“I’m going to begin to try to find out,” said Slant-Face. “And you?” “Same here. By the way, would your Uncle Joe know anything?” “Didn’t you know? He’s sold out everything here and bought himself a fruit farm in California.” “Then there’s just one man we’re certain does know. That’s Loveman, and I’m going after Loveman. Let me know if you get next to anything, Slant-Face. So-long.” Clifford and the once master pickpocket clasped hands. “And Slant-Face,” Clifford added, “about that other matter--getting money in the old way. Don’t do it.” “I’m not promising,” said Slant-Face quietly. Clifford privately asked Police Commissioner Thorne to help in locating Mary Regan. Also he hunted up little Lieutenant Jimmie Kelly, one hundred and twenty pounds of grit and daring, head of the Tenderloin Squad that free-lanced through the hotels, restaurants, and resorts of Broadway, and of Jimmie he asked the same help. He himself, for two days and nights, now and then seeing Uncle George and Slant-Face, trailed Peter Loveman from office to courts and back again--and particularly about the restaurants and theaters and after-theater theaters, which comprised Loveman’s especial habitat. But not again did Clifford see Loveman with Mary Regan. The second night, however, he did see Loveman with young Morton, and with the two a middle-aged man with a masterful face. Morton’s father, Clifford guessed. And yet, though he saw nothing, all his senses assured him with growing insistence that great forces were at their hidden work--those subtle, complex forces that operate indirectly, patiently, with infinite cunning, behind the alluring and often innocent visage of brilliant Big Pleasure. And also he had a growing sense that this was not primarily a detective’s puzzle; but primarily a matter of the eternal human mystery of how human beings react, and how they may be artfully stimulated. He felt himself just a human being in the midst of a human problem whose outlines he could not yet discern. On the third day of failure it came to Clifford that there was a chance--a bare chance--that Loveman had no design involving Mary Regan, and he decided to go openly to him. At Loveman’s lavish downtown offices he was told Loveman had telephoned he would not appear that morning. Twenty minutes later Clifford, after having sent in his card by the Japanese butler-valet, was in Loveman’s study. The room, the studio of an apartment designed for an artist, was furnished with a disordered luxury and culture which Clifford knew to be a genuine characteristic of the strange little notable on whom he waited. Here were rows and rows of first editions; old Dutch etchings, among them several original Rembrandts; a helter-skelter gallery of autographed photographs of favorite actresses. For a score of years, as Clifford knew, Loveman had not missed an important first night.