Constance Dunlap Part 23

And, according to the modern psychologists who have studied dreams carefully and scientifically, fear and anxiety represent love repressed or suppressed."

She paused to emphasize the point, glad to note that he was following her.

"That clairvoyant," she went on, "has found out the truth. True, it may not have been the part of wisdom for Mildred to have gone to her in the first place. I pa.s.s over that. I do not know whether you or she was most to blame at the start. But that woman, in the guise of being her friend, has played on every string of your wife's lonely heart, which you have wrung until it vibrates.

"Then," she hastened on, "came your precious friend Drummond, Drummond who has, no doubt, told you a pack of lies about me. You see that!"

She had flung down on the table a cigarette which she had managed to get at Madame Ca.s.sandra's.

"Smoke it."

He lighted it gingerly, took a puff or two, puckered his face, frowned, and rubbed the lighted end on the fireplace to extinguish it.

"What is it?" he asked suspiciously.

"Has.h.i.+sh," she answered tersely. "Things were not going fast enough to suit either Madame Ca.s.sandra or Drummond. Madame Ca.s.sandra helped along the dreams by a drug noted for its effect on the pa.s.sions. More than that," added Constance, leaning over toward him and catching his eye, "Madame Ca.s.sandra was working in league with a broker, as so many of the fakers do. Drummond knew it, whether he told you the truth about it or not. That broker was a swindler named Davies."

She was watching the effect on him. She saw that he had been reserving this for a last shot at her, that he realized she had stolen his own ammunition and appropriated it to herself.

"They were only too glad when Drummond approached them. There you are, three against that poor little woman--no, four, including yourself.

Perhaps she was foolish. But it was not so much to her discredit as to those who cast her adrift when she had a natural right to protection.

Here was a woman with pa.s.sions which she herself did not understand, and a little money--alone. Her case appealed to me. I knew her dreams.

I studied them."

Caswell was listening in amazement. "It is dangerous to be with a person who pays attention to such little things," he said.

Evidently Drummond himself must have been listening. The door buzzer sounded and he stepped in, perhaps to bolster up his client in case he should be weakening.

As he met Constance's eye he smiled superciliously and was about to speak. But she did not give him time even to say good evening.

"Ask him," she cried, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, for she realized that it had been part of the plan to confront her, perhaps worm out of her just enough to confirm Drummond's own story to Caswell, "ask him to tell the truth--if he is capable of it--not the truth that will make a good daily report of a hired shadow who colors his report the way he thinks his client desires it, but the real truth."

"Mr. Caswell," interrupted Drummond, "this woman----"

"Mr. Drummond," cried Constance, rising and shaking the burnt stub of the little gold-banded cigarette at him to impress it on his mind, "Mr.

Drummond, I don't care whether I am a--a she-devil"--she almost hissed the words at him--"but I have evidence enough to go before the district attorney of this city and the grand jury and get indictments for conspiracy against a certain clairvoyant and a bucket shop operator. To save themselves, they will probably tell all they know about a certain crook who has been using them."

Caswell looked at her, amazed at her denunciation of the detective. As for Drummond, he turned his back on her as if to ignore her utterly.

"Mr. Caswell," he said bitterly, "in those reports--"

"Forest Caswell," insisted Constance, rising and facing him, "if you have in that heart of yours one shred of manhood it should move you.

You--this man--the others--have placed in the path of a woman every provocation, every temptation for financial, physical, and moral ruin.

She has consulted a clairvoyant--yes. She has speculated--yes. Yet she was proof against something greater than that. And I know--because I know her unconscious self which her dreams reveal, her inmost soul--I know her better than you do, better than she does herself. I know that even now she is as good and true and would be as loving as--"

Constance had paused and taken a step toward the drawing room. Before she knew it, the portieres flew apart and an eager little woman had rushed past her and flung her arms about the neck of the man.

Caswell's features were working, as he gently disengaged her arms, still keeping one hand. Half shoving her aside, ignoring Constance, he had faced Drummond. For a moment the brazen detective flinched.

As he did so, deForest Caswell crumpled up the ma.s.s of tissue paper reports and flung them into the fireplace.

"Get out!" he said, suppressing his voice with difficulty. "Send me--your bill. I'll pay it--but, mind, if it is one penny more than it should be, I'll--I'll fight if it takes me from the district attorney and the grand jury to the highest court of the State. Now--go!"

Caswell turned slowly again toward his wife.

"I've been a brute," he said simply.

Something almost akin to jealousy rose in Constance's heart as she saw Mildred, safe at last.

Then Caswell turned slowly to her. "You," he said, stroking his wife's hand gently but looking at Constance, "you are a REAL clairvoyant."

CHAPTER VII

THE PLUNGERS

"They have the most select clientele in the city here."

Constance Dunlap was sitting in the white steamy room of Charmant's Beauty Shop. Her informant, reclining dreamily in a luxurious wicker chair, bathed in the perspiring vapor, had evidently taken a fancy to her.

"And no wonder, either; they fix you up so well," she rattled on; then confidingly, "Now, last night after the show a party of us went to supper and a dance--and it was in the wee small hours when we broke up.

But Madame here can make you all over again. Floretta," she called to an attendant who had entered, "if Mr. Warrington calls up on the 'phone, say I'll call him later."

"Yes, Miss Larue."

Constance glanced up quickly as Floretta mentioned the name of the popular young actress. Stella Larue was a pretty girl on whom the wild dissipation of the night life of New York was just beginning to show its effects. The name of Warrington, too, recalled to Constance instantly some gossip she had heard in Wall Street about the disagreement in the board of directors of the new Rubber Syndicate and the effort to oust the president whose escapades were something more than mere whispers of scandal.

This was the woman in the case. Constance looked at Stella now with added interest as she rose languidly, drew her bathrobe about her superb figure carelessly in such a way as to show it at best advantage.

"I've had more or less to do with Wall Street myself," observed Constance.

"Oh, have you? Isn't that interesting," cried Stella.

"I hope you're not putting money in Rubber?" queried Constance.

"On the contrary," rippled Stella, then added, "You're going to stay?

Let me tell you something. Have Floretta do your hair. She's the best here. Then come around to see me in the dormitory if I'm here when you are through, won't you?"

Constance promised and Stella fluttered away like the pretty b.u.t.terfly that she was, leaving Constance to wonder at the natural gravitation of plungers in the money market toward plungers in the white lights.

Charmant's Beauty Parlor was indeed all its name implied, a temple of the cult of adornment, the last cry in the effort to satisfy what is more than health, wealth, and happiness to some women--the fundamental feminine instinct for beauty.

Constance had visited the beauty specialist to have an incipient wrinkle smoothed out. Frankly, it was not vanity. But she had come to realize that her greatest a.s.set was her personal appearance. Once that had a chance to work, her native wit and keen ability would carry her to success.

Madame Charmant herself was a tall, dark-skinned, dark-haired, dark-eyed, well-groomed woman who looked as if she had been stamped from a die for a fas.h.i.+on plate--and then the die had been thrown away.

All others like her were spurious copies, counterfeits. More than that, she affected the name of Vera, which in itself had the ring of truth.