“One day, when Blanche was giving a reception, for which she had issued cards, five or six most notorious women entered, having received cards, to scandalize her, and one acknowledged that she had been hired by Masson to go there.
“Then, when Blanche sent for him and threatened him with arrest and prosecution if he continued the persecutions, he declared that he would continue them until she married him; that if she wanted to live it could only be as his wife——”
“Now,” said Nick, springing to his feet, “we have something substantial to go upon. I knew there was something back of all this indefinite suspicion of Mrs. Constant.
“It required Edith’s sympathy to get it out.
“What an infernal scoundrel the fellow is!
“What is true,” he continued, “is that we have for the first time knowledge of a threat on the part of Masson to kill Mrs. Constant.
“That becomes serious. Now we have a new motive for work.
“Patsy, you must be at the Grand Central Station to see your friends, Crummie and Graff, off to Chicago. Let them go, thinking that nobody suspects them.
“Then take up Masson’s shadow. That is to be your work for the present.
“In the meantime, I am growing alarmed about Ida. She was to wire me before this from Philadelphia.”