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On the very morning of the crime, while M. Filleul was pursuing his examination before a few privileged persons, I had the fortunate inspiration to glance at the runaway's cap, before the sham flyman came to change it. The hatter's name was enough, as you may imagine, to enable me to find the clue that led to the identification of the purchaser and his address.
"My good sir," cried the mild little man, with his first movement akin to impatience, "if you will walk down the street to the nearest hatter's shop, you will see that there is, in common speech, a difference between a man's hat and the hats that are his." "But a hatter," protested Hood, "can get money out of his stock of new hats. What could Todhunter get out of this one old hat?"
Smethurst already, and that he had been very polite to me; and we fell into a discussion of the hatter's merits that lasted some time and left us quite good friends at its conclusion. The topic was productive of goodwill. We exchanged tobacco and talked about the season, and agreed at last that we should go to the same hotel at Keswick and sup in company.
He was but the more proud; and he wore, cocked up to one side, a hat that had not known a brush since the day it had left the hatter's. "That fellow Costeclar," he went on, "he won't believe that there are in France a number of people who live and die without ever having owned a horse or a coupe; which is a fact, nevertheless.
But I saw him collapse as his master rubbed me out with his hands, and my first decided experience of the stupendous power of money was, that it had morally laid upon his back Trabb's boy. After this memorable event, I went to the hatter's, and the bootmaker's, and the hosier's, and felt rather like Mother Hubbard's dog whose outfit required the services of so many trades.
We went straight to the hatter's and bought one of those broad-brimmed German student hats, which, when he had placed it on his head, put on a pair of spectacles and parted his flowing beard in the middle, made such a transformation in his appearance that I myself would have passed him unrecognized.
My position was becoming embarrassing. At last the boy, remembering the badge of honour on his cap, undertook to change the note at the hatter's at the corner of the street. So, having given the note to the boy and bidden the policeman follow him to see fair play, and encouraged the woman to follow the policeman, I resumed my walk down Sackville Street.
His new street suit he put on in the fitting room; the frock coat and dress clothes he had bundled into the cab with his linen. Then he drove to a hatter's and a shoe house. His next errand was at Tiffany's, where he selected his silver and a new scarf pin. He would not wait to have his silver marked, he said.
A glance showed him that it was disfigured by a great blotch of black grease. He had held his hat in his hand while talking to the girl, and it must have touched her car at a point where the axle of the dray had rubbed. So this was his one memento of the incident. He thanked the stranger, and walked to a near-by hatter's, where a ready clerk set before him hats of all styles.
My morning coat was still irreproachable, my patent leather boots still gleamed, and having had some business in Piccadilly I had stepped into my hatter's and emerged with my silk hat newly ironed. I positively strutted along the pavement. For two days I had not seen her or heard from her or written to her. I had scrupulously respected her wishes, foolish though they were.
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