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!
"Don't--don't say it! It's all a mistake, which can be rectified in a
moment. I've been trying to match this piece of lace for years. I got
it at Malta when--when Mills and I--on our honeymoon. When I saw it
there on the counter I was so delighted--I never thought--I intended
taking it to the light to be sure the pattern was the same, my eyesight
is so wretched--and when you spoke to me it was the first inkling I had
that I had really taken it without paying! You certainly understand,"
she pleaded in agitation. "I have no need to steal--you must know
that--oh, that I wouldn't--that--I couldn't--If you will just let me
pay you--"
Here now, Mag Monahan, don't you get to sneering. She was
straight--right on the level, all right. You couldn't listen to that
cracked little voice of hers a minute without being sure of it.
I was just about to permit her graciously to pay me the money,--for my
friend? the dear Bishop's sake, of course,--when a big floor-walker
happened to catch sight of us.
"If you'll come with me, Mrs. Van Wagenen, to a dressing-room, I'll
arrange your collar for you," I said very loud. And then, in a
whisper: "Of course, I understand, but the thing may look different to
other people. And that big floor-walker there gets a commission from
the newspapers every time he tells them--"
She gave a squawk for all the world like a dried-up little hen
scuttling out of a yellow dog's way, and we took the elevator to the
second floor.
The minute I closed the door of the little fitting-room she held out
the lace to me.
"I have changed my mind," she said, "and shall give you the lace back.
I will not keep it. I can not--I can not bear the sight of it. It
terrifies me and shocks me. I can take no pleasure in it.
Besides--besides, it will be discipline for me to do without it now
that I have found it after all these years. Every day I shall look at
the place in my collection which it would have occupied, and I shall
say to myself: 'Maria Van Wagenen, take warning. See to what terrible
straits a worldly passion may bring one; what unconscious greed may
do!' I shall give the money to Mills for charity and I will
never--never fill that place in my collection."
"What good will that do?" I asked, puzzled, while I folded the collar
up into a very small package.
"You mean that I ought to submit to the exposure--that I deserve the
lesson and the punishment--not for stealing, but for being absorbed in
worldly things. Perhaps you are right. It certainly shows that you
have at some time been under Mills' spiritual care, my dear. I wonder
if he would insist--whether I ought--yes, I suppose he would. Oh!"
A saleswoman's head was thrust in the door. "Excuse me," she said, "I
thought the room was empty."
"We've just finished trying on," I said sweetly.
"Don't go!" The Bishop's wife turned to her, her little fluttering
hands held out appealingly. "And do not misunderstand me. The thing
may seem wrong in your eyes, as this young woman says, but if you will
listen patiently to my explanations I am sure you will see that it was
a mere eager over-sight--the fault of absent-mindedness, hardly the sin
of covetousness, and surely not a crime. I am making this confession--"
The tender conscience of the dear, blameless little soul! She was
actually giving herself away. Worse--she was giving me away, too. But
I couldn't stand that. I saw the saleswoman's puzzled face--she was a
tall woman with a big bust, big hips and the big head all right, and
she wore her long-train black rig for all the world like a Cruelty girl
who had stolen the matron's skirt to "play lady" in. I got behind
little Mrs. Bishop, and looking out over her head, I tapped my forehead
significantly.
The saleswoman tumbled. That was all right. But so did the Bishop's
wife; for she turned and caught me at it.
"You shall not save me from myself and what I deserve," she cried. "I
am perfectly sane and you know it, and you are doing me no favor in
trying to create the contrary impression. I demand an--"
"An interview with the manager," I interrupted. "I'm sure Mrs. Van
Wagenen can see the manager. Just go with the lady, Mrs. Van Wagenen,
and I'll follow with the goods."
She did it meek as a lamb, talking all the time, but never beginning at
the beginning--luckily for me. So that I had time to slip from one
dressing-room to the next, with the lace up my sleeve, out to the
elevator, and down into the street.
D'ye know what heaven must be, Mag? A place where you always get away
with the swag, and where it's always just the minute after you've made
a killing.
Cocky? Well, I should say I was. I was drunk enough with success to
take big chances. And just while I was wishing for something really
big to tackle, it came along in the shape of that big floor-walker!
He was without a hat, and his eyes looked fifty ways at once. But
you've got to look fifty-one if you want to catch Nance Olden. I ran up
the stairs of the first flat-house and rang the bell. And as I sailed
up in the elevator I saw the big floor-walker hurry past; he'd lost the
scent.
The boy let me off at the top floor, and after the elevator had gone
down I walked up to the roof. It was fine 'way up there, so still and
high, with the lights coming out down in the town. And I took out my
pretty lace collar and put it around my neck, wishing I could keep it
and wishing that I had, at least, a glass to see myself in it just
once, when my eye caught the window of the next house.
It would do for a mirror all right, for the dark green shade was down.
But at sight of the shade blowing in the wind I forgot all about the
collar.
It's this way, Mag, when they press you too far; and that little rat of
a lawyer had got me most to the wall. I looked at the window,
measuring the little climb it would be for me to get to it,--the house
next door was just one story higher than the one where I was, so its
top story was on a level with the roof nearly where I stood. And I
made up my--mind to get what would let Tom off easy, or break into jail
myself.
And so I didn't care much what I might fall into through that window.
And perhaps because I didn't care, I slipped into a dark hall, and not
a thing stirred; not a footstep creaked. I felt like the
Princess--Princess Nancy Olden--come to wake the Sleeping Beauty; some
dude it'd be that would have curly hair like Tom Dorgan's, and would
wear clothes like my friend Latimer's, over in Brooklyn.
Can you see me there, standing on one leg like a stork, ready to lie or
to fly at the first sound?
Well, the first sound didn't come. Neither did the second. In fact,
none of 'em came unless I made 'em myself.
Softly as Molly goes when the baby's just dropped off to sleep, I
walked toward an open door. It was a parlor, smelly with tobacco, and
with lots of papers and books around. And nary a he-beauty--nor any
other kind.