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Trencher thought he made him out. There was to be seen an elderly man, roughly dressed, possibly the same man whose proximity Trencher had felt rather than observed just before Sonntag made the gun play, and this man was half-squatted out on the asphalt with his back to where the rest circled and swirled about the body. Moreover, this person was staring directly in Trencher’s direction. As Trencher passed within the revolving door he saw the man pivot on his heels and start at an angle toward the policeman just as the policeman was swallowed up in the rings of figures converging into the theatre doorway.

If the policeman were of a common-enough type of policeman–that is to say, if he were the sort of policeman who would waste time examining Sonntag’s body for signs of life and then waste more time asking questions of those who had preceded him to the place, and yet more time peering about for the weapon that had been used; or if, in the excitement with everybody shouting together, the one man who possibly had a real notion concerning the proper description of the vanished slayer found difficulty in securing the policeman’s attention–why then, in any one of these cases, or better still, in all of them, Trencher had a chance. With a definite and intelligently guided pursuit starting forthwith he would be lost. But with three minutes, or two even, of delay vouchsafed him before the alarm took shape and purpose he might make it.

Accepting the latter contingency as the assured one he formed a plan instantaneously. Indeed, it sprang full-formed into his mind as the door swung round behind him. It added to the immediate difficulties of his present situation that he was most notably marked–by his garb. He had the dramatic sense well developed, as any man must have who succeeds at his calling. When Trencher played a part he dressed the part. In the staging of the plot for the undoing of the Cheyenne cattleman his had been the role of the sporting ex-telegraph operator, who could get “flashes” on the result of horse races before the names of the winners came over an imaginary tapped wire to the make-believe pool room where the gull was stripped; and he had been at some pains and expense to procure a wardrobe befitting the character.

The worst of it was that he now wore the make-up–the short fawn-coloured overcoat with its big showy buttons of smoked pearl, the brown derby hat with its striking black band, and the pair of light-tan spats. Stripped of these things he would be merely a person in a costume in nowise to be distinguished from the costumes of any number of other men in the Broadway district. But for the moment there was neither opportunity nor time to get rid of all of them without attracting the attention that would be fatal to his prospects. Men who have nothing to hide do not remove spats in a hotel lobby, nor do they go about public places bareheaded in the nighttime. Now he could do but one thing to alter his appearance.

Midway of the cross hall which he had entered and which opened into the main lobby he slowed his gait long enough to undo the overcoat and slip out of it. The top button caught fast in its buttonhole, the coat being new and its buttonholes being stiff. He gave a sharp tug at the rebellious cloth, and the button, which probably had been insecurely sewed on in the first place, came away from its thread fastenings and lodged in the fingers of his right hand. Mechanically he dropped it into a side pocket of the overcoat and a moment later, with the garment turned inside out so that only its silk lining showed, and held under his arm, he had come out of the sideway and was in the lobby proper.