Floretta returned with the bottle and placed it on the secretary beside Constance.
"Some one took some tablets from this bottle and gave them to some one else who wrote on this paper," she resumed, bending first over the paper she had torn from the pad. "Ah, a loop with twelve ridges, another loop, a whorl, a whorl, a loop. The marks on this paper correspond precisely with those made here just now by--Vera Charmant herself!"
"You get out of here--quick," snarled Drummond, placing himself between the now furious Vera and Constance.
"One minute," replied Constance calmly. "I am sure Mr. Warrington is a gentleman, if you are not. Perhaps I have no finger prints to correspond with those on the bottle. If not, I am sure that we can send for some one whose prints will do so."
She was studying the bottle.
"The other, however," she said slowly to conceal her own surprise, "was a person who has been set to trail you and Stella, Mr. Warrington, a detective named Drummond!"
Suddenly the truth flashed over her. Drummond was not employed by Mrs.
Warrington at all. Then by whom? By the directors. And the rest of these people? Grafters who were using Stella to bait the hook. Braden had gone over to them, had aided in plunging Warrington into the wild life until he could no longer play the business game as before.
Charmant was his confederate, Drummond his witness.
"Stella," said Constance, turning suddenly to the little actress, "Stella, they are using you, "Diamond Jack" and Vera, using you to lead him on, playing the game of the minority of the directors of the Syndicate to get him out. There is to be a meeting of the directors to-night at the Prince Henry. He was to be in no condition to go. Are you willing to be mixed up in such a scandal?"
Stella Larue was crying into a lace handkerchief. "You--you are all--against me," she sobbed. "What have I done?"
"Nothing," soothed Constance, patting her shoulder. "As for Charmant and Drummond, they are tied by these proofs," she added, tapping the papers with the prints, then picking them up and handing them to Warrington. "I think if the story were told to the directors at the Prince Henry to-night with reporters waiting downstairs in the lobby, it might produce a quieting effect."
Warrington was speechless. He saw them all against him, Vera, Braden, Stella, Drummond.
"More than that," added Constance, "nothing that you can ever do can equal the patience, the faith of the little woman I saw here to-day, slaving, yes, slaving for beauty. Here in my hand, in these sc.r.a.ps of paper, I hold your old life,--not part of it, but ALL of it," she emphasized. "You have your chance. Will you take it?"
He looked up quickly at Stella Larue. She had risen impulsively and flung her arms about Constance.
"Yes," he muttered huskily, taking the papers, "all of it."
CHAPTER VIII
THE ABDUCTORS
"Take care of me--please--please!"
A slip of a girl, smartly attired in a fur-trimmed dress and a chic little feather-tipped hat, hurried up to Constance Dunlap late one afternoon as she turned the corner below her apartment.
"It isn"t faintness or illness exactly--but--it"s all so hazy,"
stammered the girl breathlessly. "And I"ve forgotten who I am. I"ve forgotten where I live--and a man has been following me--oh, ever so long."
The weariness in the tone of the last words caused Constance to look more closely at the girl. Plainly she was on the verge of hysterics.
Tears were streaming down her pale cheeks and there were dark rings under her eyes, suggestive of a haunting fear of something from which she fled.
Constance was astounded for the moment. Was the girl crazy? She had heard of cases like this, but to meet one so unexpectedly was surely disconcerting.
"Who has been following you!" asked Constance gently, looking hastily over her shoulder and seeing no one.
"A man," exclaimed the girl, "but I think he has gone now."
"Can"t you think of your name!" urged Constance. "Try."
"No," cried the girl, "no, I can"t, I can"t."
"Or your address?" repeated Constance. "Try--try hard!"
The girl looked vacantly about.
"No," she sobbed, "it"s all gone--all."
Puzzled, Constance took her arm and slowly walked her up the street toward her own apartment in the hope that she might catch sight of some familiar face or be able to pull herself together.
But it was of no use.
They pa.s.sed a policeman who eyed them sharply. The mere sight of the blue-coated officer sent a shudder through the already trembling girl on her arm.
"Don"t, don"t let them take me to a hospital--don"t," pleaded the girl in a hoa.r.s.e whisper when they had pa.s.sed the officer.
"I won"t," rea.s.sured Constance. "Was that the man who was following you?"
"No--oh, no," sobbed the girl nervously looking back.
"Who was he, then?" asked Constance eagerly.
The girl did not answer, but continued to look back wildly from time to time, although there was no doubt that, if he existed at all, the man had disappeared.
Suddenly Constance realized that she had on her hands a case of aphasia, perhaps real, perhaps induced by a drug.
At any rate, the fear of being sent away to an inst.i.tution was so strong in the poor creature that Constance felt intuitively how disastrous to her might be the result of disregarding the obsession.
She was in a quandary. What should she do with the girl? To leave her on the street was out of the question. She was now more helpless than ever.
They had reached the door of the apartment. Gently she led the trembling girl into her own home.
But now the question of what to do arose with redoubled force. She hesitated to call a physician, at least yet, because his first advice would probably be to send the poor little stranger to the psychopathic ward of some hospital.
Constance"s eye happened to rest on the dictionary in her bookcase.
Perhaps she might recall the girl"s name to her, if she were not shamming, by reading over the list of women"s names in the back of the book.
It meant many minutes, perhaps hours. But then Constance reflected on what might have happened to the girl if she had chanced to appeal to some one who had not felt a true interest in her. It was worth trying.
She would do it.
Starting with "A," she read slowly.
"Is your name Abigail?"