As these thoughts passed through his mind French saw that the fact that the elusive purchaser had a moustache and glasses while Roper wore neither by no means invalidated his conclusion, but rather strengthened it. To a person of Roper’s mental calibre a moustache would appear one of the best of disguises, while a man with a squint had practically no option but to wear tinted glasses if he wished to preserve his incognito. From disgust at his job French had suddenly swung round to enthusiasm. He had not now the faintest doubt that some forty-eight hours earlier, Roper, alive and in the flesh, had been in that very shop, having dealings with the salesman, Stanley. And then came the delightful thought that with so fresh a trail and with such a multiplicity of clues, the man’s capture was a question of a very short time only. The steps to be taken were obvious, and the first was to find the taxi-man who had driven him round. This must be put in hand without delay. He crushed down his impatience and turned once more to his companions, who had been regarding him with not a little surprise. “That is important information you have just given me, Mr. Stanley,” he declared. “Now can you tell me if this is the man?” He handed over one of Roper’s photographs. And then his enthusiasm received a check. The salesman looked doubtfully at the card and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I couldn’t just be sure. It’s like him and it’s not like him, if you understand what I mean. The man who came here had a moustache.” “A false one,” French suggested. The other brightened up. “My word, but it might have been,” he exclaimed. “I noticed it looked queer, now I come to think of it. It was very thick and long; thicker and longer than you generally see. And what you might call fuzzy round the top. Not like a real moustache. Yes, sir, I believe you’re right. It looked just like a wad of hair set on.” French laid a scrap of paper over the mouth. “Now look again.” Once more Stanley shook his head. “No, sir, it’s no good. I couldn’t say for sure. You see that photograph shows his hair and his forehead and his eyes. Well, I didn’t see any of those. He had tinted glasses and he wore his hat low down near his eyebrows. I couldn’t tell. It might have been him and it might not.” “Well, if you can’t you can’t, and that’s all there is to it. Now another point. Have you the twenty-pound note?” The manager disappeared, returning in a moment with a handful of money. “Here are seven twenty-pound notes: all of that value we hold,” he explained. “I cannot tell you certainly whether that paid in by your friend is among them; but it probably is, as the cashier thinks she did not give such a note in change and no lodgment was made at the bank since the sale.” Eagerly French compared the numbers of the seven with those on his list, but this time he had no luck. If one of these had come from Starvel it was one of which Tarkington had not retained the number.