Constance Dunlap Part 31

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Could you deliver a note for me at a tea room in New York to-morrow?"

interrupted Constance, striking while the iron seemed hot.

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

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

Constance opened her handbag. Mrs. Palmer suppressed a little scream.

She had expected that ivory-handled thing to appear. Instead there was a treasury note of a size that caused the white part of the boy's eyes to expand beyond all the laws of optics.

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

"Forty-two-down the hall, around the turn, on the other side,"

whispered the boy. "And for G.o.d's sake, ma'am, don't tell n.o.body I told you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hissed the words out, then added, "They prefer to think that you are dead. Why--d.a.m.n it!--they turn to that belief for COMFORT!"

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

It yielded with a crash.

Inside the room was dark.

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

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

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

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

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

The words seemed to stick in his throat.

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

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

She reached over and switched on the lights.

The man on the floor was Drummond himself.

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

Drummond looked up sullenly, still blinking and choking.

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

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

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

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

Constance had jammed the receiver back on the hook hastily.

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

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

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

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

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

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