Just inside the door of the commissary Pat looked around. There was no guardian¹ except the girl at the cigarette stand but obtaining another person’s hat was subject to one complication: it was hard to judge the size by a cursory² glance, while the sight of a man trying on several hats in a check room was unavoidably suspicious.

Personal taste also obtruded³ itself. Pat was beguiled⁴ by a green fedora with a sprightly⁵ feather but it was too readily identifiable. This was also true of a fine white Stetson for the open spaces. Finally he decided⁶ on a sturdy grey Homburg which looked as if it would give him good service. With trembling hands he put it on. It fitted. He walked out — in painful, interminable slow motion.

His confidence was partly restored in the next hour by the fact that no one he encountered made references to tourists’ cabins. It had been a lean three months for Pat. He had regarded his job as night clerk for the Selecto Tourists Cabins as a mere⁷ fill-in, never to be mentioned to his friends. But when the police squad⁸ came this morning they held up the raid long enough to assure Pat, or Don Smith as he called himself, that he would be wanted as a witness. The story of his escape lies in the realm of melodrama⁹, how he went out a side door, bought a half pint¹⁰ of what he so desperately¹¹ needed at the corner drug-store, hitchhiked his way across the great city, going limp at the sight of traffic cops and only breathing free when he saw the studio’s high-flown sign.

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