As the night advanced she determined to stick to her post. What could it have been that Drummond was doing? It was no good, she felt positive.
Suddenly before her eye, glued to its eavesdropping aperture, she saw a strange sight. There was a violent commotion in the store. Blue-coated policemen seemed to swarm in from nowhere. And in the rear, directing them, appeared Drummond, holding by the arm the unfortunate Sleighbells, quaking with fear, evidently having been picked up already elsewhere by the wily detective.
Muller put up a stout resistance, but the officers easily seized him and, after a hasty but thorough search, unearthed his cache of the contraband drug.
As the scene unfolded, Constance was more and more bewildered after having witnessed that which preceded it, the signing of the letter and the passing of the money. Muller evidently had nothing to say about that. What did it mean?
The police were still holding Muller, and Constance had not noted that Drummond had disappeared.
"It's on the first floor—left, men," sounded a familiar voice outside her own door. "I know she's there. My shadow saw her buy the dope and take it home."
Her heart was thumping wildly. It was Drummond leading his squad of raiders, and they were about to enter the apartment of Adele. They knocked, but there was no answer.
A few moments before Constance would have felt perfectly safe in saying that Adele was out. But if Drummond's man had seen her enter, might she not have been there all the time, be there still, in a stupor? She dreaded to think of what might happen if the poor girl once fell into their hands. It would be the final impulse that would complete her ruin.
Constance did not stop to reason it out. Her woman's intuition told her that now was the time to act—that there was no retreat.
She opened her own door just as the raiders had forced in the flimsy affair that guarded the apartment of Adele.