“How old?”
“Not very. His beard was thin, patchy, and he had a boyish face.”
“Notice his eyes?”
“Blue. His hair, where it showed under the edge of his cap was a very light yellow, almost white.”
“What sort of voice?”
“Very deep bass, though he may have been putting that on.”
“Know him if you’d see him again?”
“Yes, indeed!” She put a gentle finger on her bandaged nose. “My nose would know, as the ads say, anyway!”
From Miss Eveleth’s apartment I went down to the office on the first floor, where I found McBirney, the janitor, and his wife, who managed the apartment building. She was a scrawny little woman with the angular mouth and nose of a nagger; he was big, broad-shouldered; with sandy hair and mustache; good-humored, shiftless red face; and genial eyes of a pale and watery blue.
He drawled out what he knew of the looting.
“I was a-fixin’ a spigot on the fourth floor when I heard the shot. I went up to see what was the matter, an’ just as I got far enough up the front stairs to see the Coplins’ door, the fella came out. We seen each other at the same time, an’ he aims his gun at me. There’s a lot o’ things I might of done, but what I did do was to duck down an’ get my head out o’ range. I heard him run upstairs, an’ I got up just in time to see him make the turn between the fifth and sixth floors.