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Page 14
"There," he exclaimed with a new light in the defiant, desperate
smile that she had observed many times before, "there. The curtain
rises--instead of falls."
Neither spoke for a few moments. At last he added, "What shall I do
next?"
"Do?" she repeated. She felt now the weight of responsibility for
interfering with his desperate plans, but it did not oppress her. On
the contrary, it was a pleasant burden. "According to your own
story," she went on, "they know nothing yet, as far as you can see.
You would have forestalled them by taking this little vacation
during which you could disappear while they would discover the
shortage. Do? Go back."
"And when they discover it?" he asked evidently prepared for the
answer she had given and eager to know what she would propose next.
Constance had been thinking rapidly.
"Listen," she cried, throwing aside restraint now. "No one in New
York outside my former little circle knows me. I can live there in
another circle unobserved. For weeks I have been amusing myself by
the study of shorthand. I have picked up enough to be able to carry
the thing off. Discharge your secretary. Put an advertisement in the
newspapers. I will answer it. Then I will be able to help you. I
cannot say at a distance what you should do next. There, perhaps, I
can tell you."
What was it that had impelled her to say it? She could not have
told. Murray looked at her. Her very presence seemed to infuse new
determination into him.
It was strange about this woman, what a wonderful effect she had on
him.
A few days before he would have laughed at any one who had suggested
that any woman might have aroused in him the passions that were now
surging through his heart. Ten thousand years ago, perhaps, he would
have seized her and carried her off in triumph to his clan or
tribe. To-day he must, he would win her by more subtle means.
His mind was made up. She had pointed the way. That night Dodge left
Woodlake hastily for New York.
To Constance a new purpose seemed to have entered into a barren
life. She was almost gay as she packed her trunks and grips and
quietly slipped into the city a few hours later and registered at a
quiet hotel for business women.
Sure enough in the Star the next morning was the advertisement. She
wrote in a formal way, giving her telephone number. That afternoon,
apparently as soon as the letter had been delivered, a call came.
The following morning she was the private secretary of Murray Dodge,
sitting unobtrusively before a typewriter desk in a sort of little
anteroom that guarded the door to his office.
She took pains to act the part of private secretary and no more. As
appeared natural to the rest of the office force at first she was
much with Murray, who made the most elaborate explanations of the
detail of the business.
"Do they suspect anything?" she asked anxiously as soon as they were
absolutely alone.
"I think so," he replied. "They said nothing except that they had
not expected me back so soon, I think the 'so soon' was an
afterthought. They didn't expect me back at all. For," he added
significantly, "I've been in fear and trembling until I could get
you. They already have asked the regular audit company to go over
the books in advance of the time when we usually employ them. I
didn't ask why. I merely accepted it with a nod. It might have meant
bringing matters to a crisis now."
He felt safer with Constance installed as his private secretary.
True, Beverley and Dumont had viewed her from the start with
suspicion.
Constance had been thinking hard out in her little office since she
had begun to understand how matters stood. "Well?" she demanded.
"What of it? Don't try to conceal it. Let them discover it. Go
further. Dare them. Court exposure."
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