The next step was purely constructive; an attempt to build, upon the description given by President Galbraith and the teller Johnson, a likeness which would fit some notorious "strong-arm man" known to the criminal records and the rogues' galleries. Broffin was not greatly disappointed when the effort failed.
"It's just about as I've been putting it up, all along," he mused, lighting his pipe and filling with a fragrant cloud the cramped little office in which he did his research work. "The fellow ain't a crook; he's an amateur, and this is his first break. That being the lay-out, he's liable to do all the things, the different kinds of things, that a sure-enough 'strong-arm man' wouldn't do."
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."