s that Mr. Ricks was out and the hour of his return was unknown. So
Mr. Peck went back to Sutter Street and scoured once more every shop
window in the block. Then he scouted two blocks above Powell and two
blocks below Stockton. Still the blue vase remained invisible.

So he transferred his search to a corresponding area on Bush Street, and
when that failed, he went painstakingly over four blocks of Post Street.
He was still without results when he moved one block further west and
one further south and discovered the blue vase in a huge plate-glass
window of a shop on Geary Street near Grant Avenue. He surveyed it
critically and was convinced that it was the object he sought.

He tried the door, but it was locked, as he had anticipated it would be.
So he kicked the door and raised an infernal racket, hoping against hope
that the noise might bring a watchman from the rear of the building. In
vain. He backed out to the edge of the sidewalk and read the sign over
the door:

B. Cohen's Art Shop

This was a start, so Mr. Peck limped over to the Palace Hotel and
procured a telephone directory. By actual count there were nineteen B.
Cohens scattered throughout the city, so before commencing to call the
nineteen, Bill Peck borrowed the city directory from the hotel clerk and
scanned it for the particular B. Cohen who owned the art shop. His
search availed him nothing. B. Cohen was listed as an art dealer at the
address where the blue vase reposed in the show window. That was all.

"I suppose he's a commuter," Mr. Peck concluded, and at once proceeded
to procure directories of the adjacent cities of Berkeley, Oakland and
Alameda. They were not available, so in despair he changed a dollar into
five cent pieces, sought a telephone booth and commenced calling up all
the B. Cohens in San Francisco. Of the nineteen, four did not answer,
three were temporarily disconnected, six replied in Yiddish, five were
not the B. Cohen he sought, and one swore he was Irish and that his name
was spelled Cohan and pronounced with an accent on both syllables.

The B. Cohens resident in Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, San Rafael,
Sausalito, Mill Valley, San Mateo, Redwood City and Palo Alto were next
telephoned to, and when this long and expensive task was done,
Ex-Private Bill Peck emerged from the telephone booth wringing wet with
perspiration and as irritable as a clucking hen. Once outside the hotel
he raised his haggard face to heaven and d