Now I will say au'voir, as there is no time to lose if I want to get the pearls."
So I went out and jumped into the little car and started back up town alone. The whole business was pretty plain to me, but there were a few details I wanted to study out. Ivan, as you may remember, was the man who had given me the job of stealing Edith's jewels. He was the chief executive of the Paris mob of thieves, some of whom I had met that night at Léontine's house in Passy. Ivan never did any of the active work. He was a clubman and diner-out, and when he was asked to some rich house he looked things over, and if the proposition seemed a good one, assigned it to some worker who robbed the house and turned over the swag to Ivan who disposed of it, deducting his percentage. If the job went wrong and the burglar got caught, there was a fund to defend him. Ivan kept his hands clean and was always in some conspicuous place on the night of the theft.
So far, all was clear as spring-water. The next thing was to find out who had the pearls at the present moment. The more I thought of this, the more I became convinced that the disposition of jewels stolen by the mob was Léontine's work. Léontine was undoubtedly the fence. Being under the protectorship of Kharkoff, who was fabulously rich, she might be expected to have valuable jewels, and these she might also be expected to dispose of, for various reasons common to women of her position. Her words to me at Bagatelle crossed my mind: "I am a thief on a bigger scale than you ever dreamed of." There was little doubt in my mind that at the
