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Page 29
There he was, now,--with Drummond, the police, and the Secret
Service. It was exactly as she had suspected to herself, and a smile
played over her face.
All was excitement, shouts, muttered imprecations. Constance was the
calmest in the crowd--deaf to even Drummond's "third degree."
They had begun to break open the boxes marked "salt" and "corn."
A loud exclamation above the sharp crunching of the axes escaped
Gordon. "Damn them! They've put one across on us!"
The boxes of "salt" and "corn" contained--salt and corn.
Not a stock of a rifle, not a barrel, not a cartridge was in any of
them as the axes crashed in one case after another.
A boy with a telegram emerged indiscreetly from the misty shadows.
Drummond seized it, tore it open, and read, "Buy cotton."
It was the code: "I am off safely."
The double cross had worked. Constance was thinking, as she smiled
to herself, of the money, her share, which she had hidden. There was
not a scrap of tangible evidence against her, except what Santos had
carried with him in the filibustering expedition already off from
New Orleans. Her word would stand against that of all of the victims
combined before any jury that could be empaneled.
"You thought I needed a warning," she cried, facing Drummond with
eyes that flashed scorn at the skulking figure of Gordon behind him.
"But the next time you employ a stool-pigeon to make love," she
added, "reckon in that thing you detectives scorn--a woman's
intuition."
CHAPTER IV
THE GAMBLERS
"Won't you come over to see me to-night? Just a friendly little
game, my dear--our own crowd, you know."
There was something in the purring tone of the invitation of the
woman across the hall from Constance Dunlap's apartment that aroused
her curiosity.
"Thank you. I believe I will," answered Constance. "It's lonely in a
big city without friends."
"Indeed it is," agreed Bella LeMar. "I've been watching you for some
time and wondering how you stand it. Now be sure to come, won't
you?"
"I shall be glad to do so," assured Constance, as they reached their
floor and parted at the elevator door.
She had been watching the other woman, too, although she had said
nothing about it.
"A friendly little game," repeated Constance to herself. "That
sounds as if it had the tang of an adventure in it. I'll go."
The Mayfair Arms, in which she had taken a modest suite of rooms,
was a rather recherche apartment, and one of her chief delights
since she had been there had been in watching the other occupants.
There had been much to interest her in the menage across the hall.
Mrs. Bella LeMar, as she called herself, was of a type rather common
in the city, an attractive widow on the safe side of forty, well-
groomed, often daringly gowned. Her brown eyes snapped vivacity, and
the pert little nose and racy expression of the mouth confirmed the
general impression that Mrs. LeMar liked the good things of life.
Quite naturally, Constance observed, her neighbor had hosts of
friends who often came early and stayed late, friends who seemed to
exude, as it were, an air of prosperity and high living. Clearly,
she was a woman to cultivate. Constance felt even more interest in
her, now that Mrs. LeMar had pursued a bowing acquaintance to the
point of an unsolicited invitation.
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