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 action. He knew just three persons in New York; an elderly lawyer who had been a friend of his father's, a class-mate of his own at college who was teaching at Columbia and a second college acquaintance who was in the advertising business. He would hunt them in turn and find whether they knew Miss Pearse. If by any chance they did he would secure an introduction to that lady, but he wasn't hopeful of gaining his end that way. Neither the college instructor nor the advertising man were social lights, while as for the elderly lawyer, Wade remembered him as a rather offensive, misanthropic old codger, unmarried and living in some small town in New Jersey. No, he could scarcely expect results from that trio of acquaintances, but he would see them nevertheless. If nothing came of it, and he was pretty certain that nothing would, he would go boldly to the Fifty-third Street house, request an audience of Miss Pearse and state his case. She had looked kindly. Wade recalled, and, after all, it was no