Constance was thinking rapidly.

“It is now after four o’clock,” she said finally, looking at her wrist watch.  “You say it was not half an hour ago that Drummond called on you.  He must be downtown about now.  Your husband will hardly have a chance more than to glance over the papers this afternoon.”

Suddenly an idea seemed to occur to her.  “What do you suppose he will do with them?” she asked.

Mrs. Douglas looked up through her tears, calmer.  “He is very methodical,” she answered slowly.  “If I know him rightly, I think he will probably go out to Glenclair with them to-night, to look them over.”

“Where will he keep them?” broke in Constance suddenly.

“He has a little safe in the library out there where he keeps all such personal papers.  I shouldn’t be surprised if he looked them over and locked them up there until he intends to use them at least until morning.”

“I have a plan,” exclaimed Constance excitedly.  “Are you game?”

Anita Douglas looked at her friend squarely.  In her face Constance read the desperation of a woman battling for life and honor.

“Yes,” replied Anita in a low, tense tone, “for anything.”

“Then meet me after dinner in the Terminal.  We’ll go out to Glenclair.”

The two looked deeply into each other’s eyes.  Nothing was said, but what each read was a sufficient answer to a host of unspoken questions.

A moment after Mrs. Douglas had gone, Constance opened a cabinet.  From the false back of a drawer she took two little vials of powder and a small bottle with a sponge.

Then she added a long steel bar, with a peculiar turn at the end, to her paraphernalia for the trip.

Nothing further occurred until they met at the Terminal, or, in fact, on the journey out.  On most of the ride Mrs. Douglas kept her face averted, looking out of the window into the blackness of the night.  Perhaps she was thinking of other journeys out to Glenclair, perhaps she was afraid of meeting the curious gaze of any late sojourners who might suffer from acute suburban curiosity.

Quietly the two women alighted and quickly made their way from the station up the main street, then diverged to a darker and less frequented avenue.

“There’s the house,” pointed out Mrs. Douglas, halting Constance, with a little bitter exclamation.

Evidently she had reasoned well.  He had gone out there early and there was a light in the library.

“He isn’t much of a reader,” whispered Mrs. Douglas.  “Oh—­it’s clear to me that he has the stuff all right.  He’s devouring it, gloating over it.”

The sound of footsteps approaching down the paved walk came to them.  Loitering on the streets of a suburban town always occasions suspicion, and instinctively Constance drew Anita with her into the shadow of a hedge that set off the house from that next to it.

There was no fence cutting it off from the sidewalk, but at the corner of the plot a large bush stood.  In this bower they were perfectly hidden in the shadow.