“Well,” shouted the other voice menacingly, “do you want to know the truth?  Haven’t you read it often enough?  Instead of hoping you will return, they pray that you are dead!”

He hissed the words out, then added, “They prefer to think that you are dead.  Why—­damn it!—­they turn to that belief for Comfort!”

Constance had seized Mrs. Palmer by the arm, and, acting in concert, they threw both their weights against the thin wooden door.

It yielded with a crash.

Inside the room was dark.

Indistinctly Constance could make out two figures, one standing, the other seated in a deep rocker.

A suppressed exclamation of surprise was followed by a hasty lunge of the standing figure toward her.

Constance reached quickly into her handbag and drew out the little ivory-handled pistol.

“Bang!” it spat almost into the man’s face.

Choking, sputtering, the man groped a minute blindly, then fell on the floor and frantically tried to rise again and call out.

The words seemed to stick in his throat.

“You—­you shot him?” gasped a woman’s voice which Constance now knew was Florence’s.

“With the new German Secret Service gun,” answered Constance quietly, keeping it leveled to cow any assistance that might be brought.  “It blinds and stupefies without killing—­a bulletless revolver intended to check and render harmless the criminal instead of maiming him.  The cartridges contain several chemicals that combine when they are exploded and form a vapor which blinds a man and puts him out.  No one wants to kill such a person as this.”

She reached over and switched on the lights.

The man on the floor was Drummond himself.

“You will tell your real employer, Mr. Preston,” she added contemptuously, “that unless he agrees to our story of his elopement with Florence, marries her, and allows her to start an undefended action for divorce, we intend to make use of the new federal Mann Act—­with a jail sentence—­for both of you.”

Drummond looked up sullenly, still blinking and choking.

“And not a word of this until the suit is filed.  Then we will see the reporters—­not he.  Understand?”

“Yes,” he muttered, still clutching his throat.

An hour later Constance was at the telephone in her own apartment.

“Mr. Gibbons?  I must apologize for troubling you at this late, or rather early, hour.  But I promised you something which I could not fulfill until now.  This is the Mrs. Dunlap who called on you the other day with a clue to your daughter Florence.  I have found her—­ yes—­working as a waitress in the Betsy Ross Tea Boom.  No—­not a word to anyone—­not even to her mother.  No—­not a word.  You can see her to-morrow—­at my apartment.  She is going to live with me for a few days until—­well—­until we get a few little matters straightened out.”