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"My God! it's a plant!" exclaimed Halsey, staggering and dropping heavily into a chair. "I'm ruined. There is no way out!" "Wait," interrupted Constance. "Here's another call. It may serve to explain why luck was with me to-night. I came prepared." "Yes, Mrs. LeMar," came another strange voice from the machine. "We'd do anything for Mr. Watson. What is it a pack of strippers?" "Yes.
Noble, forgetting all now but Halsey, paled. Bella LeMar was fumbling at her gold mesh bag. She gave a sudden, suppressed little scream. "Look!" she cried. "They are blank those stock certificates he gave me." Drummond seized them roughly from her hands. Where the signatures should have been there was nothing at all!
She had determined to give him plenty of time to obtain the old forged certificates and substitute for them the new forgeries. Perhaps half an hour later she heard Mrs. Noble enter. As Constance followed her in, the effusive greeting of Bella LeMar showed that as yet she suspected nothing.
"Drummond," remarked Constance significantly, as though other secrets might still be contained in the marvelous little mechanical detective, "Drummond, don't you think, for the sake of your own reputation as a detective, it might be as well to keep this thing quiet?" For a moment the detective gripped his wrath and seemed to consider the damaging record of his conversation with Bella LeMar.
He flung her from him with an effort and rushed out through the hall and down the road like a madman. Estella, watching him, felt that she was avenged. She was glad with a joy more pitiful than grief. Vivienne LeMar left the cottage the next day. Mrs. Bowes, suspecting some mystery, questioned Estella sharply, but could find out nothing. The girl kept her own counsel stubbornly.
Her figure had never seemed to her so stout and stiff, her brown hair so dull and prim, her complexion so muddy, her features so commonplace. She wished Miss LeMar would go out of the room. Vivienne LeMar watched the two faces before her; a hard gleam, half mockery, half malice, flashed into her eyes and a smile crept about her lips.
Estella leaned against the gate, listening for the sound of wheels and dreamily watching the light shining out from the window of Vivienne LeMar's room. The blind was up and she could see Miss LeMar writing at her table. Her profile was clear and distinct against the lamplight. Estella reflected without the least envy that Miss LeMar was very beautiful.
She felt commonplace and angry, and wanted to cry. Vivienne LeMar went on singing, drifting from one sweet love song into another. Once she looked up at Spencer Morgan. He rose quickly and went to her side, looking down at her with a strange fire in his eyes. Estella got up abruptly and left the room. She was angry and jealous, but she thought Spencer would follow her.
Quite naturally, Constance observed, her neighbor had hosts of friends who often came early and stayed late, friends who seemed to exude, as it were, an air of prosperity and high living. Clearly, she was a woman to cultivate. Constance felt even more interest in her, now that Mrs. LeMar had pursued a bowing acquaintance to the point of an unsolicited invitation.
Instead of allowing others, to say nothing of himself, to lead her on in the path he and Mrs. Noble and the others had entered, he was taking the bit in his teeth, like a high-strung race horse, and was running away, now that Bella LeMar for the moment did not hold the reins. He was warning her openly against the game! Somehow the action appealed to Constance. It was genuine, disinterested.