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Page 76
"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."
"Evidently, then, it is her first offense," put in Constance,
wondering at herself. Strangely, she felt more of sympathy than of
anger for the girl.
"You mean the first time she has been caught at it," corrected the
head of the store detectives.
"It is my weakness," sobbed the girl. "Sometimes an irresistible
impulse to steal comes over me. I just can't help it."
She was sobbing convulsively. As she talked and listened there
seemed to come a complete breakdown. She wept as though her heart
would break.
"Oh," exclaimed the man, "can it! Cut out the sob stuff!"
"And yet," mused Constance half to herself, watching the girl
closely, "when one walks through the shops and sees thousands of
dollars' worth of goods lying unprotected on the counters, is it any
wonder that some poor woman or girl should be tempted and fall?
There, before her eyes and within her grasp, lies the very article
above all others which she so ardently craves. No one is looking.
The salesgirl is busy with another customer. The rest is easy. And
then the store detective steps in--and here she is--captured."
The girl had been listening wildly through her tears. "Oh," she
sobbed, "you don't understand--none of you. I don't crave anything.
I--I just--can't help it--and then, afterwards--I--I HATE the stuff
--and I am so--afraid. I hurry home--and I--oh, what shall I do--what
shall I do?"
Constance pitied her deeply. She looked from the wild-eyed, tear-
stained face to the miscellaneous pile of material on the table, and
the unwinking gaze of the store detectives. True, the girl had taken
a very valuable diamond ring, and from herself. But the laces, the
trinkets, all were abominably cheap, not worth risking anything for.
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