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Page 20
"Yes, thank God. Clear and with a new ambition, thanks to you."
She had been expecting this ever since that last night. The relief
of Murray to feel that the old score that would have ruined him was
now wiped off the slate was precisely what she had anticipated.
Yet, somehow, it disappointed her. She felt instinctively that her
triumph was burning fast to ashes.
"Keep clear," she faltered.
"Constance," he urged, approaching closer and taking her cold hand.
Was she to be the one to hold him back in any way from the new life
that was now before him? What if Drummond, in his animosity, ever
got the truth? She gently unclasped her hand from his. No, that
happiness was not for her.
"I am afraid I am a crook at heart, Murray," she said sadly. "I have
gone too far to turn back. The brand is on me. But I am not
altogether bad--yet. Think of me always with charity. Yes," she
cried wildly, "I must return to my loneliness. No, do not try to
stop me, you have no right," she added bitterly as the reality of
her situation burned itself into her heart.
She broke away from him wildly, but with set purpose. The world had
taken away her husband; now it was a lover; the world must pay.
CHAPTER III
THE GUN RUNNERS
"We'll land here, Mrs. Dunlap."
Ramon Santos, terror of the Washington State Department and of a
half dozen consulates in New York, stuck a pin in a map of Central
America spread out on a table before Constance.
"Insurrectos will meet us," he pursued, then added, "but we must
have money, first, my dear Senora, plenty of money."
Dark of eye and skin, with black imperial and mustache, tall,
straight as an arrow, Santos had risen and was now gazing down with
rapt attention, not at the map, but at Constance herself.
Every curve of her face and wave of her hair, every line of her trim
figure which her filmy gown seemed to accentuate rather than conceal
added fire to his ardent glances.
He touched lightly another pin sticking in a little, almost
microscopic island of the Caribbean.
"Our plan, it is simple," he continued with animation in spite of
his foreign accent. "On this island a plant to print paper money, to
coin silver. With that we shall land, pay our men as they flock to
us, collect forces, seize cities, appropriate the customs. Once we
start, it is easy."
Constance looked up quickly. "But that is counterfeiting," she
exclaimed.
"No," rejoined Santos, "it is a war measure. We--the provisional
government--merely coin our own money. Besides, it will not be done
in this country. It will not come under your laws."
There was a magnetism about the man that fascinated her, as he stood
watching the effect of his words. Instinctively she knew that it was
not alone enthusiasm over his scheme that inspired his confidences.
"Though we are not counterfeiters," he went on, "we do not know what
moment our opponents may set your Secret Service to destroy all our
hopes. Besides, we must have money--now--to buy machinery, arms,
ammunition. We must find some one," he lowered his voice, "who can
persuade American bankers and merchants to take risks to gain
valuable concessions in the new state."
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