BOOK III—On a Lee Shore.
CHAPTER XI.
MISS MARBLE’S WATERLOO!—A LOST LAMB!—HER VACANT CHAIR.—SENATOR GARSTON’S DISCLOSURE.—SARA CONYERS’ MISSION.—MISS GARLAND’S DISHONORABLE DISCHARGE.—A DEFIANCE TO THE DEATH.—“ROBBED!”
In the two weeks after the successful affixing of those snake-like coils of wire which led the private messages of Mme. Elaine Willoughby into janitor Helms’ guarded private apartment, Mr. Harold Vreeland had effected a thorough understanding with that worthy. The trapping devices worked to a charm. All was now ready for a final betrayal.
Secure in his autocratic rule, August Helms buried his shock head in the beer seidl and tyrannized with a good-humored roughness over the cringing tradesmen visiting the Circassia, and, a greedy gossip, he made his “coign of vantage” a warm nook for letter-carrier and policeman and the high class “upper servants” of the families who lived above him, in a royal Americanized luxury in that great social fortress, the Circassia. Helms was a modern tyrant.
His round, gray-blue eye twinkled as Justine Duprez would slyly slip in and read off the printed tape of the Wheatstone instrument, a duplicate sender and receiver of the same pattern being neatly encased in a pretty cabinet in the pearl boudoir above. And Mrs. Willoughby doubted, feared, suspected—nothing.
But all in vain did Helms record the telephoned messages which were trapped on the instrument which was his especial care. There was nothing to record of moment. A lull seemed to hover over every speculative interest of the convalescent woman.
The stillness of death now marked Mr. Harold Vreeland’s “business department” at the Elmleaf. The illness of Mary Kelly had cut off all special communication with Mrs. Willoughby at the Circassia, and he had been forced to give Miss Romaine Garland a furlough “under full pay” until Mrs. Willoughby’s trusted operator could resume her desk. The young girl shunned any tête-à-tête labors. It was in virtue of a warning from the acute Joanna Marble that Vreeland gravely bade his mysterious beauty rest herself and “await further orders.”
“She is of the finer clay,” warningly remarked Miss Joanna. “One toss of that proud head and she would be off like a startled fawn. You must trust to a woman—only a woman—to lead a woman on. Beware of rashness. You would lose her.”
There was an innocuous desuetude now clinging to all Vreeland’s crippled plans.
For, soberly attentive in his duty calls, he had left daily cards at the Circassia, supplemented with flowers whose dreaming beauty might have touched a heart less wrung than Elaine’s.
Admitted but once to her presence, he marveled at the serious change in her appearance.
After receiving her orders, he now knew that he was free for a month to follow on his social pleasures and to watch, down in Wall Street, the executive matters of the firm and note the gradual liquidation, dollar for dollar, of all proved claims against the defunct firm of Hathorn & Wolfe.
He recognized the cool-headed sifting of Mr. James Potter’s lawyers, under the mandates of that young Crœsus in Paris.
“A fair, square settlement, dollar for dollar,” was Potter’s openly avowed business plan.
The last flurries of the sudden Sugar speculations had all died away, and Vreeland at last believed Mrs. Willoughby’s description of the market.
“There is nothing in sight. I shall let all speculation alone until Dr. Alberg pronounces me able to stand business excitement. Your time is your own till I call you back to your post and send Miss Kelly down to her work again. She will act as my private secretary until I am thoroughly well.”
And Vreeland, now fearful that he might be as suddenly dropped as Frederick Hathorn had been, forbore to press on the confidence of the woman whose thinned cheeks and hollow eyes told of some internal fires eating away her vitality. He was unable to extract any information of value from Dr. Hugo Alberg. And the thieving nurse was now safe over the sea—the robbery of the envelope still undiscovered.
The German medical worthy was really puzzled. In the secrecy of Vreeland’s rooms he confided that though all the depression of the skillfully administered overdoses of chloral had worn away, his patient was wearing herself to the verge of a collapse.
“Mental trouble! mental trouble!” he growled. “Neither Justine nor my new nurse (whom I dare not fully trust) can gain the slightest clew to her sorrows. The Madame has grown cat-like, too, in her secretive ways. There is old Endicott always hovering around, and that newspaper fellow, Hugh Conyers; and, besides, his raw-boned artist sister, Miss Sara, is closeted with her nearly every evening. What they are all up to is a devil’s wonder.
“Are they plucking her of her gold? There is such a thing as social blackmail. Any lonely woman of fortune usually has a ring of hungry sycophants around her.”
The German groaned helplessly. He wanted that same gold, and wanted it badly.
“And you, of course, think that you should be the king-pin of the whole machine,” sneered Vreeland. The half-angered German snorted a warning.
“Look out for yourself,” growled Alberg. “She does not let the French maid go out of her sight now, and her new nurse has not dared to leave. Remember, I will hold you responsible about the stolen envelope. I have covered up my own tracks.”
And then he proudly exhibited the newspaper clipping headed, “An Ungrateful Protégé,” which described the heartless pillaging of Dr. Alberg’s office and rooms by “Miss Martha Wilmot,” who had “decamped for parts unknown.” The police detective opinions and the portentous interviews were all set out in extenso.
“When Milady finds that she was been robbed, too, then look out for squalls,” was the parting admonition of the Doctor. It brought grave shadows to Vreeland’s face.
Harold Vreeland was startled when his dupe left him. For it now flashed over him that his evening cartes de visite had lately only elicited the same stereotyped answer: “Mrs. Willoughby is too unwell to see anyone.”
He had, however, “improved the shining hours” by a flank movement to the Hotel Savoy, where he had drifted far, very far, into the good graces of that sparkling heiress, Miss Katharine Norreys. And his daily welcome grew warmer with each visit. He was getting on famously.
Senator James Garston’s absence “on Washington visits,” with the usual trips of a busy money magnate from fever center to fever center of the golden whirlpool, had left the young man to “exploit” the many graces of the tall, willowy blonde. He had often mused over the possibility of an advantageous alliance. “Here is a woman, young, rich, and with a powerful Senatorial backing. I might even be able to get inside the ring. For now I hold the secret of a combination which no one dares avow. It would be my ruin, however, to use it until the time comes to rule or crush Mrs. Willoughby. She must be my ‘golden goose’—she alone—and, I must not kill her too soon.”
A long introspection proved to him that his old “waiting game” was the only safe plan.
“If Garston makes up to me, I can meet him half way. Perhaps he might exchange the secret of my sly patroness’ early life for the golden key to the Sugar situation. Together we could surely control her. And acting alone, I might easily be crushed between this secretly warring couple.
“But, when their dual secret is mine, then I can always act against my weakest foe. They will never dare get rid of me then,” he craftily premised, for he saw gold ahead—solid, easily earned gold. And the busy devil in his cold heart laughed and made merry.
But one circumstance now disquieted him as to the resplendent Miss Katharine VanDyke Norreys—the absence of a respectable, social womanly background.
There was no doubt as to the tangible luxury of her daily life, and the deep respect shown by the Hotel Savoy management spoke of that regular payment of bills which endears “the guest” to the Boniface.
“A certain number of women friends are a sine qua non, however, to a ‘professed beauty,’” mused Vreeland.
“Their absence is as remarkable as a bedizened general riding out all alone into the enemy’s land with no following. I presume that ‘prominent Westerners’ will in due time furnish her with a golden woman bodyguard. Garston being a widower, too, is another awkward thing.”
In the whole embarrassing situation, all that Vreeland could do to move on his plans was to make a stolen visit to the rooms of the janitor of the Circassia.
There Justine Duprez, in a few moments of stolen time, breathlessly told him of the nightly conferences. “I think that she is soon going abroad. They have maps and papers out every evening. So far she has not examined her hidden paper. When she does, there will be a wild storm.
“And then only at my room in South Fifth Avenue dare we meet. We must be watchful. For the little green-eyed typewriter, Mary Kelly, spies on me, and I find her blue-coated friend, too, that big policeman, Daly the Roundsman, following me around. Look out for yourself. You and I must stand or fall together. She may give us both the slip. If she went over to Paris, and took me with her, you dare not follow her; but I could write to you always, and give you a safe address to write to me.”
Vreeland was vaguely disturbed at heart.
“Can we trust to August Helms?” muttered Vreeland, with a sudden shiver of underlying cowardice.
“Yes,” grimly said Justine, “as long as you pay him, and, besides, he faces state’s prison in—you know—his own part of the business. We must stand together firmly, and you lead us on.”
As Vreeland regained his deserted rooms in the Elmleaf he strangely recalled the last bitter denunciation of the Lady of the Red Rose: “I leave it to the future to punish you.”
But on his table, two letters awaited him which brought a glow of secret delight to his heart.
A note from Senator James Garston bidding him name a day for a tête-à-tête dinner at the Plaza closed with these words of hope:
“I wish to enlist you in some matters of moment which may turn out to our mutual advantage. You are just the kind of a man that I feel I can work with. Please telegraph the date to me at the Arlington Hotel, Washington, and I will meet you—the sooner the better.
“It is unnecessary to say that this is a matter leading to a strictly confidential business association, and so, not a word of my coming, even to Miss Norreys.
“I wish to see you alone, and if you will act with me we shall both soon be busy.
“Just the leading card to draw him into my hands. If he will only unbosom himself ever so little, then I can soon tie Mrs. Willoughby down, for this is the man she fears. Else why that stolen interview at Lakemere? And from all knowledge of that, even Justine was excluded. Let him but come forward, and they are both mine.”
The second letter with its inclosure was the result of a long struggle between Miss Joanna Marble and the social reluctance of that “shy bird,” the stately Miss Romaine Garland. Joanna had gained ground at last.
Vreeland smiled grimly as he read the corrupt agent’s letter. It was an evening invitation couched in his interest and skillfully arranged.
“You are to come at 10:30, sir—fashionable hours. You will find me ready to greet you.
“The musicale and supper, with a little informal dancing, will enable me to see that you escort Miss Garland home. I shall be ‘suddenly indisposed,’ and then you are easily the Prince Charming of the occasion.
“The hostess is a trusted friend of mine.
“But how ‘shy’ your beautiful bird is. Romaine has called several times on me, and yet she will not give me her personal address. She always receives her letters at Station Q, General Delivery.
“And when I offered to come for her she said, quietly: ‘I will call for you, dear Miss Marble, with a carriage, and we can go together.’ I wonder is she one of us after all—a sly bird, not a shy bird?”
The address given was that of a respectably situated residence in the West Eighties, a region blessed with slightly stiffening social aspirations toward “elitedom,” as the journals deftly put it.
Senator James Garston in Washington was triumphant as he read Vreeland’s dispatch fixing a date for the private dinner. “I can easily tole this vain young fellow on with Katharine,” he gleefully cried. “And if I can only reach Margaret Cranstoun’s child, I will soon bring her proud head back to my bosom.”
The stern soldier of fortune mused long over olden days, his days of youth and promise, when his girl-wife was only a plighted bride, a woman of awakened heart, “whose head, like an o’er-wearied dove, came fluttering down to rest.”
“I will have them both,” the Senator swore. “Why should my life’s harvest be but chaff?
“For, the child is mine. The mother was once mine, and through fire and flood I’ll go on and prove my title against the whole world.
“If this young favorite can only find me the hidden girl, he shall not want for fortune, and a marriage with Katharine Norreys will tie him forever to me.”
It all promised fair enough.
But, plot and counterplot was forgotten as Harold Vreeland, superbly poised in his habitual adamantine calm, edged his way into the listening circle of the “select few” who had been gathered at Mrs. Ollie Manson’s ambitious musicale. It was a gala evening in the West End.
A furtive conference with Miss Marble had caused him to slip into the hushed rooms during the period when the convives were hanging breathlessly upon Miss Bettina Goldvogel’s rendering of “Beauty’s Eyes.” The Prince Charming’s advent was unobserved.
When the music ceased, Vreeland, who had been gazing upon Romaine Garland, a sweet and lonely figure, seated there with her hands clasped and her stately head bent, was alarmed as he pressed forward through the unfamiliar throng.
There was a flush of sudden crimson on the tall girl’s cheek, and then, a swift Diana, she passed on, a vision of stately beauty in her unfamiliar evening dress. The excited trickster was swift in her pursuit.
Vreeland’s step was on the stair, but a warning touch at once recalled him. With serpentine swing, Miss Joanna Marble sought the secret precincts of the robing rooms. “Let me handle this matter,” was the whispered comment. “Wait below in the drawing-room.”
The effusive welcome of Mrs. Ollie Manson was lost upon the man who had caught one glance of aversion from those truthful eyes into which his veiled blandishments had never brought one gleam of tenderness in those long hours at the Elmleaf. “Had she taken the alarm?”
When he was released from the little circle with its sotto voce comments, “Clubman,” “Rich young banker, my dear,” and other social incense, he saw the thin, bewhiskered Mr. Solon Manson, with a startled expression, handing Miss Romaine Garland down the front steps to her waiting carriage.
It was a five minutes of agony, and the last strains of “Non è Ver” had reverberated from Sig. Trombonini’s swelling bosom before Miss Joanna Marble, her face ashen with the pallor of rage, drew Vreeland into the library.
“You’ll never see that young tragedy queen again,” wrathfully whispered the angered woman. “She only told her driver to take her to the elevated railroad station at Ninetieth Street. I had posted the little Manson to get her address.
“There must be someone nearer to her than you ever will be. She is as deep as the sea, and she dared to lash me with her icy tongue. ‘I see it all, Miss Marble,’ she snapped out. ‘Your friendly invitation was a lure to put me on a false basis with my elegant employer.
“‘You know the girl breadwinner has no protection against such a man but the honest independence of her daily labor. Should he bend to woo the woman who stands mute before him daily, pencil in hand? I can not meet my employer socially.’”
“And you?” breathlessly cried Vreeland.
“I stood mute; for I dared go no further. But I have her picture, at any rate. I will have her secretly shadowed.
“I will wager my head there is some one nearer and dearer to the shy bird than Miss Majestic would have me believe. You can’t blame me; I did my best. But it has been a Waterloo.”
The listener swore a mighty oath in his sudden jealous rage. Vreeland’s face hardened.
“See here, just lock her picture up in your private safe. Do nothing—wait for me. I’ll follow up the quest alone.”
“And there is five hundred dollars for your obedience, and now, silence. I’ll stay here an hour and jolly these people.”
“To-morrow at ten at your office. And if you should meet her, simply ignore the matter.
“I shall tell her, of course, that Manson, an old friend, asked me informally, and that our meeting was brought about by pure chance.”
Miss Joanna Marble’s hard laugh rattled in her “bony frame.” “I think our ingenue, young as she is, has already a little commencement of a ‘past,’ a little ‘jardin secret,’ where flowers of other days still bloom.
“But I am in your hands. I will obey you. You are the paymaster, and you know I am not ‘in business for my health.’”
On his homeward way, Vreeland studied the stars with an anxious brow.
“She shall not get away from me,” he swore. “I wonder if Mary Kelly and she are now only duplicate spies of the woman who once had a use for me, and now fears the poor tools she has used. Did I get at the whole Hathorn secret?
“That is forever sealed in poor Fred’s grave.”
He started as a brilliant golden star trailed over the inky blackness of the night.
“That’s bad luck,” he gloomily reflected, as he cursed the wary young girl’s divination of his clumsy social trick. “It was a wretched botch,” he said, as he angrily dismounted at his own door, and the failure over-shadowed his gloomy slumbers.
Three days later, when Harold Vreeland gazed across the dinner table at Senator James Garston’s immutable face, he wondered what future intrigues were hidden behind the mask of the strong man’s assumed carelessness. They were alone, hidden in a retired room of the Millionaires’ Club, and, as of old, Harold Vreeland, played his waiting game. The two men were fairly matched—past masters of deceit.
Greed, ambition, revenge, a desire to reach the gilded coterie of New York’s crème de la crème, all these motives Vreeland suspected, but not that an old love, revived in a burning passion, a mad desire for repossession, thrilled the hardened heart of the man “who had once thrown a pearl away, richer than all his tribe.”
Vreeland was wary and yet uneasy. His heart’s desire, easily won wealth, now seemed to recede, like the pot of gold buried beneath the rainbow. He swore to make no mistake in the impending deal.
After a long mental debate, he had decided upon separate hiding places for the copy and the original of the one document, which, a two-edged scimetar, gave him a crushing control, he fondly fancied, over Alynton, Garston, and also the Lady of Lakemere.
“I must be careful,” he mused. Either of the men would be a relentless foe, and to him Mrs. Willoughby, now represented only incarnated dollars and cents. Lucre, not love.
With all his deeply-laid plots, he was baffled at all points, for his own rooms were still every day deserted save by the adroit valet.
With tears of rage, Miss Joanna Marble gave up to him the picture of Romaine Garland, the one visible token of that young Diana’s existence.
“I have failed, and even the Mansons can get no trace. I have even sent the picture around among all the hackmen as far as the Harlem River,” was Joanna’s meager report. “The girl has simply vanished and left no trace behind.
“The man who ‘began her past’ for her has probably spirited the young vixen away. It was a masterly change of base, for she, sly one, took wing at once on recognizing that you would like to be something more than an employer.”
And so, with orders for a redoubled energy in research, and the hope of a glittering reward, Joanna Marble returned to her mart of souls and her veiled brokerage of innocence.
A comprehensive business letter from Mrs. Elaine Willoughby had at last directed Mr. Harold Vreeland to relieve Horton Wyman as general supervisor of the firm. The veiled steel hand under the velvet glove was concealed there.
“You will have ample assistance in Noel Endicott and Maitland. Your partner needs a few weeks’ rest. Anything private will, of course, be communicated to you by Judge Endicott. I shall await my own delayed recovery, and perhaps, a fortnight at Lakemere may restore me.
“Of course, as I shall keep Miss Kelly with me, there will be no business transacted uptown. I only depend upon you now for a daily watch during business hours of the firm’s affairs. As Noel Endicott has been made a Stock Exchange member, he will handle the Board matters, and you will hear my orders from Judge Endicott through him.”
The letter was curt, chilling, and still courteous. It was however a polite closing of the social doors of the Circassia, and the anxious Vreeland, by a prompt evening call, soon verified the fact of the temporary absence of the woman who seemed to easily escape his toils. There was no one at his rooms to handle the concealed wires now.
And Justine Duprez, too, had been snapped away out of his sight by the unannounced departure of her mistress. He was helpless now to continue any effective espionage.
Even Helms, the janitor, mournfully shook his head. “The wires are all silent,” he grumbled. “The mail, too, all now goes direct to Lakemere, and so I’ve nothing to tell you.” But he wanted a handsome “temporary loan” just as usual.
A lurid ray of warning light soon gleamed upon Vreeland’s path in a letter brought by Dr. Alberg from the beleaguered Frenchwoman. It was only a scrawl, but a scrawl of unmistakably grave import.
“There is danger hovering near, mon amant,” she warned. “The old judge, the newspaper man, and his ugly, raw-boned sister have all been here, with the Kelly, little green-eyed Irish devil, and the other girl, the pretty one, who was her assistant with you.
“Dieu! how handsome that woman is. But they are all gone away now save the old judge, who comes every day, going back at night, and the Kelly woman, who goes home Saturday night. The other girl went away at night with the two Conyers. Watch the Kelly. She may come down to your office to spy. I fear that Madame has already missed the paper. Remember, we must stand and fall together, you and I. If I ever find that dark-eyed beauty near you, some dark night, look out for a dash of vitriol in her pretty face. That’s all. You would not dare to punish me! I will have no rivals! You belong to me now!” Vreeland groaned in his helpless rage.
Harold Vreeland’s heart beat wildly as Senator Garston, after locking the door, drew two chairs into the middle of the room. He studied the young man’s face and said slowly:
“Vreeland, I am now in a position to make a fortune for you. I can easily see that you depend on Mrs. Willoughby in some way. I want you to take a few moments to consider whether you will not put yourself unreservedly into my hands, and so, in helping me, help yourself. You know what the favor of rich women finally amounts to. The day that the wind blows cold you are left out in the street. But I can put you ‘on velvet.’ Now, don’t speak too quickly. It is a very serious matter. You and I can work like men together, with no change of heart.”
“What do you wish of me?” guardedly demanded Vreeland. “It must be nothing inimical to Mrs. Willoughby’s stock interests. I am no babbler, and no traitor.”
“Your character is perfectly safe in my hands,” half sneered Garston. “I merely want you to help me, and make your own future, while not injuring your lovely employer.
“I know already, through Alynton, that you’re only a figurehead in the firm, and, by the way, he is pushing that nephew of his right in as fast as he can, between you and Mrs. Willoughby. He does not like you. A touch of jealousy.” The chance shot told, and it cut Vreeland to the quick. Garston smiled sardonically.
Harold Vreeland’s face was livid with rage as the strong man calmly gazed into his eyes and said: “If you have ever nourished the idea of managing Elaine Willoughby, you can dismiss it. The lady is some years your senior, and moreover, there may be prior claims. A man like you, with your present standing and possible future, should only mate with someone like Katharine Norreys. The maternal tinge to a marriage with an elder woman is not the thing for a man of your marked gifts, your position, and your career. You can do better. The afternoon sun of life has little real warmth in it. Be warned in time.”
Vreeland sprang to his feet. “It seems that you are taking an unwarrantable liberty,” he hotly protested. He had now dropped the waiting game—but he had fallen into able hands.
“Nonsense,” calmly replied the Senator-elect. “You will be left out in the street in three months if you let the cold-hearted Alynton dominate that woman’s changing mind. He wishes to marry her himself. I say that he shall not! Now, you see, our game is the same. He has already enough power to displace you—for reasons entirely beyond your control.”
The words “Sugar syndicate” leaped to Vreeland’s pale lips, but he mastered himself. “Tell me the truth. Give me the whole game. Show me where you can secure me—and then I am your man. But I will not be paid off with fairy tales.” James Garston laughed easily.
“I am a good paymaster, and I’ve already learned my cue. Nothing for nothing in New York. I would never dare to trifle with a wideawake man like you,” and then Vreeland bowed and smiled.
“Then, what must I do for you?” demanded Vreeland, who was now thoroughly off his guard.
The Senator studied his man carefully. “I think that I’ll trust you,” he slowly said. Standing before his would-be dupe he said, carelessly. “I had supposed that you knew that Mrs. Willoughby was still bound in a marriage which would make all your season’s work ‘love’s labor lost.’”
The secret was out at last!
Vreeland’s eyes were downcast. He tried to guard his tell-tale face.
“And has a daughter now old enough to be a more fitting wife to you than even that Indian-summer beauty—the mother,” remorselessly continued the Senator, as Vreeland sprang to his feet in a torment.
“Now, I want you to find that daughter for me—and if you do, your fortune is made.” He quietly added: “You see the presence of that girl would spoil the Alynton marriage, and Elaine Willoughby has only a heart of stone. She has merely drawn Alynton on by an assumed resistance. My lady has played her cards well. I want to find the girl—and break off that match—for business reasons.”
The flood of burning jealousy which swept over Vreeland’s mind now washed away the last vestige of his calculating prudence. Alynton should never have the Lady of Lakemere.
For a moment a torturing, haunting resemblance was strangely made plain to him. And now he would hunt down that lost lamb which had escaped both himself and that thirsty she-wolf, Joanna Marble. There was a double motive for the chase now.
“Is that the girl whom you are searching for?” suddenly exclaimed the excited broker, as he thrust Romaine Garland’s picture before the gaze of the astonished Western millionaire.
There was a cry—an echo of the buried past surging now from Garston’s breast. The echo of a love long dead.
“By God! It is Margaret herself—at eighteen. Tell me—tell me—where did you get this?” He had seized Vreeland by both hands and the picture lay between them, smiling up at the excited men from the wine-stained table.
Vreeland bitterly thought of the vacant chair in his luxurious den—the chair that Romaine Garland had quitted forever. He began to see that plainly which as hitherto had only glimmered “as in a glass darkly.” And for a second time, Fate had dealt him a heavy blow. She had escaped him as scathless as the “Lady of the Red Rose.” He had a foothold left, however.
“That is my secret, sir,” sharply said Vreeland, as he wrenched himself loose, and pocketed the photograph sent “for inspection to Miss Marble.”
“And that secret is for sale to you, on fair conditions.”
“Let us make instant terms, Vreeland,” cried Garston, dropping into a chair. He was eager now. He reached out for a glass of cognac.
“Your game is mine—and mine is yours. If you find that girl for me I’ll make your fortune—I swear it. I’ll put you into the strongest secret circle in America.
“You shall handle all my private affairs—but I must have a gage of your fidelity—even when I’ve paid the price.”
He watched the breathless schemer, who faltered: “And that is, when you marry Katharine Norreys there will be no secrets between us. You shall have money now—but to open all the doors even to you of the ‘Illuminati,’ you must be mine in interest—forever.” And then they opened their hearts to each other for the lust of gold, revenge and power.
The stars were low in the west before the two wary adversaries had chaffered along to a reasonable basis of bargain and sale.
“To-morrow—I ask only till to-morrow to think all over,” was the truce which parted them. And so each knew no more of the other’s heart secrets at the last than those impulsive outbreaks of Nature which will not down. But they had drifted very near on life’s sea. There were the wildest dreams of a brilliant future thronging Vreeland’s brain as he left the Millionaires’ Club to find Dr. Hugo Alberg in his midnight haunt where the Kegelbahn—beer of the stoutest Munich brew, and the songs of the Vaterland invited the Teuton to these cheap luxuries, recalling his happy student days. Vreeland soon caught his gloomy bird.
Vreeland quickly led the startled Doctor aside. He handed over to him five one-hundred-dollar bills. “Get out of here by the first morning train. Make any professional excuse. Find out who is up at Lakemere with your patient, and, from Justine you must get me the whereabouts of that dark-haired girl who worked for me. The pretty one that you saw in my room—Miss Romaine Garland.”
“I will be waiting for you at your rooms on your return—and, bid Justine not to dare to write or send a message save by you. There is the devil to pay somewhere!”
Neither Senator Garston nor Harold Vreeland were to be found on the busy Saturday which dawned upon them. For Vreeland, telegraphing down to the office that he was called out of town for the half-holiday, closeted himself with a downtown detective firm.
Long before the hour for Alberg’s return, Vreeland knew that Hugh Conyers was absent at New Orleans, on a mission for the “Clarion,” and that his art-loving sister had accompanied him, en route to Colorado Springs, for the rest of the raw spring season. Their dainty little apartment was closed and locked.
There were thus two dangerous enemies out of the way.
At five o’clock the travel-wearied Dr. Alberg returned with his budget of news.
“There has been a devil of a scene up at Lakemere,” growled the Teuton. “I found my handsome vixen of a patient in a decidedly healthy rage. This Senator Garston came up on a train an hour later than mine.
“There was a violent quarrel between him and our patroness. Justine could only linger near enough to hear loud voices, and soon, Garston dashed away as madly as if the Wild Huntsman was after him. Now, our one friend bids me tell you that Sara Conyers has really gone West on business for Mrs. Willoughby.
“The pretty fraulein has vanished, too—but she is in some plot. The night before the Conyers woman left, the three sat up nearly the whole night. Justine would have followed this girl, but she can not manage to be even a moment out of the mistress’ sight. And old Endicott comes and goes every day. Justine hates the very shadow of the Garland woman, for Madame has taken one of her sudden fits of fancying a new face—you know how that lasts,” growled Alberg.
Harold Vreeland sought out Senator Garston, whom he found at dinner, with the sparkling California beauty at his side. A few whispers were exchanged, and then, an appointment was soon made. Garston gave no sign to the young man that he had listened that day to a defiance unto death. “He is a liar, too,” mused Vreeland, and yet, for all this, he forgot, too, to even mention that he had been out of town.
And yet, gazing into Katharine Norreys’ inviting eyes, as he bade her adieu, Vreeland found that part of his “purchase price” to be wonderfully fair.
“I could go easily through life with her, backed by a senatorial ‘push,’ and plenty of money.
“But I will have it all secured. The money all paid down first. Garston then becomes my real employer. In this ominous drift, I must change ships at sea—always a risky business, but yet the bold-hearted Perry won laurels and immortality thereby. And yet, this man may be tricking me.” Vreeland, after cogitation, realized that Garston had not actually lied, but he had prudently held back the truth. “I suppose that he is holding the old secret of her early life over her.
“Who the dickens was the missing man? This girl must have had a father. And that father hailed Elaine Willoughby as ‘Margaret’ in her heyday.
“I suppose this cold, granite-hearted upstart has blackmailed his way into the secret pool of the ‘sweetness and light.’
“Sugar and Oil is a most profitable amorphous mixture.
“And he would now like to block Alynton’s little game—and so to be free to hold the past over this wonder-working woman’s head.”
“Senator Garston,” cried Vreeland, “you may yet find that love will not be led in chains. Of all hells on earth, the embrace of an unwilling woman is the coldest revenge of an outraged Nature. And he should beware of Elaine—if she can, she will strike back at him like a wounded lioness.
“And for my own safety there is but one rule, ‘Cash down on the delivery of goods.’
“And so far, he only proposes partial payments—with Katharine Norreys as our mutual gage of faith to the last.”
Agnostic as he was, Vreeland was forced to admit that Garston’s disclosure of Mrs. Willoughby’s marital chains had swept away his last hope of ever being the master of Lakemere.
She was still the wife of some unknown John Doe—and Vreeland knew that Garston would never babble.
The young broker was ready now to play his last card to make his position between the two enemies impregnable. He was again at Life’s crossroads. But he had a last little game to play out before a final decision.
He was the picture of elegant prosperity as he picked his way up the long stairs of the modest apartment on a side street where the humble Kelly family gazed from a four-story window upon a row of private stables opposite.
The hour was opportune, and his own coupé awaited him below. The hands of the little clock marked nine as Vreeland raised his hat to the white-haired old Irish mother seated there, prayer-book in hand, and giving a touch of dignity to the plain little “parlor.”
The keen-eyed young schemer quickly noted the photograph of Miss Romaine Garland proudly given the place of honor upon the mantel.
Before he could announce his errand, Miss Mary Kelly painfully limped in from the other room, whence a murmur of voices had told him of her presence. If he could only trap her into revealing Romaine’s address!
All his gentle gravity of manner was manifest as Vreeland explained his personal call. “I desire to send to Miss Garland her uncollected monthly salary, and also to obtain some private papers which must be yet in her possession,” began Vreeland, carefully studying the girl’s plaintive pale face.
“If you would kindly give me Miss Garland’s present address, I can send a messenger to her. She probably forgot the papers.”
Vreeland paused, and then his heart hardened, as the young girl’s fearless eyes looked him through and through.
There was an indictment in her innocent glances which made him mutter, “Miss Majesty has surely blabbed about the Ollie Manson musicale. That was a clumsy failure.”
“I cannot give you Miss Garland’s address, Mr. Vreeland,” said the girl, with an uneasy glance at her old mother.
“She has left New York City for good, and I think has gone to California.”
“When she said ‘good-by’ to me, she mentioned that she would not care to continue as the only woman worker in your employ. I presume that you will hear from her through Miss Marble’s agency.”
Vreeland’s quick wit told him that here was “no thoroughfare.” And all his mean suspicions had been strengthened by Joanna Marble’s world-worn innuendoes. His lips curled in an unmanly sneer. “Ah, yes! I think I shall write to Miss Marble, and now inform her of the young woman’s dishonorable discharge. I can, of course, send her salary to the agency, and as for my papers, I presume that they went to California with her ‘character.’ Respectable young women are usually not ashamed to own their residence. Did she tell you this up at Lakemere?”
His voice was cutting and insulting in its brutal sneer.
The frightened semi-cripple was struggling to her feet to leave the room, when a brawny, blue-coated young giant dashed through the still opened door.
He seized Vreeland’s wrist with an iron clutch and twisted him around before the startled young girl, while the old mother’s hands went up in a pious appeal. There was the hatred of hell on Vreeland’s face as he struggled in that vise-like grip.
“Forbear, Dan Daly! Remember that he’s under our roof,” the aged widow cried.
The young roundsman fixed a truculent glance upon the astonished Vreeland. “Apologize, both to the present and absent, you great hulking coward,” he cried. “If it were not for my blue coat, I’d throw you down stairs. And now get out the way you came. Be quick, too, about it!”
With a mumbled apology, crestfallen and raging at heart, Vreeland sneaked down stairs.
“I was a fool to get into this low Irish nest,” he growled, as he sprang into his coupé.
When safely back at the “Elmleaf” he reviewed the whole situation. “There’s a cold plant here! That woman has never left this town. I think that I’ll work the wires to Colorado Springs, and the detectives can handle California for me.”
He went out to a gay little late supper, not realizing that Dan Daly the Roundsman had just sworn a mighty oath to “keep his eye” on the elegant member of the “Swell Mob,” and all Daly’s oaths were sworn to for love’s sweet sake, and were doubly iron clad.
It was with a shiver of impending fear that Vreeland, pausing at a cigar store on Herald Square, accidentally overheard the night chatter of two late newspaper Bohemians: “I always thought Hugh Conyers was not a marrying man, but it seems that he is a quiet, sneaking lover after all.”
“Down at Philadelphia the other day I saw him put his sister, Sara, on board a State line boat for Europe, and the prettiest young woman I ever saw, a staving-looking brunette, was with the old maid artist. Hugh was mighty affectionate, too, I can tell you.”
“Liars and deceivers all,” raged Vreeland. “But I’ve got their whole game now. They have run her over to Europe. I can find her there easily.”
He went home, triumphant in his future plans, little dreaming that Mrs. Elaine Willoughby had called Justine to her bedside at Lakemere a half an hour before. “I have been robbed, and robbed here, in my own house,” the lady sternly said. “You alone know of the paper hidden in my corset. Explain at once.”