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Page 73
"Shall we go in? Are you game?" asked Constance of her companion.
"I haven't gone so far without considering that," replied Mrs.
Palmer, somewhat reproachfully.
Without a word Constance entered the door down the street followed
by her companion.
A negro at the little cubby hole of an office pushed out a register
at them. Constance signed the first names that came into her head,
and a moment later they were on their way up to a big double room on
the third floor, led by another, younger negro.
"Will you send the bell-boy up?" asked Constance as they entered the
room.
"I'm the bell-boy ma'am," was his disconcerting reply.
"I mean the other one," replied Constance, hazarding, "the one who
is here in the day time."
"There ain't no other boy, ma'am. There ain't no--"
"Could you deliver a note for me at a tea room in New York to-
morrow?" interrupted Constance, striking while the iron seemed hot.
The boy turned around abruptly from his busy occupation of doing
something useless that would elicit a tip. He quietly shut the door,
and wheeled about with his hand still on the knob.
"Do you want to know what room she's in?" he asked.
Constance opened her handbag. Mrs. Palmer suppressed a little
scream. She had expected that ivory-handled thing to appear. Instead
there was a treasury note of a size that caused the white part of
the boy's eyes to expand beyond all the laws of optics.
"Yes," she said, pressing it into his hand.
"Forty-two-down the hall, around the turn, on the other side,"
whispered the boy. "And for God's sake, ma'am, don't tell nobody I
told you."
His shuffle down the hall had scarcely ceased before the two women
were stealthily creeping in the opposite direction, looking eagerly
at the numbers.
Constance had stopped abruptly around the turn. Through a transom of
one of the rooms they could hear voices but could see no light.
"Well, go back then," growled a gruff voice. "Your family will never
believe your story, never believe that you came again and stayed at
Lustgarten's against your will. Why," the voice taunted with a harsh
laugh, "if they knew the truth, they would turn you from the door,
instead of offering a reward."
There was a moment of silence. Then a woman's voice, strangely
familiar to Constance, spoke.
"The truth!" she exclaimed bitterly. "He knew it was a case of a
girl who liked a good time, liked pretty clothes, a ride in an
automobile, theaters, excitement, bright lights, night life--a girl
with a romantic disposition in whom all that was repressed at home.
He knew it," she repeated, raising the tone to an almost hysterical
pitch, "led me on, made me love him because he could give them all
to me. And when I began to show the strain of the pace-they all show
it more than the men--he cast me aside like a squeezed-out lemon."
As she listened, Constance understood it all now. It was to make
Florence Gibbons a piece of property, a thing to be traded in,
bartered--that was the idea. Discover her--yes; but first to thrust
her into the life if she would not go into it herself--anything to
discredit her testimony beforehand, anything to save the precious
reputation of one man.
"Well," shouted the other voice menacingly, "do you want to know the
truth? Haven't you read it often enough? Instead of hoping you will
return, they pray that you are DEAD!"
He hissed the words out, then added, "They prefer to think that you
are dead. Why--damn it!--they turn to that belief for COMFORT!"
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