nd lets it ride at that. So he's always
right there with the friendly hail whenever Penrhyn swaggers in wearin'
them noisy costumes that he has such a weakness for, and with his
eyebrows touched up and his cutie-boy mustache effect decoratin' that
thick upper lip. How a fat party like him could work up so much personal
esteem I never could understand. But they do. You watch next time you're
on a subway platform, who it is that gazes most fond into the
gum-machine mirrors and if it ain't mostly these blimp-built boys with
a 40 belt measure then I'm wrong on my statistics. Anyway, Penrhyn is
that kind.

"This is the third day that he has been missing, Torchy," says Mr.
Robert, solemn.

"Yes?" says I. "Seems to me I saw an item about him in the theatrical
notes yesterday, something about his being a. w. o. l. Kind of joshing,
it read, like they didn't take it serious."

"That's the disgusting part of it," says Mr. Robert. "Here is a man who
disappears suddenly, to whom almost anything may have happened, from
being run over by a truck to robbery and murder; yet, because he happens
to be connected with the theatrical business, it is referred to as if it
were some kind of a joke. Why, he may be lying unidentified in some
hospital, or at the bottom of the North River."

"Anybody out looking for him?" I asks.

"Not so far as I can discover," says Mr. Robert. "I have 'phoned up to
the Shuman offices--they're putting on his new piece, you know--but I
got no satisfaction at all. He hadn't been there for several days. That
was all they knew. Yes, there had been talk of giving the case to a
detective agency, but they weren't sure it had been done. And here is
his poor mother up in New Rochelle, almost on the verge of nervous
prostration. There is his fiancee, too; little Betty Parsons, who is
crying her eyes out. Nice girl, Betty. And it's a shame that something
isn't being done. Anyway, I shall do what I can."

"Sure!" says I. "I hadn't thought about his having a mother--and a girl.
But say, Mr. Robert, maybe I can put you next to somebody at Shuman's
who can give you the dope. I got a friend up there--Whitey Weeks. Used
to do reportin'. Last time I met him though, he admitted modest that
Alf. Shuman had come beggin' him to take full charge of the publicity
end of all his attractions. So if anybody has had any late bulletins
about Mr. Deems it's bound to be Whitey."

"Suppose you ring him up, then," says Mr. Robert.

"Whe