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Page 38
This was a call from Bella to Watson.
"Ross, that fellow Drummond called up to-day."
"Yes?"
"He is going to pull it off to-night. His client will make good--
five thousand if they catch Halsey with the goods. How about it?"
"Pretty soft--eh, Bella?" came back from Watson.
"My God! it's a plant!" exclaimed Halsey, staggering and dropping
heavily into a chair. "I'm ruined. There is no way out!"
"Wait," interrupted Constance. "Here's another call. It may serve to
explain why luck was with me to-night. I came prepared."
"Yes, Mrs. LeMar," came another strange voice from the machine.
"We'd do anything for Mr. Watson. What is it--a pack of strippers?"
"Yes. The aces stripped from the ends, the kings from the sides."
The group looked eagerly at Constance.
"From the maker of fake gambling apparatus, I find," she explained,
shutting off the machine. "They were ordering from him cards cut or
trimmed so that certain ones could be readily drawn from the deck,
or 'stripped.' Small wedge-shaped strips are trimmed off the edges
of all the other cards, leaving the aces, say, projecting just the
most minute fraction of an inch beyond the others. Everything is
done carefully. The rounded edges at the corners are recut to look
right. When the cards are shuffled the aces protrude a trifle over
the edges of the other cards. It is a simple matter for the dealer
to draw or strip out as many aces as he wants, stack them on the
bottom of the pack as he shuffles the cards, and draw them from the
bottom whenever he wants them. Strippers are one of the newest
things in swindling. Marked cards are out of date. But some decks
have the aces stripped from the ends, the kings from the sides. With
this pack, as you can see, a sucker can be dealt out the kings,
while the house player gets the aces."
Drummond brazened it out. With a muttered oath he turned to Watson
again. "What rot is this? The stock, Watson," he repeated. "Where
is that stock I heard them talking about?"
Mrs. Noble, forgetting all now but Halsey, paled. Bella LeMar was
fumbling at her gold mesh bag. She gave a sudden, suppressed little
scream.
"Look!" she cried. "They are blank--those stock certificates he gave
me."
Drummond seized them roughly from her hands.
Where the signatures should have been there was nothing at all!
Across the face of the stock were the words in deep black, "SAMPLE
CERTIFICATE," written in an angular, feminine hand.
What did it mean? Halsey was as amazed as any of them. Mechanically
he turned to Constance.
"I didn't say anything last night," she remarked incisively. "But I
had my suspicions from the first. I always look out for the purry
kind of 'my dear' woman. They have claws. Last night I watched. To-
day I learned--learned that you, Mr. Drummond, were nothing but a
blackmailer, using these gamblers to do your dirty work. Haddon,
they would have thrown you out like a squeezed lemon as soon as the
money you had was gone. They would have taken the bribe that
Drummond offered for the stock--and they would have left you nothing
but jail. I learned all that over the telegraphone. I learned their
methods and, knowing them, even I could not be prevented from
winning to-night"
Halsey moved as if to speak. "But," he asked eagerly, "the stock
certificates--what of them!"
"The stock?" she answered with deliberation. "Did you ever hear that
writing in quinoline will appear blue, but will soon fade away,
while other writing in silver nitrate and ammonia, invisible at
first, after a few hours appears black? You wrote on those
certificates in sympathetic ink that fades, I in ink that comes up
soon."
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