In the swim

A WEDDING IN HIGH LIFE.

It was a week later when two alert-minded men faced each other over a table in Senator James Garston’s private rooms at the Plaza Hotel. No single thread of the tangle had been successfully followed up by the restless Vreeland, save that Mr. Hugh Conyers, gravely occupied in his usual duties, had returned to the office of the Daily Clarion.

And of the whereabouts of Mrs. Elaine Willoughby, Vreeland knew absolutely nothing, save that in a stolen interview with Justine Duprez he learned that Miss Mary Kelly, now aided by her brother and mother as inmates, was the caretaker of the superb “Circassia” apartment. And so, Justine had a new mistress, pro tem.

The private secretary had handed to the French maid a note from her absent mistress, bidding her remain on duty at the “Circassia” until her own return. “Miss Kelly represents me; she will pay you and give you her orders, carrying out my directions to her.” And Justine dared not break away.

There was joy now in Justine’s anxious heart, for the stolen interviews at her old rooms in South Fifth Avenue, perhaps, could be soon renewed, Miss Kelly generously allowing the maid all her usual outings.

And Vreeland had soon calmed the Parisienne’s growing fears.

But he knew he might have some further use for her, to watch the promoted amanuensis and to learn of Mrs. Willoughby’s movements.

“Yes, she must continue to intercept the letters. Thank Heaven, I can always depend upon the janitor and Mulholland!” was Vreeland’s flattering consolation to his soul.

“It is the only way to trace Mrs. Willoughby’s real movements and so be able to post Senator Garston.”

He would have been disturbed had he marked roundsman Dan Daly, a cool but shadowy pursuer of Justine Duprez on her every outing, and known also that the untiring schoolboy brother was on his own trail all the while.

The moving into the South Fifth Avenue lodging-house of a very agreeable old French crony gave a neighbor to Justine’s resident old hag, who speedily became a familiar visitor. And then through the walls of that adjoining room, a carefully contrived peep-hole enabled roundsman Daly’s all-seeing eye to witness the now infrequent interviews of Vreeland and Justine.

“I shall not be happy until I place the jewelry on that scoundrel’s wrists,” was Daly’s pledge to his own heart, for he had not forgotten Vreeland—bully and coward! There was a growing score to settle—a long one!

And so Vreeland and Justine had freely met in the fancied security of their Fools’ Paradise.

But blissfully ignorant, over the wine, Vreeland in the crowning interview, eyed the Western rising statesman. He was all on the alert as he said: “Senator Garston, I am now ready to close with you.

Garston carelessly knocked the ash off his cigar, as he coolly said: “There is a large amount of Western property, a very large one, in which that child has an interest, an interest moreover of which she knows nothing. That is my real business with the girl, whose life story I alone know—save the mother who has adroitly hidden her so long. You see her presence would have embarrassed the social queen!”

“Who was her father?” flatly demanded Vreeland.

The Senator’s eyes hardened. “That is nobody’s business but mine. It does not enter into our affair. And the property interests demand my present silence.”

Vreeland shrugged his shoulders, and smiling, calmly said: “You wish me, then, to play my part openly for you, while I am kept in the dark?”

And Garston steadily replied: “What matters it to you, if you are well paid?” His voice was steady, but there was a wolfish anxiety in his eyes. “My professional secrets could not aid you.”

“My price will be a high one, and cash down or secured. Either cash or stocks. Sugar stocks will do,” meaningly replied Vreeland.

“Damn it, don’t haggle!” cried Garston. “Tell me simply what you want.”

“And I am to own you, out and out. You are to keep near her and to work my will,” demanded Garston. His voice was strangely eager, for his struggling heart would have its voice.

“To the death,” answered Vreeland, “if you pay me first, and then stand by Katharine and myself. It will be a union of heart, hands and interest.”

“I’ll do it on one sole condition,” replied Garston.

“And that is?” eagerly said Vreeland.

“That you clearly understand that your life would be the forfeit of any treachery. I must reach that girl. I am playing a game to the bitter end. And you do not know what a foe that sleek woman can be.”

“All right,” said the young man, extending his hand. “The future will show you what I am. We must take the risks together.”

“I will give you half in cash, the balance in stocks, and I’ll hand the check for the cash over now,” said Garston, as he laid his revolver on the table.

“Now, sir, let me see that girl’s picture. Tell me where she is, and I’ll sign the check.”

His eyes were wolfish as Vreeland silently handed him the photograph of the girl who had never known a father’s love. The young man began his cool recital:

A ferocious gleam lit up the Senator’s eyes. He signed the check and passed it over to Vreeland. “I can handle both of them easily,” he growled.

“Tell me the whole story now,” he said, leaning back with an air of exquisite delight. “My money will do the rest. I’ll get to her easy enough.”

“You’ll have to work quickly then,” answered Vreeland, “for Elaine Willoughby has stolen away on an ostensible trip around the world via Japan, but really to meet the girl and her train. There was a private guard who went with the two women. My detective recognized him, and the bodyguard is a cool and dangerous man, too.” The Senator’s brow was blackened with a ferocious scowl.

“Damnation, she is clever,” cried Garston. “I wanted the daughter in this country, for I can not quickly use foreign laws, and any open violence, of course, would be madness. Tell me the whole story. I must be at work at once. It is a serious matter; I must think it over.”

It was midnight when the two men separated, after drinking a bottle of “Pommery” to the “ensuing happiness.” Garston’s eyes were at last gleaming with a triumphant joy. His quick wit suggested the way out.

“You are to stay quietly on in the enemy’s camp. I will let her think herself unpursued. Her desire to hoodwink you is our only salvation; and now I will prepare Katharine for your visit. Shake hands! Here’s to your married happiness. You are getting a pearl of a woman—a woman fit to be a queen.”

But, in the silence of his room that night the wild words of Alida Hathorn came back to him. Her parting curse, “I leave it to the future to punish you!” “I don’t see where the game can break against me,” he reflected, “I hold four aces!” And so he slept reassured.

He had read in the evening paper the announcement of the forthcoming engagement of the “well-known club man and millionaire, Mr. James Potter, to the charming widow of the late Frederick Hathorn.” “Newspaper enterprise!” sneered Vreeland. “Well, marriage seals her lips like many another sister who has wandered a few steps from the path. I am safe now.”

So rapid was the march of Senator Garston’s executive energy that a week later, under the caption of “Prospective Wedding in High Life,” Vreeland read the prophetic intimation of his own union with “the brilliant Western heiress, Miss Katharine VanDyke Norreys.”

“It is too late to recoil now,” he mused, “for this engagement will be telegraphed by Conyers over to my ‘financial backer.’”

There was a little scene with Justine Duprez which was not down on the bills.

And of that scene, roundsman Daly was at once made aware by the reports of his woman spy, now the intimate friend of Justine’s old garde-chambre.

A common curiosity and the confidences engendered over the absinthe glass caused the two women to mark the comings and goings of the handsome young broker and the lissome French lady’s maid who had prospered so wonderfully.

For Justine’s hand was an open and a liberal one. Justine had, after a storm of tears, gone away contented. In her heart she proposed in the future to secretly reign over the new ménage of her young tyrant and dupe.

When Vreeland had at last quieted his rebellious dupe, he explained to her at once that in the new household there would always be a commanding position for herself, should Mrs. Willoughby cast her out on her return.

“So you see, Justine, I can always protect you, and then, when you wish to go over and settle in Paris, you will always have me near you as a protector.”

Harold Vreeland was now perfectly happy, and a little more than usually self-assertive.

For, on Wall Street all men now envied the man who was cementing a union which would practically control the profitable business resulting from Senator Garston’s vast operations in stocks and mines.

Garston was a financial battleship, and a man of mark, even on Manhattan’s shores.

And even in the bustling office of Wyman & Vreeland a deeper respect was soon engendered for Vreeland’s brilliant, dashing successes. “A Senator behind him, and with the handsome young heiress as a wife, he will have fully as much weight as Wyman backed by his uncle Alynton and the Endicotts,” so mused the observant cashier.

In fact, Senator Garston’s handlings of Western and Southern roads, far-away mines, added to the immense business of his bold strokes in the leading securities.

“There is no good excuse for Alynton, Wyman nor Mrs. Willoughby pushing you out of the firm as long as you really handle my business,” said the acute Garston. “They would have no sufficient business warrant in so doing, for naturally Alynton and myself are bound by both party and personal ties, which must rise above any petty quarrel. I can easily handle Alynton. He is, of course, the secret business counselor of Mrs. Willoughby, and as she fears me, and with reason, she will never strike at you, as long as our pact holds.

“Will Alynton finally marry this strange woman?” was Vreeland’s searching query.

The stony-faced Senator-elect sprang to his feet, livid with rage. And Vreeland marveled as the angered man harshly cried:

“Never, by God! Impossible! How could he? There’s that girl—the one whom I’ve sworn to take away from her. The mother can not explain the presence of the child to her admirer.

“She dare not! For the Alyntons are all as proud as Spanish hidalgos, and young Alynton is no fool. He would have to find out that she had lied to him—that her whole past life has been a sham—and no man or woman can ever deceive David Alynton twice. He is merciless. I’ve been a fellow-director with him for years, and I know him. I hold them both in the hollow of my hand.”

The Senator quickly saw that his rage had led him on too far, for the young man’s eyes were open in amazement at the passionate outburst.

“There are these property interests,” he grumbled, “and I suppose she has hoodwinked the girl as to her rights. It’s the old game. I am the only living man who can set it straight, and I will do so, in my own way. I have sworn to do it for my own reasons, and to even up with My Lady.”

“Can it be,” he pondered, “that the property which Elaine enjoys really belongs to that child? That the young girl was artfully brought up in ignorance of her rights? Has she been robbed? The young beauty may have broken away inopportunely, and appeared here to embarrass the youthful-looking beauty whom Alynton seems to adore.”

He could see no possible solution of the problem. “Garston seems to be enraged at the mere idea of Alynton’s intimate relations. Can it be that a secret love in olden days has tied the proud Senator to this wonderful woman? He is dead set against her drifting into Alynton’s arms.” It was all a life puzzle.

He was ready for the meanest suspicions, but the observations of Justine dispelled them.

“Only friends; nothing more,” had been the verdict of a woman who would have gloried to have held her mistress in the clutches of blackmail.

“And the love of the same woman has now, as usual, made Alynton and Garston secret foes,” decided Vreeland.

He recalled the legendary source of Mrs. Willoughby’s tangible fortune, some Western windfall of vast richness.

“She knew him before, she fears him now, and has spirited the girl away to keep them apart.”

It seemed clear to Vreeland that some partner, or old associate, perhaps a client of Garston’s in the wild West, had owned both the property and the lovely woman in her flush of girlish beauty.

“And now repulsed by the mother, whom evidently he has pursued, Garston would use the girl as a lever for his revenge. Once a breach effected with Alynton, and the girl his ally, then the Queen of the Street would either drift into his arms or have ‘to step down and out’—to abdicate the crown she has worn so long.” Vreeland lumbered along, building up fanciful solutions of the mystery.

In the now almost incessant “duty service” near his beautiful fiancée, Vreeland a hundred times endeavored to trace back James Garston’s early life. But the blue-eyed Nixie who was soon to be his wife only laughed merrily.

“Pray remember, sir, that Senator Garston is my guardian. After my dear father’s death, my mother went abroad, and I was educated in the ‘Sacré Cœur’ Convent at Brussels. Her death left me alone in the world.

“‘Uncle James’ had been almost forgotten by me in the thirteen years which we passed in Paris and Brussels, and as I left the West a mere child, all my memories are the vanishing dreams of childhood. All his social past is a sealed book to me.”

Vreeland was fain to be content, as the lovely ingenue concluded: “All I know is that he has always managed my affairs, and that his personal history is linked with the development of the whole region west of the Rockies. Why, you should know his history from your own Western wanderings.”

“Was he ever married?” timidly hazarded Vreeland. But, the young society queen only laughed back.

That afternoon, as they drove through the park under the chaperonage of the amiable Mrs. Volney McMorris, Vreeland unsuccessfully endeavored to allay his recent dissatisfaction at the absence of any womanly background for the highly polished “Western diamond,” which he was soon to win and wear for life.

The story of the young heiress was smooth enough and faultlessly delivered. Vreeland forebore to “pump” Mrs. McMorris, for he was well aware that she was “all things to all men,” and her voluble explanations would carry no real conviction.

“She helped Alida Hathorn on to the very verge of ruin,” he gloomily recalled.

“There might have been a marriage between myself and Elaine but for her vicious intermeddling.

“She took that Isle of Wight story in commission and spread it all over New York, while working both sides for coin—a woman Judas!”

While he returned the salutations of Messrs. Merriman, Wiltshire and Rutherstone on the social parade, he was vaguely reflecting on the uselessness of his crime as regarded the stealing of the hidden paper and the tapping of the private wires, as well as the mail frauds.

It now followed him like his own shadow, and the paper was a source of countless nightmares. If it were only safe!

“All that is useless now,” he growled. And he suddenly saw that he was left in the power of Doctor Hugo Alberg, of Justine and of August Helms, the janitor.

“My strange employer is away. She will not be here for months; and she has also taken alarm at the presence of Garston.

“The whole lot of them will probably operate in a blind pool now. There will be nothing for me to gain, and everything to lose in running any further risks.”

He saw with concern that Alberg greatly missed his wealthy and generous patient, and a few significant hints had proved to him that the German physician was now “money hungry.”

“There is Justine always to be pacified, and that brute, Helms, too; he will surely want money.

“Once married, and a fixture here, I am ‘nailed to the cross’ for torture by these people—if they should turn against me.

“Fear will control Doctor Alberg at the last,” reflected Vreeland. “He has been guilty of half-poisoning his patient.

“Justine I can surely rely on as long as I keep her pacified, but, that brute Helms is steadily increasing in his money demands. Some night, when drunk, he may blow the whole thing abroad.” And he had caught a glimpse of Helms and Bagley diving into a saloon together. It frightened him.

It was true that Helms had found his way down several times to the Elmleaf to get money, in a half-fawning and half-threatening bluster.

And on several occasions when Vreeland was absent, the grave-faced valet, Bagley, had joined the janitor, and in some hours spent over the cups of Gambrinus had gained pointers which had given the lively roundsman, Dan Daly, some very valuable hints.

The impending union with Katharine Norreys would found his fortunes on a solid basis; he would have the absolute protection of the great speculative Senator, and the reports of his detectives told him that Hugh Conyers was simply buried in his journalistic duties. It seemed to be a lull in the war, even the pickets had ceased firing.

There were no conferences with Judge Hiram Endicott, and nothing to indicate any activity among Romaine Garland’s friends.

Only one side of the whole affair remained dark to Vreeland. Even Justine Duprez could not tell him how or why Elaine Willoughby had openly taken her unacknowledged daughter to her house for shelter.

It was as yet a mystery as to whether fear, intrigue or accident had brought the lovely girl into the opened arms of her still beautiful mother.

“All I know,” said Justine, in a conference arranged for this purpose by her now indifferent fellow-conspirator, “all I could find out was, that this green-eyed cripple, this little sycophant Irelandaise, who now is my tyrant, brought the tall girl late one evening to the ‘Circassia.’”

“It was a strange visit,” murmured Justine, “for she brought no luggage, and that girl never left my mistress’ presence for a moment, till she went away with the two Conyers.

Justine demurely dropped her eyes.

“Bah!” she cried; “a woman with blood as cold as a fish! No life, no love; she cares for nothing but money.

“Among all of them, not a lover! I thought she was fond of the dead Mr. Hathorn once, but he was soon on a level with the others.”

Justine’s voice was duly scornful.

“And then her tears and frequent fits of sorrow! That was the record the whole of seven years.

“The last thing I saw of her—a stolen glance—she had this girl’s picture in her hand, and was weeping over it.

“If she is a child of hers, she is probably a child of shame. She now fears the exposure, and has gone abroad to hide the girl away forever. Trust to Justine’s experience! I know these women saints. They always have nibbled at le fruit defendu—hypocrites!”

Mr. Harold Vreeland fancied that he saw light at last. “I believe that I can observe Senator Garston’s game. He would use this hidden fact to force Elaine Willoughby into his arms. By Jove! she does fear him! Perhaps Justine is right.

“And so, when I am married to Katharine, and Garston is free of all social claims, if he alone knows her secret, it may be buried forever in her marriage with him.

“To bring the proper pressure to bear, he must have the girl first. And he would not be too good to bribe the girl with a fancied inheritance. Once that the child is under his influence, Elaine’s proud heart must either bend or break.

And so, armed with the deadly secret of the enormously powerful cabal, the stolen document, Vreeland now knew that if brought to bay, Elaine would perhaps be sacrificed by the secret syndicate, despised by the undeceived Alynton, and then, with the secret of her early life in Garston’s possession, be utterly at his mercy. “Yes, she is in the toils,” he muttered. “There is no escape for her.”

It was at the wish of Senator James Garston, now lavishly liberal in his preparations for his ward’s wedding, that the bridal was postponed to the first days of June.

“All is going on well, Harold,” said Garston. “We have worked into a thorough accord with all her representatives.

“And you will not find love-making with Katharine Norreys an irksome task. I wish only to wait till I learn that Elaine Willoughby has landed at Brindisi.

“Somewhere on the Continent she will surely meet this girl. I shall have instant reports from my detectives. For so far, we have found out Elaine’s route, but, the girl is still hidden.

“I wish you to go away at once on your wedding tour, and then to keep Mrs. Willoughby in sight—within touch. I only want to meet the mother and daughter face to face—only once. I will have my innings then, and finish the whole matter in short order.” His face was merciless now.

The days drifted along in all the preoccupation of daily business and the growing bustle of the impending wedding.

Harold Vreeland was most agreeably surprised in the later days of May by a cordial letter from Mrs. Willoughby, posted at Port Said. Her congratulations upon his impending marriage were coupled with her carte blanche as to leave of absence from the firm, and the significant direction to leave Bagley in charge at the Elmleaf.

“We shall have business uses for the apartment during the winter, and Miss Kelly will give Bagley all his orders and attend to the accounts. I have directed Judge Endicott to present in my name to your wife a proper reminder of the esteem which I have for her.”

The notification three days before the wedding, through Noel Endicott, that Mrs. Willoughby had placed a year’s salary at his personal disposal on the books of the firm, as an extra bonus, carried away the last vestige of Vreeland’s haunting fears.

Nothing remained of the awkward episode of the inquiry as to the stolen document, and Vreeland had already settled with Doctor Alberg, and Helms with an affected liberality, for his absence.

The Western millionaire was touching up every cloud hanging over Katharine VanDyke Norreys’ social haziness with a golden lining.

There remained but two things for the happy groom to do now.

The one was to have a last interview with Justine, who was now reduced to a calm subserviency to the orders of the young “Private Secretary,” and the other to effect a safe deposit in some satisfactory place of the stolen document and its tell-tale copy.

He had decided to be liberal with Justine in money matters, and to entrust her in his three months’ absence with the watching of Helms, the janitor, and the disgruntled German doctor.

A famous plan suggested itself! Justine should feed out to these men money, in his name, during his absence.

“And that, with the hope of more, will keep them true to me, as rascals go, till I return.” He had once decided to dismantle the secret connections with Mrs. Willoughby’s telegraph and telephone. It was the subject of a long, introspective reverie.

The use in the next winter of the “Elmleaf” rooms for a concealed headquarters of speculation caused him to leave the wires in position. “It might excite these people’s suspicions. I must appear to trust them,” he decided, “and Garston may even make a million over the private tips I can give him if I am up to their game.”

Suddenly it occurred to him that his own marriage might change the situation, and yet, there were Elaine Willoughby’s recent orders.

“She means probably to hide her child, and then come back and be Queen of the Street again,” he smiled. “The ruling passion. She has the speculative mania still.” For it was clear to him now that the presence of mother and daughter together in New York City was an unnecessary risk.

And so, even on the threshold of his marriage Harold Vreeland feared to trust his bride with the secret of the stolen document. They were to live at the Hotel Savoy on their return, “so as to be near Uncle James, at the Plaza.”

With a moral cowardice which he could not explain, Vreeland had as yet declined to face the burning question of the stolen document. The copy he had always carried secreted within the waistcoat lining of his traveling suit. “I can easily leave that over in Europe,” he murmured. “The original. Where shall I hide it?” He was long in the dark.

But it was by a devilish impulse, aided by accident, that he found a place in Justine Duprez’s rooms on South Fifth Avenue to safely hide the dangerous original.

To gain time for preparation, he sent the old hag away on an errand.

Sealed in a cloth envelope, the paper was soon hidden behind the upper framing plate, and with a hammer, covered with his kid gloves, he drove the half-dozen old, rusted nails tightly home. And he gazed in triumph at the neat device.

“They will of course think that she stole it, should it ever be found,” he mused triumphantly, as he lit a Henry Clay and gloated over his cunning.

“If the house should burn I am safe. In every way it would go up in flames. If I should die, then it makes no difference to me what happens. If she is caught—this would be damning evidence only against her.

“And I would never dare to trust myself with either Garston or my wife, and be found out in the custody of that document.

“Accidents will happen; I might fall ill, and now no matter what befalls, it never can be traced to me.”

He grinned with joy as he contemplated depositing the copy abroad, under an assumed name.

“It will there be safe from all American legal process, and the original is here where I can use it if needed, and as it is, it can never be traced to me.”

He carefully examined the exterior of the row of solid brick tenements. They were good for a life of fifty years.

As he walked away, when he had “finished his letters,” and left a last greeting for Justine, he stood upon the heights of an impregnable position.

Once around the corner, that old woman scuttered away to find roundsman Dan Daly, for the peep-hole had covered a keenly-glittering eye, even after Justine had left her sighing lover to his “last bachelor letters.” And thus the hiding-place was known to more than one.

But Vreeland hastened away in a triumphant glow of satisfaction.

The splendors of the Grace Church wedding, the gilded festivity of the Waldorf wedding dinner, and all the countless preoccupations of the impending voyage busied Harold Vreeland’s excited mind for three days.

There were hundreds of valuable wedding presents to deposit in safety, for society had showered gifts upon the successful interloper with its hard-hearted, hollow flattery of success. It had been a “society event,” and his face, with that of the beautiful bride, had ornamented several “up-to-date” journals.

The flower-decked bridal staterooms of the “Campania” had received Vreeland’s party, and Messrs. Rutherstone, Merriman and Wiltshire were joining the bride and bridesmaids in the parting “loving cup,” the table was covered with journals filled with the usual “glowing accounts” and piled up high with congratulatory letters and telegrams, when “Uncle James” drew the complacent bridegroom aside.

In a private nook, he turned a scowling face to the happy Vreeland.

“She has telegraphed for a cabin on the ‘Normandie,’ and is coming home alone. Took a special train from Vienna to Havre. All traces of girl lost.”

“Vreeland,” growled the maddened man, “some one has betrayed us. Wait at the Hotel Cecil, London, for my cipher orders.

“That woman is a devil in artfulness, and it is a fight to the death now.”

Ten minutes later, the “Campania” was plowing down the beautiful bay.