Without a moment’s hesitation Barry obeyed, slipping around a big pillar. With his back squarely toward the entrance, he passed quietly and easily through the crowd toward the telephones in the narrow passage behind the desk. His brain was in a seething turmoil; but overtopping every other emotion was anger at the man who had arrived so inopportunely. If he could only have delayed a single, brief minute longer, the name trembling on the woman’s lips would have been uttered, and Lawrence would have possessed at last the key to the mystery which was driving him almost frantic. Who was he supposed to be? Who was the man he so resembled? Why had he been given a thousand dollars to pass himself off for this unknown for a single week? These and a dozen other questions passed swiftly through Barry’s brain as he perfunctorily fumbled the leaves of the telephone book to give some excuse for lingering there. What did it all mean? Was he ever to know? *CHAPTER XXXIII.* *GONE!* Lawrence presently closed the book and ventured back into the lobby. A swift survey of the place told him that Mrs. Walbridge Gordon was no longer there; so he made his way to the café and settled down in one corner to wait for Hamersley. He rather wished he did not have to talk to Jock just then. It would be a difficult matter at any time to explain what had happened to him the night before without breaking the pledge of secrecy he had made to the little man in black. Besides, at the present moment his mind was so full of the extraordinary experience he had just been through, and its probable relation to the mystery which surrounded him, that there was little room for anything else. Nevertheless, when the big bulk of the Yale man loomed up before him, and that booming voice resounded in his ears, Barry was glad, after all, that he had come. When one is perplexed and muddled and utterly at sea, there is nothing like a good friend whose discretion can be trusted and whose interest and sympathy is assured, even if he lacks the cleverness to suggest a solution of the difficulty. The result was that Lawrence hailed Hamersley with pleasure, silenced the upbraiding tirade Jock started, and began to pour into his ears an account of the extraordinary things which had been happening for the past few days. He made no mention of Shirley Rives, and he refrained from saying anything about the man in black, the conditions the latter had imposed, or the money which had changed hands. He simply told his friend that he had undertaken certain trivial matters concerning which he was sworn to secrecy. What had occurred after that strange interview in the Pennsylvania Station, including mention of the Englishman and an account of his interview with Mrs. Walbridge Gordon, he had no hesitation in narrating; and, when the story was finished, the big fellow’s eyes were starting out of his head.