Constance Dunlap | Page 9

managed to maintain his outward composure admirably. Still

the little lifting of the curtain on the hidden mysteries of the new
detective art produced its effect. They were getting closer, and Dunlap
knew it, as Drummond intended he should. And, as in every crisis, he
turned naturally to Constance. Never had she meant so much to him as
now.
That night as he entered the apartment he happened to glance behind
him. In the shadow down the street a man dodged quickly behind a tree.
The thing gave him a start. He was being watched.
"There is just one thing left," he cried excitedly as he hurried upstairs
with the news. "We must both disappear this time."
Constance took it very calmly. "But we must not go together," she
added quickly, her fertile mind, as ever, hitting directly on a plan of
action. "If we separate, they will be less likely to trace us, for they will
never think we would do that."
It was evident that the words were being forced out by the conflict of
common sense and deep emotion. "Perhaps it will be best for you to
stick to your original idea of going west. I shall go to one of the winter
resorts. We shall communicate only through the personal column of the
Star. Sign yourself Weston. I shall sign Easton."
The words fell on Carlton with his new and deeper love for her like a
death sentence. It had never entered his mind that they were to be
separated now. Dissolve their partnership in crime? To him it seemed
as if they had just begun to live since that night when they had at last
understood each other. And it had come to this--separation.
"A man can always shift for himself better if he has no impediments,"
she said, speaking rapidly as if to bolster up her own resolution. "A
woman is always an impediment in a crisis like this."
In her face he saw what he had never seen before. There was love in it
that would sacrifice everything. She was sending him away from her,
not to save herself but to save him. Vainly he attempted to protest. She
placed her finger on his lips. Never before had he felt such

over-powering love for her. And yet she held him in check in spite of
himself.
"Take enough to last a few months," she added hastily. "Give me the
rest. I can hide it and take care of myself. Even if they trace me I can
get off. A woman can always do that more easily than a man. Don't
worry about me. Go somewhere, start a new life. If it takes years, I will
wait. Let me know where yon are. We can find some way in which I
can come back into your life. No, no,"--Carlton had caught her
passionately in his arms--"even that cannot weaken me. The die is cast.
We must go."
She tore herself away from him and fled into her room, where, with set
face and ashen lips, she stuffed article after article into her grip. With a
heavy heart Carlton did the same. The bottom had dropped out of
everything, yet try as he would to reason it out, he could find no other
solution but hers. To stay was out of the question, if indeed it was not
already too late to run. To go together was equally out of the question.
Constance had shown that. "Seek the woman," was the first rule of the
police.
As they left the apartment they could see a man across the street
following them closely. They were shadowed. In despair Carlton turned
toward his wife. A sudden idea had flashed over her. There were two
taxicabs at the station on the corner.
"I will take the first," she whispered. "Take the second and follow me.
Then he cannot trace us."
They were off, leaving the baffled shadow only time to take the
numbers of the cab. Constance had thought of that. She stopped and
Carlton joined her. After a short walk they took another cab.
He looked at her inquiringly, but she said nothing. In her eyes he saw
the same fire that blazed when she had asked him if there was no way
to avoid discovery and had suggested it herself in the forgery. He
reached over and caressed her hand. She did not withdraw it, but her
averted eyes told that she could not trust even herself too far.

As they stood before the gateway to the steps that led down into the
long under-river tunnel which was to swallow them so soon and project
them, each into a new life, hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles apart,
Carlton realized as never before what it all had meant. He had