With the added feeling of curiosity, Constance followed the woman detective up in the elevator.

In the office, apart in a little room curiously furnished with a camera, innumerable photographs, cabinets, and filing cases, was a young woman, perhaps twenty-six or seven.  On a table before her lay a pile of laces and small trinkets.  There, too, was the beautiful diamond ring which she had hidden in her muff.  Constance fairly gasped at the sight.

The girl was sitting limply in a chair crying bitterly.  She was not a hardened looking creature.  In fact, her face bore evident traces of refinement, and her long, slender fingers hinted at a nervous, artistic temperament.  It was rather a shock to see such a girl under such distressing circumstances.

“We’ve lost so much lately,” a small ferret-eyed man was saying, “that we must make an example of some one.  It’s serious for us detectives, too.  We’ll lose our jobs unless we can stop you boosters.”

“Oh—­I—­I didn’t mean to do it.  I—­I just couldn’t help it,” sobbed the girl over and over again.

“Yes,” drawled the man, “that’s what they all say.  But you’ve been caught with the goods, this time, young lady.”

A woman entered, and the man turned to her quickly.

“Carr—­Kitty Carr.  Did you find anything under that name?”

“No, sir,” replied the woman store detective.  “We’ve looked all through the records and the photographs.  We don’t find her.  And yet I don’t think it is an alias—­at least, if it is, not an alias for any one we have any record of.  I’ve a good eye for faces, and there isn’t one we have on file as—­as good looking,” she added, perhaps with a little touch of wistfulness at her own plainness and this beauty gone wrong.

“This is the woman who lost the ring,” put in the other woman detective, motioning to Constance, who had accompanied her and was standing, a silent spectator.

The man held up the ring, which Constance had already recognized.

“Is that yours?” he asked.

For a moment, strangely, she hesitated.  If it had been any other ring in the world she felt sure that she would have said no.  But, then, she reflected, there was that pile of stuff.  There was no use in concealing her ownership of the ring.  “Yes,” she murmured.

“One moment, please,” answered the man brusquely.  “I must send down for the salesgirl who waited on you to identify you and your check—­ a mere formality, you know, but necessary to keep things straight.”

Constance sat down.

“I suppose you don’t realize it,” explained the man, turning to Constance, “but the shoplifters of the city get away with a couple of million dollars’ worth of stuff every year.  It’s the price we have to pay for displaying our goods.  But it’s too high.  They are the department store’s greatest unsolved problem.  Now most of the stores are working together for their common interests, seeing what they can do to root them out.  We all keep a sort of private rogue’s gallery of them.  But we don’t seem to have anything on this girl, nor have any of the other stores who exchange photographs and information with us anything on her.”