Constance Dunlap Part 13

Should she be perfectly frank?

"Are you--are you using the company's money!" she asked at length pointedly.

He had not expected the question, and his evident intention was to deny it. But he met her eye. He tried to escape it, but could not. What was there about this little woman that had compelled his attention and interest from the moment he had been introduced?

Quickly he tried to reason it out in his heart. It was not that she was physically attractive to him. Mrs. n.o.ble was that. It was not that fascination which Bella aroused, the adventuress, the siren, the gorgon. In Constance there was something different. She was a woman of the world, a man's woman. Then, too, she was so brutally frank in inviting his confidences.

Over and over he turned the answer he had intended to make. He caught her eye again and knew that it was of no use.

"Yes," he muttered, as a cloud spread over his face at not being able, as usual, to let the gay life put the truth out of his mind. "Yes, I have been using--their funds."

As if a switch had been turned, the light broke on Constance. She saw herself face to face with one of the dark shadows in the great city of high lights.

"How?" she asked simply, leaning forward over the table.

There was no resisting her. Quickly he told her all.

"At first with what little money of my own I had I played. Then I began to sign I O U's and notes. Now I have been taking blank stock certificates, some of those held as treasury stock in the company's safe. They have never been issued, so that by writing in the signatures of myself and the other officers necessary, I have been able to use it to pay off my losses in gambling."

As he unfolded to her the plan which he had adopted, Constance listened in amazement.

"And you know that you are watched," she repeated, changing the subject, and sensing rather than seeing that Drummond was watching them then.

"Yes," he continued freely. "The International Surety, in which I'm bonded, has a sort of secret service of its own, I understand. It is the eye that is never closed, but is screened from the man under bond.

When you go into the Broadway night life too often, for instance," he pursued, waving his hand about at the gay tables, "run around in fast motors with faster company--well, they know it. Who is watching, I do not know. But with me it will be as it has been when others came to the end. Some day they will come to me, and they are going to say, 'We don't like your conduct. Where do you get this money?' They will know, then, too. But before that time comes I want to win, to be in a position to tell them to go--"

Halsey clenched his fist. It was evident that he did not intend to quit, no matter what the odds against him.

Constance thought of the silent figure of Drummond at the other table--watching, watching. She felt sure that it was to him that the Surety Company had turned over the work of shadowing Halsey. Day after day, probably, the un.o.btrusive detective had been trailing Halsey from the moment he left his apartment until the time when he returned, if he did return. There was nothing of his goings and comings that was not already an open book to them. Of what use was it, then, for Halsey to fight!

It was a situation such as she delighted in. She had made up her mind.

She would help Haddon Halsey to beat the law.

Already it seemed as if he knew that their positions had been reversed.

He had started to warn her; she now was saving him.

Yet even then he showed the better side of his nature.

"There is some one else, Mrs. Dunlap," he remarked earnestly, "who needs your help even more than I do."

It had cost him something to say that. He had not been able to accept her help, even under false pretenses. Eagerly he watched to see whether jealousy of the other woman played any part with her.

"I understand," she said with a hasty glance at her watch and a covert look at Drummond. "Let us go. If we are to win we must keep our heads clear. I shall see you to-morrow."

For hours during the rest of the night Constance tossed fitfully in half sleep, thinking over the problem she had a.s.sumed.

How was she to get at the inside truth of what was going on across the hall? That was the first question.

In her perplexity, she rose and looked out of the window at the now lightening gray of the courtyard. There dangled the LeMar telephone wire, only a few feet from her own window.

Suddenly an idea flashed over her. In her leisure she had read much and thought more. She recalled having heard of a machine that just fitted her needs.

As soon as she was likely to find places of business open Constance started out on her search. It was early in the forenoon before she returned, successful. The machine which she had had in mind proved to be an oak box, perhaps eighteen inches long, by half the width, and a foot deep. On its face it bore a little dial. Inside there appeared a fine wire on a spool which unwound gradually by clockwork, and, after pa.s.sing through a peculiar small arrangement, was wound up on another spool. Flexible silk-covered copper wires led from the box.

Carefully Constance reached across the dizzy intervening s.p.a.ce, and drew in the slack LeMar telephone wires. With every care she cut into them as if she were making an extension, and attached the wires from the box.

Perhaps half an hour later the door buzzer sounded. Constance could scarcely restrain her surprise as Mrs. Lansing n.o.ble stepped in quickly and shut the door herself.

"I don't want her to know I'm here," she whispered, nodding across the hall.

"Won't you take off your things?" asked Constance cordially.

"No, I can't stay," returned her visitor nervously, pausing.

Constance wondered why she had come. Was she, too, trying to warn a newcomer against the place!

She said nothing, but now that the effort had been made and the little woman had gone actually so far, she felt the reaction. She sank down into an easy chair and rested her pretty head on her delicately gloved hand.

"Oh, Mrs. Dunlap," she began convulsively, "I hope you will pardon an entire stranger for breaking in on you so informally--but--but I can't--I can't help it. I must tell some one."

Accustomed as she was now to strange confidences, Constance bent over and patted the little hand of Mrs. n.o.ble comfortingly.

"You seemed to take it so coolly," went on the other woman. "For me the glamour, the excitement are worse than champagne. But you could stop, even when you were winning. Oh, my G.o.d! What am I to do? What will happen when my husband finds out what I have done!"

Tearfully, the little woman poured out the sordid story of her fascination for the game, of her losses, of the p.a.w.ning of her jewels to pay her losses and keep them secret, if only for a few days, until that mythical time when luck would change.

"When I started," she blurted out with a bitter little laugh, "I thought I'd make a little pin money. That's how I began--with that and the excitement. And now this is the end."

She had risen and was pacing the floor wildly.

"Mrs. Dunlap," she cried, pausing before Constance, "to-day I am nothing more nor less than a 'capper,' as they call it, for a gambling resort."

She was almost hysterical. The contrast with the gay, respectable, prosperous-looking woman at Bella's was appalling. Constance realized to the full what were the tragedies that were enacted elsewhere.

As she looked at the despairing woman, she could reconstruct the terrible situation. Cultivated, well-bred, fashionably gowned, a woman like Mrs. n.o.ble served admirably the purpose of luring men on. If there had been only women or only men involved, it perhaps would not have been so bad. But there were both. Constance saw that men were wanted, men who could afford to lose not hundreds, but thousands, men who are always the heaviest players. And so Mrs. n.o.ble and other unfortunate women no doubt were sent out on Broadway to the cafes and restaurants, sent out even among those of their own social circle, always to lure men on, to involve themselves more and more in the web into which they had flown. Bella had hoped even to use Constance!

Mrs. n.o.ble had paused again. There was evident sincerity in her as she looked deeply into the eyes of Constance.

Nothing but desperation could have wrung her inmost secrets from her to another woman.

"I saw them trying to throw you together with Haddon Halsey," she said, almost tragically. "It was I who introduced Haddon to them. I was to get a percentage of his losses to pay off my own--but"--her feelings seemed to overcome her and wildly, desperately, she added--"but I can't--I can't. I--I must rescue him--I must."

It was a strange situation. Constance reasoned it out quickly. What a wreck of life these two were making! Not only they were involved, but others who as yet knew nothing, Mrs. n.o.ble's husband, the family of Halsey. She must help.

"Mrs. n.o.ble," said Constance calmly, "can you trust me?"

She shot a quick glance at Constance. "Yes," she murmured.

"Then to-night visit Mrs. LeMar as though nothing had happened.