"It works both ways. The right kind of woman can make a man change his ways—even a hardened old bachelor. Who could have guessed that I would ever fall in love?"
Helen sighed.
"What is love? We have it to-day; it eludes us to-morrow. A few weeks ago I thought I loved my husband better than any being in the world. To-day, I can hardly look him in the face. How do you account for it?"
Dropping into a chair, the lawyer look serious.
"I can't account for it, nor can I blame you. Kenneth has returned from South Africa a changed man. Whether the wreck and the loss of the diamonds affected his mind I do not know. Only a psychologist could determine that. But he is not the same. Where is he to-night?"
Helen threw up her hands.
"Do I ever know?" she exclaimed wearily. "I haven't seen him since morning, and don't expect to see him before breakfast to-morrow. He's at his club or drinking and carousing, or in some gambling house playing roulette. How do I know?"
"It is certainly a most singular case," said the lawyer meditatively. "Mr. Parker and I have gone carefully over his accounts at the Company's office. Everything is perfectly regular. There only remains the missing diamonds. We have detectives working on half a dozen clues but so far we have accomplished nothing. We have also gone to Washington to get the secret service men interested in the case on the ground that if the diamonds are here they were smuggled in and no duty was paid. But we found the secret service men busy following up counterfeiters. The country is being flooded with counterfeit $10 bills—a splendid reproduction, almost defying detection. It is believed that the plates and presses from which they are made are right here in New York and the whole secret service force is at work trying to run the counterfeiters to earth. This is why our diamond case is going so slowly. They are so busy following up the counterfeiters they have no time for us."
Ray, much interested, leaned eagerly forward.
"A counterfeit ten dollar bill, did you say?" she demanded.