CHAPTER   26.

THONE WENT DOWN THE STAIRS AS if he were sliding. On the lowest floor he checked himself. He opened the door to Mandy’s room, in hope, but one glance told him she was not there. He did not call to her. He knew, now, that wherever she was, she would not hear.

He bellowed back up the core of the house, “Turn on the floodlights.” He ran down the hall to the door that led outside. He knew he must follow the way she had taken until he found her. He came out into darkness, but he had not gone far when the lights came on. Now he could search the whole lit slope with his eyes. If she had fallen anywhere in the gardens he should be able to see her from this highest shelf.

He saw no trace of her. No human heap was lying among the leaves and flowers.

Inside the garage, then. He cursed. He had no key. Then he remembered. The door was inside out. Because it was the door to his father’s fortress, it locked in the opposite way. From inside the wall, he would need no key. And the middle door was never locked. He slipped and fell and rolled, clutching at plants that would not hold his plunging weight.

He sobbed, “Mandy,” because he could not help it.

A man’s voice was shouting, beyond the wall. “Who is it? Who is it?”

“Where’s Mandy?”

“Mandy!” He heard blows on hollow wood. The noise bounced on the canyon walls. “Can’t—get—in.” He heard running feet and then kicking and scratching on the wall.

He picked himself up and fell against the workshop door. It opened docilely. An odor poured out.

And there she was.

Gene had scrambled, somehow, over the wall and was shouting frantically beside him. Thone prayed out loud. “It’s not too late. It’s not too late.”

She was quite limp in his arms. He felt tireless. Gene had no chance. Gene’s cries in his ears were meaningless. Alone, he carried her as if she weighed nothing, well away from that place, high up to a grassy spot where the air was pure. To Gene, who stumbled, cursing, after, he said curtly, “Shut up. Get a doctor.”

“I’ve called a doctor,” said Fanny. She was there in her black satin, with her diamonds blazing.

Thone knelt on the ground.

“If she’s dead, I’ll kill you,” sobbed Gene Noyes.

“But she isn’t,” said Thone.

The time, which had seemed so long, had not been too long, after all.

“Thone,” said Fanny gently, in a moment, in the silence that thickened and deepened after frantic sound, “your father has had a stroke.”

He flung up his head. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said bitterly. He picked up Mandy, brushing the other man out of his way as he did so. He carried her slowly and carefully now, and gently, up toward the house. His body was suddenly a mass of aches and pains. His foot was aflame. One arm was torn and raw. But still her weight was nothing and the pain was good. Fiercely, he welcomed it.

Fanny stared after them, at the redheaded boy, whose coat was torn, who was dodging ahead to open the way. At Thone’s tall figure, going steadily and somehow penitently upward. At the soft mop of Mandy’s hair on his right arm, the red skirt caught up in his left, her pretty feet dangling, one slipper lost. The old actress’s eyes were tortured. Her mouth curled and trembled. Her thin hand clawed at her throat.