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Updated: September 13, 2025
"You mean she has disappeared?" asked John, feeling that her fear that Alma had been abducted might be far-fetched. "She has been gone since morning," continued Mrs. Sprockett, a little calmed by the sound of a masculine voice. "Ever since morning. Someone has stolen her. Oh, my little girl; someone has stolen her. What shall I do? What shall I do?" "Try to calm yourself," urged Mrs. Gallant.
"Thanks, I will, but Maud well you know how it is you know sometimes," said Mrs. Sprockett's husband. "I know," said John, and Sprockett hurried back across the street. A few minutes later the baby's wailing stopped. Mrs. Sprockett's husband appeared on the porch of the Sprockett house with a bundle of blankets in his arms and pacing back and forth, whistled a familiar tune as a lullaby.
"You will do the sensible thing if you permit the publication of Alma's picture and a brief story that she is missing," John said. Mrs. Sprockett drew from her bag a photograph of her daughter and gave John a description of her and the facts relative to her disappearance. "If anything has happened to her it will kill me," she said, as she rose to go.
John listened and distinguished the notes of the father's whistling and smiled to himself as he recognized it as an off-key variation of "The Merry Widow Waltz." Mrs. Sprockett, still sobbing, and Mrs. Gallant, with her arm around her, emerged from the house. "I'm going to keep Mrs. Sprockett company until she can rest," Mrs. Gallant explained.
Women like her are a disgrace to a nation and we mothers should do something, I tell you." From further snatches of the conversation John learned that Mrs. Sprockett was referring to a motion picture actress who had been given a decree of divorce that day. "I told my Alma at dinner, tonight, that she had better not let me catch her sneaking off to the picture show," Mrs. Sprockett continued.
"No," he said, shortly, an impulse rising in him to add, "and you know it." "I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Sprockett's husband, humbly. "She didn't say, you know I thought she might have the baby " As on the night of his father's death John heard the Sprockett infant, who, he had a vague idea, was the eleventh or twelfth, wailing somewhere in the Sprockett home.
Sprockett's husband, trying to appear as though he was not peering past John, which he was. John was certain that Mrs. Sprockett's husband knew as well as he did that Mrs. Sprockett was not with them. He had more than a suspicion that Mr. Sprockett, having seen the automobile bring Consuello, had crossed the street out of pure curiosity.
"Aren't you John Gallant?" she asked. He noticed a look of fear in her eyes. "Yes." "I'm Alma Sprockett," she said, as if the mention of her name was sufficient explanation of her request for him to keep whatever she had in mind a secret. "Well?" he asked, still unable to understand. "If mother ever found out that I was at the picture show today I'd be in a peck of trouble," she said.
They had not spoken, but the feeling that she was suffering with him had assuaged his agony until that Mrs. Sprockett had touched him on the shoulder and spoken to him. "Do be brave, John, you must be a man now," she had said, and he had rushed outside to begin his pacing, back and forth, back and forth. He began his walking again, ten steps across and ten steps back.
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