Her eyes lighted up and she bit her lip.
"Yes. I would. But--I haven't any money."
"I shouldn't worry about that. We can always hold up a bank." The Saint watched her while she devoured a sandwich, a double order of bacon and eggs and a slice of pie. She ate intently, quickly, without speaking. Without seeming to stare at her, his keen eyes took in the shadows under her che'ekbones, the neat patch on one elbow of the cheap dark coat, the cracks in the leather of shoes which had long since lost their shape.
"I wish I had your appetite," he said gently, when at last she had finished.
She smiled for the first time, rather faintly.
"I haven't had anything to eat for two days," she said. "And I haven't had as much to eat as this all at once for a long time."
Simon ordered more coffee and offered her a cigarette. He put his heels up on the top rung of his stool and leaned his elbows on his knees. She told him her name, but for the moment he didn't answer with his own.
"Out of a job?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head.
"Not yet."
"You aren't on a diet by any chance, are you?"
"Yes. A nice rich diet of doughnuts and coffee, mostly." She smiled rather wearily at his puzzlement. "I work for Oppenheim."
"Doesn't he pay you?"
"Sure. But maybe you haven't heard of him. I'm a dressmaker. I work with fifty other girls in a loft down near the East River, making handmade underwear. We work ten hours a day, six days a week, sewing. If you're clever and fast you can make two pieces in a day. They pay you thirty cents apiece. You can buy them on Fifth Avenue for four or five dollars, but that doesn't do us any good. I made three dollars last week, but I had to pay the rent for my room."
It was Simon Templar's first introduction to the economics of the sweatshop; and hardened as he was to the ways of chiselers and profiteers, the cold facts as she stated them made him feel slightly sick to his stomach. He realized that he had been too long in ignorance of the existence of such people as Mr Oppenheim.
"Do you mean to say he gets people to work for him on those terms?" he said incredulously. "And how is it possible to live on three dollars a week?"
"Oh, there are always girls who'll do it if they can't get anything else. I used to get forty dollars a week doing the same work on Madison Avenue, but I was sick for a couple of weeks and they used it as an excuse to let me go. I didn't have any job at all for three months, and three dollars a week is better than nothing. You learn how to live on it. After a while you get used to being hungry; but when you have to buy shoes or pay a dentist's bill, and the rent piles up for a couple of weeks, it doesn't do you any good."
"I seem to have heard of your Mr Oppenheim," said the Saint thoughtfully. "Didn't he just pay a million and a half dollars for a collection of emeralds?"
Her lips flickered cynically.
"That's the guy. I've seen them, too--I've been working on his daughter's trousseau because I've got more experience of better-class work than the other girls, and I've been going to the house to fit it. It's just one of those things that make you feel like turning communist sometimes."
"You've been in the house, have you?" he said even more thoughtfully. "And you've seen these emeralds?" He stopped himself and drew smoke from his cigarette to trickle it thoughtfully back across the counter. When he turned to her again, his dark reckless face held only the same expression of friendly interest that it had held before. "Where are you going to sleep tonight?"
She shrugged.
"I don't know. You see, I owe three weeks' rent now, and they won't let me in until I pay it. I guess I'll take a stroll up to the park."
"It's healthy enough, but a bit drafty." He smiled at her suddenly with disarming frankness. "Look here, what would you say if I suggested that we wander around to a little place close by here where I can get you a room? It's quiet and clean, and I don't live there. But I'd like to do something about you. Stay there tonight and meet me for dinner tomorrow, and let's talk it over."
She met him the following evening, and he had to do very little more than keep his ears open to learn everything that he wanted to know.
"They're in Oppenheim's study--on the second floor. His daughter's room is next door to it, and the walls aren't very thick. He was showing them to her yesterday afternoon when I was there. He has a big safe in the study, but he doesn't keep the emeralds in it. I heard him boasting about how clever he was. He said, 'Anybody who came in looking for the emeralds would naturally think they'd be in the safe, and they'd get to work on it at once. It 'd take them a long time to open it, which would give us plenty of chances to catch them; but anyhow they'd be disappointed. They'd never believe that I had a million and a half dollars' worth of emeralds just 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."