wed her.
Were they centering their efforts on capturing him?

She haunted the news-stand in the lobby of the beautifully appointed
hotel. Her desire to read newspapers grew. She read everything.

It was just two weeks since they had left New York on their separate
journeys when, on the evening of another newsless day, she was passing
the news-stand. From force of habit she glanced at an early edition of
an evening paper.

The big black type of the heading caught her eye:

NOTED FORGER A SUICIDE

With a little shriek, half-suppressed, she seized the paper. It was
Carlton. There was his name. He had shot himself in a room in a hotel
in St. Louis. She ran her eye down the column, hardly able to read. In
heavier type than the rest was the letter they had found on him:

MY DEAREST CONSTANCE,

When you read this I, who have wronged and deceived you beyond words,
will be where I can no longer hurt you. Forgive me, for by this act I
am a confessed embezzler and forger. I could not face you and tell you
of the double life I was leading. So I have sent you away and have gone
away myself--and may the Lord have mercy on the soul of

Your devoted husband, CARLTON DUNLAP.

Over and over again she read the words, as she clutched at the edge of
the news-stand to keep from fainting--"wronged and deceived you," "the
double life I was leading." What did he mean? Had he, after all, been
concealing something else from her? Had there really been another woman?

Suddenly the truth flashed over her. Tracked and almost overtaken,
lacking her hand which had guided him, he had seen no other way out.
And in his last act he had shouldered it all on himself, had shielded
her nobly from the penalty, had opened wide for her the only door of
escape.

CHAPTER II

THE EMBEZZLERS

"I came here to hide, to vanish forever from those who know me."

The young man paused a moment to watch the effect of his revelation of
himself to Constance Dunlap. There was a certain cynical bitterness in
his tone which made her shudder.

"If you were to be discovered--what then?" she hazarded.

Murray Dodge looked at her significantly, but said nothing. Instead, he
turned and gazed silently at the ruffled waters of Woodlake. There was
no mistaking the utter hopelessness and grim determination of the man.

"Why--why have you told so much to me, an absolute stranger?" she
asked, searching his face. "Might I not hand you over to the detectives
who,