"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.
"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."