Felix rested his hands on the rail fronting the desk.  “May I ask if you saw the woman?”

“No.  I only came on half an hour ago.”

“Is there any one here who did see her?”

Something in O’Day’s manner and in the incisive tones of his voice, those of command not supplication, made the lieutenant change his position.  The speaker might have a “pull” somewhere.  He turned to the sergeant.  “You were on duty.  What did she look like?”

The sergeant yawned from behind his hand.  He had been up most of the previous night and was some hours behind his sleep schedule.  Kitty’s presence had not roused him but the self-possessed man could not be ignored.

“You mean the girl who got Rosenthal’s lace?” he answered.

“You’re dead right,” returned the lieutenant obligingly.  He had, of course, always been ready to do what he could for people in trouble, and was so now.

“Oh, about as they all look.”  This time the sergeant directed his remarks to Felix.  “We get two or three of ’em every day, specially about Christmas and New Year’s.  Rather run down at the heel, this one, and —­no, come to think of it, I’m wrong—­she looked different.  Been a corker in her time—­not bad now—­ about thirty, I guess—­maybe younger—­you can’t always tell.  Rather slim—­had on a black-straw hat and some kind of a cloak.”

Kitty was about to freshen his memory with some remembrance of her own, and had got as far as, “Well, my man Mike was here and he told me that—­” when Felix lifted a restraining hand, supplementing her outburst by the direct question:  “Did she say nothing about herself?”

“She did not.  All we could get out of her was that she was English.”

Felix bent nearer.  “Will you please describe her a little closer?  I have a reason for knowing.”

The sergeant caught the look of determination, dallied with a tin paper-cutter, bent his head on one side, and pursed a pair of thick lips.  It was a strain on his memory, this recalling the features of one of a dozen prisoners, but somehow he dared not refuse.

“Well, she was one of the pocket kind of women, small and well put up but light built, you know.  She had blue eyes—­big ones—­I noticed ’em partic’lar—­ and about the smallest pair of feet I ever seen on a girl.  She stumbled down-stairs and caught her dress, and I remember they was about as big as a kid’s.  That was another thing set me to wondering how she got into a scrape like this.  She could have done a lot better if she had a-wanted to,” this last came with a leer.

Felix clenched his teeth, and drove his nails into the palms of his hands.  He would have throttled the man had he dared.

“Did she make any defense?” he asked, when he had himself under control again.

“No—­there warn’t no use—­she owned up to having pinched it.  Not here at the desk, but to Rosenthal’s man who made the charge—­that is, she didn’t deny it.  The stuff was worth $250.  That’s a felony, you know.”