a knee, the while he favored Mr. Czenki with a sharp scrutiny. There
was that in the thin, scarred face and in the beady black eyes which
inevitably drew the attention of a stranger, and half a dozen times
as he talked Mr. Birnes glanced at the expert.

He retold the story of the cab ride up Fifth Avenue, and the car trip
back downtown--omitting embarrassing details such as the finding of
two notes addressed to himself--dwelt a moment upon the empty gripsack
which Mr. Wynne carried on the car, and then:

"When you told me, Mr. Latham, that the gripsack had contained
diamonds when Mr. Wynne left here I knew instantly how he got rid of
them. He transferred them to some person in the cab, in accordance
with a carefully prearranged plan. That person was a woman!"

"A woman!" Mr. Latham repeated, as if startled.

"Dere iss alvays wimmins in id," remarked Mr. Schultze
philosophically. "Go on."

Mr. Birnes was not at all backward about detailing the persistence
and skill it had required on his part to establish this fact; and
he went on at length to acquaint them with the search that had been
made by a dozen of his men to find a trace of the woman from the time
she climbed the elevated stairs at Fifty-eighth Street. He admitted
that the quest for her had thus far been fruitless, assuring them at
the same time that it would go steadily on, for the present at least.

"And now, Mr. Latham," he went on, and inadvertently he glanced at
Mr. Czenki, "I have been hampered, of course, by the fact that you