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Page 35
Accustomed as she was now to strange confidences, Constance bent
over and patted the little hand of Mrs. Noble comfortingly.
"You seemed to take it so coolly," went on the other woman. "For me
the glamour, the excitement are worse than champagne. But you could
stop, even when you were winning. Oh, my God! What am I to do? What
will happen when my husband finds out what I have done!"
Tearfully, the little woman poured out the sordid story of her
fascination for the game, of her losses, of the pawning of her
jewels to pay her losses and keep them secret, if only for a few
days, until that mythical time when luck would change.
"When I started," she blurted out with a bitter little laugh, "I
thought I'd make a little pin money. That's how I began--with that
and the excitement. And now this is the end."
She had risen and was pacing the floor wildly.
"Mrs. Dunlap," she cried, pausing before Constance, "to-day I am
nothing more nor less than a 'capper,' as they call it, for a
gambling resort."
She was almost hysterical. The contrast with the gay, respectable,
prosperous-looking woman at Bella's was appalling. Constance
realized to the full what were the tragedies that were enacted
elsewhere.
As she looked at the despairing woman, she could reconstruct the
terrible situation. Cultivated, well-bred, fashionably gowned, a
woman like Mrs. Noble served admirably the purpose of luring men on.
If there had been only women or only men involved, it perhaps would
not have been so bad. But there were both. Constance saw that men
were wanted, men who could afford to lose not hundreds, but
thousands, men who are always the heaviest players. And so Mrs.
Noble and other unfortunate women no doubt were sent out on Broadway
to the cafes and restaurants, sent out even among those of their own
social circle, always to lure men on, to involve themselves more and
more in the web into which they had flown. Bella had hoped even to
use Constance!
Mrs. Noble had paused again. There was evident sincerity in her as
she looked deeply into the eyes of Constance.
Nothing but desperation could have wrung her inmost secrets from her
to another woman.
"I saw them trying to throw you together with Haddon Halsey," she
said, almost tragically. "It was I who introduced Haddon to them. I
was to get a percentage of his losses to pay off my own--but"--her
feelings seemed to overcome her and wildly, desperately, she added--
"but I can't--I can't. I--I must rescue him--I must."
It was a strange situation. Constance reasoned it out quickly. What
a wreck of life these two were making! Not only they were involved,
but others who as yet knew nothing, Mrs. Noble's husband, the family
of Halsey. She must help.
"Mrs. Noble," said Constance calmly, "can you trust me?"
She shot a quick glance at Constance. "Yes," she murmured.
"Then to-night visit Mrs. LeMar as though nothing had happened.
Meanwhile I will have thought out a plan."
It was late in the afternoon when Constance saw Halsey again, this
time in his office, where he had been waiting impatiently for some
word from her. The relief at seeing her showed only too plainly on
his face.
"This inaction is killing me," he remarked huskily. "Has anything
happened to-day!"
She said nothing about the visit of Mrs. Noble. Perhaps it was
better that each should not know yet that the other was worried.
"Yes," she replied, "much has happened. I cannot tell you now. But
to-night let us all go again as though nothing had occurred."
"They have twenty-five thousand dollars in stock certificates
already which I have given them," he remarked anxiously.
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