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!"

Constance had seized Mrs. Palmer by the arm, and, acting in concert,
they threw both their weights against the thin wooden door.

It yielded with a crash.

Inside the room was dark.

Indistinctly Constance could make out two figures, one standing, the
other seated in a deep rocker.

A suppressed exclamation of surprise was followed by a hasty lunge of
the standing figure toward her.

Constance reached quickly into her handbag and drew out the little
ivory-handled pistol.

"Bang!" it spat almost into the man's face.

Choking, sputtering, the man groped a minute blindly, then fell on the
floor and frantically tried to rise again and call out.

The words seemed to stick in his throat.

"You--you shot him?" gasped a woman's voice which Constance now knew
was Florence's.

"With the new German Secret Service gun," answered Constance quietly,
keeping it leveled to cow any assistance that might be brought. "It
blinds and stupefies without killing--a bulletless revolver intended to
check and render harmless the criminal instead of maiming him. The
cartridges contain several chemicals that combine when they are
exploded and form a vapor which blinds a man and puts him out. No one
wants to kill such a person as this."

She reached over and switched on the lights.

The man on the floor was Drummond himself.

"You will tell your real employer, Mr. Preston," she added
conte