Constance was thinking rapidly.
“It is now after four o’clock,” she said finally, looking at her wrist watch. “You say it was not half an hour ago that Drummond called on you. He must be downtown about now. Your husband will hardly have a chance more than to glance over the papers this afternoon.”
Suddenly an idea seemed to occur to her. “What do you suppose he will do with them?” she asked.
Mrs. Douglas looked up through her tears, calmer. “He is very methodical,” she answered slowly. “If I know him rightly, I think he will probably go out to Glenclair with them to-night, to look them over.”
“Where will he keep them?” broke in Constance suddenly.
“He has a little safe in the library out there where he keeps all such personal papers. I shouldn’t be surprised if he looked them over and locked them up there until he intends to use them at least until morning.”
“I have a plan,” exclaimed Constance excitedly. “Are you game?”
Anita Douglas looked at her friend squarely. In her face Constance read the desperation of a woman battling for life and honor.
“Yes,” replied Anita in a low, tense tone, “for anything.”
“Then meet me after dinner in the Terminal. We’ll go out to Glenclair.”
The two looked deeply into each other’s eyes. Nothing was said, but what each read was a sufficient answer to a host of unspoken questions.
A moment after Mrs. Douglas had gone, Constance opened a cabinet. From the false back of a drawer she took two little vials of powder and a small bottle with a sponge.
Then she added a long steel bar, with a peculiar turn at the end, to her paraphernalia for the trip.
Nothing further occurred until they met at the Terminal, or, in fact, on the journey out. On most of the ride Mrs. Douglas kept her face averted, looking out of the window into the blackness of the night. Perhaps she was thinking of other journeys out to Glenclair, perhaps she was afraid of meeting the curious gaze of any late sojourners who might suffer from acute suburban curiosity.
Quietly the two women alighted and quickly made their way from the station up the main street, then diverged to a darker and less frequented avenue.
“There’s the house,” pointed out Mrs. Douglas, halting Constance, with a little bitter exclamation.
Evidently she had reasoned well. He had gone out there early and there was a light in the library.
“He isn’t much of a reader,” whispered Mrs. Douglas. “Oh—it’s clear to me that he has the stuff all right. He’s devouring it, gloating over it.”
The sound of footsteps approaching down the paved walk came to them. Loitering on the streets of a suburban town always occasions suspicion, and instinctively Constance drew Anita with her into the shadow of a hedge that set off the house from that next to it.
There was no fence cutting it off from the sidewalk, but at the corner of the plot a large bush stood. In this bower they were perfectly hidden in the shadow.
Hour after hour they waited, watching that light in the library, speculating what it was he was reading, while Anita, half afraid to talk, wondered what it was that Constance had in mind.
Finally the light in the library winked out and the house was in darkness.
Midnight passed, and with it the last belated suburbanite.
At last, when the moon had disappeared under some clouds, Constance pulled Anita gently along up the lawn.
There was no sign of life about the house, yet Constance observed all the caution she would have if it had been well guarded.
Quickly they advanced over the open space to the cottage, approaching in the shadow as much as possible.
Tiptoeing over the porch, Constance tried a window, the window through which had shown the tantalizing light. It was fastened.
Without hesitation she pulled out the long steel bar with the twisted head, and began to insert the sharp end between the sashes.
“Aren’t—you—afraid?” chattered her companion.
“No,” she whispered, not looking up from her work. “You know, most persons don’t know enough about jimmies. Against them an ordinary door lock or window catch is no protection at all. Why, with this jimmy, even a woman can exert a pressure of a ton or so. Not one catch in a thousand can stand it—certainly not this one.”
Constance continued to work, muffling the lever as much as possible in a piece of felt.
At last a quick wrench and the catch yielded.
The only thing wrong about it was the noise. There had been no wind, no passing trolley, nothing to conceal it.
They shrank back into the shadow, and waited breathless. Had it been heard? Would a window open presently and an alarm be sounded?
There was not a sound, save the rustle of the leaves in the night wind.
A few minutes later Constance carefully raised the lower sash and they stepped softly into the house—once the house over which Anita Douglas had been mistress.
Cautiously Constance pressed the button on a little pocket storage-battery lamp and flashed it slowly about the room.
All was quiet in the library. The library table was disordered, as if some one in great stress of mind had been working at it. Anita wondered what had been the grim thoughts of the man as he pondered on the mass of stuff, the tissue of falsehoods that the blackmailing detective had handed to him at such great cost.
At last the cone of light rested on a little safe at the opposite end.
“There it is,” whispered Anita, pointing, half afraid even of the soft tones of her own voice.
Constance had pulled down all the shades quietly, and drew the curtains tightly between the room and the foyer.
On the top of the safe she was pouring some of the powder in a neat pile from one of the vials.
“What is that?” asked Anita, bending close to her ear.
“Some powdered metallic aluminum mixed with oxide of iron,” whispered Constance in return. “I read of this thing in a scientific paper the other day, and I determined to get some of it. But I didn’t think I’d ever really have occasion to use it.”
She added some powder from the other vial.
“And that?”
“Magnesium powder.”
Constance had lighted a match.
“Stand back, Anita,” she whispered, “back, Anita,” she whispered, “back in the farthest corner of the room, and keep quiet. Shut your eyes—turn your face away!”
There was a flash, blinding, then a steady, brilliant burst of noiseless, penetrating, burning flame.
Anita had expected an explosion. Instead she found that her eyes hurt. She had not closed them tightly quick enough.
Still, Constance’s warning had been sufficient to prevent any damage to the sight, and she slowly recovered.
Actually, the burning powder seemed to be sinking into the very steel of the safe itself, as if it had been mere ice!
Was it an optical illusion, a freak of her sight?
“Wh-what is it!” she whispered in awe, drawing closer to her friend.
“Thermit,” whispered Constance in reply, as the two watched the glowing mass fascinated, “an invention of a German chemist named Goldschmidt. It will burn a hole right through steel—at a terrific temperature, three thousand or more degrees.”
The almost burned out mass seemed to fall into the safe as if it had been a wooden box instead of chrome steel.
They waited a moment, still blinking, to regain control over their eyes in spite of the care they had used to shield them.
Then they tiptoed across the floor.
In the top of the safe yawned a hole large enough to stick one’s hand and arm through!
Constance reached into the safe and drew out something on which she flashed t
he pocket light.
There was bundle after bundle of checks, the personal checks of a methodical business man, carefully preserved.
Hastily she looked them over. All seemed to be perfectly straight—payments to tradesmen, to real estate agents, payments of all sorts, all carefully labeled.
“Oh, he’d never let anything like that lie around,” remarked Anita, as she began to comprehend what Constance was after.
Constance was scrutinizing some of the checks more carefully than others. Suddenly she held one up to the light. Apparently it was in payment of legal services.
Quickly she took the little bottle of brownish fluid which she had brought with the sponge.
She dipped the sponge in it lightly and brushed it over the check. Then she leaned forward breathlessly.
“Eradicating ink is simply a bleaching process,” she remarked, “which leaves the iron of the ink as a white oxide instead of a black oxide. The proper reagent will restore the original color—partially and at least for a time. Ah—yes—it is as I thought. There have been erasures in these checks. Other names have been written in on some of them in place of those that were originally there. The sulphide of ammonia ought to bring out anything that is hidden here.”
There, faintly, was the original writing. It read, “Pay to the order of—Helen Brett—”
Mrs. Douglas with difficulty restrained an exclamation of anger and hatred at the mere sight of the name of the other woman.
“He was careful,” remarked Constance. “Reckless at first in giving checks-he has tried to cover it up. He didn’t want to destroy them, yet he couldn’t have such evidence about. So he must have altered the name on the canceled vouchers after they were returned to him paid by the bank. Very clever—very.”
Constance reached into the safe again. There were some personal and some business letters, some old check books, some silver and gold trinkets and table silver.
She gave a low exclamation. She had found a packet of letters and a sheaf of typewritten flimsy tissue paper pages.
Mrs. Douglas uttered a little cry, quickly suppressed. The letters were those in her own handwriting addressed to Lynn Munro.
“Here are Drummond’s reports, too,” Constance added.
She looked them hastily over. The damning facts had been massed in a way that must inevitably have prejudiced any case for the defense that Mrs. Douglas might set up.
“There—there’s all the evidence against you,” whispered Constance hoarsely, handing it over to Anita. “It’s all yours again. Destroy it.”
In her eagerness, with trembling hands, Anita had torn up the whole mass of incriminating papers and had cast them into the fireplace. She was just about to strike a match.
Suddenly there came a deep voice from the stairs.
“Well—what’s all this?”
Anita dropped the match from her nerveless hands. Constance felt an arm grasp her tightly. For a moment a chill ran over her at being caught in the nefarious work of breaking and entering a dwelling-house at night. The hand was Anita’s, but the voice was that of a man.
Lights flashed all over the house at once, from a sort of electric light system that could be instantly lighted and would act as a “burglar expeller.”
It was Douglas himself. He was staring angrily at his wife and the stranger with her.
“Well!” he demanded with cold sarcasm. “Why this—this burglary?”
Before he could quite take in the situation, with a quick motion, Constance struck a match and touched it to the papers in the fireplace.
As they blazed up he caught sight of what they were and almost leaped across the floor.
Constance laid her hand on his arm. “One moment, Mr. Douglas,” she said quietly. “Look at that!”
“Who—who the devil are you?” he gasped. “What’s all this?”
“I think,” remarked Constance slowly and quietly, “that your wife is now in a position to prove that you—well, don’t come into court with clean hands, if you attempt to do so. Besides, you know, the courts rather frown on detectives that practice collusion and conspiracy and frame up evidence, to say nothing of trying to blackmail the victims. I thought perhaps you’d prefer not to say anything about this—er—visit to-night—after you saw that.”
Constance had quietly laid one of the erased checks on the library table. Again she dipped the sponge into the brownish liquid. Again the magic touch revealed the telltale name. With her finger she was pointing to the faintly legible “Helen Brett” on the check as the sulphide had brought it out.
Douglas stared-dazed.
He rubbed his eyes and stared again as the last of the flickering fire died away. In an instant he realized that it was not a dream, that it was all a fact.
He looked from one to the other of the women.
He was checkmated.
Constance ostentatiously folded up the erased vouchers.
“I—I shall not—make any—contest,” Douglas managed to gasp huskily.
CHAPTER XI
THE DOPE FIENDS
“I have a terrible headache,” remarked Constance Dunlap to her friend, Adele Gordon, the petite cabaret singer and dancer of the Mayfair, who had dropped in to see her one afternoon.
“You poor, dear creature,” soothed Adele. “Why don’t you go to see Dr. Price? He has cured me. He’s splendid—splendid.”
Constance hesitated. Dr. Moreland Price was a well-known physician. All day and even at night, she knew, automobiles and cabs rolled up to his door and their occupants were, for the most part, stylishly gowned women.
“Oh, come on,” urged Adele. “He doesn’t charge as highly as people seem to think. Besides, I’ll go with you and introduce you, and he’ll charge only as he does the rest of us in the profession.”
Constance’s head throbbed frantically. She felt that she must have some relief soon. “All right,” she agreed, “I’ll go with you, and thank you, Adele.”
Dr. Price’s office was on the first floor of the fashionable Recherche Apartments, and, as she expected, Constance noted a line of motor cars before it.
They entered and were admitted to a richly furnished room, in mahogany and expensive Persian rugs, where a number of patients waited. One after another an attendant summoned them noiselessly and politely to see the doctor, until at last the turn of Constance and Adele came.
Dr. Price was a youngish, middle-aged man, tall, with a sallow countenance and a self-confident, polished manner which went a long way in reassuring the patients, most of whom were ladies.
As they entered the doctor’s sanctum behind the folding doors, Adele seemed to be on very good terms indeed with him.
They seated themselves in the deep leather chairs beside Dr. Price’s desk, and he inclined his head to listen to the story of their ailments.
“Doctor,” began Constance’s introducer, “I’ve brought my friend, Mrs. Dunlap, who is suffering from one of those awful headaches. I thought perhaps you could give her some of that medicine that has done me so much good.”
The doctor bowed without saying anything and shifted his eyes from Adele to Constance. “Just what seems to be the difficulty?” he inquired.
Constance told him how she felt, of her general lassitude and the big, throbbing veins in her temples.
“Ah—a woman’s headaches!” he smiled, adding, “Nothing serious, however, in this case, as far as I can see. We can fix this one all right, I think.”
He wrote out a prescription quickly and handed it to Constance.
“Of course,” he added, as he pocketed his fee, “it makes no difference to me personally, but I would advise that you have it filled at Muller’s—Miss Gordon knows the place. I think Muller’s drugs are perhaps fresher than those of most druggists, and that makes a great dea
l of difference.”
He had risen and was politely and suavely bowing them out of another door, at the same time by pressing a button signifying to his attendant to admit the next patient.
Constance had preceded Adele, and, as she passed through the other door, she overheard the doctor whisper to her friend, “I’m going to stop for you to-night to take a ride. I have something important I want to say to you.”
She did not catch Adele’s answer, but as they left the marble and onyx, brass-grilled entrance, Adele remarked: “That’s his car—over there. Oh, but he is a reckless driver—dashes along pell-mell—but always seems to have his eye out for everything—never seems to be arrested, never in an accident.”
Constance turned in the direction of the car and was startled to see the familiar face of Drummond across the street dodging behind it. What was it now, she wondered—a divorce case, a scandal—what?
The medicine was made up into little powders, to be taken until they gave relief, and Constance folded the paper of one, poured it on the back of her tongue and swallowed a glass of water afterward.
Her head continued to throb, but she felt a sense of well-being that she had not before. Adele urged her to take another, and Constance did so.
The second powder increased the effect of the first marvelously. But Constance noticed that she now began to feel queer. She was not used to taking medicine. For a moment she felt that she was above, beyond the reach of ordinary rules and laws. She could have done any sort of physical task, she felt, no matter how difficult. She was amazed at herself, as compared to what she had been only a few moments before.
“Another one?” asked Adele finally.
Constance was by this time genuinely alarmed at the sudden unwonted effect on herself. “N-no,” she replied dubiously, “I don’t think I want to take any more, just yet.”
“Not another?” asked Adele in surprise. “I wish they would affect me that way. Sometimes I have to take the whole dozen before they have any effect.”
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 205