Constance Dunlap Part 43

"Wh-what is it?" gasped Drummond as he saw Adele's. .h.i.therto 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,"

a.s.serted 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+ft 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.