Pat plunged straight into her story.
"Peg and I were coming back from Dalton's book store and we ran bang into the man—he'd taken his hat off 'cause it was so warm and was fanning himself with it. We both saw it at exactly the same moment and we just turned and clutched each other and almost yelled."
"And then, what? Why didn't you grab him?"
"As if we could lay our hands on a perfect stranger! Anyway, we've got to be tactful. But I'm sure it's the one—there was a white streak that ran right back from the front of his face. And he was very handsome, too—at least we decided he would be if we were as old as Miss Gray. I thought he was a little—oh, biggish."
"And to think how we've hunted for him and he was right here——" Then Gyp realized that Pat did not have the gentleman in her pocket.
"But how will we find him again?"
"We followed him—and he went into the Morse Building and got into the elevator and we were going right in after him when who pops out but Dr. Caton, and he looked so surprised to see us that we hesitated, and the old elevator boy shut the door in our faces. But we asked a man who was standing there in a uniform, like a head janitor or something, if that gentleman in a black coat and hat and lavender tie had an office in the building, and he said, "Yes, seventh floor, 796." He leered at us, but we looked real dignified, and Peg wrote it down on a piece of paper and we walked away. So now all we've got to do is to just go and see him," and Pat hugged her slim knees in an ecstasy of satisfaction.
The girls stared meditatively at a fat robin pecking into the grass in search of a late dinner. To "just go and see him" was not as simple to the conspirators as it sounded, slipping from Pat's lips.
"Who'll go?" Gyp put the question that was in each mind.
"Perhaps it would be too many if all four of us went—so let's draw lots which two——"