They had cut out the evening trips now, for fear of recognition.  She was working faithfully.  Already she had cleaned up something like fifty thousand dollars on the turn over of the stuff he had stolen.  Another week and it would be some thousands more.

Yet the strain was beginning to show.

“Oh, Graeme,” she cried, one night after she had a particularly hard time in shaking Drummond’s shadows in order to make her unconventional visit to him, “Graeme, I’m so tired of it all—­ tired.”

He was about to pour out what was in his own heart when she resumed, “It’s the lonesomeness of it.  We are having success.  But, what is success—­alone?”

“Yes,” he echoed, thinking of his feeling that night when she had left him at the elevator, of the feeling now every moment of the time she was away from him, “yes, alone!”

With the utmost difficulty he restrained the wildly surging emotions within him.  He could not know with what effort Constance held her poise so admirably, keeping always that barrier of reserve beyond which now and then he caught a glimpse.

“Let us cut out and bury ourselves in Europe,” he urged.

“No,” she replied firmly.  “Wait.  I have a plan.  Wait.  We could never get away.  They would find us and extradite us surely.”

She was coming out of a broker’s office one day after the close of the market, only to run full tilt into Drummond, who had been waiting for her, cat-like.  Evidently he had a purpose.

“You will be interested to know,” remarked the detective, watching her narrowly, “that District Attorney Wickham, who had the case in charge out there, is in New York, with the president of the Central Western Trust.”

“Yes?” she said non-committally.

“I told them I was on the trail, through a woman, and they have come here to aid me.”

Why had he told her that?  Was it to put her on her guard or was it in a spirit of bravado?  She could not think so.  It was not his style to bluster at this stage of the game.  No, there was a deep-laid purpose.  He expected her to make some move to extricate herself that would display her hand and betray all.  It was clever and a less clever person than Constance would have fallen before the onslaught.

Constance was thinking rapidly, as he told her where and how the new pursuers were active.  Here, she felt, was the crisis, her opportunity.

Scarcely had Drummond gone, than she, too, was hurrying down the street on her way to see Mackenzie’s pursuers face to face.

She found Wickham registered at the Prince Henry, a new hotel and sent up her card.  A few moments later he received her, with considerable restraint as if he knew about her and had not expected so soon to have to show his own hand.

“I understand,” she began quickly, “that you have come to New York because Mr. Drummond claims to be able to clear up the Graeme Mackenzie case.”