at my boy had been for a bed
which they couldn't give him the night before last. I did let them have
it! But it seems the manager was out, and his understrappers had
recommended other hotels; they've just been telephoning to them all in
turn, but at every one the poor boy seems to have fared the same. Then
I've been in communication with these infernal people in St. John's Wood,
and with the doctor, but none of them have heard anything. I thought I'd
like to do what I could before coming to you, Mr. Thrush, but that's all
I've done or know how to do. Something must have happened!"

"It begins to sound like it," said Thrush gravely.

"But there are happenings and happenings; it may be only a minor accident.
One moment!"

And he returned to the powder-closet of its modish day, where Mullins was
still pursuing his ostensibly menial avocation. What the master said was
inaudible in the library, but the man hurried out in front of him, and was
heard clattering down the evil stairs next minute.

"In less than an hour," explained Thrush, "he will be back with a list of
the admissions at the principal hospitals for the last forty-eight hours.
I don't say there's much in it; your boy had probably some letter or other
means of easier indentification about him; but it's worth trying."

"It is, indeed!" murmured Mr. Upton, much impressed.

"And while he is trying it," exclaimed Eugene Thrush, lighting up as with
a really great idea, "you'll greatly oblige me by having a whisky-and-soda
in the first place."

"No, thank you! I haven't had a bite all day. It would fly to my head."

"But that's its job; that's where it's meant to fly," explained the
convivial Mr. Thrush, preparing the potion with practised hand. Baited
with a biscuit it was eventually swallowed, and a flagging giant refreshed
by his surrender. It made him like his new acquaintance too well to bear
the thought of detaining him any more.

"Go to your dinner, man, and let me waylay you later!"

"Thank you, I prefer to keep you now I've got you, Mr. Upton! My man
begins his round by going to tell my pal I can't dine with him at all.
Not a word, I beg! I'll have a bite with you instead when Mullins gets
back, and in a taxi that won't be long."

"But do you think you can do anything?"

The question floated in pathetic evidence on a flood of inarticulate
thanks.

"If you give me time, I hope so," was the measured answer. "But the
needle in the hay i