You know it takes a pretty quick touch, sharp eyes and good nerve to get away with the goods in a big shop like that. Or it takes something altogether different. It was the different way she did it. She took up the piece of lace--it was a big collar, fine like a cobweb picture in threads,--you can guess what it must have been worth if that old sinner, Mother Douty, gave me fifteen dollars for it. She took it up in a quick, eager way, as though she'd found just what she wanted. Then she took out a lace sample from her gold-linked purse and held them both up close to her blinky little eyes, looking at it through a gold lorgnette with emeralds in the handle; pulling it and feeling it with the air of one who knows a fine thing when she sees it, and just what makes it fine. Then she rustled off to the door to examine it closely in the light, and--Mag Monahan, she walked right out with it! At least, she'd got beyond the inner doors when I tapped her on the shoulder. "I beg pardon, madam." My best style, Mag. She pulled herself up haughtily and blinked at me. She was a little, thin mummy of a woman, just wrapped away in silks and velvets, but on the inside of that nervous, little old body of hers there must have been some spring of good material that wasn't all unwound yet. She stood blinking at me without a word. "That lace. You haven't paid for it," I said. Her short-sighted eyes fell from my face to the collar she held in her hand. Her yellow face grew ghastly. "Oh, mercy! You--you don't--" "I am a detective for the store, and--" "But--" "Sh! We don't like any noise made about these things, and you yourself wouldn't enjoy--" "Do you know who I am, young woman?" She fumbled in her satchel and passed a card to me. Glory be! Guess, Mag. Oh, you'd never guess, you dear old Mag! Besides, you haven't got the acquaintance in high society that Nance Olden can boast. +--------------------------------+ | Mrs. MILLS D. VAN WAGENEN | +--------------------------------+ Oh--Mag! Shame on you not to know the name even of the Bishop of the great state of--yes, the lean, short little Bishop with a little white beard, and the softest eye and the softest heart and--my very own Bishop, Nancy Olden's Bishop. And this was his wife. Tut--tut, Mag! Of course not. A bishop's wife may be a kleptomaniac; it's only Cruelty girls that really steal from stores. "I've met the Bishop, Mrs. Van Wagenen." I didn't say how--she wouldn't appreciate that story. "And he was once very kind to me. But he would be the first to tell me to do my duty now. I'll do it as quietly as I can for his sake. But you must come with me or I must arrest--" She put up a shaking hand. Dear little old guy!