“I wonder who the man higher up is,” whispered Miss Kendall.

“Someone is coming in,” reported Kennedy.  “By George, it is that stenographer from the office downstairs.  She is handing him an envelope.  Good for her!  He tried to kiss her and she backed away in disgust.  The scoundrel!

“Isn’t it clever, though?  Not a word is said by anyone.  I don’t suppose she could swear to knowing anything about what is in the envelope.  There she goes out.  He is opening the envelope and counting out the money—­ten one-hundred-dollar bills.  There they go into the fob pocket of his trousers.  I imagined he learned something from my pick-pocket.  That is the safest pocket a man has.  That little contribution, I take it, was from the Montmartre itself.”

Then followed an interval in which Ike puffed away on his cigar in silent state.

“Here’s another now,” announced Craig.  “Another woman.  I never saw her before.”

Both Miss Kendall and I looked and neither of us recognized her.  She was slim and would have been young-looking if she had not made such obvious efforts to imitate the healthy colour of the cheeks which she probably would have had if she had lived sensibly and left cosmetics alone.

Kennedy was hastily jotting down some notes on the back of an envelope.

“They are going through the same proceedings again.  I guess Ike doesn’t like her.  There she goes.  Only two hundred this time.”

Another wait followed, during which Ike smoked down his cigar and lighted another from the stub.  Then the door opened again.

Kennedy motioned quickly to Clare to look through the detectascope.  Meanwhile he pulled from his pocket the piece of paper he had written on and torn from the back of the menu at the Futurist.

“Marie!” exclaimed Clare under her breath.

“The same,” whispered Kennedy.  “Miss Kendall, you have the true ‘camera eye’ of the born detective.  Now—­please—­let me see if I can get what occurs.”

She yielded her place to him.

“Three hundred more,” he murmured.  “Marie must be in the game, though.  He didn’t wait for her to leave before he tore open the envelope.  Now they are burning the envelopes in the ash tray.  And still not a word.  This is clever, clever.  Think of it—­fifteen hundred dollars of easy money like that!  I wonder how much of it sticks to Ike’s hands on the way up.  He must have a capacious fob pocket for that.  Say, he’s a regular fellow with the ladies, Ike is.  Only this one doesn’t seem to resent it.  By George, I wonder if this fellow Ike isn’t giving the police or the politicians the double-cross.  He couldn’t be on such intimate terms with one who was paying graft to him as collector otherwise; do you think so?”

Craig looked up without waiting for an answer.  “You will excuse any levity, but that was some kiss she just gave him.”

Kennedy resumed his position for looking through the detectascope, occasionally glancing down at the notes he had made the day before and now and then making a slight alteration.