on a bet."

"Funny!" said Bat. "Who could have done it?"

Big Slim shook his head with the air of one who could talk eloquently if
he would. For a time they ate their food in silence; then the burglar
resumed:

"You know what I told you last night about the phony fighter, Allen? How
I expected to turn a trick that'd get me a roll, and be able to put it
up for him in that match?"

"Yes," said Bat, interested.

"I've been doing work all over the United States for a good many years,"
stated the burglar, "and I've run into some funny jobs. But this one had
them all faded. You could start a thousand times and never fall like I
did that time."

"Tough!" Bat nodded sagely. "A fellow remembers those things."

"I'll remember that one, all right," promised the other. "Don't let that
worry you."

"Diamonds, I think you said." The big athlete looked appreciative, and
labored with the Asiatic cookery.

"Some of them were as big as that," and Big Slim grouped some grains of
rice upon the edge of his plate. "Not bad, eh?"

"Extra special," replied the big athlete, promptly. "Diamonds like that
are only to be mentioned with great respect."

"It was one of the easiest kind of tricks to turn," said the burglar. "A
woman had 'em--but I think I told you that. She wore 'em every
night--and I framed the whole thing so that it couldn't fail. She lives
up town, and gets home about the same time every night There was a
scaffolding up the side of the house--right under her window."

Bat laughed and reached for a salt shaker with a great assumption of
carelessness.

"It might have been built for you, eh?" said he. "Easy is right."

"I slipped up the scaffolding before she got home," said Big Slim,
drifting, perhaps, unconsciously into the narrative. "And I was outside
when she came into the room. She pulled down the blind, and then I moved
over right under the window. The blind wasn't all the way down; so I
laid fiat on the boards, and could see into the room."

Bat made an indefinite sort of noise down in his throat; perhaps the
burglar fancied it indicated interest; at any rate he went on:

"She stood for a while, thinking. Then she begins to take off the
diamonds. There was a box there, to put them in--all open and ready.

"'Fine,' thinks I, to myself. 'When they are all gathered up nice and
safe, that's when I'll reach for them--then I'll be sure to have them
all.'

"She was still taking them off--out of her hair, from