“No, he isn’t here,” was the worried answer. “When he didn’t come down to breakfast we didn’t think anything of it at first, as he was going to be at your place late, he said, and we wanted to let him get as much rest as he could. “But when we looked into his room a little while ago to see how he was sleeping, he wasn’t there. His mother said that she hadn’t heard him come in during the night, but even then we weren’t alarmed. We thought he had spent the night with you, as he so often does.” “No,” Tom said slowly, “Ned isn’t here. He left my laboratory somewhere around midnight and I thought he was going straight home. But wait a minute!” Tom exclaimed as a new idea came to him. “I just happened to think. He might have gone to see Miss Morton and have stayed there all night, being too tired to pull up and head for home.” Ned Newton was engaged to Miss Morton and, more than once after calling there and finding himself stormbound, he had been persuaded by her parents to remain over night. “I think you’ll find him there,” suggested Tom, though in his heart he remembered that Ned had said it was too late to go to see Helen. Besides, he had had no positive engagement with her. “Call up the Mortons,” was Tom’s final suggestion. “I will,” agreed Mr. Newton. “Thanks.” Tom had no sooner finished his breakfast, following the departure of Dr. Layton, than the extension telephone rang again, and once more Mr. Newton was on the line. “Ned wasn’t at Helen’s,” the father of the mysteriously missing young man reported. “Oh, Tom, what do you think could have happened?” The young inventor was at a loss for an answer. Rapidly he reviewed the situation in his mind. Ned had left the laboratory, he was sure of that—or, wait a moment, was he? He had not seen Ned go out, but had taken it for granted that such had occurred. Then Tom had puzzled a bit over his latest invention before starting for his house. Then had come the explosion and—— Perhaps Ned had not left the laboratory. He may have gone to one of the private rooms and turned in there. Tom kept two bedrooms in this building for the use of himself and his manager when they were working late at night and did not want to disturb the main household. That might be it. Ned might be asleep in the laboratory. “Wait a few minutes, Mr. Newton,” Tom advised over the wire. “I have just thought of something. It is barely possible that Ned didn’t start for home after all last night. He isn’t at our house, but he may be in the laboratory. I’ll send out and have a search made. I’ll call you up in a few minutes.” “All right, Tom. But what’s this I’ve heard about a fire at your place last night?” “Oh, there was a little blaze—it didn’t amount to anything,” was the reply. Tom said nothing about the explosion. He wanted to minimize the damage, and he believed what had been told him, that it really did not amount to much.