for a few moments in the morning, I did not see Kennedy again until the following afternoon, for the tong war proved to be such an interesting feature that I had to help lay out and direct the assignments covering its various details.
I managed to get away again as soon as possible, however, for I knew that it would not be long before some one else in trouble would commandeer Kennedy to untangle a mystery, and I wanted to be on the spot when it started.
Sure enough, it turned out that I was right. Seated with him in our living room, when I came in from my hasty journey uptown in the subway, was a man, tall, thick-set, with a crop of closely curling dark hair, a sharp, pointed nose, ferret eyes, and a reddish moustache, curled at the ends. I had no difficulty in deciding what he was, if not who he was. He was the typical detective who, for the very reason that he looked the part, destroyed much of his own usefulness.
"We have lost so much lately at Trimble's," he was saying, "that it is long past the stage of being merely interesting. It is downright serious—for me, at least. I've got to make good or lose my job. And I'm up against one of the cleverest shoplifters that ever entered a department-store, apparently. Only Heaven knows how much she has got away with in various departments so far, but when it comes to lifting valuable things like pieces of jewelry which run into the thousands, that is too much."
At the mention of the name of the big Trimble store I had recognised at once what the man was, and it did not need Kennedy's rapid-fire introduction of Michael Donnelly to tell me that he was a department store detective.
"Have you no clue, no suspicions?" inquired Kennedy.
"Well, yes, suspicions," measured Donnelly slowly. "For instance, one day not long ago a beautifully dressed and refined-looking woman called at the jewellery department and asked to see a diamond necklace which we had just imported from Paris. She seemed to admire it very much, studied it, tried it on, but finally went away without making up her mind. A couple of days later she returned and asked to see it again. This time there happened to be another woman beside her who was looking at some pendants. The two fell to talking about the necklace, according to the best recollection of the clerk, and the second woman began to examine it critically. Again the prospective buyer went away. But this time after she had gone, and when he was putting the things back into the safe, the clerk examined the necklace, thinking that perhaps a flaw had been discovered in it which had decided the woman against it. It was a replica in paste; probably substituted by one of these clever and smartly dressed women for the real necklace."
Before Craig had a chance to put another question, the buzzer on our door sounded, and I admitted a dapper, soft-spoken man of middle size, who might have been a travelling salesman or a bookkeeper. He pulled a card from his case and stood facing us, evidently in doubt how to proceed.
"Professor Kennedy?" he asked at length, balancing the pasteboard between his fingers.
"Yes," answered Craig. "What can I do for you?"
"I am from Shorham, the Fifth Avenue jeweller, you know," he began brusquely, as he handed the card to Kennedy. "I thought I'd drop in to consult you about a peculiar thing that happened at the store recently, but if you are engaged, I can wait. You see, we had on exhibition a very handsome pearl dog-collar, and a few days ago two women came to—"
"Say," interrupted Kennedy, glancing from the card to the face of Joseph Bentley, and then at Donnelly. "What is this—a gathering of the clans? There seems to be an epidemic of shoplifting. How much were you stung for?"
"About twenty thousand altogether," replied Bentley with rueful frankness. "Why? Has some one else been victimised, too?"
Chapter XIII
The Kleptomaniac
Quickly Kennedy outlined, with Donnelly's permission, the story we had just heard. The two store detectives saw the humour of the situation, as well as the seriousness of it, and fell to comparing notes.
"The professional as well as the amateur shoplifter has always presented to me an interesting phase of criminality," remarked Kennedy tentatively, during a lull in their mutual commiseration. "With thousands of dollars' worth of goods lying unprotected on the counters, it is really no wonder that some are tempted to reach out and take what they want."
"Yes," explained Donnelly, "the shop-lifter is the department-store's greatest unsolved problem. Why, sir, she gets more plunder in a year than the burglar. She's costing the stores over two million dollars. And she is at her busiest just now with the season's shopping in full swing. It's the price the stores have to pay for displaying their goods, but we have to do it, and we are at the mercy of the thieves. I don't mean by that the occasional shoplifter who, when she gets caught, confesses, cries, pleads, and begs to return the stolen article. They often get off. It is the regulars who get the two million, those known to the police, whose pictures are, many of them, in the Rogues' Gallery, whose careers and haunts are known to every probation officer. They are getting away with loot that means for them a sumptuous living."
"Of course we are not up against the same sort of swindlers that you are," put in Bentley, "but let me tell you that when the big jewelers do get up against anything of the sort they are up against it hard."
"Have you any idea who it could be?" asked Kennedy, who had been following the discussion keenly.
"Well, some idea," spoke up Donnelly. "From what Bentley says I wouldn't be surprised to find that it was the same person in both cases. Of course you know how rushed all the stores are just now. It is much easier for these light-fingered individuals to operate during the rush than at any other time. In the summer, for instance, there is almost no shoplifting at all. I thought that perhaps we could discover this particular shoplifter by ordinary means, that perhaps some of the clerks in the jewellery department might be able to identify her. We found one who said that he thought he might recognise one of the women if he saw her again. Perhaps you did not know that we have our own little rogues' gallery in most of the big department-stores. But there didn't happen to be anything there that he recognised. So I took him down to Police Headquarters. Through plate after plate of pictures among the shoplifters in the regular Rogues' Gallery the clerk went. At last he came to one picture that caused him to stop. 'That is one of the women I saw in the store that day,' he said. 'I'm sure of it.'"
Donnelly produced a copy of the Bertillon picture.
"What?" exclaimed Bentley, as he glanced at it and then at the name and history on the back. "Annie Grayson? Why, she is known as the queen of shoplifters. She has operated from Christie's in London to the little curio-shops of San Francisco. She has worked under a dozen aliases and has the art of alibi down to perfection. Oh, I've heard of her many times before. I wonder if she really is the person we're looking for. They say that Annie Grayson has forgotten more about shoplifting than the others will ever know."
"Yes," continued Donnelly, "and here's the queer part of it. The clerk was ready to swear that he had seen the woman in the store at some time or other, but whether she had been near the counter where the necklace was displayed was another matter. He wasn't so sure about that."
"Then how did she get it?" I asked, much interested.
"I don't say that she did get it," cautioned Donnelly. "I don't know anything about it. That is why I am here consulting Professor Kennedy."
"Then who did get it, do you think?" I demanded.
"We have a great
