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Through the right-hand side window Trencher peered out as the mass moved by–in front a panting policeman with his one hand gripped fast in the collar of Trencher’s late messenger, and all about the pair and behind them a jostling, curious crowd of men and women.

“De gen’l’man dat sent me fur his bag is right down yere, I keeps tellin’ you,” Trencher heard the scared darky babbling as he was yanked past Trencher’s refuge.

“All right then, show him to me, that’s all,” the officer was saying impatiently.

The chauffeur twisted about in his place, following the spectacle with his eyes. But Trencher had quit looking that way and was looking another way. The centre of excitement had been moved again–instead of being north of him it was now approximately ninety feet south, and he, thanks to the shift, was once more behind it. Peering through the glass he watched the entrance to the Clarenden.

There he saw what he wanted to see–a tall man in a wide-brimmed soft dark hat and a long dark topcoat going up the short flight of steps that led from the pavement into the building. Trencher wadded the spats together and rammed them down out of sight between the back cushion and the under cushion of the car seat, and with his overcoat inside out on his left arm he opened the door and stepped out of the car. This retreat had served his purpose admirably; it was time to abandon it.

“Changed my mind,” he said, in explanation. “If O’Gavin doesn’t hurry up we’ll be late for an engagement we’ve got uptown. I’m going in after him.”

“Yes; all right, sir,” assented the chauffeur with his attention very much elsewhere.

In long steps Trencher crossed the sidewalk and ran up the steps so briskly that he passed through the door at the top of the short flight directly behind and almost touching the tall man in the dark hat and black coat. His heart beat fast; he was risking everything practically on the possibilities of what this other man meant to do.

The other man did exactly what Trencher was hoping he would do. He turned left and made for the Clarenden’s famous Chinese lounging room, which in turn opened into the main restaurant. Trencher slipped nimbly by his quarry and so beat him to where two young women in glorified uniforms of serving maids were stationed to receive wraps outside the checking booth; a third girl was inside the booth, her job being to take over checked articles from her sister helpers.

It befell therefore that Trencher surrendered his brown derby and his short tan coat, received a pasteboard check in exchange for them and saw them passed in over a flat shelf to be put on a hook, before the other man had been similarly served. When the other, now revealed as wearing a dinner jacket, came through the Orientalised passageway into the lounge, Trencher was quite ready for him. In his life Trencher had never picked a pocket, but as one thoroughly versed in the professionalism of the crime world, in which he was a distinguished figure, he knew how the trick, which is the highest phase of the art of the pickpocket, is achieved.

The thing was most neatly and most naturally accomplished. As the man in the dinner coat came just opposite him Trencher, swinging inward as though to avoid collision with the end of an upholstered couch, bumped into him, breast to breast.

“I beg your pardon,” he said in contrite tones for his seeming awkwardness, and as he said it two darting fingers and the thumb of his right hand found and invaded the little slit of the stranger’s waistcoat pocket, whisking out the check which the stranger had but a moment before, with Trencher watching, deposited there.

“Granted–no harm done,” said the man who had been jostled, and passed on leaving Trencher still uttering apologetic sounds. Palming the precious pasteboard, which meant so much to him, Trencher stood where he was until he saw the unsuspecting victim pass on through into the cafe and join two other men, who got up from a table in the far corner near one of the front windows to greet him.