B. Cohen's Art Shop

This was a start, so Mr. Peck limped over to the Palace Hotel and
procured a telephone directory. By actual count there were nineteen B.
Cohens scattered throughout the city, so before commencing to call the
nineteen, Bill Peck borrowed the city directory from the hotel clerk and
scanned it for the particular B. Cohen who owned the art shop. His
search availed him nothing. B. Cohen was listed as an art dealer at the
address where the blue vase reposed in the show window. That was all.

"I suppose he's a commuter," Mr. Peck concluded, and at once proceeded
to procure directories of the adjacent cities of Berkeley, Oakland and
Alameda. They were not available, so in despair he changed a dollar into
five cent pieces, sought a telephone booth and commenced calling up all
the B. Cohens in San Francisco. Of the nineteen, four did not answer,
three were temporarily disconnected, six replied in Yiddish, five were
not the B. Cohen he sought, and one swore he was Irish and that his name
was spelled Cohan and pronounced with an accent on both syllables.

The B. Cohens resident in Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, San Rafael,
Sausalito, Mill Valley, San Mateo, Redwood City and Palo Alto were next
telephoned to, and when this long and expensive task was done,
Ex-Private Bill Peck emerged from the telephone booth wringing wet with
perspiration and as irritable as a clucking hen. Once outside the hotel
he raised his haggard face to heaven and dumbly queried of the Almighty
what He meant by saving him from quick death on the field of honor only
to condemn him to be talked to death by B. Cohens in civil life.

It was now six o'clock. Suddenly Peck had an inspiration. Was the name