Twenty Metropolitan Police began probing the Charles River bottom and combing the shorelines for the remains of Sylvester Gardiner '46 yesterday, intensifying their search as Lionel F. Jaffe '48, a Lowell House Senior, reported seeing an unidentified figure carrying ice skates during a midnight stroll near the John Weeks Bridge on the night of January 23.

Gardiner was last seen positively at 10 o'clock the same evening by his family at his 184 Beacon Street home. They are still uncertain whether the missing crew star actually took his ice skates with him and attempted to use them at that time.

Jaffe said last night he was able to fix the time of his observations at exactly 11:50 o'clock by consulting his chronological diary, and the date by recalling that he was clearing his head from Chemistry 5 cramming and a few beers at Cronin's. The only positive fact about the silhouette, he said, seen at approximately 200 feet, was the outline of skates tied around the neck with laces, outlined against the white ice.

Meanwhile the hunt assumed national proportions as Tudor Gardiner 2L announced the discovery of a sheaf of correspondence between his missing brother and a friend in Colorado, suggesting the possibility of a secret visit.