Making a mental note to call up later and talk to the manager, if the notebook hadn't turned up in the meantime, Malone went off to find the bars he had stopped in before the theater. * * * * * Saving Topp's for last, he started at the Ad Lib, where a surprised bald man told him they hadn't found a notebook anywhere in the bar for something like six weeks. "Now if you'd been looking for umbrellas," he said, "we could have accommodated you. Got over ten umbrellas downstairs, waiting for their owners. I wonder why people lose so many umbrellas?" "Maybe they hate rain," Malone said. "I don't know," the bald man said. "I'm sort of a psychologist--you know, a judge of people. I think it's an unconscious protest against the fetters of a society which is slowly strangling them by--" Malone said good-by in a hurry and left. His next stop was the Xochitl, the Mexican bar on Forty-sixth Street. He greeted the bartender warmly. [Illustration] "Ah," the bartender told him. "You come back. We look for you." "Look for me?" Malone said. "You mean you found my notebook?" "Notesbook?" the bartender said. "A little black plastic book," Malone said, making motions, "about so big. And it----" "Not find," the bartender said. "You lose him?" "Sure I lost him," Malone said. "I mean, _it_. Would I be looking for it if I hadn't lost it?" "Who knows?" the bartender said, and shrugged. "But you said you were looking for me," Malone said. "What about?" "Oh," the bartender said. "I only say that. Make customer feel good, think we miss him. Customers like, so we do. What your name?" "Pizarro," Malone said disgustedly, and went away. The last stop was Topp's. Well, he had to find the notebook there. It was the only place the notebook could be. That was logic, and Malone was proud of it. He walked into Topp's trying to remember the bartender's name, and found it just as he walked into the bar. "Hello, Wally," he said gaily. The bartender stared at him. "I'm not Wally," he said. "Wally's the other barman. My name's Ray." "Oh," Malone said, feeling deflated. "Well, I've come about a notebook." "Yes, sir?" Ray said. "I lost the notebook here yesterday evening, between six and eight. If you'll just take me to the Lost and Found department--" "One moment, sir," Ray said, and left him standing at the bar, all alone. In a few seconds he was back. "I didn't see the notebook myself, sir," he said. "But if Wally picked it up, he'd have turned it over to the _maitre d'_. Perhaps you'd like to check with him." "Sure," Malone said. The _maitre d'_ turned out to be a shortish, heavy-set man with large blue eyes, a silver mane and a thin, pencil-line mustache. He was addressed, for no reason Malone was able to discover, as BeeBee. Ray introduced them. "This gentleman wants to know about a notebook," he told BeeBee. "Notebook?" BeeBee said.