Constance shook her head.  “Really,” she observed thoughtfully, “it’s a wonder to me how any one stays married these days.  Somebody is always mixing in, getting one or the other so wrought up that they get to thinking there is no possibility of happiness.  That’s where the crook detective comes in.”

Anita Douglas, confidence established now, poured out her story unreservedly, as there was little reason why she should not, a story of the refined brutality and neglect and inhumanity of her husband.

She told of her own first suspicions of him, of a girl who had been his stenographer, a Miss Helen Brett.

But he was careful.  There had never been any direct, positive evidence against him.  Still, there was enough to warrant a separation and the payment to her of an allowance.

They had lived, she said, in a pretty little house in the suburb of Glenclair, near New York.  Now that they were separated, she had taken a little kitchenette apartment at the new Melcombe.  Her husband was living in the house, she believed, when he was not in the city at his club, “or elsewhere,” she added bitterly.

“But,” she confided as she finished, “it is very lonely here in a big city all alone.”

“I know it is,” agreed Constance sympathetically as they parted.  “I, too, am often very lonely.  Call on me, especially if you find anything crooked going on.  Call on me, anyhow.  I shall be glad to see you any time.”

The words, “anything crooked going on,” rang in Mrs. Douglas’s ears long after the elevator door had clanged shut and her new friend had gone.  She was visibly perturbed.  And the more she thought about it the more perturbed she became.

She had carried on a mild, then an ardent, flirtation with the man who had introduced himself as “Mr. White”—­really Lynn Munro.  But she relied on her woman’s instinct in her judgment of him.  No, she felt sure that he could not be other than she thought.  But as for Alice Murray and her friend whom she had met at the Palais de Maxixe—­well, she was forced to admit that she did not know, that Constance’s warning might, after all, be true.

Munro had had to run out of town for a few days on a business trip.  That she knew, for it had been the reason why he had wanted to see her before he went.

He had, in fact, spent the evening in her company, after the other couple had excused themselves on one pretext or another.

She called up Alice Murray at the number she had given.  She was not there.  In fact, no one seemed to know when she would be there.  It was strange, because always before it had seemed possible to get her at any moment, almost instantly.  That, too, worried her.

She tried to get the thing out of her mind, but she could not.  She had a sort of foreboding that her new friend had not spoken without reason, a feeling of insecurity as though something were impending over her.