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He gently leaned over and recovered the hand that she had withdrawn.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.