There was something of the look of the hunted animal brought to bay at last in Carlton Dunlap's face as he let himself into his apartment late one night toward the close of the year. On his breath was the lingering odor of whisky, yet in his eye and hand none of the effects. He entered quietly, although there was no apparent reason for such excessive caution. Then he locked the door with the utmost care, although there was no apparent reason for caution about that, either. Even when he had thus

"I came here to hide, to vanish forever from those who know me." The young man paused a moment to watch the effect of his revelation of himself to Constance Dunlap. There was a certain cynical bitterness in his tone which made her shudder. "If you were to be discovered—what then?" she hazarded. Murray Dodge looked at her significantly, but said nothing. Instead, he turned and gazed silently at the ruffled waters of Woodlake. There was no mistaking the utter hopelessness and grim determination of

"We'll land here, Mrs. Dunlap." Ramon Santos, terror of the Washington State Department and of a half dozen consulates in New York, stuck a pin in a map of Central America spread out on a table before Constance. "Insurrectos will meet us," he pursued, then added, "but we must have money, first, my dear Senora, plenty of money." Dark of eye and skin, with black imperial and mustache, tall, straight as an arrow, Santos had risen and was now gazing down with rapt attention, not at the map, but at C

"Won't you come over to see me to-night? Just a friendly little game, my dear—our own crowd, you know." There was something in the purring tone of the invitation of the woman across the hall from Constance Dunlap's apartment that aroused her curiosity. "Thank you. I believe I will," answered Constance. "It's lonely in a big city without friends." "Indeed it is," agreed Bella LeMar. "I've been watching you for some time and wondering how you stand it. Now be sure to come, won't you?" "I shall be

"I suppose you have heard something about the troubles of the Motor Trust? The other directors, you know, are trying to force me out." Rodman Brainard, president of the big Motor Corporation, searched the magnetic depths of the big brown eyes of the woman beside his desk. Talking to Constance Dunlap was not like talking to other women he had known, either socially or in business. "A friend of yours, and of mine," he added frankly, "has told me enough about you to convince me that you are more th

"Do you believe in dreams?" Constance Dunlap looked searchingly at her interrogator, as if her face or manner betrayed some new side of her character. Mrs. deForest Caswell was an attractive woman verging on forty, a chance acquaintance at a shoppers' tea room downtown who had proved to be an uptown neighbor. "I have had some rather strange experiences, Mildred," confessed Constance tentatively. "Why!" "Because—" the other woman hesitated, then added, "why should I not tell you! Last night, Cons

"They have the most select clientele in the city here." Constance Dunlap was sitting in the white steamy room of Charmant's Beauty Shop. Her informant, reclining dreamily in a luxurious wicker chair, bathed in the perspiring vapor, had evidently taken a fancy to her. "And no wonder, either; they fix you up so well," she rattled on; then confidingly, "Now, last night after the show a party of us went to supper and a dance—and it was in the wee small hours when we broke up. But Madame here can mak

"Take care of me—please—please!" A slip of a girl, smartly attired in a fur-trimmed dress and a chic little feather-tipped hat, hurried up to Constance Dunlap late one afternoon as she turned the corner below her apartment. "It isn't faintness or illness exactly—but—it's all so hazy," stammered the girl breathlessly. "And I've forgotten who I am. I've forgotten where I live—and a man has been following me—oh, ever so long." The weariness in the tone of the last words caused Constance to look mor

"Madam, would you mind going with me for a few moments to the office on the third floor?" Constance Dunlap had been out on a shopping excursion. She had stopped at the jewelry counter of Stacy's to have a ring repaired and had gone on to the leather goods department to purchase something else. The woman who spoke to her was a quietly dressed young person, quite inconspicuous, with a keen eye that seemed to take in everything within a radius of a wide-angled lens at a glance. She leaned over and

"They're late this afternoon." "Yes. I think they might be on time. I wish they had made the appointment in a quieter place." "What do you care, Anita? Probably somebody else is doing the same thing somewhere else. What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose." "I know he has treated me like a dog, Alice, but—" There was just a trace of a catch in the voice of the second woman as she broke off the remark and left it unfinished. Constance Dunlap had caught the words unintentionally above th

"I have a terrible headache," remarked Constance Dunlap to her friend, Adele Gordon, the petite cabaret singer and dancer of the Mayfair, who had dropped in to see her one afternoon. "You poor, dear creature," soothed Adele. "Why don't you go to see Dr. Price? He has cured me. He's splendid—splendid." Constance hesitated. Dr. Moreland Price was a well-known physician. All day and even at night, she knew, automobiles and cabs rolled up to his door and their occupants were, for the most part, styl

"Newspaper pictures seldom look like the person they represent," asserted Lawrence Macey nonchalantly. Constance Dunlap looked squarely at the man opposite her at the table, oblivious to the surroundings. It was a brilliant sight in the great after-theater rendezvous, the beautiful faces and gowns, the exquisite music, the bright lights and the gayety. She had chosen this time and place for a reason. She had hoped that the contrast with what she had to say would be most marked in its influence o