“Oh dear! That pickpocket will be blocks away before I get out of here!” she thought.

The wedge beneath the door could not be moved, even when she pried at it with a nail file. The bit of steel broke in her hand.

Nancy’s frustration changed to desperation. “I’ll smash the glass with the heel of my shoe!”

Fortunately at that moment Bess and George arrived with a policeman. Nancy’s shouts drew their attention.

“The thief escaped!” she gasped as the officer jerked open the door. “He locked me in here, and then ran out the front door.”

“Front door? Why, when we were up the street,” said George, “we saw a man climb through one of the windows. Officer Kelly chased him, but he had too big a start.”

“That must have been the pickpocket’s pal in the apartment,” Nancy replied, adding, “When the thief warned him about me, he escaped through the window so I couldn’t identify him later.”

“Which door did the fellow you saw come out of?” Officer Kelly asked.

Nancy pointed. “I think it was the third one.”

The officer rapped sharply on it. For several seconds there was no answer. Then the door opened a crack. A woman peered into the halL “What do you want?” she asked, frightened. The policeman walked into the untidy room. “There’s no one here except me,” the woman whined. “Who are you after?”

“A pickpocket who hid in this building.”

“Not in my rooms,” the woman maintained.

“Didn’t someone jump from a window here?”

“No!”

“Do you live alone?” the officer inquired.

“Well, no, I got a husband,” the woman answered. “He has a cousin who sticks around here sometimes when he’s in trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Cordova has a way of gettin’ mixed up in things,” the woman answered with a shrug. “But I ain’t sayin’ it’s dishonest.”

“This man Cordova-” Nancy put in, “he’s about thirty, isn’t he, medium height and walks with short, quick steps?”