“All right. I dare say we can do half a dozen stores by that time. Listen, Arn, I’ll tell you what the man looked like so you can be on the watch too, eh? He was short and sort of slim, and he wore a brown overcoat with a velvet collar, and he had a reddish mustache cut close and sort of bristly, and he wore a slouch hat.”
“A what?”
“A slouch hat; a soft one, you know; felt. It was dark; I think either black or dark gray.”
“Well, that’s a pretty good description considering you only saw him for a second,” applauded Arnold as they entered the store. “We’d better keep out of sight as much as we can, because if he spotted us first he’d suspect something and run. Let’s go around here and work back and then come down the next aisle, and so on. Shall we?”
“I—I don’t know about that,” responded the other. “Seems to me he’d be likely to stay around where the crowd was thickest, and perhaps he’d try to keep near a door in case he had to—to leave hurriedly.”
“That’s so, Toby. You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes! All right. The crowd’s about as thick right here as it is anywhere. Have a look. Do you see him?” Arnold was beginning to enjoy the task now and tried to look as much like his conception of a sleuth as he could. Toby, backed against a counter at one side of the big entrance peered and craned for several minutes, but finally announced that he didn’t see the quarry. So they began a pilgrimage of the lower floor, pausing wherever the crowd was densest. Near the elevators they found a point of vantage and spent quite ten minutes but without result other than being pushed and elbowed and trod on. From there they went on to the foot of a central stairway and again took up their watch. But no red-mustached, brown-overcoated individual rewarded their sight, although they both more than once thrilled with the prospect of success at sight of a brown garment in the throng. They spent more than half an hour in that store, and Arnold’s enthusiasm was waning fast by the time Toby acknowledged defeat and led the way toward the big doorway.
“I guess it’s no use,” sighed Toby. “He’s a goner. And so’s my money.”
“Well, I told you that in the first place,” said Arnold, just a trifle peevishly by reason of having been shoved around and bumped into until he felt, as he told himself, like a wreck. “Want to try any other place? It’s nearly twelve and—”
He stopped suddenly, for Toby’s hand was gripping his arm painfully. “There he is!” whispered Toby. “Look! Over by the umbrellas!”