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Constance Dunlap

by Arthur B. Reeve · English · Gutenberg #5261 · 399,957 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Constance Dunlap

Author: Arthur B. Reeve


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #5261]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONSTANCE DUNLAP ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.










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 been 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. So 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 cut 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 took 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 _Arroyo_," 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.
It 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 check 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 went 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

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