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tucked away behind a row of books on a shelf. Even the man from the detective agency doesn’t know it—he thinks the safe is what he’s got to look after.’ “
    “So they have a private detective on the job, do they?” said the Saint.
    “Yes. A man from Ingerbeck’s goes in at seven o’clock every evening and stays till the servants are up in the morning. The butler’s a pretty tough-looking guy himself, so I suppose Oppenheim thinks the house is safe enough in his hands in the daytime… . Why do you want to know all this?”
    “I’m interested.”
    She looked at him with an unexpected clearness of understanding.
    “Is that what you meant when you said you’d like to do something about me ? Did you think you could do it if you got hold of those emeralds?”
    The Saint lighted a cigarette with a steady and unhurried hand, and then his blue eyes came back to her face for a moment before he answered with a very quiet and calculating directness.
    “That was more or less my idea,” he said calmly.
    She was neither shocked nor frightened. She studied him with as sober and matter-of-fact attention as if they were discussing where she might find another job, but a restrained intenseness with which he thought he could sympathize came into her voice. She said: “I couldn’t call anybody a criminal who did that. He really deserves to lose them. I believe I’d be capable of robbing him myself if I knew how to go about it. Have you ever done anything like that before?”
    “I have had a certain amount of experience,” Simon admitted mildly.
    “Who are you?”
    “If you were reading newspapers a few years back you may have read about me. I’m called the Saint.”
    “You? You’re kidding.” She stared at him, and the amused disbelief in her face changed slowly into a weakening incredulity. “But you might be. I saw a photograph once … Oh, if you only were! I’d help you to do it—I wouldn’t care what it cost.”
    “You can help me by telling me everything you can remember about Oppenheim’s household and how it works.”
    She had been there several times; and there were many useful things she remembered, which his skillful questioning helped to bring out. They went down into the back of his mind and stayed there while he talked about other things. The supremely simple and obvious solution came to him a full two hours later, when they were dancing on a small packed floor above Broadway.
    He took her back to their table as the main batteries of lights went on for the floor show, lighted a cigarette and announced serenely:
    “It’s easy. I know just how Comrade Oppenheim is going to lose his emeralds.”
    “How?”
    “They have a man in from Ingerbeck’s at night, don’t they? And he has the run of the place while everybody else is asleep. They give him breakfast in the morning when the servants get up, and then he takes a cigar and goes home. Well, the same thing can happen just once more. The guy from Ingerbeck’s comes in, stays the night and goes home. Not the usual guy, because he’s sick or been run over by a truck or something. Some other guy. And when this other guy goes home, he can pull emeralds out of every pocket.”
    Her mouth opened a little.
    “You mean you’d do that?”
    “Sure. Apart from the fact that I don’t like your Mr Oppenheim, it seems to me that with a million and a half dollars’ worth of emeralds one could do a whole lot of amusing things which Oppenheim would never dream of. To a bloke with my imagination–-“
    “But when would you do it?”
    He looked at his watch mechanically.
    “Eventually—why not now? Or at least this evening.” He was almost mad enough to consider it, but he restrained himself. “But I’m afraid it might be asking for trouble. It ‘11 probably take me a day or two to find out a few more things about this dick from Ingerbeck’s, and then I’ll have to get organized to keep him out of the way on the night I want to go in. I should