Horace Chadwick was stirring the next morning before anyone else in the
house. He crept down the main stairway in a suit of pink pajamas and a
purple bathrobe and made straight for the front door. He opened it and
peered out on the porch. The morning papers had not yet arrived. He
slipped back in the hallway and sat down on a settee. He had had a
sleepless night and he was in a rotten humor. The wife of his bosom
hadn’t spoken a word to him since the affair of the breakfast table the
day before and he had been so unmercifully “guyed” by every friend he
met that he had taken refuge in his library early in the afternoon and
had smoked three times as many black cigars as were good for him.
Chilvers had been inaccessible since the visit of the deputation and
every effort to get in touch with anyone on the Bulletin had been met
with the response that “explanations will be made in tomorrow’s paper.”
To make matters worse the Rev. Dr. Chaddow had called to offer spiritual
consolation to “dear, kind Mrs. Chadwick.” He had heard the cleric
intoning his sympathy in the drawing room and had been obliged to stand
at an open window to cool off and keep himself from rushing in and
laying violent hands on the reverend gentleman. The story was the talk
of the town and telephonic reports from other members of the aggrieved
group of prominent citizens brought word of the continuance of violent
hostilities in nearly a score of households.
The memory of these things seethed in Mr. Chadwick’s mind as he sat with
his aching head bent forward on his hands and heard the library clock
chime six. Presently a dull thud was heard against the door. Mr.
Chadwick jumped up and stepped out on the porch again. He picked up the
tightly rolled little bundle of newspapers a boy had just thrown in from
the sidewalk, and slammed the door shut behind him. He eagerly unrolled
the package, picked out the Bulletin and held up the front page under
the shade of a tall hall-lamp.
Della, the cook, who was coming down the front stairs in direct
violation of a household rule at this particular moment, was frozen in
her tracks by the incisive explicitness of a blistering exclamation
which came up out of the hall below. It was followed by murmurs and
mumbles which she couldn’t quite make out, then by a chuckle or two and
finally by a hearty laugh that sent her scurrying upstairs again and
down the back way, convinced that the gentleman of the house had
suddenly gone out of his mind.
Mr. Chadwick followed her up with the nimbleness of a school boy, waving
the paper in his hand. He knocked loudly at his wife’s door.
“Elizabeth,” he shouted, “God’s in his heaven—all’s right with the
world.”
“What’s that?” came a sleepy voice from behind the locked door.
“The blonde peril has passed on out to sea,” he said gayly. “Take a look
at this morning’s Bulletin.”
Mrs. Chadwick unlocked the door and admitted her husband. He blithely
escorted her over to the window, drew up the curtain and flashed the
paper in front of her blinking eyes. At first she saw only a smear of
black type and a dancing set of little pictures. The type presently
resolved itself into a five column headline which told a story that the
whole town would be chuckling over in another hour:
BANKER SATISFIES
GRUDGE; NEARLY
BREAKS UP HOMES
––––
Fate and Theatrical Press Agent
Play Into Hands of Donald
McDonald and Give Him Sweet
Revenge After Many Years.
––––
HE WHO LAUGHS
LAST LAUGHS BEST
Mrs. Chadwick gazed bewilderingly at the flaming headline and at the pen
and ink sketches illustrating the story which followed—sketches
picturing with comic effect little scenes like that which transpired at
her own breakfast table the morning before.
“I don’t understand,” she said weakly.
“Read the first few paragraphs and you will,” chuckled her husband.
His wife obediently read the introduction to the long story which
Crandall had written.
On a certain Spring night a score of years ago a certain Baltimorean
gazed up at the star spangled heavens on the desolate shores of a
little inlet of Chesapeake Bay twenty long miles from a railroad and
fifteen from any human habitation and swore by all the nine gods
that sometime, somehow, some place he would get even collectively
and appropriately with two dozen of his fellow club members who had
just played him what he considered the scurviest trick known to
mortal man. He had been kidnapped on his wedding night and dumped
without ceremony on the loneliest spot in this corner of the
world—all by way of a joke.
This same man sat yesterday in the living room of his country home
with a perpetual grin on his face and a heartful of joy. He knew
that every living man of that party of jokesters was suffering
something approximating the torments he suffered on that night of
nights and that he had stirred up more trouble in a score of
households than a half a hundred genuine vampires might have
succeeded in doing.
Opportunity chose the disguise of a theatrical press agent when she
finally knocked after all these years—which statement leads
naturally to an account of the real inside of the story of the
projected millionaires’ chorus girl joy ride party which amused and
startled this city yesterday.
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