The St.James, that most exclusive club, his favourite haunt, had seen nothing of him; the easel in his den, that was his hobby, had been untouched; there had been days even when he had not crossed the threshold of his home.

Every resource at his command he had called into play in an effort to solve the mystery.

For nearly the entire month, following first this lead and then that, he had lived in the one disguise that he felt confident she knew nothing of--that was, or, rather, had become, almost a dual personality with him.

From the Sanctuary, that miserable and disreputable room in a tenement on the East Side, a tenement that had three separate means of entrance and exit, he had emerged day after day as Larry the Bat, a character as well known and as well liked in the exclusive circles of the underworld as was Jimmie Dale in the most exclusive strata of New York's society and fashion.

And it had been useless--all useless.