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aren’t on a diet by any chance, are you?”
    “Yes. A nice rich diet of doughnuts and coffee, mostly.” She smiled rather wearily at his puzzlement. “I work for Oppenheim.”
    “Doesn’t he pay you?”
    “Sure. But maybe you haven’t heard of him. I’m a dressmaker. I work with fifty other girls in a loft down near the East River, making handmade underwear. We work ten hours a day, six days a week, sewing. If you’re clever and fast you can make two pieces in a day. They pay you thirty cents apiece. You can buy them on Fifth Avenue for four or five dollars, but that doesn’t do us any good. I made three dollars last week, but I had to pay the rent for my room.”
    It was Simon Templar’s first introduction to the economics of the sweatshop; and hardened as he was to the ways of chiselers and profiteers, the cold facts as she stated them made him feel slightly sick to his stomach. He realized that he had been too long in ignorance of the existence of such people as Mr Oppenheim.
    “Do you mean to say he gets people to work for him on those terms?” he said incredulously. “And how is it possible to live on three dollars a week?”
    “Oh, there are always girls who’ll do it if they can’t get anything else. I used to get forty dollars a week doing the same work on Madison Avenue, but I was sick for a couple of weeks and they used it as an excuse to let me go. I didn’t have any job at all for three months, and three dollars a week is better than nothing. You learn how to live on it. After a while you get used to being hungry; but when you have to buy shoes or pay a dentist’s bill, and the rent piles up for a couple of weeks, it doesn’t do you any good.”
    “I seem to have heard of your Mr Oppenheim,” said the Saint thoughtfully. “Didn’t he just pay a million and a half dollars for a collection of emeralds?”
    Her lips flickered cynically.
    “That’s the guy. I’ve seen them, too—I’ve been working on his daughter’s trousseau because I’ve got more experience of better-class work than the other girls, and I’ve been going to the house to fit it. It’s just one of those things that make you feel like turning communist sometimes.”
    “You’ve been in the house, have you?” he said even more thoughtfully. “And you’ve seen these emeralds?” He stopped himself and drew smoke from his cigarette to trickle it thoughtfully back across the counter. When he turned to her again, his dark reckless face held only the same expression of friendly interest that it had held before. “Where are you going to sleep tonight?”
    She shrugged.
    “I don’t know. You see, I owe three weeks’ rent now, and they won’t let me in until I pay it. I guess I’ll take a stroll up to the park.”
    “It’s healthy enough, but a bit drafty.” He smiled at her suddenly with disarming frankness. “Look here, what would you say if I suggested that we wander around to a little place close by here where I can get you a room? It’s quiet and clean, and I don’t live there. But I’d like to do something about you. Stay there tonight and meet me for dinner tomorrow, and let’s talk it over.”
    She met him the following evening, and he had to do very little more than keep his ears open to learn everything that he wanted to know.
    “They’re in Oppenheim’s study—on the second floor. His daughter’s room is next door to it, and the walls aren’t very thick. He was showing them to her yesterday afternoon when I was there. He has a big safe in the study, but he doesn’t keep the emeralds in it. I heard him boasting about how clever he was. He said, ‘Anybody who came in looking for the emeralds would naturally think they’d be in the safe, and they’d get to work on it at once. It ‘d take them a long time to open it, which would give us plenty of chances to catch them; but anyhow they’d be disappointed. They’d never believe that I had a million and a half dollars’ worth of emeralds just