if they
know," Bill Gregg protested, after he had been gruffly refused an
answer a dozen times in the first morning.

"Some of 'em won't talk," admitted Ronicky, "but that's probably
because they don't know. Take 'em by and large, most gents like to
tell everything they know, and then some!"

As a matter of fact they met with rather more help than they wanted.
In spite of all their efforts to appear casual there was something
too romantic in this search for a girl to remain entirely unnoticed.
People whom they asked became excited and offered them a thousand
suggestions. Everybody, it seemed, had, somewhere, somehow, heard of a
Caroline Smith living in his own block, and every one remembered dimly
having passed a girl on the street who looked exactly like Caroline
Smith. But they went resolutely on, running down a thousand false
clues and finding at the end of each something more ludicrous than
what had gone before. Maiden ladies with many teeth and big glasses
they found; and they discovered, at the ends of the trails on which
they were advised to go, young women and old, ugly girls and pretty
ones, but never any one who in the slightest degree resembled Caroline
Smith.

In the meantime they were working back and forth, in their progress
along the East River, from the slums to the better residence
districts. They bought newspapers at little stationery stores and
worked up chance conversations with the clerks, particularly girl
clerks, whenever they could find them.

"Because women have the eye for faces," Ronicky would say, "and, if a
girl like Caroline Smith came into the shop, she'd be remembered for a
while."

But for ten days they labored without a ghost of a success. Then
they noticed the taxi stands along the East Side and worked them as
carefully as they could, and it was on the evening of the eleventh day
of the search that they reached the first clue.

They had found a taxi drawn up before a saloon, converted into an
eating place, and when they went inside they found the driver alone in
the restaurant. They worked up the conversation, as they had done a
hundred times before. Gregg produced the picture and began showing it
to Ronicky.

"Maybe the lady's around here," said Ronicky, "but I'm new in this
part of town." He took the picture and turned to the taxi driver.
"Maybe you've been around this part of town and know the folks here.
Ever see this girl around?" And he passed the picture to the other.