"I slept nearly all the way home and the chauffeur had difficulty in rousing me. The dawn had come, clear, but intensely cold, as I stumbled up to bed.
"When I awakened, the woman was raving in delirium and I was compelled to call a doctor in spite of her prohibition. Of course, I had to tell father of our strange guest and he flared out in fury and would have driven her from the house if he could. I was horrified, for he is the dearest, most tender-hearted man in the world, but no inkling of the truth came to me. He asked if she had sent anything back to town by her chauffeur, and he looked utterly crushed when I told him the man had taken a letter to deliver for her.
"The doctor looked very grave when he came and said he would send a nurse, but when she arrived I had to dismiss her. Mr. McCormick, I sat by that woman for an hour and I knew that no one else must learn from her lips what she disclosed in her delirium!
"There was no hope for her from the first, but she lingered, and I nursed her day and night, not even allowing the housemaid to relieve me for an hour. Her raving filled me with loathing and bitter resentment, but she was a fellow creature dying and I could not help doing all that was possible, in sheer humanity.
"The night before she died consciousness returned to her and she realized everything and knew the end was approaching. She tried brokenly to thank me for the kindness I had shown her, and in gratitude told me the whole truth.
"Years ago, when father was in a desperate financial strait, he forged a check. Oh, if it is hard for me to tell you now, think how hard it must have been for me to learn of it from that wretched woman's lips. Father had great provocation, for the man whose name he used had defrauded him, but the dreadful fact remained. He made full restitution anonymously long ago, and the other man is dead, but somehow the forged check and a letter proving father's guilt had fallen into the hands of a blackmailing gang, through a dishonest law clerk, who found them in going over the man's private papers to settle up his estate.
"The blackmailers had for years preyed on father and he was broken and on the verge of ruin from the continued strain. Imagine how I felt when I realized that I had been used as a tool to deliver to his enemies the very money wrung from my own father!
"The check and letter denouncing him were in the possession of this Mrs. Atterbury, who was the leader of the greatest band of criminals ever organized in America. Their operations covered every state in the Union and they had extorted hundreds of thousands from unhappy victims all over the country. It was to Mrs. Atterbury's house that I had been sent, but the dying woman would not tell me the address. She admitted, however, that it was the meeting place for the sub-leaders of the gang and the incriminating documents were kept there.
"A wild idea came to me to get into that house somehow and destroy that check and letter which held father in such hideous bondage, and the woman's next words showed me the way.
"It appeared that Mrs. Atterbury always employed a private secretary who was not a member of the gang as a blind, and chose a girl who was alone and friendless. If she proved really stupid but trustworthy, she was frequently sent to collect money from victims so that if she later became suspicious she would be technically guilty with the rest and they could hold that as a weapon over her. That had not yet occurred, because Mrs. Atterbury dismissed each one after a short period and replaced her with another young and fairly unintelligent stranger. The time had come for the present incumbent to be sent away before she learned too much, and I made up my mind to take her place, if I could.