George wagged his head mournfully. "It's a shame. I know you counted on it, but I guess you'll have to get summonelse."

"I'm afraid I don't understand. How do you know Miss Lessing won't go?

Did she tell you so?"

"Not what you might call exactly, but she won't all right," George returned with confidence. "There ain't one chance in a hundred I'm in wrong."

"In wrong? How?"

"About her bein' who she is."

P. Sybarite subjected the open, naf countenance of the shipping clerk to a prolonged and doubting scrutiny.

"No, I ain't crazy in the head, neither," George a.s.severated with some heat. "I suspicioned somethin' was queer about that girl right along, but now I _know_ it."

"Explain yourself."

"Ah, it ain't nothin' against her! You don't have to scorch your collar. _She's_ all right. Only--she 's in bad. I don't s'pose you seen the evenin' paper?"

"No."

"Well, I picked up the _Joinal_ down to Clancey's--this is it." With an effective flourish, George drew the sheet from his coat pocket and unfolded its still damp and pungent pages. "And soon's I seen that,"

he added, indicating a smudged halftone, "I begun to wise up to that little girl. It's sure some shame about her, all right, all right."

Taking the paper, P. Sybarite examined with perplexity a portrait labelled "Marian Blessington." Whatever its original aspect, the coa.r.s.e mesh of the reproducing process had blurred it to a vague presentment of the head and shoulders of almost any young woman with fair hair and regular features: only a certain, almost indefinable individuality in the pose of the head remotely suggested Molly Lessing.

In a further endeavour to fathom his meaning, the little bookkeeper conned carefully the legend attached to the putative likeness:

MARIAN BLESSINGTON

only daughter of the late Nathaniel Blessington, millionaire founder of the great Blessington chain of department stores.

Although much sought after on account of the immense property into control of which she is to come on her twenty-fifth birthday, Miss Blessington contrived to escape matrimonial entanglement until last January, when Brian Shaynon, her guardian and executor of the Blessington estate, gave out the announcement of her engagement to his son, Bayard Shaynon. This engagement was whispered to be distasteful to the young woman, who is noted for her independent and spirited nature; and it is now persistently being rumoured that she had demonstrated her disapproval by disappearing mysteriously from the knowledge of her guardian. It is said that nothing has been known of her whereabouts since about the 1st of March, when she left her home in the Shaynon mansion on Fifth Avenue, ostensibly for a shopping tour. This was flatly contradicted this morning by Brian Shaynon, who in an interview with a reporter for the EVENING JOURNAL declared that his ward sailed for Europe February 28th on the _Mauretania_, and has since been in constant communication with her betrothed and his family. He also denied having employed detectives to locate his ward. The sailing list of the _Mauretania_ fails to give the name of Miss Blessington on the date named by Mr. Shaynon.

Refolding the paper, P. Sybarite returned it without comment.

"Well?" George demanded anxiously.

"Well?"

"Ain't you hep yet?" George betrayed some little exasperation in addition to his disappointment.

"Hep?" P. Sybarite iterated wonderingly.

"Hep's the word," George affirmed: "John W. Hep, of the well-known family of that name--very closely related to the Jeremiah Wises. Yunno who I mean, don't you?"

"Sorry," said P. Sybarite sadly: "I'm not even distinctly connected with either family."

"You mean you don't make me?"

"G.o.d forestalled me there," protested P. Sybarite piously.

"Inscrutable!"

Impatiently brushing aside this incoherent observation, George slapped the folded paper resoundingly in the palm of his hand.

"Then this here don't mean nothin' to you?"

"To me--nothing, as you say."

"You ain't dropped to the resemblance between Molly Lessing and Marian Blessington?"

"Between Miss Lessing and _that_ portrait?" asked P. Sybarite scornfully.

"Why, they're dead ringers for each other. Any one what can't see that's blind."

"But I'm _not_ blind."

"Well, then you gotta admit they look alike as twins--"

"But I've known twins who didn't look alike," said P.S.

"Ah, nix on the stallin'!" George insisted, on the verge of losing his temper. "Molly Lessing's the spit-'n'-image of Marian Blessington--and you know it. What's more--look at their names? _Molly_ for _Mary_--you make that? _Mary_ and _Marian's_ near enough alike, ain't they? And what's _Lessing_ but _Blessington_ docked goin' and comin'?"

"Wait a second. If I understand you, George, you're trying to imply that Miss Lessing is identical with Marian Blessington."

"You said somethin' then, all right."

"Simply because of the similarity of two syllables in their surnames and a fancied resemblance of Miss Lessing to this so-called portrait?"

"Now you're gettin' warm, P.S."

P.S. laughed quietly: "George, I've been doing you a grave injustice.

I apologise."

George opened his eyes and emitted a resentful "_Huh?_"

"For years I've believed you were merely stupid," P.S. explained patiently. "Now you develop a famous, if fatuous, gift of imagination.

I'm sorry. I apologise twice."

"Imag'nation h.e.l.l!" Mr. Bross exploded. "Where's your own? It's plain's daylight what I say is so. When did Miss Lessing come here?

Five weeks ago, to a day--March foist, or close onto it--just when the _Joinal_ says she did her disappearin' stunt. How you goin' to get around that?"

"You forget that the _Journal_ simply reports a rumour. It doesn't claim it's true. In fact, the story is contradicted by the very person that ought to know--Miss Blessington's guardian."

"Well, if she sailed for Europe on the _Mauretania_, like he says--how's it come her name wasn't on the pa.s.senger list?"

"It's quite possible that a young woman as much sought after and annoyed by fortune hunters, may have elected to sail incognita. It can be done, you know. In fact, it _has_ been done."

George digested this in profound gloom.