“But,” I objected, “men with Van Dyke beards are common enough.”  Then I related my experience at the Amsterdam.

“The same fellow,” ejaculated Kennedy.  “The beard seems to have covered a multitude of sins, for while every one could recall that, no one had a word to say about his features.  However, Walter, there’s just one chance of making his identification sure, and a peculiar coincidence it is, too.  It seems that one night this man and a lady who may have been the former Miss Sanderson, though the description of her like most amateur descriptions wasn’t very accurate, were dining at the Lorraine.  The Lorraine is getting up a new booklet about its accommodations and a photographer had been engaged to take a flashlight of the dining-room for the booklet.

“No sooner had the flash been lighted and the picture taken than a man with a Van Dyke beard—­your friend of the Amsterdam, no doubt, Walter,—­rushed up to the photographer and offered him fifty dollars for the plate.  The photographer thought at first it was some sport who had reasons for not wishing to appear in print in Atlantic City, as many have.  The man seemed to notice that the photographer was a little suspicious and he hastened to make some kind of excuse about ’wanting the home folks to see how swell he and his wife were dining in evening dress.’  It was a rather lame excuse, but the fifty dollars looked good to the photographer and he agreed to develop the plate and turn it over with some prints all ready for mailing the next day.  The man seemed satisfied and the photographer took another flashlight, this time with one of the tables vacant.

“Sure enough, the next day the man with a beard turned up for the plate.  The photographer tells me that he had it all wrapped up ready to mail, just to call the fellow’s bluff.  The man was equal to the occasion, paid the money, wrote an address on the package which the photographer did not see, and as there was a box for mailing packages right at the door on the boardwalk there was no excuse for not mailing it directly.  Now if I could get hold of that plate or a print from it I could identify Dawson in his disguise in a moment.  I’ve started the post-office trying to trace that package both at Atlantic City and in Chicago, where I think it must have been mailed.  I may hear from them at any moment—­at least, I hope.”

The rest of the afternoon we spent in canvassing the drug stores in the vicinity of the Amsterdam, Kennedy’s idea being that if Dawson was a habitual morphine fiend he must have replenished his supply of the drug in New York, particularly if he was contemplating a long journey where it might be difficult to obtain.

After many disappointments we finally succeeded in finding a shop where a man posing as a doctor had made a rather large purchase.  The name he gave was of course of no importance.  What did interest us was that again we crossed the trail of a man with a Van Dyke beard.  He had been accompanied by a woman whom the druggist described as rather flashily dressed, though her face was hidden under a huge hat and a veil.  “Looked very attractive,” as the druggist put it, “but she might have been a negress for all I could tell you of her face.”