e we are!" he said. "_The Girl Up-stairs,_" and he began reading off
the route. "They're playing to-night," he said, "at Cedar Rapids;
to-morrow night in Dubuque."

"All right," said Rodney. "The next thing to find out is whether she's
with the company. Who is there we can telephone to out there?"

"Why," said Jimmy, "I suppose we might raise the manager of the
opera-house. They're at Cedar Rapids to-night, and we might get a good
enough wire so that a proper name would be understood." He glanced at
his watch. "But there's a quicker and surer and cheaper way, and that's
to ask Alec McEwen. He's the press agent of the company here, and he'd
be sure to know."

"He'd know," Rodney demurred, "but would he tell?"

"He'd tell me," said Jimmy.

"Can you find him?" Rodney wanted to know. "Where would he be at this
time of day--at his office or his house?"

He hadn't any office nor any house, Jimmy said. "But since he's
undoubtedly cleaned up the newspaper offices by now, on his weekly
round," he concluded, "we can find him easily enough. I'll guarantee to
locate him--within three bars. There'll be no one in to see me after
this," he went on, slamming down the roll-top to his desk, getting up
and reaching for his overcoat, "so we may as well go straight at it."

They walked down to the street entrance in silence. There Jimmy, with a
nonchalance that rang a little flat on his own ear, pulled up and said:

"Look here! There's no need your trailing around on this job. Tell me
where you will be in an hour and I'll call you up."

"Oh, I've nothing else to do," said Rodney, "and I'll be glad to go
along."

They were at cross-purposes here. Jimmy didn't want him along. He had a
hunch that Rodney wouldn't find little Alec very satisfactory, but he
didn't know just how to say so. Rodney, on his part, strongly
disrelished the notion of trailing the press agent from bar to bar. But
he attributed the same distaste to Jimmy and felt it wouldn't be fair
not to share it with him. There was, besides, a certain satisfaction in
making his pride do penance.

Jimmy hadn't overestimated his knowledge of little Alec McEwen's orbit.
They walked together to the corner of Clark and Randolph Streets and,
working radially from there, in the third bar they found him.

Even before this, however, Rodney regretted that he hadn't let Jimmy do
the job alone. He was not an habitue of the sumptuous bars of the Loop,
and the voices of the men he foun