As she spoke, she had quickly detached the little instrument and had placed it on Annie Grayson's arm. If it had been a Bertillon camera, or even a finger-print outfit, Annie Grayson would probably have fought like a tigress. But this thing was a new one. She had a peculiar spirit of bravado.

"Such terms as kleptomania," went on Constance, "are often regarded as excuses framed up by the experts to cover up plain ordinary stealing.

But did you wiseacres of crime ever stop to think that perhaps they do actually exist?

"There are many things that distinguish such a woman as I have described to you from a common thief. There is the insane desire to steal--merely for stealing's sake--a morbid craving. Of course in a sense it is stealing. But it is persistent, incorrigible, irrational, motiveless, useless.

"Stop and think about it a moment," she concluded, lowering her voice and taking advantage of the very novelty of the situation she had created. "Such diseases are the product of civilization, of sensationalism. Naturally enough, then, woman, with her delicately balanced nervous organization, is the first and chief offender--if you insist on calling such a person an offender under your antiquated methods of dealing with such cases."

She had paused.

"What did you say you called this thing?" asked Drummond as he tapped the arrangement on Annie Grayson's arm.

He was evidently not much impressed by it, yet somehow instinctively regarded it with somewhat of the feelings of an elephant toward a mouse.

"That?" answered Constance, taking it off Annie Grayson's wrist before she could do anything with it. "Why, I don't know that I said anything about it. It is really a sphygmomanometer--the little expert witness that never lies--one of the instruments the insurance companies use now to register blood pressure and discover certain diseases. It occurred to me that it might be put to other and equally practical uses. For no one can conceal the emotions from this instrument, not even a person of cast-iron nerves."

She had placed it on Drummond's arm. He appeared fascinated.

"See how it works?" she went on. "You see one hundred and twenty-five millimeters is the normal pressure. Kitty Carr is absolutely abnormal.

I do not know, but I think that she suffers from periodical attacks of vertigo. Almost all kleptomaniacs do. During an attack they are utterly irresponsible."

Drummond was looking at the thing carefully. Constance turned to Annie Grayson.

"Where's your husband?" she asked offhand.

"Oh, he disappeared as soon as these department store d.i.c.ks showed up,"

she replied bitterly. She had been watching Constance narrowly, quite nonplussed, and unable to make anything out of what was going on.

Constance looked at Drummond inquiringly.

He shook his head slowly. "I'm afraid we'll never catch him," he said.

"He got the jump on us--although we have our lines out for him, too."

She had glanced down quickly at the little innocent-looking but telltale sphygmomanometer.

"You lie!" she exclaimed suddenly, with all the vigor of a man.

She was pointing at the quivering little needle which registered a sudden, access of emotion totally concealed by the sang-froid of Drummond's well-schooled exterior.

She wrenched the thing off his wrist and dropped it into her bag. A moment later she stood by the open window facing the street, a bright little police whistle gleaming in her hand, ready for its shrill alarm if any move were made to cut short what she had to say.

She was speaking rapidly now.

"You see, I've had it on all of you, one after another, and each has told me your story, just enough of it for me to piece it together.

Kitty is suffering from a form of vertigo, an insanity, kleptomania, the real thing. As for you, Mr. Drummond, you were in league with the alleged husband--your own stool pigeon--to catch Annie Grayson."

Drummond moved. So did the whistle. He stopped.

"But she was too clever for you all. She was not caught, even by a man who lived with her as her own husband. For she was not operating."

Annie Grayson moved as if to face out her accusers at this sudden turn of fortune.

"One moment, Annie," cut in Constance.

"And yet, you are the real shoplifter, after all. You fell into the trap which Drummond laid for you. I take pleasure, Mr. Drummond, in presenting you with better evidence than even your own stool pigeon could possibly have given you under the circ.u.mstances."

She paused.

"For myself," she concluded, "I claim Kitty Carr. I claim the right to take her, to have her treated for her--her disease. I claim it because the real shoplifter, the queen of the shoplifters, Annie Grayson, has worked out a brand-new scheme, taking up a true kleptomaniac and using her insanity to carry out the stealings which she suggested--and safely, to this point, has profited by!"

CHAPTER X

THE BLACKMAILERS

"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 the hum of conversation and the s.n.a.t.c.hes of tuneful music wafted from the large dining-room where day was being turned into night.

She had dropped into the fashionable new Vanderveer Hotel, not to meet any one, but because she liked to watch the people in "Peac.o.c.k Alley,"

as the corridor of the hotel was often popularly called.

Somehow, as she sat inconspicuously in a deep chair in an angle, she felt that very few of the gaily chatting couples or of the waiting men and women about her were quite what they seemed on the surface.

The conversation from around the angle confirmed her opinion. Here, apparently at least, were two young married women with a grievance, and it was not for those against whom they had the grievance, real or imagined, that they were waiting so anxiously.

Constance leaned forward to see them better. The woman nearest her was a trifle the elder of the two, a very attractive-looking woman, tastefully gowned and carefully groomed. The younger, who had been the first speaker, was, perhaps, the more dashing. Certainly she appeared to be the more sophisticated. And as Constance caught her eye she involuntarily thought of the old proverb, "Never trust a man who doesn't look you in the eye or a woman who does."

Two men sauntered down the long corridor, on the way from a visit to the bar. As they caught sight of the two ladies, there was a smile of recognition, an exchange of remarks between each pair, and the men hurried in the direction of the corner.

They greeted the two ladies in low, bantering, familiar terms--"Mr.

Smith," "Mrs. Jones," "Mr. White" and "Mrs. Brown."

"You got my card!" asked one of the men of the woman nearest Constance.

"Sorry we're late, but a business friend ran into us as we were coming in and I had to shunt him off in the other direction."

He nodded toward the opposite end of the corridor with a laugh.