McIntyre's answer was drowned in an
outburst of cheering in the dining room and the rush of many feet.
On common impulse Kent and the others turned toward the doorway and
looked inside the dining room. Two officers of the French High
Commission were being held on the shoulders of comrades and were
delivering, as best they could amidst cheers and applause, their
farewell to hospitable Washington.
As his companions brushed by him to join the gay throng in the
center of the room, Kent turned back to pick up the envelope he had
left lying on the table. It was gone.
In feverish haste Kent looked under the table, under the chairs, the
lounge and its cushions, behind the draperies, and even under the
rugs which covered the floor of the porch, and then rose and
stared into the dining room. Which one of his companions had taken
the envelope?
Outside the porch the beautiful trumpet vine, its sturdy trunk and
thick branches reaching almost to the roof of the club building,
rustled as in a high wind, and the branches swayed this way and that
as a figure climbed swiftly down from the porch until, reaching the
fence separating the club property from its neighbor's, the man
swung across it, no mean athletic feet, and taking advantage of each
sheltering shadow, darted into the alley and from there down silent,
deserted Nineteenth Street.
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