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have?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œI’ll have to borrow it, but I’ll get it back to you as soon as I have my copies made.”
    â€œNo! No!” he protested against having his ladylove’s face given to a lot of gumshoes. “That would be terrible!”
    I finally got it, but it cost me more words than I like to waste on an incidental.
    â€œI want to borrow a couple of her letters, or something in her writing, too,” I said.
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œTo have photostatic copies made. Handwriting specimens come in handy—give you something to go over hotel registers with. Then, even if going under fictitious names, people now and then write notes and make memorandums.”
    We had another battle, out of which I came with three envelopes and two meaningless sheets of paper, all bearing the girl’s angular writing.
    â€œShe have much money?” I asked, when the disputed photograph and handwriting specimens were safely tucked away in my pocket.
    â€œI don’t know. It’s not the sort of thing that one would pry into. She wasn’t poor; that is, she didn’t have to practice any petty economies; but I haven’t the faintest idea either as to the amount of her income or its source. She had an account at the Golden Gate Trust Company, but naturally I don’t know anything about its size.”
    â€œMany friends here?”
    â€œThat’s another thing I don’t know. I think she knew a few people here, but I don’t know who they were. You see, when we were together we never talked about anything but ourselves. You know what I mean: there was nothing we were interested in but each other. We were simply—”
    â€œCan’t you even make a guess at where she came from, who she was?”
    â€œNo. Those things didn’t matter to me. She was Jeanne Delano, and that was enough for me.”
    â€œDid you and she ever have any financial interests in common? I mean, was there ever any transaction in money or other valuables in which both of you were interested?”
    What I meant, of course, was had she got into him for a loan, or had she sold him something, or got money out of him in any other way.
    He jumped to his feet, and his face went fog-grey. Then he sat down again—slumped down—and blushed scarlet.
    â€œPardon me,” he said thickly. “You didn’t know her, and of course you must look at the thing from all angles. No, there was nothing like that. I’m afraid you are going to waste time if you are going to work on the theory that she was an adventuress. There was nothing like that! She was a girl with something terrible hanging over her; something that called her to Baltimore suddenly; something that has taken her away from me. Money? What could money have to do with it? I love her!”
    III
    R. F. Axford received me in an office-like room in his Russian Hill residence: a big blond man, whose forty-eight or -nine years had not blurred the outlines of an athlete’s body. A big, full-blooded man with the manner of one whose self-confidence is complete and not altogether unjustified.
    â€œWhat’s our Burke been up to now?” he asked amusedly when I told him who I was. His voice was a pleasant vibrant bass.
    I didn’t give him all the details.
    â€œHe was engaged to marry a Jeanne Delano, who went East about three weeks ago and then suddenly disappeared. He knows very little about her; thinks something has happened to her; and wants her found.”
    â€œAgain?” His shrewd blue eyes twinkled. “And to a Jeanne this time! She’s the fifth within a year, to my knowledge, and no doubt I missed one or two who were current while I was in Hawaii. But where do I come in?”
    â€œI asked him for responsible endorsement. I think he’s all right, but he isn’t, in the strictest sense, a responsible person. He referred me to you.”
    â€œYou’re right about his not