Peter V. Wilkinson was taken to his home in his big Mastodon car.
With him, besides the chauffeur, were his daughter Leslie and Colonel
Morehead. The news of the verdict, the sentence, and the release on
bail had travelled even faster than the sixty-horse-power machine whose
passengers had to fight their way through an impacted mass of humanity
which filled the sidewalk and the street in front of Wilkinson's big
place on the Drive. But then it was not every day that people had the
chance to look upon an ex-multi-millionaire who had been sentenced to
ten years at hard labour and had given a million-dollar bail!
With difficulty they reached the door, and a moment later it closed
upon them.
"Where's Mrs. Wilkinson?" asked the multi-millionaire of the first
footman he came across. And in an aside to Morehead: "I suppose the
missus will have a few remarks to make."
He was informed that Mrs. Wilkinson was in her room and feeling
poorly,--"Very, very poorly," the servant had been told to say,--a
condition of late chronic with the lady. And she had developed another
alarming condition: her increasing avoirdupois, the disappearance
of the last remnants of her charms, the palpable bankruptcy of her
husband, and her envy of her step-daughter Leslie--the only member
of the household who still had grace of mind and face and figure, to
say nothing of wealth--all these had developed in the lady a latent
ferocity, a tigerish temper which seemed to hold unlimited force
behind it. All over the great house her shrill virago's voice could be
heard terrifying the servants; in short, her sudden rise to power was,
perhaps, best described by another member of the household. "The missus
rules the roost now," was the way her husband put it, and he knew
whereof he spoke. Indeed, for that matter, Wilkinson, himself hitherto
fearing no one, and priding himself in the fact, actually trembled
now during the few moments that he was compelled to be in the lady's
presence.
"Colonel, you've got to come with me," begun Wilkinson.
"Not I," was the brief refusal.
"You've got to come if I have to pay you to do it," insisted the
husband. "I won't go up alone."
And Colonel Morehead would probably have used an even more forcible
expression of refusal to do the husband's bidding had he known that
at that very moment his right-hand man was closeted upstairs with his
wife, and was telling her,-- with one of his inscrutable smiles,--a
smile that was intended to convey that it rested wholly with him
whether Wilkinson would get off or not,--that Wilkinson was convicted,
because the men who took the witness stand happened to tell the truth
and had ended emphatically with: "The whole truth, and nothing but the
truth."
But it happened that when they entered on tiptoe the lady's
boudoir--Morehead having been finally persuaded, much against his
will--the lady did not deign to acknowledge Morehead's presence, but
sobbed out to her husband:
"You did not stop to consider me! Why did you let them do this thing to
you? It all falls on me. The intolerable disgrace, shame, humiliation!
You, a felon, a convict, a common thief, a forger!" One after another
she hurled these epithets at him, while Flomerfelt discreetly withdrew.
Wilkinson looked at Morehead for sympathy; then he answered with illy
assumed contrition:
"Yes, my dear."
"I can't face anybody--not my dearest friends," went on the lady. "I
shall never be able to go anywhere again--never."
Wilkinson grinned feebly at his lawyer.
"They say I won't, either, for the next ten years," he said, in
soothing tones.
His jibe aroused the sleeping tigress in her. The lady rose and pointed
toward the door. Her gown was a masterpiece of dressmaking art, for
singular as it may seem her income had not been stopped. Upon her
breast lay jewels worth many thousands; about her neck was clasped a
dog-collar weighted with heavy pearls; and her fingers sparkled with
gems.
"You can go!" exclaimed the lady, stamping her foot--this lady who
would have been nobody without the wealth that this man had lavished on
her. "All these years you've considered everybody but your wife," she
went on. "I've had to bear the brunt of it all. I--I.... The idea of
you letting them send you up for ten years, of heaping all this infamy
on me! I shall sue for divorce, do you hear, divorce!"
"Yes, my dear," said Wilkinson, again meekly glancing at his counsel.
"Go!" she exclaimed; then added with commendable melodramatic force:
"You and your paid hireling there, leave me!"
Colonel Morehead grew purple in the face. He advanced toward his
client's wife.
"Madam," he began angrily.
"Come, Morehead, come away!" exclaimed Wilkinson, and he led him out
into the hall where he said: "Don't you know she'd have scratched your
face if you'd stayed there any longer?"
Tumultuously they descended the stairs and crept into the den on the
floor below.
"That's over," sighed the husband, setting the decanter on the table
and passing the cigars. And for a while, at least, the two men smoked
in peace.
* * * * *
Blissfully happy was the condition that Leslie told herself that she
was in that evening. They had assured her after the council of war
behind closed doors that everything would come out right. And now, last
but not least, Beekman was alone with her and telling her the same
thing.
"The verdict is ridiculous," he said. "Public prejudice, that's all.
The Appellate Division will fill it full of holes."
"You're sure?" she asked, still a trifle dubious.
Beekman smiled confidently.
"Look here, Leslie," he returned consolingly, "lots of rich men have
been indicted and tried lately, haven't they? You haven't heard of any
of them having been imprisoned so far, have you? It's just a bit of
hysteria, but the Appellate courts don't get hysterical. We'll win out
upon appeal."
"There's--there's something, Eliot, I wanted to say to you." She
hesitated a moment, and then went on: "If I'd been on that jury and a
murderer had been on trial, after hearing your defence, no matter what
I knew your man had done, I would have acquitted him, I know. I think
you're wonderful!"
"If only our jury had felt as you feel, Leslie," he responded soberly.
"If only they had acquitted," --and he was looking into her eyes
now,--"why, things would be different to-night, so far as you and I are
concerned."
The girl flushed prettily, but did not dare to meet his glance.
"We're going to fight it to a finish, aren't we?" she faltered.
"That's the compact," he returned. "You're right--we'll fight it to a
finish--first."
"To see you, Miss Wilkinson." The voice was that of Jeffries, and he
was handing her a card. Leslie took it and, turning slightly pale,
started to leave the room. Before going out, however, she stopped and
made her excuse to Eliot, begging him to wait until she returned. In
the hall she asked Jeffries where her caller was to be found; she was
told that he was in the music-room. In front of the door she paused and
considered a moment. Not that she was not genuinely grateful for all
that Leech had done for her father that afternoon, but out of all that
day's experiences one thing clung to her memory more persistently than
any other: the audacious admiration in the glance of the man who had
spoken to her in the court-room and was now waiting for her.
However, she swept into the room and held out her hand.
"Miss Wilkinson," said Leech, meeting her half way and holding her hand
in his longer than necessary, "I had to come here to explain my part
in your father's prosecution. Personally I am not responsible for it. I
am a mere machine. Murgatroyd presses the button and we--I start up and
go through the day's work, willy nilly. I wanted you to know, as I said
before, that I am not responsible."
Never once did the man's eyes leave the girl's face; his look was one
of bold admiration. He wanted the dainty girl before him, wanted the
things that she stood for: the ease, the excitement, the power that
great wealth brings. Besides, he was assured of something that Beekman
did not even suspect, that Leslie, even, didn't know, and that was that
Peter V. Wilkinson had somewhere millions upon millions, and that the
man who married Leslie Wilkinson would sip the nectar of the gods from
the first tolling of the marriage bell.
"I know, Mr. Leech, you merely did your duty," she answered somewhat
coldly, lowering her eyes under his frank gaze. "We have intelligence
enough for that. We're not altogether narrow here."
"I wanted to be sure that you understood my position," he proceeded,
"to feel that my sympathies are with your father--with you. Yes, to
the extent that were I a free agent, and not bound by my oath to the
People, I'd turn in and work my fingers to the bone for your father."
He moved a little closer to her, and added significantly, "for you."
When Leslie returned to Beekman, singularly enough, she said nothing to
Beekman of the Assistant District Attorney's brief visit; nor later did
she mention it to her father. It would have disturbed Beekman; it would
have pleased Wilkinson; but she could not know that.