He gave her a peck on the cheek and vanished. She sat on the edge of the bed with her heart beating in her throat. Her nerves made her thirsty, so she poured a glass of water from the vase on the dresser and drained it. She seemed to have a bottomless thirst. She listened to the ticking of the clock. An hour passed and still he wasn’t back. She fidgeted and paced, tried to read one of the library books she had packed in her valise. She got stuck on one sentence and read it over and over. Why would a man disappear on his wedding day?

When she got up enough nerve to venture out into the hall and take the stairs down three floors to the lobby, the clerk on duty was not the same kindly, gray-haired gentleman who had checked them in that morning. This one was thin and young and dark, with dandruff all over the shoulders of his dark blue jacket. She walked past him to the entrance of the hotel and peered across the street at the great, looming bulk of the department store. It was the biggest store she had ever seen. She couldn’t face the thought of entering that cavernous place to search for him. She headed back to the stairs. The clerk glared at her, but he didn’t try to stop her. She had the horrid thought that perhaps he thought she was in the hotel for some illicit purpose. She climbed the stairs quickly, ran down the hall to Room 14, twisted the doorknob, almost sprained her wrist. The door was locked. Of course it would be. Jake had explained it to her when they arrived. The door had a special mechanism that caused it to lock when you closed it. He had two copies of the heavy brass key. One was on the bedside table, next to her library book. The other one Jake had taken with him. Did the hotel clerk keep a third copy? That was an awful lot of keys for one room. Still, she would only know if she asked. She would go right up to that clerk and say that she was Mrs. Jake McCloskey and that she had accidentally locked herself out of Room 14, and would he be so kind to give her another key, please. But how would he know that she belonged to that room? She didn’t have her handbag or her coat or anything at all. Just herself, a hick girl from Nebraska, left in a hotel room by a man who’d lured her to the big city and abandoned her. How many times did people who worked in hotels hear that story?