Missing From Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a birthday present, only a couple of months ago. But then what happened to her after she landed?—If she did land, that is!” A completely new and horrifying possibility suddenly presented itself and Clare’s eyes went wide and dark.
    “No question about that, Mrs. Collamore.” The young man was emphatic. “If you’re tormenting yourself with the idea that she might have fallen overboard you can dismiss that at once. It was a crowded boat. No one could have been out of sight of at least a dozen other people for any moment of the crossing. Besides which, I was talking to her myself almost up to the moment of berthing.”
    “Oh, thank you !” She gave him a pale, unsteady little smile. “You’re a most reassuring person, Mr. — Mr.—”
    “Penrose. Jerry Penrose is my name. And I only wish I could remember something that would reassure you entirely.” He frowned with anxious concentration.
    “There wasn’t anything she said which might give one a clue ? ” Clare looked at him as though she might almost will him to remember some vital detail. “Can you remember what you talked about ? ”
    “Mostly our respective holidays, I think. I’d been in the Tyrol and she said she’d been in Garmisch with her father.”
    “Yes. We’re separated.” Clare told him briefly. “Did she—did she say anything to suggest that the situation distressed her deeply? I’m sorry to have to ask a virtual stranger this. But one must follow every possible line of enquiry.”
    “She didn’t give me that impression at all,” was the frank reply. “She said her father was an artist—”
    “Yes. He’s Gregory Collamore.”
    “Is he?” The young man was impressed. People tended to be impressed when Greg was mentioned. “I did wonder when you mentioned the name Collamore. I was interested when she said her father was an artist, because commercial art is my own line of country.” He made a vaguely explanatory gesture towards the easel. “But we talked in the most general way. I offered to see about her luggage, along with my own, because we were nearly in then, you know. But she said she would be all right. She was a little off-brushing, in a way, to tell the truth.”
    “In what way?” enquired Clare quickly.
    “Oh, well—” he laughed and flushed slightly. “I was thinking I’d like to see more of her. She’d made a good deal of an impression on me, you might say,” he admitted with engaging candour. “And I said something about perhaps seeing her on the train on the way up to London. But she said a bit coolly, ‘I think not,’ and—”
    “She said that?” Clare stared at him. “But you never told me that before!”
    “Why should I ? ” He looked a good deal surprised. “I suppose it was just her way of saying she didn’t want to take things further.”
    “She didn’t necessarily mean that at all! Don’t you see ? —she might have meant you wouldn’t see her on the London train because she wouldn’t be there. Think!” Clare pressed him. “From the way she said it, could she have meant that ? ”
    “I—don’t know.” Jerry Penrose looked taken aback. “Yes, I suppose she could. Though that doesn’t really get us much nearer an explanation of her disappearance, does it?”
    “At least it suggests that—” Clare swallowed—“she went of her own free will. I simply can’t imagine why she should or what could induce her to stay away from home and terrify us all like this. There wasn’t—” again she hesitated painfully, for it seemed monstrous to discuss Pat so intimately with a stranger—“there wasn’t anyone else travelling with her, I suppose ? ”
    “Not as far as I could see. Certainly she gave the impression of being on her own while I was talking to her.”
    “Well, at least there’s a crumb or two of comfort in what you have told me, and I’m terribly grateful and mustn’t take up any more of your time.” Clare gave him her really beautiful smile, at which he