“That’s all right,” nodded Constance; “but you don’t know these crooked detectives nowadays as I do.  They can fake up evidence to order.  That is their business, you know, to manufacture it.  You may uncover a six-dollar operative, Mrs. Douglas, but are you the equal of a twenty-dollar-a-day investigator?”

The woman looked genuinely scared.  Evidently Constance knew some things she didn’t know, at least about detectives.

“You—­you don’t think there is anything like that, do you?” she asked anxiously.

“Well,” replied Constance slowly to impress her, “I saw your friend, Mrs. Murray, after you had left the Vanderveer, talking to a detective whom I have every reason to fear as one of the most unscrupulous in the game.”

“Oh, that is impossible!” persisted Mrs. Douglas.

“Not a bit of it,” pursued Constance.  “Think it over for a moment.  Who would be the last person a man or woman would suspect of being a detective?  Why, just such an attractive young woman, of course.  You see, it is just this way.  They reason that if they can only get acquainted with people the rest is easy.  For, people, under the right circumstances, will tell everything they know.”

The woman was staring at Constance.

“For example,” urged Constance, “I’m talking to you now as if I had known you for years.  Why, Mrs. Douglas, men tell their most important business secrets to chance luncheon and dinner companions whom they think have no direct or indirect interest in them.  Over tea-tables women tell their most intimate personal affairs.  In fact, all you have to do is to keep your ears open.”

Mrs. Douglas had risen and was nervously watching Constance, who saw that she had made an impression and that all that was necessary was to follow it up.

“Now, for instance,” added Constance quickly, “you say she is a friend of yours.  How did you meet her?”

Mrs. Douglas did not raise her eyes to Constance’s now.  Yet she seemed to feel that Constance was different from other chance acquaintances, to feel a sort of confidence, and to want to meet frankness with frankness.

“One day I was with a friend of mine at the new Palais de Maxixe,” she answered in a low voice as if making a confession.  “A woman in the dressing-room borrowed a cigarette.  You know they often do that.  We got talking, and it seemed that we had much in common in our lives.  Before I went back to him—­”

She bit her lip.  She had evidently not intended to admit that she knew any other men.  Constance, however, appeared not to notice the slip.

“I had arranged to meet her at luncheon the next day,” she continued hastily.  “We have been friends ever since.”

“You went to luncheon with her, and—­” Constance prompted.

“Oh, she told me her story.  It was very much like my own—­a husband who was a perfect bear, and then gossip about him that so many people, besides his own wife, seemed to know, and—­”