Quincy Atherton leaped forward and caught her as she reeled. Quickly Craig threw open a window for air, and as he did so leaned far out and blew shrilly on a police whistle.
The young man looked up from Eugenia, over whom he was bending, scarcely heeding what else went on about him. Still, there was no trace of anger on his face, in spite of the great wrong that had been done him. There was room for only one great emotion—only anxiety for the poor girl who had suffered so cruelly merely for taking his name.
Kennedy saw the unspoken question in his eyes.
“Eugenia is a pure normal, as Dr. Crafts told you,” he said gently. “A few weeks, perhaps only days, of treatment—the thyroid will revert to its normal state—and Eugenia Gilman will be the mother of a new house of Atherton which may eclipse even the proud record of the founder of the old.”
“Who blew the whistle?” demanded a gruff voice at the door, as a tall bluecoat puffed past the scandalized butler.
“Arrest that woman,” pointed Kennedy. “She is the poisoner. Either as wife of Burroughs, whom she fascinates and controls as she does Edith, she planned to break the will of Quincy or, in the other event, to administer the fortune as head of the Eugenics Foundation after the death of Dr. Crafts, who would have followed Eugenia and Quincy Atherton.”
I followed the direction of Kennedy’s accusing finger. Maude Schofield’s face betrayed more than even her tongue could have confessed.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE BILLIONAIRE BABY
Coming to us directly as a result of the talk that the Atherton case provoked was another that involved the happiness of a wealthy family to a no less degree.
“I suppose you have heard of the ‘billionaire baby,’ Morton Hazleton III?” asked Kennedy of me one afternoon shortly afterward.