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However, there was one point on which Hutchins felt he must have light.

“Miss Cutler,” he said, easily, “are you and Mr. Locke especially good friends?”

The girl’s cheeks took on a deeper color, but she said coldly, “Will you state what you mean by that term?”

“Whew!” Hutchins thought to himself. “What has come over her? She’s been coached by somebody—and a mighty good job, at that.”

Aloud, he said, “I will—since you ask it. I mean, is there any romantic attachment between you?”

“No,” she replied, and her air was almost judicial; “no, not that. We are pals—good chums—fellow-workers—that is all.”

Except for the sudden blush the question had called up, the girl seemed entirely unmoved.

But Hutchins said to himself, “She’ll bear watching. She has turned from a hysterical baby to a self-composed young woman altogether too quickly! I believe she has had some word from Locke, somehow. Of course he will telephone to some one, as soon as he can manage it. Unless he is really the criminal and has vamoosed for good and all.”

“Well,” Nick Nelson said to his new friend, Jarvis, after hearing some more of this futile querying, “I don’t see as anybody can get anywhere. It isn’t the Examiner’s fault—nor yet Hutchins’—but they have nothing to work on. So far as we can gather, Locke is a proper, well-behaved citizen—but he mayn’t be at all. Now, he’s got to be found! Hang it all, man, nobody can drop out of existence like that!”

“Oh, it isn’t so difficult to hide,” Jarvis reflected. “I know Tommy, and I like him—in this casual way we all know him—but if he is a deep-dyed villain, and he may