“‘Never mind the name. Tell him he’s wanted on the ’phone.’ And then, by God, Steve, he talked to me!” I was leaning toward Jerry now. “Who?” “Myself, Steve! Don’t look at me as if I’m a loon. I tell you that fellow who came to the ’phone gave me a jump higher than yours. He didn’t talk exactly like me; I mean, didn’t say words I’d have said--quite; but he said ’em the way I speak, Steve. After I’d heard him, ‘Who in the devil are you?’ I said. “‘Jerry Fanneal,’ he said, cool. ‘Who’s this?’ “Of course that left me without a comeback! ‘You’re with Dorothy Crewe?’ I said. ‘Let me talk to her!’ “‘All right,’ he said; and like a fool I waited three minutes for somebody to come. Of course nobody did; and I couldn’t rouse anybody else; he’d left the receiver off. But in four minutes I came to and grabbed a cab and got over to the Sparlings’ to find I’d just gone half a minute before with Dorothy. I’d taken her alone in a cab for the Drake; they wanted to know what was the matter; why I’d come back? Where was Dorothy? I didn’t wait to explain; I cut back to the Drake; but she didn’t come; and I didn’t come! I mean the other fellow that was me never showed up anywhere. Nobody saw more of us than me after that. There I was, all right; where was Dorothy? “By God, Steve; it’s near three now; and she never came; she’s not gone home or anywhere else where she would go. If it wasn’t for those damned diamonds and sapphires they hung on her to-night, I might believe there’s a chance for a joke somewhere. But she’s a couple of hundred thousand on her neck to-night; or anyway, she had, Steve. And the papers were telling all about it; ‘Harrison Crewe brings to Chicago royal jewels’ and all that stuff; you saw it, Steve.--I’ve been to the Crewes’; just came from them. They don’t think anything’s happened; nothing’s ever happened in their family, you know. Things only happen to other people--things like what may be happening to Dorothy, Steve! Of course I couldn’t make myself awfully clear; all they feel what has happened is that Dorothy, probably for good reasons of her own, dropped me and went off from the Sparlings’ with somebody else and I’m overexcited about it. They don’t think it’s time yet to call in the police. You know them; I worried them but not to the point of having in the police and the newspapers on an affair of their own. But I called headquarters on my way out of their building, from the porter’s room under their apartment. Told police to call me here; so you’ll take any call for me, won’t you? I’m going out on the street again and I’ll ’phone you for report within every fifteen minutes. Have it now, Steve?” “Yes,” I said, to try to help him. It wasn’t true, yet truer, perhaps than “no”; for I did have the essential fact which was that he tremendously feared that harm had come to Dorothy Crewe through an extraordinary event which he, himself, could not yet make out. “Get dressed then, Steve; and stay here for me.”