Late that evening Sidney Kalin went to his father’s club, where he saw Benson and learned enough to send him to police headquarters. There was no publicity, but a search for the missing man was begun at once. The circumstances were, to say the least, disquieting.
At the moment this search was begun Jonas Kalin was crossing Lake Michigan on one of the large steamers, and his actions were such as to attract the attention of some of the other passengers. It was a Friday night boat and was crowded with excursionists bound for a Saturday and Sunday outing in Michigan. Jonas had a state-room, but he merely put his valise in it, and then paced the deck, occasionally stopping to lean over the rail and look down at the water. Once or twice he sought a secluded corner and sat for a time buried in thought, but he moved away the moment others stopped near him. About eleven o’clock, as he passed through the main cabin, he saw a woman putting a little boy to bed on a sofa, and he offered her his state-room.
“I’m very grateful to you, sir,” she replied, “but we couldn’t think of taking it. You’ll need it yourself.”
“I shall not sleep to-night,” he said. “It will be vacant unless you take it. Shove the valise into a corner somewhere and I’ll get it in the morning.”
He dropped the state-room key on a chair and disappeared through a door leading to the deck before she could make further protest, but his face haunted her all that night. In the morning, after some search, she found him huddled up on a camp-stool against the rail of the forward deck, and she thanked him again.
“You don’t look well,” she ventured. “Can I do anything for you?”
“It’s not a question of what any one can do for me,” he answered, “but of what I can do for others.”
“I don’t understand you, sir,” she said.
“It’s a good thing you don’t,” he returned, and, fearing that she had to deal with a crazy man, she left him.
After landing, he went directly to a hotel, engaged a room, and shut himself up in it until afternoon. Then he went to the dock and wandered nervously back and forth, looking out over the water and occasionally down into it. The dock men watched him curiously, and one of them loosened a life-preserver that hung near, but he went back to the hotel without giving them an opportunity to use it.