“Oh, of course! There’s three hundred pounds on it, anyway, isn’t there?” She nodded her head in assent. “But I think we’ve got our trouble before us, and plenty of it, before we see that three hundred pounds,” he said, with a shrug. “The time’s so short—that is the danger. As I was on the point of telling you, Ottenheimer has an expert diamond-cutter in his shops.” “And that means he’ll have the apex off our Pear at the first chance, and, accordingly, it means hurry for us. But tell me the rest.” “Ottenheimer himself owns, I discovered, the double building his store is in. He has his basement, of course, his ground floor show-room and store; and work-rooms, and shipping department, and all that, on the second story. Above them is a lace importer. On the top floor there is a chemical fire-apparatus agency. In the south half of the building, with the hall and stairway between, is an antique furniture store, and above them a surgical supply company. The third and top floors are taken up by two women photographers—their reception room on the third floor, their operating-room, and that sort of thing, on the top floor, with no less than two sky-lights and a transom opening directly on the roof. I arranged for a sitting with them. That is the floor we ought to have, but the building is full. Three doors below, though, there was a top, back studio to let, and I’ve taken it for a month. There we have a transom opening on the roof. I looked through, merely to see if I could hang my washing out sometimes. But barring our roof off from Ottenheimer’s is an ugly iron fencing.” “Did you get a chance to notice their wiring?” “The first thing. We can cut in and loop their telephone from our back room, with thirty feet of number twelve wire.” “Then we’ve got to get in on that line, first thing!” He ruminated in silence for a minute or two. “Of course you didn’t get a glimpse of the basement, under Ottenheimer’s?” “Hardly, Jim. We shall have to leave that to the gas-man!” And they both laughed a little over the memory of a certain gas-man who short circuited a private line in the basement of the Stock Exchange building and through doing so upset one of the heaviest cotton brokerage businesses in Wall Street. “Did you notice any of the other wires—power circuits, and that kind of thing?” “Yes, I did; but there were too many of them! I know, though, that Ottenheimer’s wires go south along our roof.” “Then the sooner we give a quiet ear to that gentleman’s conversations, the better for us. Have you had any furniture moved in?” “It goes this evening. By the way, though, what _am_ I just at present?” Durkin thought for a moment, and then suddenly remembered her incongruous love for needlework. “You had better be a hard-working maker of cotillion-favors, don’t you think? You might have a little show-case put up outside.”