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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Constance Dunlap, by Arthur B. Reeve
+#11 in our series by Arthur B. Reeve
+
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+
+Title: Constance Dunlap
+       (The Craig Kennedy Series)
+
+Author: Arthur B. Reeve
+
+Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5261]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 19, 2002]
+[Date last updated: July 31, 2005]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONSTANCE DUNLAP ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+THE CRAIG KENNEDY SERIES
+
+CONSTANCE DUNLAP
+
+BY
+
+ARTHUR B. REEVE
+
+
+WITH FRONTISPIECE
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+
+   I THE FORGERS
+
+  II THE EMBEZZLERS
+
+ III THE GUN RUNNERS
+
+  IV THE GAMBLERS
+
+   V THE EAVESDROPPERS
+
+  VI THE CLAIRVOYANTS
+
+ VII THE PLUNGERS
+
+VIII THE ABDUCTORS
+
+  IX THE SHOPLIFTERS
+
+   X THE BLACKMAILERS
+
+  XI THE DOPE FIENDS
+
+ XII THE FUGITIVES
+
+
+
+
+CONSTANCE DUNLAP
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FORGERS
+
+
+There was something of the look of the hunted animal brought to bay
+at last in Carlton Dunlap's face as he let himself into his
+apartment late one night toward the close of the year.
+
+On his breath was the lingering odor of whisky, yet in his eye and
+hand none of the effects. He entered quietly, although there was no
+apparent reason for such excessive caution. Then he locked the door
+with the utmost care, although there was no apparent reason for
+caution about that, either.
+
+Even when he had thus barricaded himself, he paused to listen with
+all the elemental fear of the cave man who dreaded the footsteps of
+his pursuers. In the dim light of the studio apartment he looked
+anxiously for the figure of his wife. Constance was not there, as
+she had been on other nights, uneasily awaiting his return. What was
+the matter? His hand shook a trifle now as he turned the knob of the
+bedroom door and pushed it softly open.
+
+She was asleep. He leaned over, not realizing that her every faculty
+was keenly alive to his presence, that she was acting a part.
+
+"Throw something around yourself, Constance," he whispered hoarsely
+into her ear, as she moved with a little well-feigned start at being
+suddenly wakened, "and come into the studio. There is something I
+must tell you tonight, my dear."
+
+"My dear!" she exclaimed bitterly, now seeming to rouse herself with
+an effort and pretending to put back a stray wisp of her dark hair
+in order to hide from him the tears that still lingered on her
+flushed cheeks. "You can say that, Carlton, when it has been every
+night the same old threadbare excuse of working at the office until
+midnight?"
+
+She set her face in hard lines, but could not catch his eye.
+
+"Carlton Dunlap," she added in a tone that rasped his very soul, "I
+am nobody's fool. I may not know much about bookkeeping and
+accounting, but I can add--and two and two, when the same man but
+different women compose each two, do not make four, according to my
+arithmetic, but three, from which,"--she finished almost
+hysterically the little speech she had prepared, but it seemed to
+fall flat before the man's curiously altered manner--"from which I
+shall subtract one."
+
+She burst into tears.
+
+"Listen," he urged, taking her arm gently to lead her to an easy-
+chair.
+
+"No, no, no!" she cried, now thoroughly aroused, with eyes that
+again snapped accusation and defiance at him, "don't touch me. Talk
+to me, if you want to, but don't, don't come near me." She was now
+facing him, standing in the high-ceilinged "studio," as they called
+the room where she had kept up in a desultory manner for her own
+amusement the art studies which had interested her before her
+marriage. "What is it that you want to say? The other nights you
+said nothing at all. Have you at last thought up an excuse? I hope
+it is at least a clever one."
+
+"Constance," he remonstrated, looking fearfully about. Instinctively
+she felt that her accusation was unjust. Not even that had dulled
+the hunted look in his face. "Perhaps--perhaps if it were that of
+which you suspect me, we could patch it up. I don't know. But,
+Constance, I--I must leave for the west on the first train in the
+morning." He did not pause to notice her startled look, but raced
+on. "I have worked every night this week trying to straighten out
+those accounts of mine by the first of the year and--and I can't do
+it. An expert begins on them in a couple of days. You must call up
+the office to-morrow and tell them that I am ill, tell them
+anything. I must get at least a day or two start before they--"
+
+"Carlton," she interrupted, "what is the matter? What have you--"
+
+She checked herself in surprise. He had been fumbling in his pocket
+and now laid down a pile of green and yellow banknotes on the table.
+
+"I have scraped together every last cent I can spare," he continued,
+talking jerkily to suppress his emotion. "They cannot take those
+away from you, Constance. And--when I am settled--in a new life," he
+swallowed hard and averted his eyes further from her startled gaze,
+"under a new name, somewhere, if you have just a little spot in your
+heart that still responds to me, I--I--no, it is too much even to
+hope. Constance, the accounts will not come out right because I am--
+I am an embezzler."
+
+He bit off the word viciously and then sank his head into his hands
+and bowed it to a depth that alone could express his shame.
+
+Why did she not say something, do something? Some women would have
+fainted. Some would have denounced him. But she stood there and he
+dared not look up to read what was written in her face. He felt
+alone, all alone, with every man's hand against him, he who had
+never in all his life felt so or had done anything to make him feel
+so before. He groaned as the sweat of his mental and physical agony
+poured coldly out on his forehead. All that he knew was that she was
+standing there, silent, looking him through and through, as cold as
+a statue. Was she the personification of justice? Was this but a
+foretaste of the ostracism of the world?
+
+"When we were first married, Constance," he began sadly, "I was only
+a clerk for Green & Co., at two thousand a year. We talked it over.
+I stayed and in time became cashier at five thousand. But you know
+as well as I that five thousand does not meet the social obligations
+laid on us by our position in the circle in which we are forced to
+move."
+
+His voice had become cold and hard, but he did not allow himself to
+be betrayed into adding, as he might well have done in justice to
+himself, that to her even a thousand dollars a month would have been
+only a beginning. It was not that she had be accustomed to so much
+in the station of life from which he had taken her. The plain fact
+was that New York had had an over-tonic effect on her.
+
+"You were not a nagging woman, Constance," he went on in a somewhat
+softened tone. "In fact you have been a good wife; you have never
+thrown it up to me that I was unable to make good to the degree of
+many of our friends in purely commercial lines. All you have ever
+said is the truth. A banking house pays low for its brains. My God!"
+he cried stiffening out in the chair and clenching his fists, "it
+pays low for its temptations, too."
+
+There had been nothing in the world Carlton would not have given to
+make happy the woman who stood now, leaning on the table in cold
+silence, with averted head, regarding neither him nor the pile of
+greenbacks.
+
+"Hundreds of thousands of dollars passed through my hands every
+week," he resumed. "That business owed me for my care of it. It was
+taking the best in me and in return was not paying what other
+businesses paid for the best in other men. When a man gets thinking
+that way, with a woman whom he loves as I love you--something
+happens."
+
+He paused in the bitterness of his thoughts. She moved as if to
+speak. "No, no," he interrupted. "Hear me out first. All I asked was
+a chance to employ a little of the money that I saw about me--not to
+take it, but to employ it for a little while, a few days, perhaps
+only a few hours. Money breeds money. Why should I not use some of
+this idle money to pay me what I ought to have?
+
+"When Mr. Green was away last summer I heard some inside news about
+a certain stock, go it happened that I began to juggle the accounts.
+It is too long a story to tell how I did it. Anybody in my position
+could have done it--for a time. It would not interest you anyhow.
+But I did it. The first venture was successful. Also the spending of
+the money was very successful, in its way. That was the money that
+took us to the fashionable hotel in Atlantic City where we met so
+many people. Instead of helping me, it got me in deeper.
+
+"When the profit from this first deal was spent there was nothing to
+do but to repeat what I had done successfully before. I could not
+quit now. I tried again, a little hypothecation of some bonds.
+Stocks went down. I had made a bad bet and five thousand dollars was
+wiped out, a whole year's salary. I tried again, and wiped out five
+thousand more. I was at my wits' end. I have borrowed under
+fictitious names, used names of obscure persons as borrowers, have
+put up dummy security. It was possible because I controlled the
+audits. But it has done no good. The losses have far outbalanced the
+winnings and to-day I am in for twenty-five thousand dollars."
+
+She was watching him now with dilating eyes as the horror of the
+situation was burned into her soul. He raced on, afraid to pause
+lest she should interrupt him.
+
+"Mr. Green has been talked into introducing scientific management
+and a new system into the business by a certified public accountant,
+an expert in installing systems and discovering irregularities. Here
+I am, faced by certain exposure," he went on, pacing the floor and
+looking everywhere but at her face. "What should I do? Borrow? It is
+useless. I have no security that anyone would accept.
+
+"There is just one thing left." He lowered his voice until it almost
+sank into a hoarse whisper. "I must cut loose. I have scraped
+together what I can and I have borrowed on my life insurance. Here
+on the table is all that I can spare.
+
+"To-night, the last night, I have worked frantically in a vain hope
+that something, some way would at last turn up. It has not. There is
+no other way out. In despair I have put this off until the last
+moment. But I have thought of nothing else for a week. Good God,
+Constance, I have reached the mental state where even intoxicants
+fail to intoxicate."
+
+He dropped back again into the deep chair and sank his head again on
+his hands. He groaned as he thought of the agony of packing a bag
+and slinking for the Western express through the crowds at the
+railroad terminal.
+
+Still Constance was silent. Through her mind was running the single
+thought that she had misjudged him. There had been no other woman in
+the case. As he spoke, there came flooding into her heart the sudden
+realization of the truth. He had done it for her.
+
+It was a rude and bitter awakening after the past months when the
+increased income, with no questions asked, had made her feel that
+they were advancing. She passed her hands over her eyes, but there
+it was still, not a dream but a harsh reality. If she could only
+have gone back and undone it! But what was done, was done, She was
+amazed at herself. It was not horror of the deed that sent an icy
+shudder over her. It was horror of exposure.
+
+He had done it for her. Over and over again that thought raced
+through her mind. She steeled herself at last to speak. She hardly
+knew what was in her own mind, what the conflicting, surging
+emotions of her own heart meant.
+
+"And so, you are leaving me what is left, leaving me in disgrace,
+and you are going to do the best you can to get away safely. You
+want me to tell one last lie for you."
+
+There was an unnatural hollowness in her voice which he did not
+understand, but which out him to the quick. He had killed love. He
+was alone. He knew it. With a final effort he tried to moisten his
+parched lips to answer. At last, in a husky voice, he managed to
+say, "Yes."
+
+But with all his power of will he could not look at her.
+
+"Carlton Dunlap," she cried, leaning both hands for support on the
+table, bending over and at last forcing him to look her in the eyes,
+"do you know what I think of you? I think you are a damned coward.
+There!"
+
+Instead of tears and recriminations, instead of the conventional
+"How could you do it?" instead of burning denunciation of him for
+ruining her life, he read something else in her face. What was it?
+
+"Coward?" he repeated slowly. "What would you have me do--take you
+with me?"
+
+She tossed her head contemptuously.
+
+"Stay and face it?" he hazarded again.
+
+"Is there no other way?" she asked, still leaning forward with her
+eyes fixed on his. "Think! Is there no way that you could avoid
+discovery just for a time? Carlton, you--we are cornered. Is there
+no desperate chance?"
+
+He shook his head sadly.
+
+Her eyes wandered momentarily about the studio, until they rested on
+an easel. On it stood a water color on which she had been working,
+trying to put into it some of the feeling which she would never have
+put into words for him. On the walls of the apartment were pen and
+ink sketches, scores of little things which she had done for her own
+amusement. She bit her lip as an idea flashed through her mind.
+
+He shook his head again mournfully.
+
+"Somewhere," she said slowly, "I have read that clever forgers use
+water colors and pen and ink like regular artists. Think--think! Is
+there no way that we--that I could forge a check that would give us
+breathing space, perhaps rescue us?"
+
+Carlton leaned over the table toward her, fascinated. He placed both
+his hands on hers. They were icy, but she did not withdraw them.
+
+For an instant they looked into each other's eyes, an instant, and
+then they understood. They were partners in crime, amateurs perhaps,
+but partners as they had been in honesty.
+
+It was a new idea that she had suggested to him. Why should he not
+act on it? Why hesitate? Why stop at it? He was already an
+embezzler. Why not add a new crime to the list? As he looked into
+her eyes he felt a new strength. Together they could do it. Hers was
+the brain that had conceived the way out. She had the will, the
+compelling power to carry the thing through. He would throw himself
+on her intuition, her brain, her skill, her daring.
+
+On his desk in the corner, where often until far into the night he
+had worked on the huge ruled sheets of paper covered with figures of
+the firm's accounts, he saw two goose-necked vials, one of lemon-
+colored liquid, the other of raspberry color. One was of tartaric
+acid, the other of chloride of lime. It was an ordinary ink
+eradicator. Near the bottles lay a rod of glass with a curious tip,
+an ink eraser made of finely spun glass threads which scraped away
+the surface of the paper more delicately than any other tool that
+had been devised. There were the materials for his, their
+rehabilitation if they were placed in his wife's deft artist
+fingers. Here was all the chemistry and artistry of forgery at hand.
+
+"Yes," he answered eagerly, "there is a way, Constance. Together we
+can do it."
+
+There was no time for tenderness between them now. It was cold, hard
+fact and they understood each other too well to stop for
+endearments.
+
+Far into the night they sat up and discussed the way in which they
+would go about the crime. They practised with erasers and with brush
+and water color on the protective coloring tint on some canceled
+checks of his own. Carlton must get a check of a firm in town, a
+check that bore a genuine signature. In it they would make such
+trifling changes in the body as would attract no attention in
+passing, yet would yield a substantial sum toward wiping out
+Carlton's unfortunate deficit.
+
+Late as he had worked the night before, nervous and shaky as he felt
+after the sleepless hours of planning their new life, Carlton was
+the first at the office in the morning. His hand trembled as he ran
+through the huge batch of mail already left at the first delivery.
+He paused as he came to one letter with the name "W. J. REYNOLDS
+CO." on it.
+
+Here was a check in payment of a small bill, he knew. It was from a
+firm which habitually kept hundreds of thousands on deposit at the
+Gorham Bank. It fitted the case admirably. He slit open the letter.
+There, neatly folded, was the check:
+
+No. 15711. Dec. 27, 191--.
+
+THE GORHAM NATIONAL BANK
+
+Pay to the order of....... Green & Co.......
+
+Twenty-five 00/100 ..................Dollars
+
+$25.00/100
+
+W. J. REYNOLDS Co., per CHAS. M. BROWN, Treas.
+
+It flashed over him in a moment what to do. Twenty-five thousand
+would just about cover his shortage. The Reynolds firm was a big
+one, doing big transactions. He slipped the check into his pocket.
+The check might have been stolen in the mail. Why not?
+
+The journey uptown was most excruciatingly long, in spite of the
+fact that he had met no one he knew either at the office or outside.
+At last he arrived home, to find Constance waiting anxiously.
+
+"Did you get a check?" she asked, hardly waiting for his reply. "Let
+me see it. Give it to me."
+
+The coolness with which she went about it amazed him. "It has the
+amount punched on it with a check punch," she observed as she ran
+her quick eye over it while he explained his plan. "We'll have to
+fill up some of those holes made by the punch."
+
+"I know the kind they used," he answered. "I'll get one and a desk
+check from the Gorham. You do the artistic work, my dear. My
+knowledge of check punches, watermarks, and paper will furnish the
+rest. I'll be back directly. Don't forget to call up the office a
+little before the time I usually arrive there and tell them I am
+ill."
+
+With her light-fingered touch she worked feverishly, partly with the
+liquid ink eradicator, but mostly with the spun-glass eraser. First
+she rubbed out the cents after the written figure "Twenty-five."
+Carefully with a blunt instrument she smoothed down the roughened
+surface of the paper so that the ink would not run in the fibers and
+blot. Over and over she practised writing the "Thousand" in a hand
+like that on the check. She already had the capital "T" in "Twenty"
+as a guide. During the night in practising she had found that in
+raising checks only seven capital letters were used--O in one, T in
+two, three, ten, and thousand, F in four and five, S in six and
+seven, E in eight, N in nine and H in hundred.
+
+At last even her practice satisfied her. Then with a coolness born
+only of desperation she wrote in the words, "Thousand 00/100." When
+she had done it she stopped to wonder at herself. She was amazed and
+perhaps a little frightened at how readily she adapted herself to
+the crime of forgery. She did not know that it was one of the few
+crimes in which women had proved themselves most proficient, though
+she felt her own proficiency and native ability for copying.
+
+Again the eraser came into play to remove the cents after the figure
+"25." A comma and three zeros following it were inserted, followed
+by a new "00/100." The signature was left untouched.
+
+Erasing the name of "Green & Co.," presented greater difficulties,
+but it was accomplished with as little loss of the protective
+coloring on the surface of the check as possible. Then after the
+"Pay to the order of" she wrote in, as her husband had directed,
+"The Carlton Realty Co."
+
+Next came the water color to restore the protective tint where the
+glass eraser and the acids had removed it. There was much delicate
+matching of tints and careful painting in with a fine camel's hair
+brush, until at last the color of those parts where there had been
+an erasure was apparently as good as any other part.
+
+Of course, under the microscope there could have been seen the angry
+crisscrossing of the fibers of the paper due to the harsh action of
+the acids and the glass eraser. Still, painting the whole thing over
+with a little resinous liquid somewhat restored the glaze to the
+paper, at least sufficiently to satisfy a cursory glance of the
+naked eye.
+
+There remained the difficulty of the protective punch marks. There
+they were, a star cut out of the check itself, a dollar sign and 25
+followed by another star.
+
+She was still admiring her handiwork, giving it here and there a
+light little fillip with the brush and comparing this check with
+some of those which had been practised on last night, to see whether
+she had made any improvement in her technique of forgery, when
+Carlton returned with the punch and the blank checks on the Gorham
+Bank.
+
+From one of the blank checks he punched out a number of little stars
+until there was one which in watermark and scroll work corresponded
+precisely with that punched out in the original check.
+
+Constance, whose fingers had long been accustomed to fine work,
+fitted in the little star after the $25, then took it out, moistened
+the edges ever so lightly with glue on the end of a toothpick, and
+pasted it back again. A hot iron completed the work of making the
+edges smooth and unless a rather powerful glass had been used no one
+could have seen the pasted-in insertion after the $25.
+
+Careful not to deviate the fraction of a hair's breadth from the
+alignment Carlton took the punch, added three 0's, and a star after
+the 25, making it $25,000. Finally the whole thing was again ironed
+to give it the smoothness of an original. Here at last was the
+completed work, the first product of their combined skill in crime:
+
+No. 15711. Dec. 27,191--. THE GORHAM NATIONAL BANK
+
+Pay to the order of... The Carlton Realty Co.
+
+Twenty-five Thousand 00/100.........Dollars $25,000.00/100
+
+W. J. REYNOLDS Co., per CHAS. M. BROWN, Treas.
+
+How completely people may change, even within a few hours, was well
+illustrated as they stood side by side and regarded their work with
+as much pride as if it had been the result of their honest efforts
+of years. They were now pen and brush crooks of the first caliber,
+had reduced forgery to a fine art and demonstrated what an amateur
+might do. For, although they did not know it, nearly half the
+fifteen millions or so lost by forgeries every year was the work of
+amateurs such as they.
+
+The next problem was presenting the check for collection. Of course
+Carlton could not put it through his own bank, unless he wanted to
+leave a blazed trail straight to himself. Only a colossal bluff
+would do, and in a city where only colossal bluffs succeed it was
+not so impossible as might have been first imagined.
+
+Luncheon over, they sauntered casually into a high-class office
+building on Broadway where there were offices to rent. The agent was
+duly impressed by the couple who talked of their large real estate
+dealings. Where he might have been thoroughly suspicious of a man
+and might have asked many embarrassing but perfectly proper
+questions, he accepted the woman without a murmur. At her suggestion
+he even consented to take his new tenants around to the Uptown Bank
+and introduce them. They made an excellent impression by a first
+cash deposit of the money Carlton had thrown down on the table the
+night before. A check for the first month's rent more than mollified
+the agent and talk of a big deal that was just being signed up to-
+day duly impressed the bank.
+
+The next problem was to get the forged check certified. That, also,
+proved a very simple matter. Any one can walk into a bank and get a
+check for $25,000 certified, while if he appears, a stranger, before
+the window of the paying teller to cash a check for twenty-five
+dollars he would almost be thrown out of the bank. Banks will
+certify at a glance practically any check that looks right, but they
+pass on the responsibility of cashing them. Thus before the close of
+banking hours Dunlap was able to deposit in his new bank the check
+certified by the Gorham.
+
+Twenty-four hours must elapse before he could draw against the check
+which he had deposited. He did not propose to waste that time, so
+that the next day found him at Green & Co.'s, feeling much better.
+Really he had come prepared now to straighten out the books, knowing
+that in a few hours he could make good.
+
+The first hesitation due to the newness of the game had worn off by
+this time. Nothing at all of an alarming nature had happened. The
+new month had already begun and as most firms have their accounts
+balanced only once a month, he had, he reasoned, nearly the entire
+four weeks in which to operate.
+
+Conscience was dulled in Constance, also, and she was now busy with
+ink eraser, the water colors, and other paraphernalia in a wholesale
+raising of checks, mostly for amounts smaller than that in the first
+attempt.
+
+"We are taking big chances, anyway," she urged him. "Why quit yet? A
+few days more and we may land something worth while."
+
+The next day he excused himself from the office for a while and
+presented himself at his new bank with a sheaf of new checks which
+she had raised, all certified, and totaling some thousands more.
+
+His own check for twenty-five thousand was now honored. The relief
+which he felt was tremendous after the weeks of grueling anxiety. At
+once he hurried to a broker's and placed an order for the stocks he
+had used on which to borrow. He could now replace everything in the
+safe, straighten out the books, could make everything look right to
+the systematizer, could blame any apparent irregularity on his old
+system. Even ignorance was better than dishonesty.
+
+Constance, meanwhile, had installed herself in the little office
+they had hired, as stenographer and secretary. Once having embarked
+on the hazardous enterprise she showed no disposition to give it up
+yet An office boy was hired and introduced at the bank.
+
+The mythical realty company prospered, at least if prosperity is
+measured merely by the bank book. In less than a week the skilful
+pen and brush of Constance had secured them a balance, after
+straightening out Carlton's debts, that came well up to a hundred
+thousand dollars, mostly in small checks, some with genuine
+signatures and amounts altered, others complete forgeries.
+
+As they went deeper and deeper, Constance began to feel the truth of
+their situation. It was she who was really at the helm in this
+enterprise. It had been her idea; the execution of it had been
+mainly her work; Carlton had furnished merely the business knowledge
+that she did not possess. The more she thought of it during the
+hours in the little office while he was at work downtown, the more
+uneasy did she become.
+
+What if he should betray himself in some way? She was sure of
+herself. But she was almost afraid to let him go out of her sight.
+She felt a sinking sensation every time he mentioned any of the
+happenings in the banking house. Could he be trusted alone not to
+betray himself when the first hint of discovery of something wrong
+came?
+
+It was now near the middle of the month. It would not pay to wait
+until the end. Some one of the many firms whose checks they had
+forged might have its book balanced at any time now. From day to day
+small amounts in cash had already been withdrawn until they were
+twenty thousand dollars to the good. They planned to draw out thirty
+thousand now at one time. That would give them fifty thousand,
+roughly half of their forgeries.
+
+The check was written and the office boy was started to the bank
+with it. Carlton followed him at a distance, as he had on other
+occasions, ready to note the first sign of trouble as the boy waited
+at the teller's window. At last the boy was at the head of the line.
+He had passed the check in and his satchel was lying open, with
+voracious maw, on the ledge below the wicket for the greedy feeding
+of stacks of bills. Why did the teller not raise the wicket and
+shove out the money in a coveted pile? Carlton seemed to feel that
+something was wrong. The line lengthened and those at the end of the
+queue began to grow restive at the delay. One of the bank's officers
+walked down and spoke to the boy.
+
+Carlton waited no longer. The game was up. He rushed from his coign
+of observation, out of the bank building, and dashed into a
+telephone booth.
+
+"Quick, Constance," he shouted over the wire, "leave everything.
+They are holding up our check. They have discovered something. Take
+a cab and drive slowly around the square. You will find me waiting
+for you at the north end."
+
+That night the newspapers were full of the story. There was the
+whole thing, exaggerated, distorted, multiplied, until they had
+become swindlers of millions instead of thousands. But nevertheless
+it was their story. There was only one grain of consolation. It was
+in the last paragraph of the news item, and read: "There seems to be
+no trace of the man and woman who worked this clever swindle. As if
+by a telepathic message they have vanished at just the time when
+their whole house of cards collapsed."
+
+They removed every vestige of their work from the apartment.
+Everything was destroyed. Constance even began a new water color so
+that that might suggest that she had not laid aside her painting.
+
+They had played for a big stake and lost. But the twenty thousand
+dollars was something. Now the great problem was to conceal it and
+themselves. They had lost, yet if ever before they loved, it was as
+nothing to what it was now that they had tasted together the bitter
+and the sweet of their mutual crime.
+
+Carlton went down to the office the next day, just as before. The
+anxious hours that his wife had previously spent thinking whether he
+might betray himself by some slip were comparative safety as
+contrasted with the uncertainty of the hours now. But the first day
+after the alarm of the discovery passed off all right. Carlton even
+discussed the case, his case, with those in the office, commented on
+it, condemned the swindlers, and carried it off, he felt proud to
+say, as well as Constance herself might have done had she been in
+his place.
+
+Another day passed. His account of the first day, reassuring as it
+had been to her, did not lessen the anxiety. Yet never before had
+they seemed to be bound together by such ties as knitted their very
+souls in this crisis. She tried with a devotion that was touching to
+impart to him some of her own strength to ward off detection.
+
+It was the afternoon of the second day that a man who gave the name
+of Drummond called and presented a card of the Reynolds Company.
+
+"Have you ever been paid a little bill of twenty-five dollars by our
+company?" he asked.
+
+Down in his heart Carlton knew that this man was a detective. "I
+can't say without looking it up," he replied.
+
+Carlton touched a button and an assistant appeared. Something
+outside himself seemed to nerve him up, as he asked: "Look up our
+account with Reynolds, and see if we have been paid--what is it?--a
+bill for twenty-five dollars. Do you recall it?"
+
+"Yes, I recall it," replied the assistant. "No, Mr. Dunlap, I don't
+think it has been paid. It is a small matter, but we sent them a
+duplicate bill yesterday. I thought the original must have gone
+astray."
+
+Carlton cursed him inwardly for sending the bill. But then, he
+reasoned, it was only a question of time, after all, when the
+forgery would be discovered.
+
+Drummond dropped into a half-confidential, half-quizzing tone. "I
+thought not. Somewhere along the line that check has been stolen and
+raised to twenty-five thousand dollars," he remarked.
+
+"Is that so?" gasped Carlton, trying hard to show just the right
+amount of surprise and not too much. "Is that so?"
+
+"No doubt you have read in the papers of this clever realty company
+swindle? Well, it seems to have been part of that."
+
+"I am sure that we shall be glad to do all in our power to cooperate
+with Reynolds," put in Dunlap.
+
+"I thought you would," commented Drummond dryly. "I may as well tell
+you that I fear some one has been tampering with your mail."
+
+"Tampering with OUR mail?" repeated Dunlap, aghast. "Impossible."
+
+"Nothing is impossible until it is proved so," answered Drummond,
+looking him straight in the eyes. Carlton did not flinch. He felt a
+new power within himself, gained during the past few days of new
+association with Constance. For her he could face anything.
+
+But when Drummond was gone he felt as he had on the night when he
+had finally realized that he could never cover up the deficit in his
+books. With an almost superhuman effort he gripped himself.
+Interminably the hours of the rest of the day dragged on.
+
+That night he sank limp into a chair on his return home. "A man
+named Drummond was in the office to-day, my dear," he said. "Some
+one in the office sent Reynolds a duplicate bill, and they know
+about the check."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"I wonder if they suspect me?"
+
+"If you act like that, they won't suspect. They'll arrest," she
+commented sarcastically.
+
+He had braced up again into his new self at her words. But there was
+again that sinking sensation in her heart, as she realized that it
+was, after all, herself on whom he depended, that it was she who had
+been the will, even though he had been the intellect of their
+enterprise. She could not overcome the feeling that, if only their
+positions could be reversed, the thing might even yet be carried
+through.
+
+Drummond appeared again at the office the next day. There was no
+concealment about him now. He said frankly that he was from the Burr
+Detective Agency, whose business it was to guard the banks against
+forgeries.
+
+"The pen work, or, as we detectives call it, the penning," he
+remarked, "in the case of that check is especially good. It shows
+rare skill. But the pitfalls in this forgery game are so many that,
+in avoiding one, a forger, ever so clever, falls into another."
+
+Carlton felt the polite third degree, as he proceeded: "Nowadays the
+forger has science to contend with, too. The microscope and camera
+may come in a little too late to be of practical use in preventing
+the forger from getting his money at first, but they come in very
+neatly later in catching him. What the naked eye cannot see in this
+check they reveal. Besides, a little iodine vapor brings out the
+original 'Green & Co.' on it.
+
+"We have found out also that the protective coloring was restored by
+water color. That was easy. Where the paper was scratched and the
+sizing taken off, it has been painted with a resinous substance to
+restore the glaze, to the eye. Well, a little alcohol takes that
+off, too. Oh, the amateur forger may be the most dangerous kind,
+because the professional regularly follows the same line, leaves
+tracks, has associates, but," he concluded impressively, "all are
+caught sooner or later--sooner or later."
+
+Dunlap managed to maintain his outward composure admirably. Still
+the little lifting of the curtain on the hidden mysteries of the new
+detective art produced its effect. They were getting closer, and
+Dunlap knew it, as Drummond intended he should. And, as in every
+crisis, he turned naturally to Constance. Never had she meant so
+much to him as now.
+
+That night as he entered the apartment he happened to glance behind
+him. In the shadow down the street a man dodged quickly behind a
+tree. The thing gave him a start. He was being watched.
+
+"There is just one thing left," he cried excitedly as he hurried
+upstairs with the news. "We must both disappear this time."
+
+Constance took it very calmly. "But we must not go together," she
+added quickly, her fertile mind, as ever, hitting directly on a plan
+of action. "If we separate, they will be less likely to trace us,
+for they will never think we would do that."
+
+It was evident that the words were being forced out by the conflict
+of common sense and deep emotion. "Perhaps it will be best for you
+to stick to your original idea of going west. I shall go to one of
+the winter resorts. We shall communicate only through the personal
+column of the Star. Sign yourself Weston. I shall sign Easton."
+
+The words fell on Carlton with his new and deeper love for her like
+a death sentence. It had never entered his mind that they were to be
+separated now. Dissolve their partnership in crime? To him it seemed
+as if they had just begun to live since that night when they had at
+last understood each other. And it had come to this--separation.
+
+"A man can always shift for himself better if he has no
+impediments," she said, speaking rapidly as if to bolster up her own
+resolution. "A woman is always an impediment in a crisis like this."
+
+In her face he saw what he had never seen before. There was love in
+it that would sacrifice everything. She was sending him away from
+her, not to save herself but to save him. Vainly he attempted to
+protest. She placed her finger on his lips. Never before had he felt
+such over-powering love for her. And yet she held him in check in
+spite of himself.
+
+"Take enough to last a few months," she added hastily. "Give me the
+rest. I can hide it and take care of myself. Even if they trace me I
+can get off. A woman can always do that more easily than a man.
+Don't worry about me. Go somewhere, start a new life. If it takes
+years, I will wait. Let me know where you are. We can find some way
+in which I can come back into your life. No, no,"--Carlton had
+caught her passionately in his arms--"even that cannot weaken me.
+The die is cast. We must go."
+
+She tore herself away from him and fled into her room, where, with
+set face and ashen lips, she stuffed article after article into her
+grip. With a heavy heart Carlton did the same. The bottom had
+dropped out of everything, yet try as he would to reason it out, he
+could find no other solution but hers. To stay was out of the
+question, if indeed it was not already too late to run. To go
+together was equally out of the question. Constance had shown that.
+"Seek the woman," was the first rule of the police.
+
+As they left the apartment they could see a man across the street
+following them closely. They were shadowed. In despair Carlton
+turned toward his wife. A sudden idea had flashed over her. There
+were two taxicabs at the station on the corner.
+
+"I will take the first," she whispered. "Take the second and follow
+me. Then he cannot trace us."
+
+They were off, leaving the baffled shadow only time to take the
+numbers of the cab. Constance had thought of that. She stopped and
+Carlton joined her. After a short walk they took another cab.
+
+He looked at her inquiringly, but she said nothing. In her eyes he
+saw the same fire that blazed when she had asked him if there was no
+way to avoid discovery and had suggested it herself in the forgery.
+He reached over and caressed her hand. She did not withdraw it, but
+her averted eyes told that she could not trust even herself too far.
+
+As they stood before the gateway to the steps that led down into the
+long under-river tunnel which was to swallow them so soon and
+project them, each into a new life, hundreds, perhaps thousands of
+miles apart, Carlton realized as never before what it all had meant.
+He had loved her through all the years, but never with the wild love
+of the past two weeks. Now there was nothing but blackness and
+blankness. He felt as though the hand of fate was tearing out his
+wildly beating heart.
+
+She tried to smile at him bravely. She understood. For a moment she
+looked at him in the old way and all the pent-up love that would
+have, that had done and dared everything for him struggled in her
+rapidly rising and falling breast.
+
+It was now or never. She knew it, the supreme effort. One word or
+look too many from her and all would be lost. She flung her arms
+about him and kissed him. "Remember--one week from to-day--a
+personal--in the STAR," she panted.
+
+She literally tore herself from his arms, gathered up her grip, and
+was gone.
+
+A week passed. The quiet little woman at the Oceanview House was
+still as much a mystery to the other guests as when she arrived,
+travel-stained and worn with the repressed emotion of her sacrifice.
+She had appeared to show no interest in anything, to take her meals
+mechanically, to stay most of the time in her room, never to enter
+into any of the recreations of the famous winter resort.
+
+Only once a day did she betray the slightest concern about anything
+around her. That was when the New York papers arrived. Then she was
+always first at the news-stand, and the boy handed out to her, as a
+matter of habit, the STAR. Yet no one ever saw her read it. Directly
+afterward she would retire to her room. There she would pore over
+the first page, reading and rereading every personal in it.
+Sometimes she would try reading them backward and transposing the
+words, as if the message they contained might be in the form of a
+cryptograph.
+
+The strain and the suspense began to show on her. Day after day
+passed, until it was nearly two weeks since the parting in New York.
+Day after day she grew more worn by worry and fear. What had
+happened?
+
+In desperation she herself wired a personal to the paper: "Weston.
+Write me at the Oceanview. Easton."
+
+For three days she waited for an answer. Then she wired the personal
+again. Still there was no reply and no hint of reply. Had they
+captured him? Or was he so closely pursued that he did not dare to
+reply even in the cryptic manner on which they had agreed!
+
+She took the file of papers which she kept and again ran through the
+personals, even going back to the very day after they had separated.
+Perhaps she had missed one, though she knew that she could not have
+done so, for she had looked at them a hundred times. Where was he?
+Why did he not answer her message in some way? No one had followed
+her. Were they centering their efforts on capturing him?
+
+She haunted the news-stand in the lobby of the beautifully appointed
+hotel. Her desire to read newspapers grew. She read everything.
+
+It was just two weeks since they had left New York on their separate
+journeys when, on the evening of another newsless day, she was
+passing the news-stand. From force of habit she glanced at an early
+edition of an evening paper.
+
+The big black type of the heading caught her eye:
+
+NOTED FORGER A SUICIDE
+
+With a little shriek, half-suppressed, she seized the paper. It was
+Carlton. There was his name. He had shot himself in a room in a
+hotel in St. Louis. She ran her eye down the column, hardly able to
+read. In heavier type than the rest was the letter they had found on
+him:
+
+MY DEAREST CONSTANCE,
+
+When you read this I, who have wronged and deceived you beyond
+words, will be where I can no longer hurt you. Forgive me, for by
+this act I am a confessed embezzler and forger. I could not face you
+and tell you of the double life I was leading. So I have sent you
+away and have gone away myself--and may the Lord have mercy on the
+soul of
+
+Your devoted husband, CARLTON DUNLAP.
+
+Over and over again she read the words, as she clutched at the edge
+of the news-stand to keep from fainting--"wronged and deceived you,"
+"the double life I was leading." What did he mean? Had he, after
+all, been concealing something else from her? Had there really been
+another woman?
+
+Suddenly the truth flashed over her. Tracked and almost overtaken,
+lacking her hand which had guided him, he had seen no other way out.
+And in his last act he had shouldered it all on himself, had
+shielded her nobly from the penalty, had opened wide for her the
+only door of escape.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE EMBEZZLERS
+
+
+"I came here to hide, to vanish forever from those who know me."
+
+The young man paused a moment to watch the effect of his revelation
+of himself to Constance Dunlap. There was a certain cynical
+bitterness in his tone which made her shudder.
+
+"If you were to be discovered--what then?" she hazarded.
+
+Murray Dodge looked at her significantly, but said nothing. Instead,
+he turned and gazed silently at the ruffled waters of Woodlake.
+There was no mistaking the utter hopelessness and grim determination
+of the man.
+
+"Why--why have you told so much to me, an absolute stranger?" she
+asked, searching his face. "Might I not hand you over to the
+detectives who, you say, will soon be looking for you?"
+
+"You might," he answered quickly, "but you won't."
+
+There was a note of appeal in his voice as he pursued slowly, not as
+if seeking protection, but as if hungry for friendship and most of
+all her friendship, "Mrs. Dunlap, I have heard what the people at
+the hotel say is your story. I think I understand, as much as a man
+can. Anyhow, I know that you can understand. I have reached a point
+where I must tell some one or go insane. It is only a question of
+time before I shall be caught. We are all caught. Tell me," he asked
+eagerly, bending down closer to her with an almost breathless
+intensity in his face as though he would read her thoughts, "am I
+right? The story of you which I have heard since I came here is not
+the truth, the whole truth. It is only half the truth--is it not?"
+
+Constance felt that this man was dangerously near understanding her,
+as no one yet had seemed to be. It set her heart beating wildly to
+know that he did. And yet she was not afraid. Somehow, although she
+did not betray the answer by a word or a look, she felt that she
+could trust him.
+
+Through the door of escape from the penalty of her forgeries, which
+Carlton Dunlap had thrown open for her by the manner of his death,
+Constance had passed unsuspected. To return to New York, however,
+had become out of the question. She had plenty of money for her
+present needs, although she thought it best to say nothing about it
+lest some one might wonder and stumble on the truth.
+
+She had closed up the little studio apartment, and had gone to a
+quiet resort in the pines. Here, at least, she thought she might
+live unobserved until she could plan out the tangled future of her
+life.
+
+There had seemed to be no need to conceal her identity, and she had
+felt it better not to do so. She knew that her story would follow
+her, and it had. She was prepared for that. She was prepared for the
+pity and condescension of the gossips and had made up her mind to
+stand aloof.
+
+Then came a day when a stranger had registered at the hotel. She had
+not noticed him especially, but it was not long before she realized
+that he was noticing her. Was he a detective? Had he found out the
+truth in some uncanny way? She felt sure that the name on the hotel
+register, Malcolm Dodd, was not his real name.
+
+Constance had not been surprised when the head waiter had seated the
+young man at her table. No doubt he had manoeuvred it so. Nor did
+she avoid the guarded acquaintance that resulted in the natural
+course of events.
+
+One afternoon, shortly after his arrival, she had encountered him
+unexpectedly on a walk through the pines. He appeared surprised to
+meet her, yet she knew intuitively that he had been following her.
+Still, it was so different now to have any one seek her company
+that, in spite of her uncertainty of him, she almost welcomed his
+speaking.
+
+There was a certain deference in his manner, too, which did not
+accord with Constance's ideas of a detective. Yet he did know
+something of her. How much! Was it merely what the rest of the world
+knew? She could not help seeing that the man was studying her, while
+she studied him. There was a fascination about it, a fascination
+that the human mystery always possesses for a woman. On his part, he
+showed keenly his interest in her.
+
+Constance had met him with more frankness as she encountered him
+often during the days that followed. She had even tried to draw him
+out to talk of himself.
+
+"I came here," he had said one day when they were passing the spot
+where he had overtaken her first, "without knowing a soul, not
+expecting to meet any one I should care for, indeed hoping to meet
+no one."
+
+Constance had said nothing, but she felt that at last he was going
+to crash down the barrier of reserve. He continued earnestly,
+"Somehow or other I have come to enjoy these little walks."
+
+"So have I," she admitted, facing him; "but, do you know, sometimes
+I have thought that Malcolm Dodd is not your real name?"
+
+"Not my real name?" he repeated.
+
+"And that you are here for some other purpose than--just to rest.
+You know, you might be a detective."
+
+He had looked at her searchingly. Then in a burst of confidence, he
+had replied, "No, my name is not Dodd, as you guessed. But I am not
+a detective, as you suspected at first. I have been watching you
+because, ever since I heard your story here, I have been--well, not
+suspicious, but--attracted. You seem to me to have faced a great
+problem. I, too, have come to the parting of the ways. Shall I run
+or shall I fight?"
+
+He had handed her a card without hesitation. It bore the name,
+"Murray Dodge, Treasurer, Globe Importing Company."
+
+"What do you mean?" she had asked quickly, hardly expecting an
+answer. "What have you done?"
+
+"Oh, it is the usual trouble, I suppose," he had replied wearily,
+much to her surprise. "I began as a boy in the company and
+ultimately worked myself up as it grew, until I became treasurer. To
+cut it short, I have used funds belonging to the company, lost them.
+I don't need to tell you how a treasurer or a cashier can do that."
+
+Constance was actually startled. Was he what he represented himself
+to be? Or was he leading her on in this way to a confession of her
+own part, which she had covered so well, in the forgeries of her
+dead husband?
+
+"How did you begin?" she asked tentatively.
+
+"A few years ago," he answered with a disconcerting lack of reserve,
+"the company found that we could beat our competitors by a very
+simple means. The largest stockholder, Mr. Dumont, was friendly with
+some of the customs officials and--well, we undervalued our goods.
+It was easy. The only thing necessary was to bribe some of the
+officials. The president of the company, Walton Beverley, put the
+dirty work on me as treasurer. Now you can imagine what that meant."
+
+He had fallen into a cynical tone again.
+
+"It meant that I soon found, or, rather, thought I found, that every
+man has his price--some higher, some lower, but a price,
+nevertheless. It was my business to find it, to keep it as low as I
+could with safety. So it went, from one crooked thing to another. I
+knew I was crooked, but not as bad, I think, as the rest who put the
+actual work on me. I was unfortunate, weak perhaps. That is all. I
+tried to get mine, too. I lost what I meant to put back after I had
+used it. They are after me now, or soon will be--the crooks! And
+here I am, momentarily expecting some one to walk up quietly behind
+me, tap me on the shoulder and whisper, 'You're wanted.'"
+
+Time had not softened the bitterness of Constance's feelings.
+Somehow she felt that the world, or at least society owed her for
+taking away her husband. The world must pay. She sympathized with
+the young man who was appealing to her for friendship. Why not help
+him?
+
+"Do you really, really want to know what I think?" asked Constance
+after he had at last told her his wretched story. It was the first
+time that she had looked at him since she realized that he was
+unburdening the truth to her.
+
+"Yes," he answered eagerly, catching her eye. "Yes," he urged.
+
+"I think," she said slowly, "that you are running away from a fight
+that has not yet begun."
+
+It thrilled her to be talking so. Once before she had tasted the
+sweetness and the bitterness of crime. She did not stop to think
+about right or wrong. If she had done so her ethics would have been
+strangely illogical. It was enough that, short as their acquaintance
+had been, she felt unconsciously that there was something latent in
+the spirit of this man akin to her own.
+
+Murray also felt rather than understood the bond that had been
+growing so rapidly between them. His was the temperament that
+immediately translates feeling into action. He reached into his
+breast pocket. There was the blue-black glint of a cold steel
+automatic. A moment he balanced it in his hand. Then with a rapid
+and decisive motion of the arm he flung it far from him. As it
+struck the water with a sound horribly suggestive of the death
+gurgle of a lost man, he turned and faced her.
+
+"There," he exclaimed with a new light in the defiant, desperate
+smile that she had observed many times before, "there. The curtain
+rises--instead of falls."
+
+Neither spoke for a few moments. At last he added, "What shall I do
+next?"
+
+"Do?" she repeated. She felt now the weight of responsibility for
+interfering with his desperate plans, but it did not oppress her. On
+the contrary, it was a pleasant burden. "According to your own
+story," she went on, "they know nothing yet, as far as you can see.
+You would have forestalled them by taking this little vacation
+during which you could disappear while they would discover the
+shortage. Do? Go back."
+
+"And when they discover it?" he asked evidently prepared for the
+answer she had given and eager to know what she would propose next.
+
+Constance had been thinking rapidly.
+
+"Listen," she cried, throwing aside restraint now. "No one in New
+York outside my former little circle knows me. I can live there in
+another circle unobserved. For weeks I have been amusing myself by
+the study of shorthand. I have picked up enough to be able to carry
+the thing off. Discharge your secretary. Put an advertisement in the
+newspapers. I will answer it. Then I will be able to help you. I
+cannot say at a distance what you should do next. There, perhaps, I
+can tell you."
+
+What was it that had impelled her to say it? She could not have
+told. Murray looked at her. Her very presence seemed to infuse new
+determination into him.
+
+It was strange about this woman, what a wonderful effect she had on
+him.
+
+A few days before he would have laughed at any one who had suggested
+that any woman might have aroused in him the passions that were now
+surging through his heart. Ten thousand years ago, perhaps, he would
+have seized her and carried her off in triumph to his clan or
+tribe. To-day he must, he would win her by more subtle means.
+
+His mind was made up. She had pointed the way. That night Dodge left
+Woodlake hastily for New York.
+
+To Constance a new purpose seemed to have entered into a barren
+life. She was almost gay as she packed her trunks and grips and
+quietly slipped into the city a few hours later and registered at a
+quiet hotel for business women.
+
+Sure enough in the Star the next morning was the advertisement. She
+wrote in a formal way, giving her telephone number. That afternoon,
+apparently as soon as the letter had been delivered, a call came.
+The following morning she was the private secretary of Murray Dodge,
+sitting unobtrusively before a typewriter desk in a sort of little
+anteroom that guarded the door to his office.
+
+She took pains to act the part of private secretary and no more. As
+appeared natural to the rest of the office force at first she was
+much with Murray, who made the most elaborate explanations of the
+detail of the business.
+
+"Do they suspect anything?" she asked anxiously as soon as they were
+absolutely alone.
+
+"I think so," he replied. "They said nothing except that they had
+not expected me back so soon, I think the 'so soon' was an
+afterthought. They didn't expect me back at all. For," he added
+significantly, "I've been in fear and trembling until I could get
+you. They already have asked the regular audit company to go over
+the books in advance of the time when we usually employ them. I
+didn't ask why. I merely accepted it with a nod. It might have meant
+bringing matters to a crisis now."
+
+He felt safer with Constance installed as his private secretary.
+True, Beverley and Dumont had viewed her from the start with
+suspicion.
+
+Constance had been thinking hard out in her little office since she
+had begun to understand how matters stood. "Well?" she demanded.
+"What of it? Don't try to conceal it. Let them discover it. Go
+further. Dare them. Court exposure."
+
+It was bold and ingenious. What a woman she was for meeting
+emergencies. Murray, who had a will that had been accustomed to bend
+others to his purposes except in the instance where they had bent
+him and nearly broken him, recognized the masterful mind of
+Constance. He was willing to allow her to play the game.
+
+Thus Constance began collecting the very data that would have sent
+Murray to jail for bribery. Day by day as she worked on, the
+situation became more and more delicate. They found themselves alone
+much of the time now. Beverley was, or pretended to be, busy on
+other matters and avoided Dodge as much as possible. Only the
+regular routine affairs passed through his hands, but he said
+nothing. It gave him more time with her. Dumont came in as rarely as
+it was possible.
+
+And as they worked along gathering the data Constance came to admire
+Murray more than ever. She worked patiently over the big books,
+taking only those on which the accountant was not engaged at such
+times as she could get them without exciting suspicion. Together
+they dug out the extent of the frauds that had been practiced on the
+Government for years back. From the letter files they rescued notes
+and orders and letters, pieced them together into as near a
+continuous record as they could make. With his own knowledge of the
+books Dodge could count on making better progress on the essential
+things than the regular accountant of the audit company. He felt
+sure that they would finish sooner and that they would have a closer
+report of the frauds of all kinds than could be uncovered by the man
+who had been set on the trail of Dodge to discover just how much of
+the illicit gains he had taken for himself.
+
+Constance became aware soon that whenever she left the office at
+night she was being followed. She had at first studiously repelled
+the offers of Murray to see her home. It was not that he had taken
+advantage of the situation into which she had put herself. He would
+never have done that. Still, she wished a little more time to
+analyze her own conflicting feelings toward him. Then, too, several
+times in the crowded subway cars she had noticed a face that was
+familiar. It was Drummond, never looking directly at her, always
+engrossed in something else, yet never failing to note where she was
+going. That must be, she reasoned, some of the work of Beverley and
+Dumont.
+
+Murray was now working feverishly. As he worked he found himself
+feeling differently toward the whole affair. He actually came to
+enjoy it with all its risks and uncertainty, to enjoy gathering the
+data which, he should have said, ought really to be destroyed. Often
+he caught himself wishing that everything had come out all right in
+the end and that Constance really was his private secretary.
+
+Every moment with her seemed now to pass so quickly that he would
+willingly have smashed all the clocks and destroyed all the
+calendars. Association with other women had been tame beside his new
+friendship with her. She had suffered, felt, lived. She fascinated
+him, as often over the books they would stop to talk, talk of things
+the most irrelevant, yet to him the most interesting, until she
+would bring him back inevitably to the point of their work and start
+him again with a new power and incentive toward the purpose she had
+in mind.
+
+To Constance he seemed to fill a blank spot in her empty life. If
+she had been bitter toward the world for what had happened to her,
+the pleasure of helping another to beat that harsh world seemed an
+unspeakably sweet compensation.
+
+At last even Constance herself began to realize it. It was not,
+after all, merely the bitterness toward society, that lured her on.
+She was not a woman carved out of a block of stone. There was a
+sweetness about this association that carried her along as if in a
+dream. She was actually falling in love with him.
+
+One day she had been working later than usual. The accountant had
+shown signs of approaching the end of his task sooner than they had
+expected. Murray was waiting, as was his custom, for her to finish
+before he left.
+
+There was no sound in the almost deserted office building save the
+banging of a door echoing now and then, or an insistent ring of the
+elevator bell as an anxious office boy or stenographer sought to
+escape after an extra period of work.
+
+Murray stood looking at her admiringly as she deftly shoved the pins
+into her hat. Then he held her coat, which brought them close
+together.
+
+"It will soon be time for the final scene," he remarked. His manner
+was different as he looked down at her. "We must succeed,
+Constance," he went on slowly. "Of course, after it is over, it will
+be impossible for me to remain here with this company. I have been
+looking around. I must--we must clear ourselves. I already have an
+offer to go with another company, much better than this position in
+every way--honest, square, with no dirty work, such as I have had
+here."
+
+It was a moment that Constance had foreseen, without planning what
+she would do. She moved to the door as if to go.
+
+"Take dinner with me to-night at the Riverside," he went on,
+mentioning the name of a beautifully situated inn uptown overlooking
+the lights of the Hudson and thronged by gay parties of pleasure
+seekers.
+
+Before she could say no, even though she would have said it, he had
+linked his arm in hers, banged shut the door and they were being
+whisked to the street in the elevator.
+
+This time, as they were about to go out of the building, she noticed
+Drummond standing in the shadow of a corner back of the cigar
+counter on the first floor. She told Murray of the times she had
+seen Drummond following her. Murray ground his teeth.
+
+"He'll have to hustle this time," he muttered, handing her quickly
+into a cab that was waiting for a fare.
+
+Before he could give the order where to drive she had leaned out of
+the window, "To the ferry," she cried.
+
+Murray looked at her inquiringly. Then he understood. "Not to the
+Riverside--yet," she whispered. "That man has just summoned a cab
+that was passing."
+
+In her eyes Murray saw the same fire that had blazed when she had
+told him he was running away from a fight that had not yet begun. As
+the cab whirled through the now nearly deserted downtown streets, he
+reached over in sheer admiration and caressed her hand. She did not
+withdraw it, but her averted eyes and quick breath told that a
+thousand thoughts were hurrying through her mind, divided between
+the man in the cab beside her and the man in the cab following
+perhaps half a block behind.
+
+At the ferry they halted and pretended to be examining a time table,
+though they bought only ferry tickets. Drummond did the same, and
+sauntered leisurely within easy distance of the gate. Nothing seemed
+to escape him, and yet never did he seem to be watching them.
+
+The gateman shouted "All aboard!"
+
+The door began to close.
+
+"Come," she tugged at his sleeve.
+
+They dodged in just in time. Drummond followed. They started across
+the wagonway to the opposite side of the slip. He kept on the near
+side. Constance swerved back again to the near side. Drummond had
+been opposite them and they had now fallen in behind him. He was now
+ahead, but going slowly. Murray felt her pulling back on his arm.
+With a little exclamation she dropped her purse, which contained a
+few coins. She had contrived to open it, and the coins ran in every
+possible direction. Drummond was now on the boat.
+
+"All aboard," growled the guard surlily. "All aboard."
+
+"Go ahead, go ahead," shouted Murray, trying to pick up the
+scattered change and scattering it the more. At last he understood.
+"Go ahead. We'll take the next boat. Can't you see the lady has
+dropped her purse?"
+
+The gates closed. The warning whistle blew, and the ferryboat,
+departed, bearing off Drummond alone.
+
+Another cab toot them to the Riverside. A new bond of experience had
+been established between them. They dined quietly and as the lights
+grew mellow she told him more of her story than she had ever
+breathed to any other living soul.
+
+As Murray listened he looked his admiration for the daring of the
+little woman opposite him at the table.
+
+They drifted. ...
+
+It was the day of the threatened exposure. Curiously enough, Dodge
+felt no nervousness. The understanding which he had reached or felt
+that he had reached with Constance made him rather eager than,
+otherwise to have the whole affair over with at once.
+
+Drummond had been shut up for some time in the office of Beverley
+with Dumont, going over the report which the accountant had prepared
+and other matters--He had come in without seeing either Constance or
+Murray, though they knew he must be nursing his chagrin over the
+episode of the night before.
+
+"They are waiting to see you," reported Constance to Dodge, half an
+hour later, after one of the office boys had been sent over as a
+formal messenger to their office.
+
+"We are ready for them?" he asked, smiling at her.
+
+Constance nodded.
+
+"Then I shall go in. Wait a moment. When they have hurled their
+worst at me I shall call on you. Have the stuff ready."
+
+There was no hesitation, no misgiving on the part of either, as he
+strode into Beverley's office. Constance had prepared the record
+which they had been working on, and for days had been momentarily
+expecting this crisis. She felt that she was ready.
+
+An ominous silence greeted Dodge as he entered.
+
+"We have had experts on your books, Dodge," began Beverley, clearing
+his throat, as Murray seated himself, waiting for them to speak
+first.
+
+"I have seen that," he replied dryly.
+
+"They are fifty thousand dollars short," shot out Dumont.
+
+"Indeed?"
+
+Dumont gasped at the coolness of the man. "Wh--what? You have
+nothing to say? Why, sir," he added, raising his voice, "you have
+actually made no effort to conceal it!"
+
+Dodge smiled cynically. "A consultation, will rectify it," was all
+he said. "A conference will show you that it is all right."
+
+"A consultation?" broke in Beverley in rage. "A consultation in
+jail!"
+
+Still Dodge merely smiled.
+
+"Then you consider yourself trapped. You admit it," ground out
+Dumont.
+
+"Anything you please," repeated Dodge. "I am perfectly willing--"
+
+"Let us end this farce--now," cried Beverley hotly. "Drummond!"
+
+The detective had been doing some rapid thinking. "Just a moment,"
+he interrupted. "Don't be too precipitate. Hear his side, if he has
+any. I can manage him. Besides, I have something else to say about
+another person that will interest us all."
+
+"Then you are willing to have the consultation!"
+
+Drummond nodded.
+
+"Miss Dunlap," called Murray, taking the words almost from the
+detective's lips, as he opened the door and held it for her to
+enter.
+
+"No--no. Alone," almost shouted Beverley.
+
+The detective signaled to him and he subsided, muttering.
+
+As she entered Drummond looked hard at her. Constance met him
+without wavering an instant.
+
+"I think I've seen you before, MRS. Dunlap," insinuated the
+detective.
+
+"Perhaps," replied Constance, still meeting his sharp ferret eye
+squarely, which increased his animosity.
+
+"Your husband was Carlton Dunlap, cashier of Green & Company, was he
+not?"
+
+She bit her lip. The manner of his raking up of old scores, though
+she had expected it, was cruel. It would have been cruel in court,
+if she had had a lawyer to protect her rights. It was doubly cruel,
+merciless, here. Before Dodge could interrupt, the detective added,
+"Who committed suicide after forging checks to meet his--"
+
+Murray was at Drummond like a hound. "Another word from you and I'll
+throttle you," he blurted out.
+
+"No, Murray, no. Don't," pleaded Constance. She was burning with
+indignation, but it was not by violence that she expected to
+prevail. "Let him say what he has to say."
+
+Drummond smiled. He had no scruples about a "third degree" of this
+kind, and besides there were three of them to Dodge.
+
+"You were--both of you--at Woodlake not long ago, were you not?" he
+asked calmly.
+
+There was no escaping the implication of the tone. Still Drummond
+was taking no chances of being misunderstood. "There was one man,"
+he went on, "who embezzled for you. Here is another who has
+embezzled. How will that look when it goes before a jury!" he
+concluded.
+
+The fight had shifted before it had well begun. Instead of being
+between Dodge on one side and Beverley and Dumont on the, other, it
+now seemed to be a clash between a cool detective and a clever
+woman.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," interrupted Murray, with a mocking smile at the
+detective, "will you tell us what you have found out since you have
+been my private secretary?"
+
+Constance had not lost control of herself for a moment.
+
+"I have been looking over the books a little bit myself," she began
+slowly, with all eyes riveted on her. "I find, for instance, that
+your company has been undervaluing its imported goods. Undervaluing
+merchandise is considered, I believe, one of the meanest forms of
+smuggling. The undervaluer has frequently to make a tool of a man in
+his employ. Then that tool must play on the frailties of an
+unfortunate or weak examiner at the Public Stores where all invoices
+and merchandise from foreign countries are examined."
+
+Drummond had been trying to interrupt, but she had ignored him, and
+was speaking rapidly so that he could get no chance.
+
+"You have cheated the Government of hundreds of thousands dollars,"
+she hurried on facing Beverley and Dumont. "It would make a splendid
+newspaper story."
+
+Dumont moved uneasily. Drummond was now staring. It was a new phase
+of the matter to him. He had not counted on handling a woman like
+Constance, who knew how to take advantage of every weak spot in the
+armor.
+
+"We are wasting time," he interrupted brusquely. "Get back to the
+original subject. There is a fifty thousand-dollar shortage on these
+books."
+
+The attempt clumsily to shift the case away again from Constance to
+Dodge was apparent.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap's past troubles," Dodge asserted vigorously, "have
+nothing to do with the case. It was cowardly to drag that in. But
+the other matter of which she speaks has much to do with it."
+
+"One moment, Murray," cried Constance. "Let me finish what I began.
+This is my fight, too, now."
+
+She was talking with blazing eyes and in quick, cutting tone.
+
+"For three years he did your dirty work," she flashed. "He did the
+bribing--and you saved half a million dollars."
+
+"He has stolen fifty thousand," put in Beverley, white with anger.
+
+"I have kept an account of everything," pursued Constance, without
+pausing. "I have pieced the record together so that he can now
+connect the men higher up with the actual acts he had to do. He can
+gain immunity by turning state's evidence. I am not sure but that he
+might be able to obtain his moiety of what the Government recovers
+if the matter were brought to suit and won on the information he can
+furnish."
+
+She paused. No one seemed to breathe.
+
+"Now," she added impressively, "at ten per cent. commission the half
+million that he saved for you yields fifty thousand dollars. That,
+gentlemen, is the amount of the shortage--an offset."
+
+"The deuce it is!" exclaimed Beverley.
+
+Constance reached for a telephone on the desk near her.
+
+"Get me the Law Division at the Customs House," she asked simply.
+
+Dumont was pale and almost speechless. Beverley could ill suppress
+his smothered rage. What could they do? The tables had been turned.
+If they objected to the amazing proposal Constance had made they
+might all go to jail. Dodge even might go free, rich. They looked at
+Dodge and Mrs. Dunlap. There was no weakening. They were as
+relentless as their opponents had been before.
+
+Dumont literally tore the telephone from her. "Never mind about that
+number, central," he muttered.
+
+Then he started as if toward the door. The rest followed. Outside
+the accountant had been waiting patiently, perhaps expecting
+Drummond to call on him to corroborate the report. He had been
+listening. There was no sound of high voices, as he had expected.
+What did it mean?
+
+The door opened. Beverley was pale and haggard, Dumont worn and
+silent. He could scarcely talk. Dodge again held the door for
+Constance as she swept past the amazed accountant.
+
+All eyes were now fixed on Dumont as chief spokesman.
+
+"He has made a satisfactory explanation," was all he said.
+
+"I would lock all that stuff up in the strongest safe deposit vault
+in New York," remarked Constance, laying the evidence that involved
+them all on Murray's desk. "It is your only safeguard."
+
+"Constance," he burst forth suddenly, "you were superb."
+
+The crisis was past now and she felt the nervous reaction.
+
+"There is one thing more I want to say," he added in a low tone.
+
+He had crossed to where she was standing by the window, and bent
+over, speaking with great emotion.
+
+"Since that afternoon at Woodlake when you turned me back again from
+the foolish and ruinous course on which I had decided you--you have
+been more to me than life. Constance, I have never loved until now.
+Nothing has ever mattered except money. I never had any one else to
+think of, care for, except myself. You have changed everything."
+
+She was gazing out of the window at the tall buildings. There, in a
+myriad of offices, lay wealth untold, opportunity as yet untasted to
+seize that wealth. Only for an instant she turned and looked at him,
+then dropped her eyes. What lay that way?
+
+"You are clear now, respected, respectable," she said simply.
+
+"Yes, thank God. Clear and with a new ambition, thanks to you."
+
+She had been expecting this ever since that last night. The relief
+of Murray to feel that the old score that would have ruined him was
+now wiped off the slate was precisely what she had anticipated.
+
+Yet, somehow, it disappointed her. She felt instinctively that her
+triumph was burning fast to ashes.
+
+"Keep clear," she faltered.
+
+"Constance," he urged, approaching closer and taking her cold hand.
+
+Was she to be the one to hold him back in any way from the new life
+that was now before him? What if Drummond, in his animosity, ever
+got the truth? She gently unclasped her hand from his. No, that
+happiness was not for her.
+
+"I am afraid I am a crook at heart, Murray," she said sadly. "I have
+gone too far to turn back. The brand is on me. But I am not
+altogether bad--yet. Think of me always with charity. Yes," she
+cried wildly, "I must return to my loneliness. No, do not try to
+stop me, you have no right," she added bitterly as the reality of
+her situation burned itself into her heart.
+
+She broke away from him wildly, but with set purpose. The world had
+taken away her husband; now it was a lover; the world must pay.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE GUN RUNNERS
+
+
+"We'll land here, Mrs. Dunlap."
+
+Ramon Santos, terror of the Washington State Department and of a
+half dozen consulates in New York, stuck a pin in a map of Central
+America spread out on a table before Constance.
+
+"Insurrectos will meet us," he pursued, then added, "but we must
+have money, first, my dear Senora, plenty of money."
+
+Dark of eye and skin, with black imperial and mustache, tall,
+straight as an arrow, Santos had risen and was now gazing down with
+rapt attention, not at the map, but at Constance herself.
+
+Every curve of her face and wave of her hair, every line of her trim
+figure which her filmy gown seemed to accentuate rather than conceal
+added fire to his ardent glances.
+
+He touched lightly another pin sticking in a little, almost
+microscopic island of the Caribbean.
+
+"Our plan, it is simple," he continued with animation in spite of
+his foreign accent. "On this island a plant to print paper money, to
+coin silver. With that we shall land, pay our men as they flock to
+us, collect forces, seize cities, appropriate the customs. Once we
+start, it is easy."
+
+Constance looked up quickly. "But that is counterfeiting," she
+exclaimed.
+
+"No," rejoined Santos, "it is a war measure. We--the provisional
+government--merely coin our own money. Besides, it will not be done
+in this country. It will not come under your laws."
+
+There was a magnetism about the man that fascinated her, as he stood
+watching the effect of his words. Instinctively she knew that it was
+not alone enthusiasm over his scheme that inspired his confidences.
+
+"Though we are not counterfeiters," he went on, "we do not know what
+moment our opponents may set your Secret Service to destroy all our
+hopes. Besides, we must have money--now--to buy machinery, arms,
+ammunition. We must find some one," he lowered his voice, "who can
+persuade American bankers and merchants to take risks to gain
+valuable concessions in the new state."
+
+Santos was talking rapidly and earnestly, urging his case on her.
+
+"We are prepared," he hurried on confidentially, "to give you,
+Senora, half the money that you can raise for these purposes."
+
+He paused and stood before her. He was certainly a handsome figure,
+this soldier of fortune, and he was at his best now.
+
+Constance looked out of the window of her sitting room. This was a
+business proposition, not to be influenced by any sentiment.
+
+She watched the lights moving up and down the river and bay. There
+were craft from the ends of the earth. She speculated on the
+romantic secrets hidden in liner and tramp. Surely they could
+scarcely be more romantic than the appeal Santos was making.
+
+"Will you help us?" urged Santos, leaning further over the map to
+read her averted face.
+
+In her loneliness after she had given up Murray Dodge, life in New
+York had seemed even more bitter to Constance than before. Yet the
+great city cast a spell over her, with its countless opportunities
+for adventure. She could not leave it, but had taken a suite in a
+quiet boarding house overlooking the bay from the Heights in
+Brooklyn.
+
+One guest in particular had interested her. He was a Latin American,
+Ramon Santos. She noticed that he seldom appeared at breakfast or
+luncheon. But at dinner he often, ordered much as if it were seven
+o'clock in the morning instead of the evening. He was a mystery and
+mysteries interested her. Did he work all night and sleep all day?
+What was he doing?
+
+She was astonished a few nights after her arrival to receive a call
+from the mysterious evening breakfaster.
+
+"Pardon--I intrude," he began gracefully, presenting his card. "But
+I have heard how clever you are, Senora Dunlap. A friend, in an
+importing firm, has told me of you, a Mr. Dodge."
+
+Constance was startled at the name. Murray had indeed written a
+little note expressing his entire confidence in Mr. Santos. Formal
+as it was, Constance thought she could read between the lines the
+same feeling toward her that he had expressed at their parting.
+
+Santos gave her no time to live over the past.
+
+"You see, Mrs. Dunlap," he explained, as he led up to the object of
+his visit, "the time has come to overthrow the regime in Central
+America--for a revolution which will bring together all the
+countries in a union like the old United States of Central America."
+
+He had spread out the map on the table.
+
+"Only," he added, "we would call the new state, Vespuccia."
+
+"We?" queried Constance.
+
+"Yes--my--colleagues-you call it in English! We have already a Junta
+with headquarters in an old loft on South Street, in New York."
+
+Santos indicated the plan of campaign on the map.
+
+"We shall strike a blow," he cried, bringing his fist down on the
+table as if the blow had already fallen, "that will paralyze the
+enemy at the very start!"
+
+He paused.
+
+"Will you help us raise the money?" he repeated earnestly.
+
+Constance had been inactive long enough. The appeal was romantic,
+almost irresistible. Besides--no, at the outset she put out of
+consideration any thought of the fascinating young soldier of
+fortune himself.
+
+The spirit of defiance of law and custom was strong upon her. That
+was all.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "I will help you."
+
+Santos leaned over, and with a graceful gesture that she could not
+resent, raised her finger tips gallantly to his lips.
+
+"Thank you," he said with, a courtly smile. "We have already won!"
+
+The next day Ramon introduced her to the other members of the Junta.
+It was evident that he was in fact as well as name their leader, but
+they were not like the usual oily plotters of revolution who
+congregate about the round tables in dingy back rooms of South
+Street cafes, apportioning the gold lace, the offices, and the
+revenues among themselves. There was an "air" about them that was
+different.
+
+"Let me present Captain Lee Gordon of the Arrayo," remarked Santos,
+coming to a stockily-built, sun-burned man with the unmistakable
+look of the Anglo-Saxon who has spent much time in the neighborhood
+of the tropical sun. "The Arroyo is the ship that is to carry the
+arms and the plant to the island--from Brooklyn. We choose Brooklyn
+because it is quieter over there--fewer people late at night on the
+streets."
+
+Captain Gordon bowed, without taking his eyes off Constance.
+
+"I am, like yourself, Mrs. Dunlap, a recent recruit," he explained.
+"It is a wonderful plan," he added enthusiastically. "We shall sweep
+the country with it."
+
+He flicked off the ash of his inevitable cigarette, much as if it
+were the opposition of the governments they were to encounter.
+
+It was evident that the Captain was much impressed by Constance. Yet
+she instinctively disliked the man. His cameraderie had something
+offensive about it, as contrasted with the deferential friendship of
+Santos.
+
+With all her energy, however, Constance plunged directly into her
+work. Indeed, even at the start she was amazed to find that money
+for a revolution could be raised at all. She soon, found that it
+could be done more easily in New York than anywhere else in the
+world.
+
+ There seemed to be something about her that apparently appealed to
+those whom she went to see. She began to realize what a tremendous
+advantage a woman of the world had in presenting the case and
+convincing a speculator of the rich returns if the revolution should
+prove successful. More than that, she quickly learned that it was
+best to go alone, that it was she, quite as much as the promised
+concessions for tobacco, salt, telegraph, telephone monopolies, that
+loosed the purse strings.
+
+Her first week's report of pledges ran into the thousands with a
+substantial immediate payment of real dollars.
+
+"How did you do it?" asked Santos in undisguised admiration, as she
+was telling him one night of her success, in the dusty, cobwebbed
+little ship chandlery on South Street where the Junta headquarters
+had been established.
+
+"Dollar diplomacy," she laughed, not displeased at his admiration.
+"We shall soon convert American dollars into Vespuccian bullets."
+
+They were alone, and a week had made much difference in the
+fascinating friendship to Constance.
+
+"Let me show you what I have done," Ramon confided. "Already, I have
+started together the 'counterfeiting plant,' as you call it."
+
+Piece by piece, as he had been able to afford them, he had been
+ordering the presses, the stamping machine, and a little "reeding"
+or milling machine for the edges of the coins.
+
+"The paper, the ink, and the bullion, we shall order now as we can,"
+he explained, resting his head on his elbow at the table beside her.
+"Everything will be secured from firms which make mint supplies for
+foreign governments. A photo-engraver is now engaged on the work of
+copying the notes. He is making the plates by the photo-etching
+process--the same as that by which the real money plates are made.
+Then, too, there will be dies for the coins. Coined silver will be
+worth, twice the cost of the bullion to us. Why," he added eagerly,
+"a few more successful days, Senora, and we shall have even arms and
+ammunition."
+
+A key turned in the door. Santos sprang to his feet. It was Gordon.
+
+"Ah, good evening," the Captain greeted them. The fact that they had
+been talking so earnestly alone was not lost on him. "May I join the
+conspiracy?" he smiled. "What luck to-day? By the way, I have just
+heard of a consignment of a thousand rifles as good as new that can
+be bought for a song."
+
+Santos, elated at the progress so far, told hastily of Constance's
+success. "Let us get an option on them for a few days," he cried.
+
+"Good," agreed Gordon, "only," he added, shaking his finger
+playfully at Constance, as the three left the headquarters, "don't
+let the commander-in-chief monopolize ALL your time, Remember, we
+all need you now. Santos, that was an inspiration to get Mrs. Dunlap
+on our side."
+
+Somehow she felt uncomfortable. She half imagined that a frown had
+flitted over Santos' face.
+
+"Are you going to Brooklyn?" she asked him.
+
+"No, we shall be working at the Junta late to-night," he replied, as
+they parted at the subway, he and Gordon to secure the option on the
+guns, she to plan for the morrow.
+
+"I have made a good beginning," she congratulated herself, when,
+later in her rooms, she was going over the list of names of
+commission merchants who handled produce of South American
+countries.
+
+There was a tap on the door.
+
+Quickly, she shoved the list into the drawer of the table.
+
+"A gentleman to see you, downstairs, ma'am," announced the maid.
+
+As she pushed aside the portieres, her heart gave a leap--it was
+Drummond.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," began the wily detective, seeming to observe
+everything with eyes that seldom had the appearance of looking at
+anything, "I think you will recall that we have met before."
+
+Constance bit her lip. "And why again?" she queried curtly.
+
+"I am informed," he went on coolly ignoring her curtness, "that
+there is a guest in this house named Santos--Ramon Santos."
+
+He said it in a half insinuating, half questioning tone.
+
+"You might inquire of the landlady," replied Constance, now
+perfectly composed.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," he burst forth, exasperated, "what is the use of
+beating about? Do you know the real character of this Santos!"
+
+"It is a matter of perfect indifference," she returned.
+
+"Then you do not think a warning from me worth troubling about?"
+demanded the detective.
+
+Constance continued to stand as if to terminate the interview.
+
+"I came here," continued the detective showing no evidence of taking
+the hint, "to make a proposition to you. Mrs. Dunlap, you are in bad
+again. But this time there is a chance for you to get out without
+risk. I--I think I may talk plainly? We understand each other!"
+
+His manner had changed. Constance could not have described to
+herself the loathing she felt for the man as it suddenly flashed
+over her what he was after. If she had resented his familiarity
+before, it brought the stinging blood to her cheeks now to realize
+that he was actually seeking to persuade her to betray her friends.
+
+"Do you want to know what I think?" she scorned, then without
+waiting added, "I think you are a crook--a blackmailer,--that's what
+I think of a private detective like you."
+
+The defiance of the little woman amazed even Drummond. Instead of
+fear as of the pursued, Constance Dunlap showed all the boldness of
+the pursuer.
+
+"You have got to stop this swindling," the detective raged, taking a
+step closer to her. "I know the bankers you have fooled. I know how
+much you have worked them for."
+
+"Swindling?" she repeated coolly, in assumed surprise. "Who says I
+am swindling?"
+
+"You know well enough what I mean--this revolution that is being
+planned to bring about the new state of Vespuccia, as your friends
+Santos and Gordon call it."
+
+"Vespuccia--Santos--Gordon?"
+
+"Yes," he shouted, "Vespuccia--Santos--Gordon. And I'll go further.
+I'll tell you something you may not care to hear."
+
+Drummond leaned over closer to her in his favorite bulldozing manner
+when he dealt with a woman. All the malevolence of the human
+bloodhound seemed concentrated in his look.
+
+"Who forged those Carlton Realty checks?" he hissed. "Who played off
+the weakness of Dumont and Beverley against the clever thefts of
+Murray Dodge! Who is using a counterfeiter and a soldier of fortune
+and swindling honest American bankers and business men as no man
+crook--you seem to like that word--crook--could ever do?"
+
+Constance met him calmly. "Oh," she laughed airily, "I suppose you
+mean to imply that it is I."
+
+"I don't imply," he ground out, "I assert--accuse."
+
+Constance shrugged her pretty shoulders.
+
+"I want to tell you that I am employed by the Central American
+consulates in this city," blustered Drummond. "And I am waiting only
+for one thing. The moment an order is given for the withdrawal of
+that stuff from the little shop in South Street--you know what I
+mean--I am ready. I shall not be alone, then. You will have the
+power of the United States Secret Service to deal with, this time,
+my clever lady."
+
+"Well, what of that?"
+
+"There is this much of it. I warn you now against working with this
+Santos. He--you--can make no move that we do not know."
+
+Why had Drummond come to see her? Constance was asking herself. The
+very insolence of the man seemed to arouse all the combativeness of
+her nature. The detective had thought to "throw a scare into" her.
+She turned suddenly and swept out of the room.
+
+"I thank you for your kindness," she said icily. "It is unnecessary.
+Good-night."
+
+In her own room she paced the floor nervously, now that the strain
+was off. Should she desert Santos and save herself? He had more need
+of her help now than ever before. She did not stop to analyze her
+own feelings. She knew he had been making love to her during the
+past week as only a Spaniard could. It fascinated her without
+blinding her. Yes, she would match her wits against this detective,
+clever though she knew he was. But Santos must be warned.
+
+Santos and Gordon were alone when she burst in on them,
+breathlessly, an hour later at the Junta.
+
+"What is the matter?" inquired Ramon quickly, placing a chair for
+her.
+
+Gordon looked his admiration for the little woman, though he did not
+speak it. She saw him cast a sidewise glance at Santos and herself.
+
+Though the three were friends, it was evident to her that Gordon did
+not trust Santos any further than the suspicious Anglo-Saxon trusts
+a foreigner usually when there is a woman in the case.
+
+"The Secret Service!" exclaimed Constance. "I have just had a visit
+from a private detective employed by one of the consulates. They
+know too much. He has threatened to tell all to the Secret Service,
+has even had the effrontery to ask me to betray you."
+
+"The scoundrel," burst out Santos impulsively.
+
+"You are not frightened?" Gordon asked quickly.
+
+"On the contrary, I expected something of the sort soon, but not
+from this man. I can meet him!"
+
+"Good," exclaimed the Captain.
+
+There was that in his voice that caused her to look at him quickly.
+Santos had noticed it, too, and a sullen scowl spread over his face.
+
+Intuitively Constance read the two men before her. She had fled from
+one problem to a greater. Both Santos and Gordon were in love with
+her.
+
+In the whirl of this new discovery, two things alone crowded all
+else from her mind. She must contrive to hold off Drummond until
+that part of the expedition which was ready could be got off. And
+she must play the jealous rivals against each other with such
+finesse as to keep them separated.
+
+Far into the night after she had left the Junta she debated the
+question with herself. She could not turn back now. The attentions
+of Gordon were offensive. Yet she could have given no other reason
+than that she liked Santos the better. Yet what was Santos to her,
+after all? Once she had let herself go too far. She must be careful
+in this case. She must not allow this to be other than a business
+proposition.
+
+The crisis for her came sooner than she had anticipated. It was the
+day after the visit of Drummond. She was waiting at the Junta alone
+for Santos when Gordon entered. She had dreaded just that. There was
+no mistaking the man.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," began Gordon bending down close over her.
+
+She was almost trembling with emotion, and he saw it.
+
+"You can read me like a book," he hurried on, mistaking her
+feelings. "I can see that you know how much I think of you--how much
+I--"
+
+"No, no," she implored. "Don't talk to me that way. Remember--there
+is work to do. After it is over--then--"
+
+"Work!" he scorned. "What is the whole of Central America to me
+compared to you?"
+
+"Captain Gordon!" she stood facing him. "You must not. Listen to me.
+You do not know--I--please, please leave me. Let me think."
+
+She did not dare accept him; she could not reject him. It seemed
+that with an almost superhuman effort Gordon gripped himself. But he
+did not go.
+
+Constance was distracted, what if Santos with his fiery nature
+should find Gordon talking to her alone? She must temporize.
+
+"One week," she murmured. "When the Arroyo sails--that night--I
+shall give you my answer."
+
+Gordon shot a peculiar glance at her--half doubt, half surprise. But
+she was gone. As she hurried unexpectedly out of the Junta she
+fancied she caught a glimpse of a familiar figure. It must have been
+Drummond. Every move at the Junta was being watched.
+
+At the boarding house all night she waited. She must see Santos.
+Plan after plan whirled through her brain as the hours dragged.
+
+It was not until almost morning that, seeing a light, he tapped
+cautiously at her door.
+
+"You were not at the Junta to-night," he remarked.
+
+There was something of jealousy in the tone.
+
+"No. There is something I wanted to say to you where we should not
+be interrupted," she answered as he sat down.
+
+A fold of her filmy house dress fluttered near him. Involuntarily he
+moved closer. His eyes met hers. She could feel the passions surging
+in the man beside her.
+
+"I saw Drummond again, to-day," she began. "Captain Gordon--"
+
+The intense look of hatred that blazed in the eyes of Santos
+frightened her. What might have happened if he instead of Gordon had
+met her at the Junta she could not have said. But now she must guard
+against it. If flashed over her that there was only one thing to be
+done.
+
+She rose and laid her hand on his arm. As quickly the look changed.
+There was only one way to do it; she must make this man think they
+understood each other without saying so.
+
+"You must get the counterfeiting plant down on the island--
+immediately--alone. Don't tell any of the others until it is there
+safely. You were going to send it down on the Arroyo next week. It
+must not go from New York at all. It must be shipped by rail, and
+then from New Orleans. You must--"
+
+"But--Gordon?" His voice was hoarse.
+
+She looked at Santos long and earnestly. "I will take care of him,"
+she said in a tone that Santos could not mistake. "No--Ramon, no.
+After the revolution--perhaps--who shall say? But now--to work!"
+
+It was with a sigh of relief that she sank to rest at last when he
+had gone. For the moment she had won.
+
+Piece by piece, Santos and she secretly carried out the goods that
+had already been collected at the Junta, during the next few days.
+Without a word to a soul they were shipped south. The boxes and
+barrels remained in the musty shop, apparently undisturbed.
+
+Next the order for the arms and ammunition was quietly diverted so
+that they, too, were on their way to New Orleans. Instead, cases
+resembling them were sent to the Junta headquarters. Drummond, least
+of all, must be allowed to think that there was any change in their
+plans.
+
+While Santos was at work gathering the parts, the stamping machine,
+the press, the dies, the plates, and the rest of the counterfeiting
+plant which had not yet been delivered, Constance, during the hours
+that she was not collecting money from the concession-grabbers,
+haunted the Junta. There was every evidence of activity there as the
+week advanced.
+
+She was between two fires, yet never had she enjoyed the tang of
+adventure more than now. It was a keen pleasure to feel that she was
+outwitting Drummond when, as some apparently insurmountable
+difficulty arose, she would overcome it. More delicate was it,
+however, to preserve the balance between Santos and Gordon. In fact
+it seemed that the more she sought to avoid Gordon, the more
+jealously did he pursue her. It was a tangled skein of romance and
+intrigue that Constance was weaving.
+
+At last all was ready. It was the night before the departure of
+Santos for the south. Constance had decided on the last interview in
+her own rooms where the first had been.
+
+"I shall go ahead preparing as if to ship the things on the Arroyo,"
+she said. "Let me know by the code the moment you are ready."
+
+Santos was looking at her, oblivious of everything else.
+
+He reached over and took her hand. She knew this was the moment
+against which she had steeled herself.
+
+"Come with me," he asked suddenly.
+
+She could feel his breath, hotly, on her cheek.
+
+It was the final struggle. If she let go of herself, all would be
+lost.
+
+"No, Ramon," she said softly, but without withdrawing her hand. "It
+can never be--listen."
+
+It was terrific, to hold in cheek a nature such as his.
+
+"I went into this scheme for--for money. I have it. We have raised
+nearly forty thousand dollars. Twenty thousand you have given me as
+my share."
+
+She paused. He was paying no attention to her words. His whole self
+was centered on her face.
+
+"With me," she continued, half wearily withdrawing her hand as she
+assumed the part she had decided on for herself, "with me, Ramon,
+love is dead--dead. I have seen too much of the world. Nothing has
+any fascination for me now except excitement, money--"
+
+He gently leaned over and recovered the hand that she had withdrawn.
+Quickly he raised it to his lips as he had done that first night.
+
+"You are mine," he whispered, "not his."
+
+She did not withdraw the hand this time.
+
+"No--not his--nobody's."
+
+For a moment the adventurers understood each other.
+
+"Not his," he muttered fiercely as he threw his arms about her
+wildly, passionately.
+
+"Nobody's," she panted as she gave one answering caress, then
+struggled from him.
+
+She had conquered not only Ramon Santos but Constance Dunlap.
+
+Early the next morning he was speeding southward over the clicking
+rails.
+
+Every energy must be bent toward keeping the new scheme secret until
+it was carried out successfully. Not a hint must get to Drummond
+that there was any change in the activities of the Junta. As for the
+Junta itself, there was no one of those who believed implicitly in
+Santos whom Constance need fear, except Gordon. Gordon was the bete
+noire.
+
+Two days passed and she was able to guard the secret, as well as to
+act as though nothing had happened. Santos had left a short note for
+the Junta telling them that he would be away for a short time
+putting the finishing touches on the purchase of the arms. The
+arrival of a cartload of cases at the Junta, which Constance
+arranged for herself, bore out the letter. Still, she waited
+anxiously for word from him.
+
+The day set for the sailing of the Arroyo arrived and with it at
+last a telegram: "Buy corn, oats, wheat. Sell cotton."
+
+It was the code, telling of the safe arrival of the rifles,
+cartridges and the counterfeiting plant in New Orleans, a little
+late, but safe. "Sell cotton," meant "I sail to-night."
+
+On the way over to the Junta, she had noticed one of Drummond's
+shadows dogging her. She must do anything to keep the secret until
+that night.
+
+She hurried into the dusty ship chandlery. There was Gordon.
+
+"Good morning, Mrs. Dunlap," he cried. "You are just the person I am
+looking for. Where is Santos? Has the plan been changed?"
+
+Constance thought she detected a shade of jealousy in the tone. At
+any rate, Gordon was more attentive than ever.
+
+"I think he is in Bridgeport," she replied as casually as she could.
+"Your ship, you know, sails to-night. He has sent word to me to give
+orders that all the goods here at the Junta be ready to cart over by
+truck to Brooklyn. There has been no change. The papers are to be
+signed during the day and she is to be scheduled to sail late in the
+afternoon with the tide. Only, as you know, some pretext must delay
+you. You will hold her at the pier for us. He trusts all that to you
+as a master hand at framing such excuses that seem plausible."
+
+Gordon leaned over closer to her. He was positively revolting to her
+in the role of admirer. But she must not offend him--yet.
+
+"And my answer!" he asked.
+
+There was something about him that made Constance almost draw away
+involuntarily.
+
+"To-night--at the pier," she murmured forcing a smile.
+
+Shortly after dark the teams started their lumbering way across the
+city and the bridge. Messengers, stationed on the way, were to
+report the safe progress of the trucks to Brooklyn.
+
+Constance slipped away from the boardinghouse, down through the
+deserted streets to the waterfront, leaving word at home that any
+message was to be sent by a trusty boy to the pier.
+
+It was a foggy and misty night on the water, an ideal night for the
+gun-runner. She was relieved to learn that there had been not a
+hitch so far. Still, she reasoned, that was natural. Drummond, even
+if he had not been outwitted, would scarcely have spoiled the game
+until the last moment.
+
+On the Arroyo every one was chafing. Below decks, the engineer and
+his assistants were seeing that the machinery was in perfect order.
+Men in the streets were posted to give Gordon warning of any danger.
+
+In the river a tug was watching for a possible police boat. On the
+wharf the only footfalls were those of Gordon himself and an
+assistant from the Junta. It was dreary waiting, and Constance drew
+her coat more closely around her, as she shivered in the night wind
+and tried to brace herself against the unexpected.
+
+At last the welcome muffled rumble of heavily laden carts disturbed
+the midnight silence of the street leading to the river.
+
+At once a score of men sprang from the hold of the ship, as if by
+magic. One by one the cases were loaded. The men were working
+feverishly by the light of battle lanterns--big lamps with
+reflectors so placed as to throw the light exactly where it was
+needed and nowhere else. They were taking aboard the Arroyo dozens
+of coffin-like wooden cases, and bags and boxes, smaller and even
+heavier. Silently and swiftly they toiled.
+
+It was risky work, too, at night and in the tense haste. There was a
+muttered exclamation--a heavy case had dropped! a man had gone down
+with a broken leg.
+
+It was a common thing with the gun-runners. The crew of the Arroyo
+had expected it. The victim of such an accident could not be sent to
+a hospital ashore. He was carried, as gently as the rough hands
+could carry anything, to one side, where he lay silently waiting for
+the ship's surgeon who had been engaged for just such an emergency.
+Constance bent over and made the poor fellow as comfortable as she
+could. There was never a whimper from him, but he looked his
+gratitude.
+
+Scarcely a fraction of a minute had been lost. The last cases were
+now being loaded. The tug crawled up and made fast. Already the
+empty trucks were vanishing in the misty darkness, one by one, as
+muffled as they came.
+
+Suddenly lights flashed through the fog on the river.
+
+There was a hurried tread of feet on the land from around the corner
+of a bleak, forbidding black warehouse.
+
+They were surrounded. On one side was the police boat Patrol. On the
+other was Drummond. With both was the Secret Service. The surprise
+was complete.
+
+Constance turned to Gordon. He was gone.
+
+Before she could move, some one seized her.
+
+"Where's Santos?" demanded a hoarse voice in her ear. She looked up
+to see Drummond.
+
+She shut her lips tightly, secure in the secret that Ramon was at
+the moment or soon would be on the Gulf, out of reach.
+
+Across in the fog she strained her eyes. Was that the familiar
+figure of Gordon moving in the dim light?
+
+There he was, now,--with Drummond, the police, and the Secret
+Service. It was exactly as she had suspected to herself, and a smile
+played over her face.
+
+All was excitement, shouts, muttered imprecations. Constance was the
+calmest in the crowd--deaf to even Drummond's "third degree."
+
+They had begun to break open the boxes marked "salt" and "corn."
+
+A loud exclamation above the sharp crunching of the axes escaped
+Gordon. "Damn them! They've put one across on us!"
+
+The boxes of "salt" and "corn" contained--salt and corn.
+
+Not a stock of a rifle, not a barrel, not a cartridge was in any of
+them as the axes crashed in one case after another.
+
+A boy with a telegram emerged indiscreetly from the misty shadows.
+Drummond seized it, tore it open, and read, "Buy cotton."
+
+It was the code: "I am off safely."
+
+The double cross had worked. Constance was thinking, as she smiled
+to herself, of the money, her share, which she had hidden. There was
+not a scrap of tangible evidence against her, except what Santos had
+carried with him in the filibustering expedition already off from
+New Orleans. Her word would stand against that of all of the victims
+combined before any jury that could be empaneled.
+
+"You thought I needed a warning," she cried, facing Drummond with
+eyes that flashed scorn at the skulking figure of Gordon behind him.
+"But the next time you employ a stool-pigeon to make love," she
+added, "reckon in that thing you detectives scorn--a woman's
+intuition."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE GAMBLERS
+
+
+"Won't you come over to see me to-night? Just a friendly little
+game, my dear--our own crowd, you know."
+
+There was something in the purring tone of the invitation of the
+woman across the hall from Constance Dunlap's apartment that aroused
+her curiosity.
+
+"Thank you. I believe I will," answered Constance. "It's lonely in a
+big city without friends."
+
+"Indeed it is," agreed Bella LeMar. "I've been watching you for some
+time and wondering how you stand it. Now be sure to come, won't
+you?"
+
+"I shall be glad to do so," assured Constance, as they reached their
+floor and parted at the elevator door.
+
+She had been watching the other woman, too, although she had said
+nothing about it.
+
+"A friendly little game," repeated Constance to herself. "That
+sounds as if it had the tang of an adventure in it. I'll go."
+
+The Mayfair Arms, in which she had taken a modest suite of rooms,
+was a rather recherche apartment, and one of her chief delights
+since she had been there had been in watching the other occupants.
+
+There had been much to interest her in the menage across the hall.
+Mrs. Bella LeMar, as she called herself, was of a type rather common
+in the city, an attractive widow on the safe side of forty, well-
+groomed, often daringly gowned. Her brown eyes snapped vivacity, and
+the pert little nose and racy expression of the mouth confirmed the
+general impression that Mrs. LeMar liked the good things of life.
+
+Quite naturally, Constance observed, her neighbor had hosts of
+friends who often came early and stayed late, friends who seemed to
+exude, as it were, an air of prosperity and high living. Clearly,
+she was a woman to cultivate. Constance felt even more interest in
+her, now that Mrs. LeMar had pursued a bowing acquaintance to the
+point of an unsolicited invitation.
+
+"A friendly little game," she speculated. "What IS the game?"
+
+ That night found Constance at the buzzer beside the heavy mahogany
+door across the hall. She wore a new evening gown of warm red. Her
+face glowed with heightened color, and her nerves were on the qui
+vive for the unlocking at last of the mystery of the fascinating
+Mrs. LeMar.
+
+"So glad to see you, my dear," smiled Bella, holding out her hand
+engagingly. "You are just in time."
+
+Already several of the guests had arrived. There was an air of
+bonhomie as Bella presented them to Constance--a stocky, red-faced
+man with a wide chest and narrow waist, Ross Watson; a tall,
+sloping-shouldered man who inclined his head forward earnestly when
+he talked to a lady and spoke with animation, Haddon Halsey; and a
+fair-haired, baby-blue eyed little woman gowned in becoming pink,
+Mrs. Lansing Noble.
+
+"Now we're all here--just enough for a game," remarked Bella in a
+business-like tone. "Oh, I beg pardon--you play, Mrs. Dunlap?" she
+added to Constance.
+
+"Oh, yes," Constance replied. "Almost anything--a little bit."
+
+She had already noted that the chief object in the room, after all,
+appeared to be a round table. About it the guests seemed naturally
+to take their places.
+
+"What shall it be to-night--bridge?" asked Watson, nonchalantly
+fingering a little pack of gilt-edged cards which Bella had
+produced.
+
+"Oh, no," cried Mrs. Noble. "Bridge is such a bore."
+
+"Rum?"
+
+"No--no. The regular game--poker."
+
+"A dollar limit?"
+
+"Oh, make it five," drawled Halsey impatiently.
+
+Watson said nothing, but Bella patted Halsey's hand in approval, as
+if all were on very good terms indeed. "I think that will make a
+nice little game," she cut in, opening a drawer from which she took
+out a box of blue, red and white chips of real ivory. Watson seemed
+naturally to assume the role of banker.
+
+"Aren't you going to join us?" asked Constance.
+
+"Oh, I seldom play. You know, I'm too busy entertaining you people,"
+excused Bella, as she bustled out of the room, reappearing a few
+minutes later with the maid and a tray of slender hollow-stemmed
+glasses with a bottle wrapped in a white napkin in a pail of ice.
+
+ Mrs. Noble shuffled the cards with practiced hand and Watson kept a
+calculating eye on every face. Luck was not with Constance on the
+first deal and she dropped out.
+
+Mrs. Noble and Halsey were betting eagerly. Watson was coolly
+following along until the show-down--which he won.
+
+"Of all things," exclaimed the little woman in pink, plainly
+betraying her vexation at losing. "Will luck never turn?"
+
+Halsey said nothing.
+
+Constance watched in amazement. This was no "friendly little game."
+The faces were too tense, too hectic. The play was too high, and the
+desire to win too great. Mrs. LeMar was something more than a
+gracious hostess in her solicitude for her guests.
+
+All the time the pile of chips in front of Watson kept building up.
+At each new deal a white chip was placed in a little box--the kitty
+--for the "cards and refreshments."
+
+It was in reality one of the new style gambling joints for men and
+women.
+
+The gay parties of callers on Mrs. LeMar were nothing other than
+gamblers. The old gambling dens of the icebox doors and steel
+gratings, of white-coated servants and free food and drink, had
+passed away with "reform." Here was a remarkable new phase of
+sporting life which had gradually taken its place.
+
+Constance had been looking about curiously in the meantime. On a
+table she saw copies of the newspapers which published full accounts
+of the races, something that looked like a racing sheet, and a
+telephone conveniently located near writing materials. It was a
+poolroom, too, then, in the daytime, she reasoned.
+
+Surely, in the next room, when the light was on, she saw what looked
+like a miniature roulette wheel, not one of the elaborate affairs of
+bright metal and ebony, but one of those that can almost be packed
+into a suitcase and carried about easily.
+
+That was the secret of the flashily dressed men and women who called
+on Bella LeMar. They were risking everything, perhaps even honor
+itself, on a turn of a wheel, the fall of a card, a guess on a
+horse.
+
+Why had Bella LeMar invited her here? she asked herself.
+
+At first Constance was a little bit afraid that she might have
+plunged into too deep water. She made up her mind to quit when her
+losses reached a certain nominal point. But they did not reach it.
+Perhaps the gamblers were too clever. But Constance seemed always to
+keep just a little bit ahead of the game.
+
+One person in particular in the group interested her as she
+endeavored intuitively to take their measure. It was Haddon Halsey,
+immaculately garbed, with all those little touches of smartness
+which women like to see.
+
+Once she caught Halsey looking intently at her. Was it he who was
+letting her win at his expense! Or was his attention to her causing
+him to neglect his own game and play it poorly?
+
+She decided to quit. She was a few dollars ahead. For excuse she
+pleaded a headache.
+
+Bella accepted the excuse with a cordial nod and a kind inquiry
+whether she might not like to lie down.
+
+"No, thank you," murmured Constance. "But the cards make me nervous
+to-night. Just let me sit here. I'll be all right in a minute."
+
+As she lolled back on a divan near the players Constance noted, or
+thought she noted, now and then exchanges of looks between Bella and
+Watson. What was the bond of intimacy between them? She noted on
+Mrs. Noble's part that she was keenly alive to everything that
+Halsey did. It was a peculiar quadrangle.
+
+Halsey was losing heavily in his efforts to retrieve his fortunes.
+He said nothing, but accepted the losses grimly. Mrs. Noble,
+however, after each successive loss seemed more and more nervous.
+
+At last, with a hasty look at her wrist watch, she gave a little
+suppressed scream.
+
+"How the time flies!" she cried. "Who would have thought it as late
+as that? Really I must go. I expect my husband back from a
+director's meeting at ten, and it's much easier to be home than to
+have to think up an excuse. No, Haddon, don't disturb yourself. I
+shall get a cab at the door. Let me see--two hundred and twenty-
+eight dollars." She paused as if the loss staggered her. "I'll have
+to sign another I O U for it, Bella. There!"
+
+She left in a flutter, as if some one had winked out the light by
+which she, poor little butterfly, had singed her wings, and there
+was nothing for her but to fly away alone in the darkness with her
+secret.
+
+Halsey accompanied her to the door. For a moment she raised a
+questioning face to his, and shot a half covert glance at Constance.
+Then, as if with an effort, adhering to her first resolution to go
+alone, she whispered earnestly, "I hope you win. Luck MUST turn."
+
+Halsey plunged back into the game, now with Bella holding a hand. He
+played recklessly, then conservatively. It made no difference. The
+cards seemed always against him. Constance began really to feel
+alarmed at his manner.
+
+Once, however, he chanced to look up at her. Something in her face
+must have impressed him. Turning, he flung down the cards in disgust.
+"That's enough for to-night," he exclaimed, rising and
+draining another glass on the tray.
+
+"Luck will come your way soon again," urged Bella. "It all averages
+up in the end, you know. It has to."
+
+"How did you enjoy the evening!" insinuated Bella.
+
+"Very much," replied Constance enthusiastically. "It is so exciting,
+you know."
+
+"You must come again when more of my friends are here."
+
+"I should like to. But to-night was very nice."
+
+Halsey looked at her contemplatively. She had risen to go. As she
+took a step or two toward the door, still facing them, she found
+Halsey at her side.
+
+"Shall we go over to Jack's for a bite to eat?" he whispered.
+
+There was as much of appeal in his undertone as of invitation.
+
+"Thank you. I shall be glad to go," Constance assented quickly.
+
+There was something about Haddon Halsey that interested her. Perhaps
+Bella and Watson exchanged a knowing glance as she crossed the hall
+for her wraps. Whatever it was, Constance determined to see the
+thing through to a finish, confident that she was quite able to take
+care of herself.
+
+Outside the raw night air smote dankly on their fevered faces. As
+they walked along briskly, too glad to get into the open to summon a
+car, Constance happened to turn. She had an uncomfortable feeling.
+She could have sworn some one was following them. She said nothing
+about a figure a few feet behind them.
+
+The lively, all-night restaurant was thronged. Halsey seemed to
+throw himself into the gayety with reckless abandon, ordering about
+twice as much as they could eat and drink. But in spite of the
+fascination of the scene, Constance could not forget the dark figure
+skulking behind them in the shadow of the street.
+
+Once she looked up. At another table she could just catch a glimpse
+of Drummond, of the Burr Detective Agency, alone, oblivious.
+
+Never did he look at them. There was nothing to indicate that he was
+even interested. But Constance knew that that was the method of his
+shadowing. Never for a moment, she knew, did he permit himself to
+look into the eyes of his quarry, even for the most fleeting glance.
+
+She knew, too, that there must be some psychological reason for his
+not looking at them, as he otherwise must have done, if only by
+chance. It was the method followed by the expert modern trailer. She
+knew that if one looks at a person intently while in a public place,
+for instance, it will not be long before the gaze will be returned.
+Try as she would, she could not catch Drummond's eye, however.
+
+Halsey, now that the strain of the game was off, was rattling along
+about his losses in an undertone to her.
+
+"But what of it?" he concluded. "Any day luck may change. As for
+myself, I go always on the assumption that I am the one exception--
+unlucky both at cards and love. If the event proves I am right, I am
+not disappointed. If I am wrong, then I am happy."
+
+There was something in the tone of the whimsicality that alarmed
+her. It covered a desperation which she felt instinctively.
+
+Why was he talking thus to her, almost a stranger? Surely it could
+not have been for that that Bella LeMar had brought them together.
+
+Gradually it came to her. The man had really, honestly been struck
+by her from the moment of their introduction. Instead of allowing
+others, to say nothing of himself, to lead her on in the path he and
+Mrs. Noble and the others had entered, he was taking the bit in his
+teeth, like a high-strung race horse, and was running away, now that
+Bella LeMar for the moment did not hold the reins. He was warning
+her openly against the game!
+
+Somehow the action appealed to Constance. It was genuine,
+disinterested. Secretly, it was flattering. Still, she said nothing
+about Bella, nor about Mrs. Noble. Halsey seemed to appreciate the
+fact. His face showed plainly as if he had said it that here, at
+least, was one woman who was not always talking about others.
+
+There had been a rapid-fire suddenness about his confidences which
+had fascinated her.
+
+"Are you in business?" she ventured.
+
+"Oh, yes," he laughed grimly. "I'm in business--treasurer of the
+Exporting & Manufacturing Company."
+
+"But," she pursued, looking him frankly in the face, "I should think
+you'd be afraid to--er--become involved--"
+
+"I know I am being watched," he broke in impatiently. "You see, I'm
+bonded, and the bonding companies keep a pretty sharp lookout on
+your habits. Oh, the crash will come some day. Until it does--let us
+make the most of it--while it lasts."
+
+He said the words bitterly. Constance was confirmed in her original
+suspicion of him now. Halsey was getting deeper and deeper into the
+moral quagmire. She had seen his interest in Mrs. Noble. Had Bella
+LeMar hoped that she, too, would play will-o '-the-wisp in leading
+him on?
+
+Over the still half-eaten supper she watched Halsey keenly. A
+thousand questions about himself, about Mrs. Noble, rushed through
+her mind. Should she be perfectly frank?
+
+"Are you--are you using the company's money!" she asked at length
+pointedly.
+
+He had not expected the question, and his evident intention was to
+deny it. But he met her eye. He tried to escape it, but could not.
+What was there about this little woman that had compelled his
+attention and interest from the moment he had been introduced?
+
+Quickly he tried to reason it out in his heart. It was not that she
+was physically attractive to him. Mrs. Noble was that It was not
+that fascination which Bella aroused, the adventuress, the siren,
+the gorgon. In Constance there was something different. She was a
+woman of the world, a man's woman. Then, too, she was so brutally
+frank in inviting his confidences.
+
+Over and over he turned the answer he had intended to make. He
+caught her eye again and knew that it was of no use.
+
+"Yes," he muttered, as a cloud spread over his face at not being
+able, as usual, to let the gay life put the truth out of his mind.
+"Yes, I have been using--their funds."
+
+As if a switch had been turned, the light broke on Constance. She
+saw herself face to face with one of the dark shadows in the great
+city of high lights.
+
+"How?" she asked simply, leaning forward over the table.
+
+There was no resisting her. Quickly he told her all.
+
+"At first with what little money of my own I had I played. Then I
+began to sign I O U's and notes. Now I have been taking blank stock
+certificates, some of those held as treasury stock in the company's
+safe. They have never been issued, so that by writing in the
+signatures of myself and the other officers necessary, I have been
+able to use it to pay off my losses in gambling."
+
+As he unfolded to her the plan which he had adopted, Constance
+listened in amazement.
+
+"And you know that you are watched," she repeated, changing the
+subject, and sensing rather than seeing that Drummond was watching
+them then.
+
+"Yes," he continued freely. "The International Surety, in which I'm
+bonded, has a sort of secret service of its own, I understand. It is
+the eye that is never closed, but is screened from the man under
+bond. When you go into the Broadway night life too often, for
+instance," he pursued, waving his hand about at the gay tables, "run
+around in fast motors with faster company--well, they know it. Who
+is watching, I do not know. But with me it will be as it has been
+when others came to the end. Some day they will come to me, and they
+are going to say, 'We don't like your conduct. Where do you get this
+money?' They will know, then, too. But before that time comes I want
+to win, to be in a position to tell them to go--"
+
+Halsey clenched his fist. It was evident that he did not intend to
+quit, no matter what the odds against him.
+
+Constance thought of the silent figure of Drummond at the other
+table--watching, watching. She felt sure that it was to him that the
+Surety Company had turned over the work of shadowing Halsey. Day
+after day, probably, the unobtrusive detective had been trailing
+Halsey from the moment he left his apartment until the time when he
+returned, if he did return. There was nothing of his goings and
+comings that was not already an open book to them. Of what use was
+it, then, for Halsey to fight!
+
+It was a situation such as she delighted in. She had made up her
+mind. She would help Haddon Halsey to beat the law.
+
+Already it seemed as if he knew that their positions had been
+reversed. He had started to warn her; she now was saving him.
+
+Yet even then he showed the better side of his nature.
+
+"There is some one else, Mrs. Dunlap," he remarked earnestly, "who
+needs your help even more than I do."
+
+It had cost him something to say that. He had not been able to
+accept her help, even under false pretenses. Eagerly he watched to
+see whether jealousy of the other woman played any part with her.
+
+"I understand," she said with a hasty glance at her watch and a
+covert look at Drummond. "Let us go. If we are to win we must keep
+our heads clear. I shall see you to-morrow."
+
+For hours during the rest of the night Constance tossed fitfully in
+half sleep, thinking over the problem she had assumed.
+
+How was she to get at the inside truth of what was going on across
+the hall? That was the first question.
+
+In her perplexity, she rose and looked out of the window at the now
+lightening gray of the courtyard. There dangled the LeMar telephone
+wire, only a few feet from her own window.
+
+Suddenly an idea flashed over her. In her leisure she had read much
+and thought more. She recalled having heard of a machine that just
+fitted her needs.
+
+As soon as she was likely to find places of business open Constance
+started out on her search. It was early in the forenoon before she
+returned, successful. The machine which she had had in mind proved
+to be an oak box, perhaps eighteen inches long, by half the width,
+and a foot deep. On its face it bore a little dial. Inside there
+appeared a fine wire on a spool which unwound gradually by
+clockwork, and, after passing through a peculiar small arrangement,
+was wound up on another spool. Flexible silk-covered copper wires
+led from the box.
+
+Carefully Constance reached across the dizzy intervening space, and
+drew in the slack LeMar telephone wires. With every care she cut
+into them as if she were making an extension, and attached the wires
+from the box.
+
+Perhaps half an hour later the door buzzer sounded. Constance could
+scarcely restrain her surprise as Mrs. Lansing Noble stepped in
+quickly and shut the door herself.
+
+"I don't want her to know I'm here," she whispered, nodding across
+the hall.
+
+"Won't you take off your things?" asked Constance cordially.
+
+"No, I can't stay," returned her visitor nervously, pausing.
+
+Constance wondered why she had come. Was she, too, trying to warn a
+newcomer against the place!
+
+She said nothing, but now that the effort had been made and the
+little woman had gone actually so far, she felt the reaction. She
+sank down into an easy chair and rested her pretty head on her
+delicately gloved hand.
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Dunlap," she began convulsively, "I hope you will pardon
+an entire stranger for breaking in on you so informally--but--but I
+can't--I can't help it. I must tell some one."
+
+Accustomed as she was now to strange confidences, Constance bent
+over and patted the little hand of Mrs. Noble comfortingly.
+
+"You seemed to take it so coolly," went on the other woman. "For me
+the glamour, the excitement are worse than champagne. But you could
+stop, even when you were winning. Oh, my God! What am I to do? What
+will happen when my husband finds out what I have done!"
+
+Tearfully, the little woman poured out the sordid story of her
+fascination for the game, of her losses, of the pawning of her
+jewels to pay her losses and keep them secret, if only for a few
+days, until that mythical time when luck would change.
+
+"When I started," she blurted out with a bitter little laugh, "I
+thought I'd make a little pin money. That's how I began--with that
+and the excitement. And now this is the end."
+
+She had risen and was pacing the floor wildly.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," she cried, pausing before Constance, "to-day I am
+nothing more nor less than a 'capper,' as they call it, for a
+gambling resort."
+
+She was almost hysterical. The contrast with the gay, respectable,
+prosperous-looking woman at Bella's was appalling. Constance
+realized to the full what were the tragedies that were enacted
+elsewhere.
+
+As she looked at the despairing woman, she could reconstruct the
+terrible situation. Cultivated, well-bred, fashionably gowned, a
+woman like Mrs. Noble served admirably the purpose of luring men on.
+If there had been only women or only men involved, it perhaps would
+not have been so bad. But there were both. Constance saw that men
+were wanted, men who could afford to lose not hundreds, but
+thousands, men who are always the heaviest players. And so Mrs.
+Noble and other unfortunate women no doubt were sent out on Broadway
+to the cafes and restaurants, sent out even among those of their own
+social circle, always to lure men on, to involve themselves more and
+more in the web into which they had flown. Bella had hoped even to
+use Constance!
+
+Mrs. Noble had paused again. There was evident sincerity in her as
+she looked deeply into the eyes of Constance.
+
+Nothing but desperation could have wrung her inmost secrets from her
+to another woman.
+
+"I saw them trying to throw you together with Haddon Halsey," she
+said, almost tragically. "It was I who introduced Haddon to them. I
+was to get a percentage of his losses to pay off my own--but"--her
+feelings seemed to overcome her and wildly, desperately, she added--
+"but I can't--I can't. I--I must rescue him--I must."
+
+It was a strange situation. Constance reasoned it out quickly. What
+a wreck of life these two were making! Not only they were involved,
+but others who as yet knew nothing, Mrs. Noble's husband, the family
+of Halsey. She must help.
+
+"Mrs. Noble," said Constance calmly, "can you trust me?"
+
+She shot a quick glance at Constance. "Yes," she murmured.
+
+"Then to-night visit Mrs. LeMar as though nothing had happened.
+Meanwhile I will have thought out a plan."
+
+It was late in the afternoon when Constance saw Halsey again, this
+time in his office, where he had been waiting impatiently for some
+word from her. The relief at seeing her showed only too plainly on
+his face.
+
+"This inaction is killing me," he remarked huskily. "Has anything
+happened to-day!"
+
+She said nothing about the visit of Mrs. Noble. Perhaps it was
+better that each should not know yet that the other was worried.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "much has happened. I cannot tell you now. But
+to-night let us all go again as though nothing had occurred."
+
+"They have twenty-five thousand dollars in stock certificates
+already which I have given them," he remarked anxiously.
+
+"Some way--any way, you must get them back for a time. Let me see
+some of the blanks."
+
+Halsey shut the door. From a secret drawer of his desk he drew a
+package of beautifully engraved paper.
+
+Constance looked at it a moment. Then with a fountain pen, across
+the front of each, she made a few marks. Halsey looked on eagerly.
+As she handed them back to him, not a sign showed on any part of
+them.
+
+"You must tell them that there is something wrong with the others,
+that you will give them other certificates of your own about which
+there is no question. Tell them anything to get them back. Here--
+take this other fountain pen, sign the new certificates with that,
+in their presence so that they will suspect nothing. To-night I
+shall expect you to play up to the limit, to play into Mrs. Noble's
+hand and assume her losses, too. I shall meet you there at nine."'
+
+Constance had laid her plans quickly. That night she waited in her
+own apartment until she heard Halsey enter across the hall. She had
+determined to give him plenty of time to obtain the old forged
+certificates and substitute for them the new forgeries.
+
+Perhaps half an hour later she heard Mrs. Noble enter. As Constance
+followed her in, the effusive greeting of Bella LeMar showed that as
+yet she suspected nothing. A quick glance at Halsey brought an
+answering nod and an unconscious motion toward his pocket where he
+had stuffed the old certificates carelessly.
+
+A moment later they had plunged into the game. The play that night
+was spirited. Soon the limit was the roof.
+
+From the start things seemed to run against Halsey and Mrs. Noble
+even worse than before. At the same time fortune seemed to favor
+Constance. Again and again she won, until even Watson seemed to
+think there was something uncanny about it.
+
+"Beginner's luck," remarked Bella with a forced laugh.
+
+Still Constance won, not much, but steadily, though not enough to
+offset the larger winnings of Watson.
+
+Fast and furious became the play and as steadily did it go against
+Halsey. Mrs. Noble retired, scarcely repressing the tears. Constance
+dropped out. Only Halsey and Watson remained, fighting as if it were
+a duel to the death.
+
+"Please stop, Halsey," pleaded Mrs. Noble. "What is the use of
+tempting fortune?"
+
+An insane half light seemed to glow in his eyes as, with a quick
+glance at Constance and a covert nod of approval from her, he forced
+a smile and playfully laid his finger on Mrs. Noble's lips.
+
+"Double or quits, Watson," he cried. "Return the new certificates or
+take others for twice the amount. Are you game?"
+
+"I'm on," agreed Watson coolly.
+
+Halsey laid down his hand in triumph. There were four kings.
+
+"I win," ground out Watson viciously, as he tossed down four aces.
+
+Constance was on her feet in a moment.
+
+"You are a lot of cheats and swindlers," she cried, seizing the
+cards before any one could interfere.
+
+Deftly she laid out the four aces beside the four deuces, the four
+kings beside the four queens. It was done so quickly that even
+Halsey, in his amazement, could find nothing to say. Mrs. Noble
+paled and was speechless. As for Bella and Watson, nothing could
+have aroused them more than the open charge that they were using
+false devices.
+
+Yet never for a moment did Watson lose his iron cynicism.
+
+"Prove it," he demanded. "As for Mr. Halsey, he may pay or I'll show
+the stock I already hold to the proper people."
+
+Constance was facing Watson, as calm as he.
+
+"Show it," she said quietly.
+
+There was a knock at the door.
+
+"Don't let any one in," ordered Bella of the maid, who had already
+opened the door.
+
+A man's foot had been inserted into the opening. "What's the matter,
+Chloe?"
+
+"Good Lawd, Mis' Bella--we done been raided!" burst out the maid as
+the door flew wholly open.
+
+Halsey staggered back. "A detective!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, what shall I do!" wailed Mrs. Noble. "My husband will never
+forgive me if this becomes known."
+
+Bella was as calm as a good player with a royal straight flush.
+
+"I've caught you at last," fairly hissed Drummond. "And you, too,
+Mrs. Dunlap. Watson, I overheard something about some stock. Let me
+see it. I think it will interest International Surety as well as
+Exporters and Manufacturers."
+
+Through the still open door Constance had darted across the hall to
+her apartment.
+
+"Not so fast," cried Drummond. "You can't escape. The front door is
+guarded. You can't get out."
+
+She was gone, but a moment later emerged from the darkness of her
+rooms, carrying the oak box.
+
+As she set it down on the card table, no one said a word.
+Deliberately she opened the box, disclosing two spools of wire
+inside. To the machine she attached several head pieces such as a
+telephone operator wears. She turned a switch and the wire began to
+unroll from one spool and wind up on the other again.
+
+A voice, or rather voices, seemed to come from the box itself. It
+was uncanny.
+
+"Hello, is this Mrs. LeMar?" came from it.
+
+"What is it?" whispered Halsey, as if fearful of being overheard.
+
+"A telegraphone," replied Constance, shutting it off for a moment.
+
+"A telegraphone? What is that?"
+
+"A machine for registering telephone conversations, dictation,
+anything of the sort you wish. It was invented by Valdemar Poulsen,
+the Danish Edison. This is one of his new wire machines. The record
+is made by a new process, localized charges of magnetism on this
+wire. It is as permanent as the wire itself. There is only one thing
+that can destroy them--rubbing over the wire with this magnet.
+Listen."
+
+She had started the machine again. Whose voice was it calling Bella?
+Constance was looking fixedly at Drummond. He shifted uneasily.
+
+"How much is he in for now?" pursued the voice.
+
+Halsey gasped. It was Drummond's own voice.
+
+"Two hundred and fifty shares," replied Bella's voice.
+
+"Good. Keep at him. Don't lose him. To-night I'll drop in."
+
+"And your client will make good?" she anxiously.
+
+"Absolutely. We will pay five thousand dollars for the evidence that
+will convict him."
+
+Constance's little audience was stunned. But she did not let the
+telegraphone pause. Skipping some unimportant calls, she began
+again.
+
+This was a call from Bella to Watson.
+
+"Ross, that fellow Drummond called up to-day."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"He is going to pull it off to-night. His client will make good--
+five thousand if they catch Halsey with the goods. How about it?"
+
+"Pretty soft--eh, Bella?" came back from Watson.
+
+"My God! it's a plant!" exclaimed Halsey, staggering and dropping
+heavily into a chair. "I'm ruined. There is no way out!"
+
+"Wait," interrupted Constance. "Here's another call. It may serve to
+explain why luck was with me to-night. I came prepared."
+
+"Yes, Mrs. LeMar," came another strange voice from the machine.
+"We'd do anything for Mr. Watson. What is it--a pack of strippers?"
+
+"Yes. The aces stripped from the ends, the kings from the sides."
+
+The group looked eagerly at Constance.
+
+"From the maker of fake gambling apparatus, I find," she explained,
+shutting off the machine. "They were ordering from him cards cut or
+trimmed so that certain ones could be readily drawn from the deck,
+or 'stripped.' Small wedge-shaped strips are trimmed off the edges
+of all the other cards, leaving the aces, say, projecting just the
+most minute fraction of an inch beyond the others. Everything is
+done carefully. The rounded edges at the corners are recut to look
+right. When the cards are shuffled the aces protrude a trifle over
+the edges of the other cards. It is a simple matter for the dealer
+to draw or strip out as many aces as he wants, stack them on the
+bottom of the pack as he shuffles the cards, and draw them from the
+bottom whenever he wants them. Strippers are one of the newest
+things in swindling. Marked cards are out of date. But some decks
+have the aces stripped from the ends, the kings from the sides. With
+this pack, as you can see, a sucker can be dealt out the kings,
+while the house player gets the aces."
+
+Drummond brazened it out. With a muttered oath he turned to Watson
+again. "What rot is this? The stock, Watson," he repeated. "Where
+is that stock I heard them talking about?"
+
+Mrs. Noble, forgetting all now but Halsey, paled. Bella LeMar was
+fumbling at her gold mesh bag. She gave a sudden, suppressed little
+scream.
+
+"Look!" she cried. "They are blank--those stock certificates he gave
+me."
+
+Drummond seized them roughly from her hands.
+
+Where the signatures should have been there was nothing at all!
+
+Across the face of the stock were the words in deep black, "SAMPLE
+CERTIFICATE," written in an angular, feminine hand.
+
+What did it mean? Halsey was as amazed as any of them. Mechanically
+he turned to Constance.
+
+"I didn't say anything last night," she remarked incisively. "But I
+had my suspicions from the first. I always look out for the purry
+kind of 'my dear' woman. They have claws. Last night I watched. To-
+day I learned--learned that you, Mr. Drummond, were nothing but a
+blackmailer, using these gamblers to do your dirty work. Haddon,
+they would have thrown you out like a squeezed lemon as soon as the
+money you had was gone. They would have taken the bribe that
+Drummond offered for the stock--and they would have left you nothing
+but jail. I learned all that over the telegraphone. I learned their
+methods and, knowing them, even I could not be prevented from
+winning to-night"
+
+Halsey moved as if to speak. "But," he asked eagerly, "the stock
+certificates--what of them!"
+
+"The stock?" she answered with deliberation. "Did you ever hear that
+writing in quinoline will appear blue, but will soon fade away,
+while other writing in silver nitrate and ammonia, invisible at
+first, after a few hours appears black? You wrote on those
+certificates in sympathetic ink that fades, I in ink that comes up
+soon."
+
+Mrs. Noble was crying softly to herself. They still had her notes
+for thousands.
+
+Halsey saw her. Instantly he forgot his own case. What was to be
+done about her? He telegraphed a mute appeal to Constance, forgetful
+of himself now. Constance was fingering the switch of the
+telegraphone.
+
+"Drummond," remarked Constance significantly, as though other
+secrets might still be contained in the marvelous little mechanical
+detective, "Drummond, don't you think, for the sake of your own
+reputation as a detective, it might be as well to keep this thing
+quiet?"
+
+For a moment the detective gripped his wrath and seemed to consider
+the damaging record of his conversation with Bella LeMar.
+
+"Perhaps," he agreed sullenly.
+
+Constance reached into her chatelaine. From it she drew an ordinary
+magnet, and slowly pulled off the armature.
+
+"If I run this over the wires," she hinted, holding it near the
+spools, "the record will be wiped out." She paused impressively.
+"Let me have those I O U's of Mrs. Noble's. By the way, you might as
+well give me that blank stock, too. There is no use in that, now."
+
+As she laid the papers in a pile on the table before her she added
+the old forged certificates from Halsey's pocket. There it lay, the
+incriminating, ruining evidence.
+
+Deliberately she passed the magnet over the thin steel wire, wiping
+out what it had recorded, as if the recording angel were blotting
+out from the book of life.
+
+"Try it, Drummond," she cried, dropping on her knees before the open
+fireplace. "You will find the wire a blank."
+
+There was a hot, sudden blaze as the pile of papers from the table
+flared up.
+
+"There," she exclaimed. "These gambling debts were not even debts of
+honor. If you will call a cab, Haddon, I have reserved a table at
+Jade's for you and Mrs. Noble. It is a farewell. Drummond will not
+occupy his place in the corner to-night. But--after it--you are to
+forget--both of you--forever. You understand?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE EAVESDROPPERS
+
+
+"I suppose you have heard something about the troubles of the Motor
+Trust? The other directors, you know, are trying to force me out."
+
+Rodman Brainard, president of the big Motor Corporation, searched
+the magnetic depths of the big brown eyes of the woman beside his
+desk. Talking to Constance Dunlap was not like talking to other
+women he had known, either socially or in business.
+
+"A friend of yours, and of mine," he added frankly, "has told me
+enough about you to convince me that you are more than an amateur at
+getting people out of tight places. I asked you to call because I
+think you can help me."
+
+There was a directness about Brainard which Constance liked.
+
+"It's very kind of you to place such confidence in me--on such short
+acquaintance," she returned pointedly, searching his face.
+
+Brainard laughed.
+
+"I don't need to tell you, Mrs. Dunlap, that anything I have said so
+far is an open secret in Wall Street. They have threatened to drag
+in the Sherman law, and in the reorganization that will follow the
+investigation, they plan to eliminate Rodman Brainard--perhaps set
+in motion the criminal clauses of the law. It's nothing, Mrs.
+Dunlap, but a downright hypocritical pose. They reverse the usual
+process. It is doing good that evil may result."
+
+He watched her face intently. Something in her expression seemed to
+please him. "By George," he thought to himself, "this is a man's
+woman. You can talk to her."
+
+Brainard, accustomed to quick decisions, added aloud, "Just now they
+are using Mrs. Brainard as a catspaw. They are spreading that
+scandal about my acquaintance with Blanche Leblanc, the actress. You
+have seen her? A stunning woman--wonderful. But I long ago saw that
+such a friendship could lead to nothing but ruin." He met
+Constance's eye squarely. There was nothing of the adventuress in it
+as there had been in Blanche Leblanc. "And," he finished, almost
+biting off the words, "I decided to cut it out."
+
+"How does Blanche Leblanc figure in the Motor Trust trouble?" asked
+Constance keenly.
+
+"They had been shadowing me a long time before I knew it, ferreting
+back into my past. Yesterday I learned that some one had broken into
+Miss Leblanc's apartments and had stolen a package of letters which
+I wrote to her. It can't hurt her. People expect that sort of thing
+of an actress. But it can hurt the president of the Motor Trust--
+just at present."
+
+"Who has been doing the shadowing?"
+
+"Worthington, the treasurer, is the guiding spirit of the
+'insurgents' as they call themselves--it sounds popular, like
+reform. I understand they have had a detective named Drummond
+working for them."
+
+Constance raised her eyes quickly at the name. "Was Drummond always
+to cross her trail?
+
+"This story of the letters," he went on, "puts on the finishing
+touch. They have me all right on that. I can tell by the way that
+Sybil--er, Mrs. Brainard--acts, that she has read and reread those
+letters. But, by God," he concluded, bringing down his fist on the
+desk, "I shall fight to the end, and when I go down,"--he emphasized
+each word with an additional blow,--"the crash will bring down the
+whole damned structure on their own heads, too."
+
+He was too earnest even to apologize to her. Constance studied the
+grim determination in the man's face. He was not one of those
+destined to fail.
+
+"All is not lost that is in peril, Mr. Brainard," she remarked
+quietly. "That's one of the maxims of your own Wall Street."
+
+"What would you do?" he asked. It was not an appeal; rather it was
+an invitation.
+
+"I can't say, yet. Let me come into the office of the Trust. Can't I
+be your private secretary?"
+
+"Consider yourself engaged. Name your figure--after it is over. My
+record on the Streets speaks for how I stand by those who stand by
+me. But I hate a quitter."
+
+"So do I," exclaimed Constance, rising and giving him her hand in a
+straight-arm shake that made Brainard straighten himself and look
+down into her face with unconcealed admiration.
+
+The next morning Constance became private secretary to the president
+of the Motor Trust.
+
+"You will be 'Miss' Dunlap," remarked Brainard. "It sounds more
+plausible."
+
+Quietly he arranged her duties so that she would seem to be very
+busy without having anything which really interfered with the
+purpose of her presence.
+
+She had been thinking rapidly. Late in the forenoon she reached a
+decision. A little errand uptown kept her longer than she expected,
+but by the late afternoon she was back again at her desk, on which
+rested a small package which had been delivered by messenger for
+her.
+
+"I beg you won't think as badly of me as it seems on the surface,
+Miss Dunlap," remarked Brainard, stopping beside her desk.
+
+"I don't think badly of you," she answered in a low voice. "You are
+not the only man who has been caught with a crowd of crooks who plan
+to leave him holding the bag."
+
+"Oh, it isn't that," he hastened, "I mean this Blanche Leblanc
+affair. May I be frank with you?"
+
+It was not the first time Constance had been made a confidante of
+the troubles of the heart, and yet there was something fascinating
+about having a man like Brainard consider her worthy of being
+trusted with what meant so much to him.
+
+"I'm not altogether to blame." he went on slowly. "The estrangement
+between my wife and myself came long before that little affair. It
+began over--well--over what they call a serious difference in
+temperament. You know a man--an ambitious man--needs a partner, a
+woman who can use the social position that money gives not alone for
+pleasure but as a means of advancing the partnership. I never had
+that. The more I advanced, the more I found her becoming a
+butterfly--and not as attractive as the other butterflies either.
+She went one way--I, another. Oh well--what's the use? I wont too
+far--the wrong way. I must pay. Only let me save what I can from the
+wreck."
+
+It was not Constance, the woman, to whom he was talking. It was
+Constance, the secretary. Yet it was the woman, not the secretary,
+who listened.
+
+Brainard stopped again beside her desk.
+
+"All that is neither here nor there," he remarked, forcing a change
+in his manner. "I am in for it. Now, the question is--what are we
+going to do about it!"
+
+Constance had unwrapped the package on her desk, disclosing an
+oblong box.
+
+"What's that?" he asked curiously.
+
+"Mr. Brainard," she answered tapping the box, "there's no limit to
+the use of this little machine for our purposes. We can get at their
+most vital secrets with it. We can discover every plan which they
+have against us. We may even learn the hiding place of those letters
+Why, there is no limit. This is one of those new microphone
+detectives."
+
+"A microphone?" he repeated as he opened the box, looked sharply at
+the two black little storage batteries inside, the coil of silk-
+covered wire, a little black rubber receiver and a curious black
+disc whose face was pierced by a circular row of holes.
+
+"Yes. You must have heard of them. You hide that transmitter behind
+a picture or under a table or desk. Then you run the wire out of the
+room and by listening in the receiver you can hear everything!"
+
+"But that is what detectives use--"
+
+"Well?" she interrupted coolly, "what of it? If it is good for them,
+is it not just as good for us?"
+
+"Better!" he exclaimed. "By George, you ARE the goods."
+
+It was late before Constance had a chance to do anything with the
+microphone. It seemed as if Worthington were staying, perversely,
+later than usual. At last, however, he left with a curt nod to her.
+
+The moment the door was closed she stopped the desultory clicking of
+her typewriter with Which she had been toying in the appearance of
+being busy. With Brainard she entered the board room where she had
+noticed Worthington and Sheppard often during the day.
+
+It was, without exaggeration, one of the most plainly furnished
+rooms she had ever seen. A long mahogany table with eight large
+mahogany chairs, a half inch pile of velvety rug on the floor and a
+huge chandelier in the middle of the ceiling constituted the
+furniture. Not a picture, not a cabinet or filing case broke the
+blankness of the brown painted walls.
+
+For a moment she stopped to consider. Brainard waited and watched
+her narrowly.
+
+"There isn't a place to put this transmitter except up above that
+chandelier," she said at length.
+
+He gave her his hand as she stepped on a chair and then on the
+table. There was a glimpse of a trim ankle. The warmth and softness
+of her touch caused him to hold her hand just a moment longer than
+was absolutely necessary. A moment later he was standing on the
+table beside her.
+
+"This is the place, all right," she said, looking at the thick scum
+of dust on the top of the reflector.
+
+Quickly she placed the little black disc close to the center on the
+top of the reflector. "Can you see that from the floor?" she asked.
+
+"No," he answered, walking about the room, "not a sign of it."
+
+"I'll sit here," she said in just a tremor of excitement over the
+adventure, "and listen while you talk in the board room."
+
+Brainard entered. It seemed ridiculous for him to talk to himself.
+
+"If the microphone works," he said at length, "rap on the desk
+twice." Then he added, half laughing to himself, "If it doesn't, rap
+once--Constance."
+
+A single rap came in answer.
+
+"If you couldn't hear," he smiled entering her office, "why did you
+rap once!"
+
+"It didn't work smoothly on that last word."
+
+"What--Constance?"
+
+He thought there was a subtle change in their relations since the
+microphone incident. At any rate she was not angry. Were they not
+partners?
+
+"I think it will be better if I turn that microphone around," she
+remarked. "I placed it face downwards. Let me change it."
+
+Again he helped her as she jumped up on the board room table. This
+time his hand lingered a little longer in hers and she did not
+withdraw it so soon. When she did there was a quick twinkle in her
+eyes as she straightened the microphone and offered her hand to him
+again.
+
+"Jump!" he said, as if daring her.
+
+A moment she paused. "I never could take a dare," she answered.
+
+She leaped lightly to the floor. For just a moment she seemed about
+to lose her balance. Then she felt an arm steadying her. He had
+caught her and for an instant their eyes met.
+
+"Well, Rodman--I scarcely thought it was as brazen as this!"
+
+They turned in surprise.
+
+Mrs. Brainard was standing in the doorway.
+
+She was a petite blonde little woman of the deceptive age which the
+beauty parlors convey to thousands of their assiduous patrons.
+
+For a moment she looked coldly from one to the other.
+
+"To what am I indebted for the pleasure of this unexpected visit,
+Sybil?" asked Brainard with sarcastic emphasis. "I shall finish
+those letters to-morrow, Miss Dunlap. You need not wait for them."
+
+He held the door to his own office open for Mrs. Brainard.
+
+Sybil Brainard shot a quick glance at Constance. "Well, young lady,"
+she said haughtily, "do you realize what you are doing and with whom
+you are?"
+
+"It isn't necessary, Sybil, to bother about Miss Dunlap. The lights
+were out of order and I found Miss Dunlap standing on the table
+trying to fix them. You came just in time to see her jump down. By
+the way, Worthington seems to be another who works late. He left
+only a few minutes ago."
+
+Constance passed a restless night. To have got wrong at the very
+start worried her. Over and over she thought of what had happened.
+And always she came back to one question. What had Brainard meant by
+that reference to Worthington?
+
+He came in late the next day, however. Still, there was no change in
+his manner as he greeted her. The incident had not affected him, as
+it had her. Neither of them said anything about it.
+
+A young man had been waiting to see Brainard and as he entered he
+asked him in.
+
+Just then Sheppard walked casually through the reception room and
+into the board room.
+
+Constance quickly closed her door. She heard the young man leave
+Brainard's office but she was too engrossed to pay attention to
+anything but the voices that were coming through the microphone. She
+was writing feverishly what she heard.
+
+"Yes, Sheppard, I saw her again last night."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"She was to meet me here, but he stayed later than usual with that
+new secretary of his. So I cut out and met her at the street
+entrance."
+
+"And?"
+
+"I told her of the new secretary. She did just what I wanted--came
+up here--and, say Sheppard--what do you think? They were in this
+room and he had his arms about her!"
+
+"The letters are all right, are they? How much did you have to pay
+the Leblanc girl?"
+
+"Twenty thousand. That's all charged up against the pool. Say,
+Leblanc is--well--give you my word, Sheppard--I can hardly blame
+Brainard after all."
+
+"You ARE the last word in woman haters, Lee."
+
+Both men laughed.
+
+"And the letters?"
+
+"Don't worry. They are where they'll do the most good. Sybil has
+them herself. Now, what have you to report? You saw the district
+attorney?"
+
+"Yes. He is ready to promise us all immunity if we will go on the
+stand for the state. The criminal business will come later. Only,
+you have to play him carefully. He's on the level. A breath of what
+we really want and it will be all off."
+
+"Then we'll have to hold the stock up, as though nothing was going
+to happen."
+
+They had left the board room.
+
+Constance hurried into Brainard's office. He was sunk deep in his
+chair reading some papers.
+
+"What's the matter?" she asked.
+
+"She has entered a suit for divorce. That young man was a process
+server."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are named as co-respondent along with Blanche Leblanc."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes. It must have been an afterthought. Everything is going--
+fortune, reputation--even your friendship, now, Constance--"
+
+"Going? Not yet."
+
+She read hastily what she had overheard.
+
+"Devil take Worthington," ground out Brainard, gripping the arms of
+his chair. "For weeks I have suspected him. They have been too
+clever for me. Constance, while I have been going around laying
+myself open to discovery, Sybil has played a cool and careful game."
+
+He was pacing the floor.
+
+"So--that's the plan. Hold back, keep the stock up until they get
+started. Then let it go down until I'm forced to sell out at a loss,
+buy it back cheap, and control the reorganization. Well, I haven't
+control now, alone. I wish I did have. But neither have they. The
+public owns the stock now. I need it. Who'll get it first--that's
+the question!"
+
+He was thinking rapidly.
+
+"If you could do a little bear manipulation yourself," she
+suggested. "That might get the public scared. You could get enough
+to control, perhaps, then. They wouldn't dare sell--or if they did
+they would weaken their own control. Either way, you get them, going
+or coming."
+
+"Exactly what I was thinking. Play their own game--ahead of them--
+accelerate it."
+
+It was just after the lunch hour that Constance resumed her place at
+her desk with the receiver at her ear.
+
+There were voices again in the board room.
+
+"My God, Sheppard, what do you think? Someone is selling Motors--
+five points off and still going down."
+
+"Who is it? What shall we do?"
+
+"Who! Brainard, of course. Some one has peached. What are you going
+to do?"
+
+"Wait. Let's call up the News Agency. Hello--yes--what? Unofficial
+rumor of prosecution of Motors by the government--large selling
+orders placed in advance. The deuce--say, we'll have to meet this
+or--"
+
+"Meet nothing. It's Brainard. He's going down in a big crash. We
+pour our money into his pockets now and let him sell at the top and
+grab back control with OUR money? Not much. I sell, too."
+
+Already boys were on the street with extras crying the great crash
+in Motors. It was only a matter of minutes before all the news
+reading public were thoroughly scared at the apparently bursting
+bubble. Shares were dug up in small lots, in huge blocks and slammed
+on the market for what they would bring. All day the pounding went
+on. Thousands of shares were poured out until Motors which had been
+climbing toward par in the neighborhood of 79 had declined forty
+points. Brainard had jumped in first and had realized the top price
+for his holdings.
+
+Yet during all the wild scenes when the telephone was ringing
+insistently for him, Brainard, having set the machinery in motion
+and having been ostentatiously in the office when it started in
+order to avert suspicion, could not now be found.
+
+The market had closed and Constance was reading the account of the
+collapse as it was interpreted in the Wall Street editions of the
+papers, when the door opened and Brainard entered.
+
+"This has been a good day's work, Constance," he said, flinging
+himself into a chair.
+
+"Yes, I was just reading of it in the papers. The little microphone
+has put an entirely new twist on affairs. And the best of it is that
+the financial writers all seem to think it was planned by
+Worthington and the rest."
+
+"Oh, hang Worthington--hang Motors. THAT is what I meant."
+
+He slapped down a packet of letters on the desk.
+
+"You--you found them?" gasped Constance. She looked at him keenly.
+It was evident that a great weight had been taken off his mind.
+
+"Yes indeed. I knew there was only one place where she would put
+them--in her safe with her jewels. She would think I would never
+suspect that she had them and, besides, she had the combination
+changed. I went up to the house this afternoon when she was out. I
+had an expert with me. He worked two hours, steady,--but he opened
+it. Here they are. Now for the real game."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean that I noticed the name of the manufacturer on your
+microphone. I have had one installed in the room which she uses most
+of all. The wires run to the next house where I've hired an
+apartment. I intend to 'listen in' there. I'll get this Worthington
+--yet!"
+
+That night Constance and Brainard sat for hours in the empty
+apartment patiently waiting for word over the microphone.
+
+At last there was a noise as of a door opening.
+
+"Show them in here."
+
+"Sybil," whispered Brainard as if perhaps she might even hear.
+
+Then came more voices.
+
+"Worthington and Drummond," he added. "They suspect nothing yet."
+
+"Drummond knows this Dunlap woman," said Worthington.
+
+The detective launched forth in a tirade against Constance.
+
+"But she is clever, Drummond. You admit that."
+
+"Clever as they make 'em."
+
+"You will have her shadowed?"
+
+"Every moment, Mrs. Brainard." "What's all this about the panic in
+Motors, Lee?"
+
+"Some other time, Sybil, not now. Drummond, what do people say?"
+
+Drummond hesitated.
+
+"Out with it, man."
+
+"Well, Mr. Worthington, it is said you started it."
+
+"The deuce I did. But I guess Sheppard and I helped it along. We'll
+go the limit, too. After all, it had to come. We'll load up after it
+reaches the bottom."
+
+The voices trailed off.
+
+"Good night, Mrs. Brainard."
+
+"Good night, Mr. Drummond. That was what I wanted to know." A pause.
+
+"Lee, how can I ever thank you?"
+
+A sound suspiciously like a kiss came over the wire. Brainard
+clenched his fist.
+
+"Good night, Sybil. I must go now--" Again the voices trailed off.
+
+It was several minutes before Brainard spoke. Then it was that he
+showed his wonderful power of concentration.
+
+"I have a conference in half an hour, Constance," he remarked,
+looking at his watch. "It is very important. It means getting money
+to support Motors on the opening to-morrow after I have gathered in
+again what I need. I think I can come pretty near doubling my
+holdings if I play it right. That's important. But so is this."
+
+"I will listen," put in Constance. "Trust me. If anything else
+occurs I will tell you."
+
+She was at the office early the next day, but not before Brainard
+who, bright and fresh, even though he had been up all night, was
+primed for the battle of his life at the opening of the market.
+
+Brainard had swung in at the turn and had quietly accumulated the
+stock control which he needed. He was now bulling the market by
+matching orders, pyramiding stock which he owned, using every device
+that was known to his astute brain.
+
+On up went Motors, recovering the forty points, gradually, and even
+going beyond in the reaction. Worthington and Sheppard had been
+squeezed out. Not for a moment did he let up.
+
+As the clock on Trinity church struck three, the closing hour,
+Brainard wheeled suddenly in his chair.
+
+"Miss Dunlap," he said quietly. "I wish that you would tell
+Worthington and Sheppard that I should like to see them in the board
+room at four."
+
+Constance looked at her watch. There was time also to execute a
+little scheme of her own.
+
+Four o'clock came. Brainard lounged casually across to the board
+room. Instantly Constance had the receiver of the microphone at her
+ear, straining to catch every word, and to make notes of the stormy
+scene, if necessary.
+
+Her door opened. It was Sybil Brainard.
+
+The two women looked at each other coldly.
+
+Constance was the first to speak.
+
+"Mrs. Brainard," she began, "I asked you to come down here--not Mr.
+Worthington. More than that, I asked the office boy to direct you
+here instead of to his office. Do you see that machine?"
+
+Sybil looked at it without a sign of recognition.
+
+"It is a microphone detective. It was the installing of that machine
+in the board room which you interrupted the other night."
+
+"Was it necessary that Mr. Brainard should put his arm around you
+for that?" inquired Mrs. Brainard with biting sarcasm.
+
+"I had just jumped down from the table and had almost lost my
+balance--that was all," pursued Constance imperturbably.
+
+"Another of these microphone eavesdroppers told me of a conversation
+last night in your own apartment, Mrs. Brainard."
+
+Her face blanched. "You--have one--there?"
+
+"Yes. Mr. Brainard heard the first conversation, when Drummond and
+Mr. Worthington were there. After they left he had to attend a
+conference himself. I alone heard what passed when Mr. Worthington
+returned."
+
+"You are at liberty to--"
+
+"Mrs. Brainard. You do not understand. I have no reason to want to
+make you--"
+
+An office boy tapped on the door and entered. "Mr. Brainard wants
+you, Miss Dunlap."
+
+"I cannot explain now," resumed Constance. "Won't you sit here at my
+desk and listen over the microphone to what happens!"
+
+She was gone before Mrs. Brainard could reply. What did it all mean?
+Sybil put the black disc receiver to her ear as she had seen
+Constance do. Her hand trembled. "Why did she tell me that?" she
+murmured.
+
+"You can't prove it," shouted a voice through the black disc at her
+ear. She was startled. It was the voice of Worthington.
+
+"Miss Dunlap--have you that notebook?" came the deep tones of her
+husband.
+
+Constance read from her first notes that part relating to the
+conspiracy to control Motors, carefully omitting the part about the
+Leblanc letters.
+
+"It's a lie--a lie."
+
+"No, it is not a lie. It is all good legal evidence, the record
+taken over the new microphone detective. Look up there over the
+chandelier, Worthington. The other end is In the top drawer of Miss
+Dunlap's desk."
+
+"I'll fight that to a finish, Brainard. You are clever but there are
+other things besides Motors that you have to answer for."
+
+"No. Those letters--that is what you mean--are in my possession now.
+You didn't know that? All the eavesdropping, if you choose to call
+it that, was not done here, either, by a long shot, Worthington. I
+had one of these machines in my wife's reception room. I have all
+sorts of little scraps of conversation," he boasted. "I also have an
+account of a visit there from two--er--scoundrels--"
+
+"Mrs. Brainard to see you, sir," announced a boy at the door.
+
+Constance had risen. Her face was flushed and her breast rose and
+fell with excitement.
+
+"Mr. Brainard," she interrupted. "I must explain--confess. Mrs.
+Brainard has been sitting in my office listening to us over the
+microphone. I arranged it. I asked her to come down, using another
+name as a pretext. But I didn't think she would interrupt so soon.
+Before you see her--let me read this. It was a conversation I got
+after you had left last night and so far I have had no chance to
+tell you of it. Some one," she laid particular stress on the word,
+"came back after that first interview. Listen."
+
+"No, Lee," Constance read rapidly from her notes, "no. Don't think I
+am ungrateful. You have been one friend in a thousand through all
+this. I shall have my decree-soon, now. Don't spoil it-"
+
+"But Sybil, think of Mm. What did he ever care for you! He has made
+you free already."
+
+"He is still my husband."
+
+"Take this latest escapade with this Miss Dunlap."
+
+"Well, what do I really know about that?"
+
+"You saw him."
+
+"Yes, but maybe it was as he said."
+
+The door was flung open, interrupting Constance's reading, and Sybil
+Brainard entered. The artificiality of the beauty parlor was all
+gone. She was a woman, who had been wronged and deceived.
+
+"Next friend--a true next friend--fiend would be better, Lee
+Worthington," she scorned. "How can you stand there and look me in
+the face, how could you tell me of your love for me, when all the
+time you cared no more for me or for any other woman than for that--
+that Leblanc! You knew that I, who was as jealous as I could be of
+Rodman, had heard a little--you added more. Yet when you had played
+on my feelings, you would have cast me off, too--I know it; I know
+your kind."
+
+She paused for breath, then turned slowly to Brainard with a note of
+pathos in her voice.
+
+"Our temperaments may have been different, Rodman. They were not
+when we were poor. Perhaps I have not developed with you, the way
+you want of me. But, Rodman, did you ever stop to think that
+perhaps, perhaps if I had ever had the chance to be taken into your
+confidence more often--"
+
+"Will you--forgive me?" Brainard managed to blurt out.
+
+"Will you forgive me?" she returned frankly.
+
+"I--forgive? I have nothing to forgive."
+
+"I could have understood, Rodman, if it had been Miss Dunlap. She is
+clever, wonderful. But that Leblanc--never!"
+
+Sybil Brainard turned to Constance.
+
+"Miss Dunlap--Mrs. Dunlap," she sobbed, "forgive me. You--you are a
+better woman than I am."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE CLAIRVOYANTS
+
+
+"Do you believe in dreams?" Constance Dunlap looked searchingly at
+her interrogator, as if her face or manner betrayed some new side of
+her character.
+
+Mrs. deForest Caswell was an attractive woman verging on forty, a
+chance acquaintance at a shoppers' tea room downtown who had proved
+to be an uptown neighbor.
+
+"I have had some rather strange experiences, Mildred," confessed
+Constance tentatively. "Why!"
+
+"Because--" the other woman hesitated, then added, "why should I not
+tell you! Last night, Constance, I had the strangest dream. It has
+left such an impression on me that I can't shake it off, although I
+have tried all day."
+
+"Yes? Tell me about it."
+
+Mildred Caswell paused a moment, then began slowly, as if not to
+omit anything from her story.
+
+"I dreamt that Forest was dying. I could see him, could see the
+doctor and the nurse, everything. And yet somehow I could not get to
+him. I was afraid, with such an oppressive fear. I tried--oh, how I
+tried! I struggled, and how badly I felt!" and she shuddered at the
+very recollection.
+
+"There seemed to be a wall," she resumed, "a narrow wall in the way
+and I couldn't get over it. As often as I tried, I fell. And then I
+seemed to be pursued by some kind of animal, half bull, half snake.
+I ran. It followed closely. I seemed to see a crowd of people and I
+felt that if I could only get to that crowd, somehow I would be
+safe, perhaps might even get over the wall and--I woke up--almost
+screaming."
+
+The woman's face was quite blanched.
+
+"My dear," remonstrated Constance, "you must not take it so.
+Remember--it was only a dream.
+
+"I know it was only a dream," she said, "but you don't know what is
+back of it."
+
+Mildred Caswell had from time to time hinted to Constance of the
+growing incompatibility of her married life, but as Constance was
+getting used to confidences, she had kept silent, knowing that her
+friend would tell her in time.
+
+"You must have guessed," faltered Mrs. Caswell, "that Forest and I
+are not--not on the best of terms, that we are getting further and
+further apart."
+
+It rather startled Constance to hear frankly stated what she already
+had observed. She wondered how far the estrangement had gone. The
+fact was that she had rather liked deForest Caswell, although she
+had only met her friend's husband a few times. In fact she was
+surprised that momentarily there flashed through her mind the query
+as to whether Mildred herself might be altogether blameless in the
+growing uncongeniality.
+
+Mildred Caswell had drawn out of her chatelaine a bit of newspaper
+and handed it to Constance, not as if it was of any importance to
+herself but as if it would explain better than she could tell what
+she meant.
+
+Constance read:
+
+      MME. CASSANDRA,
+     THE VEILED PROPHETESS
+
+Born with a double veil, educated in occult mysteries in Egypt and
+India. Without asking a question, tells your name and reads your
+secret troubles and the remedy. Reads your dreams. Great questions
+of life quickly solved. Failure turned to success, the separated
+brought together, advice on all affairs of life, love, marriage,
+divorce, business, speculation, and investments. Overcomes all evil
+influences. Ever ready to help and advise those with capital to find
+a safe and paying investment. No fee until it succeeds. Could
+anything be fairer?
+
+      THE RETREAT,
+   ---W. 47th Street.
+
+"Won't you come with me to Madame Cassandra?" asked Mrs. Caswell, as
+Constance finished reading. "She always seems to do me so much
+good."
+
+"Who is Madame Cassandra?" asked Constance, rereading the last part
+of the advertisement.
+
+"I suppose you would call her a dream doctor," said Mildred.
+
+It was a new idea to Constance, this of a dream doctor to settle the
+affairs of life. Only a moment she hesitated, then she answered
+simply, "Yes, I'll go."
+
+"The retreat" was just off Longacre Square among quite a nest of
+fakers. A queue of automobiles before the place testified, however,
+to the prosperity of Madame Cassandra, as they entered the bronze
+grilled plate glass door and turned on the first floor toward the
+home of the Adept. Constance had an uncomfortable feeling as they
+entered of being watched behind the shades of the apartment. Still,
+they had no trouble in being admitted, and a soft-voiced colored
+attendant welcomed them.
+
+The esoteric flat of Madame Cassandra was darkened except for the
+electric lights glowing in amber and rose-colored shades. There were
+several women there already. As they entered Constance had noticed a
+peculiar, dreamy odor. There did not seem to be any hurry, any such
+thing as time here, so skilfully was the place run. There was no
+noise; the feet sank in half-inch piles of rugs, and easy-chairs and
+divans were scattered about.
+
+Once a puff of light smoke appeared, and Constance awoke to the fact
+that some were smoking little delicately gold-banded cigarettes.
+Indeed it was all quite recherche.
+
+Mrs. Caswell took one from a maid. So did Constance, but after a
+puff or two managed to put it out and later to secure another which
+she kept.
+
+Madame Cassandra herself proved to be a tall, slender, pale woman
+with dark hair and a magnetic eye, an eye that probably accounted
+more than anything else for her success. She was clad in a house
+gown of purplish silk which clung tightly to her, and at her throat
+a diamond pendant sparkled, as well as other brilliants on her long,
+slender fingers.
+
+She met Mildred and Constance with outstretched hands.
+
+"So glad to see you, my dears," purred Madame, leading the way into
+an inner sanctum.
+
+Mrs. Caswell had seated herself with the air of one who worshiped at
+the shrine, while Constance gazed about curiously.
+
+"Madame," she began a little tremulously, "I have had another of
+those dreadful dreams."
+
+"You poor dear soul," soothed Madame, stroking her hand. "Tell me of
+it--all."
+
+Quickly Mrs. Caswell poured forth her story as she had already told
+it to Constance.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Caswell," remarked the high priestess slowly, when the
+story was complete, "it is all very simple. His love is dead. That
+is what you fear and it is the truth. The wall is the wall that he
+has erected against you. Try to forget it--to forget him. You would
+be better off. There are other things in the world--"
+
+"Ah, but I cannot live as I am used to without money," murmured Mrs.
+Caswell.
+
+"I know," replied Madame. "It is that that keeps many a woman with a
+brute. When financial and economic independence come, then woman
+will be free and only then. Now, listen. Would you like to be free--
+financially? You remember that delightful Mr. Davies who has been
+here? Yes? Well, he is a regular client of mine, now. He is a broker
+and never embarks in any enterprise without first consulting me.
+Just the other day I read his fortune in United Traction. It has
+gone up five points already and will go fifteen more. If you want, I
+will give you a card to him. Let me see--yes, I can do that. You too
+will be lucky in speculation."
+
+Constance, with one ear open, had been busy looking about the room.
+In a bookcase she saw a number of books and paused to examine their
+titles. She was surprised to see among the old style dream books
+several works on modern psychology, particularly on the
+interpretation of dreams.
+
+"Of course, Mrs. Caswell, I don't want to urge you," Madame was
+saying. "I have only pointed out a way in which you can be
+independent. And, you know, Mr. Davies is a perfect gentleman, so
+courteous and reliable. I know you will be successful if you take my
+advice and go to him."
+
+Mildred said nothing for a few moments, but as she rose to go she
+remarked, "Thank you very much. I'll think about it. Anyhow, you've
+made me feel better."
+
+"So kind of you to say it," murmured the Adept. "I'm sorry you must
+go, but really I have other appointments. Please come again--with
+your friend. Good-bye."
+
+"What do you think of her?" asked Mrs. Caswell on the street.
+
+"Very clever," answered Constance dubiously.
+
+Mrs. Caswell looked up quickly. "You don't like her?"
+
+"To tell the truth," confessed Constance quietly, "I have had too
+much experience in Wall Street myself to trust to a clairvoyant."
+
+They had scarcely reached the corner before Constance again had that
+peculiar feeling which some psychologists have noted, of being
+stared at. She turned, but saw no one. Still the feeling persisted.
+She could stand it no longer.
+
+"Don't think me crazy, Mildred," she said, "but I just have a desire
+to walk back a block."
+
+Constance had turned suddenly. As she glanced keenly about she was
+aware of a familiar figure gazing into the window of an art store
+across the street. He had stopped so that although his back was
+turned he could, by a slight shift of his position, still see by
+means of a mirror in the window what was going on across the street
+behind him.
+
+One look was enough. It was Drummond, the detective. What did it
+mean?
+
+Neither woman said much as they rode uptown, and parted on the
+respective floors of their apartment house. Still Constance could
+not get out of her head the recollection of the dream doctor and of
+Drummond.
+
+Restless, she determined that night to go down to the Public Library
+and see whether any of the books at the clairvoyant's were on the
+shelves. Fortunately she found some, found indeed that they were not
+all, as she had half suspected, the works of fakers but that quite a
+literature had been built up around the new psychology of dreams.
+
+Deeply she delved into the fascinating subjects that had been opened
+by the studies of the famous Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, and as she
+read she found that she began to understand much about Mrs. Caswell
+--and, with a start, about her own self.
+
+At first she revolted against the unpleasant feature of the new
+dream philosophy--the irresistible conclusion that all humanity,
+underneath the shell, is sensuous or sensual in nature, that
+practically all dreams portray some delight of the senses and that
+sexual dreams are a large proportion of all visions. But the more
+she thought of it, the more clearly was she able to analyze Mrs.
+Caswell's dream and to get back at the causes of it, in the
+estrangement from her husband and perhaps the brutality of his
+ignorance of woman. And then, too, there was Drummond. What was he
+doing in the case?
+
+She did not see Mildred Caswell again until the following afternoon.
+But then she seemed unusually bright in contrast with the depression
+of the day before. Constance was not surprised. Her intuition told
+her that something had happened and she hardly needed to guess that
+Mrs. Caswell had followed the advice of the clairvoyant and had been
+to see the wonderful Mr. Davies, to whom the mysteries of the stock
+market were an open book.
+
+"Have you had any other dreams?" asked Constance casually.
+
+"Yes," replied Mildred, "but not like the one that depressed me.
+Last night I had a very pleasant dream. It seemed that I was
+breakfasting with Mr. Davies. I remember that there was a hot coal
+fire in the grate. Then suddenly a messenger came in with news that
+United Traction had advanced twenty points. Wasn't it strange?"
+
+Constance said nothing. In fact it did not seem strange to her at
+all. The strange thing to her, now that she was a sort of amateur
+dream reader herself, was that Mrs. Caswell did not seem to see the
+real import of her own dream.
+
+"You have seen Mr. Davies to-day?" Constance ventured.
+
+Mrs. Caswell laughed. "I wasn't going to tell you. You seemed so set
+against speculating in Wall Street. But since you ask me, I may as
+well admit it."
+
+"When did you see him before?" went on Constance. "Did you have much
+invested with him already?"
+
+Mrs. Caswell glanced up, startled. "My--you are positively uncanny,
+Constance. How did you know I had seen him before?"
+
+"One seldom dreams," said Constance, "about anything unless it has
+been suggested by an event of the day before. You saw him today.
+That would not have inspired the dream of last night. Therefore I
+concluded that you must have seen him and invested before. Madame
+Cassandra's mention of him yesterday caused the dream of last night.
+The dream of last night probably influenced you to see him again to-
+day, and you invested in United Traction. That is the way dreams
+work. Probably more of conduct than we know is influenced by dream
+life. Now, if you should get fifteen or twenty points you would be
+in a fair way to join the ranks of those who believe that dreams do
+come true."
+
+Mrs. Caswell looked at her almost alarmed, then attempted to turn it
+off with a laugh, "And perhaps breakfast with him?"
+
+"When I do set up as interpreter of dreams," answered Constance
+simply, "I'll tell you more."
+
+On one point she had made up her mind. That was to visit Mr. Davies
+herself the next day.
+
+She found his office a typical bucket shop, even down to having a
+section partitioned off for women clients of the firm. She had not
+intended to risk anything, and so was prepared when Mr. Davies
+himself approached her courteously. Instinctively Constance
+distrusted him. He was too cordial, too polite. She could feel the
+claws hidden in his velvety paw, as it were. There was a debonnaire
+assurance about him, the air of a man who thought he understood
+women, and indeed did understand a certain type. But to Constance,
+who was essentially a man's woman, Davies was only revolting.
+
+She managed to talk without committing herself, and he in his
+complacency was glad to hope that he was making a new customer. She
+had to be careful not to betray any of the real and extensive
+knowledge about Wall Street which she actually possessed. But the
+glib misrepresentations about United Traction quite amazed her.
+
+When she rose to go, Davies accompanied her to the door, then out
+into the hall to the elevator. As he bent over to shake hands, she
+noted that he held her hand just a little longer than was necessary.
+
+"He's a swindler of the first water," she concluded as she was
+whisked down in the elevator. "I'm sure Mildred is in badly with
+this crowd, one urging her on in her trouble, the other making it
+worse and fleecing her into the bargain."
+
+At the entrance she paused, undecided which was the quickest route
+home. As by chance she turned just for a moment she thought she
+caught a fleeting glimpse of Drummond dodging behind a pillar. It
+was only for an instant but even that apparition was enough.
+
+"I WILL get her out of this safely," resolved Constance. "I WILL
+keep one more fly from his web."
+
+Constance felt as if, even now, she must see Mildred and, although
+she knew nothing, at least put her on her guard. She did not have
+long to wait for her chance. It was late in the afternoon when her
+door buzzer sounded.
+
+"Constance, I've been looking for you all day," sighed Mildred,
+dropping sobbing into a chair. "I am--distracted."
+
+"Why, my dear, what's the matter?" asked Constance. "Let me make you
+a cup of coffee."
+
+Over the steaming little cups Mildred grew more calm.
+
+"Forest has found out in some way that I am speculating in Wall
+Street," she confided at length. "I suppose some of his friends--he
+has lots down there--told him."
+
+Momentarily the picture of Drummond back of the post in Davies'
+building flashed over Constance.
+
+"And he is awfully angry. Oh, I never knew him to be so angry--and
+sarcastic, too."
+
+"Was it wholly over your money?" asked Constance. "Was there nothing
+else?"
+
+Mrs. Caswell started. "You grow more weird, every day, Constance.
+Yes--there was something else."
+
+"Mr. Davies?"
+
+Mildred had risen. "Don't--don't--" she cried.
+
+"Then you do really--care for him!" asked Constance mercilessly.
+
+"No--no, a thousand times--no. How can I? I have put all such
+thoughts out of my mind--long ago." She paused, then went on more
+calmly, "Constance, believe me or not--I am just as good a woman to-
+day as I was the day I married Forest. No--I would not even let the
+thought enter my head--never!"
+
+For perhaps an hour after her friend had gone, Constance sat
+thinking. What should she do? Something must be done and soon. As
+she thought, suddenly the truth flashed over her.
+
+Caswell had employed Drummond to shadow his wife in the hope that he
+might unearth something that might lead to a divorce. Drummond, like
+so many divorce detectives, was not averse to guiding events, to put
+it mildly. He had ingratiated himself, perhaps, with the clairvoyant
+and Davies. Constance had often heard before of clairvoyants and
+brokers who worked in conjunction to fleece the credulous. Now
+another and more serious element than the loss of money was
+involved. Added to them was a divorce detective--and honor itself
+was at stake. She remembered the doped cigarettes. She had heard of
+them before at clairvoyants'. She saw it all--Madame Cassandra
+playing on Mildred's wounded affections, the broker on both that and
+her desire to be independent--and Drummond pulling the wires that
+all might take advantage of her woman's frailty.
+
+That moment Constance determined on action.
+
+First she telephoned to deForest Caswell at his office. It was an
+unconventional thing to do to ask him to call, but she made some
+plausible pretext. She was surprised to find that he accepted it
+without hesitating. It set her thinking. Drummond must have told him
+something of her and he had thought this as good a time as any to
+face her. In that case Drummond would probably come too. She was
+prepared.
+
+She had intended to have one last talk with Mildred, but had no need
+to call her. Utterly wretched, the poor little woman came in again
+to see her as she had done scores of times before, to pour out her
+heart. Forest had not come home to dinner, had not even taken the
+trouble to telephone. Constance did not say that she herself was
+responsible.
+
+"Do you really want to know the truth about your dreams?" asked
+Constance, after she had prevailed upon Mildred to eat a little.
+
+"I do know," she returned.
+
+"No, you don't," went on Constance, now determined to tell her the
+truth whether she liked it or not. "That clairvoyant and Mr. Davies
+are in league, playing you for a sucker, as they say."
+
+Mrs. Caswell did not reply for a moment. Then she drew a long breath
+and shut her eyes. "Oh, you don't know how true what she says is to
+me. She--"
+
+"Listen," interrupted Constance. "Mildred, I'm going to be frank,
+brutally frank. Madame Cassandra has read your character, not the
+character as you think it is, but your unconscious, subconscious
+self. She knows that there is no better way to enter into the
+intimate life of a client, according to the new psychology, than by
+getting at and analyzing the dreams. And she knows that you can't go
+far in dream analysis without finding sex. It is one of the
+strongest natural impulses, yet subject to the strongest repression,
+and hence one of the weakest points of our culture.
+
+"She is actually helping along your alienation for that broker. You
+yourself have given me the clue in your dreams. Only I am telling
+you the truth about them. She holds it back and tells you plausible
+falsehoods to help her own ends. She is trying to arouse in you
+those passions which you have suppressed, and she has not scrupled
+to use drugged cigarettes with you and others to do it. You remember
+the breakfast dream, when I said that much could be traced back to
+dreams? A thing happens. It causes a dream. That in turn sometimes
+causes action. No, don't interrupt. Let me finish first.
+
+"Take that first dream," continued Constance, rapidly thrusting home
+her interpretation so that it would have its full effect. "You
+dreamed that your husband was dying and you were afraid. She said it
+meant love was dead. It did not. The fact is that neurotic fear in a
+woman has its origin in repressed, unsatisfied love, love which for
+one reason or another is turned away from its object and has not
+succeeded in being applied. Then his death. That simply means that
+you have a feeling that you might be happier if he were away and
+didn't devil you. It is a survival of childhood, when death is
+synonymous with absence. I know you don't believe it. But if you had
+studied the subject as I have in the last few days you'd understand.
+Madame Cassandra understands.
+
+"And the wall. That was Wall Street, probably, which does divide you
+two. You tried to get over it and you fell. That means your fear of
+actually falling, morally, of being a fallen woman."
+
+Mildred was staring wildly. She might deny but in her heart she must
+admit.
+
+"The thing that pursued you, half bull, half snake, was Davies and
+his blandishments. I have seen him. I know what he is. The crowd in
+a dream always denotes a secret. He is pursuing you, as in the
+dream. But he hasn't caught you. He thinks there is in you the same
+wild demimondaine instinct that with many an ardent woman, slumbers
+unknown in the back of her mind.
+
+"Whatever you may say, you do think of him. When a woman dreams of
+breakfasting cozily with some one other than her husband it has an
+obvious meaning. As for the messenger and the message about the
+United Traction, there, too, was a plain wish, and, as you must see,
+wishes in one form or another, disguised or distorted, lie at the
+basis of dreams. Take the coal fire. That, too, is susceptible of
+interpretation. I think you must have heard the couplet:
+
+"'No coal, no fire so hotly glows As the secret love that no one
+knows.'"
+
+Mildred Caswell had risen, an indignant flush on her face.
+
+Constance put her hand on her arm gently to restrain her, knowing
+that such indignation was the first sign that she had struck at the
+core of truth in her interpretation.
+
+"My dear," she urged, "I'm only telling you the truth, for your own
+sake, and not to take advantage of you as Madame Cassandra is doing.
+Please--remember that the best evidence of your normal condition is
+just what I find, that absence of love would be abnormal. My dear,
+you are what the psychologists call a consciously frigid,
+unconsciously passionate woman. Consciously you reject this Davies;
+unconsciously you accept him. And it is the more dangerous, although
+you do not know it, because some one else is watching. It was not
+one of his friends who told your husband--"
+
+Mrs. Caswell had paled. "Is--is there a--detective?" she faltered.
+
+Constance nodded.
+
+Mildred had collapsed completely. She was sobbing in a chair, her
+head bowed in her hands, her little lace handkerchief soaked. "What
+shall I do? What shall I do?"
+
+There was a sudden tap at the door.
+
+"Quick--in there," whispered Constance, shoving her through the
+portieres into the drawing room.
+
+It was Forest Caswell.
+
+For a moment Constance stood irresolute, wondering just how to meet
+him, then she said, "Good evening, Mr. Caswell. I hope you will
+pardon me for asking you to call on me, but, as you know, I've come
+to know your wife--perhaps better than you do."
+
+"Not better," he corrected, seeming to see that it was directness
+that she was aiming at. "It is bad enough to get mixed up badly in
+Wall Street, but what would you yourself say--you are a business
+woman--what would you say about getting into the clutches of a--a
+dream doctor--and worse?"
+
+He had put Constance on the defensive in a sentence.
+
+"Don't you ever dream?" she asked quietly.
+
+He looked at her a moment as if doubting even her mentality.
+
+"Lord," he exclaimed in disgust, "you, too, defend it?"
+
+"But, don't you dream?" she persisted.
+
+"Why, of course I dream," he answered somewhat petulantly. "What of
+it? I don't guide my actions by it."
+
+"Do you ever dream of Mildred?" she asked.
+
+"Sometimes," he admitted reluctantly.
+
+"Ever of other--er--people?" she pursued.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "sometimes of other people. But what has that to
+do with it? I cannot help my dreams. My conduct I can help and I do
+help."
+
+Constance had not expected him to be frank to the extent of taking
+her into his confidence. Still, she felt that he had told her just
+enough. She discerned a vague sense of jealousy in his tone which
+told her more than words that whatever he might have said or done to
+Mildred he resented, unconsciously, the manner in which she had
+striven to gain sympathy outside.
+
+"Fortunately he knows nothing of the new theories," she said to
+herself.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," he resumed, "since you have been frank with me, I
+must be equally frank with you. I think you are far too sensible a
+woman not to understand in just what a peculiar position my wife has
+placed me."
+
+He had taken out of his pocket a few sheets of closely typewritten
+tissue paper. He did not look at them. Evidently he knew the
+contents by heart. Constance did not need to be told that this was a
+sheaf of the daily reports of the agency for which Drummond worked.
+
+He paused. She had been watching him searchingly. She was determined
+not to let him justify himself first.
+
+"Mr. Caswell," she persisted in a low, earnest tone, "don't be so
+sure that there is nothing in this dream, business. Before you read
+me those reports from Mr. Drummond, let me finish."
+
+Forest Caswell almost dropped them in surprise.
+
+"Dreams," she continued, seeing her advantage, "are wishes, either
+suppressed or expressed. Sometimes the dream is frank and shows an
+expressed wish. Other times it shows a suppressed wish, or a wish
+which in its fulfilment in the dream is disguised or distorted.
+
+"You are the cause of your wife's dreams. She feels in them anxiety.
+And, according to the modern psychologists who have studied dreams
+carefully and scientifically, fear and anxiety represent love
+repressed or suppressed."
+
+She paused to emphasize the point, glad to note that he was
+following her.
+
+"That clairvoyant," she went on, "has found out the truth. True, it
+may not have been the part of wisdom for Mildred to have gone to her
+in the first place. I pass over that. I do not know whether you or
+she was most to blame at the start. But that woman, in the guise of
+being her friend, has played on every string of your wife's lonely
+heart, which you have wrung until it vibrates.
+
+"Then," she hastened on, "came your precious friend Drummond,
+Drummond who has, no doubt, told you a pack of lies about me. You
+see that!"
+
+She had flung down on the table a cigarette which she had managed to
+get at Madame Cassandra's.
+
+"Smoke it."
+
+He lighted it gingerly, took a puff or two, puckered his face,
+frowned, and rubbed the lighted end on the fireplace to extinguish
+it.
+
+"What is it?" he asked suspiciously.
+
+"Hashish," she answered tersely. "Things were not going fast enough
+to suit either Madame Cassandra or Drummond. Madame Cassandra helped
+along the dreams by a drug noted for its effect on the passions.
+More than that," added Constance, leaning over toward him and
+catching his eye, "Madame Cassandra was working in league with a
+broker, as so many of the fakers do. Drummond knew it, whether he
+told you the truth about it or not. That broker was a swindler named
+Davies."
+
+She was watching the effect on him. She saw that he had been
+reserving this for a last shot at her, that he realized she had
+stolen his own ammunition and appropriated it to herself.
+
+"They were only too glad when Drummond approached them. There you
+are, three against that poor little woman--no, four, including
+yourself. Perhaps she was foolish. But it was not so much to her
+discredit as to those who cast her adrift when she had a natural
+right to protection. Here was a woman with passions which she
+herself did not understand, and a little money--alone. Her case
+appealed to me. I knew her dreams. I studied them."
+
+Caswell was listening in amazement. "It is dangerous to be with a
+person who pays attention to such little things," he said.
+
+Evidently Drummond himself must have been listening. The door buzzer
+sounded and he stepped in, perhaps to bolster up his client in case
+he should be weakening.
+
+As he met Constance's eye he smiled superciliously and was about to
+speak. But she did not give him time even to say good evening.
+
+"Ask him," she cried, her eyes flashing, for she realized that it
+had been part of the plan to confront her, perhaps worm out of her
+just enough to confirm Drummond's own story to Caswell, "ask him to
+tell the truth--if he is capable of it--not the truth that will make
+a good daily report of a hired shadow who colors his report the way
+he thinks his client desires it, but the real truth."
+
+"Mr. Caswell," interrupted Drummond, "this woman----"
+
+"Mr. Drummond," cried Constance, rising and shaking the burnt stub
+of the little gold-banded cigarette at him to impress it on his
+mind, "Mr. Drummond, I don't care whether I am a--a she-devil"--she
+almost hissed the words at him--"but I have evidence enough to go
+before the district attorney of this city and the grand jury and get
+indictments for conspiracy against a certain clairvoyant and a
+bucket shop operator. To save themselves, they will probably tell
+all they know about a certain crook who has been using them."
+
+Caswell looked at her, amazed at her denunciation of the detective.
+As for Drummond, he turned his back on her as if to ignore her
+utterly.
+
+"Mr. Caswell," he said bitterly, "in those reports--"
+
+"Forest Caswell," insisted Constance, rising and facing him, "if you
+have in that heart of yours one shred of manhood it should move you.
+You--this man--the others--have placed in the path of a woman every
+provocation, every temptation for financial, physical, and moral
+ruin. She has consulted a clairvoyant--yes. She has speculated--yes.
+Yet she was proof against something greater than that. And I know--
+because I know her unconscious self which her dreams reveal, her
+inmost soul--I know her better than you do, better than she does
+herself. I know that even now she is as good and true and would be
+as loving as--"
+
+Constance had paused and taken a step toward the drawing room.
+Before she knew it, the portieres flew apart and an eager little
+woman had rushed past her and flung her arms about the neck of the
+man.
+
+Caswell's features were working, as he gently disengaged her arms,
+still keeping one hand. Half shoving her aside, ignoring Constance,
+he had faced Drummond. For a moment the brazen detective flinched.
+
+As he did so, deForest Caswell crumpled up the mass of tissue paper
+reports and flung them into the fireplace.
+
+"Get out!" he said, suppressing his voice with difficulty. "Send me
+--your bill. I'll pay it--but, mind, if it is one penny more than it
+should be, I'll--I'll fight if it takes me from the district
+attorney and the grand jury to the highest court of the State. Now--
+go!"
+
+Caswell turned slowly again toward his wife.
+
+"I've been a brute," he said simply.
+
+Something almost akin to jealousy rose in Constance's heart as she
+saw Mildred, safe at last.
+
+Then Caswell turned slowly to her. "You," he said, stroking his
+wife's hand gently but looking at Constance, "you are a REAL
+clairvoyant."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE PLUNGERS
+
+
+"They have the most select clientele in the city here."
+
+Constance Dunlap was sitting in the white steamy room of Charmant's
+Beauty Shop. Her informant, reclining dreamily in a luxurious wicker
+chair, bathed in the perspiring vapor, had evidently taken a fancy
+to her.
+
+"And no wonder, either; they fix you up so well," she rattled on;
+then confidingly, "Now, last night after the show a party of us went
+to supper and a dance--and it was in the wee small hours when we
+broke up. But Madame here can make you all over again. Floretta,"
+she called to an attendant who had entered, "if Mr. Warrington calls
+up on the 'phone, say I'll call him later."
+
+"Yes, Miss Larue."
+
+Constance glanced up quickly as Floretta mentioned the name of the
+popular young actress. Stella Larue was a pretty girl on whom the
+wild dissipation of the night life of New York was just beginning to
+show its effects. The name of Warrington, too, recalled to Constance
+instantly some gossip she had heard in Wall Street about the
+disagreement in the board of directors of the new Rubber Syndicate
+and the effort to oust the president whose escapades were something
+more than mere whispers of scandal.
+
+This was the woman in the case. Constance looked at Stella now with
+added interest as she rose languidly, drew her bathrobe about her
+superb figure carelessly in such a way as to show it at best
+advantage.
+
+"I've had more or less to do with Wall Street myself," observed
+Constance.
+
+"Oh, have you? Isn't that interesting," cried Stella.
+
+"I hope you're not putting money in Rubber?" queried Constance.
+
+"On the contrary," rippled Stella, then added, "You're going to
+stay? Let me tell you something. Have Floretta do your hair. She's
+the best here. Then come around to see me in the dormitory if I'm
+here when you are through, won't you?"
+
+Constance promised and Stella fluttered away like the pretty
+butterfly that she was, leaving Constance to wonder at the natural
+gravitation of plungers in the money market toward plungers in the
+white lights.
+
+Charmant's Beauty Parlor was indeed all its name implied, a temple
+of the cult of adornment, the last cry in the effort to satisfy what
+is more than health, wealth, and happiness to some women--the
+fundamental feminine instinct for beauty.
+
+Constance had visited the beauty specialist to have an incipient
+wrinkle smoothed out. Frankly, it was not vanity. But she had come
+to realize that her greatest asset was her personal appearance. Once
+that had a chance to work, her native wit and keen ability would
+carry her to success.
+
+Madame Charmant herself was a tall, dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-
+eyed, well-groomed woman who looked as if she had been stamped from
+a die for a fashion plate--and then the die had been thrown away.
+All others like her were spurious copies, counterfeits. More than
+that, she affected the name of Vera, which in itself had the ring of
+truth.
+
+And so Charmant had prevailed on Constance to take a full course in
+beautification and withhold the wrinkle at the source.
+
+"Besides, you know, my dear," she purred, "there's nothing
+discovered by the greatest minds of the age that we don't apply at
+once."
+
+Constance was not impervious to feminine reason, and here she was.
+
+"Has Miss Larue gone?" she asked when at last she was seated in a
+comfortable chair again sipping a little aromatic cup of coffee.
+
+"No, she's resting in one of the little dressing rooms."
+
+She followed Floretta down the corridor. Each little compartment had
+its neat, plain white enameled bed, a dresser and a chair.
+
+Stella smiled as Constance entered. "Yes," she murmured in response
+to the greeting, "I feel quite myself now."
+
+"Mr. Warrington on the wire," announced Floretta a moment later,
+coming down the corridor again with a telephone on a long unwinding
+wire.
+
+"Hello, Alfred--oh, rocky this morning," Constance overheard. "I
+said to myself, 'Never again--until the nest time. Vera? Oh, she was
+as fresh as a lark. Can I lunch with you downtown? Of course.'" Then
+as she hung up the receiver she called, "Floretta, get me a taxi."
+
+"Yes, Miss Larue."
+
+"I always have a feeling here," whispered Stella, "that I am being
+listened to. I mean to speak to Vera about it some time. By the way,
+wouldn't you like to join us to-night? Vera will be along and Mr.
+Warrington and perhaps 'Diamond Jack' Braden--you know him?"
+
+Constance confessed frankly that she did not have the pleasure of
+the acquaintance of the well-known turfman and first nighter.
+
+She hesitated. Perhaps it was that that Stella liked. Almost any one
+else would have been overeager to accept. But to Constance, sure of
+herself now, nothing of the sort was worth scrambling for. Besides,
+she was wondering how a man with the fight of his life on his hands
+could find time to lunch downtown even with Stella.
+
+"I've taken quite a fancy to you," pressed Stella.
+
+"Thank you, it's very kind of you," Constance answered. "I shall try
+very hard to be there."
+
+"I'll leave a box for you at the office. Come around after the
+performance to my dressing room."
+
+"Miss Larue, your taxi's waiting," announced Floretta.
+
+"Thanks. Are you going now, Mrs. Dunlap? Yes? Then ride down in the
+elevator with me."
+
+They parted at the foot of the elevator and Constance walked through
+the arcade of the office building in which the beauty parlor
+occupied the top floor. She stopped at a florist's stand to admire
+the flowers, but more for an excuse to look back at Stella.
+
+As Stella stepped into a taxicab, showing a generous wealth of
+silken hosiery beneath the tango gown, Constance was aware that the
+driver of another cab across the street was also interested. She
+noticed that he turned and spoke to his fare through the open
+window.
+
+The cab swung around to follow the other and Constance caught a
+fleeting glimpse of a familiar face.
+
+"Drummond," she exclaimed almost aloud.
+
+What did it mean? Why had the detective been employed to follow
+Stella? Instinctively she concluded that he must be engaged by Mrs.
+Warrington.
+
+"I must accept Stella's invitation," she said to herself excitedly.
+"At least, she should be put on her guard."
+
+That evening, as she was looking over the newspapers, her eye caught
+the item in the Wall Street edition:
+
+RUBBER SYNDICATE DISSENSION
+
+Break in Stock Follows Effort of Strong Minority to Oust Warrington
+from Presidency
+
+Then followed a brief account of the struggle of a powerful group of
+directors to force Warrington, Braden, and the rest out, with a hint
+at the scandal of which every one now was talking.
+
+"I never yet knew a man who went in for that sort of thing that
+lasted long in business," she observed. "This is my chance--a crowd
+riding for a fall."
+
+Constance chose a modest orchestra seat in preference to the place
+in a box which Stella had reserved for her at the office, and, aside
+from the purpose which was rapidly taking shape in her mind, she
+enjoyed the play very much. Stella Larue, as the "Grass Widow,"
+played her part with a piquancy which Constance knew was not wholly
+a matter of book knowledge.
+
+As the curtain went down, the audience, its appetite for the risque
+whetted, filed out on Broadway with its myriad lights and continuous
+film of motion. Constance made her way around to Stella's dressing
+room.
+
+She had scarcely been welcomed by Stella, whose cheeks beneath the
+grease paint were now genuinely ablaze with excitement, when a man
+entered. He was tall, spare, the type whose very bow is ingratiating
+and whose "delighted, I assure you" is suave and compelling.
+
+Alfred Warrington seemed to be on very good terms indeed with Stella
+as she introduced him to Constance.
+
+"You will join us, Mrs. Dunlap?" he asked, throwing an opera cloak
+over Stella's shoulders. "Vera Charmant and Jack Braden are waiting
+for us at the Little Montmartre."
+
+As he mentioned the famous cabaret, Constance took a little tighter
+grip on herself and decided to take the plunge and see the affair
+out, although that sort of thing had very little attraction for her.
+
+They were leaving the theater when she saw lurking in the crowd the
+familiar figure of Drummond. She turned her head quickly and sank
+back into the dark recesses of the limousine.
+
+Should she tell them now about him?
+
+She leaned over to Warrington. "I saw a man in the crowd just now
+who seemed to be quite interested in us," she said quickly. "Can't
+we drive around a bit to throw him off if he should get into a cab?"
+
+Warrington looked at her keenly. It was quite evident that he
+thought it was Constance who was being followed, not Stella or
+himself. Constance decided quickly to say nothing more that would
+prejudice Stella, but as Warrington directed his driver to run up
+through the park she saw that, far from alarming him, the words had
+only added a zest of mystery about herself.
+
+They left the Park and the car jolted them quickly now over the
+uneven asphalt to the palace of pleasure, where already the two
+advance guards were holding one of the best tables in a house
+crowded with all classes from debutantes to debauchees.
+
+"Diamond Jack" Braden was a heavy-set man with a debonnaire, dapper
+way about him. He wore a flower in his buttonhole, a smart touch
+which seemed very fetching, evidently, to the artistic Vera.
+
+Constance fell to studying him, as she did all men and women. "His
+hands betray him," she said to herself, as she was introduced.
+
+They were in fact shielded from view as he bowed, one with the thumb
+tucked in the corner of his trousers pocket, the other behind his
+back.
+
+"He is hiding something," flashed through her mind intuitively. And,
+when she analyzed it, she felt still that there was nothing fanciful
+about the idea. It was simply a little unconscious piece of
+evidence.
+
+From the start the cabaret was pretty rapid. When they entered, two
+of the performers were rendering the Apache dance with an abandon
+that improved on its namesake. Scarcely had they finished when the
+orchestra began all over again, and a couple of diners from the
+tables glided past them on the dancing floor, then another couple
+and another.
+
+"Tanguez-vous?" bowed Braden, leaning over to Stella.
+
+"Oui, je tanguerai," she nodded, catching the spirit of the place.
+
+It left Warrington and Constance at the table with Vera, and as
+Constance looked eagerly after the graceful form of the little
+actress, Warrington asked, "Will you dance!"
+
+"No, thank you," she said, trying him out. "I haven't had time to
+learn these new steps. And, besides, I have had a bad day in the
+market. Steel, Reading, everything is off. Not that I have lost
+much--but it's what I haven't made."
+
+Warrington, who had been about to repeat his question to Vera,
+turned suddenly. This was something new to him, to meet a woman like
+Constance. If she knew about other stocks, she must know about the
+Syndicate. Already he had felt an attraction toward Constance
+physically, an attraction of maturity which somehow or other seemed
+more satisfying, at least novel, in contrast with, the gay butterfly
+talk of Stella.
+
+He did not ask Vera to dance. Instead he began banteringly to
+discuss Wall Street and in five minutes he found out that she really
+knew as much about certain features of the game as he did. She did
+not need to be told that Alfred Warrington, plunger, man about town,
+was quite unexpectedly struck by her personality.
+
+Now and then she could see Stella eyeing her covertly. The little
+actress had had, like many another, a few dollars to invest or
+rather with which to speculate. Her method had been usually to make
+a quick profit on a tip from some Wall Street friend. Often, if the
+tip went wrong, the friend would return the money to the
+unsuspecting little girl, with some muttered apology about having
+been unable to get it placed in time, and then, as the market went
+down or up, seeing that it was too late, adding a congratulation
+that at least the principal was saved if there was no profit.
+
+The little actress was plainly piqued. She saw, though she did not
+understand, that Constance was a different kind of plunger from what
+she had thought at first up at Charmant's. Instead of trying to
+compete with Constance in her field, she redoubled her efforts in
+her own. Was Warrington, a live spender, to slip through her grasp
+for a chance acquaintance?
+
+Another dance. This time it was Stella and Warrington. Braden, who
+had served excellently as a foil to lead Warrington on when he had
+eyes for no one else, not even Vera, was left severely alone.
+Nothing was said, not an action done openly, but Constance, woman-
+like, could feel the contest in the air. And she felt just a little
+quiver when they sat down and Warrington resumed the conversation
+with her where he had left it. Even the daring cut of Stella's gown
+and the exaggerated proximity of her dainty person had failed this
+time.
+
+As they chatted gaily, Constance enjoyed her triumph to the full.
+Yes, she could see that Stella was violently jealous. But she
+intended that she should be. That was now a part of her plan as it
+shaped itself in her mind, since she had plunged or, perhaps better,
+had been dragged into the game.
+
+As the evening wore on and the dancing became more furious,
+Warrington seemed to catch the spirit of recklessness that was in
+the very air. He talked more recklessly, once in a while with a
+bitterness not aimed at any one in particular, which passed among
+the others as blase sarcasm of one who had seen much and to whom
+even the fastest was slow.
+
+But to Constance, as she tried to fathom him, it presented an
+entirely different interpretation. For example, she asked herself,
+why had he been so ready, apparently, to transfer his interest from
+Stella? Was it because, having cut loose from the one feminine tie
+that morally bound him, he no longer felt any restraint in cutting
+loose from others? Was it the same spirit that had carried him on in
+the money game, having cut loose from one financial principle, to
+let all go and to guide his course as close to the edge of things as
+he dared? There had been the same reckless bravado in the way he had
+urged on the driver of his car in the wild ride of the earlier
+evening, violating the speed laws yet succeeding in escaping the
+traffic squad.
+
+Warrington was a plunger. Yet there was something about him that was
+different from others she had seen. Perhaps it was that he had a
+conscience, even though he had succeeded in detaching himself from
+it.
+
+And Stella. There was something different about her, too. Constance
+more than once was on the point of revising her estimate of the
+little actress. Was she, after all, wholly mercenary in her attitude
+toward Warrington? Was he merely a live spender whom she could not
+afford to lose? Or was she merely a beautiful, delicate creature
+caught in the merciless maelstrom of the life into which she had
+been thrown? Did she realize the perilous position this all was
+placing her in?
+
+They were among the last to leave and Vera and Braden offered to
+take Constance to her apartment in Braden's car, while Stella
+contrived prettily to take so much of Warrington's time with the
+wraps that by the time they were ready to go the manner of the
+breaking up of the party was as she wanted it. In her final triumph
+she could not help just an extra inflection on, "I hope I'll see you
+again at Vera's soon, my dear."
+
+All night, or at least all that was left of it, Constance tried to
+straighten out the whirl of her thoughts. With the morning she had
+an idea. Now, in a moment when the exhilaration of the gay life was
+at low ebb, she must see Stella.
+
+It was early yet, but Stella was not at her hotel when Constance
+cautiously called up the office to find out. Where was she?
+Constance drove around to Charmant's on the chance that she might be
+there. Vera greeted her a trifle coldly, she thought, but then this
+was not midnight at the Montmartre. No, Stella was not there, she
+said, but nevertheless Constance decided to wait.
+
+"I'm all unstrung," confided Constance, with an assumed air of
+languor, as she dropped into a chair.
+
+Charmant, as fresh as if she had just emerged from the proverbial
+bandbox, nodded knowingly. "A Turkish bath, massage, something to
+tone you up," she advised.
+
+With alert eyes Constance went patiently through the process of
+freshening, first in the steamy hot room where she had met Stella
+the day before, then the deliciously cool shower, gentle massage,
+and all the rest.
+
+At one of the little white tables of the manicures she noticed a
+pretty, rather sad-faced little woman. There was something about her
+that attracted Constance's attention, although she could not have
+told exactly what it was.
+
+"You know her?" whispered Floretta, bursting with excitement. "No?
+Why,--" and here she paused and dropped her voice even lower,--
+"that's Mrs. Warrington."
+
+"Not the--"
+
+"Yes," she nodded, "his wife. You know, she comes here twice a week.
+We have to do some tall scheming to keep them apart. No, it's not
+vanity, either. It's--well--you see, she's trying to get him back,
+to look like a sport."
+
+Constance thought of the hopeless fight so far which the little
+woman was waging to keep up with the dashing actress. Then she
+thought of Warrington, of last night, of how he had sought her, so
+ready, it seemed, to leave even the "other woman." Then Floretta's
+remark repeated itself mechanically. "We have to do some tall
+scheming to keep them apart." Was Stella here, after all?
+
+Mrs. Warrington was not a bad looking woman and in fact it was
+difficult to see how she expected to be improved by cosmetics that
+would lighten her complexion, bleaches that would flaxen her hair,
+tortures for this, that, and the other defect, real or imagined.
+
+Now, however, she was a creature of reinforcements, from her puffy
+masses of light hair to her French heels and embroidered stockings
+that showed through the slash in the drapery of her gown.
+
+Constance felt sorry for her, deeply sorry. The whole thing seemed
+not in keeping with her. She was a home-maker, not a butterfly. Was
+Warrington worth it all? asked Constance of herself. "At least she
+thinks so," flashed over her, as Mrs. Warrington rose, and left the
+room, watchfully guided by Floretta to the next process in her
+course in beautification.
+
+Constance sank back luxuriously on the cushions of her chaise
+longue. She longed to explore the beauty parlor, to leave the rest
+room and go down the narrow corridor, prying into the secrets of the
+little dressing rooms that opened into it. What did they conceal?
+Why had Vera seemed so distant? Was it the natural reaction of the
+"morning after," or was Stella really there and was she keeping her
+away from Mrs. Warrington to prevent friction between two clients
+that would have been annoying to all?
+
+She could reach no conclusion, except that there was a feeling of
+luxurious well-being as she lolled back into the deep recesses of
+the lounge in the corner of the room separated from the next room by
+a thin board partition.
+
+Suddenly her attention was arrested by muffled voices on the other
+side of the partition. She strained her ears. She could not, of
+course, see the speakers, or even recognize their voices, but they
+were a man and a woman.
+
+"We must get the thing settled right away," she overheard the man's
+voice. "You see how he is? Every new face attracts him. See how he
+took to that new one last night. Who knows what may happen? By and
+by some one may come along and spoil all."
+
+"Couldn't we use her?" asked the woman.
+
+"No, you can't use that woman. She's too clever. But we must do
+something, right away--to-night if possible."
+
+A pause. "How, then?"
+
+Another pause and the whispered monosyllable, "Dope!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"I have it here. Use a dozen of them. They can be snuffed as a
+powder, or it can be put in a drink. If you want more--see, I will
+put the bottle on this shelf--'way back. No one will see it."
+
+"Don't you think I ought to write a note, something that will be
+sure to get him up here?"
+
+"Yes--just a line or two--as if in haste."
+
+There was a sound as if of tearing a sheet of note paper from a pad.
+
+"Is that all right?"
+
+"Yes. As soon as the market closes. There will be nothing done to-
+day. To-morrow's the day. To-night we must get him going and in the
+meantime a meeting will be held, the plan arranged at the Prince
+Henry to-night--and then the smash. Between them all, he won't know
+what has struck him."
+
+"All right. You had better go out as you came in. It's better that
+no one up here should suspect anything."
+
+The voices ceased.
+
+What did it mean! Constance rose and sauntered around into the next
+room. It was empty, but when she looked hastily up on the shelf
+there was a bottle of white tablets and on a table a pad of note
+paper from which a sheet had been torn.
+
+She picked up the bottle gingerly. Who had touched it? Her mind was
+working quickly. Somewhere she had read of finger prints and the
+subject had interested her because the system had been introduced in
+banks and she saw that it was going to become more and more
+important.
+
+But how did they get them in a case like this? She had read of some
+powder that adhered to the marks left by the sweat glands of the
+fingers. There was the talcum powder. Perhaps it would do.
+
+Quickly she shook the box gently over the glass. Then she blew it
+off carefully.
+
+Clear, sharp, distinct, there were the imprints of fingers!
+
+But the paper. Talcum powder would not bring them out on that. It
+must be something black.
+
+A lead pencil! Eagerly she seized it and with, a little silver pen-
+knife whittled off the wood. Scrape! scrape! until she had a neat
+little pile of finely powdered graphite.
+
+Then she poured it on the paper and taking the sheet daintily by the
+edges, so that she would not mix her own finger prints with the
+others, she rolled the powder back and forth. As she looked
+anxiously she could see the little grains adhering to the paper.
+
+A fine camel's hair brush lay on the table, for penciling. She took
+it deftly. It made her think of that first time when she painted the
+checks for Carlton. A lump came into her throat.
+
+There they were, the second pair of telltale prints. But what tale
+did they tell? Whose were they?
+
+Her reading on finger prints had been very limited but, like
+everything she did, to the point. She studied those before her,
+traced out as best she could the loops, whorls, arches, and
+composites, even counted the ridges on some of them. It was not so
+difficult, after all.
+
+She stopped in an uptown branch of her brokers in one of the hotels.
+The market was very quiet, and even the Rubber Syndicate seemed to
+be marking time. As she went out she passed the telephone booths.
+Should she call up Warrington? Would he misinterpret it? What if he
+did? She was mistress of her own tongue. She need not say too much.
+Besides, if she were going on a fishing expedition, a telephone line
+was as good as any other--better than a visit.
+
+"This is Mrs. Dunlap," she said directly.
+
+"Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Dunlap. I have been intending to call you
+up, but," he paused, and added, "you know we are having a pretty
+strenuous time down here."
+
+There was a genuine ring to the first part of his reply. But the
+rest of it trailed off into the old blase tone.
+
+"I'm sorry," she replied. "I enjoyed last night so much."
+
+"Did you?" came back eagerly.
+
+Before he could add anything she asked, "I suppose you are going to
+see Stella again this afternoon."
+
+"Why--er--yes," he hesitated. "I think so."
+
+"Where? At Vera's?" she asked, adopting a tone not of curiosity but
+of chiding him for seeing Stella instead of herself.
+
+The moment of hesitation, before he said that he didn't know, told
+her the truth. It was as good as a plain, "Yes."
+
+For a few moments they chatted. As she hung up the receiver after
+his deferential goodbye, Constance knew that she had gained a new
+angle from which to observe Warrington's character. He was intensely
+human and he was "in wrong." Here was a mess, all around.
+
+The day wore on, yet brought no indecision as to what she would do,
+though it brought no solution as to how to do it. The inaction was
+worse than anything else. The last quotations had come in over the
+ticker, showing the Syndicate stocks still unchanged. She left her
+brokers and sat for a few moments in the rotunda of the hotel,
+considering. She could stand it no longer. Whatever happened, she
+would run around to Charmant's. Some excuse would occur when she got
+there.
+
+As Constance alighted from the private elevator, a delicate scent as
+of attar of roses smote lightly on her, and there was, if anything,
+a greater air of exotic warmth about the place. Everything, from the
+electric bulbs buried deep in the clusters of amber artificial
+flowers to the bright green leaves on the dainty trellises, the
+little square-paned windows and white furniture, bespoke luxury.
+There was an inviting "tone" to it all.
+
+"I'm glad I've found you," began Constance to Stella, as though
+nothing had happened. "There is something I'd like to say to you
+besides thanking you most kindly for the good time last--"
+
+"Is there anything I can do for you?" interrupted Madame Charmant in
+a business like tone. "I am sure that Miss Larue invited you last
+night because she thought you were lonely. She and Mr. Warrington,
+you know, are old friends."
+
+Charmant emphasized the remark to mean, "You trespassed on forbidden
+ground, if you thought you could get him away."
+
+Constance seemed not to notice the implication.
+
+"There is something I'd like to say," she repeated gently.
+
+She picked up a little inking pad which lay on a mahogany secretary
+which Vera used as an office desk.
+
+"If you will be so kind, Stella, as to place your fingers flat on
+this pad-never mind about the ink; call Floretta; she will wipe them
+off afterwards-and then on this piece of paper, I won't bother you
+further."
+
+Almost before she knew it, the little actress had placed her dainty
+white hand on the pad and then on the paper.
+
+Constance did the same, to illustrate, then called Floretta. "If
+Vera will do as I have done," she said, offering her the pad, and
+taking her hand. Charmant complied, and when Floretta arrived her
+impressions were added to the others.
+
+"There's a man wishes to see you, outside, Madame," said Floretta,
+wiping off the soiled finger tips.
+
+"Tell him to wait--in the little room."
+
+Floretta opened the door to go out and through it Constance caught
+sight of a familiar face.
+
+A moment later the man was in the room with them. It was Drummond,
+the same sneer, the same assurance in his manner.
+
+"So," he snarled at Constance. "You here?"
+
+"I seem to be here," she answered calmly. "Why?"
+
+"Never mind why," he blustered. "I knew you saw me the other night.
+I heard you tell 'em to hit it up so as to shake me. But I found out
+all right."
+
+"Found out what?" asked Constance coldly.
+
+"Say, that's about your style, isn't it? You always get in when it
+comes to trimming the good spenders, don't you?"
+
+"Mr. Drummond," she replied, "I don't care to talk to you."
+
+"You don't, hey? Well, perhaps, when the time comes you'll have to
+talk. How about that?"
+
+She was thinking rapidly. Was Mrs. Warrington preparing to strike a
+blow that would be the last impulse necessary to send the plunger
+down for the last time? She decided to take a chance, to temporize
+until some one else made a move.
+
+"I'd thank you to place your fingers on this pad," said Constance
+quietly. "I'm making a collection of these things."
+
+"You are, are you?"
+
+"Yes," she cut short. "And if my collection isn't large enough I
+shall call up Mrs. Warrington and ask her to come over, too," she
+added significantly.
+
+Floretta entered again. "Please wipe the ink off Mr. Drummond's
+fingers," ordered Constance quietly, still holding out the pad.
+
+"Confound your impudence," he ground out, seizing the pad. "There!
+What do you mean by Mrs. Warrington? What has she to do with this?
+Have a care, Mrs. Dunlap--you're on the wrong track here, and going
+the wrong way."
+
+"Mr. Warrington is--" began Floretta.
+
+"Show him in--quick," demanded Constance, determined to bring the
+affair to a show-down on the spot.
+
+As the door swung open, Warrington looked at the group in unfeigned
+surprise.
+
+"Mr. Warrington," greeted Constance without giving any of the others
+a chance, "this morning, I heard a little conversation up here.
+Floretta, will you go into the little room, and on the top shelf you
+will find a bottle. Bring it here carefully. I have a sheet of
+paper, also, which I am going to show you. I had already seen the
+little woman, Mr. Warrington, whom you have treated so unjustly. She
+was here trying vainly to win you back by those arts which she
+thinks must appeal to you."
+
+Floretta returned with the bottle and placed it on the secretary
+beside Constance.
+
+"Some one took some tablets from this bottle and gave them to some
+one else who wrote on this paper," she resumed, bending first over
+the paper she had torn from the pad. "Ah, a loop with twelve ridges,
+another loop, a whorl, a whorl, a loop. The marks on this paper
+correspond precisely with those made here just now by--Vera Charmant
+herself!"
+
+"You get out of here--quick," snarled Drummond, placing himself
+between the now furious Vera and Constance.
+
+"One minute," replied Constance calmly. "I am sure Mr. Warrington is
+a gentleman, if you are not. Perhaps I have no finger prints to
+correspond with those on the bottle. If not, I am sure that we can
+send for some one whose prints will do so."
+
+She was studying the bottle.
+
+"The other, however," she said slowly to conceal her own surprise,
+"was a person who has been set to trail you and Stella, Mr.
+Warrington, a detective named Drummond!"
+
+Suddenly the truth flashed over her. Drummond was not employed by
+Mrs. Warrington at all. Then by whom? By the directors. And the rest
+of these people? Grafters who were using Stella to bait the hook.
+Braden had gone over to them, had aided in plunging Warrington into
+the wild life until he could no longer play the business game as
+before. Charmant was his confederate, Drummond his witness.
+
+"Stella," said Constance, turning suddenly to the little actress,
+"Stella, they are using you, 'Diamond Jack' and Vera, using you to
+lead him on, playing the game of the minority of the directors of
+the Syndicate to get him out. There is to be a meeting of the
+directors to-night at the Prince Henry. He was to be in no condition
+to go. Are you willing to be mixed up in such a scandal?"
+
+Stella Larue was crying into a lace handkerchief. "You--you are all
+--against me," she sobbed. "What have I done?"
+
+"Nothing," soothed Constance, patting her shoulder. "As for Charmant
+and Drummond, they are tied by these proofs," she added, tapping the
+papers with the prints, then picking them up and handing them to
+Warrington. "I think if the story were told to the directors at the
+Prince Henry to-night with reporters waiting downstairs in the
+lobby, it might produce a quieting effect."
+
+Warrington was speechless. He saw them all against him, Vera,
+Braden, Stella, Drummond.
+
+"More than that," added Constance, "nothing that you can ever do can
+equal the patience, the faith of the little woman I saw here to-day,
+slaving, yes, slaving for beauty. Here in my hand, in these scraps
+of paper, I hold your old life,--not part of it, but ALL of it," she
+emphasized. "You have your chance. Will you take it?"
+
+He looked up quickly at Stella Larue. She had risen impulsively and
+flung her arms about Constance.
+
+"Yes," he muttered huskily, taking the papers, "all of it."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE ABDUCTORS
+
+
+"Take care of me--please--please!"
+
+A slip of a girl, smartly attired in a fur-trimmed dress and a chic
+little feather-tipped hat, hurried up to Constance Dunlap late one
+afternoon as she turned the corner below her apartment.
+
+"It isn't faintness or illness exactly--but--it's all so hazy,"
+stammered the girl breathlessly. "And I've forgotten who I am. I've
+forgotten where I live--and a man has been following me--oh, ever so
+long."
+
+The weariness in the tone of the last words caused Constance to look
+more closely at the girl. Plainly she was on the verge of hysterics.
+Tears were streaming down her pale cheeks and there were dark rings
+under her eyes, suggestive of a haunting fear of something from
+which she fled.
+
+Constance was astounded for the moment. Was the girl crazy? She had
+heard of cases like this, but to meet one so unexpectedly was surely
+disconcerting.
+
+"Who has been following you!" asked Constance gently, looking
+hastily over her shoulder and seeing no one.
+
+"A man," exclaimed the girl, "but I think he has gone now."
+
+"Can't you think of your name!" urged Constance. "Try."
+
+"No," cried the girl, "no, I can't, I can't."
+
+"Or your address?" repeated Constance. "Try--try hard!"
+
+The girl looked vacantly about.
+
+"No," she sobbed, "it's all gone--all."
+
+Puzzled, Constance took her arm and slowly walked her up the street
+toward her own apartment in the hope that she might catch sight of
+some familiar face or be able to pull herself together.
+
+But it was of no use.
+
+They passed a policeman who eyed them sharply. The mere sight of the
+blue-coated officer sent a shudder through the already trembling
+girl on her arm.
+
+"Don't, don't let them take me to a hospital--don't," pleaded the
+girl in a hoarse whisper when they had passed the officer.
+
+"I won't," reassured Constance. "Was that the man who was following
+you?"
+
+"No--oh, no," sobbed the girl nervously looking back.
+
+"Who was he, then?" asked Constance eagerly.
+
+The girl did not answer, but continued to look back wildly from time
+to time, although there was no doubt that, if he existed at all, the
+man had disappeared.
+
+Suddenly Constance realized that she had on her hands a case of
+aphasia, perhaps real, perhaps induced by a drug.
+
+At any rate, the fear of being sent away to an institution was so
+strong in the poor creature that Constance felt intuitively how
+disastrous to her might be the result of disregarding the obsession.
+
+She was in a quandary. What should she do with the girl? To leave
+her on the street was out of the question. She was now more helpless
+than ever.
+
+They had reached the door of the apartment. Gently she led the
+trembling girl into her own home.
+
+But now the question of what to do arose with redoubled force. She
+hesitated to call a physician, at least yet, because his first
+advice would probably be to send the poor little stranger to the
+psychopathic ward of some hospital.
+
+Constance's eye happened to rest on the dictionary in her bookcase.
+Perhaps she might recall the girl's name to her, if she were not
+shamming, by reading over the list of women's names in the back of
+the book.
+
+It meant many minutes, perhaps hours. But then Constance reflected
+on what might have happened to the girl if she had chanced to appeal
+to some one who had not felt a true interest in her. It was worth
+trying. She would do it.
+
+Starting with "A," she read slowly.
+
+"Is your name Abigail?"
+
+Down through Barbara, Camilla, Deborah, Edith, Faith, she read.
+
+"Flora?" she asked.
+
+The girl seemed to apprehend something, appear less blank.
+
+"Florence?" persisted Constance.
+
+"Oh, yes," she cried, "that's it--that's my name."
+
+But as for the last name and the address she was just as hazy as
+ever. Still, there was now something different about her.
+
+"Florence--Florence what?" reiterated Constance patiently.
+
+There was no answer. But with the continued repetition it seemed as
+if some depth in her nature had been stirred. Constance could not
+help feeling that the girl had really found herself.
+
+She had risen and was facing Constance, both hands pressed to her
+throbbing temples as if to keep her head from bursting. Constance
+had assisted her off with her coat and hat, and now the sartorial
+wreck of her masses of blonde hair was apparent.
+
+"I suppose," she cried incoherently, "I'm just one more of the
+thousands of girls who drop out of sight every year."
+
+Constance listened in amazement. As the spell of her influence
+seemed to calm the overwrought mind of the girl there succeeded a
+hardness in her tone that was wholly out of keeping with her youth.
+There was something that breathed of a past where there should have
+been nothing but the thought of a future.
+
+"Tell me why," soothed Constance with an air that invited
+confidence.
+
+The girl looked up and again passed her hand over her white forehead
+with its mass of tangled fallen hair. Somehow Constance felt a
+tingling sensation of sympathy in her heart. Impulsively she put out
+her hand and took the cold moist hand of the girl.
+
+"Because," she hesitated, struggling now with re-flooding
+consciousness, "because--I don't know. I thought, perhaps--" she
+added, dropping her eyes, "you could--help me."
+
+She was speaking rapidly enough now, "I think they have employed
+detectives to trace me. One of them is almost up with me. I'm afraid
+I can't slip out of the net again. And--I--I won't go back to them.
+I can't. I won't."
+
+"Go back to whom?" queried her friend. "Detectives employed by
+whom?"
+
+"My folks," she answered quickly.
+
+Constance was surprised. Least of all had she expected that.
+
+"Why won't you go home?" she prompted as the girl seemed about to
+lapse into a sort of stolid reticence.
+
+"Home?" she repeated bitterly. "Home? No one would believe my story.
+I couldn't go home, now. They have made it impossible for me to go
+home. I mean, every newspaper has published my picture. There were
+headlines for days, and only by chance I was not recognized."
+
+She was sobbing now convulsively. "If they had only let me alone! I
+might have gone back, then. But now--after the newspapers and the
+search--never! And yet I am going to have revenge some day. When he
+least expects it I am going to tell the truth and--"
+
+She stopped.
+
+"And what?" asked Constance.
+
+"Tell the truth--and then do a cowardly thing. I would--"
+
+"You would not!" blazed Constance.
+
+There was no mistaking the meaning.
+
+"Leave it to me. Trust me. I will help you."
+
+She pulled the girl down on the divan beside her.
+
+"Why talk of suicide?" mused Constance. "You can plead this aphasia
+I have just seen. I know lots of newspaper women. We could carry it
+through so that even the doctors would help us. Remember, aphasia
+will do for a girl nowadays what nothing else can do."
+
+"Aphasia!" Florence repeated harshly. "Call it what you like--
+weakness--anything. I--I loved that man--not the one who followed
+me--another. I believed him. But he left me--left me in a place--
+across in Brooklyn. They said I was a fool, that some other fellow,
+perhaps better, with more money, would take care of me. But I left.
+I got a place in a factory. Then some one in the factory became
+suspicious. I had saved a little. It took me to Boston.
+
+"Again some one grew suspicious. I came back here, here--the only
+place to hide. I got another position as waitress in the Betsy Ross
+Tea Room. There I was able to stay until yesterday. But then a man
+came in. He had been there before. He seemed too interested in me,
+not in a way that others have been, but in me--my name. Some how I
+suspected. I put on my hat and coat. I fled. I think he followed me.
+All night I have walked the streets and ridden in cars to get away
+from him. At last--I appealed to you."
+
+The girl had sunk back into the soft pillows of the couch beside her
+new friend and hid her face. Softly Constance patted and smoothed
+the wealth of golden hair.
+
+"You--you poor little girl," she sympathized.
+
+Then a film came over her own eyes.
+
+"New York took me at a critical time in my own life," she said more
+to herself than to the girl. "She sheltered me, gave me a new start.
+What she did for me she will do for any other person who really
+wishes to make a fresh start in life. I made few acquaintances, no
+friends. Fortunately, the average New Yorker asks only that his
+neighbor leave him alone. No hermit could find better and more
+complete solitude than in the heart of this great city."
+
+Constance looked pityingly at the girl before her.
+
+"Why can't you tell them," she suggested, "that you wanted to be
+independent, that you went away to make your own living?"
+
+"But--they--my father--is well off. And they have this detective who
+follows me. He will find me some day--for the reward--and will tell
+the truth."
+
+"The reward?"
+
+"Yes--a thousand dollars. Don't you remember reading--"
+
+The girl stopped short as if to check herself.
+
+"You--you are Florence Gibbons!" gasped Constance as with a rush
+there came over her the recollection of a famous unsolved mystery of
+several months before.
+
+The girl did not look up as Constance bent over and put her arms
+about her.
+
+"Who was he?" she asked persuasively.
+
+"Preston--Lansing Preston," she sobbed bitterly. "Only the other day
+I read of his engagement to a girl in Chicago--beautiful, in
+society. Oh--I could KILL him," she cried, throwing out her arms
+passionately. "Think of it. He--rich, powerful, respected. I--poor,
+almost crazy--an outcast."
+
+Constance did not interfere until the tempest had passed.
+
+"What name did you give at the tea room?" asked Constance.
+
+"Viola Cole," answered Florence.
+
+"Rest here," soothed Constance. "Here at least you are safe. I have
+an idea. I shall be back soon."
+
+The Betsy Ross was still open after the rush of tired shoppers and
+later of business women to whom this was not only a restaurant but a
+club. Constance entered and sat down.
+
+"Is the manager in?" she asked of the waitress.
+
+"Mrs. Palmer? No. But, if you care to wait, I think she'll be back
+directly."
+
+As Constance sat toying absently with some food at one of the snowy
+white tables, a man entered. A man in a tea room is an anomaly. For
+the tea room is a woman's institution, run by women for women. Men
+enter with diffidence, and seldom alone. This man was quite
+evidently looking for some one.
+
+His eye fell on Constance. Her heart gave a leap. It was her old
+enemy, Drummond, the detective. For a moment he hesitated, then
+bowed, and came over to her table.
+
+"Peculiar places, these tea rooms," observed Drummond.
+
+Constance was doing some quick thinking. Could this be the detective
+Florence Gibbons had mentioned?
+
+"The only thing lacking to make them complete," he rattled on, "is a
+license. Now, take those places that have a ladies' bar--that do
+openly what tea rooms do covertly. They don't reckon with the
+attitude of women. This is New York--not Paris. Such things are
+years off. I don't say they'll not come or that women won't use
+them--but not by that name--not yet."
+
+Constance wondered what his cynical inconsequentialities masked.
+
+"I think it adds to the interest," she observed, watching him
+furtively, "this evasion of the laws."
+
+Drummond was casting about for something to do and, naturally, to a
+mind like his, a drink was the solution. Evidently, however, there
+were degrees of brazenness, even in tea rooms. The Betsy Ross not
+only would not produce a labeled bottle and an obvious glass but
+stoutly denied their ability to fill such an order, even whispered.
+
+"Russian tea?" suggested Drummond cryptically.
+
+"How will you have it--with Scotch or rye?" asked the waitress.
+
+"Bourbon," hazarded Drummond.
+
+When the "Russian tea" arrived it was in a neat little pot with two
+others, the first containing real tea and the second hot water. It
+was served virtuously in tea cups, so opaquely concealed that no one
+but the clandestine drinker could know what sort of poison was being
+served.
+
+Mrs. Palmer was evidently later than expected. Drummond fidgeted
+after the manner of a man out of his accustomed habitat. And yet he
+did not seem to be interested really in Constance, or even in Mrs.
+Palmer. For after a few moments, he rose and excused himself.
+
+"How did HE come here?" Constance asked herself over and over.
+
+As far as she could reason it out, there could be only one reason.
+Drummond was clearly up with Florence. Did he also know that
+Constance was shielding her?
+
+The more she thought of it, the more she shuddered at the tactless
+way in which the detective would perform the act of "charity" by
+discovering the lost girl--and pocketing the reward.
+
+If her family only knew, how eagerly they might let her come back in
+her own way. She looked up the address of Everett Gibbons while she
+was waiting, a half-formed plan taking definite shape in her mind.
+
+What--she did must be done quickly. Here at the tea room at least
+Florence, or rather Viola, was known. Perhaps the best way, after
+all, was to let her be discovered here. They could not deny that she
+had been working for them acceptably for some time.
+
+Half an hour later, Mrs. Palmer, a bustling business woman, came in
+and the waitress pointed her out to Constance.
+
+"Did you have a waitress here named Viola Cole?" began Constance,
+watching keenly the effect of her inquiry.
+
+"Yes," replied Mrs. Palmer in a tone of interest that reassured
+Constance that, if there were any connection between Drummond's
+presence and Mrs. Palmer, it was wholly on his seeking. "But she
+disappeared last night. A most peculiar girl--but a splendid
+worker."
+
+"She has been ill," Constance hastened to explain. "I am a friend of
+hers. I have a business downtown and could not come around until to-
+night to tell you that she will be back to-morrow if you will take
+her back."
+
+"Of course I'll take her back. I'm sorry she's ill," and Mrs. Palmer
+bustled out into the kitchen, not unfeelingly but merely because
+that was her manner.
+
+Constance paid her check and left the tea room. So far she had
+succeeded. The next thing she had planned was a visit to Mr.
+Gibbons. That need not take long, for she was not going to tell
+anything. Her idea was merely to pave the way.
+
+The Gibbons she found, lived in a large house on one of the numerous
+side streets from the Park, in a neighborhood that was in fact
+something more than merely well-to-do.
+
+Fortunately she found Everett Gibbons in and was ushered into his
+study, where he sat poring over some papers and enjoying an after-
+dinner cigar.
+
+"Mr. Gibbons," began Constance, "I believe there is a one thousand
+dollar reward for news of the whereabouts of your daughter,
+Florence."
+
+"Yes," he said in a colorless tone that betrayed the hopelessness of
+the long search. "But we have traced down so many false clues that
+we have given up hope. Since the day she went away, we have never
+been able to get the slightest trace of her. Still, we welcome
+outside aid."
+
+"Of detectives?" she asked.
+
+"Official and private--paid and volunteer--anybody," he answered. "I
+myself have come to the belief that she is dead, for that is the
+only explanation I can think of for her long silence."
+
+"She is not dead," replied Constance in a low tone.
+
+"Not dead?" he repeated eagerly, catching at even such a straw as an
+unknown woman might cast out. "Then you know--"
+
+"No," she interrupted positively, "I cannot tell you any more. You
+must call off all other searchers. I will let you know."
+
+"When?"
+
+"To-morrow, perhaps the next day. I will call you on the telephone."
+
+She rose and made a hasty adieu before the man who had been
+prematurely aged might overwhelm her with questions and break down
+her resolution to carry the thing through as she had seen best.
+
+Cheerily, Constance turned the key in the lock of her door.
+
+There was no light and somehow the silence smote on her ominously.
+
+"Florence!" she called.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+Not a sign indicated her presence. There was the divan with the
+pillows disarranged as they had been when she left. The furniture
+was in the same position as before. Hastily she went from one room
+to another. Florence had disappeared!
+
+She went to the door again. All seemed right there. If any one had
+entered, it must have been because he was admitted, for there were
+no marks to indicate that the lock had been forced.
+
+She called up the tea room. Mrs. Palmer was very sympathetic, but
+there had been no trace of "Viola Cole" there yet.
+
+"You will let me know if you get any word?" asked Constance
+anxiously.
+
+"Surely," came back Mrs. Palmer's cordial reply.
+
+A hundred dire possibilities crowded through her mind. Might
+Florence be held somewhere as a "white slave"--not by physical force
+but by circumstances, ignorant of her rights, afraid to break away
+again?
+
+Or was it suicide, as she had threatened? She could not believe it.
+Nothing could have happened in such a short time to change her
+resolution about revenge.
+
+The recollection of all the stories she had read recently crossed
+her mind. Could it be a case of drugs? The girl had given no
+evidence of being a "dope" fiend.
+
+Perhaps some one had entered, after all.
+
+She thought of the so-called "poisoned needle" cases. Might she not
+have been spirited off in that way? Constance had doubted the
+stories. She knew that almost any doctor would say that it was
+impossible to inject a narcotic by a sudden jab of a hypodermic
+syringe. That was rather a slow, careful and deliberate operation,
+to be submitted to with patience.
+
+Yet Florence was gone!
+
+Suddenly it flashed over Constance that Drummond might not be
+seeking the reward primarily, after all. His first object might be
+shielding Preston. She recollected that Mr. Gibbons had said nothing
+about Drummond, either one way or the other. And if he were both
+shielding Preston and working for the reward, he would care little
+how much Florence suffered. He might be playing both ends to serve
+himself.
+
+She rang the elevator bell.
+
+"Has anybody called at my apartment while I was out?" she asked.
+
+"Yes'm. A man came here."
+
+"And you let him up?"
+
+"I didn't know you were out. You see I had just come on. He said he
+was to meet some one at your apartment. And when he pressed the
+buzzer, the door opened, and I ran the elevator down again. I
+thought it was all right, ma'am."
+
+"And then what?" inquired Constance breathlessly.
+
+"Well, in about five minutes my bell rang. I ran the elevator up
+again, and, waiting, was this man with a girl I had never seen
+before. You understand--I thought it was all right--he told me he
+was going to meet some one."
+
+"Yes--yes. I understand. Oh, my God, if I had only thought to leave
+word not to let her go. How did she look?"
+
+"Her clothes, you mean, Ma'am?"
+
+"No--her face, her eyes!"
+
+"Beggin' your pardon, I thought she was--well, er,--acted queer--
+scared--dazed-like."
+
+"You didn't notice which way they went, I suppose!"
+
+"No ma'am, I didn't."
+
+Constance turned back again into her empty apartment, heart-sick. In
+spite of all she had planned and done, she was defeated--worse than
+defeated. Where was Florence! What might not happen to her! She
+could have sat down and cried. Instead she passed a feverishly
+restless night.
+
+All the next day passed, and still not a word. She felt her own
+helplessness. She could not appeal to the police. That might defeat
+the very end she sought. She was single-handed. For all she knew,
+she was fighting the almost limitless power of brains and money of
+Preston. Inquiry developed the fact that Preston himself was
+reported to be in Chicago with his fiancee. Time and again she was
+on the point of making the journey to let him know that some one at
+least was watching him. But, she reflected, if she did that she
+might miss the one call from Florence for help.
+
+Then she thought bitterly of the false hopes she had raised in the
+despairing father of Florence Gibbons. It was maddening.
+
+Several times during the day Constance dropped into the Betsy Ross,
+without finding any word.
+
+Late that night the buzzer on her door sounded. It was Mrs. Palmer
+herself, with a letter at last, written on rough paper in pencil
+with a trembling hand.
+
+Constance almost literally pounced on it.
+
+"Will you tell the lady who was so kind to me that while she was out
+seeing you at the tea room, there was a call at her door? I didn't
+like to open it, but when I asked who was there, a man said it was
+the steam-fitter she had asked to call about the heat.
+
+"I opened the door. From that moment when I saw his face until I
+came to myself here I remember nothing. I would write to her, only I
+don't know where she lives. One of the bell-boys here is kind enough
+to smuggle this note out for me addressed to the Betsy Boss.
+
+"Tell her please, that I am at a place in Brooklyn, I think, called
+Lustgarten's--she can recognize it because it is at a railroad
+crossing--steam railroads, not trolleys or elevateds.
+
+"I know you think me crazy, Mrs. Palmer, but the other lady can tell
+you about it. Oh, it was the same horrible feeling that came over me
+that night as before. It isn't a dream; it's more like a trance. It
+comes in a second--usually when I am frightened. I suddenly feel
+nervous and shaky. I can't tell what is going on around me. I lose
+my hearing. Part of the time it is as though, I had a paralytic
+stroke of the tongue. The next day, perhaps, it is gone. But while
+it lasts it is terrifying. It's like walking into a new world, with
+everybody, everything strange about me."
+
+The note ended with a most pathetic appeal.
+
+Constance was already nervously putting on her hat.
+
+"You are going to go there?" asked Mrs. Palmer.
+
+"If I can locate the place," she answered.
+
+"Aren't you afraid?" inquired the other.
+
+Constance did not reply. She ostentatiously slipped a little ivory-
+handled revolver into her handbag.
+
+"It's a new one," she explained finally, "like nothing you ever
+heard of before, I guess. I bought it only the other day after a
+friend of mine told me about it."
+
+Mrs. Palmer was watching her closely.
+
+"You--you are a wonderful woman," she burst out finally. "It isn't
+good business, it isn't good sense."
+
+Constance stopped short in her preparations for the search. "What
+are business and sense compared to the--the life of--"
+
+She checked herself on the very point of revealing the girl's real
+name.
+
+"Nothing," replied Mrs. Palmer. "I had already made up my mind to go
+with you before I spoke--if you will let me."
+
+In a moment the two understood each other better than after years of
+casual acquaintance.
+
+Back and forth through the mazes of streets and car lines of the
+city across the river the two women traveled, asking veiled
+questions of every wearer of a uniform, until at last they found
+such a place as Florence had described in her note.
+
+There, it seemed, had sprung up a little center of vice. While
+reformers were trying to clamp down tight the "lid" in New York, all
+the vicious elements were prying it up here. Crushed in one place,
+they rose again in another.
+
+There was the electric sign--"Lustgarten." Even a cursory glance
+told them that it included a saloon on the first floor, with a sort
+of dance hall and second-rate cabaret. Above that was a hotel. The
+windows were darkened, with awnings pulled down, even on what must
+have been in the daytime the shady side.
+
+"Shall we go in? Are you game?" asked Constance of her companion.
+
+"I haven't gone so far without considering that," replied Mrs.
+Palmer, somewhat reproachfully.
+
+Without a word Constance entered the door down the street followed
+by her companion.
+
+A negro at the little cubby hole of an office pushed out a register
+at them. Constance signed the first names that came into her head,
+and a moment later they were on their way up to a big double room on
+the third floor, led by another, younger negro.
+
+"Will you send the bell-boy up?" asked Constance as they entered the
+room.
+
+"I'm the bell-boy ma'am," was his disconcerting reply.
+
+"I mean the other one," replied Constance, hazarding, "the one who
+is here in the day time."
+
+"There ain't no other boy, ma'am. There ain't no--"
+
+"Could you deliver a note for me at a tea room in New York to-
+morrow?" interrupted Constance, striking while the iron seemed hot.
+
+The boy turned around abruptly from his busy occupation of doing
+something useless that would elicit a tip. He quietly shut the door,
+and wheeled about with his hand still on the knob.
+
+"Do you want to know what room she's in?" he asked.
+
+Constance opened her handbag. Mrs. Palmer suppressed a little
+scream. She had expected that ivory-handled thing to appear. Instead
+there was a treasury note of a size that caused the white part of
+the boy's eyes to expand beyond all the laws of optics.
+
+"Yes," she said, pressing it into his hand.
+
+"Forty-two-down the hall, around the turn, on the other side,"
+whispered the boy. "And for God's sake, ma'am, don't tell nobody I
+told you."
+
+His shuffle down the hall had scarcely ceased before the two women
+were stealthily creeping in the opposite direction, looking eagerly
+at the numbers.
+
+Constance had stopped abruptly around the turn. Through a transom of
+one of the rooms they could hear voices but could see no light.
+
+"Well, go back then," growled a gruff voice. "Your family will never
+believe your story, never believe that you came again and stayed at
+Lustgarten's against your will. Why," the voice taunted with a harsh
+laugh, "if they knew the truth, they would turn you from the door,
+instead of offering a reward."
+
+There was a moment of silence. Then a woman's voice, strangely
+familiar to Constance, spoke.
+
+"The truth!" she exclaimed bitterly. "He knew it was a case of a
+girl who liked a good time, liked pretty clothes, a ride in an
+automobile, theaters, excitement, bright lights, night life--a girl
+with a romantic disposition in whom all that was repressed at home.
+He knew it," she repeated, raising the tone to an almost hysterical
+pitch, "led me on, made me love him because he could give them all
+to me. And when I began to show the strain of the pace-they all show
+it more than the men--he cast me aside like a squeezed-out lemon."
+
+As she listened, Constance understood it all now. It was to make
+Florence Gibbons a piece of property, a thing to be traded in,
+bartered--that was the idea. Discover her--yes; but first to thrust
+her into the life if she would not go into it herself--anything to
+discredit her testimony beforehand, anything to save the precious
+reputation of one man.
+
+"Well," shouted the other voice menacingly, "do you want to know the
+truth? Haven't you read it often enough? Instead of hoping you will
+return, they pray that you are DEAD!"
+
+He hissed the words out, then added, "They prefer to think that you
+are dead. Why--damn it!--they turn to that belief for COMFORT!"
+
+Constance had seized Mrs. Palmer by the arm, and, acting in concert,
+they threw both their weights against the thin wooden door.
+
+It yielded with a crash.
+
+Inside the room was dark.
+
+Indistinctly Constance could make out two figures, one standing, the
+other seated in a deep rocker.
+
+A suppressed exclamation of surprise was followed by a hasty lunge
+of the standing figure toward her.
+
+Constance reached quickly into her handbag and drew out the little
+ivory-handled pistol.
+
+"Bang!" it spat almost into the man's face.
+
+Choking, sputtering, the man groped a minute blindly, then fell on
+the floor and frantically tried to rise again and call out.
+
+The words seemed to stick in his throat.
+
+"You--you shot him?" gasped a woman's voice which Constance now knew
+was Florence's.
+
+"With the new German Secret Service gun," answered Constance
+quietly, keeping it leveled to cow any assistance that might be
+brought. "It blinds and stupefies without killing--a bulletless
+revolver intended to check and render harmless the criminal instead
+of maiming him. The cartridges contain several chemicals that
+combine when they are exploded and form a vapor which blinds a man
+and puts him out. No one wants to kill such a person as this."
+
+She reached over and switched on the lights.
+
+The man on the floor was Drummond himself.
+
+"You will tell your real employer, Mr. Preston," she added
+contemptuously, "that unless he agrees to our story of his elopement
+with Florence, marries her, and allows her to start an undefended
+action for divorce, we intend to make use of the new federal Mann
+Act--with a jail sentence--for both of you."
+
+Drummond looked up sullenly, still blinking and choking.
+
+"And not a word of this until the suit is filed. Then WE will see
+the reporters--not he. Understand?"
+
+"Yes," he muttered, still clutching his throat.
+
+An hour later Constance was at the telephone in her own apartment.
+
+"Mr. Gibbons? I must apologize for troubling you at this late, or
+rather early, hour. But I promised you something which I could not
+fulfill until now. This is the Mrs. Dunlap who called on you the
+other day with a clue to your daughter Florence. I have found her--
+yes--working as a waitress in the Betsy Ross Tea Boom. No--not a
+word to anyone--not even to her mother. No--not a word. You can see
+her to-morrow--at my apartment. She is going to live with me for a
+few days until--well--until we get a few little matters straightened
+out."
+
+Constance had jammed the receiver back on the hook hastily.
+
+Florence Gibbons, wild-eyed, trembling, imploring, had flung her
+arms about her neck.
+
+"No--no--no," she cried. "I can't. I won't."
+
+With a force that was almost masculine, Constance took the girl by
+both shoulders.
+
+"The one thousand dollar reward which comes to me," said Constance
+decisively, "will help us--straighten out those few little matters
+with Preston. Mrs. Palmer can stretch the time which you have worked
+for her."
+
+Something of Constance's will seemed to be infused into Florence
+Gibbons by force of suggestion.
+
+"And remember," Constance added in a tense voice, "for anything
+after your elopement--it's aphasia, aphasia, APHASIA!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE SHOPLIFTERS
+
+
+"Madam, would you mind going with me for a few moments to the office
+on the third floor?"
+
+Constance Dunlap had been out on a shopping excursion. She had
+stopped at the jewelry counter of Stacy's to have a ring repaired
+and had gone on to the leather goods department to purchase
+something else.
+
+The woman who spoke to her was a quietly dressed young person, quite
+inconspicuous, with a keen eye that seemed to take in everything
+within a radius of a wide-angled lens at a glance.
+
+She leaned over and before Constance could express even surprise,
+added in a whisper, "Look in your bag."
+
+Constance looked hastily, then realized what had happened. The ring
+was gone!
+
+It gave her quite a shock, too, for the ring, a fine diamond, was a
+present from her husband, one of the few pieces of jewelry,
+treasured not only for its intrinsic value but as a remembrance of
+Carlton and the supreme sacrifice he had made for her.
+
+She had noticed nothing in the crowd, nothing more than she had
+noticed scores of times before. The woman watched her puzzled look.
+
+"I've been following you," she said. "By this time the other store
+detectives must have caught the shoplifter and bag-opener who
+touched you. You see, we don't make any arrests in the store if we
+can help it, because we don't like to make a scene. It's bad for
+business. Besides, if she had anything else, we are safer when the
+case comes to court, if we have caught her actually leaving the
+store with it. Of course, when we make an arrest on the sidewalk, we
+bring the shoplifter back, but in a private, back elevator."
+
+Constance was following the young woman mechanically. At least there
+was a chance of recovering the ring.
+
+"She was standing next to you at the jewelry counter," she
+continued, "and if you will help identify her the store management
+will appreciate it--and make it worth your while. Besides," she
+urged, "It's really your duty to do it, madam."
+
+Constance remembered now the rather simply but richly gowned young
+woman who had been standing next to her at the counter, seemingly
+unable to decide which of a number of beautiful rings she really
+wanted. She remembered because, with her own love of beauty, she had
+wanted one herself, in fact had thought at the time that she, too,
+might have difficulty in choosing.
+
+With the added feeling of curiosity, Constance followed the woman
+detective up in the elevator.
+
+In the office, apart in a little room curiously furnished with a
+camera, innumerable photographs, cabinets, and filing cases, was a
+young woman, perhaps twenty-six or seven. On a table before her lay
+a pile of laces and small trinkets. There, too, was the beautiful
+diamond ring which she had hidden in her muff. Constance fairly
+gasped at the sight.
+
+The girl was sitting limply in a chair crying bitterly. She was not
+a hardened looking creature. In fact, her face bore evident traces
+of refinement, and her long, slender fingers hinted at a nervous,
+artistic temperament. It was rather a shock to see such a girl under
+such distressing circumstances.
+
+"We've lost so much lately," a small ferret-eyed man was saying,
+"that we must make an example of some one. It's serious for us
+detectives, too. We'll lose our jobs unless we can stop you
+boosters."
+
+"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.
+
+Constance's attention was recalled by the man who beckoned her aside
+to talk to the salesgirl who had waited on her.
+
+"You remember seeing this lady at the counter?" he asked of the
+girl. She nodded. "And that woman in there?" he motioned. Again the
+salesgirl nodded.
+
+"Do you remember anything else that happened?" he asked Constance as
+they faced Kitty Carr and he handed Constance the ring.
+
+Constance looked the detective squarely in the face for a moment.
+
+"I have my ring. You have the other stuff," she murmured. "Besides,
+there is no record against her. She doesn't even look like a
+professional bad character. No--I'll not appear to press the charge
+--I'll make it as hard as I can before I'll do it," she added
+positively.
+
+The woman, who had overheard, looked her gratitude. The detectives
+were preparing to argue. Constance hardly knew what she was saying,
+as she hurried on before any one else could speak.
+
+"No," she added, "but I'll tell you what I will do. If you will let
+her go I will look after her. Parole her, unofficially, with me."
+
+Constance drew a card from her case and handed it to the detective.
+He read it carefully, and a puzzled look came over his face. "Charge
+account--good customer--pays promptly," he muttered under his
+breath.
+
+For a moment he hesitated. Then he sat down at a desk.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," he said, "I'll do it."
+
+He pulled a piece of printed paper from the desk, filled in a few
+blanks, then turned to Kitty Carr, handing her a pen.
+
+"Sign here," he said brusquely.
+
+Constance bent over and read. It was a form of release:
+
+"I, Kitty Carr, residing at--East --th Street, single, age twenty-
+seven years, in consideration of the sum of One Dollar, hereby admit
+taking the following property... without having paid therefor and
+with intent not to pay therefor, and by reason of the withdrawal of
+the complaint of larceny, OF WHICH I AM GUILTY, I hereby remise,
+release, and forever discharge the said Stacy Co. or its
+representatives from any claims, action, or causes of action which I
+may have against the Stacy Co. or its representatives or agents by
+reason of the withdrawal of said charge of larceny and failure to
+prosecute."
+
+"Signed, Kitty Carr."
+
+"Now, Kitty," soothed Constance, as the trembling signature was
+blotted and added to a photograph which had quietly been taken,
+"they are going to let you go this time--with me. Come, straighten
+your hat, wipe your eyes. You must take me home with you--where we
+can have a nice long talk. Remember, I am your friend."
+
+On the way uptown and across the city the girl managed to tell most
+of her history. She came from a family of means in another city. Her
+father was dead, but her mother and a brother were living. She
+herself had a small annuity, sufficient to live on modestly, and had
+come to New York seeking a career as an artist. Her story, her
+ambitions appealed to Constance, who had been somewhat of an artist
+herself and recognized even in talking to the girl that she was not
+without some ability.
+
+Then, too, she found that Kitty actually lived, as she had said, in
+a cozy little kitchenette apartment with two friends, a man and his
+wife, both of whom happened to be out when they arrived. As
+Constance looked about she could see clearly that there was indeed
+no adequate reason why the girl should steal.
+
+"How do you feel?" asked Constance when the girl had sunk half
+exhausted on a couch in the living room.
+
+"Oh, so nervous," she replied, pressing her hands to the back of her
+head, "and I have a terrible headache, although it is a little
+better now."
+
+They had talked for perhaps half an hour, as Constance soothed her,
+when there was the sound of a key in the door. A young woman in
+black entered. She was well-dressed, in fact elegantly dressed in a
+quiet way, somewhat older than Kitty, but by no means as attractive.
+
+"Why--hello, Kitty," she cried, "what's the matter!"
+
+"Oh, Annie, I'm so unstrung," replied the girl, then recollecting
+Constance, added, "let me introduce my friend, Mrs. Dunlap. This is
+Mrs. Annie Grayson, who has taken me in as a lodger and is ever so
+kind to me."
+
+Constance nodded, and the woman held out her hand frankly.
+
+"Very glad to meet you," she said. "My husband, Jim, is not at home,
+but we are a very happy little family up here. Why, Kitty, what is
+the matter?"
+
+The girl had turned her face down in the sofa pillows and was
+sobbing again. Between sobs she blurted out the whole of the sordid
+story. And as she proceeded, Annie glanced quickly from her to
+Constance, for confirmation.
+
+Suddenly she rose and extended her hand to Constance.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," she said, "how can I ever thank you for what you have
+done for Kitty? She is almost like a sister to me. You--you were--
+too good."
+
+There was a little catch in the woman's voice. But Constance could
+not quite make out whether it was acted or wholly genuine.
+
+"Did she ever do anything like that before?" she asked.
+
+"Only once," replied Annie Grayson, "and then I gave her such a
+talking to that I thought she would be able to restrain herself when
+she felt that way again."
+
+It was growing late and Constance recollected that she had an
+engagement for the evening. As she rose to go Kitty almost
+overwhelmed her with embraces.
+
+"I'll keep in touch with Kitty," whispered Constance at the door,
+"and if you will let me know when anything comes up that I may help
+her in, I shall thank you."
+
+"Depend on me," answered Mrs. Grayson, "and I want to add my thanks
+to Kitty's for what you have done. I'll try to help you."
+
+As she groped her way down the as yet unlighted stairs, Constance
+became aware of two men talking in the hall. As she passed them she
+thought she recognized one of the voices. She lowered her head, and
+fortunately her thin veil in the half-light did the rest. She passed
+unnoticed and reached the door of the apartment.
+
+As she opened it she heard the men turn and mount the stairs.
+Instinctively she realized that something was wrong. One of the men
+was her old enemy, Drummond, the detective.
+
+They had not recognized her, and as she stood for a moment with her
+hand on the knob, she tried to reason it out. Then she crept back,
+and climbed the stairs noiselessly. Voices inside the apartment told
+her that she had not been mistaken. It was the apartment of the
+Graysons and Kitty that they sought.
+
+The hall door was of thin, light wood, and as she stood there she
+could easily hear what passed inside.
+
+"What--is Kitty ill?" she heard the strange man's voice inquire.
+
+"Yes," replied Mrs. Grayson, then her voice trailed off into an
+indistinguishable whisper.
+
+"How are you, Kitty?" asked the man.
+
+"Oh, I have a splitting headache, Jim. I've had it all day. I could
+just get up and--screech!"
+
+"I'm sorry. I hope it gets better soon."
+
+"Oh, I guess it will. They often go away as suddenly as they come.
+You know I've had them before."
+
+Drummond's voice then spoke up.
+
+"Did you see the Trimble ad. to-night?" he asked, evidently of
+Annie. "They have a lot of new diamonds from Arkansas, they say,--
+one of them is a big one, the Arkansas Queen, I believe they call
+it."
+
+"No, I didn't see the papers," replied Annie.
+
+There was the rustle of a newspaper.
+
+"Here's a picture of it. It must be great. I've heard a good deal
+about it."
+
+"Have you seen it?" asked Annie.
+
+"No, but I intend to see it."
+
+They had passed into the next room, and Constance, fearing to be
+discovered, decided to get away before that happened.
+
+Early the next morning she decided to call on Kitty, but by the time
+Constance arrived at the apartment it was closed, and a neighbor
+informed her that the two women had gone out together about half an
+hour before.
+
+Constance was nervous and, as she left the apartment, she did not
+notice that a man who had been loitering about had quickened his
+pace and overtaken her.
+
+"So," drawled a voice, "you're traveling with shoplifters now."
+
+She looked up quickly. This time she had run squarely into Drummond.
+There was no concealment possible now. Her only refuge was silence.
+She felt the hot tingle of indignation in her cheeks. But she said
+nothing.
+
+"Huh!" exclaimed Drummond, walking along beside her, and adding
+contemptuously, "I don't know the young one, but you know who the
+other is?"
+
+Constance bit her lip.
+
+"No?" he queried. "Then I'll show you."
+
+He had taken from his pocket a bunch of oblong cards. Each bore, she
+could see from the corner of her eye, a full face and a profile
+picture of a woman, and on the back of the card was a little
+writing.
+
+He selected one and handed it to Constance. Instantly she recognized
+the face. It was Annie Grayson, with half a dozen aliases written
+after the name.
+
+"There!" he fairly snorted. "That's the sort of people your little
+friend consorts with. Why, they call Annie Grayson the queen of the
+shoplifters. She has forgotten more about shoplifting than all the
+rest will ever know."
+
+Constance longed to ask him what had taken him to the Grayson flat
+the night before, but thought better of it. There was no use in
+angering Drummond further. Instead, she let him think that he had
+succeeded in frightening her off.
+
+She went back to her own apartment to wait and worry. Evidently
+Drummond was pretty sure of something, or he would not have
+disclosed his hand to her, even partially. She felt that she must
+see Kitty before it was too late. Then the thought crossed her mind
+that perhaps already it was too late. Drummond evidently was working
+in some way for an alliance of the department stores outside.
+
+Constance had had her own ideas about Kitty. And as she waited and
+watched, she tried to reason how she might carry them out if she had
+a chance.
+
+She had just been insured, and had been very much interested in the
+various tests that the woman doctor of the insurance company had
+applied to her. One in particular which involved the use of a little
+simple instrument that fitted over the forearm had interested her
+particularly. She had talked to the doctor about it, and as she
+talked an idea had occurred to her that it might have other uses
+than those which the doctor made of it. She had bought one. While
+she was waiting it occurred to her that perhaps it might serve her
+purpose. She got the instrument out. It consisted of a little
+arrangement that fitted over the forearm, and was attached by a tube
+to a dial that registered in millimeters a column of mercury. Would
+it really show anything, she wondered?
+
+There was a quick call on the telephone and she answered it, her
+hand trembling, for she felt sure that it was something about the
+little woman she had befriended.
+
+Somehow or other her voice hardened as she answered the call and
+found that it was from Drummond. It would never do to betray even
+nervousness before him.
+
+"Your friend, Miss Carr," shot out Drummond with brutal directness,
+"has been caught again. She fell into something as neatly as if she
+had really meant to do it. Yesterday, you know, Trimble's advertised
+the new diamond, the Arkansas Queen, on exhibition. Well, it was
+made of paste, anyway. But it was a perfect imitation. But that
+didn't make any difference. We caught Kitty just now trying to lift
+it. I'm sorry it wasn't the other one. But small fry are better than
+none. We'll get her, too, yet. Besides, I find this Kitty has a
+record already at Stacy's."
+
+He added the last words with a taunting sneer. Constance realized
+suddenly the truth. The whole affair had been a plant of Drummond's!
+
+"You are at Trimble's?" she inquired quickly. "Well, can you wait
+there just a few minutes? I'd like to see Miss Carr."
+
+Drummond promised. His acquiescence in itself boded no good, but
+nevertheless she decided to go. As she left her apartment hurriedly
+she picked up the little instrument and dropped it into her hand-
+bag.
+
+"You see, it's no use," almost chortled Drummond as Constance
+stepped off the elevator and opened the door to a little room at
+Trimble's much like that which she had already seen at Stacy's. "A
+shoplifter becomes habitual after twenty-five. They get to
+consorting with others of their kind."
+
+Kitty was sitting rigidly motionless in a chair, staring straight
+ahead, as Constance entered. She gave a start at the sight of a
+familiar face, rose, and would almost have fainted if Constance had
+not caught her. It seemed as if something had snapped in the girl's
+make-up. For the first time tears came. Constance patted her hand
+softly. The girl was an enigma. Was she a clever actress--one minute
+hardened Miss Sophisticated, the next appealing Miss Innocence?
+
+"How did you--catch her?" asked Constance a moment later as she
+found an opportunity to talk to Drummond alone.
+
+"Oh, she was trying to substitute a paste replica for the alleged
+Arkansas Queen. The clerk noticed the replica in time, saw a little
+spot of carbon on it--and she was shadowed and arrested just as she
+was leaving the store. Yes, they found the other paste jewel on her.
+She was caught with the goods."
+
+"Replica?" repeated Constance, thinking of the picture that had
+appeared in the papers the night before. "How could she get a
+replica of it?"
+
+"How do I know?" shrugged Drummond coldly.
+
+Constance looked him squarely in the eyes.
+
+"What about Annie Grayson?" she asked pointblank.
+
+"I have taken care of that," he replied harshly. "She is already
+under arrest, and from what I have heard we may get something on her
+now. We have a record against the Carr girl. We can use it against
+her friend. We're just about taking her to the flat to identify the
+Grayson woman. Would you like to come along?" he added in a spirit
+of bravado. "I think you are a material witness in the Stacy case,
+anyhow."
+
+Constance felt bitterly her defeat. Still she went with them. There
+was always a chance that something might turn up.
+
+As they entered the door of the kitchenette loud voices told them
+that some one was disputing inside.
+
+Drummond strode in.
+
+The sight of a huge pile of stuff that two strange men had drawn out
+of drawers and closets and stacked on the table riveted Constance's
+eyes. Only dimly she could hear that Annie Grayson was violently
+threatening Drummond, who stood coolly surveying the scene.
+
+The stuff on the table was, in fact, quite enough to dazzle the
+eyes. There were articles of every sort and description there--
+silks, laces, jewelry and trinkets, little antiques, even rare
+books--everything small and portable, some of the richest and most
+exquisite, others of the cheapest and most tawdry. It was a truly
+remarkable collection, which the raiding detectives had brought to
+light.
+
+As Constance took in the scene--the raiding detectives holding the
+stormy Annie Grayson at bay, Drummond, cool, supercilious, Kitty
+almost on the edge of collapse--she wondered how Jim Grayson had
+managed to slip through the meshes of the net.
+
+She had read of such things. Annie Grayson was to all appearances a
+"fence" for stolen goods. This was, perhaps, a school for
+shoplifters. In addition to her other accomplishments, the queen of
+the shoplifters was a "Fagin," educating others to the tricks of her
+trade, taking advantage of their lack of facility in disposing of
+the stolen goods.
+
+Just then the woman caught sight of Constance standing in the
+doorway.
+
+In an instant she had broken loose and ran toward her.
+
+"What are you," she hissed, "one of these department store Moll
+Dicks, too?"
+
+Quick as a flash Kitty Carr had leaped to her feet and placed
+herself between them.
+
+"No, Annie, no. She was a real friend of mine. No--if your own
+friends had been as loyal as she was to me this would never have
+happened--I should never have been caught again, for I should never
+have given them a chance to get it on me."
+
+"Little fool!" ground out Annie Grayson, raising her arm.
+
+"Here--here--LADIES!" interposed Drummond, protruding an arm between
+the two, and winking sarcastically to the two other men. "None of
+that. We shall need both of you in our business. I've no objection
+to your talking; but cut out the rough stuff."
+
+Constance had stepped back. She was cool, cool as Drummond, although
+she knew her heart was thumping like a sledge-hammer. There was
+Kitty Carr, in a revulsion of feeling, her hands pressed tightly to
+her head again, as if it were bursting. She was swaying as if she
+would faint.
+
+Constance caught her gently about the waist and forced her down on
+the couch where she had been lying the night before. With her back
+to the others, she reached quickly into her hand-bag and pulled out
+the little instrument she had hastily stuffed into it. Deftly she
+fastened it to Kitty's wrist and forearm.
+
+She dropped down on her knees beside the poor girl, and gently
+stroked her free hand, reassuring her in a low tone.
+
+"There, there," she soothed. "You are not well, Kitty. Perhaps,
+after all, there may be something--some explanation."
+
+In spite of all, however, Kitty was on the verge of the wildest
+hysterics. Annie Grayson sniffed contemptuously at such weakness.
+
+Drummond came over, an exasperating sneer on his face. As he looked
+down he saw what Constance was doing, and she rose, so that all
+could see now.
+
+"This girl," she said, speaking rapidly, "is afflicted with a
+nervous physical disorder, a mania, which is uncontrollable, and
+takes this outlet. It is emotional insanity--not loss of control of
+the will, but perversion of the will."
+
+"Humph!" was Drummond's sole comment with a significant glance at
+the pile of goods on the table.
+
+"It is not the articles themselves so much," went on Constance,
+following his glance, "as it is the pleasure, the excitement, the
+satisfaction--call it what you will--of taking them. A thief works
+for the benefit he may derive from objects stolen after he gets
+them. Here is a girl who apparently has no further use for an
+article after she gets it, who forgets, perhaps hates it."
+
+"Oh, yes," remarked Drummond; "but why are they all so careful not
+to get caught? Every one is responsible who knows the nature and
+consequences of his act."
+
+Constance had wheeled about.
+
+"That is not so," she exclaimed. "Any modern alienist will tell you
+that. Sometimes the chief mark of insanity may be knowing the nature
+and consequences, craftily avoiding detection with an almost
+superhuman cunning. No; the test is whether knowing the nature and
+consequences, a person suffers under such a defect of will that in
+spite of everything, in the face of everything, that person cannot
+control that will."
+
+As she spoke, she had quickly detached the little instrument and had
+placed it on Annie Grayson's arm. If it had been a Bertillon camera,
+or even a finger-print outfit, Annie Grayson would probably have
+fought like a tigress. But this thing was a new one. She had a
+peculiar spirit of bravado.
+
+"Such terms as kleptomania," went on Constance, "are often regarded
+as excuses framed up by the experts to cover up plain ordinary
+stealing. But did you wiseacres of crime ever stop to think that
+perhaps they do actually exist?
+
+"There are many things that distinguish such a woman as I have
+described to you from a common thief. There is the insane desire to
+steal--merely for stealing's sake--a morbid craving. Of course in a
+sense it is stealing. But it is persistent, incorrigible,
+irrational, motiveless, useless.
+
+"Stop and think about it a moment," she concluded, lowering her
+voice and taking advantage of the very novelty of the situation she
+had created. "Such diseases are the product of civilization, of
+sensationalism. Naturally enough, then, woman, with her delicately
+balanced nervous organization, is the first and chief offender--if
+you insist on calling such a person an offender under your
+antiquated methods of dealing with such cases."
+
+She had paused.
+
+"What did you say you called this thing?" asked Drummond as he
+tapped the arrangement on Annie Grayson's arm.
+
+He was evidently not much impressed by it, yet somehow instinctively
+regarded it with somewhat of the feelings of an elephant toward a
+mouse.
+
+"That?" answered Constance, taking it off Annie Grayson's wrist
+before she could do anything with it. "Why, I don't know that I said
+anything about it. It is really a sphygmomanometer--the little
+expert witness that never lies--one of the instruments the insurance
+companies use now to register blood pressure and discover certain
+diseases. It occurred to me that it might be put to other and
+equally practical uses. For no one can conceal the emotions from
+this instrument, not even a person of cast-iron nerves."
+
+She had placed it on Drummond's arm. He appeared fascinated.
+
+"See how it works?" she went on. "You see one hundred and twenty-
+five millimeters is the normal pressure. Kitty Carr is absolutely
+abnormal. I do not know, but I think that she suffers from
+periodical attacks of vertigo. Almost all kleptomaniacs do. During
+an attack they are utterly irresponsible."
+
+Drummond was looking at the thing carefully. Constance turned to
+Annie Grayson.
+
+"Where's your husband?" she asked offhand.
+
+"Oh, he disappeared as soon as these department store dicks showed
+up," she replied bitterly. She had been watching Constance narrowly,
+quite nonplussed, and unable to make anything out of what was going
+on.
+
+Constance looked at Drummond inquiringly.
+
+He shook his head slowly. "I'm afraid we'll never catch him," he
+said. "He got the jump on us--although we have our lines out for
+him, too."
+
+She had glanced down quickly at the little innocent-looking but
+telltale sphygmomanometer.
+
+"You lie!" she exclaimed suddenly, with all the vigor of a man.
+
+She was pointing at the quivering little needle which registered a
+sudden, access of emotion totally concealed by the sang-froid of
+Drummond's well-schooled exterior.
+
+She wrenched the thing off his wrist and dropped it into her bag. A
+moment later she stood by the open window facing the street, a
+bright little police whistle gleaming in her hand, ready for its
+shrill alarm if any move were made to cut short what she had to say.
+
+She was speaking rapidly now.
+
+"You see, I've had it on all of you, one after another, and each has
+told me your story, just enough of it for me to piece it together.
+Kitty is suffering from a form of vertigo, an insanity, kleptomania,
+the real thing. As for you, Mr. Drummond, you were in league with
+the alleged husband--your own stool pigeon--to catch Annie Grayson."
+
+Drummond moved. So did the whistle. He stopped.
+
+"But she was too clever for you all. She was not caught, even by a
+man who lived with her as her own husband. For she was not
+operating."
+
+Annie Grayson moved as if to face out her accusers at this sudden
+turn of fortune.
+
+"One moment, Annie," cut in Constance.
+
+"And yet, you are the real shoplifter, after all. You fell into the
+trap which Drummond laid for you. I take pleasure, Mr. Drummond, in
+presenting you with better evidence than even your own stool pigeon
+could possibly have given you under the circumstances."
+
+She paused.
+
+"For myself," she concluded, "I claim Kitty Carr. I claim the right
+to take her, to have her treated for her--her disease. I claim it
+because the real shoplifter, the queen of the shoplifters, Annie
+Grayson, has worked out a brand-new scheme, taking up a true
+kleptomaniac and using her insanity to carry out the stealings which
+she suggested--and safely, to this point, has profited by!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BLACKMAILERS
+
+
+"They're late this afternoon."
+
+"Yes. I think they might be on time. I wish they had made the
+appointment in a quieter place."
+
+"What do you care, Anita? Probably somebody else is doing the same
+thing somewhere else. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the
+goose."
+
+"I know he has treated me like a dog, Alice, but--"
+
+There was just a trace of a catch in the voice of the second woman
+as she broke off the remark and left it unfinished.
+
+Constance Dunlap had caught the words unintentionally above the hum
+of conversation and the snatches of tuneful music wafted from the
+large dining-room where day was being turned into night.
+
+She had dropped into the fashionable new Vanderveer Hotel, not to
+meet any one, but because she liked to watch the people in "Peacock
+Alley," as the corridor of the hotel was often popularly called.
+
+Somehow, as she sat inconspicuously in a deep chair in an angle, she
+felt that very few of the gaily chatting couples or of the waiting
+men and women about her were quite what they seemed on the surface.
+
+The conversation from around the angle confirmed her opinion. Here,
+apparently at least, were two young married women with a grievance,
+and it was not for those against whom they had the grievance, real
+or imagined, that they were waiting so anxiously.
+
+Constance leaned forward to see them better. The woman nearest her
+was a trifle the elder of the two, a very attractive-looking woman,
+tastefully gowned and carefully groomed. The younger, who had been
+the first speaker, was, perhaps, the more dashing. Certainly she
+appeared to be the more sophisticated. And as Constance caught her
+eye she involuntarily thought of the old proverb, "Never trust a man
+who doesn't look you in the eye or a woman who does."
+
+Two men sauntered down the long corridor, on the way from a visit to
+the bar. As they caught sight of the two ladies, there was a smile
+of recognition, an exchange of remarks between each pair, and the
+men hurried in the direction of the corner.
+
+They greeted the two ladies in low, bantering, familiar terms--"Mr.
+Smith," "Mrs. Jones," "Mr. White" and "Mrs. Brown."
+
+"You got my card!" asked one of the men of the woman nearest
+Constance. "Sorry we're late, but a business friend ran into us as
+we were coming in and I had to shunt him off in the other
+direction."
+
+He nodded toward the opposite end of the corridor with a laugh.
+
+"You've been bad boys," pouted the other woman, "but we forgive you
+--this time."
+
+"Perhaps we may hope to be reinstated after a little--er--tea--and a
+dance?" suggested the other man.
+
+The four were all moving in the direction of the dining-room and the
+gay music.
+
+They had disappeared in the crush about the door before Constance
+noticed that the woman who had been sitting nearest her had dropped
+an envelope. She picked it up. It was on the stationery of another
+fashionable hotel, evidently written by one of those who lounge in,
+and on the strength of a small bill in the cafe use the writing
+room. In a man's hand was the name, "Mrs. Anita Douglas, The
+Melcombe Apartments, City"
+
+Before she realized it, Constance had pulled out the card inside and
+glanced at it. It read:
+
+     MY DEAREST A----:
+
+     Can you meet us in the Vanderveer to-morrow afternoon at four?
+     Bring along your little friend.
+
+     With many * * * *
+
+     Yours,
+
+     ?????
+
+Mechanically Constance crumpled the card and the envelope in her
+hand and held them as she regarded the passing throng, intending to
+throw them away when she passed a scrap basket on the way out.
+
+Still, it was a fascinating scene, this of the comedy and tragedy of
+human weaknesses, and she stayed much longer than she had intended.
+One by one the people had either gone to dinner in the main dining-
+room or elsewhere and Constance had nearly decided on going, too.
+
+She was looking down the corridor toward the desk when she saw
+something that caused her to change her mind. There was the young
+lady who had been talking so flippantly to the woman with a
+grievance, and she was now talking, of all people, to Drummond!
+
+Constance shrank back into her wicker chair in the protecting angle.
+What did it mean? If Drummond had anything to do with it, even
+remotely, it boded no good, at least.
+
+Suddenly a possible explanation crossed her mind. Was it a side-
+light upon that peculiar industry of divorce as practiced in no
+place except New York?
+
+It was not only that Constance longed for, lived by excitement. She
+felt a sense of curiosity as to what the detective was up to now.
+And, somehow, she felt a duty in the case. She determined to return
+the envelope and card, and meet the woman. And the more she thought
+of it the more imperative became the idea.
+
+So it came about that the following forenoon Constance sought out
+the Melcombe Apartments, a huge stone and brick affair on a street
+which the uptown trend of population was transforming.
+
+Anita Douglas, she had already found out by an inquiry or two, was
+the wife of a well-known business man. Yet, as she entered the
+little apartment, she noticed that there was no evidence about it of
+a man's presence.
+
+Mrs. Douglas greeted her unexpected visitor with an inquiring look.
+
+"I was passing through the corridor of the Vanderveer yesterday
+afternoon," began Constance, leaping into the middle of her errand,
+"and I happened to see this envelope lying on the carpet. I thought
+first of destroying it; then that perhaps you would rather destroy
+it yourself."
+
+Mrs. Douglas almost pounced on the letter as Constance handed it to
+her. "Thank you," she exclaimed. "It was very thoughtful of you."
+
+For a moment or two they chatted of inconsequential things.
+
+"Who was your friend?" asked Constance at length.
+
+The woman caught her breath and flushed a bit, evidently wondering
+just how much Constance really knew.
+
+"The young lady," added Constance, who had put the question in this
+form purposely.
+
+"Why do you ask?" Mrs. Douglas inquired in a tone that betrayed
+considerable relief.
+
+"Because I can tell you something of her, I think."
+
+"A friend of mine--a Mrs. Murray. Why?"
+
+"Aren't you just a little bit afraid of--er--friends that you may
+chance to make in the city?" queried Constance.
+
+"Afraid?" repeated the other.
+
+"Yes," said Constance, coming gradually to the point. "You know
+there are so many detectives about."
+
+Mrs. Douglas laughed half nervously. "Oh, I've been shadowed," she
+replied confidently. "I know how to shake them off. If you can't do
+anything else, you can always take a taxi. Besides, I think I can
+uncover almost any shadow. All you have to do, if you think you're
+being shadowed, is to turn a corner and stop. That uncovers the
+shadow as soon as he comes up to the corner, and after that he is
+useless. You know him."
+
+"That's all right," nodded Constance; "but you don't know these
+crooked detectives nowadays as I do. They can fake up evidence to
+order. That is their business, you know, to manufacture it. You may
+uncover a six-dollar operative, Mrs. Douglas, but are you the equal
+of a twenty-dollar-a-day investigator?"
+
+The woman looked genuinely scared. Evidently Constance knew some
+things she didn't know, at least about detectives.
+
+"You--you don't think there is anything like that, do you?" she
+asked anxiously.
+
+"Well," replied Constance slowly to impress her, "I saw your friend,
+Mrs. Murray, after you had left the Vanderveer, talking to a
+detective whom I have every reason to fear as one of the most
+unscrupulous in the game."
+
+"Oh, that is impossible!" persisted Mrs. Douglas.
+
+"Not a bit of it," pursued Constance. "Think it over for a moment.
+Who would be the last person a man or woman would suspect of being a
+detective? Why, just such an attractive young woman, of course. You
+see, it is just this way. They reason that if they can only get
+acquainted with people the rest is easy. For, people, under the
+right circumstances, will tell everything they know."
+
+The woman was staring at Constance.
+
+"For example," urged Constance, "I'm talking to you now as if I had
+known you for years. Why, Mrs. Douglas, men tell their most
+important business secrets to chance luncheon and dinner companions
+whom they think have no direct or indirect interest in them. Over
+tea-tables women tell their most intimate personal affairs. In fact,
+all you have to do is to keep your ears open."
+
+Mrs. Douglas had risen and was nervously watching Constance, who saw
+that she had made an impression and that all that was necessary was
+to follow it up.
+
+"Now, for instance," added Constance quickly, "you say she is a
+friend of yours. How did you meet her?"
+
+Mrs. Douglas did not raise her eyes to Constance's now. Yet she
+seemed to feel that Constance was different from other chance
+acquaintances, to feel a sort of confidence, and to want to meet
+frankness with frankness.
+
+"One day I was with a friend of mine at the new Palais de Maxixe,"
+she answered in a low voice as if making a confession. "A woman in
+the dressing-room borrowed a cigarette. You know they often do that.
+We got talking, and it seemed that we had much in common in our
+lives. Before I went back to him--"
+
+She bit her lip. She had evidently not intended to admit that she
+knew any other men. Constance, however, appeared not to notice the
+slip.
+
+"I had arranged to meet her at luncheon the next day," she continued
+hastily. "We have been friends ever since."
+
+"You went to luncheon with her, and--" Constance prompted.
+
+"Oh, she told me her story. It was very much like my own--a husband
+who was a perfect bear, and then gossip about him that so many
+people, besides his own wife, seemed to know, and--"
+
+Constance shook her head. "Really," she observed thoughtfully, "it's
+a wonder to me how any one stays married these days. Somebody is
+always mixing in, getting one or the other so wrought up that they
+get to thinking there is no possibility of happiness. That's where
+the crook detective comes in."
+
+Anita Douglas, confidence established now, poured out her story
+unreservedly, as there was little reason why she should not, a story
+of the refined brutality and neglect and inhumanity of her husband.
+
+She told of her own first suspicions of him, of a girl who had been
+his stenographer, a Miss Helen Brett.
+
+But he was careful. There had never been any direct, positive
+evidence against him. Still, there was enough to warrant a
+separation and the payment to her of an allowance.
+
+They had lived, she said, in a pretty little house in the suburb of
+Glenclair, near New York. Now that they were separated, she had
+taken a little kitchenette apartment at the new Melcombe. Her
+husband was living in the house, she believed, when he was not in
+the city at his club, "or elsewhere," she added bitterly.
+
+"But," she confided as she finished, "it is very lonely here in a
+big city all alone."
+
+"I know it is," agreed Constance sympathetically as they parted. "I,
+too, am often very lonely. Call on me, especially if you find
+anything crooked going on. Call on me, anyhow. I shall be glad to
+see you any time."
+
+The words, "anything crooked going on," rang in Mrs. Douglas's ears
+long after the elevator door had clanged shut and her new friend had
+gone. She was visibly perturbed. And the more she thought about it
+the more perturbed she became.
+
+She had carried on a mild, then an ardent, flirtation with the man
+who had introduced himself as "Mr. White"--really Lynn Munro. But
+she relied on her woman's instinct in her judgment of him. No, she
+felt sure that he could not be other than she thought. But as for
+Alice Murray and her friend whom she had met at the Palais de
+Maxixe--well, she was forced to admit that she did not know, that
+Constance's warning might, after all, be true.
+
+Munro had had to run out of town for a few days on a business trip.
+That she knew, for it had been the reason why he had wanted to see
+her before he went.
+
+He had, in fact, spent the evening in her company, after the other
+couple had excused themselves on one pretext or another.
+
+She called up Alice Murray at the number she had given. She was not
+there. In fact, no one seemed to know when she would be there. It
+was strange, because always before it had seemed possible to get her
+at any moment, almost instantly. That, too, worried her.
+
+She tried to get the thing out of her mind, but she could not. She
+had a sort of foreboding that her new friend had not spoken without
+reason, a feeling of insecurity as though something were impending
+over her.
+
+The crisis came sooner than even Constance had anticipated when she
+called on Anita Douglas. It was early in the afternoon, while Anita
+was still brooding, that a strange man called on her. Instinctively
+she seemed to divine that he was a detective. He, at least, had the
+look.
+
+"My name," he introduced himself, "is Drummond."
+
+Drummond paused and glanced about as if to make sure that he could
+by no possibility be overheard.
+
+"I have called," he continued, "on a rather delicate matter."
+
+He paused for effect, then went on:
+
+"Some time ago I was employed by Mr. Douglas to--er--to watch his
+wife."
+
+He was watching her narrowly to see what effect his sudden remark
+would have on her. She was speechless.
+
+"Since then," he added quietly, "I have watched, I have seen--what I
+have seen."
+
+Drummond had faced her. Somehow the effect of his words was more
+potent on her than if he had not accused her by indirection. Still
+she said nothing.
+
+"I can suppress it," he insinuated.
+
+Her heart was going like a trip-hammer.
+
+"But it will cost something to do that."
+
+Here was a straw--she caught at it eagerly.
+
+"Cost something?" she repeated, facing him. "How much?"
+
+Drummond never took his eyes from her anxious face.
+
+"I was to get a fee of one thousand dollars if I obtained some
+letters that had passed from her to a man named Lynn Munro. He has
+gone out of town--has left his rooms unguarded. I have the letters."
+
+She felt a sinking sensation. One thousand dollars!
+
+Suddenly the truth of the situation flashed over her. He had come
+with an offer that set her bidding against her husband for the
+letters. And in a case of dollars her husband would win. One
+thousand dollars! It was blackmail.
+
+"I--I can't afford it," she pleaded weakly. "Can't you make it--
+less?"
+
+Drummond shook his head. Already he had learned what he had come to
+learn. She did not have the money.
+
+"No," he replied positively, adding, by way of inserting the knife
+and turning it around, "I shall have to turn the letters over to him
+to-day."
+
+She drew herself up. At least she could fight back.
+
+"But you can't prove anything," she cut in quickly.
+
+"Can't I?" he returned. "The letters don't speak for themselves, do
+they? You don't realize that this interview helps to prove it, do
+you? An innocent woman wouldn't have considered my offer, much less
+plead with me. Bah! can't prove anything. Why, it's all in plain
+black and white!"
+
+Drummond flicked the ashes from his cigar into the fireplace as he
+rose to go. At the door he turned for one parting shot.
+
+"I have all the evidence I need," he concluded. "I've got the goods
+on you. To-night it will be locked in his safe--documentary
+evidence. If you should change your mind--you can reach me at his
+office. Call under an assumed name--Mrs. Green, perhaps."
+
+He was gone, with a mocking smile at the parting shot.
+
+Anita Douglas saw it all now. Things had not been going fast enough
+to suit her new friend, Mrs. Murray. So, after a time, she had begun
+to tell of her own escapades and to try to get Anita to admit that
+she had had similar adventures. It was a favorite device of
+detectives, working under the new psychological method by use of the
+law of suggestion.
+
+She had introduced herself, had found out about Lynn Munro, and in
+some way, after he had left town, had got the letters. Was he in the
+plot, too? She could not believe it.
+
+Suddenly the thought came to her that the blackmailers might give
+her husband material that would look very black if a suit for
+divorce came up in court.
+
+What if he were able to cut off her little allowance? She trembled
+at the thought of being thus cast adrift on the world.
+
+Anita Douglas did not know which way to turn. In her dilemma she
+thought only of Constance. She hurried to her.
+
+"It was as you said, a frame-up," she blurted out, as she entered
+Constance's apartment, then in the same breath added, "That Mrs.
+Murray was just a stool pigeon."
+
+Constance received her sympathetically. She had expected such a
+visit, though not so soon.
+
+"Just how much do they--know?" she asked pointedly.
+
+Anita had pressed her hands together nervously. "Really--I confess,"
+she murmured, "indiscretions--yes; misconduct--no!"
+
+She spoke the last words defiantly. Constance listened eagerly,
+though she did not betray it.
+
+She had found out that it was a curious twist in feminine psychology
+that the lie under such circumstances was a virtue, that it showed
+that there was hope for such a woman. Admission of the truth, even
+to a friend, would have shown that the woman was hopelessly lost.
+Lie or not, Constance felt in her inmost heart that she approved of
+it.
+
+"Still, it looks badly," she remarked.
+
+"Perhaps it does--on the surface," persisted Anita.
+
+"You poor dear creature," soothed Constance. "I don't say I blame
+you for your--indiscreet friendships. You are more sinned against
+than sinning."
+
+Sympathy had its effect. Anita was now sobbing softly, as Constance
+stole her arm about her waist.
+
+"The next question," she reasoned, considering aloud, "is, of
+course, what to do? If it was just one of these blackmailing
+detective cases it would be common, but still very hard to deal
+with. There's a lot of such blackmailing going on in New York. Next
+to business and political cases, I suppose, it is the private
+detective's most important graft. Nearly everybody has a past--
+although few are willing to admit it. The graft lies in the fact
+that people talk so much, are so indiscreet, take such reckless
+chances. It's a wonder, really, that there isn't more of it."
+
+"Yet there is the--evidence, as he called it--my letters to Lynn--
+and the reports that that woman must have made of our--our
+conversations," groaned Anita. "How they may distort it all!"
+
+Constance was thinking rapidly.
+
+"It is now after four o'clock," she said finally, looking at her
+wrist watch. "You say it was not half an hour ago that Drummond
+called on you. He must be downtown about now. Your husband will
+hardly have a chance more than to glance over the papers this
+afternoon."
+
+Suddenly an idea seemed to occur to her. "What do you suppose he
+will do with them?" she asked.
+
+Mrs. Douglas looked up through her tears, calmer. "He is very
+methodical," she answered slowly. "If I know him rightly, I think he
+will probably go out to Glenclair with them to-night, to look them
+over."
+
+"Where will he keep them?" broke in Constance suddenly.
+
+"He has a little safe in the library out there where he keeps all
+such personal papers. I shouldn't be surprised if he looked them
+over and locked them up there until he intends to use them at least
+until morning."
+
+"I have a plan," exclaimed Constance excitedly. "Are you game?"
+
+Anita Douglas looked at her friend squarely. In her face Constance
+read the desperation of a woman battling for life and honor.
+
+"Yes," replied Anita in a low, tense tone, "for anything."
+
+"Then meet me after dinner in the Terminal. We'll go out to
+Glenclair."
+
+The two looked deeply into each other's eyes. Nothing was said, but
+what each read was a sufficient answer to a host of unspoken
+questions.
+
+A moment after Mrs. Douglas had gone, Constance opened a cabinet.
+From the false back of a drawer she took two little vials of powder
+and a small bottle with a sponge.
+
+Then she added a long steel bar, with a peculiar turn at the end, to
+her paraphernalia for the trip.
+
+Nothing further occurred until they met at the Terminal, or, in
+fact, on the journey out. On most of the ride Mrs. Douglas kept her
+face averted, looking out of the window into the blackness of the
+night. Perhaps she was thinking of other journeys out to Glenclair,
+perhaps she was afraid of meeting the curious gaze of any late
+sojourners who might suffer from acute suburban curiosity.
+
+Quietly the two women alighted and quickly made their way from the
+station up the main street, then diverged to a darker and less
+frequented avenue.
+
+"There's the house," pointed out Mrs. Douglas, halting Constance,
+with a little bitter exclamation.
+
+Evidently she had reasoned well. He had gone out there early and
+there was a light in the library.
+
+"He isn't much of a reader," whispered Mrs. Douglas. "Oh--it's clear
+to me that he has the stuff all right. He's devouring it, gloating
+over it."
+
+The sound of footsteps approaching down the paved walk came to them.
+Loitering on the streets of a suburban town always occasions
+suspicion, and instinctively Constance drew Anita with her into the
+shadow of a hedge that set off the house from that next to it.
+
+There was no fence cutting it off from the sidewalk, but at the
+corner of the plot a large bush stood. In this bower they were
+perfectly hidden in the shadow.
+
+Hour after hour they waited, watching that light in the library,
+speculating what it was he was reading, while Anita, half afraid to
+talk, wondered what it was that Constance had in mind.
+
+Finally the light in the library winked out and the house was in
+darkness.
+
+Midnight passed, and with it the last belated suburbanite.
+
+At last, when the moon had disappeared under some clouds, Constance
+pulled Anita gently along up the lawn.
+
+There was no sign of life about the house, yet Constance observed
+all the caution she would have if it had been well guarded.
+
+Quickly they advanced over the open space to the cottage,
+approaching in the shadow as much as possible.
+
+Tiptoeing over the porch, Constance tried a window, the window
+through which had shown the tantalizing light. It was fastened.
+
+Without hesitation she pulled out the long steel bar with the
+twisted head, and began to insert the sharp end between the sashes.
+
+"Aren't--you--afraid?" chattered her companion.
+
+"No," she whispered, not looking up from her work. "You know, most
+persons don't know enough about jimmies. Against them an ordinary
+door lock or window catch is no protection at all. Why, with this
+jimmy, even a woman can exert a pressure of a ton or so. Not one
+catch in a thousand can stand it--certainly not this one."
+
+Constance continued to work, muffling the lever as much as possible
+in a piece of felt.
+
+At last a quick wrench and the catch yielded.
+
+The only thing wrong about it was the noise. There had been no wind,
+no passing trolley, nothing to conceal it.
+
+They shrank back into the shadow, and waited breathless. Had it been
+heard? Would a window open presently and an alarm be sounded?
+
+There was not a sound, save the rustle of the leaves in the night
+wind.
+
+A few minutes later Constance carefully raised the lower sash and
+they stepped softly into the house--once the house over which Anita
+Douglas had been mistress.
+
+Cautiously Constance pressed the button on a little pocket storage-
+battery lamp and flashed it slowly about the room.
+
+All was quiet in the library. The library table was disordered, as
+if some one in great stress of mind had been working at it. Anita
+wondered what had been the grim thoughts of the man as he pondered
+on the mass of stuff, the tissue of falsehoods that the blackmailing
+detective had handed to him at such great cost.
+
+At last the cone of light rested on a little safe at the opposite
+end.
+
+"There it is," whispered Anita, pointing, half afraid even of the
+soft tones of her own voice.
+
+Constance had pulled down all the shades quietly, and drew the
+curtains tightly between the room and the foyer.
+
+On the top of the safe she was pouring some of the powder in a neat
+pile from one of the vials.
+
+"What is that?" asked Anita, bending close to her ear.
+
+"Some powdered metallic aluminum mixed with oxide of iron,"
+whispered Constance in return. "I read of this thing in a scientific
+paper the other day, and I determined to get some of it. But I
+didn't think I'd ever really have occasion to use it."
+
+She added some powder from the other vial.
+
+"And that?"
+
+"Magnesium powder."
+
+Constance had lighted a match.
+
+"Stand back, Anita," she whispered, "back, Anita," she whispered,
+"back in the farthest corner of the room, and keep quiet. Shut your
+eyes--turn your face away!"
+
+There was a flash, blinding, then a steady, brilliant burst of
+noiseless, penetrating, burning flame.
+
+Anita had expected an explosion. Instead she found that her eyes
+hurt. She had not closed them tightly quick enough.
+
+Still, Constance's warning had been sufficient to prevent any damage
+to the sight, and she slowly recovered.
+
+Actually, the burning powder seemed to be sinking into the very
+steel of the safe itself, as if it had been mere ice!
+
+Was it an optical illusion, a freak of her sight?
+
+"Wh-what is it!" she whispered in awe, drawing closer to her friend.
+
+"Thermit," whispered Constance in reply, as the two watched the
+glowing mass fascinated, "an invention of a German chemist named
+Goldschmidt. It will burn a hole right through steel--at a terrific
+temperature, three thousand or more degrees."
+
+The almost burned out mass seemed to fall into the safe as if it had
+been a wooden box instead of chrome steel.
+
+They waited a moment, still blinking, to regain control over their
+eyes in spite of the care they had used to shield them.
+
+Then they tiptoed across the floor.
+
+In the top of the safe yawned a hole large enough to stick one's
+hand and arm through!
+
+Constance reached into the safe and drew out something on which she
+flashed the pocket light.
+
+There was bundle after bundle of checks, the personal checks of a
+methodical business man, carefully preserved.
+
+Hastily she looked them over. All seemed to be perfectly straight--
+payments to tradesmen, to real estate agents, payments of all sorts,
+all carefully labeled.
+
+"Oh, he'd never let anything like that lie around," remarked Anita,
+as she began to comprehend what Constance was after.
+
+Constance was scrutinizing some of the checks more carefully than
+others. Suddenly she held one up to the light. Apparently it was in
+payment of legal services.
+
+Quickly she took the little bottle of brownish fluid which she had
+brought with the sponge.
+
+She dipped the sponge in it lightly and brushed it over the check.
+Then she leaned forward breathlessly.
+
+"Eradicating ink is simply a bleaching process," she remarked,
+"which leaves the iron of the ink as a white oxide instead of a
+black oxide. The proper reagent will restore the original color--
+partially and at least for a time. Ah--yes--it is as I thought.
+There have been erasures in these checks. Other names have been
+written in on some of them in place of those that were originally
+there. The sulphide of ammonia ought to bring out anything that is
+hidden here."
+
+There, faintly, was the original writing. It read, "Pay to the order
+of--Helen Brett--"
+
+Mrs. Douglas with difficulty restrained an exclamation of anger and
+hatred at the mere sight of the name of the other woman.
+
+"He was careful," remarked Constance. "Reckless at first in giving
+checks-he has tried to cover it up. He didn't want to destroy them,
+yet he couldn't have such evidence about. So he must have altered
+the name on the canceled vouchers after they were returned to him
+paid by the bank. Very clever--very."
+
+Constance reached into the safe again. There were some personal and
+some business letters, some old check books, some silver and gold
+trinkets and table silver.
+
+She gave a low exclamation. She had found a packet of letters and a
+sheaf of typewritten flimsy tissue paper pages.
+
+Mrs. Douglas uttered a little cry, quickly suppressed. The letters
+were those in her own handwriting addressed to Lynn Munro.
+
+"Here are Drummond's reports, too," Constance added.
+
+She looked them hastily over. The damning facts had been massed in a
+way that must inevitably have prejudiced any case for the defense
+that Mrs. Douglas might set up.
+
+"There--there's all the evidence against you," whispered Constance
+hoarsely, handing it over to Anita. "It's all yours again. Destroy
+it"
+
+In her eagerness, with trembling hands, Anita had torn up the whole
+mass of incriminating papers and had cast them into the fireplace.
+She was just about to strike a match.
+
+Suddenly there came a deep voice from the stairs.
+
+"Well--what's all this?"
+
+Anita dropped the match from her nerveless hands. Constance felt an
+arm grasp her tightly. For a moment a chill ran over her at being
+caught in the nefarious work of breaking and entering a dwelling-
+house at night. The hand was Anita's, but the voice was that of a
+man.
+
+Lights flashed all over the house at once, from a sort of electric
+light system that could be instantly lighted and would act as a
+"burglar expeller."
+
+It was Douglas himself. He was staring angrily at his wife and the
+stranger with her.
+
+"Well!" he demanded with cold sarcasm. "Why this--this burglary?"
+
+Before he could quite take in the situation, with a quick motion,
+Constance struck a match and touched it to the papers in the
+fireplace.
+
+As they blazed up he caught sight of what they were and almost
+leaped across the floor.
+
+Constance laid her hand on his arm. "One moment, Mr. Douglas," she
+said quietly. "Look at that!"
+
+"Who--who the devil are you?" he gasped. "What's all this?"
+
+"I think," remarked Constance slowly and quietly, "that your wife is
+now in a position to prove that you--well, don't come into court
+with clean hands, if you attempt to do so. Besides, you know, the
+courts rather frown on detectives that practice collusion and
+conspiracy and frame up evidence, to say nothing of trying to
+blackmail the victims. I thought perhaps you'd prefer not to say
+anything about this--er--visit to-night--after you saw that."
+
+Constance had quietly laid one of the erased checks on the library
+table. Again she dipped the sponge into the brownish liquid. Again
+the magic touch revealed the telltale name. With her finger she was
+pointing to the faintly legible "Helen Brett" on the check as the
+sulphide had brought it out.
+
+Douglas stared-dazed.
+
+He rubbed his eyes and stared again as the last of the flickering
+fire died away. In an instant he realized that it was not a dream,
+that it was all a fact.
+
+He looked from one to the other of the women.
+
+He was checkmated.
+
+Constance ostentatiously folded up the erased vouchers.
+
+"I--I shall not--make any--contest," Douglas managed to gasp
+huskily.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE DOPE FIENDS
+
+
+"I have a terrible headache," remarked Constance Dunlap to her
+friend, Adele Gordon, the petite cabaret singer and dancer of the
+Mayfair, who had dropped in to see her one afternoon.
+
+"You poor, dear creature," soothed Adele. "Why don't you go to see
+Dr. Price? He has cured me. He's splendid--splendid."
+
+Constance hesitated. Dr. Moreland Price was a well-known physician.
+All day and even at night, she knew, automobiles and cabs rolled up
+to his door and their occupants were, for the most part, stylishly
+gowned women.
+
+"Oh, come on," urged Adele. "He doesn't charge as highly as people
+seem to think. Besides, I'll go with you and introduce you, and
+he'll charge only as he does the rest of us in the profession."
+
+Constance's head throbbed frantically. She felt that she must have
+some relief soon. "All right," she agreed, "I'll go with you, and
+thank you, Adele."
+
+Dr. Price's office was on the first floor of the fashionable
+Recherche Apartments, and, as she expected, Constance noted a line
+of motor cars before it.
+
+They entered and were admitted to a richly furnished room, in
+mahogany and expensive Persian rugs, where a number of patients
+waited. One after another an attendant summoned them noiselessly and
+politely to see the doctor, until at last the turn of Constance and
+Adele came.
+
+Dr. Price was a youngish, middle-aged man, tall, with a sallow
+countenance and a self-confident, polished manner which went a long
+way in reassuring the patients, most of whom were ladies.
+
+As they entered the doctor's sanctum behind the folding doors, Adele
+seemed to be on very good terms indeed with him.
+
+They seated themselves in the deep leather chairs beside Dr. Price's
+desk, and he inclined his head to listen to the story of their
+ailments.
+
+"Doctor," began Constance's introducer, "I've brought my friend,
+Mrs. Dunlap, who is suffering from one of those awful headaches. I
+thought perhaps you could give her some of that medicine that has
+done me so much good."
+
+The doctor bowed without saying anything and shifted his eyes from
+Adele to Constance. "Just what seems to be the difficulty?" he
+inquired.
+
+Constance told him how she felt, of her general lassitude and the
+big, throbbing veins in her temples.
+
+"Ah--a woman's headaches!" he smiled, adding, "Nothing serious,
+however, in this case, as far as I can see. We can fix this one all
+right, I think."
+
+He wrote out a prescription quickly and handed it to Constance.
+
+"Of course," he added, as he pocketed his fee, "it makes no
+difference to me personally, but I would advise that you have it
+filled at Muller's--Miss Gordon knows the place. I think Muller's
+drugs are perhaps fresher than those of most druggists, and that
+makes a great deal of difference."
+
+He had risen and was politely and suavely bowing them out of another
+door, at the same time by pressing a button signifying to his
+attendant to admit the next patient.
+
+Constance had preceded Adele, and, as she passed through the other
+door, she overheard the doctor whisper to her friend, "I'm going to
+stop for you to-night to take a ride. I have something important I
+want to say to you."
+
+She did not catch Adele's answer, but as they left the marble and
+onyx, brass-grilled entrance, Adele remarked: "That's his car--over
+there. Oh, but he is a reckless driver--dashes along pell-mell--but
+always seems to have his eye out for everything--never seems to be
+arrested, never in an accident."
+
+Constance turned in the direction of the car and was startled to see
+the familiar face of Drummond across the street dodging behind it.
+What was it now, she wondered--a divorce case, a scandal--what?
+
+The medicine was made up into little powders, to be taken until they
+gave relief, and Constance folded the paper of one, poured it on the
+back of her tongue and swallowed a glass of water afterward.
+
+Her head continued to throb, but she felt a sense of well-being that
+she had not before. Adele urged her to take another, and Constance
+did so.
+
+The second powder increased the effect of the first marvelously. But
+Constance noticed that she now began to feel queer. She was not used
+to taking medicine. For a moment she felt that she was above, beyond
+the reach of ordinary rules and laws. She could have done any sort
+of physical task, she felt, no matter how difficult. She was amazed
+at herself, as compared to what she had been only a few moments
+before.
+
+"Another one?" asked Adele finally.
+
+Constance was by this time genuinely alarmed at the sudden unwonted
+effect on herself. "N-no," she replied dubiously, "I don't think I
+want to take any more, just yet."
+
+"Not another?" asked Adele in surprise. "I wish they would affect me
+that way. Sometimes I have to take the whole dozen before they have
+any effect."
+
+They chatted for a few minutes, and finally Adele rose.
+
+"Well," she remarked with a nervous twitching of her body, as if she
+were eager to be doing something, "I really must be going. I can't
+say I feel any too well myself."
+
+"I think I'll take a walk with you," answered Constance, who did not
+like the continued effect of the two powders. "I feel the need of
+exercise--and air."
+
+Adele hesitated, but Constance already had her hat on. She had seen
+Drummond watching Dr. Price's door, and it interested her to know
+whether he could possibly have been following Adele or some one
+else.
+
+As they walked along Adele quickened her pace, until they came again
+to the drug store.
+
+"I believe I'll go in and get something," she remarked, pausing.
+
+For the first time in several minutes Constance looked at the face
+of her friend. She was amazed to discover that Adele looked as if
+she had had a spell of sickness. Her eyes were large and glassy, her
+skin cold and sweaty, and she looked positively pallid and thin.
+
+As they entered the store Muller, the druggist, bowed again and
+looked at Adele a moment as she leaned over the counter and
+whispered something to him. Without a word he went into the arcana
+behind the partition that cuts off the mysteries of the prescription
+room in every drug store from the front of the store.
+
+When Muller returned he handed her a packet, for which she paid and
+which she dropped quickly into her pocketbook, hugging the
+pocketbook close to herself.
+
+Adele turned and was about to hurry from the store with Constance.
+"Oh, excuse me," she said suddenly as if she had just recollected
+something, "I promised a friend of mine I'd telephone this
+afternoon, and I have forgotten to do it. I see a pay station here."
+Constance waited.
+
+Adele returned much quicker than one would have expected she could
+call up a number, but Constance thought nothing of it at the time.
+She did notice, however, that as her friend emerged from the booth a
+most marvelous change had taken place in her. Her step was firm, her
+eye clear, her hand steady. Whatever it was, reasoned Constance, it
+could not have been serious to have disappeared so quickly.
+
+It was with some curiosity as to just what she might expect that
+Constance went around to the famous cabaret that night. The Mayfair
+occupied two floors of what had been a wide brownstone house before
+business and pleasure had crowded the residence district further and
+further uptown. It was a very well-known bohemian rendezvous, where
+under-, demi-and upper-world rubbed elbows without friction and
+seemed to enjoy the novelty and be willing to pay for it.
+
+Adele, who was one of the performers, had not arrived yet, but
+Constance, who had come with her mind still full of the two
+unexpected encounters with Drummond, was startled to see him here
+again. Fortunately he did not see her, and she slipped unobserved
+into an angle near the window overlooking the street.
+
+Drummond had been engrossed in watching some one already there, and
+Constance made the best use she could of her eyes to determine who
+it was. The outdoor walk and a good dinner had checked her headache,
+and now the excitement of the chase of something, she knew not what,
+completed the cure.
+
+It was not long before she discovered that Drummond was watching
+intently, without seeming to do so, a nervous-looking fellow whose
+general washed-out appearance of face was especially unattractive
+for some reason or other. He was very thin, very pale, and very
+stary about the eyes. Then, too, it seemed as if the bone in his
+nose was going, due perhaps to the shrinkage of the blood vessels
+from some cause.
+
+Constance noticed a couple of girls whom she had seen Adele speak to
+on several other occasions approaching the young man.
+
+There came an opportune lull in the music and from around the corner
+of her protecting angle Constance could just catch the greeting of
+one of the girls, "Hello, Sleighbells! Got any snow!"
+
+It was a remark that seemed particularly malapropos to the sultry
+weather, and Constance half expected a burst of laughter at the
+unexpected sally.
+
+Instead, she was surprised to hear the young man reply in a very
+serious and matter-of-fact manner, "Sure. Got any money, May?"
+
+She craned her neck, carefully avoiding coming into Drummond's line
+of vision, and as she did so she saw two silver quarters gleam
+momentarily from hand to hand, and the young man passed each girl
+stealthily a small white paper packet.
+
+Others came to him, both men and women. It seemed to be an
+established thing, and Constance noted that Drummond watched it all
+covertly.
+
+"Who is that?" asked Constance of the waiter who had served her
+sometimes when she had been with Adele, and knew her.
+
+"Why, they call him Sleighbells Charley," he replied, "a coke
+fiend."
+
+"Which means a cocaine fiend, I suppose!" she queried.
+
+"Yes. He's a lobbygow for the grapevine system they have now of
+selling the dope in spite of this new law."
+
+"Where does he get the stuff!" she asked.
+
+The waiter shrugged his shoulders. "Nobody knows, I guess. I don't.
+But he gets it in spite of the law and peddles it. Oh, it's all
+adulterated--with some white stuff, I don't know what, and the price
+they charge is outrageous. They must make an ounce retail at five or
+six times the cost. Oh, you can bet that some one who is at the top
+is making a pile of money out of that graft, all right."
+
+He said it not with any air of righteous indignation, but with a
+certain envy.
+
+Constance was thinking the thing over in her mind. Where did the
+"coke" come from? The "grapevine" system interested her.
+
+"Sleighbells" seemed to have disposed of all the "coke" he had
+brought with him. As the last packet went, he rose slowly, and
+shuffled out. Constance, who knew that Adele would not come for some
+time, determined to follow him. She rose quietly and, under cover of
+a party going out, managed to disappear without, as far as she knew,
+letting Drummond catch a glimpse of her. This would not only employ
+her time, but it was better to avoid Drummond as far as possible, at
+present, too, she felt.
+
+At a distance of about half a block she followed the curiously
+shuffling figure. He crossed the avenue, turned and went uptown,
+turned again, and, before she knew it, disappeared in a drug store.
+She had been so engrossed in following the lobbygow that it was with
+a start that she realized that he had entered Muller's.
+
+What did it all mean? Was the druggist, Muller, the man higher up?
+She recalled suddenly her own experience of the afternoon. Had
+Muller tried to palm off something on her? The more she thought of
+it the more sure she was that the powders she had taken had been
+doped.
+
+Slowly, turning the matter over in her mind, she returned to the
+Mayfair. As she peered in cautiously before entering she saw that
+Drummond had gone. Adele had not come in yet, and she went in and
+sat down again in her old place.
+
+Perhaps half an hour later, outside, she heard a car drive up with a
+furious rattle of gears. She looked out of the window and, as far as
+she could determine in the shadows, it was Dr. Price. A woman got
+out, Adele. For a moment she stopped to talk, then Dr. Price waved a
+gay good-bye and was off. All she could catch was a hasty, "No; I
+don't think I'd better come in to-night," from him.
+
+As Adele entered the Mayfair she glanced about, caught sight of
+Constance and came and sat down by her.
+
+It would have been impossible for her to enter unobserved, so
+popular was she. It was not long before the two girls whom Constance
+had seen dealing with "Sleighbells" sauntered over.
+
+"Your friend was here to-night," remarked one to Adele.
+
+"Which one?" laughed Adele.
+
+"The one who admired your dancing the other night and wanted to take
+lessons."
+
+"You mean the young fellow who was selling something?" asked
+Constance pointedly.
+
+"Oh, no," returned the girl quite casually. "That was Sleighbells,"
+and they all laughed.
+
+Constance thought immediately of Drummond. "The other one, then,"
+she said, "the thick-set man who was all alone!"
+
+"Yes; he went away afterward. Do you know him?"
+
+"I've seen him somewhere," evaded Constance; "but I just can't quite
+place him."
+
+She had not noticed Adele particularly until now. Under the light
+she had a peculiar worn look, the same as she had had before.
+
+The waiter came up to them. "Your turn is next," he hinted to Adele.
+
+"Excuse me a minute," she apologized to the rest of the party. "I
+must fix up a bit. No," she added to Constance, "don't come with
+me."
+
+She returned from the dressing room a different person, and plunged
+into the wild dance for which the limited orchestra was already
+tuning up. It was a veritable riot of whirl and rhythm. Never before
+had Constance seen Adele dance with such abandon. As she executed
+the wild mazes of a newly imported dance, she held even the jaded
+Mayfair spellbound. And when she concluded with one daring figure
+and sat down, flushed and excited, the diners applauded and even
+shouted approval. It was an event for even the dance-mad Mayfair.
+
+Constance did not share in the applause. At last she understood.
+Adele was a dope fiend, too. She felt it with a sense of pain.
+Always, she knew, the fiends tried to get away alone somewhere for a
+few minutes to snuff some of their favorite nepenthe. She had heard
+before of the cocaine "snuffers" who took a little of the deadly
+powder, placed it on the back of the hand, and inhaled it up the
+nose with a quick intake of breath. Adele was one. It was not Adele
+who danced. It was the dope.
+
+Constance was determined to speak.
+
+"You remember that man the girls spoke of?" she began.
+
+"Yes. What of him?" asked Adele with almost a note of defiance.
+
+"Well, I really DO know him," confessed Constance. "He is a
+detective."
+
+Constance watched her companion curiously, for at the mere word she
+had stopped short and faced her. "He is?" she asked quickly. "Then
+that was why Dr. Price--"
+
+She managed to suppress the remark and continued her walk home
+without another word.
+
+In Adele's little apartment Constance was quick to note that the
+same haggard look had returned to her friend's face.
+
+Adele had reached for her pocketbook with a sort of clutching
+eagerness and was about to leave the room.
+
+Constance rose. "Why don't you give up the stuff?" she asked
+earnestly. "Don't you want to?"
+
+For a moment Adele faced her angrily. Then her real nature seemed
+slowly to come to the surface. "Yes," she murmured frankly.
+
+"Then why don't you?" pleaded Constance.
+
+"I haven't the power. There is an indescribable excitement to do
+something great, to make a mark. It's soon gone, but while it lasts,
+I can sing, dance, do anything--and then--every part of my body
+begins crying for mere of the stuff again."
+
+There was no longer any necessity of concealment from Constance. She
+took a pinch of the stuff, placed it on the back of her wrist and
+quickly sniffed it. The change in her was magical. From a quivering
+wretched girl she became a self-confident neurasthenic.
+
+"I don't care," she laughed hollowly now.
+
+"Yes, I know what you are going to tell me. Soon I'll be 'hunting
+the cocaine bug,' as they call it, imagining that in my skin, under
+the flesh, are worms crawling, perhaps see them, see the little
+animals running around and biting me."
+
+She said it with a half-reckless cynicism. "Oh, you don't know.
+There are two souls in the cocainist--one tortured by the pain of
+not having the stuff, the other laughing and mocking at the dangers
+of it. It stimulates. It makes your mind work--without effort, by
+itself. And it gives such visions of success, makes you feel able to
+do so much, and to forget. All the girls use it."
+
+"Where do they get it?" asked Constance "I thought the new law
+prohibited it."
+
+"Get it?" repeated Adele. "Why, they get it from that fellow they
+call 'Sleighbells.' They call it 'snow,' you know, and the girls who
+use it 'snowbirds.' The law does prohibit its sale, but--"
+
+She paused significantly.
+
+"Yes," agreed Constance; "but Sleighbells is only a part of the
+system after all. Who is the man at the top?"
+
+Adele shrugged her shoulders and was silent. Still, Constance did
+not fail to note a sudden look of suspicion which Adele shot at her.
+Was Adele shielding some one?
+
+Constance knew that some one must be getting rich from the traffic,
+probably selling hundreds of ounces a week and making thousands of
+dollars. Somehow she felt a sort of indignation at the whole thing.
+Who was it? Who was the man higher up?
+
+In the morning as she was working about her little kitchenette an
+idea came to her. Why not hire the vacant apartment cross the hall
+from Adele? An optician, who was a friend of hers, in the course of
+a recent conversation had mentioned an invention, a model of which
+he had made for the inventor. She would try it.
+
+Since, with Constance, the outlining of a plan was tantamount to the
+execution, it was not many hours later before she had both the
+apartment and the model of the invention.
+
+Her wall separated her from the drug store and by careful
+calculation she determined about where came the little prescription
+department. Carefully, so as to arouse no suspicion, she began to
+bore away at the wall with various tools, until finally she had a
+small, al-most imperceptible opening. It was tedious work, and
+toward the end needed great care so as not to excite suspicion. But
+finally she was rewarded. Through it she could see just a trace of
+daylight, and by squinting could see a row of bottles on a shelf
+opposite.
+
+Then, through the hole, she pushed a long, narrow tube, like a putty
+blower. When at last she placed her eye at it, she gave a low
+exclamation of satisfaction. She could now see the whole of the
+little room.
+
+It was a detectascope, invented by Gaillard Smith, adapter of the
+detectaphone, an instrument built up on the principle of the
+cytoscope which physicians use to explore internally down the
+throat. Only, in the end of the tube, instead of an ordinary lens,
+was placed what is known as a "fish-eye" lens, which had a range
+something like nature has given the eyes of fishes, hence the name.
+Ordinarily cameras, because of the flatness of their lenses, have a
+range of only a few degrees, the greatest being scarcely more than
+ninety. But this lens was globular, and, like a drop of water,
+refracted light from all directions. When placed so that half of it
+caught the light it "saw" through an angle of 180 degrees, "saw"
+everything in the room instead of just that little row of bottles on
+the shelf opposite.
+
+Constance set herself to watch, and it was not long before her
+suspicions were confirmed, and she was sure that this was nothing
+more than a "coke" joint. Still she wondered whether Muller was the
+real source of the traffic of which Sleighbells was the messenger.
+She was determined to find out.
+
+All day she watched through her detectascope. Once she saw Adele
+come in and buy more dope. It was with difficulty that she kept from
+interfering. But, she reflected, the time was not ripe. She had
+thought the thing out. There was no use in trying to get at it
+through Adele. The only way was to stop the whole curse at its
+source, to dam the stream. People came and went. She soon found that
+he was selling them packets from a box hidden in the woodwork. That
+much she had learned, anyhow.
+
+Constance watched faithfully all day with only time enough taken out
+for dinner. It was after her return from this brief interval that
+she felt her heart give a leap of apprehension, as she looked again
+through the detectascope. There was Drummond in the back of the
+store talking to Muller and a woman who looked as if she might be
+Mrs. Muller, for both, seemed nervous and anxious.
+
+As nearly as she could make out, Drummond was alternately
+threatening and arguing with Muller. Finally the three seemed to
+agree, for Drummond walked over to a typewriter on a table, took a
+fresh sheet of carbon paper from a drawer, placed it between two
+sheets of paper, and hastily wrote something.
+
+Drummond read over what he had written. It seemed to be short, and
+the three apparently agreed on it. Then, in a trembling hand, Muller
+signed the two copies which Drummond had made, one of which Drummond
+himself kept and the other he sealed in an envelope and sent away by
+a boy. Drummond reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge roll
+of bills of large denomination. He counted out what seemed to be
+approximately half, handed it to the woman, and replaced the rest in
+his pocket. What it was all about Constance could only vaguely
+guess. She longed to know what was in the letter and why the money
+had been paid to the woman.
+
+Perhaps a quarter of an hour after Drummond left Adele appeared
+again, pleading for more dope. Muller went back of the partition and
+made up a fresh paper of it from a bottle also concealed.
+
+Constance was torn by conflicting impulses. She did not want to miss
+anything in the perplexing drama that was being enacted before her,
+yet she wished to interfere with the deadly course of Adele. Still,
+perhaps the girl would resent interference if she found out that
+Constance was spying on her. She determined to wait a little while
+before seeing Adele. It was only after a decided effort that she
+tore herself away from the detectascope and knocked on Adele's door
+as if she had just come in for a visit. Again she knocked, but still
+there was no answer. Every minute something might be happening next
+door. She hurried back to her post of observation.
+
+One of the worst aspects of the use of cocaine, she knew, was the
+desire of the user to share his experience with some one else. The
+passing on of the habit, which seemed to be one of the strongest
+desires of the drug fiend, made him even more dangerous to society
+than he would otherwise have been. That thought gave Constance an
+idea.
+
+She recalled also now having heard somewhere that it was a common
+characteristic of these poor creatures to have a passion for fast
+automobiling, to go on long rides, perhaps even without having the
+money to pay for them. That, too, confirmed the idea which she had.
+
+As the night advanced she determined to stick to her post. What
+could it have been that Drummond was doing? It was no good, she felt
+positive.
+
+Suddenly before her eye, glued to its eavesdropping aperture, she
+saw a strange sight. There was a violent commotion in the store.
+Blue-coated policemen seemed to swarm in from nowhere. And in the
+rear, directing them, appeared Drummond, holding by the arm the
+unfortunate Sleighbells, quaking with fear, evidently having been
+picked up already elsewhere by the wily detective.
+
+Muller put up a stout resistance, but the officers easily seized him
+and, after a hasty but thorough search, unearthed his cache of the
+contraband drug.
+
+As the scene unfolded, Constance was more and more bewildered after
+having witnessed that which preceded it, the signing of the letter
+and the passing of the money. Muller evidently had nothing to say
+about that. What did it mean?
+
+The police were still holding Muller, and Constance had not noted
+that Drummond had disappeared.
+
+"It's on the first floor--left, men," sounded a familiar voice
+outside her own door. "I know she's there. My shadow saw her buy the
+dope and take it home."
+
+Her heart was thumping wildly. It was Drummond leading his squad of
+raiders, and they were about to enter the apartment of Adele. They
+knocked, but there was no answer.
+
+A few moments before Constance would have felt perfectly safe in
+saying that Adele was out. But if Drummond's man had seen her enter,
+might she not have been there all the time, be there still, in a
+stupor? She dreaded to think of what might happen if the poor girl
+once fell into their hands. It would be the final impulse that would
+complete her ruin.
+
+Constance did not stop to reason it out. Her woman's intuition told
+her that now was the time to act--that there was no retreat.
+
+She opened her own door just as the raiders had forced in the flimsy
+affair that guarded the apartment of Adele.
+
+"So!" sneered Drummond, catching sight of her in the dim light of
+the hallway. "You are mixed up in these violations of the new drug
+law, too!"
+
+Constance said nothing. She had determined first to make Drummond
+display his hand.
+
+"Well," he ground out, "I'm going to get these people this time. I
+represent the Medical Society and the Board of Health. These men
+have been assigned to me by the Commissioner as a dope squad. We
+want this girl. We have others who will give evidence; but we want
+this one, too."
+
+He said it with a bluster that even exaggerated the theatrical
+character of the raid itself. Constance did not stop to weigh the
+value of his words, but through the door she brushed quickly. Adele
+might need her if she was indeed there.
+
+As she entered the little living-room she saw a sight which almost
+transfixed her. Adele was there--lying across a divan, motionless.
+
+Constance bent over. Adele was cold. As far as she could determine
+there was not a breath or a heart beat!
+
+What did it mean? She did not stop to think. Instantly there flashed
+over her the recollection of an instrument she had read about at one
+of the city hospitals, It might save Adele. Before any one knew what
+she was doing she had darted to the telephone in the lower hall of
+the apartment and had called up the hospital frantically, imploring
+them to hurry. Adele must be saved.
+
+Constance had no very clear idea of what happened next in the hurly-
+burly of events, until the ambulance pulled up at the door and the
+white-coated surgeon burst in carrying a heavy suitcase.
+
+With one look at the unfortunate girl he muttered, "Paralysis of the
+respiratory organs--too large a dose of the drug. You did perfectly
+right," and began unpacking the case.
+
+Constance, calm now in the crisis, stood by him and helped as deftly
+as could any nurse.
+
+It was a curious arrangement of tubes and valves, with a large
+rubber bag, and a little pump that the doctor had brought. Quickly
+he placed a cap, attached to it, over the nose and mouth of the poor
+girl, and started the machine.
+
+"Wh-what is it?" gasped Drummond as he saw Adele's hitherto
+motionless breast now rise and fall.
+
+"A pulmotor," replied the doctor, working quickly and carefully, "an
+artificial lung. Sometimes it can revive even the medically dead. It
+is our last chance with this girl."
+
+Constance had picked up the packet which had fallen beside Adele and
+was looking at the white powder.
+
+"Almost pure cocaine," remarked the young surgeon, testing it. "The
+hydrochloride, large crystals, highest quality. Usually it is
+adulterated. Was she in the habit of taking it this way?"
+
+Constance said nothing. She had seen Muller make up the packet--
+specially now, she recalled. Instead of the adulterated dope he had
+given Adele the purest kind. Why? Was there some secret he wished to
+lock in her breast forever?
+
+Mechanically the pulmotor pumped. Would it save her?
+
+Constance was living over what she had already seen through the
+detectascope. Suddenly she thought of the strange letter and of the
+money.
+
+She hurried into the drug store. Muller had already been taken away,
+but before the officer left in charge could interfere she picked up
+the carbon sheet on which the letter had been copied, turned it over
+and held it eagerly to the light.
+
+She read in amazement. It was a confession. In it Muller admitted to
+Dr. Moreland Price that he was the head of a sort of dope trust,
+that he had messengers out, like Sleighbells, that he had often put
+dope in the prescriptions sent him by the doctor, and had repeatedly
+violated the law and refilled such prescriptions. On its face it was
+complete and convincing.
+
+Yet it did not satisfy Constance. She could not believe that Adele
+had committed suicide. Adele must possess some secret. What was it?
+
+"Is--is there any change?" she asked anxiously of the young surgeon
+now engrossed in his work.
+
+For answer he merely nodded to the apparently motionless form on the
+bed, and for a moment stopped the pulmotor.
+
+The mechanical movement of the body ceased. But in its place was a
+slight tremor about the lips and mouth.
+
+Adele moved--was faintly gasping for breath!
+
+"Adele!" cried Constance softly in her ear. "Adele!"
+
+Something, perhaps a far-away answer of recognition, seemed to
+flicker over her face. The doctor redoubled his efforts.
+
+"Adele--do you know me?" whispered Constance again.
+
+"Yes," came back faintly at last. "There--there's something--wrong
+with it--They--they--"
+
+"How? What do you mean?" urged Constance. "Tell me, Adele."
+
+The girl moved uneasily. The doctor administered a stimulant and she
+vaguely opened her eyes, began to talk hazily, dreamily. Constance
+bent over to catch the faint words which would have been lost to the
+others.
+
+"They--are going to--double cross the Health Department," she
+murmured as if to herself, then gathering strength she went on,
+"Muller and Sleighbells will be arrested and take the penalty. They
+have been caught with the goods, anyhow. It has all been arranged so
+that the detective will get his case. Money--will be paid to both of
+them, to Muller and the detective, to swing the case and protect
+him. He made me do it. I saw the detective, even danced with him and
+he agreed to do it. Oh, I would do anything--I am his willing tool
+when I have the stuff. But--this time--it was--" She rambled off
+incoherently.
+
+"Who made you do it? Who told you?" prompted Constance. "For whom
+would you do anything?"
+
+Adele moaned and clutched Constance's hand convulsively. Constance
+did not pause to consider the ethics of questioning a half-
+unconscious girl Her only idea was to get at the truth.
+
+"Who was it?" she reiterated.
+
+Adele turned weakly.
+
+"Dr. Price," she murmured as Constance bent her ear to catch even
+the faintest sound. "He told me--all about it--last night--in the
+car."
+
+Instantly Constance understood. Adele was the only one outside who
+held the secret, who could upset the carefully planned frame-up that
+was to protect the real head of the dope trust who had paid
+liberally to save his own wretched skin.
+
+She rose quickly and wheeled about suddenly on Drummond.
+
+"You will convict Dr. Price also," she said in a low tone. "This
+girl must not be dragged down, too. You will leave her alone, and
+both you and Mr. Muller will hand over that money to her for her
+cure of the habit."
+
+Drummond started forward angrily, but fell back as Constance added
+in a lower but firmer tone, "Or I'll have you all up on a charge of
+attempting murder."
+
+Drummond turned surlily to those of his "dope squad," who remained:
+
+"You can go, boys," he said brusquely.
+
+"There's been some mistake here."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE FUGITIVES
+
+
+"Newspaper pictures seldom look like the person they represent,"
+asserted Lawrence Macey nonchalantly.
+
+Constance Dunlap looked squarely at the man opposite her at the
+table, oblivious to the surroundings. It was a brilliant sight in
+the great after-theater rendezvous, the beautiful faces and gowns,
+the exquisite music, the bright lights and the gayety. She had
+chosen this time and place for a reason. She had hoped that the
+contrast with what she had to say would be most marked in its
+influence on the man.
+
+"Nevertheless," she replied keenly, "I recognize the picture--as
+though you were Bertillon's new 'spoken portrait' of this Graeme
+Mackenzie."
+
+She deliberately folded up a newspaper clipping and shoved it into
+her hand-bag on a chair beside the table.
+
+Lawrence Macey met her eye unflinchingly.
+
+"Suppose," he drawled, "just for the sake of argument, that you are
+right. What would you do?"
+
+Constance looked at the unruffled exterior of the man. With her keen
+perception she knew that it covered just as calm an interior. He
+would have said the same thing if she had been a real detective, had
+walked up behind him suddenly in the subway crush, had tapped his
+shoulder, and whispered, "You're wanted."
+
+"We are dealing with facts, not suppositions," she replied
+evasively.
+
+Momentarily, a strange look passed over Macey's face. What was she
+driving at--blackmail? He could not think so, even though he had
+only just come to know Constance. He rejected the thought before it
+was half formed.
+
+"Put it as you please," he persisted. "I am, then, this Graeme
+Mackenzie who has decamped from Omaha with half a million--it is
+half a million in the article, is it not?--of cash and unregistered
+stocks and bonds. Now what would you do?"
+
+Constance felt unconsciously the shift which he had skilfully made
+in their positions. Instead of being the pursuer, she was now the
+pursued, at least in their conversation. He had admitted nothing of
+what her quick intuition told her.
+
+Yet she felt an admiration for the sang-froid of Macey. She felt a
+spell thrown over her by; the magnetic eyes that seemed to search
+her own. They were large eyes, the eyes of a dreamer, rather than of
+a practical man, eyes of a man who goes far and travels long with
+the woman on whom he fixes them solely.
+
+"You haven't answered my hypothetical question," he reminded her.
+
+She brought herself back with a start. "I was only thinking," she
+murmured.
+
+"Then there is doubt in your mind what you would do?"
+
+"N--no," she hesitated.
+
+He bent over nearer across the table. "You would at least recall the
+old adage, 'Do unto others as you would that they should do unto
+you'?" he urged.
+
+It was uncanny, the way this man read her thoughts.
+
+"You know whom they say quotes scripture," she avoided.
+
+"And am I a--a devil?"
+
+"I did not say so."
+
+"You hinted it."
+
+She had. But she said, "No, nor hinted it."
+
+"Then you did not MEAN to hint it?"
+
+She looked away a moment at the gay throng. "Graeme Mackenzie," she
+said, slowly, "what's the use of all this beating about? Why cannot
+we be frank with one another?"
+
+She paused, then resumed, meditatively, "A long time ago I became
+involved with a man in a scheme to forge checks. I would have done
+anything for him, anything."
+
+A cloud passed over his face. She saw it, had been watching for it,
+but appeared not to do so. His was a nature to brook no rivalry.
+
+"My husband had become involved in extravagances for which I was to
+blame," she went on.
+
+The cloud settled, and in its place came a look of intense relief.
+He was like most men. Whatever his own morals, he demanded a high
+standard in her.
+
+"We formed an amateur partnership in crime," she hurried on. "He
+lost his life, was unable to stand up against the odds, while he was
+alone, away from me. Since then I have been helping those who have
+become involved, on the wrong side, with the law. There," she
+concluded simply, "I have put myself in your power. I have admitted
+my part in something that, try as they would, they could never
+connect me with. I have done it because--because I want to help you.
+Be as frank with me."
+
+He eyed her keenly again. The appeal was irresistible.
+
+"I can tell you Graeme Mackenzie's story," he began carefully. "Six
+months ago there was a young man in Omaha who had worked faithfully
+for a safe deposit company for years. He was getting eighty-five
+dollars a month. That is more than it seems to you here in New York.
+But it was very little for what he did. Why, as superintendent of
+the safe deposit vaults he had helped to build up that part of the
+trust company's business to such an extent that he knew he deserved
+more.
+
+"Now, a superintendent of a safe deposit vault has lots of chances.
+Sometimes depositors give him their keys to unlock their boxes for
+them. It is a simple thing to make an impression in wax or chewing
+gum palmed in the hand. Or he has access to a number of keys of
+unrented boxes; he can, as opportunity offers, make duplicates, and
+then when the boxes are rented, he has a key. Even if the locks of
+unrented boxes are blanks, set by the first insertion of the key
+chosen at random, he can still do the same thing. And even if it
+takes two to get at the idle keys, himself and another trusted
+employe, he can get at them, if he is clever, without the other
+officer knowing it, though it may be done almost before his eyes.
+You see, it all comes down to the honesty of the man."
+
+He paused. Constance was fascinated at the coolness with which this
+man had gone to work, and with which he told of it.
+
+"This superintendent earned more than he received. He deserved it.
+But when he asked for a raise, they told him he was lucky to keep
+the job,--they reduced him, instead, to seventy-five dollars. He was
+angry at the stinging rebuke. He determined to make them smart, to
+show them what he could do.
+
+"One noon he went out to lunch and--they have been looking for him
+ever since. He had taken half a million in cash, stocks, and bonds,
+unregistered and hence easily hypothecated and traded on."
+
+"And his motive?" she asked.
+
+He looked at her long and earnestly as if making up his mind to
+something. "I think," he replied, "I wanted revenge quite as much as
+the money."
+
+He said it slowly, measured, as if realizing that there was now
+nothing to be gained by concealment from her, as if only he wanted
+to put himself in the best light with the woman who had won from him
+his secret. It was his confession!
+
+Acquaintances with Constance ripened fast into friendships. She had
+known Macey, as he called himself, only a fortnight. He had been
+introduced to her at a sort of Bohemian gathering, had talked to
+her, direct, as she liked a man to talk. He had seen her home that
+night, had asked to call, and on the other nights had taken her to
+the theater and to supper.
+
+Delicately unconsciously, a bond of friendship had grown up between
+them. She felt that he was a man vibrating with physical and mental
+power, long latent, which nothing but a strong will held in check, a
+man by whom she could be fascinated, yet of whom she was just a
+little bit afraid.
+
+With Macey, it would have been difficult to analyze his feelings. He
+had found in Constance a woman who had seen the world in all its
+phases, yet had come through unstained by what would have drowned
+some in the depths of the under-world, or thrust others into the
+degradation of the demi-monde, at least. He admired and respected
+her. He, the dreamer, saw in her the practical. She, an adventurer
+in amateur lawlessness saw in him something kindred at heart.
+
+And so when a newspaper came to her in which she recognized with her
+keen insight Lawrence Macey's face under Graeme Mackenzie's name,
+and a story of embezzlement of trust company and other funds from
+the Omaha Central Western Trust of half a million, she had not been
+wholly surprised. Instead, she felt almost a sense of elation. The
+man was neither better nor worse than herself. And he needed help.
+
+Her mind wandered back to a time, months before, when she had
+learned the bitter lesson of what it was to be a legal outcast, and
+had determined always to keep within the law, no matter how close to
+the edge of things she went.
+
+Mackenzie continued looking at her, as if waiting for the answer to
+his first question.
+
+"No," she said slowly, "I am not going to hand you over. I never had
+any such intention. We are in each other's power. But you cannot go
+about openly, even in New York, now. Some one besides myself must
+have seen that article."
+
+Graeme listened blankly. It was true. His fancied security in the
+city was over. He had fled to New York because there, in the mass of
+people, he could best sink his old identity and take on a new.
+
+She leaned her head on her hand and her elbow on the table and
+looked deeply into his eyes. "Let me take those securities," she
+said. "I will be able to do safely what you cannot do."
+
+Graeme did not seem now to consider the fortune for which he had
+risked so much. The woman before him was enough.
+
+"Will you?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"I will do with them as I would for myself, better, because--because
+it is a trust," she accepted.
+
+"More than a trust," he added, as he leaned over in turn and in
+spite of other diners in the restaurant took her hand.
+
+There are times when the rest of the critical world and its frigid
+opinions are valueless. Constance did not withdraw her hand. Rather
+she watched in his eyes the subtle physical change in the man that
+her very touch produced, watched and felt a response in herself.
+
+Quickly she withdrew her hand. "I must go," she said rather
+hurriedly, "it is getting late."
+
+"Constance," he whispered, as he helped her on with her wraps,
+brushing the waiter aside that he might himself perform any duty
+that involved even touching her, "Constance, I am in your hands--
+absolutely."
+
+It had been pleasant to dine with him. It was more pleasant now to
+feel her influence and power over him. She knew it, though she only
+half admitted it. They seemed for the moment to walk on air, as they
+strolled, chatting, out to a taxicab.
+
+But as the cab drew up before her own apartment, the familiar
+associations of even the entrance brought her back to reality
+suddenly. He handed her out, and the excitement of the evening was
+over. She saw the thing in its true light. This was the beginning,
+not the end.
+
+"Graeme," she said, as she lingered for a moment at the door. "To-
+morrow we must find a place where you can hide."
+
+"I may see you, though?" he asked anxiously.
+
+"Of course. Ring me up in the morning, Graeme. Good-night," and she
+was whisked up in the elevator, leaving Mackenzie with a sense of
+loss and loneliness.
+
+"By the Lord," he muttered, as he swung down the street in
+preference to taking a cab, "what a woman that is!"
+
+Together the next day they sought out a place where he could remain
+hidden. Mackenzie would have been near her, but Constance knew
+better. She chose a bachelor apartment where the tenants never arose
+before noon and where night was turned into day. Men would not ask
+questions. In an apartment like her own there was nothing but
+gossip.
+
+In the daytime he stayed at home. Only at night did he go forth and
+then under her direction in the most unfrequented ways.
+
+Every day Constance went to Wall Street, where she had established
+confidential relations with a number of brokers. Together they
+planned the campaigns; she executed them with consummate skill and
+adroitness.
+
+Constance was amazed. Here was a man who for years had been able to
+earn only eighty-five dollars a month and had not seemed to show any
+ability. Yet he was able to speculate in Wall Street with such dash
+that he seemed to be in a fair way, through her, to accumulate a
+fortune.
+
+One night as they were hurrying back to Graeme's after a walk, they
+had to pass a crowd on Broadway. Constance saw a familiar face
+hurrying by. It gave her a start. It was Drummond, the detective. He
+was not, apparently, looking for her. But then that was his method.
+He might have been looking. At any rate it reminded her unpleasantly
+of the fact that there were detectives in the world.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Graeme, noticing the change in her.
+
+"I just saw a man I know."
+
+The old jealousy flushed his face. Constance laughed in spite of her
+fears. Indeed, there was something that pleased her in his jealousy.
+
+"He was the detective who has been hounding me ever since that time
+I told you about."
+
+"Oh," he subsided. But if Drummond had been there, Mackenzie could
+have been counted on to risk all to protect her.
+
+"We must be more careful," she shuddered.
+
+Constance was startled one evening just as she was going out to meet
+Graeme and report on the progress of the day at hearing a knock at
+her door.
+
+She opened it.
+
+"I suppose you think I am your Nemesis," introduced Drummond, as he
+stepped in, veiling the keenness of his search by an attempt to be
+familiar.
+
+She had more than half expected it. She said nothing, but her
+coldness was plainly one of interrogation.
+
+"A case has been placed in my hands by some western clients of
+ours," he said by way of swaggering explanation, "of an embezzler
+who is hiding in New York. It required no great reasoning power to
+decide that the man's trail would sooner or later cross Wall Street.
+I believe it has done so--not directly, but indirectly. The trail, I
+think, has brought me back to the proverbial point of 'CHERCHEZ LA
+FEMME.' I am delighted," he dwelt on the word to see what would be
+its effect, "to see in the Graeme Mackenzie case my old friend,
+Constance Dunlap."
+
+"So," she replied quietly, "you suspect ME, now. I suppose _I_ am
+Graeme Mackenzie."
+
+"No," Drummond replied dubiously, "you are not Graeme Mackenzie, of
+course. You may be Mrs. Graeme Mackenzie, for all I know. But I
+believe you are the receiver of Graeme Mackenzie's stolen goods!"
+
+"You do?" she answered calmly. "That remains for you to prove. Why
+do you believe it? Is it because you are ready to believe anything
+of me!"
+
+"I have noticed that you are more active downtown than--"
+
+"Oh, it is because I speculate. Have I no means of my own?" she
+asked pointedly.
+
+"Where is he? Not here, I know. But where?" insinuated Drummond with
+a knowing look.
+
+"Am I my brother's keeper?" she laughed merrily. "Come, now. Who is
+this wonderful Graeme Mackenzie? First show me that I know him. You
+know the rule in a murder case--you must prove the CORPUS DELICTI."
+
+Drummond was furious. She was so baffling. That was his weak point
+and she had picked it out infallibly. Whatever his suspicions, he
+had been able to prove nothing, though he suspected much in the
+buying and selling of Constance.
+
+A week of bitterness, of a constant struggle against the wiles of
+one of the most subtle sleuths followed, avoiding hidden traps that
+beset her on every side. Was this to be the end of it all? Was
+Drummond's heroic effort to entangle her to succeed at last?
+
+She felt that a watch of the most extraordinary kind was set on her,
+an invisible net woven about her. Eyes that never slept were upon
+her; there was no minute in her regular haunts that she was not
+guarded. She knew it, though she could not see it.
+
+It was a war of subtle wits. Yet from the beginning Constance was
+the winner of every move. She was on her mettle. They would not, she
+determined, find Graeme through her.
+
+Days passed and the detectives still had no sign of the missing man.
+It seemed hopeless, but, like all good detectives, Drummond knew
+from experience that a clue might come to the surface when it was
+least expected. Constance on her part never relaxed.
+
+One day it was a young woman dressed in most inconspicuous style who
+followed close behind her, a woman shadow, one of the shrewdest in
+the city.
+
+A tenant moved into the apartment across the hall from Constance,
+and another hired an apartment in the next house, across the court.
+There was constant espionage. She seemed to "sense" it. The newcomer
+was very neighborly, explaining that her husband was a traveling
+salesman, and that she was alone for weeks at a time.
+
+The lines tightened. The next door neighbor always seemed to be
+around at mail time, trying to get a look at the postmarks on the
+Dunlap letters. She had an excuse in the number of letters to
+herself. "Orders for my husband," she would smile. "He gets lots of
+them personally here."
+
+All their ingenuity went for naught. Constance was not to be caught
+that way.
+
+They tried new tricks. If it was a journey she took, some one went
+with her whom she had to shake off sooner or later. There were
+visits of peddlers, gas men, electric light and telephone men. They
+were all detectives, also, always seeking a chance to make a search
+that might reveal her secret. The janitor who collected the waste
+paper found that it had a ready sale at a high price. Every
+stratagem that Drummond's astute mind could devise was called into
+play. But nothing, not a scrap of new evidence did they find.
+
+Yet all the time Constance was in direct communication with
+Mackenzie.
+
+Graeme, in his enforced idleness, was more deeply in love with
+Constance now than ever. He had eyes for nothing else. Even his
+fortunes would have been disregarded, had he not felt that to do
+that would have been the surest way to condemn himself before her.
+
+They had cut out the evening trips now, for fear of recognition. She
+was working faithfully. Already she had cleaned up something like
+fifty thousand dollars on the turn over of the stuff he had stolen.
+Another week and it would be some thousands more.
+
+Yet the strain was beginning to show.
+
+"Oh, Graeme," she cried, one night after she had a particularly hard
+time in shaking Drummond's shadows in order to make her
+unconventional visit to him, "Graeme, I'm so tired of it all--
+tired."
+
+He was about to pour out what was in his own heart when she resumed,
+"It's the lonesomeness of it. We are having success. But, what is
+success--alone?"
+
+"Yes," he echoed, thinking of his feeling that night when she had
+left him at the elevator, of the feeling now every moment of the
+time she was away from him, "yes, alone!"
+
+With the utmost difficulty he restrained the wildly surging emotions
+within him. He could not know with what effort Constance held her
+poise so admirably, keeping always that barrier of reserve beyond
+which now and then he caught a glimpse.
+
+"Let us cut out and bury ourselves in Europe," he urged.
+
+"No," she replied firmly. "Wait. I have a plan. Wait. We could never
+get away. They would find us and extradite us surely."
+
+She was coming out of a broker's office one day after the close of
+the market, only to run full tilt into Drummond, who had been
+waiting for her, cat-like. Evidently he had a purpose.
+
+"You will be interested to know," remarked the detective, watching
+her narrowly, "that District Attorney Wickham, who had the case in
+charge out there, is in New York, with the president of the Central
+Western Trust."
+
+"Yes?" she said non-committally.
+
+"I told them I was on the trail, through a woman, and they have come
+here to aid me."
+
+Why had he told her that? Was it to put her on her guard or was it
+in a spirit of bravado? She could not think so. It was not his style
+to bluster at this stage of the game. No, there was a deep-laid
+purpose. He expected her to make some move to extricate herself that
+would display her hand and betray all. It was clever and a less
+clever person than Constance would have fallen before the onslaught.
+
+Constance was thinking rapidly, as he told her where and how the new
+pursuers were active. Here, she felt, was the crisis, her
+opportunity.
+
+Scarcely had Drummond gone, than she, too, was hurrying down the
+street on her way to see Mackenzie's pursuers face to face.
+
+She found Wickham registered at the Prince Henry, a new hotel and
+sent up her card. A few moments later he received her, with
+considerable restraint as if he knew about her and had not expected
+so soon to have to show his own hand.
+
+"I understand," she began quickly, "that you have come to New York
+because Mr. Drummond claims to be able to clear up the Graeme
+Mackenzie case."
+
+"Yes?" he replied quizzically.
+
+"Perhaps," she continued, coming nearer to the point of her self-
+imposed mission, "perhaps there may be some other way to settle this
+case than through Mr. Drummond."
+
+"We might hold you," he shot out quickly.
+
+"No," she replied, "you have nothing on me. And as for Mr.
+Mackenzie, I understand, you don't even know where he is--whether he
+is in New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, or whether he may not go
+from one city to another at any moment you take open action."
+
+Wickham bit his lip. He knew she was right. Even yet the case hung
+on the most slender threads.
+
+"I have been wondering," she continued, "if there is not some way in
+which this thing can be compromised."
+
+"Never," exclaimed Wickham positively. "He must return the whole
+sum, with interest to date. Then and only then can we consider his
+plea for clemency."
+
+"You would consider it?" she asked keenly.
+
+"Of course. We should have to consider it. Voluntary surrender and
+reparation would be something like turning state's witness--against
+himself."
+
+Constance said nothing.
+
+"Can you do it?" he asked, watching craftily to see whether she
+might not drop a hint that might prove valuable.
+
+"I know those who might try," she answered, catching the look.
+
+Wickham changed.
+
+"What if we should get him without your aid!" he blustered.
+
+"Try," she shrugged.
+
+Arguments and threats were of no avail with her. She would say
+nothing more definite. She was obdurate.
+
+"You must leave it all to me," she repeated. "I would not betray
+him. You cannot prove anything on ME."
+
+"Bring the stuff up here yourself, then," he insinuated.
+
+"But I don't trust you, either," she replied frankly.
+
+The two faced each other. Constance knew in her heart that it was
+going to be a battle royal with this man, that now she had taken a
+step even so far in the open it was every one for himself and the
+devil take the hindmost.
+
+"I can't help it," he concluded. "Those are the terms. It is as far
+as I can trust a--a thief."
+
+"But I will keep my word," she said quietly. "When you prove to me
+that you are absolutely on the level, that Mackenzie can make
+restitution in full with interest, and in return be left as free a
+man as he is at this moment--why,--I can have him give up."
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," said Wickham with an air of finality, "I will make
+one concession. I will adopt any method of restitution he may
+prefer. But it must be by direct dealing between Mackenzie and
+myself, with Drummond present as well as Mr. Taylor, president of
+the Trust Company, who is now also in New York. That is my
+ultimatum. Good-afternoon."
+
+Constance left the room with flushed face and eyes that glinted with
+determination. Over and over she thought out methods to accomplish
+what she had planned. When they complied with all the conditions
+that would safeguard Mackenzie, she had determined to act. But
+Graeme must be master of the situation.
+
+Cautiously she went through her usual elaborate precautions to shake
+off any shadows that might be following her, and an hour later found
+her with Mackenzie.
+
+"What has happened!" he asked eagerly, surprised at her early visit.
+
+Briefly she ran over the events of the afternoon. "Would you be
+willing," she asked, "to go to District Attorney Wickham, hand over
+the half million with, say, twelve thousand dollars interest, in
+return for freedom?"
+
+Graeme looked at Constance a moment doubtfully.
+
+"I would not do that," he measured slowly. "How do I know what they
+will do, the moment they get me in their power? No. Almost, I would
+say that I would not go there under any guarantee they might give. I
+do not trust them. The indictment must be dismissed first."
+
+"But they won't do that. The ultimatum was personal restitution."
+
+Constance was faced by an apparently insurmountable dilemma. She saw
+and agreed with the reasonableness of Graeme's position. But there
+was the opposition and obstinacy of Wickham, the bitterness and
+unscrupulousness of Drummond. Here was a tremendous problem. How was
+she to meet it?
+
+For perhaps half an hour they sat in silence. One plan after another
+she rejected.
+
+Suddenly an idea occurred to her. Somewhere, in a bank, she had seen
+a method which might meet the difficulty.
+
+"To-morrow--I will arrange it--to suit both of you," she cried
+confidently.
+
+"How?" he asked.
+
+"Trust it all to me," she appealed.
+
+"All," replied Graeme, rising and standing before her. "All. I will
+do anything you say."
+
+He was about to take her hand, but she rose. "No, Graeme. Not now.
+There is work--the crisis. No, I must go. Trust me."
+
+It was not until noon of the next day that he saw Constance again.
+There was an air of suppressed excitement about her as she entered
+the apartment and placed on a table before him a small oblong box of
+black enameled metal, beneath which was a roll of paper. Above was
+another somewhat similar box with another roll of paper.
+
+Constance attached the instrument to the telephone, an enigmatical
+conversation followed, and she hung up the receiver.
+
+A few minutes later, she took the stylus that was in the lower box.
+Hastily across the blank paper she wrote the words, "We are ready."
+
+Mackenzie was too fascinated to ask questions. Suddenly, out of the
+corner of his eye, he saw something in the upper box move, as if of
+itself. It was a similar, self-inking stylus.
+
+"Watch!" exclaimed Constance.
+
+"Do you get this?" wrote the spirit hand.
+
+"Perfectly," she scrawled in turn. "Go ahead, as you promised."
+
+The upper stylus was now moving freely at the ends of its two rigid
+arms, counterparts of those holding the lower stylus.
+
+"We promise," it wrote, "that in consideration of the return..."
+
+"What is it?" interrupted Graeme, as the meaning of the words even
+now began to dawn on him.
+
+"A telautograph," she replied simply, "a long distance writer which
+I have had installed over a leased wire from the hotel room of
+Wickham to meet the demands of you two. With it you write over wires
+just as with the telephone you talk over wires. It is as though you
+took one of the old pantagraphs, split it in half, and had each half
+connected only by the telephone wires. While you write on this
+transmitter, their receiver records for them what you write. Look!"
+
+"... of $500,000," it continued to write, "in cash, stocks and
+bonds, with interest to date, all proceedings against Graeme
+Mackenzie will be dropped and the indictment quashed.
+
+"Marshall Taylor, Pres. Central Western Trust."
+
+"Maxwell Wickham, District Att'y."
+
+"Riley Drummond, Detective."
+
+"It is even broader than I had hoped," cried Constance in delight.
+"Does that satisfy you, Graeme?"
+
+"Y-yes," he murmured, not through hesitation, but from the
+suddenness and surprise of the thing.
+
+"Then sign this."
+
+She wrote quickly: "In consideration of the dropping of all charges
+against me, I agree to tell the number and location of the safe
+deposit box in New York where the stocks and bonds I possess are
+located and to hand over a key and written order to the same. I now
+agree immediately to pay by check the balance of the half million,
+including interest."
+
+She stepped aside from the machine. With a tremor of eagerness he
+seized the stylus and underneath what she had written wrote boldly
+the name, "Graeme Mackenzie."
+
+Next Constance herself took the stylus. "Place in the telautograph a
+blank check," she wrote. "He will write in the name of the bank, the
+amount, and the signature."
+
+She did the same. "Now, Graeme, sign this cheek on the Universal
+Bank as Lawrence Macey," she said, writing in the amount.
+
+Mechanically he took the stylus. His fingers trembled as he held it,
+but with an effort he controlled himself. It was too weird, too
+uncanny to be true. Here he was, without stirring forth from the
+security of his hiding place; there were his pursuers in their
+hotel. With the precautions taken by Constance, neither party knew
+where the other was. Yet they were in instant touch, not by the ear
+alone, but by handwriting itself.
+
+He placed the stylus on the paper. She had already written in the
+number of the check, the date, the bank, the amount, and the payee,
+Marshall Taylor. Hastily Graeme signed it, as though in fear that
+they might rescind their action before he could finish.
+
+"Now the securities," she said. "I have withdrawn already the amount
+we have made trading--it is a substantial sum. Write out an order to
+the Safe Deposit Company to deliver the key and the rest of the
+contents of the box to Taylor. I have fixed it with them after a
+special interview this morning. They understand."
+
+Again Graeme wrote, feverishly.
+
+"I--we--are entirely free from prosecution of any kind?" he asked
+eagerly.
+
+"Yes," Constance murmured, with just a catch in her throat, as now
+that the excitement was over, she realized that he was free,
+independent of her again.
+
+The telautograph had stopped. No, it was starting again. Had there
+been a slip! Was the dream at last to turn to ashes? They watched
+anxiously.
+
+"Mrs. Dunlap," the words unfolded, "I take my hat off to you. You
+have put it across again.
+
+"DRUMMOND."
+
+Constance read it with a sense of overwhelming relief. It was a
+magnanimous thing in Drummond. Almost she forgave him for many of
+the bitter hours he had caused in the discharge of his duty.
+
+As they looked at the writing they realized its import. The
+detective had abandoned the long search. It was as though he had put
+his "O.K." on the agreement.
+
+"We are no longer fugitives!" exclaimed Graeme, drawing in a breath
+that told of the weight lifted from him.
+
+For an instant he looked down into her upturned face and read the
+conflict that was going on in her. She did not turn away, as she had
+before. It flashed over him that once, not long ago, she had talked
+in a moment of confidence of the loneliness she had felt since she
+had embarked as the rescuer of amateur criminals.
+
+Graeme bent down and took her hand, as he had the first night when
+they had entered their strange partnership.
+
+"Never--never can I begin to pay you what I owe," he said huskily,
+his face near hers.
+
+He felt her warm breath almost on his cheek, saw the quick color
+come into her face, her breast rise and fall with suppressed
+emotion. Their eyes met.
+
+"You need not pay," she whispered, "I am yours."
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Constance Dunlap, by Arthur B. Reeve
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONSTANCE DUNLAP ***
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