“I understand,” she said with a hasty glance at her watch and a covert look at Drummond.  “Let us go.  If we are to win we must keep our heads clear.  I shall see you to-morrow.”

For hours during the rest of the night Constance tossed fitfully in half sleep, thinking over the problem she had assumed.

How was she to get at the inside truth of what was going on across the hall?  That was the first question.

In her perplexity, she rose and looked out of the window at the now lightening gray of the courtyard.  There dangled the LeMar telephone wire, only a few feet from her own window.

Suddenly an idea flashed over her.  In her leisure she had read much and thought more.  She recalled having heard of a machine that just fitted her needs.

As soon as she was likely to find places of business open Constance started out on her search.  It was early in the forenoon before she returned, successful.  The machine which she had had in mind proved to be an oak box, perhaps eighteen inches long, by half the width, and a foot deep.  On its face it bore a little dial.  Inside there appeared a fine wire on a spool which unwound gradually by clockwork, and, after passing through a peculiar small arrangement, was wound up on another spool.  Flexible silk-covered copper wires led from the box.

Carefully Constance reached across the dizzy intervening space, and drew in the slack LeMar telephone wires.  With every care she cut into them as if she were making an extension, and attached the wires from the box.

Perhaps half an hour later the door buzzer sounded.  Constance could scarcely restrain her surprise as Mrs. Lansing Noble stepped in quickly and shut the door herself.

“I don’t want her to know I’m here,” she whispered, nodding across the hall.

“Won’t you take off your things?” asked Constance cordially.

“No, I can’t stay,” returned her visitor nervously, pausing.

Constance wondered why she had come.  Was she, too, trying to warn a newcomer against the place!

She said nothing, but now that the effort had been made and the little woman had gone actually so far, she felt the reaction.  She sank down into an easy chair and rested her pretty head on her delicately gloved hand.

“Oh, Mrs. Dunlap,” she began convulsively, “I hope you will pardon an entire stranger for breaking in on you so informally—­but—­but I can’t—­I can’t help it.  I must tell some one.”

Accustomed as she was now to strange confidences, Constance bent over and patted the little hand of Mrs. Noble comfortingly.

“You seemed to take it so coolly,” went on the other woman.  “For me the glamour, the excitement are worse than champagne.  But you could stop, even when you were winning.  Oh, my God!  What am I to do?  What will happen when my husband finds out what I have done!”

Tearfully, the little woman poured out the sordid story of her fascination for the game, of her losses, of the pawning of her jewels to pay her losses and keep them secret, if only for a few days, until that mythical time when luck would change.