After that he listened.  He heard that Dr. Jennings was contemplating taking Anna’s place at the lodge, and he comprehended after a moment that Anna was already gone.  Even then the significance of the situation was a little time in dawning on him.  When it did, however, he rose with a stifled oath.

Mrs. Boyer was speaking.

“It is exactly as I tell you,” she was saying.  “If Peter Byrne is trying to protect her reputation he is late doing it.  Personally I have been there twice.  I never saw Anna Gates.  And she is registered here at the club as living in the Pension Schwarz.  Whatever the facts may be, one thing remains, she is not there now.”

McLean waited to hear no more.  He was beside himself with rage.  He found a “comfortable” at the curb.  The driver was asleep inside the carriage.  McLean dragged him out by the shoulder and shouted an address to him.  The cab bumped along over the rough streets to an accompaniment of protests from its frantic passenger.

The boy was white-lipped with wrath and fear.  Peter’s silence that afternoon as to the state of affairs loomed large and significant.  He had thought once or twice that Peter was in love with Harmony; he knew it now in the clearer vision of the moment.  He recalled things that maddened him:  the dozen intimacies of the little menage, the caress in Peter’s voice when he spoke to the girl, Peter’s steady eyes in the semi-gloom of the salon while Harmony played.

At a corner they must pause for the inevitable regiment.  McLean cursed, bending out to see how long the delay would be.  Peter had been gone for half an hour, perhaps, but Peter would walk.  If he could only see the girl first, talk to her, tell her what she would be doing by remaining—­

He was there at last, flinging across the courtyard like a madman.  Peter was already there; his footprints were fresh in the slush of the path.  The house door was closed but not locked.  McLean ran up the stairs.  It was barely twilight outside, but the staircase well was dark.  At the upper landing he was compelled to fumble for the bell.

Peter admitted him.  The corridor was unlighted, but from the salon came a glow of lamplight.  McLean, out of breath and furious, faced Peter.

“I want to see Harmony,” he said without preface.

Peter eyed him.  He knew what had happened, had expected it when the bell rang, had anticipated it when Harmony told him of Mrs. Boyer’s visit.  In the second between the peal of the bell and his opening the door he had decided what to do.

“Come in.”

McLean stepped inside.  He was smaller than Peter, not so much shorter as slenderer.  Even Peter winced before the look in his eyes.

“Where is she?”

“In the kitchen, I think.  Come into the salon.”

McLean flung off his coat.  Peter closed the door behind him and stood just inside.  He had his pipe as usual.  “I came to see her, not you, Byrne.”