Constance Dunlap Part 15

Constance was looking fixedly at Drummond. He s.h.i.+fted uneasily.

"How much is he in for now?" pursued the voice.

Halsey gasped. It was Drummond's own voice.

"Two hundred and fifty shares," replied Bella's voice.

"Good. Keep at him. Don't lose him. To-night I'll drop in."

"And your client will make good?" she anxiously.

"Absolutely. We will pay five thousand dollars for the evidence that will convict him."

Constance's little audience was stunned. But she did not let the telegraphone pause. Skipping some unimportant calls, she began again.

This was a call from Bella to Watson.

"Ross, that fellow Drummond called up to-day."

"Yes?"

"He is going to pull it off to-night. His client will make good--five thousand if they catch Halsey with the goods. How about it?"

"Pretty soft--eh, Bella?" came back from Watson.

"My G.o.d! it's a plant!" exclaimed Halsey, staggering and dropping heavily into a chair. "I'm ruined. There is no way out!"

"Wait," interrupted Constance. "Here's another call. It may serve to explain why luck was with me to-night. I came prepared."

"Yes, Mrs. LeMar," came another strange voice from the machine. "We'd do anything for Mr. Watson. What is it--a pack of strippers?"

"Yes. The aces stripped from the ends, the kings from the sides."

The group looked eagerly at Constance.

"From the maker of fake gambling apparatus, I find," she explained, shutting off the machine. "They were ordering from him cards cut or trimmed so that certain ones could be readily drawn from the deck, or 'stripped.' Small wedge-shaped strips are trimmed off the edges of all the other cards, leaving the aces, say, projecting just the most minute fraction of an inch beyond the others. Everything is done carefully.

The rounded edges at the corners are recut to look right. When the cards are shuffled the aces protrude a trifle over the edges of the other cards. It is a simple matter for the dealer to draw or strip out as many aces as he wants, stack them on the bottom of the pack as he shuffles the cards, and draw them from the bottom whenever he wants them. Strippers are one of the newest things in swindling. Marked cards are out of date. But some decks have the aces stripped from the ends, the kings from the sides. With this pack, as you can see, a sucker can be dealt out the kings, while the house player gets the aces."

Drummond brazened it out. With a muttered oath he turned to Watson again. "What rot is this? The stock, Watson," he repeated. "Where is that stock I heard them talking about?"

Mrs. n.o.ble, forgetting all now but Halsey, paled. Bella LeMar was fumbling at her gold mesh bag. She gave a sudden, suppressed little scream.

"Look!" she cried. "They are blank--those stock certificates he gave me."

Drummond seized them roughly from her hands.

Where the signatures should have been there was nothing at all!

Across the face of the stock were the words in deep black, "SAMPLE CERTIFICATE," written in an angular, feminine hand.

What did it mean? Halsey was as amazed as any of them. Mechanically he turned to Constance.

"I didn't say anything last night," she remarked incisively. "But I had my suspicions from the first. I always look out for the purry kind of 'my dear' woman. They have claws. Last night I watched. To-day I learned--learned that you, Mr. Drummond, were nothing but a blackmailer, using these gamblers to do your dirty work. Haddon, they would have thrown you out like a squeezed lemon as soon as the money you had was gone. They would have taken the bribe that Drummond offered for the stock--and they would have left you nothing but jail. I learned all that over the telegraphone. I learned their methods and, knowing them, even I could not be prevented from winning to-night."

Halsey moved as if to speak. "But," he asked eagerly, "the stock certificates--what of them!"

"The stock?" she answered with deliberation. "Did you ever hear that writing in quinoline will appear blue, but will soon fade away, while other writing in silver nitrate and ammonia, invisible at first, after a few hours appears black? You wrote on those certificates in sympathetic ink that fades, I in ink that comes up soon."

Mrs. n.o.ble was crying softly to herself. They still had her notes for thousands.

Halsey saw her. Instantly he forgot his own case. What was to be done about her? He telegraphed a mute appeal to Constance, forgetful of himself now. Constance was fingering the switch of the telegraphone.

"Drummond," remarked Constance significantly, as though other secrets might still be contained in the marvelous little mechanical detective, "Drummond, don't you think, for the sake of your own reputation as a detective, it might be as well to keep this thing quiet?"

For a moment the detective gripped his wrath and seemed to consider the damaging record of his conversation with Bella LeMar.

"Perhaps," he agreed sullenly.

Constance reached into her chatelaine. From it she drew an ordinary magnet, and slowly pulled off the armature.

"If I run this over the wires," she hinted, holding it near the spools, "the record will be wiped out." She paused impressively. "Let me have those I O U's of Mrs. n.o.ble's. By the way, you might as well give me that blank stock, too. There is no use in that, now."

As she laid the papers in a pile on the table before her she added the old forged certificates from Halsey's pocket. There it lay, the incriminating, ruining evidence.

Deliberately she pa.s.sed the magnet over the thin steel wire, wiping out what it had recorded, as if the recording angel were blotting out from the book of life.

"Try it, Drummond," she cried, dropping on her knees before the open fireplace. "You will find the wire a blank."

There was a hot, sudden blaze as the pile of papers from the table flared up.

"There," she exclaimed. "These gambling debts were not even debts of honor. If you will call a cab, Haddon, I have reserved a table at Jade's for you and Mrs. n.o.ble. It is a farewell. Drummond will not occupy his place in the corner to-night. But--after it--you are to forget--both of you--forever. You understand?"

CHAPTER V

THE EAVESDROPPERS

"I suppose you have heard something about the troubles of the Motor Trust? The other directors, you know, are trying to force me out."

Rodman Brainard, president of the big Motor Corporation, searched the magnetic depths of the big brown eyes of the woman beside his desk.

Talking to Constance Dunlap was not like talking to other women he had known, either socially or in business.

"A friend of yours, and of mine," he added frankly, "has told me enough about you to convince me that you are more than an amateur at getting people out of tight places. I asked you to call because I think you can help me."

There was a directness about Brainard which Constance liked.