“Oh, I’m not anxious,” Patsy cut in quickly. “I was only wondering how the fellow you spoke of used the color. Give me one can of it, smallest size, and a small jar of vaseline.”
Patsy’s explanation was glibly made, and the storekeeper appeared to attach no further significance to his customer’s curiosity. He wrapped up the two articles, and Patsy paid him and departed, afterward tossing the package mentioned among some weeds in a vacant lot.
“Only a lunkhead would have questioned him further,” he said to himself, now feeling almost sure that he had hit the right trail. “Toby Monk, eh? I’ll soon find out where he lives and what is generally known about him. Bought Prussian blue twice, has he? It’s a hundred to one that he has been using it to temporarily blot out a figure with blue paste matching the background of his number plate, or to so cover part of one or more figures as to form others, apparently giving the plate an entirely different number when engaged in a job like that of last night. Blue paste could be quickly wiped off after the job was done. I’ll find out mighty soon whether I am right and have nailed one of the suspects.”
He hastened to a near drug store, and again resorted to the city directory. He found that Toby Monk lodged in Green Street, and thither he then hastened.
He learned, after a little roundabout questioning in an opposite cigar store, that Toby Monk kept his car in an unused stable about a block away, and that he could usually be found between six and seven o’clock in Foley’s saloon and restaurant in Prince Street, where he often went for his beer and supper.
It then was nearly six, with dusk beginning to gather, and Patsy lost no time in seeking the stable mentioned. It stood in the back yard of an inferior wooden dwelling. The stable door was open, and the car stood within, apparently the one he had pursued the previous night, though he could not now see the number plates.
“I must make dead sure of it,” he said to himself, after sauntering by the house and turning merely a furtive gaze toward the stable. “Toby Monk may be in this house, since his car is here, and I’d better not venture through the yard. I’ll go round to the next street and steal between those two houses back of the stable. There may be a back window, and I could easily climb the fence.”
It took him about three minutes to reach the rear of the stable, which he accomplished without being seen, and he found the window he was seeking. He found it unlocked, moreover, and within half a minute he was crouching back of the touring car, inspecting the number plate.
It was as clean as a whistle, though the rest of the car was quite dusty. Obviously it had been recently wiped. Plainly, too, the number, 12674, could be apparently changed to 2671, the very number he had seen the previous night, by eliminating the 1 and the loop of the 4 by covering them with the blue paste.
“By Jove, this does settle it!” Patsy muttered, after a brief inspection. “Here’s a smooch of dirty blue grease, too, on the tire. Possibly I can find the——”