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“Yes. Away part of the time.”

“Where did he go?”

The Chinaman shrugged his shoulders, with a mere “No,” but no words could have expressed a more utter absence of information on that subject.

A few further questions and he was set aside as a hopeless source of enlightenment.

Rodman Jarvis was called next, and he also knew but little. His acquaintance with Locke dated perhaps from six months back. He knew him in a social and casual way, but not at all intimately or confidentially. He himself was a lawyer, but he had artistic leanings and in his leisure hours preferred to consort with painters or art students rather than learned members of his own profession.

He said there were perhaps a dozen or so who met occasionally for a social evening or afternoon, but the occasions were not very frequent, and they rarely saw each other in the intervals.

His estimate of Locke was all to the good, though avowedly superficial. He said Locke was something of a dreamer, rather intellectual, a fair artist, and a good pal. He was more inclined to listen than to talk, Jarvis said, when the crowd held their pow-wows, but when he did speak, he usually said something worth listening to. Oh, not highbrow, or erudite, but original and interesting.

All of which put the absent Locke in a pleasant light, and gave no impression of a sinister character.

But Babcock sighed, as he realized that this, after all, meant very little. He asked Henry Post for further description of the missing man.

“Locke is a good sort,” Post declared. “But I know little about him. He kept to himself—as we most of us do, down here. We are not inquisitive about our neighbors,