forget how very much the
idea of so doing frightened you, climb into the opening, and follow the
passage to its other end. Bubbles compromised. He waited patiently for
half an hour. Nothing happened. Then he pulled himself into the opening
and crawled through the darkness for perhaps the length of a city block.

"What," he then said to himself, "is the use of me going any further? I
can't see in the dark. I've got no matches, and if anything happens to
me, there'll be nobody to tell Harry about this place. Better make a
get-away now, find Harry, and bring him here to-night. Then if we find
anybody there'll be something doing."

He had turned and was crawling rather rapidly toward the entrance of the
passage.

XXVIII

Bubble's problem was to locate Harry West. And he wrestled with it, if
trying to cover the whole of a scorching hot city on a pair of
insufficient legs and a very limited amount of carfare may be called
wrestling. His search took him into many odd places where you could not
have expected to cross the trail of an honest man. He even made
inquiries of a master-plumber, of a Fourth Avenue vender of antiques, of
a hairy woman with one eye who ran a news-stand, of a bar-tender, of
saloon-keepers and bootblacks. He drifted through a department store,
and whispered to a pretty girl who sold "art pictures." She shook her
head. He spoke a word to the negro sentinel of a house in the West
Forties, and was admitted to quiet, padded rooms, containing everything
which is necessary to separate hopeful persons from their money. In one
room a number of book-makers were whiling away the hot afternoon with
poker for small stakes. In another room, played upon by an electric fan,
sat Mr. Lichtenstein, the proprietor. He was bent over a table on which
he had assembled fifteen or twenty of the component parts of a very
large picture-puzzle. He was small, plump and earnest. He may have been
a Jew, but he had bright red hair and a pug nose. His eyes, bright,
quick, small, brown, and kind, were very busy hunting among the
brightly colored pieces of the puzzle.

"'Dafternoon, Mr. Liechtenstein," said Bubbles.

"'Dafternoon, Bubbles," said Mr. Lichtenstein, without looking up.

"How d'je know it was me?"

"I saw you in the looking-glass. What's the news?"

"It's for Harry."

"And Harry is--where?"

"Don't you know where Harry is?"

"I do. But you can't get to him." Mr. Lichtenstein lowered his voice.
"He's gon