After failing to find Ole Andreson at the diner, Max and Al finally leave. When describing the hitmen’s exit, the narrator uses a simile and an allusion:
The two of them went out the door. George watched them, through the window, pass under the arc-light and cross the street. In their tight overcoats and derby hats they looked like a vaudeville team. George went back through the swinging-door into the kitchen and untied Nick and the cook.
The simile here—“In their tight overcoats and derby hats they looked like a vaudeville team”—alludes to vaudeville, a type of comical theater performance that came to the United States from France in the late 19th century. Given vaudeville’s popularity at the time Hemingway was writing (the 1920s), Hemingway assumes his contemporaneous readers will easily be able to picture the classic male vaudeville performer’s costume, with its exaggeratedly “fancy” three-piece suits and top hats.
The fact that George only realizes Max and Al resemble vaudeville performers as they walk away from the diner highlights how, now that he is not in immediate danger, George can see reality much more clearly. In other words, he finally understands that these two men are much less threatening than they made themselves out to be.
