Volplaning to earth, he looked for the source of this dismaying interruption. He recognized with a start one of the past season's débutantes whose mamma had spread a maze of traps and labyrinths for him--Miss Sybil Hawker-Sponge of New York, Newport, Tuxedo and Lenox. Before he could even stutter a reply a motor footman had leaped down from the box and opened the door of the limousine. Miss Hawker-Sponge fluttered out, contrived her most winning smile and repeated: "Why, Mr. Barnes, what are you doing here?" Her big doll eyes rolled a double circuit of coquetry and slanted off with a suggestive glance at the massive doorway of the Hawker-Sponge mansion, one of the most aristocratically mortgaged dwellings in America. "It is rather late for a call," she gushed suddenly, "but I know mamma"---- "Impossible!" cried Barnes. "That is--I beg your pardon--I should be charmed, but the fact is I was looking for a friend--I mean a policeman. Er--you haven't seen a good looking policeman going by, have you, Miss Sybil?" All the coquetry in Miss Hawker-Sponge's eyes went into stony eclipse. "You are looking for a policeman friend, Mr. Barnes?" she said icily, gathering up her skirts and beginning to back away. "I hope you find him." She gave him her back with the abruptness of a slap in the face. In another moment he was again a lone wayfarer in the bleak night wilderness of out-of-doors Fifth avenue. Indubitably he had committed a hideous breach of good manners and could never expect forgiveness from Miss Hawker-Sponge. She had really invited him into her home and he had preferred to hunt for a "policeman friend." Yet the tragedy of it was so grotesquely funny that Whitney Barnes laughed, and in laughing dismissed Miss Hawker-Sponge from his mind. He must find Travers Gladwin, and off he went at another burst of speed. He covered about three blocks without pause. A second and far more sensational interruption came from a side street, and again of the feminine gender. It was a tall, weird looking figure wound in a black shawl and it bumped squarely into Whitney Barnes and brought him up sharply, spinning on one foot. Before he stopped spinning he felt himself seized by the arm. Without warning a bundle was thrust into his arms and he had to clutch it. In another instant the weird figure had fled up the avenue, turned a corner and vanished. Instantly the bundle that Whitney Barnes held awkwardly and painfully, as if it were a firebrand, emitted an anguished wail. If that wasn't a pretty pickle for Whitney Barnes! His cane had clattered to the pavement and he did not dare stoop to pick it up. The anguish from the bundle he held increased terrifically in volume. He could feel beads of perspiration running down his face. What in desperation was he going to do with that awful bundle? He knew intuitively that the tall, shawled figure would never return.