“Listen, Mr. Cohn.  Your store is not on fire, but I had to say so in order to get you to the telephone.  I am Mr. Peck, a total stranger to you.  You have a blue vase in your shop window on Geary Street in San Francisco.  I want to buy it and I want to buy it before seven forty-five tonight.  I want you to come across the bay and open the store and sell me that vase.”

“Such a business!  Vot you think I am?  Crazy?”

“No, Mr. Cohn, I do not.  I’m the only crazy man talking.  I’m crazy for that vase and I’ve got to have it right away.”

“You know vot dot vase costs?” Mr. B. Cohn’s voice dripped syrup.

“No, and I don’t give a hoot what it costs.  I want what I want when I want it.  Do I get it?”

“Ve-ell, lemme see.  Vot time iss it?” A silence while B. Cohn evidently looked at his watch.  “It iss now a quarter of seven, Mr. Eckstein, und der nexd drain from Mill Valley don’t leaf until eight o’clock.  Dot vill get me to San Francisco at eight-fifty—­und I am dining mit friends und haf just finished my soup.”

“To hell with your soup.  I want that blue vase.”

“Vell, I tell you, Mr. Eckstein, if you got to have it, call up my head salesman, Herman Joost, in der Chilton Apardments—­Prospect three—­two—­four—­nine, und tell him I said he should come down right avay qvick und sell you dot blue vase.  Goodbye, Mr. Eckstein.”

And B. Cohn hung up.

Instantly Peck called Prospect 3249 and asked for Herman Joost.  Mr. Joost’s mother answered.  She was desolated because Herman was not at home, but vouchsafed the information that he was dining at the country club.  Which country club?  She did not know.  So Peck procured from the hotel clerk a list of the country clubs in and around San Francisco and started calling them up.  At eight o’clock he was still being informed that Mr. Juice was not a member, that Mr. Luce wasn’t in, that Mr. Coos had been dead three months and that Mr. Boos had played but eight holes when he received a telegram calling him back to New York.  At the other clubs Mr. Joust was unknown.

“Licked,” murmured Bill Peck, “but never let it be said that I didn’t go down fighting.  I’m going to heave a brick through that show window, grab the vase and run with it.”

He engaged a taxicab and instructed the driver to wait for him at the corner of Geary and Stockton Streets.  Also, he borrowed from the chauffeur a ball peen hammer.  When he reached the art shop of B. Cohn, however, a policeman was standing in the doorway, violating the general orders of a policeman on duty by surreptitiously smoking a cigar.

“He’ll nab me if I crack that window,” the desperate Peck decided, and continued on down the street, crossed to the other side and came back.  It was now dark and over the art shop B. Cohn’s name burned in small red, white and blue electric lights.

And lo, it was spelled B. Cohen!

Ex-private William E. Peck sat down on a fire hydrant and cursed with rage.  His weak leg hurt him, too, and for some damnable reason, the stump of his left arm developed the feeling that his missing hand was itchy.