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Page 19
"One moment, Murray," cried Constance. "Let me finish what I began.
This is my fight, too, now."
She was talking with blazing eyes and in quick, cutting tone.
"For three years he did your dirty work," she flashed. "He did the
bribing--and you saved half a million dollars."
"He has stolen fifty thousand," put in Beverley, white with anger.
"I have kept an account of everything," pursued Constance, without
pausing. "I have pieced the record together so that he can now
connect the men higher up with the actual acts he had to do. He can
gain immunity by turning state's evidence. I am not sure but that he
might be able to obtain his moiety of what the Government recovers
if the matter were brought to suit and won on the information he can
furnish."
She paused. No one seemed to breathe.
"Now," she added impressively, "at ten per cent. commission the half
million that he saved for you yields fifty thousand dollars. That,
gentlemen, is the amount of the shortage--an offset."
"The deuce it is!" exclaimed Beverley.
Constance reached for a telephone on the desk near her.
"Get me the Law Division at the Customs House," she asked simply.
Dumont was pale and almost speechless. Beverley could ill suppress
his smothered rage. What could they do? The tables had been turned.
If they objected to the amazing proposal Constance had made they
might all go to jail. Dodge even might go free, rich. They looked at
Dodge and Mrs. Dunlap. There was no weakening. They were as
relentless as their opponents had been before.
Dumont literally tore the telephone from her. "Never mind about that
number, central," he muttered.
Then he started as if toward the door. The rest followed. Outside
the accountant had been waiting patiently, perhaps expecting
Drummond to call on him to corroborate the report. He had been
listening. There was no sound of high voices, as he had expected.
What did it mean?
The door opened. Beverley was pale and haggard, Dumont worn and
silent. He could scarcely talk. Dodge again held the door for
Constance as she swept past the amazed accountant.
All eyes were now fixed on Dumont as chief spokesman.
"He has made a satisfactory explanation," was all he said.
"I would lock all that stuff up in the strongest safe deposit vault
in New York," remarked Constance, laying the evidence that involved
them all on Murray's desk. "It is your only safeguard."
"Constance," he burst forth suddenly, "you were superb."
The crisis was past now and she felt the nervous reaction.
"There is one thing more I want to say," he added in a low tone.
He had crossed to where she was standing by the window, and bent
over, speaking with great emotion.
"Since that afternoon at Woodlake when you turned me back again from
the foolish and ruinous course on which I had decided you--you have
been more to me than life. Constance, I have never loved until now.
Nothing has ever mattered except money. I never had any one else to
think of, care for, except myself. You have changed everything."
She was gazing out of the window at the tall buildings. There, in a
myriad of offices, lay wealth untold, opportunity as yet untasted to
seize that wealth. Only for an instant she turned and looked at him,
then dropped her eyes. What lay that way?
"You are clear now, respected, respectable," she said simply.
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