Not quite an hour later William Heron, a railroad detective, noticed the same two men in the station. They were sitting on a bench by the gents’ toilet smoking cigarettes and talking in some foreign language. Dagos, he thought they were. He had come down on the 12:27 from Boston, and he was scarcely off the train before he spotted a fresh kid who had climbed on top of the Union News stand and was trying to tip it over. Eleven or twelve years old he was, one of that gang that hung around the station afternoons. Heron grabbed him by the collar and ran him into the operator’s room. The Dagos didn’t even look up as he went by. McNamara was the kid’s name. The operator said his old man was all right, worked for the railroad, so Heron told the kid what he’d do to him if he ever caught him hanging round the station again, and let him go. He was not in the operator’s room more than five minutes, but when he stepped out again the Dagos had left. Somehow they stuck in his mind, and he wondered where they had gone to. By trade Ralph DeForest was a shoemaker, though he had been unemployed for two months now. When he had nothing else to do, and that was most of the time, he wandered around South Braintree Square or sometimes dropped in at Magazu’s poolroom on Pearl Street. At 2:20 he was talking with Officer Shea on the corner next to Torrey’s when he spotted two men in front of the jewelry store. In the last two months he had seen everyone in town, but he had never seen those two before. Shea left to go up to the town hall and DeForest walked down by the fruit store past the jeweler’s. The two men looked him over as if they wanted to make something of it. Dark men they were, tough babies. He wasn’t going to let them think he was scared of them, though. Deliberately he turned round and walked past them again. They stared at him, and he stared at them, and finally he said: “I don’t think I owe you fellows anything.” Without answering him they started off down Pearl Street, one about five feet ahead of the other. DeForest decided he would follow them. At the crossing they turned left toward the station. Just in front of the station a pinch-faced man in a brown coat was tinkering with the engine of a black touring car. The other two paused on the platform and DeForest brushed right by them and through the station into the toilet. When he came out the car and men had disappeared.