Then he flew upstairs, two steps at a time, rebolted the photographers’ hall door, replaced the transom as he swung up through it, and as hurriedly refitted the loose iron bar in the roof-fencing. Three minutes later, a well-dressed gentleman, wearing a black hat and carrying a large leather suit-case, stopped, with a not unnatural curiosity, on his way up Fifth Avenue, to inquire the meaning of an excited little crowd that clustered about two policemen and a woman in the doorway of Ottenheimer & Company. He drew up, casually enough, and listened while a short, stout, and very indignant man spluttered and gesticulated and angrily demanded how any one should dare to stop him from going into his own store. He was the owner of the place—there was his own watchman to identify him,—and somebody would be “broke” for this tomfoolery, he declared, with a shake of the fist toward the silent sergeant beside him. The young woman, who chanced to be veiled, explained in her well-modulated, rich contralto voice that the hour had seemed so unusual, the store had looked so dark inside, even the burglar-alarm, she stubbornly insisted, had rung so loudly, that, naturally, it had made her suspicious. She was sorry if it was a mistake. But now the officers were there; they could attend to it—if some one would kindly call a taxi for her. The sergeant between her and Ottenheimer agreed with her, and stepping out and stopping an empty motor-cab on its way up the Avenue, turned back to the still enraged owner of the store and solicitously advised him to go home and cool down. “You hold that woman!” demanded Ottenheimer, husky with rage. “You hold that woman, until I examine these premises!” The young woman, obviously, and also quite naturally, objected to being held. There was a moment of puzzled silence, and then a murmur of disapproval from the crowd, for about the carefully gloved girl in the black street-gown and plumed hat clung that nameless touch of birth and bearing which marked her as a person who would be more at home in a limousine than in a wind-swept doorway. “The lady, of course, will wait!” quietly but deliberately suggested the black-hatted man with the suit-case, looking casually in over the circling crowd of heads. The sergeant turned, sharply, glaring out his sudden irritability. “Now, who asked you to butt in on this?” he demanded, as he impatiently elbowed the pressing crowd further out into a wider circle. “I merely suggested that the lady wait,” repeated the man in the black hat, as unperturbed as before. “Of course, officer, I shall wait, willingly,” said the girl, hurriedly, in her equally confident, low-noted rich contralto. She drew her skirts about her, femininely, merely asking that the shop-owner might make his search as quickly as possible.