Clyde shook his head. “Hell if I know. You say four o’clock? I left right about then to come back here. But no one came around asking for a lost kid. Did you talk to Horace? Or Larry?”

“I figured I’d ask you first. You were in the tunnel with them.”

“Them and one thousand nine hundred and twelve other folks.”

He tugged at the tails of his jacket. Clyde was a dandy. Black swallowtail jacket, matching pants with a stripe of black ribbon down the sides. Immaculate white shirt and purple tie, secured with an emerald stickpin, white carnation in his buttonhole.

“How do I look?” he asked, adjusting the stickpin. “Not too flossy?”

“Not too flossy.” She peered inside the dove cage, cooing softly at the birds. “I ain’t mistaken,” she said. “I saw Charlie Chaplin at the studio this morning. The man at Hell Gate looked like him.”

“Charlie Chaplin?”

“Yeah. He was meeting with Spoor, they’re trying to get him to come back from California. He was with the same girl—Chaplin, I mean. He was kidding around with her on the movie stage.”

“You sure it was the same girl?”

She shrugged. “Pretty sure. I got a pretty good look at them at Essanay.”

“Huh.” Clyde stared at her thoughtfully. “That is peculiar, I agree. Have you told Bacon or any of the police?”

“I told you, I wanted to ask you first.”

“I’m not the police, boy.” He gave a barking laugh. “Not even close. That’s who you need to talk to. And you should find yourself an honest job, instead of hanging round Max.”

“You’ve smoked his dope.”

“I’m not denying it. But women cause more trouble than dope ever did.”

“So you don’t remember a man and a girl in a yellow dress?”

Clyde let his breath out in an impatient huff, shut his eyes for a moment.

“No,” he said at last. “But there was a white man, I remember him because he was the only person riding alone. I saw him in the tunnel, right before I got ready to leave when Lemuel came on—that’s who was spelling me. Clean shaven, with a hat. Couldn’t tell you what color hair. No girl that I saw. Now I got to run.”

Clyde stooped beside her. His fingers grazed the hair behind her temple.

“Forgot to wash behind your ears again,” he announced, and handed her a wooden token. “Tell the cops. If she’s gone missing, they’ll have been looking for her. You shouldn’t have waited till now,” he added. “That kid’s ma will be worried sick.” He picked up the dove cage and sauntered off.