"He's a swindler of the first water," she concluded as she was whisked down in the elevator. "I'm sure Mildred is in badly with this crowd, one urging her on in her trouble, the other making it worse and fleecing her into the bargain."

At the entrance she paused, undecided which was the quickest route home. As by chance she turned just for a moment she thought she caught a fleeting glimpse of Drummond dodging behind a pillar. It was only for an instant but even that apparition was enough.

"I WILL get her out of this safely," resolved Constance. "I WILL keep one more fly from his web."

Constance felt as if, even now, she must see Mildred and, although she knew nothing, at least put her on her guard. She did not have long to wait for her chance. It was late in the afternoon when her door buzzer sounded.

"Constance, I've been looking for you all day," sighed Mildred, dropping sobbing into a chair. "I am—distracted."

"Why, my dear, what's the matter?" asked Constance. "Let me make you a cup of coffee."

Over the steaming little cups Mildred grew more calm.

"Forest has found out in some way that I am speculating in Wall Street," she confided at length. "I suppose some of his friends—he has lots down there—told him."

Momentarily the picture of Drummond back of the post in Davies' building flashed over Constance.

"And he is awfully angry. Oh, I never knew him to be so angry—and sarcastic, too."

"Was it wholly over your money?" asked Constance. "Was there nothing else?"

Mrs. Caswell started. "You grow more weird, every day, Constance. Yes—there was something else."

"Mr. Davies?"

Mildred had risen. "Don't—don't—" she cried.

"Then you do really—care for him!" asked Constance mercilessly.

"No—no, a thousand times—no. How can I? I have put all such thoughts out of my mind—long ago." She paused, then went on more calmly, "Constance, believe me or not—I am just as good a woman to-day as I was the day I married Forest. No—I would not even let the thought enter my head—never!"

For perhaps an hour after her friend had gone, Constance sat thinking. What should she do? Something must be done and soon. As she thought, suddenly the truth flashed over her.

Caswell had employed Drummond to shadow his wife in the hope that he might unearth something that might lead to a divorce. Drummond, like so many divorce detectives, was not averse to guiding events, to put it mildly. He had ingratiated himself, perhaps, with the clairvoyant and Davies. Constance had often heard before of clairvoyants and brokers who worked in conjunction to fleece the credulous. Now another and more serious element than the loss of money was involved. Added to them was a divorce detective—and honor itself was at stake. She remembered the doped cigarettes. She had heard of them before at clairvoyants'. She saw it all—Madame Cassandra playing on Mildred's wounded affections, the broker on both that and her desire to be independent—and Drummond pulling the wires that all might take advantage of her woman's frailty.

That moment Constance determined on action.

First she telephoned to deForest Caswell at his office. It was an unconventional thing to do to ask him to call, but she made some plausible pretext. She was surprised to find that he accepted it without hesitating. It set her thinking. Drummond must have told him something of her and he had thought this as good a time as any to face her. In that case Drummond would probably come too. She was prepared.

She had intended to have one last talk with Mildred, but had no need to call her. Utterly wretched, the poor little woman came in again to see her as she had done scores of times before, to pour out her heart. Forest had not come home to dinner, had not even taken the trouble to telephone. Constance did not say that she herself was responsible.

"Do you really want to know the truth about your dreams?" asked Constance, after she had prevailed upon Mildred to eat a little.

"I do know," she returned.

"No, you don't," went on Constance, now determined to tell her the truth whether she liked it or not. "That clairvoyant and Mr. Davies are in league, playing you for a sucker, as they say."

Mrs. Caswell did not reply for a moment. Then she drew a long breath and shut her eyes. "Oh, you don't know how true what she says is to me. She—"

"Listen," interrupted Constance. "Mildred, I'm going to be frank, brutally frank. Madame Cassandra has read your character, not the character as you think it is, but your unconscious, subconscious self. She knows that there is no better way to enter into the intimate life of a client, according to the new psychology, than by getting at and analyzing the dreams. And she knows that you can't go far in dream analysis without finding sex. It is one of the strongest natural impulses, yet subject to the strongest repression, and hence one of the weakest points of our culture.

"She is actually helping along your alienation for that broker. You yourself have given me the clue in your dreams. Only I am telling you the truth about them. She holds it back and tells you plausible falsehoods to help her own ends. She is trying to arouse in you those passions which you have suppressed, and she has not scrupled to use drugged cigarettes with you and others to do it. You remember the breakfast dream, when I said that much could be traced back to dreams? A thing happens. It causes a dream. That in turn sometimes causes action. No, don't interrupt. Let me finish first.

"Take that first dream," continued Constance, rapidly thrusting home her interpretation so that it would have its full effect. "You dreamed that your husband was dying and you were afraid. She said it meant love was dead. It did not. The fact is that neurotic fear in a woman has its origin in repressed, unsatisfied love, love which for one reason or another is turned away from its object and has not succeeded in being applied. Then his death. That simply means that you have a feeling that you might be happier if he were away and didn't devil you. It is a survival of childhood, when death is synonymous with absence. I know you don't believe it. But if you had studied the subject as I have in the last few days you'd understand. Madame Cassandra understands.

"And the wall. That was Wall Street, probably, which does divide you two. You tried to get over it and you fell. That means your fear of actually falling, morally, of being a fallen woman."

Mildred was staring wildly. She might deny but in her heart she must admit.

"The thing that pursued you, half bull, half snake, was Davies and his blandishments. I have seen him. I know what he is. The crowd in a dream always denotes a secret. He is pursuing you, as in the dream. But he hasn't caught you. He thinks there is in you the same wild demimondaine instinct that with many an ardent woman, slumbers unknown in the back of her mind.

"Whatever you may say, you do think of him. When a woman dreams of breakfasting cozily with some one other than her husband it has an obvious meaning. As for the messenger and the message about the United Traction, there, too, was a plain wish, and, as you must see, wishes in one form or another, disguised or distorted, lie at the basis of dreams. Take the coal fire. That, too, is susceptible of interpretation. I think you must have heard the couplet:

"'No coal, no fire so hotly glows As the secret love that no one knows.'"

Mildred Caswell had risen, an indignant flush on her face.

Constance put her hand on her arm gently to restrain her, knowing that such indignation was the first sign that she had struck at the core of truth in her interpretation.

"My dear," she urged, "I'm only telling you the truth, for your own sake, and not to take advantage of you as Madame Cassandra is doing. Please—remember that the best evidence of your normal condition is just what I find, that absence of love would be abnormal. My dear, you are what the psychologists call a consciously frigid, unconsciously passionate woman. Consciously you reject this Davies; unconsciously you accept him. And it is the more dangerous, although you do not know it, because some one else is watching. It was not one of his friends who told your husband—"

Mrs. Caswell had paled. "Is—is there a—detective?" she faltered.

Constance nodded.

Mildred had collapsed completely. She was sobbing in a chair, her head bowed in her hands, her little lace handkerchief soaked. "What shall I do? What shall I do?"

There was a sudden tap at the door.

"Quick—in there," whispered Constance, shoving her through the portieres into the drawing room.

It was Forest Caswell.

For a moment Constance stood irresolute, wondering just how to meet him, then she said, "Good evening, Mr. Caswell. I hope you will pardon me for asking you to call on me, but, as you know, I've come to know your wife—perhaps better than you do."

"Not better," he corrected, seeming to see that it was directness that she was aiming at. "It is bad enough to get mixed up badly in Wall Street, but what would you yourself say—you are a business woman—what would you say about getting into the clutches of a—a dream doctor—and worse?"

He had put Constance on the defensive in a sentence.

"Don't you ever dream?" she asked quietly.

He looked at her a moment as if doubting even her mentality.

"Lord," he exclaimed in disgust, "you, too, defend it?"

"But, don't you dream?" she persisted.

"Why, of course I dream," he answered somewhat petulantly. "What of it? I don't guide my actions by it."

"Do you ever dream of Mildred?" she asked.

"Sometimes," he admitted reluctantly.

"Ever of other—er—people?" she pursued.

"Yes," he replied, "sometimes of other people. But what has that to do with it? I cannot help my dreams. My conduct I can help and I do help."

Constance had not expected him to be frank to the extent of taking her into his confidence. Still, she felt that he had told her just enough. She discerned a vague sense of jealousy in his tone which told her more than words that whatever he might have said or done to Mildred he resented, unconsciously, the manner in which she had striven to gain sympathy outside.

"Fortunately he knows nothing of the new theories," she said to herself.

"Mrs. Dunlap," he resumed, "since you have been frank with me, I must be equally frank with you. I think you are far too sensible a woman not to understand in just what a peculiar position my wife has placed me."

He had taken out of his pocket a few sheets of closely typewritten tissue paper. He did not look at them. Evidently he knew the contents by heart. Constance did not need to be told that this was a sheaf of the daily reports of the agency for which Drummond worked.

He paused. She had been watching him searchingly. She was determined not to let him justify himself first.

"Mr. Caswell," she persisted in a low, earnest tone, "don't be so sure that there is nothing in this dream, business. Before you read me those reports from Mr. Drummond, let me finish."

Forest Caswell almost dropped them in surprise.

"Dreams," she continued, seeing her advantage, "are wishes, either suppressed or expressed. Sometimes the dream is frank and shows an expressed wish. Other times it shows a suppressed wish, or a wish which in its fulfilment in the dream is disguised or distorted.

"You are the cause of your wife's dreams. She feels in them anxiety. And, according to the modern psychologists who have studied dreams carefully and scientifically, fear and anxiety represent love repressed or suppressed."

She paused to emphasize the point, glad to note that he was following her.

"That clairvoyant," she went on, "has found out the truth. True, it may not have been the part of wisdom for Mildred to have gone to her in the first place. I pass over that. I do not know whether you or she was most to blame at the start. But that woman, in the guise of being her friend, has played on every string of your wife's lonely heart, which you have wrung until it vibrates.

"Then," she hastened on, "came your precious friend Drummond, Drummond who has, no doubt, told you a pack of lies about me. You see that!"

She had flung down on the table a cigarette which she had managed to get at Madame Cassandra's.

"Smoke it."

He lighted it gingerly, took a puff or two, puckered his face, frowned, and rubbed the lighted end on the fireplace to extinguish it.

"What is it?" he asked suspiciously.

"Hashish," she answered tersely. "Things were not going fast enough to suit either Madame Cassandra or Drummond. Madame Cassandra helped along the dreams by a drug noted for its effect on the passions. More than that," added Constance, leaning over toward him and catching his eye, "Madame Cassandra was working in league with a broker, as so many of the fakers do. Drummond knew it, whether he told you the truth about it or not. That broker was a swindler named Davies."

She was watching the effect on him. She saw that he had been reserving this for a last shot at her, that he realized she had stolen his own ammunition and appropriated it to herself.

"They were only too glad when Drummond approached them. There you are, three against that poor little woman—no, four, including yourself. Perhaps she was foolish. But it was not so much to her discredit as to those who cast her adrift when she had a natural right to protection. Here was a woman with passions which she herself did not understand, and a little money—alone. Her case appealed to me. I knew her dreams. I studied them."

Caswell was listening in amazement. "It is dangerous to be with a person who pays attention to such little things," he said.

Evidently Drummond himself must have been listening. The door buzzer sounded and he stepped in, perhaps to bolster up his client in case he should be weakening.

As he met Constance's eye he smiled superciliously and was about to speak. But she did not give him time even to say good evening.

"Ask him," she cried, her eyes flashing, for she realized that it had been part of the plan to confront her, perhaps worm out of her just enough to confirm Drummond's own story to Caswell, "ask him to tell the truth—if he is capable of it—not the truth that will make a good daily report of a hired shadow who colors his report the way he thinks his client desires it, but the real truth."

"Mr. Caswell," interrupted Drummond, "this woman——"

"Mr. Drummond," cried Constance, rising and shaking the burnt stub of the little gold-banded cigarette at him to impress it on his mind, "Mr. Drummond, I don't care whether I am a—a she-devil"—she almost hissed the words at him—"but I have evidence enough to go before the district attorney of this city and the grand jury and get indictments for conspiracy against a certain clairvoyant and a bucket shop operator. To save themselves, they will probably tell all they know about a certain crook who has been using them."

Caswell looked at her, amazed at her denunciation of the detective. As for Drummond, he turned his back on her as if to ignore her utterly.

"Mr. Caswell," he said bitterly, "in those reports—"

"Forest Caswell," insisted Constance, rising and facing him, "if you have in that heart of yours one shred of manhood it should move you. You—this man—the others—have placed in the path of a woman every provocation, every temptation for financial, physical, and moral ruin. She has consulted a clairvoyant—yes. She has speculated—yes. Yet she was proof against something greater than that. And I know—because I know her unconscious self which her dreams reveal, her inmost soul—I know her better than you do, better than she does herself. I know that even now she is as good and true and would be as loving as—"

Constance had paused and taken a step toward the drawing room. Before she knew it, the portieres flew apart and an eager little woman had rushed past her and flung her arms about the neck of the man.

Caswell's features were working, as he gently disengaged her arms, still keeping one hand. Half shoving her aside, ignoring Constance, he had faced Drummond. For a moment the brazen detective flinched.

As he did so, deForest Caswell crumpled up the mass of tissue paper reports and flung them into the fireplace.

"Get out!" he said, suppressing his voice with difficulty. "Send me—your bill. I'll pay it—but, mind, if it is one penny more than it should be, I'll—I'll fight if it takes me from the district attorney and the grand jury to the highest court of the State. Now—go!"

Caswell turned slowly again toward his wife.

"I've been a brute," he said simply.

Something almost akin to jealousy rose in Constance's heart as she saw Mildred, safe at last.

Then Caswell turned slowly to her. "You," he said, stroking his wife's hand gently but looking at Constance, "you are a REAL clairvoyant."



CHAPTER VII

THE PLUNGERS

"They have the most select clientele in the city here."

Constance Dunlap was sitting in the white steamy room of Charmant's Beauty Shop. Her informant, reclining dreamily in a luxurious wicker chair, bathed in the perspiring vapor, had evidently taken a fancy to her.

"And no wonder, either; they fix you up so well," she rattled on; then confidingly, "Now, last night after the show a party of us went to supper and a dance—and it was in the wee small hours when we broke up. But Madame here can make you all over again. Floretta," she called to an attendant who had entered, "if Mr. Warrington calls up on the 'phone, say I'll call him later."

"Yes, Miss Larue."

Constance glanced up quickly as Floretta mentioned the name of the popular young actress. Stella Larue was a pretty girl on whom the wild dissipation of the night life of New York was just beginning to show its effects. The name of Warrington, too, recalled to Constance instantly some gossip she had heard in Wall Street about the disagreement in the board of directors of the new Rubber Syndicate and the effort to oust the president whose escapades were something more than mere whispers of scandal.

This was the woman in the case. Constance looked at Stella now with added interest as she rose languidly, drew her bathrobe about her superb figure carelessly in such a way as to show it at best advantage.

"I've had more or less to do with Wall Street myself," observed Constance.

"Oh, have you? Isn't that interesting," cried Stella.

"I hope you're not putting money in Rubber?" queried Constance.

"On the contrary," rippled Stella, then added, "You're going to stay? Let me tell you something. Have Floretta do your hair. She's the best here. Then come around to see me in the dormitory if I'm here when you are through, won't you?"

Constance promised and Stella fluttered away like the pretty butterfly that she was, leaving Constance to wonder at the natural gravitation of plungers in the money market toward plungers in the white lights.

Charmant's Beauty Parlor was indeed all its name implied, a temple of the cult of adornment, the last cry in the effort to satisfy what is more than health, wealth, and happiness to some women—the fundamental feminine instinct for beauty.

Constance had visited the beauty specialist to have an incipient wrinkle smoothed out. Frankly, it was not vanity. But she had come to realize that her greatest asset was her personal appearance. Once that had a chance to work, her native wit and keen ability would carry her to success.

Madame Charmant herself was a tall, dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed, well-groomed woman who looked as if she had been stamped from a die for a fashion plate—and then the die had been thrown away. All others like her were spurious copies, counterfeits. More than that, she affected the name of Vera, which in itself had the ring of truth.

And so Charmant had prevailed on Constance to take a full course in beautification and withhold the wrinkle at the source.

"Besides, you know, my dear," she purred, "there's nothing discovered by the greatest minds of the age that we don't apply at once."

Constance was not impervious to feminine reason, and here she was.

"Has Miss Larue gone?" she asked when at last she was seated in a comfortable chair again sipping a little aromatic cup of coffee.

"No, she's resting in one of the little dressing rooms."

She followed Floretta down the corridor. Each little compartment had its neat, plain white enameled bed, a dresser and a chair.

Stella smiled as Constance entered. "Yes," she murmured in response to the greeting, "I feel quite myself now."

"Mr. Warrington on the wire," announced Floretta a moment later, coming down the corridor again with a telephone on a long unwinding wire.

"Hello, Alfred—oh, rocky this morning," Constance overheard. "I said to myself, 'Never again—until the next time. Vera? Oh, she was as fresh as a lark. Can I lunch with you downtown? Of course.'" Then as she hung up the receiver she called, "Floretta, get me a taxi."

"Yes, Miss Larue."

"I always have a feeling here," whispered Stella, "that I am being listened to. I mean to speak to Vera about it some time. By the way, wouldn't you like to join us to-night? Vera will be along and Mr. Warrington and perhaps 'Diamond Jack' Braden—you know him?"

Constance confessed frankly that she did not have the pleasure of the acquaintance of the well-known turfman and first nighter.

She hesitated. Perhaps it was that that Stella liked. Almost any one else would have been overeager to accept. But to Constance, sure of herself now, nothing of the sort was worth scrambling for. Besides, she was wondering how a man with the fight of his life on his hands could find time to lunch downtown even with Stella.

"I've taken quite a fancy to you," pressed Stella.

"Thank you, it's very kind of you," Constance answered. "I shall try very hard to be there."

"I'll leave a box for you at the office. Come around after the performance to my dressing room."

"Miss Larue, your taxi's waiting," announced Floretta.

"Thanks. Are you going now, Mrs. Dunlap? Yes? Then ride down in the elevator with me."

They parted at the foot of the elevator and Constance walked through the arcade of the office building in which the beauty parlor occupied the top floor. She stopped at a florist's stand to admire the flowers, but more for an excuse to look back at Stella.

As Stella stepped into a taxicab, showing a generous wealth of silken hosiery beneath the tango gown, Constance was aware that the driver of another cab across the street was also interested. She noticed that he turned and spoke to his fare through the open window.

The cab swung around to follow the other and Constance caught a fleeting glimpse of a familiar face.

"Drummond," she exclaimed almost aloud.

What did it mean? Why had the detective been employed to follow Stella? Instinctively she concluded that he must be engaged by Mrs. Warrington.

"I must accept Stella's invitation," she said to herself excitedly. "At least, she should be put on her guard."

That evening, as she was looking over the newspapers, her eye caught the item in the Wall Street edition:

RUBBER SYNDICATE DISSENSION

Break in Stock Follows Effort of Strong Minority to Oust Warrington from Presidency

Then followed a brief account of the struggle of a powerful group of directors to force Warrington, Braden, and the rest out, with a hint at the scandal of which every one now was talking.

"I never yet knew a man who went in for that sort of thing that lasted long in business," she observed. "This is my chance—a crowd riding for a fall."

Constance chose a modest orchestra seat in preference to the place in a box which Stella had reserved for her at the office, and, aside from the purpose which was rapidly taking shape in her mind, she enjoyed the play very much. Stella Larue, as the "Grass Widow," played her part with a piquancy which Constance knew was not wholly a matter of book knowledge.

As the curtain went down, the audience, its appetite for the risque whetted, filed out on Broadway with its myriad lights and continuous film of motion. Constance made her way around to Stella's dressing room.

She had scarcely been welcomed by Stella, whose cheeks beneath the grease paint were now genuinely ablaze with excitement, when a man entered. He was tall, spare, the type whose very bow is ingratiating and whose "delighted, I assure you" is suave and compelling.

Alfred Warrington seemed to be on very good terms indeed with Stella as she introduced him to Constance.

"You will join us, Mrs. Dunlap?" he asked, throwing an opera cloak over Stella's shoulders. "Vera Charmant and Jack Braden are waiting for us at the Little Montmartre."

As he mentioned the famous cabaret, Constance took a little tighter grip on herself and decided to take the plunge and see the affair out, although that sort of thing had very little attraction for her.

They were leaving the theater when she saw lurking in the crowd the familiar figure of Drummond. She turned her head quickly and sank back into the dark recesses of the limousine.

Should she tell them now about him?

She leaned over to Warrington. "I saw a man in the crowd just now who seemed to be quite interested in us," she said quickly. "Can't we drive around a bit to throw him off if he should get into a cab?"

Warrington looked at her keenly. It was quite evident that he thought it was Constance who was being followed, not Stella or himself. Constance decided quickly to say nothing more that would prejudice Stella, but as Warrington directed his driver to run up through the park she saw that, far from alarming him, the words had only added a zest of mystery about herself.

They left the Park and the car jolted them quickly now over the uneven asphalt to the palace of pleasure, where already the two advance guards were holding one of the best tables in a house crowded with all classes from debutantes to debauchees.

"Diamond Jack" Braden was a heavy-set man with a debonnaire, dapper way about him. He wore a flower in his buttonhole, a smart touch which seemed very fetching, evidently, to the artistic Vera.

Constance fell to studying him, as she did all men and women. "His hands betray him," she said to herself, as she was introduced.

They were in fact shielded from view as he bowed, one with the thumb tucked in the corner of his trousers pocket, the other behind his back.

"He is hiding something," flashed through her mind intuitively. And, when she analyzed it, she felt still that there was nothing fanciful about the idea. It was simply a little unconscious piece of evidence.

From the start the cabaret was pretty rapid. When they entered, two of the performers were rendering the Apache dance with an abandon that improved on its namesake. Scarcely had they finished when the orchestra began all over again, and a couple of diners from the tables glided past them on the dancing floor, then another couple and another.

"Tanguez-vous?" bowed Braden, leaning over to Stella.

"Oui, je tanguerai," she nodded, catching the spirit of the place.

It left Warrington and Constance at the table with Vera, and as Constance looked eagerly after the graceful form of the little actress, Warrington asked, "Will you dance!"

"No, thank you," she said, trying him out. "I haven't had time to learn these new steps. And, besides, I have had a bad day in the market. Steel, Reading, everything is off. Not that I have lost much—but it's what I haven't made."

Warrington, who had been about to repeat his question to Vera, turned suddenly. This was something new to him, to meet a woman like Constance. If she knew about other stocks, she must know about the Syndicate. Already he had felt an attraction toward Constance physically, an attraction of maturity which somehow or other seemed more satisfying, at least novel, in contrast with, the gay butterfly talk of Stella.

He did not ask Vera to dance. Instead he began banteringly to discuss Wall Street and in five minutes he found out that she really knew as much about certain features of the game as he did. She did not need to be told that Alfred Warrington, plunger, man about town, was quite unexpectedly struck by her personality.

Now and then she could see Stella eyeing her covertly. The little actress had had, like many another, a few dollars to invest or rather with which to speculate. Her method had been usually to make a quick profit on a tip from some Wall Street friend. Often, if the tip went wrong, the friend would return the money to the unsuspecting little girl, with some muttered apology about having been unable to get it placed in time, and then, as the market went down or up, seeing that it was too late, adding a congratulation that at least the principal was saved if there was no profit.

The little actress was plainly piqued. She saw, though she did not understand, that Constance was a different kind of plunger from what she had thought at first up at Charmant's. Instead of trying to compete with Constance in her field, she redoubled her efforts in her own. Was Warrington, a live spender, to slip through her grasp for a chance acquaintance?

Another dance. This time it was Stella and Warrington. Braden, who had served excellently as a foil to lead Warrington on when he had eyes for no one else, not even Vera, was left severely alone. Nothing was said, not an action done openly, but Constance, woman-like, could feel the contest in the air. And she felt just a little quiver when they sat down and Warrington resumed the conversation with her where he had left it. Even the daring cut of Stella's gown and the exaggerated proximity of her dainty person had failed this time.

As they chatted gaily, Constance enjoyed her triumph to the full. Yes, she could see that Stella was violently jealous. But she intended that she should be. That was now a part of her plan as it shaped itself in her mind, since she had plunged or, perhaps better, had been dragged into the game.

As the evening wore on and the dancing became more furious, Warrington seemed to catch the spirit of recklessness that was in the very air. He talked more recklessly, once in a while with a bitterness not aimed at any one in particular, which passed among the others as blase sarcasm of one who had seen much and to whom even the fastest was slow.

But to Constance, as she tried to fathom him, it presented an entirely different interpretation. For example, she asked herself, why had he been so ready, apparently, to transfer his interest from Stella? Was it because, having cut loose from the one feminine tie that morally bound him, he no longer felt any restraint in cutting loose from others? Was it the same spirit that had carried him on in the money game, having cut loose from one financial principle, to let all go and to guide his course as close to the edge of things as he dared? There had been the same reckless bravado in the way he had urged on the driver of his car in the wild ride of the earlier evening, violating the speed laws yet succeeding in escaping the traffic squad.

Warrington was a plunger. Yet there was something about him that was different from others she had seen. Perhaps it was that he had a conscience, even though he had succeeded in detaching himself from it.

And Stella. There was something different about her, too. Constance more than once was on the point of revising her estimate of the little actress. Was she, after all, wholly mercenary in her attitude toward Warrington? Was he merely a live spender whom she could not afford to lose? Or was she merely a beautiful, delicate creature caught in the merciless maelstrom of the life into which she had been thrown? Did she realize the perilous position this all was placing her in?

They were among the last to leave and Vera and Braden offered to take Constance to her apartment in Braden's car, while Stella contrived prettily to take so much of Warrington's time with the wraps that by the time they were ready to go the manner of the breaking up of the party was as she wanted it. In her final triumph she could not help just an extra inflection on, "I hope I'll see you again at Vera's soon, my dear."

All night, or at least all that was left of it, Constance tried to straighten out the whirl of her thoughts. With the morning she had an idea. Now, in a moment when the exhilaration of the gay life was at low ebb, she must see Stella.

It was early yet, but Stella was not at her hotel when Constance cautiously called up the office to find out. Where was she? Constance drove around to Charmant's on the chance that she might be there. Vera greeted her a trifle coldly, she thought, but then this was not midnight at the Montmartre. No, Stella was not there, she said, but nevertheless Constance decided to wait.

"I'm all unstrung," confided Constance, with an assumed air of languor, as she dropped into a chair.

Charmant, as fresh as if she had just emerged from the proverbial bandbox, nodded knowingly. "A Turkish bath, massage, something to tone you up," she advised.

With alert eyes Constance went patiently through the process of freshening, first in the steamy hot room where she had met Stella the day before, then the deliciously cool shower, gentle massage, and all the rest.

At one of the little white tables of the manicures she noticed a pretty, rather sad-faced little woman. There was something about her that attracted Constance's attention, although she could not have told exactly what it was.

"You know her?" whispered Floretta, bursting with excitement. "No? Why,—" and here she paused and dropped her voice even lower,—"that's Mrs. Warrington."

"Not the—"

"Yes," she nodded, "his wife. You know, she comes here twice a week. We have to do some tall scheming to keep them apart. No, it's not vanity, either. It's—well—you see, she's trying to get him back, to look like a sport."

Constance thought of the hopeless fight so far which the little woman was waging to keep up with the dashing actress. Then she thought of Warrington, of last night, of how he had sought her, so ready, it seemed, to leave even the "other woman." Then Floretta's remark repeated itself mechanically. "We have to do some tall scheming to keep them apart." Was Stella here, after all?

Mrs. Warrington was not a bad looking woman and in fact it was difficult to see how she expected to be improved by cosmetics that would lighten her complexion, bleaches that would flaxen her hair, tortures for this, that, and the other defect, real or imagined.

Now, however, she was a creature of reinforcements, from her puffy masses of light hair to her French heels and embroidered stockings that showed through the slash in the drapery of her gown.

Constance felt sorry for her, deeply sorry. The whole thing seemed not in keeping with her. She was a home-maker, not a butterfly. Was Warrington worth it all? asked Constance of herself. "At least she thinks so," flashed over her, as Mrs. Warrington rose, and left the room, watchfully guided by Floretta to the next process in her course in beautification.

Constance sank back luxuriously on the cushions of her chaise longue. She longed to explore the beauty parlor, to leave the rest room and go down the narrow corridor, prying into the secrets of the little dressing rooms that opened into it. What did they conceal? Why had Vera seemed so distant? Was it the natural reaction of the "morning after," or was Stella really there and was she keeping her away from Mrs. Warrington to prevent friction between two clients that would have been annoying to all?

She could reach no conclusion, except that there was a feeling of luxurious well-being as she lolled back into the deep recesses of the lounge in the corner of the room separated from the next room by a thin board partition.

Suddenly her attention was arrested by muffled voices on the other side of the partition. She strained her ears. She could not, of course, see the speakers, or even recognize their voices, but they were a man and a woman.

"We must get the thing settled right away," she overheard the man's voice. "You see how he is? Every new face attracts him. See how he took to that new one last night. Who knows what may happen? By and by some one may come along and spoil all."

"Couldn't we use her?" asked the woman.

"No, you can't use that woman. She's too clever. But we must do something, right away—to-night if possible."

A pause. "How, then?"

Another pause and the whispered monosyllable, "Dope!"

"What?"

"I have it here. Use a dozen of them. They can be snuffed as a powder, or it can be put in a drink. If you want more—see, I will put the bottle on this shelf—'way back. No one will see it."

"Don't you think I ought to write a note, something that will be sure to get him up here?"

"Yes—just a line or two—as if in haste."

There was a sound as if of tearing a sheet of note paper from a pad.

"Is that all right?"

"Yes. As soon as the market closes. There will be nothing done to-day. To-morrow's the day. To-night we must get him going and in the meantime a meeting will be held, the plan arranged at the Prince Henry to-night—and then the smash. Between them all, he won't know what has struck him."

"All right. You had better go out as you came in. It's better that no one up here should suspect anything."

The voices ceased.

What did it mean! Constance rose and sauntered around into the next room. It was empty, but when she looked hastily up on the shelf there was a bottle of white tablets and on a table a pad of note paper from which a sheet had been torn.

She picked up the bottle gingerly. Who had touched it? Her mind was working quickly. Somewhere she had read of finger prints and the subject had interested her because the system had been introduced in banks and she saw that it was going to become more and more important.

But how did they get them in a case like this? She had read of some powder that adhered to the marks left by the sweat glands of the fingers. There was the talcum powder. Perhaps it would do.

Quickly she shook the box gently over the glass. Then she blew it off carefully.

Clear, sharp, distinct, there were the imprints of fingers!

But the paper. Talcum powder would not bring them out on that. It must be something black.

A lead pencil! Eagerly she seized it and with, a little silver pen-knife whittled off the wood. Scrape! scrape! until she had a neat little pile of finely powdered graphite.

Then she poured it on the paper and taking the sheet daintily by the edges, so that she would not mix her own finger prints with the others, she rolled the powder back and forth. As she looked anxiously she could see the little grains adhering to the paper.

A fine camel's hair brush lay on the table, for penciling. She took it deftly. It made her think of that first time when she painted the checks for Carlton. A lump came into her throat.

There they were, the second pair of telltale prints. But what tale did they tell? Whose were they?

Her reading on finger prints had been very limited but, like everything she did, to the point. She studied those before her, traced out as best she could the loops, whorls, arches, and composites, even counted the ridges on some of them. It was not so difficult, after all.

She stopped in an uptown branch of her brokers in one of the hotels. The market was very quiet, and even the Rubber Syndicate seemed to be marking time. As she went out she passed the telephone booths. Should she call up Warrington? Would he misinterpret it? What if he did? She was mistress of her own tongue. She need not say too much. Besides, if she were going on a fishing expedition, a telephone line was as good as any other—better than a visit.

"This is Mrs. Dunlap," she said directly.

"Oh, how do you do, Mrs. Dunlap. I have been intending to call you up, but," he paused, and added, "you know we are having a pretty strenuous time down here."

There was a genuine ring to the first part of his reply. But the rest of it trailed off into the old blase tone.

"I'm sorry," she replied. "I enjoyed last night so much."

"Did you?" came back eagerly.

Before he could add anything she asked, "I suppose you are going to see Stella again this afternoon."

"Why—er—yes," he hesitated. "I think so."

"Where? At Vera's?" she asked, adopting a tone not of curiosity but of chiding him for seeing Stella instead of herself.

The moment of hesitation, before he said that he didn't know, told her the truth. It was as good as a plain, "Yes."

For a few moments they chatted. As she hung up the receiver after his deferential goodbye, Constance knew that she had gained a new angle from which to observe Warrington's character. He was intensely human and he was "in wrong." Here was a mess, all around.

The day wore on, yet brought no indecision as to what she would do, though it brought no solution as to how to do it. The inaction was worse than anything else. The last quotations had come in over the ticker, showing the Syndicate stocks still unchanged. She left her brokers and sat for a few moments in the rotunda of the hotel, considering. She could stand it no longer. Whatever happened, she would run around to Charmant's. Some excuse would occur when she got there.

As Constance alighted from the private elevator, a delicate scent as of attar of roses smote lightly on her, and there was, if anything, a greater air of exotic warmth about the place. Everything, from the electric bulbs buried deep in the clusters of amber artificial flowers to the bright green leaves on the dainty trellises, the little square-paned windows and white furniture, bespoke luxury. There was an inviting "tone" to it all.

"I'm glad I've found you," began Constance to Stella, as though nothing had happened. "There is something I'd like to say to you besides thanking you most kindly for the good time last—"

"Is there anything I can do for you?" interrupted Madame Charmant in a business like tone. "I am sure that Miss Larue invited you last night because she thought you were lonely. She and Mr. Warrington, you know, are old friends."

Charmant emphasized the remark to mean, "You trespassed on forbidden ground, if you thought you could get him away."

Constance seemed not to notice the implication.

"There is something I'd like to say," she repeated gently.

She picked up a little inking pad which lay on a mahogany secretary which Vera used as an office desk.

"If you will be so kind, Stella, as to place your fingers flat on this pad-never mind about the ink; call Floretta; she will wipe them off afterwards-and then on this piece of paper, I won't bother you further."

Almost before she knew it, the little actress had placed her dainty white hand on the pad and then on the paper.

Constance did the same, to illustrate, then called Floretta. "If Vera will do as I have done," she said, offering her the pad, and taking her hand. Charmant complied, and when Floretta arrived her impressions were added to the others.

"There's a man wishes to see you, outside, Madame," said Floretta, wiping off the soiled finger tips.

"Tell him to wait—in the little room."

Floretta opened the door to go out and through it Constance caught sight of a familiar face.

A moment later the man was in the room with them. It was Drummond, the same sneer, the same assurance in his manner.

"So," he snarled at Constance. "You here?"

"I seem to be here," she answered calmly. "Why?"

"Never mind why," he blustered. "I knew you saw me the other night. I heard you tell 'em to hit it up so as to shake me. But I found out all right."

"Found out what?" asked Constance coldly.

"Say, that's about your style, isn't it? You always get in when it comes to trimming the good spenders, don't you?"

"Mr. Drummond," she replied, "I don't care to talk to you."

"You don't, hey? Well, perhaps, when the time comes you'll have to talk. How about that?"

She was thinking rapidly. Was Mrs. Warrington preparing to strike a blow that would be the last impulse necessary to send the plunger down for the last time? She decided to take a chance, to temporize until some one else made a move.

"I'd thank you to place your fingers on this pad," said Constance quietly. "I'm making a collection of these things."

"You are, are you?"

"Yes," she cut short. "And if my collection isn't large enough I shall call up Mrs. Warrington and ask her to come over, too," she added significantly.

Floretta entered again. "Please wipe the ink off Mr. Drummond's fingers," ordered Constance quietly, still holding out the pad.

"Confound your impudence," he ground out, seizing the pad. "There! What do you mean by Mrs. Warrington? What has she to do with this? Have a care, Mrs. Dunlap—you're on the wrong track here, and going the wrong way."

"Mr. Warrington is—" began Floretta.

"Show him in—quick," demanded Constance, determined to bring the affair to a show-down on the spot.

As the door swung open, Warrington looked at the group in unfeigned surprise.

"Mr. Warrington," greeted Constance without giving any of the others a chance, "this morning, I heard a little conversation up here. Floretta, will you go into the little room, and on the top shelf you will find a bottle. Bring it here carefully. I have a sheet of paper, also, which I am going to show you. I had already seen the little woman, Mr. Warrington, whom you have treated so unjustly. She was here trying vainly to win you back by those arts which she thinks must appeal to you."

Floretta returned with the bottle and placed it on the secretary beside Constance.

"Some one took some tablets from this bottle and gave them to some one else who wrote on this paper," she resumed, bending first over the paper she had torn from the pad. "Ah, a loop with twelve ridges, another loop, a whorl, a whorl, a loop. The marks on this paper correspond precisely with those made here just now by—Vera Charmant herself!"

"You get out of here—quick," snarled Drummond, placing himself between the now furious Vera and Constance.

"One minute," replied Constance calmly. "I am sure Mr. Warrington is a gentleman, if you are not. Perhaps I have no finger prints to correspond with those on the bottle. If not, I am sure that we can send for some one whose prints will do so."

She was studying the bottle.

"The other, however," she said slowly to conceal her own surprise, "was a person who has been set to trail you and Stella, Mr. Warrington, a detective named Drummond!"

Suddenly the truth flashed over her. Drummond was not employed by Mrs. Warrington at all. Then by whom? By the directors. And the rest of these people? Grafters who were using Stella to bait the hook. Braden had gone over to them, had aided in plunging Warrington into the wild life until he could no longer play the business game as before. Charmant was his confederate, Drummond his witness.

"Stella," said Constance, turning suddenly to the little actress, "Stella, they are using you, 'Diamond Jack' and Vera, using you to lead him on, playing the game of the minority of the directors of the Syndicate to get him out. There is to be a meeting of the directors to-night at the Prince Henry. He was to be in no condition to go. Are you willing to be mixed up in such a scandal?"

Stella Larue was crying into a lace handkerchief. "You—you are all—against me," she sobbed. "What have I done?"

"Nothing," soothed Constance, patting her shoulder. "As for Charmant and Drummond, they are tied by these proofs," she added, tapping the papers with the prints, then picking them up and handing them to Warrington. "I think if the story were told to the directors at the Prince Henry to-night with reporters waiting downstairs in the lobby, it might produce a quieting effect."

Warrington was speechless. He saw them all against him, Vera, Braden, Stella, Drummond.

"More than that," added Constance, "nothing that you can ever do can equal the patience, the faith of the little woman I saw here to-day, slaving, yes, slaving for beauty. Here in my hand, in these scraps of paper, I hold your old life,—not part of it, but ALL of it," she emphasized. "You have your chance. Will you take it?"

He looked up quickly at Stella Larue. She had risen impulsively and flung her arms about Constance.

"Yes," he muttered huskily, taking the papers, "all of it."



CHAPTER VIII

THE ABDUCTORS

"Take care of me—please—please!"

A slip of a girl, smartly attired in a fur-trimmed dress and a chic little feather-tipped hat, hurried up to Constance Dunlap late one afternoon as she turned the corner below her apartment.

"It isn't faintness or illness exactly—but—it's all so hazy," stammered the girl breathlessly. "And I've forgotten who I am. I've forgotten where I live—and a man has been following me—oh, ever so long."

The weariness in the tone of the last words caused Constance to look more closely at the girl. Plainly she was on the verge of hysterics. Tears were streaming down her pale cheeks and there were dark rings under her eyes, suggestive of a haunting fear of something from which she fled.

Constance was astounded for the moment. Was the girl crazy? She had heard of cases like this, but to meet one so unexpectedly was surely disconcerting.

"Who has been following you!" asked Constance gently, looking hastily over her shoulder and seeing no one.

"A man," exclaimed the girl, "but I think he has gone now."

"Can't you think of your name!" urged Constance. "Try."

"No," cried the girl, "no, I can't, I can't."

"Or your address?" repeated Constance. "Try—try hard!"

The girl looked vacantly about.

"No," she sobbed, "it's all gone—all."

Puzzled, Constance took her arm and slowly walked her up the street toward her own apartment in the hope that she might catch sight of some familiar face or be able to pull herself together.

But it was of no use.

They passed a policeman who eyed them sharply. The mere sight of the blue-coated officer sent a shudder through the already trembling girl on her arm.

"Don't, don't let them take me to a hospital—don't," pleaded the girl in a hoarse whisper when they had passed the officer.

"I won't," reassured Constance. "Was that the man who was following you?"

"No—oh, no," sobbed the girl nervously looking back.

"Who was he, then?" asked Constance eagerly.

The girl did not answer, but continued to look back wildly from time to time, although there was no doubt that, if he existed at all, the man had disappeared.

Suddenly Constance realized that she had on her hands a case of aphasia, perhaps real, perhaps induced by a drug.

At any rate, the fear of being sent away to an institution was so strong in the poor creature that Constance felt intuitively how disastrous to her might be the result of disregarding the obsession.

She was in a quandary. What should she do with the girl? To leave her on the street was out of the question. She was now more helpless than ever.

They had reached the door of the apartment. Gently she led the trembling girl into her own home.

But now the question of what to do arose with redoubled force. She hesitated to call a physician, at least yet, because his first advice would probably be to send the poor little stranger to the psychopathic ward of some hospital.

Constance's eye happened to rest on the dictionary in her bookcase. Perhaps she might recall the girl's name to her, if she were not shamming, by reading over the list of women's names in the back of the book.

It meant many minutes, perhaps hours. But then Constance reflected on what might have happened to the girl if she had chanced to appeal to some one who had not felt a true interest in her. It was worth trying. She would do it.

Starting with "A," she read slowly.

"Is your name Abigail?"

Down through Barbara, Camilla, Deborah, Edith, Faith, she read.

"Flora?" she asked.

The girl seemed to apprehend something, appear less blank.

"Florence?" persisted Constance.

"Oh, yes," she cried, "that's it—that's my name."

But as for the last name and the address she was just as hazy as ever. Still, there was now something different about her.

"Florence—Florence what?" reiterated Constance patiently.

There was no answer. But with the continued repetition it seemed as if some depth in her nature had been stirred. Constance could not help feeling that the girl had really found herself.

She had risen and was facing Constance, both hands pressed to her throbbing temples as if to keep her head from bursting. Constance had assisted her off with her coat and hat, and now the sartorial wreck of her masses of blonde hair was apparent.

"I suppose," she cried incoherently, "I'm just one more of the thousands of girls who drop out of sight every year."

Constance listened in amazement. As the spell of her influence seemed to calm the overwrought mind of the girl there succeeded a hardness in her tone that was wholly out of keeping with her youth. There was something that breathed of a past where there should have been nothing but the thought of a future.

"Tell me why," soothed Constance with an air that invited confidence.

The girl looked up and again passed her hand over her white forehead with its mass of tangled fallen hair. Somehow Constance felt a tingling sensation of sympathy in her heart. Impulsively she put out her hand and took the cold moist hand of the girl.

"Because," she hesitated, struggling now with re-flooding consciousness, "because—I don't know. I thought, perhaps—" she added, dropping her eyes, "you could—help me."

She was speaking rapidly enough now, "I think they have employed detectives to trace me. One of them is almost up with me. I'm afraid I can't slip out of the net again. And—I—I won't go back to them. I can't. I won't."

"Go back to whom?" queried her friend. "Detectives employed by whom?"

"My folks," she answered quickly.

Constance was surprised. Least of all had she expected that.

"Why won't you go home?" she prompted as the girl seemed about to lapse into a sort of stolid reticence.

"Home?" she repeated bitterly. "Home? No one would believe my story. I couldn't go home, now. They have made it impossible for me to go home. I mean, every newspaper has published my picture. There were headlines for days, and only by chance I was not recognized."

She was sobbing now convulsively. "If they had only let me alone! I might have gone back, then. But now—after the newspapers and the search—never! And yet I am going to have revenge some day. When he least expects it I am going to tell the truth and—"

She stopped.

"And what?" asked Constance.

"Tell the truth—and then do a cowardly thing. I would—"

"You would not!" blazed Constance.

There was no mistaking the meaning.

"Leave it to me. Trust me. I will help you."

She pulled the girl down on the divan beside her.

"Why talk of suicide?" mused Constance. "You can plead this aphasia I have just seen. I know lots of newspaper women. We could carry it through so that even the doctors would help us. Remember, aphasia will do for a girl nowadays what nothing else can do."

"Aphasia!" Florence repeated harshly. "Call it what you like—weakness—anything. I—I loved that man—not the one who followed me—another. I believed him. But he left me—left me in a place—across in Brooklyn. They said I was a fool, that some other fellow, perhaps better, with more money, would take care of me. But I left. I got a place in a factory. Then some one in the factory became suspicious. I had saved a little. It took me to Boston.

"Again some one grew suspicious. I came back here, here—the only place to hide. I got another position as waitress in the Betsy Ross Tea Room. There I was able to stay until yesterday. But then a man came in. He had been there before. He seemed too interested in me, not in a way that others have been, but in me—my name. Some how I suspected. I put on my hat and coat. I fled. I think he followed me. All night I have walked the streets and ridden in cars to get away from him. At last—I appealed to you."

The girl had sunk back into the soft pillows of the couch beside her new friend and hid her face. Softly Constance patted and smoothed the wealth of golden hair.

"You—you poor little girl," she sympathized.

Then a film came over her own eyes.

"New York took me at a critical time in my own life," she said more to herself than to the girl. "She sheltered me, gave me a new start. What she did for me she will do for any other person who really wishes to make a fresh start in life. I made few acquaintances, no friends. Fortunately, the average New Yorker asks only that his neighbor leave him alone. No hermit could find better and more complete solitude than in the heart of this great city."

Constance looked pityingly at the girl before her.

"Why can't you tell them," she suggested, "that you wanted to be independent, that you went away to make your own living?"

"But—they—my father—is well off. And they have this detective who follows me. He will find me some day—for the reward—and will tell the truth."

"The reward?"

"Yes—a thousand dollars. Don't you remember reading—"

The girl stopped short as if to check herself.

"You—you are Florence Gibbons!" gasped Constance as with a rush there came over her the recollection of a famous unsolved mystery of several months before.

The girl did not look up as Constance bent over and put her arms about her.

"Who was he?" she asked persuasively.

"Preston—Lansing Preston," she sobbed bitterly. "Only the other day I read of his engagement to a girl in Chicago—beautiful, in society. Oh—I could KILL him," she cried, throwing out her arms passionately. "Think of it. He—rich, powerful, respected. I—poor, almost crazy—an outcast."

Constance did not interfere until the tempest had passed.

"What name did you give at the tea room?" asked Constance.

"Viola Cole," answered Florence.

"Rest here," soothed Constance. "Here at least you are safe. I have an idea. I shall be back soon."

The Betsy Ross was still open after the rush of tired shoppers and later of business women to whom this was not only a restaurant but a club. Constance entered and sat down.

"Is the manager in?" she asked of the waitress.

"Mrs. Palmer? No. But, if you care to wait, I think she'll be back directly."

As Constance sat toying absently with some food at one of the snowy white tables, a man entered. A man in a tea room is an anomaly. For the tea room is a woman's institution, run by women for women. Men enter with diffidence, and seldom alone. This man was quite evidently looking for some one.

His eye fell on Constance. Her heart gave a leap. It was her old enemy, Drummond, the detective. For a moment he hesitated, then bowed, and came over to her table.

"Peculiar places, these tea rooms," observed Drummond.

Constance was doing some quick thinking. Could this be the detective Florence Gibbons had mentioned?

"The only thing lacking to make them complete," he rattled on, "is a license. Now, take those places that have a ladies' bar—that do openly what tea rooms do covertly. They don't reckon with the attitude of women. This is New York—not Paris. Such things are years off. I don't say they'll not come or that women won't use them—but not by that name—not yet."

Constance wondered what his cynical inconsequentialities masked.

"I think it adds to the interest," she observed, watching him furtively, "this evasion of the laws."

Drummond was casting about for something to do and, naturally, to a mind like his, a drink was the solution. Evidently, however, there were degrees of brazenness, even in tea rooms. The Betsy Ross not only would not produce a labeled bottle and an obvious glass but stoutly denied their ability to fill such an order, even whispered.

"Russian tea?" suggested Drummond cryptically.

"How will you have it—with Scotch or rye?" asked the waitress.

"Bourbon," hazarded Drummond.

When the "Russian tea" arrived it was in a neat little pot with two others, the first containing real tea and the second hot water. It was served virtuously in tea cups, so opaquely concealed that no one but the clandestine drinker could know what sort of poison was being served.

Mrs. Palmer was evidently later than expected. Drummond fidgeted after the manner of a man out of his accustomed habitat. And yet he did not seem to be interested really in Constance, or even in Mrs. Palmer. For after a few moments, he rose and excused himself.

"How did HE come here?" Constance asked herself over and over.

As far as she could reason it out, there could be only one reason. Drummond was clearly up with Florence. Did he also know that Constance was shielding her?

The more she thought of it, the more she shuddered at the tactless way in which the detective would perform the act of "charity" by discovering the lost girl—and pocketing the reward.

If her family only knew, how eagerly they might let her come back in her own way. She looked up the address of Everett Gibbons while she was waiting, a half-formed plan taking definite shape in her mind.

What—she did must be done quickly. Here at the tea room at least Florence, or rather Viola, was known. Perhaps the best way, after all, was to let her be discovered here. They could not deny that she had been working for them acceptably for some time.

Half an hour later, Mrs. Palmer, a bustling business woman, came in and the waitress pointed her out to Constance.

"Did you have a waitress here named Viola Cole?" began Constance, watching keenly the effect of her inquiry.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Palmer in a tone of interest that reassured Constance that, if there were any connection between Drummond's presence and Mrs. Palmer, it was wholly on his seeking. "But she disappeared last night. A most peculiar girl—but a splendid worker."

"She has been ill," Constance hastened to explain. "I am a friend of hers. I have a business downtown and could not come around until to-night to tell you that she will be back to-morrow if you will take her back."

"Of course I'll take her back. I'm sorry she's ill," and Mrs. Palmer bustled out into the kitchen, not unfeelingly but merely because that was her manner.

Constance paid her check and left the tea room. So far she had succeeded. The next thing she had planned was a visit to Mr. Gibbons. That need not take long, for she was not going to tell anything. Her idea was merely to pave the way.

The Gibbons she found, lived in a large house on one of the numerous side streets from the Park, in a neighborhood that was in fact something more than merely well-to-do.

Fortunately she found Everett Gibbons in and was ushered into his study, where he sat poring over some papers and enjoying an after-dinner cigar.

"Mr. Gibbons," began Constance, "I believe there is a one thousand dollar reward for news of the whereabouts of your daughter, Florence."

"Yes," he said in a colorless tone that betrayed the hopelessness of the long search. "But we have traced down so many false clues that we have given up hope. Since the day she went away, we have never been able to get the slightest trace of her. Still, we welcome outside aid."

"Of detectives?" she asked.

"Official and private—paid and volunteer—anybody," he answered. "I myself have come to the belief that she is dead, for that is the only explanation I can think of for her long silence."

"She is not dead," replied Constance in a low tone.

"Not dead?" he repeated eagerly, catching at even such a straw as an unknown woman might cast out. "Then you know—"

"No," she interrupted positively, "I cannot tell you any more. You must call off all other searchers. I will let you know."

"When?"

"To-morrow, perhaps the next day. I will call you on the telephone."

She rose and made a hasty adieu before the man who had been prematurely aged might overwhelm her with questions and break down her resolution to carry the thing through as she had seen best.

Cheerily, Constance turned the key in the lock of her door.

There was no light and somehow the silence smote on her ominously.

"Florence!" she called.

There was no answer.

Not a sign indicated her presence. There was the divan with the pillows disarranged as they had been when she left. The furniture was in the same position as before. Hastily she went from one room to another. Florence had disappeared!

She went to the door again. All seemed right there. If any one had entered, it must have been because he was admitted, for there were no marks to indicate that the lock had been forced.

She called up the tea room. Mrs. Palmer was very sympathetic, but there had been no trace of "Viola Cole" there yet.

"You will let me know if you get any word?" asked Constance anxiously.

"Surely," came back Mrs. Palmer's cordial reply.

A hundred dire possibilities crowded through her mind. Might Florence be held somewhere as a "white slave"—not by physical force but by circumstances, ignorant of her rights, afraid to break away again?

Or was it suicide, as she had threatened? She could not believe it. Nothing could have happened in such a short time to change her resolution about revenge.

The recollection of all the stories she had read recently crossed her mind. Could it be a case of drugs? The girl had given no evidence of being a "dope" fiend.

Perhaps some one had entered, after all.

She thought of the so-called "poisoned needle" cases. Might she not have been spirited off in that way? Constance had doubted the stories. She knew that almost any doctor would say that it was impossible to inject a narcotic by a sudden jab of a hypodermic syringe. That was rather a slow, careful and deliberate operation, to be submitted to with patience.

Yet Florence was gone!

Suddenly it flashed over Constance that Drummond might not be seeking the reward primarily, after all. His first object might be shielding Preston. She recollected that Mr. Gibbons had said nothing about Drummond, either one way or the other. And if he were both shielding Preston and working for the reward, he would care little how much Florence suffered. He might be playing both ends to serve himself.

She rang the elevator bell.

"Has anybody called at my apartment while I was out?" she asked.

"Yes'm. A man came here."

"And you let him up?"

"I didn't know you were out. You see I had just come on. He said he was to meet some one at your apartment. And when he pressed the buzzer, the door opened, and I ran the elevator down again. I thought it was all right, ma'am."

"And then what?" inquired Constance breathlessly.

"Well, in about five minutes my bell rang. I ran the elevator up again, and, waiting, was this man with a girl I had never seen before. You understand—I thought it was all right—he told me he was going to meet some one."

"Yes—yes. I understand. Oh, my God, if I had only thought to leave word not to let her go. How did she look?"

"Her clothes, you mean, Ma'am?"

"No—her face, her eyes!"

"Beggin' your pardon, I thought she was—well, er,—acted queer—scared—dazed-like."

"You didn't notice which way they went, I suppose!"

"No ma'am, I didn't."

Constance turned back again into her empty apartment, heart-sick. In spite of all she had planned and done, she was defeated—worse than defeated. Where was Florence! What might not happen to her! She could have sat down and cried. Instead she passed a feverishly restless night.

All the next day passed, and still not a word. She felt her own helplessness. She could not appeal to the police. That might defeat the very end she sought. She was single-handed. For all she knew, she was fighting the almost limitless power of brains and money of Preston. Inquiry developed the fact that Preston himself was reported to be in Chicago with his fiancee. Time and again she was on the point of making the journey to let him know that some one at least was watching him. But, she reflected, if she did that she might miss the one call from Florence for help.

Then she thought bitterly of the false hopes she had raised in the despairing father of Florence Gibbons. It was maddening.

Several times during the day Constance dropped into the Betsy Ross, without finding any word.

Late that night the buzzer on her door sounded. It was Mrs. Palmer herself, with a letter at last, written on rough paper in pencil with a trembling hand.

Constance almost literally pounced on it.

"Will you tell the lady who was so kind to me that while she was out seeing you at the tea room, there was a call at her door? I didn't like to open it, but when I asked who was there, a man said it was the steam-fitter she had asked to call about the heat.

"I opened the door. From that moment when I saw his face until I came to myself here I remember nothing. I would write to her, only I don't know where she lives. One of the bell-boys here is kind enough to smuggle this note out for me addressed to the Betsy Boss.

"Tell her please, that I am at a place in Brooklyn, I think, called Lustgarten's—she can recognize it because it is at a railroad crossing—steam railroads, not trolleys or elevateds.

"I know you think me crazy, Mrs. Palmer, but the other lady can tell you about it. Oh, it was the same horrible feeling that came over me that night as before. It isn't a dream; it's more like a trance. It comes in a second—usually when I am frightened. I suddenly feel nervous and shaky. I can't tell what is going on around me. I lose my hearing. Part of the time it is as though, I had a paralytic stroke of the tongue. The next day, perhaps, it is gone. But while it lasts it is terrifying. It's like walking into a new world, with everybody, everything strange about me."

The note ended with a most pathetic appeal.

Constance was already nervously putting on her hat.

"You are going to go there?" asked Mrs. Palmer.

"If I can locate the place," she answered.

"Aren't you afraid?" inquired the other.

Constance did not reply. She ostentatiously slipped a little ivory-handled revolver into her handbag.

"It's a new one," she explained finally, "like nothing you ever heard of before, I guess. I bought it only the other day after a friend of mine told me about it."

Mrs. Palmer was watching her closely.

"You—you are a wonderful woman," she burst out finally. "It isn't good business, it isn't good sense."

Constance stopped short in her preparations for the search. "What are business and sense compared to the—the life of—"

She checked herself on the very point of revealing the girl's real name.

"Nothing," replied Mrs. Palmer. "I had already made up my mind to go with you before I spoke—if you will let me."

In a moment the two understood each other better than after years of casual acquaintance.

Back and forth through the mazes of streets and car lines of the city across the river the two women traveled, asking veiled questions of every wearer of a uniform, until at last they found such a place as Florence had described in her note.

There, it seemed, had sprung up a little center of vice. While reformers were trying to clamp down tight the "lid" in New York, all the vicious elements were prying it up here. Crushed in one place, they rose again in another.

There was the electric sign—"Lustgarten." Even a cursory glance told them that it included a saloon on the first floor, with a sort of dance hall and second-rate cabaret. Above that was a hotel. The windows were darkened, with awnings pulled down, even on what must have been in the daytime the shady side.

"Shall we go in? Are you game?" asked Constance of her companion.

"I haven't gone so far without considering that," replied Mrs. Palmer, somewhat reproachfully.

Without a word Constance entered the door down the street followed by her companion.

A negro at the little cubby hole of an office pushed out a register at them. Constance signed the first names that came into her head, and a moment later they were on their way up to a big double room on the third floor, led by another, younger negro.

"Will you send the bell-boy up?" asked Constance as they entered the room.

"I'm the bell-boy ma'am," was his disconcerting reply.

"I mean the other one," replied Constance, hazarding, "the one who is here in the day time."

"There ain't no other boy, ma'am. There ain't no—"

"Could you deliver a note for me at a tea room in New York to-morrow?" interrupted Constance, striking while the iron seemed hot.

The boy turned around abruptly from his busy occupation of doing something useless that would elicit a tip. He quietly shut the door, and wheeled about with his hand still on the knob.

"Do you want to know what room she's in?" he asked.

Constance opened her handbag. Mrs. Palmer suppressed a little scream. She had expected that ivory-handled thing to appear. Instead there was a treasury note of a size that caused the white part of the boy's eyes to expand beyond all the laws of optics.

"Yes," she said, pressing it into his hand.

"Forty-two-down the hall, around the turn, on the other side," whispered the boy. "And for God's sake, ma'am, don't tell nobody I told you."

His shuffle down the hall had scarcely ceased before the two women were stealthily creeping in the opposite direction, looking eagerly at the numbers.

Constance had stopped abruptly around the turn. Through a transom of one of the rooms they could hear voices but could see no light.

"Well, go back then," growled a gruff voice. "Your family will never believe your story, never believe that you came again and stayed at Lustgarten's against your will. Why," the voice taunted with a harsh laugh, "if they knew the truth, they would turn you from the door, instead of offering a reward."

There was a moment of silence. Then a woman's voice, strangely familiar to Constance, spoke.

"The truth!" she exclaimed bitterly. "He knew it was a case of a girl who liked a good time, liked pretty clothes, a ride in an automobile, theaters, excitement, bright lights, night life—a girl with a romantic disposition in whom all that was repressed at home. He knew it," she repeated, raising the tone to an almost hysterical pitch, "led me on, made me love him because he could give them all to me. And when I began to show the strain of the pace-they all show it more than the men—he cast me aside like a squeezed-out lemon."

As she listened, Constance understood it all now. It was to make Florence Gibbons a piece of property, a thing to be traded in, bartered—that was the idea. Discover her—yes; but first to thrust her into the life if she would not go into it herself—anything to discredit her testimony beforehand, anything to save the precious reputation of one man.

"Well," shouted the other voice menacingly, "do you want to know the truth? Haven't you read it often enough? Instead of hoping you will return, they pray that you are DEAD!"

He hissed the words out, then added, "They prefer to think that you are dead. Why—damn it!—they turn to that belief for COMFORT!"

Constance had seized Mrs. Palmer by the arm, and, acting in concert, they threw both their weights against the thin wooden door.

It yielded with a crash.

Inside the room was dark.

Indistinctly Constance could make out two figures, one standing, the other seated in a deep rocker.

A suppressed exclamation of surprise was followed by a hasty lunge of the standing figure toward her.

Constance reached quickly into her handbag and drew out the little ivory-handled pistol.

"Bang!" it spat almost into the man's face.

Choking, sputtering, the man groped a minute blindly, then fell on the floor and frantically tried to rise again and call out.

The words seemed to stick in his throat.

"You—you shot him?" gasped a woman's voice which Constance now knew was Florence's.

"With the new German Secret Service gun," answered Constance quietly, keeping it leveled to cow any assistance that might be brought. "It blinds and stupefies without killing—a bulletless revolver intended to check and render harmless the criminal instead of maiming him. The cartridges contain several chemicals that combine when they are exploded and form a vapor which blinds a man and puts him out. No one wants to kill such a person as this."

She reached over and switched on the lights.

The man on the floor was Drummond himself.

"You will tell your real employer, Mr. Preston," she added contemptuously, "that unless he agrees to our story of his elopement with Florence, marries her, and allows her to start an undefended action for divorce, we intend to make use of the new federal Mann Act—with a jail sentence—for both of you."

Drummond looked up sullenly, still blinking and choking.

"And not a word of this until the suit is filed. Then WE will see the reporters—not he. Understand?"

"Yes," he muttered, still clutching his throat.

An hour later Constance was at the telephone in her own apartment.

"Mr. Gibbons? I must apologize for troubling you at this late, or rather early, hour. But I promised you something which I could not fulfill until now. This is the Mrs. Dunlap who called on you the other day with a clue to your daughter Florence. I have found her—yes—working as a waitress in the Betsy Ross Tea Boom. No—not a word to anyone—not even to her mother. No—not a word. You can see her to-morrow—at my apartment. She is going to live with me for a few days until—well—until we get a few little matters straightened out."

Constance had jammed the receiver back on the hook hastily.

Florence Gibbons, wild-eyed, trembling, imploring, had flung her arms about her neck.

"No—no—no," she cried. "I can't. I won't."

With a force that was almost masculine, Constance took the girl by both shoulders.

"The one thousand dollar reward which comes to me," said Constance decisively, "will help us—straighten out those few little matters with Preston. Mrs. Palmer can stretch the time which you have worked for her."

Something of Constance's will seemed to be infused into Florence Gibbons by force of suggestion.

"And remember," Constance added in a tense voice, "for anything after your elopement—it's aphasia, aphasia, APHASIA!"



CHAPTER IX

THE SHOPLIFTERS

"Madam, would you mind going with me for a few moments to the office on the third floor?"

Constance Dunlap had been out on a shopping excursion. She had stopped at the jewelry counter of Stacy's to have a ring repaired and had gone on to the leather goods department to purchase something else.

The woman who spoke to her was a quietly dressed young person, quite inconspicuous, with a keen eye that seemed to take in everything within a radius of a wide-angled lens at a glance.

She leaned over and before Constance could express even surprise, added in a whisper, "Look in your bag."

Constance looked hastily, then realized what had happened. The ring was gone!

It gave her quite a shock, too, for the ring, a fine diamond, was a present from her husband, one of the few pieces of jewelry, treasured not only for its intrinsic value but as a remembrance of Carlton and the supreme sacrifice he had made for her.

She had noticed nothing in the crowd, nothing more than she had noticed scores of times before. The woman watched her puzzled look.

"I've been following you," she said. "By this time the other store detectives must have caught the shoplifter and bag-opener who touched you. You see, we don't make any arrests in the store if we can help it, because we don't like to make a scene. It's bad for business. Besides, if she had anything else, we are safer when the case comes to court, if we have caught her actually leaving the store with it. Of course, when we make an arrest on the sidewalk, we bring the shoplifter back, but in a private, back elevator."

Constance was following the young woman mechanically. At least there was a chance of recovering the ring.

"She was standing next to you at the jewelry counter," she continued, "and if you will help identify her the store management will appreciate it—and make it worth your while. Besides," she urged, "It's really your duty to do it, madam."

Constance remembered now the rather simply but richly gowned young woman who had been standing next to her at the counter, seemingly unable to decide which of a number of beautiful rings she really wanted. She remembered because, with her own love of beauty, she had wanted one herself, in fact had thought at the time that she, too, might have difficulty in choosing.

With the added feeling of curiosity, Constance followed the woman detective up in the elevator.

In the office, apart in a little room curiously furnished with a camera, innumerable photographs, cabinets, and filing cases, was a young woman, perhaps twenty-six or seven. On a table before her lay a pile of laces and small trinkets. There, too, was the beautiful diamond ring which she had hidden in her muff. Constance fairly gasped at the sight.

The girl was sitting limply in a chair crying bitterly. She was not a hardened looking creature. In fact, her face bore evident traces of refinement, and her long, slender fingers hinted at a nervous, artistic temperament. It was rather a shock to see such a girl under such distressing circumstances.

"We've lost so much lately," a small ferret-eyed man was saying, "that we must make an example of some one. It's serious for us detectives, too. We'll lose our jobs unless we can stop you boosters."

"Oh—I—I didn't mean to do it. I—I just couldn't help it," sobbed the girl over and over again.

"Yes," drawled the man, "that's what they all say. But you've been caught with the goods, this time, young lady."

A woman entered, and the man turned to her quickly.

"Carr—Kitty Carr. Did you find anything under that name?"

"No, sir," replied the woman store detective. "We've looked all through the records and the photographs. We don't find her. And yet I don't think it is an alias—at least, if it is, not an alias for any one we have any record of. I've a good eye for faces, and there isn't one we have on file as—as good looking," she added, perhaps with a little touch of wistfulness at her own plainness and this beauty gone wrong.

"This is the woman who lost the ring," put in the other woman detective, motioning to Constance, who had accompanied her and was standing, a silent spectator.

The man held up the ring, which Constance had already recognized.

"Is that yours?" he asked.

For a moment, strangely, she hesitated. If it had been any other ring in the world she felt sure that she would have said no. But, then, she reflected, there was that pile of stuff. There was no use in concealing her ownership of the ring. "Yes," she murmured.

"One moment, please," answered the man brusquely. "I must send down for the salesgirl who waited on you to identify you and your check—a mere formality, you know, but necessary to keep things straight."

Constance sat down.

"I suppose you don't realize it," explained the man, turning to Constance, "but the shoplifters of the city get away with a couple of million dollars' worth of stuff every year. It's the price we have to pay for displaying our goods. But it's too high. They are the department store's greatest unsolved problem. Now most of the stores are working together for their common interests, seeing what they can do to root them out. We all keep a sort of private rogue's gallery of them. But we don't seem to have anything on this girl, nor have any of the other stores who exchange photographs and information with us anything on her."

"Evidently, then, it is her first offense," put in Constance, wondering at herself. Strangely, she felt more of sympathy than of anger for the girl.

"You mean the first time she has been caught at it," corrected the head of the store detectives.

"It is my weakness," sobbed the girl. "Sometimes an irresistible impulse to steal comes over me. I just can't help it."

She was sobbing convulsively. As she talked and listened there seemed to come a complete breakdown. She wept as though her heart would break.

"Oh," exclaimed the man, "can it! Cut out the sob stuff!"

"And yet," mused Constance half to herself, watching the girl closely, "when one walks through the shops and sees thousands of dollars' worth of goods lying unprotected on the counters, is it any wonder that some poor woman or girl should be tempted and fall? There, before her eyes and within her grasp, lies the very article above all others which she so ardently craves. No one is looking. The salesgirl is busy with another customer. The rest is easy. And then the store detective steps in—and here she is—captured."

The girl had been listening wildly through her tears. "Oh," she sobbed, "you don't understand—none of you. I don't crave anything. I—I just—can't help it—and then, afterwards—I—I HATE the stuff—and I am so—afraid. I hurry home—and I—oh, what shall I do—what shall I do?"

Constance pitied her deeply. She looked from the wild-eyed, tear-stained face to the miscellaneous pile of material on the table, and the unwinking gaze of the store detectives. True, the girl had taken a very valuable diamond ring, and from herself. But the laces, the trinkets, all were abominably cheap, not worth risking anything for.

Constance's attention was recalled by the man who beckoned her aside to talk to the salesgirl who had waited on her.

"You remember seeing this lady at the counter?" he asked of the girl. She nodded. "And that woman in there?" he motioned. Again the salesgirl nodded.

"Do you remember anything else that happened?" he asked Constance as they faced Kitty Carr and he handed Constance the ring.

Constance looked the detective squarely in the face for a moment.

"I have my ring. You have the other stuff," she murmured. "Besides, there is no record against her. She doesn't even look like a professional bad character. No—I'll not appear to press the charge—I'll make it as hard as I can before I'll do it," she added positively.

The woman, who had overheard, looked her gratitude. The detectives were preparing to argue. Constance hardly knew what she was saying, as she hurried on before any one else could speak.

"No," she added, "but I'll tell you what I will do. If you will let her go I will look after her. Parole her, unofficially, with me."

Constance drew a card from her case and handed it to the detective. He read it carefully, and a puzzled look came over his face. "Charge account—good customer—pays promptly," he muttered under his breath.

For a moment he hesitated. Then he sat down at a desk.

"Mrs. Dunlap," he said, "I'll do it."

He pulled a piece of printed paper from the desk, filled in a few blanks, then turned to Kitty Carr, handing her a pen.

"Sign here," he said brusquely.

Constance bent over and read. It was a form of release:

"I, Kitty Carr, residing at — East —th Street, single, age twenty-seven years, in consideration of the sum of One Dollar, hereby admit taking the following property... without having paid therefor and with intent not to pay therefor, and by reason of the withdrawal of the complaint of larceny, OF WHICH I AM GUILTY, I hereby remise, release, and forever discharge the said Stacy Co. or its representatives from any claims, action, or causes of action which I may have against the Stacy Co. or its representatives or agents by reason of the withdrawal of said charge of larceny and failure to prosecute."

"Signed, Kitty Carr."

"Now, Kitty," soothed Constance, as the trembling signature was blotted and added to a photograph which had quietly been taken, "they are going to let you go this time—with me. Come, straighten your hat, wipe your eyes. You must take me home with you—where we can have a nice long talk. Remember, I am your friend."

On the way uptown and across the city the girl managed to tell most of her history. She came from a family of means in another city. Her father was dead, but her mother and a brother were living. She herself had a small annuity, sufficient to live on modestly, and had come to New York seeking a career as an artist. Her story, her ambitions appealed to Constance, who had been somewhat of an artist herself and recognized even in talking to the girl that she was not without some ability.

Then, too, she found that Kitty actually lived, as she had said, in a cozy little kitchenette apartment with two friends, a man and his wife, both of whom happened to be out when they arrived. As Constance looked about she could see clearly that there was indeed no adequate reason why the girl should steal.

"How do you feel?" asked Constance when the girl had sunk half exhausted on a couch in the living room.

"Oh, so nervous," she replied, pressing her hands to the back of her head, "and I have a terrible headache, although it is a little better now."

They had talked for perhaps half an hour, as Constance soothed her, when there was the sound of a key in the door. A young woman in black entered. She was well-dressed, in fact elegantly dressed in a quiet way, somewhat older than Kitty, but by no means as attractive.

"Why—hello, Kitty," she cried, "what's the matter!"

"Oh, Annie, I'm so unstrung," replied the girl, then recollecting Constance, added, "let me introduce my friend, Mrs. Dunlap. This is Mrs. Annie Grayson, who has taken me in as a lodger and is ever so kind to me."