Harry had begun to weep when his wife told of the operations, and continued to sob bitterly.
“Did you and Mr. Thaw discuss the fate of other young women at the hands of Stanford White and did you tell him certain names?”
Mr. Jerome objected.
Mr. Delmas put another question:
“Did you and Mr. Thaw discuss the fate of the ‘pie girl?’”
“Yes, sir. It was in Paris in 1903. He asked me what other girls I knew of who had suffered at the hands of White. I told him I had heard of the ‘pie girl,’ whose name was known to both of us. A girl at the theater had told me about it and that night when White came to my dressing-room I asked him about it. He asked me where I had heard the story. I told him a girl had told me. Then he told me all about it.
“There was a stag dinner, he said, and the girl was put in a big pie with a lot of birds. She was very young—about 15 years, I think he said. He also told me that the girl had a beautiful figure and wore only a gauze dress. He helped put her in the pie and fix it, and said it was the best stunt he ever saw at a dinner. When the girl jumped out of the pie the birds flew all about the room.
“‘But I came near getting into trouble about it,’ he said. ‘We put gold pieces in the girl’s shoes and in her dress and a lot of people heard of it. All the newspapers got hold of it. I stopped it at all the newspapers but one, but I could not stop it there. I got a friend to go see them, though, and we finally got them to stop it, too. We kept it out of the papers, but it was close.’”
“I told Mr. White I had heard he ruined the girl that night, but he only laughed.”
The names of other girls ruined by White were whispered by Mrs. Thaw to Jerome, but not made public.