him," goes on Zosco. "Nothing fancy
about Jake, plain dresser and all that. But what gets us is how he could
have lost himself for so long."

"Lost!" echoes Mr. Robert.

"Well, he's gone, anyway," says Zosco. "Disappeared. Since after dinner
last night and----"

"Oh, Jake, Jake!" wails the billowy female with the pearl ropes.

"There, there, Matilda!" put in Zosco. "Never mind the sob stuff now.
He's all right somewhere, of course. He'll turn up in time. Bound to. It
ain't as if he was some wild young sport. Steady as a church, Jake. No
bad habits to speak of. Not one of the kind to go slippin' into town on
a spree. Not him. And never carries around much ready money or jewelry.
No holdup men out here, anyway."

"But--but he's gone!" moans Matilda.

"Sure he is," admits Zosco. "Maybe back to Saginaw. Something might have
happened at the store. Or he might have got word that some cloak and
suit jobber was closing out his fall goods at a sacrifice and got so
busy in town making the deal that he forgot to let us know. That would
be Jake, all right, if he saw a chance of turnin' over a few thousands."

"Would he go bareheaded, and without his indigestion tablets?" demands
Mrs. Jake.

"If it was another bargain like that lot of army raincoats, he'd go in
his pajamas," says Zosco.

But Matilda shakes her head. She's sure something awful has happened to
Jake. Now that she thinks it over she believes he must have had
something on his mind. Hadn't they noticed how restless he'd been for
the past few days? Yes, both the squatty women had. And the funny little
guy in the long-tailed cutaway brought up how Jake had quit playing
billiards with him, even after he'd offered to start him 20 up.

"But that don't mean anything," says Zosco. "Jake never could play
billiards anyway. Hates it. He's no sport at all, except maybe when it
comes to pinochle. He's all for business. Don't know how to take a real
vacation like a gentleman. I'm always telling him that."

Gradually we'd all drifted into the big drawin' room, but Jake continues
to be the general topic. We couldn't help but get kind of interested in
him, too. When a middle-aged storekeeper from Saginaw gets up from
dinner, wanders out into a quiet, respectable community like ours, and
disappears like he'd dropped from a manhole or been swished off on an
airplane it's enough to set you guessin'. By askin' a few questions we
got the whole life history of Jake, from the time