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Page 18
As she entered Drummond looked hard at her. Constance met him
without wavering an instant.
"I think I've seen you before, MRS. Dunlap," insinuated the
detective.
"Perhaps," replied Constance, still meeting his sharp ferret eye
squarely, which increased his animosity.
"Your husband was Carlton Dunlap, cashier of Green & Company, was he
not?"
She bit her lip. The manner of his raking up of old scores, though
she had expected it, was cruel. It would have been cruel in court,
if she had had a lawyer to protect her rights. It was doubly cruel,
merciless, here. Before Dodge could interrupt, the detective added,
"Who committed suicide after forging checks to meet his--"
Murray was at Drummond like a hound. "Another word from you and I'll
throttle you," he blurted out.
"No, Murray, no. Don't," pleaded Constance. She was burning with
indignation, but it was not by violence that she expected to
prevail. "Let him say what he has to say."
Drummond smiled. He had no scruples about a "third degree" of this
kind, and besides there were three of them to Dodge.
"You were--both of you--at Woodlake not long ago, were you not?" he
asked calmly.
There was no escaping the implication of the tone. Still Drummond
was taking no chances of being misunderstood. "There was one man,"
he went on, "who embezzled for you. Here is another who has
embezzled. How will that look when it goes before a jury!" he
concluded.
The fight had shifted before it had well begun. Instead of being
between Dodge on one side and Beverley and Dumont on the, other, it
now seemed to be a clash between a cool detective and a clever
woman.
"Mrs. Dunlap," interrupted Murray, with a mocking smile at the
detective, "will you tell us what you have found out since you have
been my private secretary?"
Constance had not lost control of herself for a moment.
"I have been looking over the books a little bit myself," she began
slowly, with all eyes riveted on her. "I find, for instance, that
your company has been undervaluing its imported goods. Undervaluing
merchandise is considered, I believe, one of the meanest forms of
smuggling. The undervaluer has frequently to make a tool of a man in
his employ. Then that tool must play on the frailties of an
unfortunate or weak examiner at the Public Stores where all invoices
and merchandise from foreign countries are examined."
Drummond had been trying to interrupt, but she had ignored him, and
was speaking rapidly so that he could get no chance.
"You have cheated the Government of hundreds of thousands dollars,"
she hurried on facing Beverley and Dumont. "It would make a splendid
newspaper story."
Dumont moved uneasily. Drummond was now staring. It was a new phase
of the matter to him. He had not counted on handling a woman like
Constance, who knew how to take advantage of every weak spot in the
armor.
"We are wasting time," he interrupted brusquely. "Get back to the
original subject. There is a fifty thousand-dollar shortage on these
books."
The attempt clumsily to shift the case away again from Constance to
Dodge was apparent.
"Mrs. Dunlap's past troubles," Dodge asserted vigorously, "have
nothing to do with the case. It was cowardly to drag that in. But
the other matter of which she speaks has much to do with it."
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