Coming out of the quiet cross street he stepped thoughtlessly into the rush of traffic that sweeps through Union Square. An automobile brushed carelessly by within inches of him. A great lumbering truck came charging down upon him. A motorcycle screamed at his ear. He leaped back to the curb, muttering at the grinning fiend in goggles who shot past. Wardwell stood on the curb looking out over the shifting lines and tides of trucks, handcarts, automobiles, horses and people. He was looking for one person out of the hundreds and hundreds that moved within range of his eye. As well, he thought, look for a particular stone in the paving. A few men have stepped into the wilderness and never been seen again. But how many, many men, and women, have stepped off a curb into a stream like that and never been seen again. There's Flynn, the cop, across the street. He knows me by sight. He could say he saw me step off the curb. And that's all he could say. I could lose myself from anybody that ever saw me. The string that holds us where we are is so thin that--Why it's a wonder that anybody stays where he is! It's so easy to walk out, completely out! And then some of Augusta's excited worry came upon him. Rose Wilding _might_ have been stunned by the fall. She _might_ have walked, dazed, right past her own door, right off this curb and into that sea of moving life! "Is it kiddin' me you are?" snorted officer Flynn. "Lookin' for your boarding mistress! More like, she's lookin' for you." "No, I'm not," said Jimmie quietly. "I'm right in earnest. Her daughter has it that she fell and struck her head on the curb, and lost--" "Sure. There'd have to be a daughter in it." "Oh, go to Blazes!" snapped Jimmie, turning on his heel. "I might have known better," he growled as he walked away. "They never do anything unless you show them a corpse. And then they'd like to club you for giving them trouble." He turned south, looking to the only other resource he knew. He was a New Yorker with all of a New Yorker's entire dependence on the two forces that govern his town--the police and the newspapers. At Astor Place he ran across Jim Ray, a dark little crank of a man, a man who looked as old as the first thing that ever happened, and seemed to have been present at every happening since the first. He was coming from a stormy, snapping interview with an irate, bullying financier, and he was on his way to get the personal story of an interesting adventuress who had gotten herself into jail. But he listened to Wardwell. In fact, he always listened to everything, until he was sure it was not worth listening to. He had known Wardwell during the latter's sporadic incursions into newspaper work, and had shown a grudging, contrary sort of liking for him. "Which do you want to go on," Ray questioned noncommittally, "the facts, or the daughter's imagination?" "Both," said Wardwell stubbornly.