That's all the help I can offer you. He's not in jail or the morgue or
any of the hospitals, as yet. That isn't much, but it's something.
Here's a personal description of him which the police issued
yesterday. It's as good as any I could give you, and here are two
photographs of him which I got from his mother yesterday afternoon.
Take a good look at him, Suraci, fix his face in your mind, and then
if you should manage, or happen, to locate him, you can't go wrong. I
know your memory for faces."

The "shadow" departed eagerly upon his quest, and Blaine settled down
to an hour's deep reflection. He held the threads of the major
conspiracy in his hands, but as yet he could not connect them, at
least in any tangible way to present at a court of so-called justice,
where everyone, from the judge to the policeman at the door could, and
inevitably would, be bought over, in advance, to the side of the
criminals. It was a one-man fight, backed only with the slender means
provided by a young girl's insignificant financial ventures, against
the press, the public, a corrupt political machine of great power, the
desperate ingenuity of three clever, unscrupulous minds brought to
bay, and the overwhelming influence of colossal wealth. Henry Blaine
felt that the supreme struggle of his whole career was confronting
him.

The unheard-of intrepidity of conception, the very daring of the
conspiracy, combined with the prominence of the men involved,
would brand any accusation, even from a man of Henry Blaine's
celebrated international reputation, as totally preposterous, unless
substantiated. And what actual proof had he of their criminal
connection with the alleged bankruptcy of Pennington Lawton?

He had established, to his own satisfaction, at least, that the
mortgage on the family home on Belleair Avenue had been forged, and by
Jimmy Brunell. The signature on the note held by Moore, the banker,
and the entire letter asking Mallowe to negotiate the loan had been
also fraudulent, and manufactured by the same hand. Paddington, the
private detective with perhaps the most unsavory record of any
operating in the city, was in close and constant communication with
the three men Blaine held under suspicion, and probably also with
Jimmy Brunell. Lastly, Brunell himself was known to be still in
possession of his paraphernalia for the pursuit of his old nefarious
calling. Paddington, on Margaret Hefferman's testimony, had assuredly
succeeded i