When we were at table and the edge off his hunger he told me more:
"It began this morning, and this afternoon when there was still no trace of Barker—Gee whizz! it was an avalanche."
"You mean he's gone? Disappeared?"
"That's the way it looks. They had their suspicions when they couldn't find him last night. And today—nobody knows a thing about him at his house or his office, can't account for it, don't understand. Then we turned up something that looked like a clincher. One of his motors, a limousine, and his chauffeur, fellow called Heney, have disappeared too."
"What do they say about that at the house?"
"Same thing—know nothing. Nobody was in the garage from six to half-past eight. When the other men who sleep there came back Heney and the limousine were gone."
"Did anyone see Barker at the Black Eagle Building?"
"No—that's the strongest proof that he's decamped. You'd suppose with such a scene as that going on he'd have shown up. But not a soul's been found who saw him there. If he wanted to slip out quietly he could easily have done it. Jerome and the Franks girl say they were so paralyzed they never gave him another thought and he could have passed behind them, as they stood in the corridor, and gone down by the side stairs. There's another flight round the corner on the branch hall. The street on that side was deserted—the boys say every human being in the neighborhood was round on the Broadway front."
"But, but," I stammered, for I couldn't understand it all, "what's he done? What's the reason for his going?"
"Reason!" said Babbitts with a snort. "Believe me, there's reason enough. Somebody's welched on the Copper Pool and they think it's he and that he's disappeared with twenty million."