MINE AND COUNTERMINE.
The mistress of Lakemere was frozen into a forced calm as she keenly
eyed Justine Duprez standing with open-eyed astonishment before the
woman whose heart was still racked with the sharp battle with Garston.
But Justine’s heart was tranquil. The nurse was far away over the seas
now.
The one man living who knew the vital secret of her life had thrown off
his mask in the bitter conflict of the afternoon.
“If you will not bring me into your life again, Margaret,” he cried, “I
swear that I will fight my way to that child’s side, and she shall know
how your cold pride is throttling a father’s honest love. It has been a
hard life, the lonely one I’ve led.
“And to that child’s side, I will yet win my way.
“Remember, Alynton and his friends must listen to me. I can crush you.
“The walls of your flimsy social fortification will fall around you at
my touch. Tell me, where have you hidden our child—your child, Margaret
Cranstoun! My child!” And a new fear had entered into the mother’s
soul, all bereft of a husband’s love.
The Senator’s appeal was the hoarse, pleading cry of a last despair,
and in it were the echoes of the last agony of a desperate man. There
before him, still defiant, stood the wife of his youth, glowing in her
autumn beauty, and at the last, madly desired by the revenge of an
outraged love.
All the triumphs of his life were only Dead Sea fruit, apples of Sodom.
For he knew that the proud, silent lips before him might tell the story
of a father’s shame to that unknown girl whose lovely face now haunted
him. The girl whose picture still rested on the heart of the yet
unbought Vreeland. For the schemer had carefully reclaimed his property.
“The past is sealed. You shall never hear her call you father. Mine she
is forever, brought forth in tears, nurtured in sorrow and mine alone,”
defiantly cried Elaine. “I have bought my freedom, with all these long
and lonely years, and it is Nature’s revolt against the recreated
passion of your youth.
“Tell me,” she sternly said, “had you found me poor, faded, broken, in
obscurity, would you have then begged to atone?” She faced him like a
tigress.
His quivering lips refused to lie, but he drew nearer to her
menacingly. “Stand off!” she panted. “Your ownership is forfeit. The
brute tyranny of marriage as made by man; you can not reforge the chain
I wore once. Every fiber of my flesh revolts against your touch. And
she—the pure, the innocent, you shall never see. I swear it!” He had
thus raged at her side in brutal menaces.
“I go now to Alynton. They shall know whom they trust with secrets that
would shake a nation,” the passion-blinded man growled, forgetting that
he had dropped to the mere bully. But the victorious woman laughed him
to scorn.
“I hold them, you and your masters, in the hollow of my hand,” the
defiant woman said. “At bay, a true woman fears nothing. Your ruin and
public shame await you. I will deal with them alone.” And so he had
failed.
When James Garston was gone, his mad thoughts goading him on to the
final purchase of Vreeland as the seal of his revenge, the exhausted
woman had sought her room. “I must telegraph for Judge Endicott,” she
muttered. “This paper must be placed where neither murder nor millions
can reach it.” She slowly examined the dangerous envelope, and then her
stricken heart stopped beating as the blank paper fluttered down at
her feet. Gone—when—where—how? A thousand times she had felt it there
resting on a heart now thrilled with a loving hunger for the beautiful
girl who was far away over the yeasty Atlantic surges, with the one
woman whom she could trust in life and death, Sara Conyers.
She had hardly felt the clasp of her daughter’s loving arms before fate
sundered them. Fate and fear had parted them.
Her mind was working with lightning rapidity as she awaited the
stubborn French maid’s answer. In an instant she revolved the whole
circle of her friends and foes. Who was the thief? Justine’s calm voice
recalled her to the troubles of the moment. “I have never seen it since
I sewed it in for you at the Arlington Hotel. Madame does not doubt me,
I hope. Have any of the jewels in my custody been stolen or your money?
When did Madame discover the loss?”
Under the clairvoyance of suspicion, Elaine realized the unmistakable
air of the _déclassée_, in the woman’s crafty face and the physical
abandon of her tell-tale bearing. And yet, she felt that Justine was
technically innocent.
Secure in a nearness to her generous employer, Justine Duprez had
lately given herself over to all the easy luxuries of a vicious life,
and the unerring record was now written on her smug face. There was
all the insolence of the woman’s vile nature shining in her velvety
eyes—the servant ready to turn and rend her mistress.
“Here is a possible enemy, a spy, the willing tool of others,” mused
Elaine Willoughby, as she rose and coldly said, “The matter is merely
an annoyance, not a loss. I however wish to be always able to trust
those around me.” In her own mind she quickly recalled the last time
when she had verified the existence of the document which bound up a
financial secret of national importance. It was on the day before the
dinner at which James Garston had come back into her life as a living
legacy of a dead past. The existence of the paper had been verified
then, in view of possible “business.” “When had it been stolen?” Her
long illness flashed upon her. There were a hundred chances since then.
“Madame may remember her long illness,” sullenly said the uneasy
Frenchwoman, at last. “There were two strange women in charge of you,
night and day. I was not responsible for them, the Doctor brought them
here. One of those nurses robbed Dr. Alberg himself later, and then ran
away. _Mon Dieu!_
“The story was in all the papers. And, _pardonnez moi_, Madame was
out of her mind. The story of that woman’s theft was a talk of the
town. Doctor Alberg supplied her place from the St. Vincent’s Hospital
service. Did he not tell you? But I am sure that he never knew that
Madame, too, had been robbed. And these women were in sole charge for
a fortnight of all your effects. They were in the sick-room night and
day. As for me, Madame, my character is my sole capital.”
She laid a bunch of keys upon the night stand. “If Madame will please
have some one verify her jewels, laces and wardrobe, I am ready to
depart. I shall see the French Consul. He will protect me. And I will
remain here, if Madame pleases, until my room and boxes are searched.
To-morrow I go. _À votre disposition!_”
The sly soubrette feared however that she had gone too far, as her
mistress sternly gazed at her with eyes flashing with indignation.
“Take up your keys, Justine, and go back at once to your room,” she
quietly said. “Send the housekeeper to me.”
In ten minutes, Justine Duprez listened to the quick galloping of a
horse, whirling a coupé away at a breakneck speed. There was help sent
for. Was it to be the police? She raged in her heart, for there was no
indication of her angry mistress’ intentions.
“Not a word can I send off to warn Vreeland. It is every one for
himself now. And she dare not arrest me, for all her quiet suspicions.
The other women were in charge. And Vreeland must protect me now.”
Justine felt reasonably safe.
The woman dreamed uneasy dreams, however, that night, for she had
realized in the past days, to her astonishment, that she had been
skillfully kept chained to her mistress’ side. She knew nothing of
the one darling hope of Elaine Willoughby’s heart, to hide Miss
Romaine Garland forever from the gleam of the pitiless eyes of the
passion-maddened husband of her youth. And the caution of the secret
council of friends had held her as a hostage indoors.
But Dr. Hugo Alberg was absolutely in the dark when he reached Lakemere
by the earliest morning train. He marveled at the absence of Justine,
when he awaited the summons of his supposed patient. The woman,
secretly frightened more every moment at her long isolation from her
only protector, was on duty, charged with carefully examining every
article of her mistress’ wardrobe, and searching all the rooms where
the invalid had been despoiled by parties unknown. She became bolder,
for as yet, they had not dared to arrest her.
Through the opened doors of the anteroom, Justine Duprez could see the
flushed face of the greedy German doctor as he conversed in a low tone
with the woman whose every faculty was now on the alert. It was an hour
of drawn out agony to her before the doctor hastened away, and from her
window, Justine could see him being rapidly driven back to the station.
And still her mistress was sternly silent.
That evening the household at Lakemere was reinforced by a detective in
plain clothes, who publicly assembled every inmate of the mansion house
and questioned them all, for some hours, upon every movement of the two
nurses who had been in charge of their mistress. A shadow of suspicion
brooded over the whole _ménage_ now. Justine Duprez was now conscious
of a burning gnawing at her heart.
For, all day the pale-faced cripple, Mary Kelly, had been working
with flying fingers at the side of Mrs. Willoughby, and the rattle
of the key and the clang of the telephone bell was unceasing. The
Frenchwoman’s nerves were shaken with the suspense.
“Vreeland is powerless here,” mused the frightened Frenchwoman. “He
forgot in his haste to tap the wires from Lakemere to the old Judge’s
office, and so, all harm can be done to us now. We are only digging in
the dark. We have no defense whatever. We are cut off from each other.
This house is really a prison for me now.”
The easy swing of Justine’s debonnair insolence would have moderated
had she known that a detective promptly met Doctor Hugo Alberg at the
Forty-second Street Station; that Mary Kelly’s schoolboy brother had
orders not to lose sight of Vreeland in his daily wanderings, until
relieved by the night detective; that the “Circassia,” too, was being
watched night and day, and that even Senator James Garston was now
provided with an invisible escort. For, Elaine Willoughby was fighting
for life and love now, to the death.
While Justine was held an unwilling listener to the detective’s
cross-examinations at Lakemere, Judge Hiram Endicott was closeted below
in a grave conference with Mrs. Willoughby, whereat Roundsman Dan Daly,
looking sheepish enough in mufti, watched the pale-faced Mary Kelly’s
slender fingers recording in shorthand all the directions of the
silver-haired lawyer.
It was midnight before the entire domestic force at Lakemere were
allowed to separate, after volunteering an examination of all their
rooms and luggage. They knew not what had been stolen, but a vague
distrust of each other was now written on all their sullen faces.
“This forces me to volunteer to do the same, and so, cuts off my
lawsuit for damages,” snarled Justine, as she descended to find the
rooms of her wearied mistress in darkness.
The hastily summoned counselors had departed to New York, without
the Frenchwoman even learning of their identity. And now, in her
loneliness, Justine Duprez became the prey to a sudden fear.
In the silence of the night she conjured up visions of a condign
punishment reaching only herself. Her fellow-conspirator, her ignoble
lover! If he could only be warned.
It was one o’clock when she stole out into the silent gardens dreaming
around the mansion. It was a desperate plan, but it would warn her
lover and accomplice. If she could only reach the village!
But it was two miles to the railroad station. Once there however,
a French restaurateur, who was her slave, could send a dispatch to
the old hag in charge of her rooms on South Fifth Avenue. She could
even send a messenger boy down to warn Vreeland. And the letter which
explained the dangers now threatening them all was hidden in her bosom,
ready for the mail, and inclosed under cover to the old woman. The
little haunt at the station was open all night for the trainsmen and
freight handlers—a sort of all-night caravansera.
And she knew she could trust Pierre Gervais. A throb of guilty pride
stirred her bosom. He was her easily subjugated slave, and her
countryman.
Young, alert and active, the two miles of country road was nothing to
the hardy Parisienne, child of the _trottoirs_. Her hand was already
upon the latch of the nearest gate, as a dark form glided to her side.
She was trapped!
“Rather late for a walk, Mademoiselle,” quietly remarked the detective,
who had stolen after her noiselessly. “You must beware of the night
air. It is treacherous.” In a sullen silence, Justine Duprez returned
to the house. “Here is where you went out; I guess that you know the
way back,” the detective meaningly said, as he resumed his steady tramp
around the house. And the baffled woman slunk upstairs in a silent
wrath.
Safe in her room, Justine Duprez hastened to burn the letter which now
weighed upon her breast with a crushing weight. “My God! If it had
been daylight and they had searched me! Then, the prison cell would
have received me.” With chattering teeth she crept to a corner, and,
unlocking her trunk, took a deep draught from the brandy bottle. She
eyed herself in the glass. Her face was the very image of guilt. Its
mien was that of a hunted woman. “There will soon be trouble for others
now,” she defiantly said. “The only story that will save me from prison
for this attempt is the lame one of a lover in the village. _Va banc!_
I have lost my place anyway; my character can follow it. This cool
woman below is not deceived. They have cut all our wires. I am to be
dogged to death here, day by day. But they can prove absolutely nothing
as to the cursed paper. And my character is just as good as before.”
She laughed a defiant laugh and hummed a bar of a song from La
Perichole. “_O mon cher amant, je te jure, que je t’aime de tout
mon coeur._ He has to shield me—to support me now,” she cheerfully
concluded, as the strong cognac cheered her, “for he is in my power,
and Alberg, too; and that sly boots, August Helms also. They dare not
abandon poor Justine. At the last I confess, and save myself, for my
money is all safe in Paris. Perhaps the Madame would pay me well; who
knows?”
With profound astonishment, Justine Duprez saw the next day glide by
without reproach of any kind. Her mistress had resumed her normal
calm, and beyond a formal search of the whole house, the matter of the
robbery was left in _statu quo_.
Even when Mrs. Willoughby, at night, directed her to pack all her
immediate belongings for an instant return to New York City, there
was no mention of that intercepted nocturnal visit to the station so
skillfully planned. It looked as if the storm was blowing over. The
household had regained its normal calm.
The telegraph and telephone wires were voiceless and but one ominous
cloud lingered over the woman whose personal belongings had passed a
most triumphant inspection. She was not able to evade the sight of the
keen-eyed cripple or of her mistress, for even ten minutes.
And the cat-like nature of the woman rightly warned her of a coming
storm. It was impossible for her the next day, on their departure,
to reach her faithful dupe, Pierre Gervais, for even a moment at the
station.
“Remember, Justine, to watch over my jewels,” said her mistress,
calmly. “Miss Kelly and yourself must not separate for a moment. I hold
you both responsible for them.” And Justine knew the faith of Mary
Kelly but too well.
“I wonder if I am to be arrested on our arrival in New York,” gloomily
mused the woman, who now felt herself entrapped. But her spirits rose
as she realized that once in the “Circassia” there would probably be a
visit from Harold Vreeland himself, at once. “If I can only see him,
warn him, then we are safe, for he will shield me,” she exulted.
And Dr. Alberg, with August Helms, too, would be under her control.
Then it would be an easy matter to thoroughly forewarn the man to whom
alone she looked now for safety.
With true Gallic prevision, her secretly stolen hoard of the seven long
years past, as well as Vreeland’s bribes, was now all safely deposited
in her own name in Paris, and she could gaily laugh at the wolf at the
door. For there were also the two nurses between her and a conviction.
“Yes,” she exulted, “I can snap my fingers at them, and say ‘_Bon jour,
M’sieur Loup! Comment ça va._’”
The only thing now was to comfortably reach Paris. For she knew that
even across the sea she could draw upon Harold Vreeland’s golden
hoard. “He may even come over there, to me, at Paris, and I can finish
plucking him there.” With a demure sleekness, she plumed herself
and closely watched the inscrutable face of her beautiful mistress.
Justine well knew the awkwardness of a mistress daring to arrest her
confidential maid. There was, however, a perfect serenity lingering
upon the noble lines of the human mask which now baffled even the
velvety-eyed Justine, even though her wits were sharpened by her fears.
In the period since the discovery of the abstraction of the vastly
important document, Elaine Willoughby had been fortified with Judge
Endicott’s calm counsels. She knew, too, that she was surrounded with
friends, lynx-eyed and active, and that her emissaries were in the
enemy’s camp.
It had only taken Endicott ten minutes to give her a list of her
probable friends and foes. “The whole thing proves that you were known
to be lulled into the idea that your precious deposit was still there.
No one would dare to threaten or blackmail you and produce that paper;
it is too risky. It would land all the gang into Sing Sing at once.” He
recounted all those whom its possession could possibly benefit. “There
is Garston, a rugged egoist, and a cool-headed, middle-aged possible
wooer. A man who would confidently pit his money and place against
Alynton, even though younger and a thousand times his superior in any
woman’s eyes.”
Elaine Willoughby listened in a hushed relief, for, as fond woman
often does, she had only told her aged Mentor half the truth. She had
merely hinted at Garston’s growing infatuation. “There is Vreeland,
whom I thoroughly detest, and think him at heart capable of any
sneaking villainy. Moreover, Noel also thinks so. Your generous fancies
have cost you dearly in the past, in your easily volunteered faith.
Separately or together this dangerous document would benefit Garston
and Vreeland.
“Now, mark me. Garston would use it, of course, only to bring you to
his arms. You would hear of it from him only, for that purpose only.”
“And Vreeland?” tremblingly demanded his client.
“Would blackmail you for a fortune if you ever fell in his power. I
hate his sleek ways, his insincere eyes, his cat-like moves.
“Minor enemies are Alberg and your French maid. This German doctor
shall not have sole charge of your health again. His explanation about
the nurse is a very lame one. Of course, you can not pin him down, for
he refuges himself behind an ignorance of your loss, and points to her
flight and the hubbub in the papers and the police records.
“Of course, you were too ill to be bothered, and so you may have been
despoiled by either the maid or one or both of the nurses.
“Justine alone knew where the document was; she has been only the agent
of some one of the three; perhaps of all. A rich widow’s doctor too may
be her nearest foe. Why in God’s name did you not have a reputable
family physician? In your easy seclusion you thought yourself safe.
“Now go away, and leave them all to me. All depends upon your absolute
unconcern, and leaving them to me. The rats will come together as soon
as you are out of the way.”
When Hiram Endicott said adieu, it was with a last injunction to Elaine
not to use either the telegraph or telephone in her absence. “The fact
is, my dear child, if you had married some good man instead of dallying
along with these discoveries, you would now be proof against all such
attacks.”
The grumbling old Judge thought of a golden-hearted, manly lover whose
secret he had unwittingly surprised, and sighed when he was on his
homeward way. “Given to a woman for her choice, a sly knave, a handsome
fool, and a man really worthy of her, she will try either of the
first two before ever thinking of the noble heart under her feet. The
experience of every other woman seems to be merely thrown away. It is
the song of the Pied Piper of Hamelin over again.”
The old lawyer swore a deep oath in his rage. “If I can not protect her
against the weaknesses of her own heart, I will at least punish some of
these banded rascals. For they will soon fall into my trap.”
To the astonishment of the mystified Justine Duprez, there was a new
butler on duty in the “Circassia,” a man whose cold and piercing eyes
made her tremble. And also a deft-handed, middle-aged American woman,
whose husband, an extra servant, was evidently cast for “responsible
duties.” And she could not divine the meaning of all this, but she was
tied down to her lonely rack.
The long day dragged away—a day of imprisonment and one of isolation.
There was no visit of the ardent-eyed Vreeland, that envy of all rising
men! And Doctor Hugo Alberg, too, was conspicuously absent.
The Parisienne felt the toils closing around her, as her mistress
called her to her side before dinner. But the “Madame” was perfectly
unmoved.
“I am leaving here for some weeks, Justine,” she carelessly said. “All
your duties in my absence will be to continue to search this entire
apartment with Miss Kelly for the paper, which I may have mislaid. Miss
Kelly, who will remain here, will have entire charge in my name, and I
expect you to remain here with her. You will thus have ample time to
make a most careful search, and very likely you will find the paper,
only a mere formal legal document.”
The Frenchwoman gasped: “Of course, I am free to go out as I wish?”
“Certainly, Justine,” was her mistress’ reply. “But always with Miss
Kelly, as she may need you to help her at any moment. I leave her as my
representative.”
The ashen pallor of fear tinged Justine Duprez’s cheeks, as she bowed
in silence. “They know all, and I—I—must hold Vreeland now, between
myself and the prison door.” Her mistress’ easy politeness gave no
ground for mutiny or quarrel.
The frightened maid knew not whither her mistress had departed when the
“Circassia” was deserted that evening by both the new body servants and
the Lady of Lakemere. Their use as a bodyguard was all too evident.
But the resolute, pale-faced stenographer was on duty there and ready
to enter upon her new kingdom. There was but one forlorn hope left to
Justine—a hurried visit to August Helms, and to send the janitor down
to the Elmleaf with a message to Harold Vreeland. She had not left the
building, and her little absence was unnoted.
“Tell him that I must see him at once on a matter of life and death,
and that he must come to your rooms and wait there to meet me. It is
the only way, and he must come without a moment’s delay, for all our
sakes! Go!”
The stolid German janitor smiled over the ten-dollar bill, which he
pocketed, and after an hour’s waiting at the Elmleaf, learned from
the parchment-faced Bagley that Mr. Harold Vreeland was dining at the
Savoy with Senator Garston and Miss Norreys. A grand, private “swell
function,” and so, likely to be a late one.
“I’ll give him your message,” obligingly said Mr. Vreeland’s man. “I
’ave always to wait up for him, you know. He has to be undressed by me.
So, I am sure to see him.”
Helms was anxious to get away and sample the good “Münchner Leist-brau”
in his brother-in-law’s saloon near by, and so he yielded up his story
with a sly wink. “Fine girl, that Justine. They are all the same—these
pretty French maids.”
When he lumbered away, he did not realize that Judge Hiram Endicott
had received the message before the triumphant Harold Vreeland had
returned, flushed with both love and wine. The blundering janitor had
played into the enemy’s hands, and Bagley had easily earned a heavy
reward.
Before Vreeland sat in hiding the next morning, awaiting Justine in
Helms’ rooms at the “Circassia,” Hugh Conyers handed a cipher dispatch
to Mrs. Elaine Willoughby at Washington, on her way to Asheville, in
the far North Carolinian hills. “There is the missing link, Madame,”
said Conyers. “Vreeland and your maid have jointly robbed you. This
vulgar janitor is only their tool and paid go-between. Doctor Alberg
and Vreeland were shut up together for some hours yesterday, and you
will find that the janitor has probably robbed your private letters in
their interest. I’ll wire now to Officer Dan Daly, and have him watched
day and night. He is only a beer-sodden fool. But we will just let them
go on, and drop one by one, into the trap. You will later find Garston
lurking behind it all. I think I begin to see his little game. Somehow,
I distrust that man,” and he murmured, semi-unconsciously, as he gazed
at the agitated woman beside him:
“Your lonely life has made you an easy prey heretofore to both schemer
and fortune-hunter. You will have now Romaine to guard, and you need
help. You can not go on and brave society’s natural curiosity.
“And, no half explanations will do. When we have recovered your missing
document, you must abandon forever all your operations in the Street,
and go away to some safe European land, either Sweden, Switzerland or
Germany, and, moreover, under a good guard.
“If you stay here, you need a resolute man at your side, one who knows
all your enemies, and one who can protect you. It is the revenge of
Nature’s laws. You can not be father and mother both to your beautiful
Cinderella—God bless her!”
“And do you think that my friends are in any danger over the loss of
the stolen document?” tremblingly said Elaine, fixing her eyes fondly
upon his earnest face.
“No,” said the journalist. “There has been time already to have struck
at them. The paper is only held to coerce you—either to gain over your
hand in marriage, or else, money will be the price of your safety.
“If it’s Vreeland, it will be merely money. If it’s Garston, and far
the more dangerous of the two—a man not foolish enough for criminal
blackmailing threats—then he wants to control both you and Romaine.
“Of course, he has no claim whatever on Romaine. He would only use her
as the pivot to turn your heart toward him.”
Elaine Willoughby’s eyes were filled with sudden tears. “If I only
dared to tell you all!” she murmured.
But as their hands met, Hugh Conyers brokenly said: “I am yours to
the death; I can wait for your words, Elaine. Romaine is safe under a
watchful guardian. Roper was an old Wells-Fargo shotgun messenger; a
trusted Pinkerton man later, and as Romaine is Sara’s roommate, and as
Roper never leaves them by day, you and I can wait here without fear
till the demand is made on you.
“And then, you may find the two men whom I fear turn up together. But
the very moment they take any steps that indicate the possession of the
document, the tables are turned.
“They are then in our power. And Bagley may further trap Vreeland.”
“He may have sold his secret to Senator Garston,” faltered Elaine
Willoughby. “The only man on earth whom I fear.”
“Fear nothing, however, while I am at your side, and Endicott is
our Blucher in reserve. Our fears are always more real than our
hopes,” said Conyers, as he relapsed into a brown study. He feared a
self-betrayal.
The winsome woman at his side was gazing at him with a new and tender
light in her eyes. “How noble he is! How true!” she sighed; for Hugh
Conyers’ friendship was a rock in the desert of her life.
It was after four that afternoon when Harold Vreeland, plainly dressed,
sauntered into the rear entrance of the “Circassia,” and sought the
rooms of August Helms, the janitor. He was only waiting for the
final sale of a soul and to hear the full story of Justine. The cold
relegation to his routine duties at the office, and Mrs. Willoughby’s
message, had now cut off all hopes of a nearer social approach.
“I must be very careful,” he mused. “These fellows down here are all
on the watch; and if Elaine abandons me, I am half stranded with my
winter’s extravagance and, my poor fifteen thousand dollars will not go
very far. But, Garston counsels me to keep cool, to play my old game,
and to post him. He must now give me his open aid, and Elaine may not
then dare to thrust me out.
“And if I married Katharine Norreys, that would be the fairest reason
for a transference into Senator Garston’s camp.
“He must give me his entire business in stocks.”
He had quietly dropped into his old business routine, and the waxen
mask of his face was unruffled even before Wyman and Noel Endicott, his
foes in ambush. He had in some dim way realized that Elaine Willoughby
had only used him as a lever to crush the dead favorite, Hathorn. And
he began now to fear her variable nature.
“I do not dare to accuse her,” he growled, “for Alida’s visits were a
treason to my trust. Does she know of them?” He breathed freer at the
rumors of the approaching marriage of the golden-hearted Potter with
the woman who was his natural mate. “That will keep her mouth shut
forever, for her own sake!” meanly exulted Vreeland.
When Justine glided into the dark back room of the janitor, her excited
lover cut short all tenderness.
“Tell me, for God’s sake, all you know! We can make an appointment for
South Fifth Avenue afterwards.”
He had brought a roll of crisp bills to stimulate Justine’s memory,
and when he slipped away half an hour later, his heart was throbbing
wildly. He was armed at all points now.
In his mean egoism, he saw the storm lowering only over Justine’s head.
“Bah! they will merely chase her over to Paris; a few thousand will
close her mouth there.
“And I can surely afford it, when I marry Katharine Norreys, a
millionairess _in posse_!”
He went directly to the Savoy Hotel, after sending up a beautiful
corbeille of flowers. His mind was made up at last. “Justine is all
right. She dare not talk. And they will seal her lips and send her out
of America.” He laughed lightly. “My capricious employer! You are only
playing my game for me. For I should not care to have Justine Duprez as
a bridesmaid. It will be well to have her out of the way. Garston might
use his sly arts on her.”
Lulled by his mean selfishness he forgot all his own risks, in
believing the now half-desperate maid to be the single object of
suspicion.
He little knew that the police were quietly watching every movement
of himself, Doctor Alberg and the now fretful Justine. The cool body
servant, Bagley, was a spy by night and day; and even janitor August
Helms and the two letter-carriers at the “Circassia” were under the
surveillance of roundsman Dan Daly’s friends in plain clothes.
A minute mark on every letter and a special time list enabled Miss Mary
Kelly, self-possessed and untiring, to compare daily her list with the
chief clerk of Station Z.
An average detention of two hours on every letter, and the use of
prepared decoys, told of the unfaithfulness of the janitor and the
collusion of the unfortunate Mulholland, who had succumbed to the
demands of a thirst beyond his salary. For the other letter-carrier had
vindicated himself, and aided to trap his fellow.
Harold Vreeland was now ready for his final bargain with the
stony-faced Senator James Garston. He had withdrawn himself from
general society, and, as envious swains said, was “making the running”
now on Miss Katharine VanDyke Norreys.
The tall, blonde beauty’s exquisite grace, her superb dress, her
Western free-lance wit, and all the brilliant glow of her youthful
freshness, accentuated the charms of golden hair and the almost
pleading violet eyes _à l’Imperatrice Eugenie_.
Once or twice Vreeland fancied that he had discerned a tenderness
beyond their relations in her manner to Senator Garston, but his whole
faculties were now devoted to the arrangement of his dual future
relations.
“I can easily get my price from Mrs. Willoughby—the price of her
peace—and I might find a way to discover and return the dangerous
paper.
“A voyage to London, hunting down Martha Wilmot, and then, a return of
the paper to her as a conquering hero.” In fact, the custody of the
paper now became a source of daily worry to him. He dared not give it
to any other. He feared to deposit it in any bank of the city or in a
safety vault.
“I am king over Justine while I have it,” he mused, “and to convey it
about me is a fearful risk. If I leave it in hiding, a house may burn,
and there is always the unexpected to fear. If I should fall ill—” He
began to grow morbidly cowardly.
He was lulled by Elaine Willoughby’s silence as to her loss. “Of
course,” he reflected, “Doctor Alberg, the two nurses and Justine
were the only ones who had access to her during the illness following
Garston’s sudden appearance. I am a ‘rank outsider’ in all that.”
It was clear to him that the Lady of Lakemere had accepted Doctor
Alberg’s ingeniously contrived explanation as to Martha Wilmot’s
robbery. But the paper—the paper! What to do with it now?
In fact, Judge Hiram Endicott, after a long examination of the
newspapers and police records, had finally dismissed the frightened
German physician with the remark: “I suppose that this sly adventuress
of a nurse thought her patient had concealed some bank bills or stocks
in that womanly hiding place, the corset, and has undoubtedly destroyed
the private papers, which were of no value to any one but the owner.”
The able old lawyer calmed the frightened doctor’s all too evident fear
of losing his “star” patient.
Those same private papers, the original and the copy, had been already
shifted by Harold Vreeland, from time to time, through a dozen
different hiding places.
“Damn them!” he growled. “If I burn them, I am safe, but then I lose my
hold on Elaine. If I sell them to Senator Garston, I am in his hands as
a criminal, and forever in his power. I’ll make my bargain with him,
and then, cover over my breach with Mrs. Willoughby by a well-devised
return. If she would only give me a sign of her real purposes!” He was
in a quandary, and had no counsel.
He never knew that Hugh Conyers wrote the long and even unusually
friendly letter from Asheville, in which his patroness announced her
intention of a long voyage “for a complete rest and change of air.”
A tour, perhaps, around the world via Japan, but he did know that he
was to assist Noel Endicott and his cool partner, Wyman, in the routine
business.
“Stocks appear to be standing on a dead level,” she wrote, “and so, I
will lose nothing in my absence.”
The clear intimation that he would receive fifteen thousand dollars a
year for his services, and that the “Elmleaf” apartment would be kept
up as an extra account, satisfied him.
“It will be unnecessary for you to write to me for orders. I may go
on from here,” the letter concluded; “and you will receive all my
final wishes later, through Judge Endicott, by the hands of Noel. Miss
Kelly, in charge at the ‘Circassia,’ will liquidate all the ‘Elmleaf’
bills as usual, through Bagley. I shall close up both my rooms at the
‘Circassia’ and Lakemere. Please acknowledge the receipt of this to my
Asheville address.”
“By Jove! She is a cool hand!” cried Vreeland. “The Colorado Springs
humbug and the southern trip was only devised to outwit Garston. She
will go around the world and meet her child in a safe hiding-place.
Now I am ready to sell out to Garston for a substantial consideration.
I am safe, and, I can easily hoodwink her.”