It was to Bainbridge, sitting at the desk's end and turning the leaves
of a rogues'-gallery reprint, that the musing conclusion was directed.
The reporter was freshly returned from his jaunt to the banana coast,
and he had climbed Broffin's stair to get the story of the Mortsen
capture.

"He did one of the different things when he worked his way out of here
in a deck crew," suggested Bainbridge. "The real thug wouldn't have done
anything so honestly toilsome as that."

"Hardly," Broffin acquiesced. "There was about one chance in a thousand,
and on that chance I've been looking for a picture that would fit him.
There ain't any."

The reporter was glancing over his notes of the Mortsen story, and he
got up to go.

"Well, I'm glad it's your job and not mine," he said, by way of
leave-taking. "If your guess is right, it's like looking for the
traditional needle in the haystack."

"Ump," said Broffin; and for a good hour after the reporter had gone he
sat slowly swinging in the creaking office chair, smoking pipe after
pipe and thinking.

At the end of the reflective revery he closed his desk, locked his
office, and went once more to the bank. It was the hour of the noon
lull, and Johnson, the paying teller, was free to talk.

"I hope I'll get through bothering you, some day, Mr. Johnson," Broffin
began. "But when I get stuck, I have to come to you. What Mr. Galbraith
don't remember would crowd a dictionary."

The teller made good-natured apologies for his chief. "Mr. Galbraith was
a good bit upset, naturally. It was a pretty bad wrench for a man of his
age."

"Sure, it was; and he's feeling it yet. That's why I'm letting him alone
when I can. Just go once more carefully over the part of it that you
saw, won't you?"

Johnson retold the story of the cashing of the president's check,
circumstantially, and with the exactness of a man trained in a school of
business accuracy.

"You'd make a good witness, Mr. Johnson," was Broffin's comment. "You
can tell the same story twice, hand-running, which is more than most
folks can do. Would you know the young woman if you'd see her again?"

"Hardly, I think."

"You say she was cashing a draft: how was she identified?"

"She had credentials from her home bank, with her signature attested."

"Of course, she didn't surrender her letter of identification?"

"No; we don't require it when the letter is a general one and not a
credit letter."

Broffin pulled thoughtf