“How do you mean?”
“Well, with an ordinary man, when it’s blazoned all over the headlines of the newspapers that the police are looking for him and he still continues to stay away, you feel that you have something on him. With a blind man, it’s different. He can’t see the newspapers. You know, there’s just a chance Rodney Kosling may not know anything at all about what has happened and may not know that the police are looking for him.”
“That’s probably it,” Bertha said, just a little too eagerly, as she realized as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
Sergeant Sellers went on without letting her comment divert him in the least, “I say there’s a chance of it — about one chance in twenty.”
“You mean about one chance in twenty that he knows you want him?”
“No, I mean about one chance in twenty he doesn’t know we want him.”
“I don’t get you,” Bertha said.
“Well, let’s look at it this way. We’ve eliminated nearly all of these beggar peddlers. Time was when you used to see a lot of them on the street — people going around with tin cups and guitars. It got to be a racket. We kicked them all out except half a dozen who had done things for the police in times past or had some political pull. These people have very definite locations where they’re permitted to work. When they die off, there won’t be any others to take their places. We’re getting the city cleaned up. At least, we’re trying to.”
“Well?” Bertha asked.
“How do you suppose those blind people get to work?”