Kitty backed away toward the door, so that a huge wardrobe shielded her from Otto and his customer.

“Come near, Mr. O’Day,” she whispered, all her forced humor gone.  “I’ve got the woman who dropped the sleeve-buttons.”

Felix swayed unsteadily, and gripped a chair-back for support.

“You’ve got—­the woman—­ What do you mean?” he said at last.

“Mike saw her at the police-station.  They’ve put her in a cell.”

“Arrested?”

“Yes, for stealin’.”

Involuntarily his fingers brushed his throat as if he were choking, but no words came.  He had been all his life accustomed to surprises, some of them appalling, but against this, for the instant, he had no power to stand.

Kitty stood watching the quivering of his lips and the drawn, strained muscles about his jaw and neck as his will power whipped them back to their normal shape.  She was convinced now of the truth of her suspicions—­the woman was not only interwoven with his past, but was closely identified with his present anguish.

She drew closer, her voice rising.  “Ye’ll go with me, won’t ye, Mr. Felix?” she went on, hiding under an assumed indifference all recognition of his struggle.  “Father Cruse told me if I ever come across her again, and there wasn’t time to get hold of him, to let ye know.”

“I will go anywhere, where Father Cruse thinks I should, Mrs. Cleary—­especially in cases of this kind, where I may be of use.”  The words had come from between partly closed lips; his hands were still tightly clinched.  “And you say she was arrested—­for stealing?”

“Yes, shopliftin’, they call it.  Poor creatures, they get that miserable and trodden on they don’t know right from wrong!”

Then, as if to give him time in which to recover himself fully, she went on, speaking rapidly:  “And, after all, it may only be a put-up job or a mistake.  Half the women they pinch in them big stores ain’t reg’lar thieves.  They get tempted, or they can’t find anybody to tell ’em the price o’ things, especially these holiday times, and they carry ’em round from counter to counter, and along comes a store detective and nabs ’em with the goods on ’em.  They did that to me once, over at Cryder’s, and I told him I’d knock him down if he put his hand on me, and somebody come along who knew me, and they was that scared when they found out who I was that they bowed and scraped like dancin’ masters and wanted me to take the skirt along if I’d say nothin’ about it.  That might have happened to this poor child—­”

“Has Father Cruse seen her?” asked Felix.  No word of the recital had reached his ears.

“No—­that’s why I come to ye.”

“And where did you say she was?” He had himself under perfect control again, and might have been a man bent only on aiding Father Cruse in some charitable work.

“Locked up in the station-house not far from here.  It won’t take ye ten minutes to get there.”