Constance nodded, and the woman held out her hand frankly.

"Very glad to meet you," she said. "My husband, Jim, is not at home, but we are a very happy little family up here. Why, Kitty, what is the matter?"

The girl had turned her face down in the sofa pillows and was sobbing again. Between sobs she blurted out the whole of the sordid story. And as she proceeded, Annie glanced quickly from her to Constance, for confirmation.

Suddenly she rose and extended her hand to Constance.

"Mrs. Dunlap," she said, "how can I ever thank you for what you have done for Kitty? She is almost like a sister to me. You—you were—too good."

There was a little catch in the woman's voice. But Constance could not quite make out whether it was acted or wholly genuine.

"Did she ever do anything like that before?" she asked.

"Only once," replied Annie Grayson, "and then I gave her such a talking to that I thought she would be able to restrain herself when she felt that way again."

It was growing late and Constance recollected that she had an engagement for the evening. As she rose to go Kitty almost overwhelmed her with embraces.

"I'll keep in touch with Kitty," whispered Constance at the door, "and if you will let me know when anything comes up that I may help her in, I shall thank you."

"Depend on me," answered Mrs. Grayson, "and I want to add my thanks to Kitty's for what you have done. I'll try to help you."

As she groped her way down the as yet unlighted stairs, Constance became aware of two men talking in the hall. As she passed them she thought she recognized one of the voices. She lowered her head, and fortunately her thin veil in the half-light did the rest. She passed unnoticed and reached the door of the apartment.

As she opened it she heard the men turn and mount the stairs. Instinctively she realized that something was wrong. One of the men was her old enemy, Drummond, the detective.

They had not recognized her, and as she stood for a moment with her hand on the knob, she tried to reason it out. Then she crept back, and climbed the stairs noiselessly. Voices inside the apartment told her that she had not been mistaken. It was the apartment of the Graysons and Kitty that they sought.

The hall door was of thin, light wood, and as she stood there she could easily hear what passed inside.

"What—is Kitty ill?" she heard the strange man's voice inquire.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Grayson, then her voice trailed off into an indistinguishable whisper.

"How are you, Kitty?" asked the man.

"Oh, I have a splitting headache, Jim. I've had it all day. I could just get up and—screech!"

"I'm sorry. I hope it gets better soon."

"Oh, I guess it will. They often go away as suddenly as they come. You know I've had them before."

Drummond's voice then spoke up.

"Did you see the Trimble ad. to-night?" he asked, evidently of Annie. "They have a lot of new diamonds from Arkansas, they say,—one of them is a big one, the Arkansas Queen, I believe they call it."

"No, I didn't see the papers," replied Annie.

There was the rustle of a newspaper.

"Here's a picture of it. It must be great. I've heard a good deal about it."

"Have you seen it?" asked Annie.

"No, but I intend to see it."

They had passed into the next room, and Constance, fearing to be discovered, decided to get away before that happened.

Early the next morning she decided to call on Kitty, but by the time Constance arrived at the apartment it was closed, and a neighbor informed her that the two women had gone out together about half an hour before.

Constance was nervous and, as she left the apartment, she did not notice that a man who had been loitering about had quickened his pace and overtaken her.

"So," drawled a voice, "you're traveling with shoplifters now."

She looked up quickly. This time she had run squarely into Drummond. There was no concealment possible now. Her only refuge was silence. She felt the hot tingle of indignation in her cheeks. But she said nothing.

"Huh!" exclaimed Drummond, walking along beside her, and adding contemptuously, "I don't know the young one, but you know who the other is?"

Constance bit her lip.

"No?" he queried. "Then I'll show you."

He had taken from his pocket a bunch of oblong cards. Each bore, she could see from the corner of her eye, a full face and a profile picture of a woman, and on the back of the card was a little writing.

He selected one and handed it to Constance. Instantly she recognized the face. It was Annie Grayson, with half a dozen aliases written after the name.

"There!" he fairly snorted. "That's the sort of people your little friend consorts with. Why, they call Annie Grayson the queen of the shoplifters. She has forgotten more about shoplifting than all the rest will ever know."

Constance longed to ask him what had taken him to the Grayson flat the night before, but thought better of it. There was no use in angering Drummond further. Instead, she let him think that he had succeeded in frightening her off.

She went back to her own apartment to wait and worry. Evidently Drummond was pretty sure of something, or he would not have disclosed his hand to her, even partially. She felt that she must see Kitty before it was too late. Then the thought crossed her mind that perhaps already it was too late. Drummond evidently was working in some way for an alliance of the department stores outside.

Constance had had her own ideas about Kitty. And as she waited and watched, she tried to reason how she might carry them out if she had a chance.

She had just been insured, and had been very much interested in the various tests that the woman doctor of the insurance company had applied to her. One in particular which involved the use of a little simple instrument that fitted over the forearm had interested her particularly. She had talked to the doctor about it, and as she talked an idea had occurred to her that it might have other uses than those which the doctor made of it. She had bought one. While she was waiting it occurred to her that perhaps it might serve her purpose. She got the instrument out. It consisted of a little arrangement that fitted over the forearm, and was attached by a tube to a dial that registered in millimeters a column of mercury. Would it really show anything, she wondered?

There was a quick call on the telephone and she answered it, her hand trembling, for she felt sure that it was something about the little woman she had befriended.

Somehow or other her voice hardened as she answered the call and found that it was from Drummond. It would never do to betray even nervousness before him.

"Your friend, Miss Carr," shot out Drummond with brutal directness, "has been caught again. She fell into something as neatly as if she had really meant to do it. Yesterday, you know, Trimble's advertised the new diamond, the Arkansas Queen, on exhibition. Well, it was made of paste, anyway. But it was a perfect imitation. But that didn't make any difference. We caught Kitty just now trying to lift it. I'm sorry it wasn't the other one. But small fry are better than none. We'll get her, too, yet. Besides, I find this Kitty has a record already at Stacy's."

He added the last words with a taunting sneer. Constance realized suddenly the truth. The whole affair had been a plant of Drummond's!

"You are at Trimble's?" she inquired quickly. "Well, can you wait there just a few minutes? I'd like to see Miss Carr."

Drummond promised. His acquiescence in itself boded no good, but nevertheless she decided to go. As she left her apartment hurriedly she picked up the little instrument and dropped it into her hand-bag.

"You see, it's no use," almost chortled Drummond as Constance stepped off the elevator and opened the door to a little room at Trimble's much like that which she had already seen at Stacy's. "A shoplifter becomes habitual after twenty-five. They get to consorting with others of their kind."

Kitty was sitting rigidly motionless in a chair, staring straight ahead, as Constance entered. She gave a start at the sight of a familiar face, rose, and would almost have fainted if Constance had not caught her. It seemed as if something had snapped in the girl's make-up. For the first time tears came. Constance patted her hand softly. The girl was an enigma. Was she a clever actress—one minute hardened Miss Sophisticated, the next appealing Miss Innocence?

"How did you—catch her?" asked Constance a moment later as she found an opportunity to talk to Drummond alone.

"Oh, she was trying to substitute a paste replica for the alleged Arkansas Queen. The clerk noticed the replica in time, saw a little spot of carbon on it—and she was shadowed and arrested just as she was leaving the store. Yes, they found the other paste jewel on her. She was caught with the goods."

"Replica?" repeated Constance, thinking of the picture that had appeared in the papers the night before. "How could she get a replica of it?"

"How do I know?" shrugged Drummond coldly.

Constance looked him squarely in the eyes.

"What about Annie Grayson?" she asked pointblank.

"I have taken care of that," he replied harshly. "She is already under arrest, and from what I have heard we may get something on her now. We have a record against the Carr girl. We can use it against her friend. We're just about taking her to the flat to identify the Grayson woman. Would you like to come along?" he added in a spirit of bravado. "I think you are a material witness in the Stacy case, anyhow."

Constance felt bitterly her defeat. Still she went with them. There was always a chance that something might turn up.

As they entered the door of the kitchenette loud voices told them that some one was disputing inside.

Drummond strode in.

The sight of a huge pile of stuff that two strange men had drawn out of drawers and closets and stacked on the table riveted Constance's eyes. Only dimly she could hear that Annie Grayson was violently threatening Drummond, who stood coolly surveying the scene.

The stuff on the table was, in fact, quite enough to dazzle the eyes. There were articles of every sort and description there—silks, laces, jewelry and trinkets, little antiques, even rare books—everything small and portable, some of the richest and most exquisite, others of the cheapest and most tawdry. It was a truly remarkable collection, which the raiding detectives had brought to light.

As Constance took in the scene—the raiding detectives holding the stormy Annie Grayson at bay, Drummond, cool, supercilious, Kitty almost on the edge of collapse—she wondered how Jim Grayson had managed to slip through the meshes of the net.

She had read of such things. Annie Grayson was to all appearances a "fence" for stolen goods. This was, perhaps, a school for shoplifters. In addition to her other accomplishments, the queen of the shoplifters was a "Fagin," educating others to the tricks of her trade, taking advantage of their lack of facility in disposing of the stolen goods.

Just then the woman caught sight of Constance standing in the doorway.

In an instant she had broken loose and ran toward her.

"What are you," she hissed, "one of these department store Moll Dicks, too?"

Quick as a flash Kitty Carr had leaped to her feet and placed herself between them.

"No, Annie, no. She was a real friend of mine. No—if your own friends had been as loyal as she was to me this would never have happened—I should never have been caught again, for I should never have given them a chance to get it on me."

"Little fool!" ground out Annie Grayson, raising her arm.

"Here—here—LADIES!" interposed Drummond, protruding an arm between the two, and winking sarcastically to the two other men. "None of that. We shall need both of you in our business. I've no objection to your talking; but cut out the rough stuff."

Constance had stepped back. She was cool, cool as Drummond, although she knew her heart was thumping like a sledge-hammer. There was Kitty Carr, in a revulsion of feeling, her hands pressed tightly to her head again, as if it were bursting. She was swaying as if she would faint.

Constance caught her gently about the waist and forced her down on the couch where she had been lying the night before. With her back to the others, she reached quickly into her hand-bag and pulled out the little instrument she had hastily stuffed into it. Deftly she fastened it to Kitty's wrist and forearm.

She dropped down on her knees beside the poor girl, and gently stroked her free hand, reassuring her in a low tone.

"There, there," she soothed. "You are not well, Kitty. Perhaps, after all, there may be something—some explanation."

In spite of all, however, Kitty was on the verge of the wildest hysterics. Annie Grayson sniffed contemptuously at such weakness.

Drummond came over, an exasperating sneer on his face. As he looked down he saw what Constance was doing, and she rose, so that all could see now.

"This girl," she said, speaking rapidly, "is afflicted with a nervous physical disorder, a mania, which is uncontrollable, and takes this outlet. It is emotional insanity—not loss of control of the will, but perversion of the will."

"Humph!" was Drummond's sole comment with a significant glance at the pile of goods on the table.

"It is not the articles themselves so much," went on Constance, following his glance, "as it is the pleasure, the excitement, the satisfaction—call it what you will—of taking them. A thief works for the benefit he may derive from objects stolen after he gets them. Here is a girl who apparently has no further use for an article after she gets it, who forgets, perhaps hates it."

"Oh, yes," remarked Drummond; "but why are they all so careful not to get caught? Every one is responsible who knows the nature and consequences of his act."

Constance had wheeled about.

"That is not so," she exclaimed. "Any modern alienist will tell you that. Sometimes the chief mark of insanity may be knowing the nature and consequences, craftily avoiding detection with an almost superhuman cunning. No; the test is whether knowing the nature and consequences, a person suffers under such a defect of will that in spite of everything, in the face of everything, that person cannot control that will."

As she spoke, she had quickly detached the little instrument and had placed it on Annie Grayson's arm. If it had been a Bertillon camera, or even a finger-print outfit, Annie Grayson would probably have fought like a tigress. But this thing was a new one. She had a peculiar spirit of bravado.

"Such terms as kleptomania," went on Constance, "are often regarded as excuses framed up by the experts to cover up plain ordinary stealing. But did you wiseacres of crime ever stop to think that perhaps they do actually exist?

"There are many things that distinguish such a woman as I have described to you from a common thief. There is the insane desire to steal—merely for stealing's sake—a morbid craving. Of course in a sense it is stealing. But it is persistent, incorrigible, irrational, motiveless, useless.

"Stop and think about it a moment," she concluded, lowering her voice and taking advantage of the very novelty of the situation she had created. "Such diseases are the product of civilization, of sensationalism. Naturally enough, then, woman, with her delicately balanced nervous organization, is the first and chief offender—if you insist on calling such a person an offender under your antiquated methods of dealing with such cases."

She had paused.

"What did you say you called this thing?" asked Drummond as he tapped the arrangement on Annie Grayson's arm.

He was evidently not much impressed by it, yet somehow instinctively regarded it with somewhat of the feelings of an elephant toward a mouse.

"That?" answered Constance, taking it off Annie Grayson's wrist before she could do anything with it. "Why, I don't know that I said anything about it. It is really a sphygmomanometer—the little expert witness that never lies—one of the instruments the insurance companies use now to register blood pressure and discover certain diseases. It occurred to me that it might be put to other and equally practical uses. For no one can conceal the emotions from this instrument, not even a person of cast-iron nerves."

She had placed it on Drummond's arm. He appeared fascinated.

"See how it works?" she went on. "You see one hundred and twenty-five millimeters is the normal pressure. Kitty Carr is absolutely abnormal. I do not know, but I think that she suffers from periodical attacks of vertigo. Almost all kleptomaniacs do. During an attack they are utterly irresponsible."

Drummond was looking at the thing carefully. Constance turned to Annie Grayson.

"Where's your husband?" she asked offhand.

"Oh, he disappeared as soon as these department store dicks showed up," she replied bitterly. She had been watching Constance narrowly, quite nonplussed, and unable to make anything out of what was going on.

Constance looked at Drummond inquiringly.

He shook his head slowly. "I'm afraid we'll never catch him," he said. "He got the jump on us—although we have our lines out for him, too."

She had glanced down quickly at the little innocent-looking but telltale sphygmomanometer.

"You lie!" she exclaimed suddenly, with all the vigor of a man.

She was pointing at the quivering little needle which registered a sudden, access of emotion totally concealed by the sang-froid of Drummond's well-schooled exterior.

She wrenched the thing off his wrist and dropped it into her bag. A moment later she stood by the open window facing the street, a bright little police whistle gleaming in her hand, ready for its shrill alarm if any move were made to cut short what she had to say.

She was speaking rapidly now.

"You see, I've had it on all of you, one after another, and each has told me your story, just enough of it for me to piece it together. Kitty is suffering from a form of vertigo, an insanity, kleptomania, the real thing. As for you, Mr. Drummond, you were in league with the alleged husband—your own stool pigeon—to catch Annie Grayson."

Drummond moved. So did the whistle. He stopped.

"But she was too clever for you all. She was not caught, even by a man who lived with her as her own husband. For she was not operating."

Annie Grayson moved as if to face out her accusers at this sudden turn of fortune.

"One moment, Annie," cut in Constance.

"And yet, you are the real shoplifter, after all. You fell into the trap which Drummond laid for you. I take pleasure, Mr. Drummond, in presenting you with better evidence than even your own stool pigeon could possibly have given you under the circumstances."

She paused.

"For myself," she concluded, "I claim Kitty Carr. I claim the right to take her, to have her treated for her—her disease. I claim it because the real shoplifter, the queen of the shoplifters, Annie Grayson, has worked out a brand-new scheme, taking up a true kleptomaniac and using her insanity to carry out the stealings which she suggested—and safely, to this point, has profited by!"



CHAPTER X

THE BLACKMAILERS

"They're late this afternoon."

"Yes. I think they might be on time. I wish they had made the appointment in a quieter place."

"What do you care, Anita? Probably somebody else is doing the same thing somewhere else. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose."

"I know he has treated me like a dog, Alice, but—"

There was just a trace of a catch in the voice of the second woman as she broke off the remark and left it unfinished.

Constance Dunlap had caught the words unintentionally above the hum of conversation and the snatches of tuneful music wafted from the large dining-room where day was being turned into night.

She had dropped into the fashionable new Vanderveer Hotel, not to meet any one, but because she liked to watch the people in "Peacock Alley," as the corridor of the hotel was often popularly called.

Somehow, as she sat inconspicuously in a deep chair in an angle, she felt that very few of the gaily chatting couples or of the waiting men and women about her were quite what they seemed on the surface.

The conversation from around the angle confirmed her opinion. Here, apparently at least, were two young married women with a grievance, and it was not for those against whom they had the grievance, real or imagined, that they were waiting so anxiously.

Constance leaned forward to see them better. The woman nearest her was a trifle the elder of the two, a very attractive-looking woman, tastefully gowned and carefully groomed. The younger, who had been the first speaker, was, perhaps, the more dashing. Certainly she appeared to be the more sophisticated. And as Constance caught her eye she involuntarily thought of the old proverb, "Never trust a man who doesn't look you in the eye or a woman who does."

Two men sauntered down the long corridor, on the way from a visit to the bar. As they caught sight of the two ladies, there was a smile of recognition, an exchange of remarks between each pair, and the men hurried in the direction of the corner.

They greeted the two ladies in low, bantering, familiar terms—"Mr. Smith," "Mrs. Jones," "Mr. White" and "Mrs. Brown."

"You got my card!" asked one of the men of the woman nearest Constance. "Sorry we're late, but a business friend ran into us as we were coming in and I had to shunt him off in the other direction."

He nodded toward the opposite end of the corridor with a laugh.

"You've been bad boys," pouted the other woman, "but we forgive you—this time."

"Perhaps we may hope to be reinstated after a little—er—tea—and a dance?" suggested the other man.

The four were all moving in the direction of the dining-room and the gay music.

They had disappeared in the crush about the door before Constance noticed that the woman who had been sitting nearest her had dropped an envelope. She picked it up. It was on the stationery of another fashionable hotel, evidently written by one of those who lounge in, and on the strength of a small bill in the cafe use the writing room. In a man's hand was the name, "Mrs. Anita Douglas, The Melcombe Apartments, City"

Before she realized it, Constance had pulled out the card inside and glanced at it. It read:

MY DEAREST A——:

Can you meet us in the Vanderveer to-morrow afternoon at four? Bring along your little friend.

With many * * * *

Yours,

?????

Mechanically Constance crumpled the card and the envelope in her hand and held them as she regarded the passing throng, intending to throw them away when she passed a scrap basket on the way out.

Still, it was a fascinating scene, this of the comedy and tragedy of human weaknesses, and she stayed much longer than she had intended. One by one the people had either gone to dinner in the main dining-room or elsewhere and Constance had nearly decided on going, too.

She was looking down the corridor toward the desk when she saw something that caused her to change her mind. There was the young lady who had been talking so flippantly to the woman with a grievance, and she was now talking, of all people, to Drummond!

Constance shrank back into her wicker chair in the protecting angle. What did it mean? If Drummond had anything to do with it, even remotely, it boded no good, at least.

Suddenly a possible explanation crossed her mind. Was it a side-light upon that peculiar industry of divorce as practiced in no place except New York?

It was not only that Constance longed for, lived by excitement. She felt a sense of curiosity as to what the detective was up to now. And, somehow, she felt a duty in the case. She determined to return the envelope and card, and meet the woman. And the more she thought of it the more imperative became the idea.

So it came about that the following forenoon Constance sought out the Melcombe Apartments, a huge stone and brick affair on a street which the uptown trend of population was transforming.

Anita Douglas, she had already found out by an inquiry or two, was the wife of a well-known business man. Yet, as she entered the little apartment, she noticed that there was no evidence about it of a man's presence.

Mrs. Douglas greeted her unexpected visitor with an inquiring look.

"I was passing through the corridor of the Vanderveer yesterday afternoon," began Constance, leaping into the middle of her errand, "and I happened to see this envelope lying on the carpet. I thought first of destroying it; then that perhaps you would rather destroy it yourself."

Mrs. Douglas almost pounced on the letter as Constance handed it to her. "Thank you," she exclaimed. "It was very thoughtful of you."

For a moment or two they chatted of inconsequential things.

"Who was your friend?" asked Constance at length.

The woman caught her breath and flushed a bit, evidently wondering just how much Constance really knew.

"The young lady," added Constance, who had put the question in this form purposely.

"Why do you ask?" Mrs. Douglas inquired in a tone that betrayed considerable relief.

"Because I can tell you something of her, I think."

"A friend of mine—a Mrs. Murray. Why?"

"Aren't you just a little bit afraid of—er—friends that you may chance to make in the city?" queried Constance.

"Afraid?" repeated the other.

"Yes," said Constance, coming gradually to the point. "You know there are so many detectives about."

Mrs. Douglas laughed half nervously. "Oh, I've been shadowed," she replied confidently. "I know how to shake them off. If you can't do anything else, you can always take a taxi. Besides, I think I can uncover almost any shadow. All you have to do, if you think you're being shadowed, is to turn a corner and stop. That uncovers the shadow as soon as he comes up to the corner, and after that he is useless. You know him."

"That's all right," nodded Constance; "but you don't know these crooked detectives nowadays as I do. They can fake up evidence to order. That is their business, you know, to manufacture it. You may uncover a six-dollar operative, Mrs. Douglas, but are you the equal of a twenty-dollar-a-day investigator?"

The woman looked genuinely scared. Evidently Constance knew some things she didn't know, at least about detectives.

"You—you don't think there is anything like that, do you?" she asked anxiously.

"Well," replied Constance slowly to impress her, "I saw your friend, Mrs. Murray, after you had left the Vanderveer, talking to a detective whom I have every reason to fear as one of the most unscrupulous in the game."

"Oh, that is impossible!" persisted Mrs. Douglas.

"Not a bit of it," pursued Constance. "Think it over for a moment. Who would be the last person a man or woman would suspect of being a detective? Why, just such an attractive young woman, of course. You see, it is just this way. They reason that if they can only get acquainted with people the rest is easy. For, people, under the right circumstances, will tell everything they know."

The woman was staring at Constance.

"For example," urged Constance, "I'm talking to you now as if I had known you for years. Why, Mrs. Douglas, men tell their most important business secrets to chance luncheon and dinner companions whom they think have no direct or indirect interest in them. Over tea-tables women tell their most intimate personal affairs. In fact, all you have to do is to keep your ears open."

Mrs. Douglas had risen and was nervously watching Constance, who saw that she had made an impression and that all that was necessary was to follow it up.

"Now, for instance," added Constance quickly, "you say she is a friend of yours. How did you meet her?"

Mrs. Douglas did not raise her eyes to Constance's now. Yet she seemed to feel that Constance was different from other chance acquaintances, to feel a sort of confidence, and to want to meet frankness with frankness.

"One day I was with a friend of mine at the new Palais de Maxixe," she answered in a low voice as if making a confession. "A woman in the dressing-room borrowed a cigarette. You know they often do that. We got talking, and it seemed that we had much in common in our lives. Before I went back to him—"

She bit her lip. She had evidently not intended to admit that she knew any other men. Constance, however, appeared not to notice the slip.

"I had arranged to meet her at luncheon the next day," she continued hastily. "We have been friends ever since."

"You went to luncheon with her, and—" Constance prompted.

"Oh, she told me her story. It was very much like my own—a husband who was a perfect bear, and then gossip about him that so many people, besides his own wife, seemed to know, and—"

Constance shook her head. "Really," she observed thoughtfully, "it's a wonder to me how any one stays married these days. Somebody is always mixing in, getting one or the other so wrought up that they get to thinking there is no possibility of happiness. That's where the crook detective comes in."

Anita Douglas, confidence established now, poured out her story unreservedly, as there was little reason why she should not, a story of the refined brutality and neglect and inhumanity of her husband.

She told of her own first suspicions of him, of a girl who had been his stenographer, a Miss Helen Brett.

But he was careful. There had never been any direct, positive evidence against him. Still, there was enough to warrant a separation and the payment to her of an allowance.

They had lived, she said, in a pretty little house in the suburb of Glenclair, near New York. Now that they were separated, she had taken a little kitchenette apartment at the new Melcombe. Her husband was living in the house, she believed, when he was not in the city at his club, "or elsewhere," she added bitterly.

"But," she confided as she finished, "it is very lonely here in a big city all alone."

"I know it is," agreed Constance sympathetically as they parted. "I, too, am often very lonely. Call on me, especially if you find anything crooked going on. Call on me, anyhow. I shall be glad to see you any time."

The words, "anything crooked going on," rang in Mrs. Douglas's ears long after the elevator door had clanged shut and her new friend had gone. She was visibly perturbed. And the more she thought about it the more perturbed she became.

She had carried on a mild, then an ardent, flirtation with the man who had introduced himself as "Mr. White"—really Lynn Munro. But she relied on her woman's instinct in her judgment of him. No, she felt sure that he could not be other than she thought. But as for Alice Murray and her friend whom she had met at the Palais de Maxixe—well, she was forced to admit that she did not know, that Constance's warning might, after all, be true.

Munro had had to run out of town for a few days on a business trip. That she knew, for it had been the reason why he had wanted to see her before he went.

He had, in fact, spent the evening in her company, after the other couple had excused themselves on one pretext or another.

She called up Alice Murray at the number she had given. She was not there. In fact, no one seemed to know when she would be there. It was strange, because always before it had seemed possible to get her at any moment, almost instantly. That, too, worried her.

She tried to get the thing out of her mind, but she could not. She had a sort of foreboding that her new friend had not spoken without reason, a feeling of insecurity as though something were impending over her.

The crisis came sooner than even Constance had anticipated when she called on Anita Douglas. It was early in the afternoon, while Anita was still brooding, that a strange man called on her. Instinctively she seemed to divine that he was a detective. He, at least, had the look.

"My name," he introduced himself, "is Drummond."

Drummond paused and glanced about as if to make sure that he could by no possibility be overheard.

"I have called," he continued, "on a rather delicate matter."

He paused for effect, then went on:

"Some time ago I was employed by Mr. Douglas to—er—to watch his wife."

He was watching her narrowly to see what effect his sudden remark would have on her. She was speechless.

"Since then," he added quietly, "I have watched, I have seen—what I have seen."

Drummond had faced her. Somehow the effect of his words was more potent on her than if he had not accused her by indirection. Still she said nothing.

"I can suppress it," he insinuated.

Her heart was going like a trip-hammer.

"But it will cost something to do that."

Here was a straw—she caught at it eagerly.

"Cost something?" she repeated, facing him. "How much?"

Drummond never took his eyes from her anxious face.

"I was to get a fee of one thousand dollars if I obtained some letters that had passed from her to a man named Lynn Munro. He has gone out of town—has left his rooms unguarded. I have the letters."

She felt a sinking sensation. One thousand dollars!

Suddenly the truth of the situation flashed over her. He had come with an offer that set her bidding against her husband for the letters. And in a case of dollars her husband would win. One thousand dollars! It was blackmail.

"I—I can't afford it," she pleaded weakly. "Can't you make it—less?"

Drummond shook his head. Already he had learned what he had come to learn. She did not have the money.

"No," he replied positively, adding, by way of inserting the knife and turning it around, "I shall have to turn the letters over to him to-day."

She drew herself up. At least she could fight back.

"But you can't prove anything," she cut in quickly.

"Can't I?" he returned. "The letters don't speak for themselves, do they? You don't realize that this interview helps to prove it, do you? An innocent woman wouldn't have considered my offer, much less plead with me. Bah! can't prove anything. Why, it's all in plain black and white!"

Drummond flicked the ashes from his cigar into the fireplace as he rose to go. At the door he turned for one parting shot.

"I have all the evidence I need," he concluded. "I've got the goods on you. To-night it will be locked in his safe—documentary evidence. If you should change your mind—you can reach me at his office. Call under an assumed name—Mrs. Green, perhaps."

He was gone, with a mocking smile at the parting shot.

Anita Douglas saw it all now. Things had not been going fast enough to suit her new friend, Mrs. Murray. So, after a time, she had begun to tell of her own escapades and to try to get Anita to admit that she had had similar adventures. It was a favorite device of detectives, working under the new psychological method by use of the law of suggestion.

She had introduced herself, had found out about Lynn Munro, and in some way, after he had left town, had got the letters. Was he in the plot, too? She could not believe it.

Suddenly the thought came to her that the blackmailers might give her husband material that would look very black if a suit for divorce came up in court.

What if he were able to cut off her little allowance? She trembled at the thought of being thus cast adrift on the world.

Anita Douglas did not know which way to turn. In her dilemma she thought only of Constance. She hurried to her.

"It was as you said, a frame-up," she blurted out, as she entered Constance's apartment, then in the same breath added, "That Mrs. Murray was just a stool pigeon."

Constance received her sympathetically. She had expected such a visit, though not so soon.

"Just how much do they—know?" she asked pointedly.

Anita had pressed her hands together nervously. "Really—I confess," she murmured, "indiscretions—yes; misconduct—no!"

She spoke the last words defiantly. Constance listened eagerly, though she did not betray it.

She had found out that it was a curious twist in feminine psychology that the lie under such circumstances was a virtue, that it showed that there was hope for such a woman. Admission of the truth, even to a friend, would have shown that the woman was hopelessly lost. Lie or not, Constance felt in her inmost heart that she approved of it.

"Still, it looks badly," she remarked.

"Perhaps it does—on the surface," persisted Anita.

"You poor dear creature," soothed Constance. "I don't say I blame you for your—indiscreet friendships. You are more sinned against than sinning."

Sympathy had its effect. Anita was now sobbing softly, as Constance stole her arm about her waist.

"The next question," she reasoned, considering aloud, "is, of course, what to do? If it was just one of these blackmailing detective cases it would be common, but still very hard to deal with. There's a lot of such blackmailing going on in New York. Next to business and political cases, I suppose, it is the private detective's most important graft. Nearly everybody has a past—although few are willing to admit it. The graft lies in the fact that people talk so much, are so indiscreet, take such reckless chances. It's a wonder, really, that there isn't more of it."

"Yet there is the—evidence, as he called it—my letters to Lynn—and the reports that that woman must have made of our—our conversations," groaned Anita. "How they may distort it all!"

Constance was thinking rapidly.

"It is now after four o'clock," she said finally, looking at her wrist watch. "You say it was not half an hour ago that Drummond called on you. He must be downtown about now. Your husband will hardly have a chance more than to glance over the papers this afternoon."

Suddenly an idea seemed to occur to her. "What do you suppose he will do with them?" she asked.

Mrs. Douglas looked up through her tears, calmer. "He is very methodical," she answered slowly. "If I know him rightly, I think he will probably go out to Glenclair with them to-night, to look them over."

"Where will he keep them?" broke in Constance suddenly.

"He has a little safe in the library out there where he keeps all such personal papers. I shouldn't be surprised if he looked them over and locked them up there until he intends to use them at least until morning."

"I have a plan," exclaimed Constance excitedly. "Are you game?"

Anita Douglas looked at her friend squarely. In her face Constance read the desperation of a woman battling for life and honor.

"Yes," replied Anita in a low, tense tone, "for anything."

"Then meet me after dinner in the Terminal. We'll go out to Glenclair."

The two looked deeply into each other's eyes. Nothing was said, but what each read was a sufficient answer to a host of unspoken questions.

A moment after Mrs. Douglas had gone, Constance opened a cabinet. From the false back of a drawer she took two little vials of powder and a small bottle with a sponge.

Then she added a long steel bar, with a peculiar turn at the end, to her paraphernalia for the trip.

Nothing further occurred until they met at the Terminal, or, in fact, on the journey out. On most of the ride Mrs. Douglas kept her face averted, looking out of the window into the blackness of the night. Perhaps she was thinking of other journeys out to Glenclair, perhaps she was afraid of meeting the curious gaze of any late sojourners who might suffer from acute suburban curiosity.

Quietly the two women alighted and quickly made their way from the station up the main street, then diverged to a darker and less frequented avenue.

"There's the house," pointed out Mrs. Douglas, halting Constance, with a little bitter exclamation.

Evidently she had reasoned well. He had gone out there early and there was a light in the library.

"He isn't much of a reader," whispered Mrs. Douglas. "Oh—it's clear to me that he has the stuff all right. He's devouring it, gloating over it."

The sound of footsteps approaching down the paved walk came to them. Loitering on the streets of a suburban town always occasions suspicion, and instinctively Constance drew Anita with her into the shadow of a hedge that set off the house from that next to it.

There was no fence cutting it off from the sidewalk, but at the corner of the plot a large bush stood. In this bower they were perfectly hidden in the shadow.

Hour after hour they waited, watching that light in the library, speculating what it was he was reading, while Anita, half afraid to talk, wondered what it was that Constance had in mind.

Finally the light in the library winked out and the house was in darkness.

Midnight passed, and with it the last belated suburbanite.

At last, when the moon had disappeared under some clouds, Constance pulled Anita gently along up the lawn.

There was no sign of life about the house, yet Constance observed all the caution she would have if it had been well guarded.

Quickly they advanced over the open space to the cottage, approaching in the shadow as much as possible.

Tiptoeing over the porch, Constance tried a window, the window through which had shown the tantalizing light. It was fastened.

Without hesitation she pulled out the long steel bar with the twisted head, and began to insert the sharp end between the sashes.

"Aren't—you—afraid?" chattered her companion.

"No," she whispered, not looking up from her work. "You know, most persons don't know enough about jimmies. Against them an ordinary door lock or window catch is no protection at all. Why, with this jimmy, even a woman can exert a pressure of a ton or so. Not one catch in a thousand can stand it—certainly not this one."

Constance continued to work, muffling the lever as much as possible in a piece of felt.

At last a quick wrench and the catch yielded.

The only thing wrong about it was the noise. There had been no wind, no passing trolley, nothing to conceal it.

They shrank back into the shadow, and waited breathless. Had it been heard? Would a window open presently and an alarm be sounded?

There was not a sound, save the rustle of the leaves in the night wind.

A few minutes later Constance carefully raised the lower sash and they stepped softly into the house—once the house over which Anita Douglas had been mistress.

Cautiously Constance pressed the button on a little pocket storage-battery lamp and flashed it slowly about the room.

All was quiet in the library. The library table was disordered, as if some one in great stress of mind had been working at it. Anita wondered what had been the grim thoughts of the man as he pondered on the mass of stuff, the tissue of falsehoods that the blackmailing detective had handed to him at such great cost.

At last the cone of light rested on a little safe at the opposite end.

"There it is," whispered Anita, pointing, half afraid even of the soft tones of her own voice.

Constance had pulled down all the shades quietly, and drew the curtains tightly between the room and the foyer.

On the top of the safe she was pouring some of the powder in a neat pile from one of the vials.

"What is that?" asked Anita, bending close to her ear.

"Some powdered metallic aluminum mixed with oxide of iron," whispered Constance in return. "I read of this thing in a scientific paper the other day, and I determined to get some of it. But I didn't think I'd ever really have occasion to use it."

She added some powder from the other vial.

"And that?"

"Magnesium powder."

Constance had lighted a match.

"Stand back, Anita," she whispered, "back, Anita," she whispered, "back in the farthest corner of the room, and keep quiet. Shut your eyes—turn your face away!"

There was a flash, blinding, then a steady, brilliant burst of noiseless, penetrating, burning flame.

Anita had expected an explosion. Instead she found that her eyes hurt. She had not closed them tightly quick enough.

Still, Constance's warning had been sufficient to prevent any damage to the sight, and she slowly recovered.

Actually, the burning powder seemed to be sinking into the very steel of the safe itself, as if it had been mere ice!

Was it an optical illusion, a freak of her sight?

"Wh-what is it!" she whispered in awe, drawing closer to her friend.

"Thermit," whispered Constance in reply, as the two watched the glowing mass fascinated, "an invention of a German chemist named Goldschmidt. It will burn a hole right through steel—at a terrific temperature, three thousand or more degrees."

The almost burned out mass seemed to fall into the safe as if it had been a wooden box instead of chrome steel.

They waited a moment, still blinking, to regain control over their eyes in spite of the care they had used to shield them.

Then they tiptoed across the floor.

In the top of the safe yawned a hole large enough to stick one's hand and arm through!

Constance reached into the safe and drew out something on which she flashed the pocket light.

There was bundle after bundle of checks, the personal checks of a methodical business man, carefully preserved.

Hastily she looked them over. All seemed to be perfectly straight—payments to tradesmen, to real estate agents, payments of all sorts, all carefully labeled.

"Oh, he'd never let anything like that lie around," remarked Anita, as she began to comprehend what Constance was after.

Constance was scrutinizing some of the checks more carefully than others. Suddenly she held one up to the light. Apparently it was in payment of legal services.

Quickly she took the little bottle of brownish fluid which she had brought with the sponge.

She dipped the sponge in it lightly and brushed it over the check. Then she leaned forward breathlessly.

"Eradicating ink is simply a bleaching process," she remarked, "which leaves the iron of the ink as a white oxide instead of a black oxide. The proper reagent will restore the original color—partially and at least for a time. Ah—yes—it is as I thought. There have been erasures in these checks. Other names have been written in on some of them in place of those that were originally there. The sulphide of ammonia ought to bring out anything that is hidden here."

There, faintly, was the original writing. It read, "Pay to the order of—Helen Brett—"

Mrs. Douglas with difficulty restrained an exclamation of anger and hatred at the mere sight of the name of the other woman.

"He was careful," remarked Constance. "Reckless at first in giving checks-he has tried to cover it up. He didn't want to destroy them, yet he couldn't have such evidence about. So he must have altered the name on the canceled vouchers after they were returned to him paid by the bank. Very clever—very."

Constance reached into the safe again. There were some personal and some business letters, some old check books, some silver and gold trinkets and table silver.

She gave a low exclamation. She had found a packet of letters and a sheaf of typewritten flimsy tissue paper pages.

Mrs. Douglas uttered a little cry, quickly suppressed. The letters were those in her own handwriting addressed to Lynn Munro.

"Here are Drummond's reports, too," Constance added.

She looked them hastily over. The damning facts had been massed in a way that must inevitably have prejudiced any case for the defense that Mrs. Douglas might set up.

"There—there's all the evidence against you," whispered Constance hoarsely, handing it over to Anita. "It's all yours again. Destroy it."

In her eagerness, with trembling hands, Anita had torn up the whole mass of incriminating papers and had cast them into the fireplace. She was just about to strike a match.

Suddenly there came a deep voice from the stairs.

"Well—what's all this?"

Anita dropped the match from her nerveless hands. Constance felt an arm grasp her tightly. For a moment a chill ran over her at being caught in the nefarious work of breaking and entering a dwelling-house at night. The hand was Anita's, but the voice was that of a man.

Lights flashed all over the house at once, from a sort of electric light system that could be instantly lighted and would act as a "burglar expeller."

It was Douglas himself. He was staring angrily at his wife and the stranger with her.

"Well!" he demanded with cold sarcasm. "Why this—this burglary?"

Before he could quite take in the situation, with a quick motion, Constance struck a match and touched it to the papers in the fireplace.

As they blazed up he caught sight of what they were and almost leaped across the floor.

Constance laid her hand on his arm. "One moment, Mr. Douglas," she said quietly. "Look at that!"

"Who—who the devil are you?" he gasped. "What's all this?"

"I think," remarked Constance slowly and quietly, "that your wife is now in a position to prove that you—well, don't come into court with clean hands, if you attempt to do so. Besides, you know, the courts rather frown on detectives that practice collusion and conspiracy and frame up evidence, to say nothing of trying to blackmail the victims. I thought perhaps you'd prefer not to say anything about this—er—visit to-night—after you saw that."

Constance had quietly laid one of the erased checks on the library table. Again she dipped the sponge into the brownish liquid. Again the magic touch revealed the telltale name. With her finger she was pointing to the faintly legible "Helen Brett" on the check as the sulphide had brought it out.

Douglas stared-dazed.

He rubbed his eyes and stared again as the last of the flickering fire died away. In an instant he realized that it was not a dream, that it was all a fact.

He looked from one to the other of the women.

He was checkmated.

Constance ostentatiously folded up the erased vouchers.

"I—I shall not—make any—contest," Douglas managed to gasp huskily.



CHAPTER XI

THE DOPE FIENDS

"I have a terrible headache," remarked Constance Dunlap to her friend, Adele Gordon, the petite cabaret singer and dancer of the Mayfair, who had dropped in to see her one afternoon.

"You poor, dear creature," soothed Adele. "Why don't you go to see Dr. Price? He has cured me. He's splendid—splendid."

Constance hesitated. Dr. Moreland Price was a well-known physician. All day and even at night, she knew, automobiles and cabs rolled up to his door and their occupants were, for the most part, stylishly gowned women.

"Oh, come on," urged Adele. "He doesn't charge as highly as people seem to think. Besides, I'll go with you and introduce you, and he'll charge only as he does the rest of us in the profession."

Constance's head throbbed frantically. She felt that she must have some relief soon. "All right," she agreed, "I'll go with you, and thank you, Adele."

Dr. Price's office was on the first floor of the fashionable Recherche Apartments, and, as she expected, Constance noted a line of motor cars before it.

They entered and were admitted to a richly furnished room, in mahogany and expensive Persian rugs, where a number of patients waited. One after another an attendant summoned them noiselessly and politely to see the doctor, until at last the turn of Constance and Adele came.

Dr. Price was a youngish, middle-aged man, tall, with a sallow countenance and a self-confident, polished manner which went a long way in reassuring the patients, most of whom were ladies.

As they entered the doctor's sanctum behind the folding doors, Adele seemed to be on very good terms indeed with him.

They seated themselves in the deep leather chairs beside Dr. Price's desk, and he inclined his head to listen to the story of their ailments.

"Doctor," began Constance's introducer, "I've brought my friend, Mrs. Dunlap, who is suffering from one of those awful headaches. I thought perhaps you could give her some of that medicine that has done me so much good."

The doctor bowed without saying anything and shifted his eyes from Adele to Constance. "Just what seems to be the difficulty?" he inquired.

Constance told him how she felt, of her general lassitude and the big, throbbing veins in her temples.

"Ah—a woman's headaches!" he smiled, adding, "Nothing serious, however, in this case, as far as I can see. We can fix this one all right, I think."

He wrote out a prescription quickly and handed it to Constance.

"Of course," he added, as he pocketed his fee, "it makes no difference to me personally, but I would advise that you have it filled at Muller's—Miss Gordon knows the place. I think Muller's drugs are perhaps fresher than those of most druggists, and that makes a great deal of difference."

He had risen and was politely and suavely bowing them out of another door, at the same time by pressing a button signifying to his attendant to admit the next patient.

Constance had preceded Adele, and, as she passed through the other door, she overheard the doctor whisper to her friend, "I'm going to stop for you to-night to take a ride. I have something important I want to say to you."

She did not catch Adele's answer, but as they left the marble and onyx, brass-grilled entrance, Adele remarked: "That's his car—over there. Oh, but he is a reckless driver—dashes along pell-mell—but always seems to have his eye out for everything—never seems to be arrested, never in an accident."

Constance turned in the direction of the car and was startled to see the familiar face of Drummond across the street dodging behind it. What was it now, she wondered—a divorce case, a scandal—what?

The medicine was made up into little powders, to be taken until they gave relief, and Constance folded the paper of one, poured it on the back of her tongue and swallowed a glass of water afterward.

Her head continued to throb, but she felt a sense of well-being that she had not before. Adele urged her to take another, and Constance did so.

The second powder increased the effect of the first marvelously. But Constance noticed that she now began to feel queer. She was not used to taking medicine. For a moment she felt that she was above, beyond the reach of ordinary rules and laws. She could have done any sort of physical task, she felt, no matter how difficult. She was amazed at herself, as compared to what she had been only a few moments before.

"Another one?" asked Adele finally.

Constance was by this time genuinely alarmed at the sudden unwonted effect on herself. "N-no," she replied dubiously, "I don't think I want to take any more, just yet."

"Not another?" asked Adele in surprise. "I wish they would affect me that way. Sometimes I have to take the whole dozen before they have any effect."

They chatted for a few minutes, and finally Adele rose.

"Well," she remarked with a nervous twitching of her body, as if she were eager to be doing something, "I really must be going. I can't say I feel any too well myself."

"I think I'll take a walk with you," answered Constance, who did not like the continued effect of the two powders. "I feel the need of exercise—and air."

Adele hesitated, but Constance already had her hat on. She had seen Drummond watching Dr. Price's door, and it interested her to know whether he could possibly have been following Adele or some one else.

As they walked along Adele quickened her pace, until they came again to the drug store.

"I believe I'll go in and get something," she remarked, pausing.

For the first time in several minutes Constance looked at the face of her friend. She was amazed to discover that Adele looked as if she had had a spell of sickness. Her eyes were large and glassy, her skin cold and sweaty, and she looked positively pallid and thin.

As they entered the store Muller, the druggist, bowed again and looked at Adele a moment as she leaned over the counter and whispered something to him. Without a word he went into the arcana behind the partition that cuts off the mysteries of the prescription room in every drug store from the front of the store.

When Muller returned he handed her a packet, for which she paid and which she dropped quickly into her pocketbook, hugging the pocketbook close to herself.

Adele turned and was about to hurry from the store with Constance. "Oh, excuse me," she said suddenly as if she had just recollected something, "I promised a friend of mine I'd telephone this afternoon, and I have forgotten to do it. I see a pay station here." Constance waited.

Adele returned much quicker than one would have expected she could call up a number, but Constance thought nothing of it at the time. She did notice, however, that as her friend emerged from the booth a most marvelous change had taken place in her. Her step was firm, her eye clear, her hand steady. Whatever it was, reasoned Constance, it could not have been serious to have disappeared so quickly.

It was with some curiosity as to just what she might expect that Constance went around to the famous cabaret that night. The Mayfair occupied two floors of what had been a wide brownstone house before business and pleasure had crowded the residence district further and further uptown. It was a very well-known bohemian rendezvous, where under-, demi-and upper-world rubbed elbows without friction and seemed to enjoy the novelty and be willing to pay for it.

Adele, who was one of the performers, had not arrived yet, but Constance, who had come with her mind still full of the two unexpected encounters with Drummond, was startled to see him here again. Fortunately he did not see her, and she slipped unobserved into an angle near the window overlooking the street.

Drummond had been engrossed in watching some one already there, and Constance made the best use she could of her eyes to determine who it was. The outdoor walk and a good dinner had checked her headache, and now the excitement of the chase of something, she knew not what, completed the cure.

It was not long before she discovered that Drummond was watching intently, without seeming to do so, a nervous-looking fellow whose general washed-out appearance of face was especially unattractive for some reason or other. He was very thin, very pale, and very stary about the eyes. Then, too, it seemed as if the bone in his nose was going, due perhaps to the shrinkage of the blood vessels from some cause.

Constance noticed a couple of girls whom she had seen Adele speak to on several other occasions approaching the young man.

There came an opportune lull in the music and from around the corner of her protecting angle Constance could just catch the greeting of one of the girls, "Hello, Sleighbells! Got any snow!"

It was a remark that seemed particularly malapropos to the sultry weather, and Constance half expected a burst of laughter at the unexpected sally.

Instead, she was surprised to hear the young man reply in a very serious and matter-of-fact manner, "Sure. Got any money, May?"

She craned her neck, carefully avoiding coming into Drummond's line of vision, and as she did so she saw two silver quarters gleam momentarily from hand to hand, and the young man passed each girl stealthily a small white paper packet.

Others came to him, both men and women. It seemed to be an established thing, and Constance noted that Drummond watched it all covertly.

"Who is that?" asked Constance of the waiter who had served her sometimes when she had been with Adele, and knew her.

"Why, they call him Sleighbells Charley," he replied, "a coke fiend."

"Which means a cocaine fiend, I suppose!" she queried.

"Yes. He's a lobbygow for the grapevine system they have now of selling the dope in spite of this new law."

"Where does he get the stuff!" she asked.

The waiter shrugged his shoulders. "Nobody knows, I guess. I don't. But he gets it in spite of the law and peddles it. Oh, it's all adulterated—with some white stuff, I don't know what, and the price they charge is outrageous. They must make an ounce retail at five or six times the cost. Oh, you can bet that some one who is at the top is making a pile of money out of that graft, all right."

He said it not with any air of righteous indignation, but with a certain envy.

Constance was thinking the thing over in her mind. Where did the "coke" come from? The "grapevine" system interested her.

"Sleighbells" seemed to have disposed of all the "coke" he had brought with him. As the last packet went, he rose slowly, and shuffled out. Constance, who knew that Adele would not come for some time, determined to follow him. She rose quietly and, under cover of a party going out, managed to disappear without, as far as she knew, letting Drummond catch a glimpse of her. This would not only employ her time, but it was better to avoid Drummond as far as possible, at present, too, she felt.

At a distance of about half a block she followed the curiously shuffling figure. He crossed the avenue, turned and went uptown, turned again, and, before she knew it, disappeared in a drug store. She had been so engrossed in following the lobbygow that it was with a start that she realized that he had entered Muller's.

What did it all mean? Was the druggist, Muller, the man higher up? She recalled suddenly her own experience of the afternoon. Had Muller tried to palm off something on her? The more she thought of it the more sure she was that the powders she had taken had been doped.

Slowly, turning the matter over in her mind, she returned to the Mayfair. As she peered in cautiously before entering she saw that Drummond had gone. Adele had not come in yet, and she went in and sat down again in her old place.

Perhaps half an hour later, outside, she heard a car drive up with a furious rattle of gears. She looked out of the window and, as far as she could determine in the shadows, it was Dr. Price. A woman got out, Adele. For a moment she stopped to talk, then Dr. Price waved a gay good-bye and was off. All she could catch was a hasty, "No; I don't think I'd better come in to-night," from him.

As Adele entered the Mayfair she glanced about, caught sight of Constance and came and sat down by her.

It would have been impossible for her to enter unobserved, so popular was she. It was not long before the two girls whom Constance had seen dealing with "Sleighbells" sauntered over.

"Your friend was here to-night," remarked one to Adele.

"Which one?" laughed Adele.

"The one who admired your dancing the other night and wanted to take lessons."

"You mean the young fellow who was selling something?" asked Constance pointedly.

"Oh, no," returned the girl quite casually. "That was Sleighbells," and they all laughed.

Constance thought immediately of Drummond. "The other one, then," she said, "the thick-set man who was all alone!"

"Yes; he went away afterward. Do you know him?"

"I've seen him somewhere," evaded Constance; "but I just can't quite place him."

She had not noticed Adele particularly until now. Under the light she had a peculiar worn look, the same as she had had before.

The waiter came up to them. "Your turn is next," he hinted to Adele.

"Excuse me a minute," she apologized to the rest of the party. "I must fix up a bit. No," she added to Constance, "don't come with me."

She returned from the dressing room a different person, and plunged into the wild dance for which the limited orchestra was already tuning up. It was a veritable riot of whirl and rhythm. Never before had Constance seen Adele dance with such abandon. As she executed the wild mazes of a newly imported dance, she held even the jaded Mayfair spellbound. And when she concluded with one daring figure and sat down, flushed and excited, the diners applauded and even shouted approval. It was an event for even the dance-mad Mayfair.

Constance did not share in the applause. At last she understood. Adele was a dope fiend, too. She felt it with a sense of pain. Always, she knew, the fiends tried to get away alone somewhere for a few minutes to snuff some of their favorite nepenthe. She had heard before of the cocaine "snuffers" who took a little of the deadly powder, placed it on the back of the hand, and inhaled it up the nose with a quick intake of breath. Adele was one. It was not Adele who danced. It was the dope.

Constance was determined to speak.

"You remember that man the girls spoke of?" she began.

"Yes. What of him?" asked Adele with almost a note of defiance.

"Well, I really DO know him," confessed Constance. "He is a detective."

Constance watched her companion curiously, for at the mere word she had stopped short and faced her. "He is?" she asked quickly. "Then that was why Dr. Price—"

She managed to suppress the remark and continued her walk home without another word.

In Adele's little apartment Constance was quick to note that the same haggard look had returned to her friend's face.

Adele had reached for her pocketbook with a sort of clutching eagerness and was about to leave the room.

Constance rose. "Why don't you give up the stuff?" she asked earnestly. "Don't you want to?"

For a moment Adele faced her angrily. Then her real nature seemed slowly to come to the surface. "Yes," she murmured frankly.

"Then why don't you?" pleaded Constance.

"I haven't the power. There is an indescribable excitement to do something great, to make a mark. It's soon gone, but while it lasts, I can sing, dance, do anything—and then—every part of my body begins crying for more of the stuff again."

There was no longer any necessity of concealment from Constance. She took a pinch of the stuff, placed it on the back of her wrist and quickly sniffed it. The change in her was magical. From a quivering wretched girl she became a self-confident neurasthenic.

"I don't care," she laughed hollowly now.

"Yes, I know what you are going to tell me. Soon I'll be 'hunting the cocaine bug,' as they call it, imagining that in my skin, under the flesh, are worms crawling, perhaps see them, see the little animals running around and biting me."

She said it with a half-reckless cynicism. "Oh, you don't know. There are two souls in the cocainist—one tortured by the pain of not having the stuff, the other laughing and mocking at the dangers of it. It stimulates. It makes your mind work—without effort, by itself. And it gives such visions of success, makes you feel able to do so much, and to forget. All the girls use it."

"Where do they get it?" asked Constance "I thought the new law prohibited it."

"Get it?" repeated Adele. "Why, they get it from that fellow they call 'Sleighbells.' They call it 'snow,' you know, and the girls who use it 'snowbirds.' The law does prohibit its sale, but—"

She paused significantly.

"Yes," agreed Constance; "but Sleighbells is only a part of the system after all. Who is the man at the top?"

Adele shrugged her shoulders and was silent. Still, Constance did not fail to note a sudden look of suspicion which Adele shot at her. Was Adele shielding some one?

Constance knew that some one must be getting rich from the traffic, probably selling hundreds of ounces a week and making thousands of dollars. Somehow she felt a sort of indignation at the whole thing. Who was it? Who was the man higher up?

In the morning as she was working about her little kitchenette an idea came to her. Why not hire the vacant apartment cross the hall from Adele? An optician, who was a friend of hers, in the course of a recent conversation had mentioned an invention, a model of which he had made for the inventor. She would try it.

Since, with Constance, the outlining of a plan was tantamount to the execution, it was not many hours later before she had both the apartment and the model of the invention.

Her wall separated her from the drug store and by careful calculation she determined about where came the little prescription department. Carefully, so as to arouse no suspicion, she began to bore away at the wall with various tools, until finally she had a small, almost imperceptible opening. It was tedious work, and toward the end needed great care so as not to excite suspicion. But finally she was rewarded. Through it she could see just a trace of daylight, and by squinting could see a row of bottles on a shelf opposite.

Then, through the hole, she pushed a long, narrow tube, like a putty blower. When at last she placed her eye at it, she gave a low exclamation of satisfaction. She could now see the whole of the little room.

It was a detectascope, invented by Gaillard Smith, adapter of the detectaphone, an instrument built up on the principle of the cytoscope which physicians use to explore internally down the throat. Only, in the end of the tube, instead of an ordinary lens, was placed what is known as a "fish-eye" lens, which had a range something like nature has given the eyes of fishes, hence the name. Ordinarily cameras, because of the flatness of their lenses, have a range of only a few degrees, the greatest being scarcely more than ninety. But this lens was globular, and, like a drop of water, refracted light from all directions. When placed so that half of it caught the light it "saw" through an angle of 180 degrees, "saw" everything in the room instead of just that little row of bottles on the shelf opposite.

Constance set herself to watch, and it was not long before her suspicions were confirmed, and she was sure that this was nothing more than a "coke" joint. Still she wondered whether Muller was the real source of the traffic of which Sleighbells was the messenger. She was determined to find out.

All day she watched through her detectascope. Once she saw Adele come in and buy more dope. It was with difficulty that she kept from interfering. But, she reflected, the time was not ripe. She had thought the thing out. There was no use in trying to get at it through Adele. The only way was to stop the whole curse at its source, to dam the stream. People came and went. She soon found that he was selling them packets from a box hidden in the woodwork. That much she had learned, anyhow.

Constance watched faithfully all day with only time enough taken out for dinner. It was after her return from this brief interval that she felt her heart give a leap of apprehension, as she looked again through the detectascope. There was Drummond in the back of the store talking to Muller and a woman who looked as if she might be Mrs. Muller, for both, seemed nervous and anxious.

As nearly as she could make out, Drummond was alternately threatening and arguing with Muller. Finally the three seemed to agree, for Drummond walked over to a typewriter on a table, took a fresh sheet of carbon paper from a drawer, placed it between two sheets of paper, and hastily wrote something.

Drummond read over what he had written. It seemed to be short, and the three apparently agreed on it. Then, in a trembling hand, Muller signed the two copies which Drummond had made, one of which Drummond himself kept and the other he sealed in an envelope and sent away by a boy. Drummond reached into his pocket and pulled out a huge roll of bills of large denomination. He counted out what seemed to be approximately half, handed it to the woman, and replaced the rest in his pocket. What it was all about Constance could only vaguely guess. She longed to know what was in the letter and why the money had been paid to the woman.

Perhaps a quarter of an hour after Drummond left Adele appeared again, pleading for more dope. Muller went back of the partition and made up a fresh paper of it from a bottle also concealed.

Constance was torn by conflicting impulses. She did not want to miss anything in the perplexing drama that was being enacted before her, yet she wished to interfere with the deadly course of Adele. Still, perhaps the girl would resent interference if she found out that Constance was spying on her. She determined to wait a little while before seeing Adele. It was only after a decided effort that she tore herself away from the detectascope and knocked on Adele's door as if she had just come in for a visit. Again she knocked, but still there was no answer. Every minute something might be happening next door. She hurried back to her post of observation.

One of the worst aspects of the use of cocaine, she knew, was the desire of the user to share his experience with some one else. The passing on of the habit, which seemed to be one of the strongest desires of the drug fiend, made him even more dangerous to society than he would otherwise have been. That thought gave Constance an idea.

She recalled also now having heard somewhere that it was a common characteristic of these poor creatures to have a passion for fast automobiling, to go on long rides, perhaps even without having the money to pay for them. That, too, confirmed the idea which she had.

As the night advanced she determined to stick to her post. What could it have been that Drummond was doing? It was no good, she felt positive.

Suddenly before her eye, glued to its eavesdropping aperture, she saw a strange sight. There was a violent commotion in the store. Blue-coated policemen seemed to swarm in from nowhere. And in the rear, directing them, appeared Drummond, holding by the arm the unfortunate Sleighbells, quaking with fear, evidently having been picked up already elsewhere by the wily detective.

Muller put up a stout resistance, but the officers easily seized him and, after a hasty but thorough search, unearthed his cache of the contraband drug.

As the scene unfolded, Constance was more and more bewildered after having witnessed that which preceded it, the signing of the letter and the passing of the money. Muller evidently had nothing to say about that. What did it mean?

The police were still holding Muller, and Constance had not noted that Drummond had disappeared.

"It's on the first floor—left, men," sounded a familiar voice outside her own door. "I know she's there. My shadow saw her buy the dope and take it home."

Her heart was thumping wildly. It was Drummond leading his squad of raiders, and they were about to enter the apartment of Adele. They knocked, but there was no answer.

A few moments before Constance would have felt perfectly safe in saying that Adele was out. But if Drummond's man had seen her enter, might she not have been there all the time, be there still, in a stupor? She dreaded to think of what might happen if the poor girl once fell into their hands. It would be the final impulse that would complete her ruin.

Constance did not stop to reason it out. Her woman's intuition told her that now was the time to act—that there was no retreat.

She opened her own door just as the raiders had forced in the flimsy affair that guarded the apartment of Adele.

"So!" sneered Drummond, catching sight of her in the dim light of the hallway. "You are mixed up in these violations of the new drug law, too!"

Constance said nothing. She had determined first to make Drummond display his hand.

"Well," he ground out, "I'm going to get these people this time. I represent the Medical Society and the Board of Health. These men have been assigned to me by the Commissioner as a dope squad. We want this girl. We have others who will give evidence; but we want this one, too."

He said it with a bluster that even exaggerated the theatrical character of the raid itself. Constance did not stop to weigh the value of his words, but through the door she brushed quickly. Adele might need her if she was indeed there.

As she entered the little living-room she saw a sight which almost transfixed her. Adele was there—lying across a divan, motionless.

Constance bent over. Adele was cold. As far as she could determine there was not a breath or a heart beat!

What did it mean? She did not stop to think. Instantly there flashed over her the recollection of an instrument she had read about at one of the city hospitals, It might save Adele. Before any one knew what she was doing she had darted to the telephone in the lower hall of the apartment and had called up the hospital frantically, imploring them to hurry. Adele must be saved.

Constance had no very clear idea of what happened next in the hurly-burly of events, until the ambulance pulled up at the door and the white-coated surgeon burst in carrying a heavy suitcase.

With one look at the unfortunate girl he muttered, "Paralysis of the respiratory organs—too large a dose of the drug. You did perfectly right," and began unpacking the case.

Constance, calm now in the crisis, stood by him and helped as deftly as could any nurse.

It was a curious arrangement of tubes and valves, with a large rubber bag, and a little pump that the doctor had brought. Quickly he placed a cap, attached to it, over the nose and mouth of the poor girl, and started the machine.

"Wh-what is it?" gasped Drummond as he saw Adele's hitherto motionless breast now rise and fall.

"A pulmotor," replied the doctor, working quickly and carefully, "an artificial lung. Sometimes it can revive even the medically dead. It is our last chance with this girl."

Constance had picked up the packet which had fallen beside Adele and was looking at the white powder.

"Almost pure cocaine," remarked the young surgeon, testing it. "The hydrochloride, large crystals, highest quality. Usually it is adulterated. Was she in the habit of taking it this way?"

Constance said nothing. She had seen Muller make up the packet—specially now, she recalled. Instead of the adulterated dope he had given Adele the purest kind. Why? Was there some secret he wished to lock in her breast forever?

Mechanically the pulmotor pumped. Would it save her?

Constance was living over what she had already seen through the detectascope. Suddenly she thought of the strange letter and of the money.

She hurried into the drug store. Muller had already been taken away, but before the officer left in charge could interfere she picked up the carbon sheet on which the letter had been copied, turned it over and held it eagerly to the light.

She read in amazement. It was a confession. In it Muller admitted to Dr. Moreland Price that he was the head of a sort of dope trust, that he had messengers out, like Sleighbells, that he had often put dope in the prescriptions sent him by the doctor, and had repeatedly violated the law and refilled such prescriptions. On its face it was complete and convincing.

Yet it did not satisfy Constance. She could not believe that Adele had committed suicide. Adele must possess some secret. What was it?

"Is—is there any change?" she asked anxiously of the young surgeon now engrossed in his work.

For answer he merely nodded to the apparently motionless form on the bed, and for a moment stopped the pulmotor.

The mechanical movement of the body ceased. But in its place was a slight tremor about the lips and mouth.

Adele moved—was faintly gasping for breath!

"Adele!" cried Constance softly in her ear. "Adele!"

Something, perhaps a far-away answer of recognition, seemed to flicker over her face. The doctor redoubled his efforts.

"Adele—do you know me?" whispered Constance again.

"Yes," came back faintly at last. "There—there's something—wrong with it—They—they—"

"How? What do you mean?" urged Constance. "Tell me, Adele."

The girl moved uneasily. The doctor administered a stimulant and she vaguely opened her eyes, began to talk hazily, dreamily. Constance bent over to catch the faint words which would have been lost to the others.

"They—are going to—double cross the Health Department," she murmured as if to herself, then gathering strength she went on, "Muller and Sleighbells will be arrested and take the penalty. They have been caught with the goods, anyhow. It has all been arranged so that the detective will get his case. Money—will be paid to both of them, to Muller and the detective, to swing the case and protect him. He made me do it. I saw the detective, even danced with him and he agreed to do it. Oh, I would do anything—I am his willing tool when I have the stuff. But—this time—it was—" She rambled off incoherently.

"Who made you do it? Who told you?" prompted Constance. "For whom would you do anything?"

Adele moaned and clutched Constance's hand convulsively. Constance did not pause to consider the ethics of questioning a half-unconscious girl. Her only idea was to get at the truth.

"Who was it?" she reiterated.

Adele turned weakly.

"Dr. Price," she murmured as Constance bent her ear to catch even the faintest sound. "He told me—all about it—last night—in the car."

Instantly Constance understood. Adele was the only one outside who held the secret, who could upset the carefully planned frame-up that was to protect the real head of the dope trust who had paid liberally to save his own wretched skin.

She rose quickly and wheeled about suddenly on Drummond.

"You will convict Dr. Price also," she said in a low tone. "This girl must not be dragged down, too. You will leave her alone, and both you and Mr. Muller will hand over that money to her for her cure of the habit."

Drummond started forward angrily, but fell back as Constance added in a lower but firmer tone, "Or I'll have you all up on a charge of attempting murder."

Drummond turned surlily to those of his "dope squad," who remained:

"You can go, boys," he said brusquely.

"There's been some mistake here."



CHAPTER XII

THE FUGITIVES

"Newspaper pictures seldom look like the person they represent," asserted Lawrence Macey nonchalantly.

Constance Dunlap looked squarely at the man opposite her at the table, oblivious to the surroundings. It was a brilliant sight in the great after-theater rendezvous, the beautiful faces and gowns, the exquisite music, the bright lights and the gayety. She had chosen this time and place for a reason. She had hoped that the contrast with what she had to say would be most marked in its influence on the man.

"Nevertheless," she replied keenly, "I recognize the picture—as though you were Bertillon's new 'spoken portrait' of this Graeme Mackenzie."

She deliberately folded up a newspaper clipping and shoved it into her hand-bag on a chair beside the table.

Lawrence Macey met her eye unflinchingly.

"Suppose," he drawled, "just for the sake of argument, that you are right. What would you do?"

Constance looked at the unruffled exterior of the man. With her keen perception she knew that it covered just as calm an interior. He would have said the same thing if she had been a real detective, had walked up behind him suddenly in the subway crush, had tapped his shoulder, and whispered, "You're wanted."

"We are dealing with facts, not suppositions," she replied evasively.

Momentarily, a strange look passed over Macey's face. What was she driving at—blackmail? He could not think so, even though he had only just come to know Constance. He rejected the thought before it was half formed.

"Put it as you please," he persisted. "I am, then, this Graeme Mackenzie who has decamped from Omaha with half a million—it is half a million in the article, is it not?—of cash and unregistered stocks and bonds. Now what would you do?"

Constance felt unconsciously the shift which he had skilfully made in their positions. Instead of being the pursuer, she was now the pursued, at least in their conversation. He had admitted nothing of what her quick intuition told her.

Yet she felt an admiration for the sang-froid of Macey. She felt a spell thrown over her by the magnetic eyes that seemed to search her own. They were large eyes, the eyes of a dreamer, rather than of a practical man, eyes of a man who goes far and travels long with the woman on whom he fixes them solely.

"You haven't answered my hypothetical question," he reminded her.

She brought herself back with a start. "I was only thinking," she murmured.

"Then there is doubt in your mind what you would do?"

"N—no," she hesitated.

He bent over nearer across the table. "You would at least recall the old adage, 'Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you'?" he urged.

It was uncanny, the way this man read her thoughts.

"You know whom they say quotes scripture," she avoided.

"And am I a—a devil?"

"I did not say so."

"You hinted it."

She had. But she said, "No, nor hinted it."

"Then you did not MEAN to hint it?"

She looked away a moment at the gay throng. "Graeme Mackenzie," she said, slowly, "what's the use of all this beating about? Why cannot we be frank with one another?"

She paused, then resumed, meditatively, "A long time ago I became involved with a man in a scheme to forge checks. I would have done anything for him, anything."

A cloud passed over his face. She saw it, had been watching for it, but appeared not to do so. His was a nature to brook no rivalry.

"My husband had become involved in extravagances for which I was to blame," she went on.

The cloud settled, and in its place came a look of intense relief. He was like most men. Whatever his own morals, he demanded a high standard in her.

"We formed an amateur partnership in crime," she hurried on. "He lost his life, was unable to stand up against the odds, while he was alone, away from me. Since then I have been helping those who have become involved, on the wrong side, with the law. There," she concluded simply, "I have put myself in your power. I have admitted my part in something that, try as they would, they could never connect me with. I have done it because—because I want to help you. Be as frank with me."

He eyed her keenly again. The appeal was irresistible.

"I can tell you Graeme Mackenzie's story," he began carefully. "Six months ago there was a young man in Omaha who had worked faithfully for a safe deposit company for years. He was getting eighty-five dollars a month. That is more than it seems to you here in New York. But it was very little for what he did. Why, as superintendent of the safe deposit vaults he had helped to build up that part of the trust company's business to such an extent that he knew he deserved more.

"Now, a superintendent of a safe deposit vault has lots of chances. Sometimes depositors give him their keys to unlock their boxes for them. It is a simple thing to make an impression in wax or chewing gum palmed in the hand. Or he has access to a number of keys of unrented boxes; he can, as opportunity offers, make duplicates, and then when the boxes are rented, he has a key. Even if the locks of unrented boxes are blanks, set by the first insertion of the key chosen at random, he can still do the same thing. And even if it takes two to get at the idle keys, himself and another trusted employe, he can get at them, if he is clever, without the other officer knowing it, though it may be done almost before his eyes. You see, it all comes down to the honesty of the man."

He paused. Constance was fascinated at the coolness with which this man had gone to work, and with which he told of it.

"This superintendent earned more than he received. He deserved it. But when he asked for a raise, they told him he was lucky to keep the job,—they reduced him, instead, to seventy-five dollars. He was angry at the stinging rebuke. He determined to make them smart, to show them what he could do.

"One noon he went out to lunch and—they have been looking for him ever since. He had taken half a million in cash, stocks, and bonds, unregistered and hence easily hypothecated and traded on."

"And his motive?" she asked.

He looked at her long and earnestly as if making up his mind to something. "I think," he replied, "I wanted revenge quite as much as the money."

He said it slowly, measured, as if realizing that there was now nothing to be gained by concealment from her, as if only he wanted to put himself in the best light with the woman who had won from him his secret. It was his confession!

Acquaintances with Constance ripened fast into friendships. She had known Macey, as he called himself, only a fortnight. He had been introduced to her at a sort of Bohemian gathering, had talked to her, direct, as she liked a man to talk. He had seen her home that night, had asked to call, and on the other nights had taken her to the theater and to supper.

Delicately unconsciously, a bond of friendship had grown up between them. She felt that he was a man vibrating with physical and mental power, long latent, which nothing but a strong will held in check, a man by whom she could be fascinated, yet of whom she was just a little bit afraid.

With Macey, it would have been difficult to analyze his feelings. He had found in Constance a woman who had seen the world in all its phases, yet had come through unstained by what would have drowned some in the depths of the under-world, or thrust others into the degradation of the demi-monde, at least. He admired and respected her. He, the dreamer, saw in her the practical. She, an adventurer in amateur lawlessness saw in him something kindred at heart.

And so when a newspaper came to her in which she recognized with her keen insight Lawrence Macey's face under Graeme Mackenzie's name, and a story of embezzlement of trust company and other funds from the Omaha Central Western Trust of half a million, she had not been wholly surprised. Instead, she felt almost a sense of elation. The man was neither better nor worse than herself. And he needed help.

Her mind wandered back to a time, months before, when she had learned the bitter lesson of what it was to be a legal outcast, and had determined always to keep within the law, no matter how close to the edge of things she went.

Mackenzie continued looking at her, as if waiting for the answer to his first question.

"No," she said slowly, "I am not going to hand you over. I never had any such intention. We are in each other's power. But you cannot go about openly, even in New York, now. Some one besides myself must have seen that article."

Graeme listened blankly. It was true. His fancied security in the city was over. He had fled to New York because there, in the mass of people, he could best sink his old identity and take on a new.

She leaned her head on her hand and her elbow on the table and looked deeply into his eyes. "Let me take those securities," she said. "I will be able to do safely what you cannot do."

Graeme did not seem now to consider the fortune for which he had risked so much. The woman before him was enough.

"Will you?" he asked eagerly.

"I will do with them as I would for myself, better, because—because it is a trust," she accepted.

"More than a trust," he added, as he leaned over in turn and in spite of other diners in the restaurant took her hand.

There are times when the rest of the critical world and its frigid opinions are valueless. Constance did not withdraw her hand. Rather she watched in his eyes the subtle physical change in the man that her very touch produced, watched and felt a response in herself.

Quickly she withdrew her hand. "I must go," she said rather hurriedly, "it is getting late."

"Constance," he whispered, as he helped her on with her wraps, brushing the waiter aside that he might himself perform any duty that involved even touching her, "Constance, I am in your hands—absolutely."

It had been pleasant to dine with him. It was more pleasant now to feel her influence and power over him. She knew it, though she only half admitted it. They seemed for the moment to walk on air, as they strolled, chatting, out to a taxicab.

But as the cab drew up before her own apartment, the familiar associations of even the entrance brought her back to reality suddenly. He handed her out, and the excitement of the evening was over. She saw the thing in its true light. This was the beginning, not the end.

"Graeme," she said, as she lingered for a moment at the door. "To-morrow we must find a place where you can hide."

"I may see you, though?" he asked anxiously.

"Of course. Ring me up in the morning, Graeme. Good-night," and she was whisked up in the elevator, leaving Mackenzie with a sense of loss and loneliness.

"By the Lord," he muttered, as he swung down the street in preference to taking a cab, "what a woman that is!"

Together the next day they sought out a place where he could remain hidden. Mackenzie would have been near her, but Constance knew better. She chose a bachelor apartment where the tenants never arose before noon and where night was turned into day. Men would not ask questions. In an apartment like her own there was nothing but gossip.

In the daytime he stayed at home. Only at night did he go forth and then under her direction in the most unfrequented ways.

Every day Constance went to Wall Street, where she had established confidential relations with a number of brokers. Together they planned the campaigns; she executed them with consummate skill and adroitness.

Constance was amazed. Here was a man who for years had been able to earn only eighty-five dollars a month and had not seemed to show any ability. Yet he was able to speculate in Wall Street with such dash that he seemed to be in a fair way, through her, to accumulate a fortune.

One night as they were hurrying back to Graeme's after a walk, they had to pass a crowd on Broadway. Constance saw a familiar face hurrying by. It gave her a start. It was Drummond, the detective. He was not, apparently, looking for her. But then that was his method. He might have been looking. At any rate it reminded her unpleasantly of the fact that there were detectives in the world.

"What's the matter?" asked Graeme, noticing the change in her.

"I just saw a man I know."

The old jealousy flushed his face. Constance laughed in spite of her fears. Indeed, there was something that pleased her in his jealousy.

"He was the detective who has been hounding me ever since that time I told you about."

"Oh," he subsided. But if Drummond had been there, Mackenzie could have been counted on to risk all to protect her.

"We must be more careful," she shuddered.

Constance was startled one evening just as she was going out to meet Graeme and report on the progress of the day at hearing a knock at her door.

She opened it.

"I suppose you think I am your Nemesis," introduced Drummond, as he stepped in, veiling the keenness of his search by an attempt to be familiar.

She had more than half expected it. She said nothing, but her coldness was plainly one of interrogation.

"A case has been placed in my hands by some western clients of ours," he said by way of swaggering explanation, "of an embezzler who is hiding in New York. It required no great reasoning power to decide that the man's trail would sooner or later cross Wall Street. I believe it has done so—not directly, but indirectly. The trail, I think, has brought me back to the proverbial point of 'CHERCHEZ LA FEMME.' I am delighted," he dwelt on the word to see what would be its effect, "to see in the Graeme Mackenzie case my old friend, Constance Dunlap."

"So," she replied quietly, "you suspect ME, now. I suppose I am Graeme Mackenzie."

"No," Drummond replied dubiously, "you are not Graeme Mackenzie, of course. You may be Mrs. Graeme Mackenzie, for all I know. But I believe you are the receiver of Graeme Mackenzie's stolen goods!"

"You do?" she answered calmly. "That remains for you to prove. Why do you believe it? Is it because you are ready to believe anything of me!"

"I have noticed that you are more active downtown than—"

"Oh, it is because I speculate. Have I no means of my own?" she asked pointedly.

"Where is he? Not here, I know. But where?" insinuated Drummond with a knowing look.

"Am I my brother's keeper?" she laughed merrily. "Come, now. Who is this wonderful Graeme Mackenzie? First show me that I know him. You know the rule in a murder case—you must prove the CORPUS DELICTI."

Drummond was furious. She was so baffling. That was his weak point and she had picked it out infallibly. Whatever his suspicions, he had been able to prove nothing, though he suspected much in the buying and selling of Constance.

A week of bitterness, of a constant struggle against the wiles of one of the most subtle sleuths followed, avoiding hidden traps that beset her on every side. Was this to be the end of it all? Was Drummond's heroic effort to entangle her to succeed at last?

She felt that a watch of the most extraordinary kind was set on her, an invisible net woven about her. Eyes that never slept were upon her; there was no minute in her regular haunts that she was not guarded. She knew it, though she could not see it.

It was a war of subtle wits. Yet from the beginning Constance was the winner of every move. She was on her mettle. They would not, she determined, find Graeme through her.

Days passed and the detectives still had no sign of the missing man. It seemed hopeless, but, like all good detectives, Drummond knew from experience that a clue might come to the surface when it was least expected. Constance on her part never relaxed.

One day it was a young woman dressed in most inconspicuous style who followed close behind her, a woman shadow, one of the shrewdest in the city.

A tenant moved into the apartment across the hall from Constance, and another hired an apartment in the next house, across the court. There was constant espionage. She seemed to "sense" it. The newcomer was very neighborly, explaining that her husband was a traveling salesman, and that she was alone for weeks at a time.