In the swim

AN INTERVIEW AT LAKEMERE—SOME INGENIOUS MECHANISM.—“WHOSE PICTURE IS THAT?”

Harold Vreeland was seated in a blaze of light, in his own rooms at four in the morning, anxiously awaiting a night visit from one who might unravel the whole mystery while the lonely Elaine Willoughby lay helpless in her secluded rooms, feebly struggling toward a return of her self-control.

“What new devil’s jugglery is this?” muttered Vreeland, pausing in his wolf stride. He carefully recalled every action of the newly-made Senator and yet he was baffled at every turn. “Was the newcomer an agent of a morose husband, an old lover, or an unwelcome apparition from the clouded past?” He was baffled.

For, he began to realize how baseless were his meaner suspicions of the past. There had been no unworthy love between Elaine and Hathorn. The devil’s poison of slander alone had excited Alida’s burning jealousy. She herself had only sought “a dead straight point” in the daring visit to his rooms. Elaine’s record was clear so far. “Was it only an old sorrow?” He pondered long. Even the pale-faced, proud girl, whom he would trap, so far had hugged her honest poverty to a stainless bosom.

“I’ve been dead wrong on Alynton’s game all along. There’s neither an old love, nor a new intrigue, there,” he growled. “Justine has clearly proved that. Their union is only to be termed, ‘strictly business.’

It had been a galling mortification to Vreeland in the past, that faintly disguised disdain of Senator David Alynton, who had always practically ignored him.

But, this new statesman, sturdy James Garston, had brought to their meeting an unfeigned western bonhomie.

The newcomer had sought him out eagerly. He had drawn the younger man aside, in a lull of the entertainment.

“We must meet and talk over western matters; we have the world’s coming treasury out there,” largely remarked the new Senator-elect.

“I am housed at the Plaza, to be near Miss Norreys, who is at the Savoy. I shall stay here a few days, and, we will have a luncheon together.”

In fact the acute Mrs. Volney McMorris had very deftly arranged it, for she was eager to matronize the resplendent Miss Norreys, to bask in the smile of this rising financial sun, and to have her own private chat with the young Fortunatus about the vanished Lady of the Red Rose. Her prompt social fastening upon Mrs. Willoughby, was only a grim proof that “the one who goes is happier than the one that’s left behind.”

The new Senator’s round bullet-head, his curved beak-like nose, his uncertain gray eye and unsmiling lips marked him as a man of power.

He bore in every movement the badge of hard-won success.

Vreeland had watched Garston keenly at the dinner and noted his poised manner, his brilliant flashes of silence, and the grave, undisturbed courtesy of his demeanor toward the marble-faced hostess. “A man of a level head,” was Vreeland’s verdict. And he tried to read the secret of Garston’s imploring glances.

There had been no lingering cloud over the table, and no shade of Banquo was evoked to chill the later merriment. Love, veiled and unveiled, deftly footed it, among the revelers, and, only Doctor Alberg’s steady eyes, anxiously fixed upon his “star” patient, proved that but one, besides Vreeland, realized the desperate battle against Time which Elaine Willoughby was fighting out to the last. The egoistic revelers imagined their hostess’ seizure to be a mere passing weakness. They all knew the strain of the exhausting New York season.

“Charming woman, our hostess,” frankly remarked Senator Garston to Vreeland. “Type all unknown to our modest Marthas of the Occident. Here in America, our women will soon be crowned queens, if I may trust to the ‘tiara’ bearing stories of the society journals.” And a casual remark from Vreeland brought out the admission that Senator Garston had never before met the hostess. “It was to my colleague, Alynton, that I owe the honor of this presentation,” said the newly-made toga wearer. “And, as Mrs. Willoughby has been so kind to my ward, Miss Norreys, in this new acquaintance, both pleasure and duty join hands.”

“Doctor Alberg has sent for a trained nurse to help me watch with her to-night. Be on your guard.

“When this new Senator had made his adieu, I was hidden behind the curtain in the long hall. I saw him neatly drop his glove, as if by accident. Alynton and that tall golden-haired girl were waiting outside as he stole back.” The French woman fairly hissed, “He is the man to fear. I am sure they are old lovers. For, he caught her by both hands and fairly devoured her with his eyes.

“‘To-morrow, alone, at Lakemere,’ she said. Voilà! Milady. Just a woman, like the rest of us.”

“Justine, that paper, the one in her corset. A thousand dollars for a copy of it.”

“I will get it to-night!” the velvet-eyed spy cried.

“Go now. You will hear from me soon. Don’t leave your room for a moment, and, gare la Kelly. She reports daily on you to our full-blown ingenue. Whatever turns up, you will surely hear from me. I’ll earn your money yet.”

It was five o’clock when the haggard German physician crawled up Vreeland’s stair. He was worn and exhausted.

The angry Teuton drank a second dram and then relapsed into a sullen silence.

“Alberg, my boy, you are a good doctor, but, you don’t know women, only your blue-eyed, clumsy frauleins, over there. This American woman is made of fire and flame. Tell me, what sort of a person is your nurse, Wilmot?”

“She’s a good one—an ‘out and outer.’ She goes home to England next week. She has some ideas of her own to work out over there.”

“Tell that smart woman to slip down here and see me before our patient comes back. I’ll be here from four to seven to-day. And, mind that you put her ‘dead on’ to me, as the holder of a hundred pound note for her.”

“Good,” grunted Alberg.

“And, now, my son of Galen, what was it that upset Mrs. Willoughby?” Vreeland was eagerly studying the German’s face.

“The old thing. She has raved all night about her child. I only brought her out of the attack with the strongest anti-spasmodics that man dare to use, short of clear cold murder. It’s a terrible risk,” sighed Alberg.

“I am ill, and, must have a long sleep. You can take a day off yourself. Clear out for the day and don’t let me hear a single footfall about my rooms,” were the staccato injunctions of the excited schemer.

“If that nurse only comes,” he murmured, as he closed his weary eyes.

It was eleven o’clock when a light step echoed in Vreeland’s hall, and the swishing sound of Justine Duprez’s robe made the banker leap to his door. The French girl had her will at last. She stood amid the splendors of Vreeland’s veiled Paradise—her lover’s home.

She cried out in glee, “Thank God! She is out of the way. I came here from the train. She absolutely forbade me to go with her. I have had the janitor’s boy watching all the trains. This Senator Garston went up the road an hour ago. The smart boy helped us last night in the cloak rooms, and, so, they are off alone together, up there, to-day.”

Vreeland’s eyes blazed in a mighty triumph. “To-night, you must help me, Justine,” cried the eager schemer.

She was not listened too, for with a ferocious joy, Vreeland leaped up, crying, “My God! I have her now. They are all in the hollow of my hand.”

He had glanced over the list of names written there, and a row of figures with some characters added, which seemed to glow before him in living flame.

He drew the Frenchwoman to his side, and there dashed off a check to his own order and carefully indorsed it.

“There’s your money, you jewel,” he gasped. “Listen. To-night, when she comes back, or to-morrow night, if she is again under the nurse’s watch, you must steal that envelope again. I will be waiting outside the Circassia, and stay all of both nights till I get the original paper that you copied. Put a simple sheet of blank paper back in the envelope and close it up. Sew it up again in the same place in her corset.

“We will leave that to be stolen by the nurse, Martha Wilmot. She will know what to do with it.

“She clears out of here for Europe in a few days. She will keep well out of Mrs. Willoughby’s way. And, so the Madame will think that she has been robbed by our sly, English friend. I will pay the nurse well and help her away. But that original paper must come to me.

“Be sure to leave Mrs. Willoughby’s garments where the nurse could easily reach them—no one shall suspect you. I’ll hold you safe—it is our own secret. Alberg will, of course, raise a devil of a row about the nurse clearing out, and robbing him, but only after she is gone.”

“Nonsense. The woman comes down here to-day. She will get her orders from me. You can put this blank envelope with its paper filling back in the corset, so that Mrs. Willoughby will feel that something is there. And, now, about tapping her telephone and telegraph wires.”

Justine had finished a glass of wine when she sprang to her feet. “To-day is the day of days. The janitor, August Helms, is all ready to tie on the wires to tap her telegraph and telephone. Come up to the Circassia at noon. I will take you into his room by the back way. He has arranged all with Mulholland, one of the two letter-carriers, to always delay Mrs. Willoughby’s mail by one delivery. Mulholland can hold them all for himself to handle. And, Helms, in his room, will then open and copy any we need. He is a German adept in letter opening.”

“You are a genius, Justine,” cried Vreeland. “You can bring Helms down to your own room in South Fifth Avenue and there you and I together can square up with him. We must be two to his one. This is the very day of days while she is fondly lingering at Lakemere with her own oldest lover.

“And now, my girl, take a good look around my den and then get out of here. It is too dangerous for us.

“For, you must never come here again. The janitor has sharp eyes.”

The rooms echoed to the laughter of hell as Vreeland’s fiery devil whispered, “Victory!” He had at last solved the mystery of a “business syndicate” which made him tremble as he feared its name might escape his lips. The copied paper gave a list of names whose publication would shake a nation’s counsels, and Garston’s name was there.

So, tiger-like and triumphant, he waited for the hour to go and arrange for his secret stealing of his dupe’s messages.

And, far away, at lonely Lakemere, where the trees now gleamed like ghastly silver skeletons of summer’s glories, the winds wailed around the silent mansion where Elaine Willoughby stood face to face with the man who had come out of her dead past, an apparition as grim and awful to her as the rising of the sheeted dead.

It was the struggle to the death of two proud and world-hardened hearts. The secret of her blighted youth was face to face with her now. And, the shadow of a crime hung menacingly over James Garston, the toga wearer. A statesman of a clouded past—a past known only to the defiant woman facing him on her own battle-ground.

When he would have drawn her to him, she flung him off and dropped, a shaken Niöbe, into a chair, with her stormy tears raining over her beautiful, pallid face. That single word, “child,” had disarmed her rising anger. For, she was facing one who knew all of the sealed past.

“My child, my child,” she sobbed.

But, James Garston was on his knees before her now.

“Our child—Margaret! It can all be made right, now. Trust to me. Let me take you openly to my heart. Be my wife once more. Be a world’s queen. I will make you happy.”

Bold as he was, he shuddered, as she sprang to her feet. “You hound!” she bitterly cried, and then slowly turned, and walked unsteadily to the door. He had found a way to wring her heart at last, but her courage had returned. The wrongs of her youth burned in her bosom again.

“Hear me. You must! You shall!” he pleaded, seizing her in his strong arms. “I knew not even the horn book of my own nature when we married as young fools marry.” She had torn herself away from him, and stood at bay with an unutterable loathing hardening upon her face. “I am rich, now, a Senator to be, and the friend of your friends.

The strong man counted upon the physical subjection of the woman once reduced to be his loving vassal—the girl wife who had lain in his arms.

And, master of her destiny once, he would now bend her to his will again.

His eyes were burning, his breath came quickly, and he awaited the physical revulsion of a weakened womanhood.

“There is always the tie that binds—the child—and, she belongs by Nature’s bond to me.”

But, the man who coarsely counted upon “a previous condition of servitude” as establishing a valid claim upon the Lady of Lakemere, shivered under the cold scorn of her words, for the wife of his youth seated herself, and, gazing into his eyes with an unutterable contempt, read the death warrant of his hopes.

“Let me cast up our accounts, here, now, in my home, Arnold Cranstoun, on this winter day, in a solitude on which you shall never intrude again save when I call upon you.

“The dead past is buried. Let it rest. Dare not to cry Resurgam! I dismiss all your sneers as to Alynton, and, I fear not your circle. You are as yet, but a clumsy neophyte there.

“Know, once for all, that your friends are in my power, but they trust to me, and, I am more than worthy of their confidence.

“For another circle of men of boundless power also trust me—men who would not trust them, save through me, and, men who would resistlessly crush you at my bidding.

“Margaret Cranstoun, the woman heart slain by your cowardice, the loving and tender girl-wife. Look back nineteen long years to see yourself the trusted bank-cashier, a rising man of thirty-two.

“I was then your slave, your loving slave, a wearer of self-forced heart shackles. I, the girl of seventeen, believed you to be my lover husband—a man among men.”

Senator James Garston’s head was bowed in his hands, as the accusing voice rang out. He heard the knell of his last hopes.

“A year later, when you basely fled, leaving me, the mother of your two months’ old helpless girl to face the employers whom you had robbed in your hidden speculations, then, only then, I learned of your double life in New York. I knew that I was the innocent hostage of purity and honor. The screen of your dearest vices.”

Garston groaned as the voice rose high in its scorn and Elaine Willoughby stood before him, with outstretched arm, an angel with a flaming sword, at the shut gates of his Lost Paradise.

“Where you fled to I knew not—I cared not, for, with young blood and a loving heart, I might even have shared the fate of a bold sinner.

“But a sneaking coward must learn that woman’s heart condones not poltrooning nor meanness!

“You would now hold the dead past over my head—trumpet to the world your own story!” she cried. “I can easily confirm it. I have kept all your letters—the story of your crime, the papers and vouchers which were found in your New York room.

The suffering man sprang up. “Not so. I have a right to my name. I legally changed it years ago. The bank is long years out of existence; there is also the limitation of the past years. No one would believe you.”

His voice was broken with helpless tears now.

“Look at me! look at me!” the splendid woman proudly cried. “Dare any man say that my life has been a lie? Hear my story.

“Starvation, cold charity or the ignominy of helpless dependence was all you left me. I put our babe away. I went out a toiler into the world. As a school teacher I drifted away to the far West, and only changed my name. I left our home to avoid the honest love of good men who would have married me for pity’s sake. For men were good to the shamed widowed Margaret Cranstoun.

“My clean hands were still linked by law to the unpunished fugitive felon. I am free now, and I know that you never would dare to speak. I know your coward soul. A judicial decree that you are dead can be easily had; your eighteen years of absence makes that my legal right. Widow of the heart, I will be a widow by law. But your coward silence will continue.

“Where did I gain wealth? I see the question in your eyes. I became a school teacher at Leadville. A few acres of ground and a cottage were the first fruits of my savings.

“The kindly mountain gnomes worked for me, with fairy friendship.

“Young yet—beautiful then—I became the ardent chase of men in marriage. My gold gilded my lonely life. Many wished to share it.

“I was made sadly wise, and I reaped my harvest of sorrows. Five years in Europe made me a woman of the world—an accomplished world wanderer. I have learned in these lonely years the delicious power of wealth.

“I followed your secret example. I legally changed my name to Elaine Willoughby. And my honest title is clearer than yours.

“I have an able lawyer to defend my rights, in whom you would find an implacable foe.”

She paused and spoke the final doom of his hopes.

“Had you come to me, red-handed, but loving, I might have forgiven you, followed you—loved you even in your crime—and suffered all to shield the one beloved head. I did love you once with my whole soul.”

There was the sound of choking sobs, and in an instant, Garston was on his knees before her. The silence was broken by her faltering accents.

“But now, freed by Nature’s reincarnation, loyal even yet to a dead past, I exult in the unchallenged ownership of my mind, body and soul. You would take to your bosom the woman you still find fair, rich, powerful and respected. Never! Nature revolts!

“For the starving outcast of the streets who sells herself for bread to the first chance comer were white as snow compared to the woman who would again sink to your level.

“Arnold Cranstoun, any man in the world but you may look on me with longing eyes.

“Your silence will be assured, for fear will seal your lips. Let there be neither approach nor avoidance—simply the oblivion of the absolute divorce of all laws, God’s, Nature’s, and man’s.

“Go now! If you ever seek to cross my path, beware! You may haunt the peopled solitudes around me and meet me as a chance acquaintance.

“Your ‘society drill’ will hold you in your place in the poor parade of this superficial life.”

She dropped her eyes, and her impassioned voice echoed sadly on his ears. He was defeated, and an agony rent his heart.

“Let me do something for you, Margaret,” he pleaded.

“I am above your power to aid,” the proud woman replied.

“Let me atone,” he begged.

“Dead beyond awakening is my heart, and you know it. Do not now add a hideous insult to Nature to your cowardly abandonment of the past.”

The dull, level coldness of her voice proved to him that she bore a frozen heart, one never to awaken at his touch. He cast himself down before her in a last appeal.

And then, on his knees before the woman whom he had sworn to cherish “till death do us part,” the strong man pleaded for the child whom fate had robbed from the clinging arms of its mother. Margaret Cranstoun sobbed:

The stately woman stood before him with the menace of a life in her eyes.

“This is the end of all! Go! You are safe from my vengeance now. I care not how you have dragged yourself up on Fortune’s wheel.

“Go! And if you ever break the sorrow-shaded stillness of my life, then, may God help you. For I will strike you down for the sake of that same fatherless child.”

A black storm of suddenly aroused jealousy swept over Garston’s face.

“Your handsome lover Vreeland shall be my prey, my tool, my confidant. I will creep into your heart through your own pleasant vice. And, by God! He shall find out the girl for me.”

When James Garston’s passion-blinded eyes cleared, he was standing there alone, and a sudden fear smote upon him.

The ghastly silence of the splendid deserted halls weighed upon him. He staggered out into the blinding snows, now falling, and crossed the park to where a sleigh waited at the garden gate.

He was half mad, as he wandered away under the trees, and he hurled away his revolver lest he should be tempted to die there before her windows.

“I have lost a woman upon whose breast a king’s head might proudly rest,” he said to that ghost of his dead self which rose up to mock the man of mark, the millionaire. “And—she loved me once. Fool—fool—and—blind fool!” he muttered.

A mad resolve thrilled him now.

His busy brain thrilled with plots of the one revenge left to him. “I will steal away both child and lover!” he swore.

Senator Garston’s face was sternly composed that night as he indited his invitation to the rising young banker to join him at the Plaza.

“Katie Norreys can soon twist him around her slim, white fingers—he is young and rash,” the cold-hearted millionaire mused. “I am safe in Margaret’s silence. My money will talk. My record is safe. I have made my calling and election sure. I’ll get Vreeland into the fair Katie’s hands.

“A little money will help. He shall be turned away from Margaret. Once that I have the girl, then Margaret will surely soften—for that child’s sake. By God! I’ll buy the girl’s heart! I have money enough, and I’ll outbid even Mrs. Elaine Willoughby.”

The Senator-elect felt a new glow in his heart, the ardor of a wolf-like chase, an untiring chase, for love, passion, and vengeance carried him on.

“I’ll live to laugh at her heroics yet,” he cried, “for I will bring her into camp. I am not accustomed to fail.” He was resolute now.

The lights were gleaming golden in the Circassia when a pale-faced woman crept back to the splendors of the pearl boudoir.

Could the three humble servitors have heard the accusing cry of Elaine Willoughby’s heart they would have known the anguish of a stricken woman’s arraignment of Providence.

“And he—oh, my God! He prospers, while my child is taken from me! Is this the price of my mother’s love, my empty heart, my vacant home, my death in life!”

It seemed as if God had spared the wrongdoer to smite her quivering mother heart.

Dr. Hugo Alberg and the stolid-faced Martha Wilmot were busily whispering in a corner of Mrs. Willoughby’s sick room that night long after midnight had sounded on the frosty air.

For, relaxed and broken by the enforced bravery of her struggle with the father of her lost child, the Lady of Lakemere had crept, bruised and wounded in soul, back to die or live, she cared not, in the peopled wilderness of the two million souls who envied her the lonely luxuries of her life.

“She has had one dose,” whispered Alberg. “She is dead safe to sleep till three o’clock. Give her this chloral carefully then. Get your work done as soon as you can, and at eight o’clock your expected telegram will call you away. The French woman will watch till the new nurse comes. You have seen young Vreeland?”

The Doctor’s eyes glowed like live coals.

“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s all right,” and her fingers tightly closed on the vial. “I am to meet him at the ferry. The boat sails at eleven. It will be all right.”

“You have left all where she can do the work?” whispered the miserly German, who already had the price of his treason in his pocket.

“Yes,” murmured Justine. “I’ll tell you all when we meet down there.”

The hoodwinked physician went out into the night, whispering: “I’ll be here at seven, on the watch.”

It was but half an hour later that a man seated in August Helms’ darkened basement room opened his arms as Justine Duprez glided in.

“She is sleeping like a log,” murmured the maid. “Here is what you want. The nurse will do her part later, and be sure that she clears out at once. I’ll keep the Doctor with me here till noon. She will get her ‘sudden telegram;’ he will be here on duty; while he is busied with the new nurse Martha will go and rob the Doctor’s office and rooms, and be soon on the sea. Then we are all covered.”

The schemer’s eyes gleamed as he pocketed the paper which made his patroness an involuntary traitor to her dangerous trust. Vreeland breathed in a happy triumph.

“You must not leave your rooms to-morrow. Keep in sight of the Kelly girl,” warned the Frenchwoman. “Now I will steal away.”

There were words murmured which bound the two wretches to each other, and they laughed as they pointed to the janitor’s new telegraphic instrument and telephone.

“When I have the extra instrument in my own room,” he exulted, “then if Miss Romaine Garland is not approachable I will soon find another more malleable.

“But the secret firm of Endicott & Willoughby will talk into my ear when they think that the whole world is theirs. It’s a royal plan,” he mused.

Justine’s gliding step had died away when Harold Vreeland crept out like a guilty thief.

“Where shall I hide this original,” he muttered, as he disappeared in the darkness. “I must find a place in my rooms. I cannot carry it about me.”

When he had regained the Elmleaf he dared hardly breathe as he carefully examined the original document which tied up the fate of the Sugar Syndicate with that of men whose very names he feared to utter.

“She is in my power at last. Her ruin is in my hands.

“And now to bring her into my arms to be my fond tool and willing slave.”

There was no “stock plunging” for two long weeks, as the illness of Mrs. Willoughby dragged on, and Martha Wilmot was well across the seas before the police of New York City had ceased to blunder around after the ungrateful nurse who had seemingly robbed her benefactor’s office and then decamped.

Mr. Harold Vreeland was astounded at the golden sunshine of Senator James Garston’s favors which followed on that luncheon at the Plaza Hotel which had made him a sworn knight in the rosy chains of Miss Katharine VanDyke Norreys.

Miss Mary Kelly’s desk, too, was vacant, for she lay at home ill with a fever, and it was at the side of the girl’s sick-bed that Mrs. Elaine Willoughby, still feeble and shaken in soul, suddenly seized a photograph from the mantel. “Whose picture is this?” she cried, her voice trembling in the throes of an emotion which swept her loving soul with wonderment and a new hope.