She knew, too, that there must be some psychological reason for his not looking at them, as he otherwise must have done, if only by chance. It was the method followed by the expert modern trailer. She knew that if one looks at a person intently while in a public place, for instance, it will not be long before the gaze will be returned. Try as she would, she could not catch Drummond’s eye, however.
Halsey, now that the strain of the game was off, was rattling along about his losses in an undertone to her.
“But what of it?” he concluded. “Any day luck may change. As for myself, I go always on the assumption that I am the one exception—unlucky both at cards and love. If the event proves I am right, I am not disappointed. If I am wrong, then I am happy.”
There was something in the tone of the whimsicality that alarmed her. It covered a desperation which she felt instinctively.
Why was he talking thus to her, almost a stranger? Surely it could not have been for that that Bella LeMar had brought them together.
Gradually it came to her. The man had really, honestly been struck by her from the moment of their introduction. Instead of allowing others, to say nothing of himself, to lead her on in the path he and Mrs. Noble and the others had entered, he was taking the bit in his teeth, like a high-strung race horse, and was running away, now that Bella LeMar for the moment did not hold the reins. He was warning her openly against the game!
Somehow the action appealed to Constance. It was genuine, disinterested. Secretly, it was flattering. Still, she said nothing about Bella, nor about Mrs. Noble. Halsey seemed to appreciate the fact. His face showed plainly as if he had said it that here, at least, was one woman who was not always talking about others.
There had been a rapid-fire suddenness about his confidences which had fascinated her.
“Are you in business?” she ventured.
“Oh, yes,” he laughed grimly. “I’m in business—treasurer of the Exporting & Manufacturing Company.”
“But,” she pursued, looking him frankly in the face, “I should think you’d be afraid to—er—become involved—”
“I know I am being watched,” he broke in impatiently. “You see, I’m bonded, and the bonding companies keep a pretty sharp lookout on your habits. Oh, the crash will come some day. Until it does—let us make the most of it—while it lasts.”
He said the words bitterly. Constance was confirmed in her original suspicion of him now. Halsey was getting deeper and deeper into the moral quagmire. She had seen his interest in Mrs. Noble. Had Bella LeMar hoped that she, too, would play will-o’-the-wisp in leading him on?
Over the still half-eaten supper she watched Halsey keenly. A thousand questions about himself, about Mrs. Noble, rushed through her mind. 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. Noble 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 unobtrusive 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 assumed.
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 passing 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 space, and dre
w 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 Noble 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. Noble 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 God! 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 pawning 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. Noble 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. Noble 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. Noble 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. Noble’s husband, the family of Halsey. She must help.
“Mrs. Noble,” 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. Meanwhile I will have thought out a plan.”
It was late in the afternoon when Constance saw Halsey again, this time in his office, where he had been waiting impatiently for some word from her. The relief at seeing her showed only too plainly on his face.
“This inaction is killing me,” he remarked huskily. “Has anything happened to-day!”
She said nothing about the visit of Mrs. Noble. Perhaps it was better that each should not know yet that the other was worried.
“Yes,” she replied, “much has happened. I cannot tell you now. But to-night let us all go again as though nothing had occurred.”
“They have twenty-five thousand dollars in stock certificates already which I have given them,” he remarked anxiously.
“Some way—any way, you must get them back for a time. Let me see some of the blanks.”
Halsey shut the door. From a secret drawer of his desk he drew a package of beautifully engraved paper.
Constance looked at it a moment. Then with a fountain pen, across the front of each, she made a few marks. Halsey looked on eagerly. As she handed them back to him, not a sign showed on any part of them.
“You must tell them that there is something wrong with the others, that you will give them other certificates of your own about which there is no question. Tell them anything to get them back. Here—take this other fountain pen, sign the new certificates with that, in their presence so that they will suspect nothing. To-night I shall expect you to play up to the limit, to play into Mrs. Noble’s hand and assume her losses, too. I shall meet you there at nine.”’
Constance had laid her plans quickly. That night she waited in her own apartment until she heard Halsey enter across the hall. She had determined to give him plenty of time to obtain the old forged certificates and substitute for them the new forgeries.
Perhaps half an hour later she heard Mrs. Noble enter. As Constance followed her in, the effusive greeting of Bella LeMar showed that as yet she suspected nothing. A quick glance at Halsey brought an answering nod and an unconscious motion toward his pocket where he had stuffed the old certificates carelessly.
A moment later they had plunged into the game. The play that night was spirited. Soon the limit was the roof.
From the start things seemed to run against Halsey and Mrs. Noble even worse than before. At the same time fortune seemed to favor Constance. Again and again she won, until even Watson seemed to think there was something uncanny about it.
“Beginner’s luck,” remarked Bella with a forced laugh.
Still Constance won, not much, but steadily, though not enough to offset the larger winnings of Watson.
Fast and furious became the play and as steadily did it go against Halsey. Mrs. Noble retired, scarcely repressing the tears. Constance dropped out. Only Halsey and Watson remained, fighting as if it were a duel to the death.
“Please stop, Halsey,” pleaded Mrs. Noble. “What is the use of tempting fortune?”
An insane half light seemed to glow in his eyes as, with a quick glance at Constance and a covert nod of approval from her, he forced a smile and playfully laid his finger on Mrs. Noble’s lips.
“Double or quits, Watson,” he cried. “Return the new certificates or take others for twice the amount. Are you game?”
“I’m on,” agreed Watson coolly.
Halsey laid down his hand in triumph. There were four kings.
“I win,” ground out Watson viciously, as he tossed down four aces.
Constance was on her feet in a moment.
“You are a lot of cheats and swindlers,” she cried, seizing the cards before any one could interfere.
Deftly she laid out the four aces beside the four deuces, the four kings beside the four queens. It was done so quickly that even Halsey, in his amazement, could find nothing to say. Mrs. Noble paled and was speechless. As for Bella and Watson, nothing could hav
e aroused them more than the open charge that they were using false devices.
Yet never for a moment did Watson lose his iron cynicism.
“Prove it,” he demanded. “As for Mr. Halsey, he may pay or I’ll show the stock I already hold to the proper people.”
Constance was facing Watson, as calm as he.
“Show it,” she said quietly.
There was a knock at the door.
“Don’t let any one in,” ordered Bella of the maid, who had already opened the door.
A man’s foot had been inserted into the opening. “What’s the matter, Chloe?”
“Good Lawd, Mis’ Bella—we done been raided!” burst out the maid as the door flew wholly open.
Halsey staggered back. “A detective!” he exclaimed.
“Oh, what shall I do!” wailed Mrs. Noble. “My husband will never forgive me if this becomes known.”
Bella was as calm as a good player with a royal straight flush.
“I’ve caught you at last,” fairly hissed Drummond. “And you, too, Mrs. Dunlap. Watson, I overheard something about some stock. Let me see it. I think it will interest International Surety as well as Exporters and Manufacturers.”
Through the still open door Constance had darted across the hall to her apartment.
“Not so fast,” cried Drummond. “You can’t escape. The front door is guarded. You can’t get out.”
She was gone, but a moment later emerged from the darkness of her rooms, carrying the oak box.
As she set it down on the card table, no one said a word. Deliberately she opened the box, disclosing two spools of wire inside. To the machine she attached several head pieces such as a telephone operator wears. She turned a switch and the wire began to unroll from one spool and wind up on the other again.
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 194