As Constance sat toying absently with some food at one of the snowy white tables, a man entered. A man in a tea room is an anomaly. For the tea room is a woman's institution, run by women for women. Men enter with diffidence, and seldom alone. This man was quite evidently looking for some one.
His eye fell on Constance. Her heart gave a leap. It was her old enemy, Drummond, the detective. For a moment he hesitated, then bowed, and came over to her table.
"Peculiar places, these tea rooms," observed Drummond.
Constance was doing some quick thinking. Could this be the detective Florence Gibbons had mentioned?
"The only thing lacking to make them complete," he rattled on, "is a license. Now, take those places that have a ladies' bar—that do openly what tea rooms do covertly. They don't reckon with the attitude of women. This is New York—not Paris. Such things are years off. I don't say they'll not come or that women won't use them—but not by that name—not yet."
Constance wondered what his cynical inconsequentialities masked.
"I think it adds to the interest," she observed, watching him furtively, "this evasion of the laws."
Drummond was casting about for something to do and, naturally, to a mind like his, a drink was the solution. Evidently, however, there were degrees of brazenness, even in tea rooms. The Betsy Ross not only would not produce a labeled bottle and an obvious glass but stoutly denied their ability to fill such an order, even whispered.
"Russian tea?" suggested Drummond cryptically.
"How will you have it—with Scotch or rye?" asked the waitress.