But they went resolutely on, running down a thousand false clues and finding at the end of each something more ludicrous than what had gone before.

Maiden ladies with many teeth and big glasses they found; and they discovered, at the ends of the trails on which they were advised to go, young women and old, ugly girls and pretty ones, but never any one who in the slightest degree resembled Caroline Smith.
In the meantime they were working back and forth, in their progress along the East River, from the slums to the better residence districts.

They bought newspapers at little stationery stores and worked up chance conversations with the clerks, particularly girl clerks, whenever they could find them.
"Because women have the eye for faces," Ronicky would say, "and, if a girl like Caroline Smith came into the shop, she'd be remembered for a while." But for ten days they labored without a ghost of a success.

Then they noticed the taxi stands along the East Side and worked them as carefully as they could, and it was on the evening of the eleventh day of the search that they reached the first clue.
They had found a taxi drawn up before a saloon, converted into an eating place, and when they went inside they found the driver alone in the restaurant.

They worked up the conversation, as they had done a hundred times before.