PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
| David Aldrich | An author |
| Alexander Chambers | A king of finance |
| Helen Chambers | His daughter |
| Henry Allen | A lawyer with a political future |
| Carl Hoffman | The Mayor of Avenue A |
| Carrie Becker | An admirer of the Mayor |
| William Osborne | A publisher |
| Rev. Joseph Franklin | Director of St. Christopher's Mission |
| Rev. Philip Morton | Dead, but a living memory |
| John Rogers | A real estate agent |
| Kate Morgan | A nurse-maid |
| Jimmie Morgan | Her father |
| Tom (last name uncertain) | Whose parents were the street |
| Lillian Drew | Of the sisterhood of Magdalene |
BOOK I
THE HIGHEST PRICE
CHAPTER I
AN INJUSTICE OF GOD
The Reverend Philip Morton, head of St. Christopher's Mission, had often said that, in event of death or serious accident, he wished David Aldrich to be placed in charge of his personal affairs; so when at ten o'clock of a September morning the janitor, at order of the frightened housekeeper, broke into the bath-room and found Morton's body lying white and dead in the tub, the housekeeper's first clear thought was of a telegram to David.
The message came to David while he was doggedly working over a novel that had just come back from a third publisher. He glanced at the telegram, then his tall figure sank back into his chair and he stared at the yellow sheet. Never before had Death struck him so heavy a blow. The wound of his mother's death had been dealt in quick-healing childhood; and though his father, a Western mining engineer, had died but seven years before, David had known him hardly otherwise than as a remotely placed giver of an allowance. Morton had for years been his best friend—latterly almost his only friend. For a space the blow rendered him stupid; then the agony of his personal loss entered him, and wrung him; and then in beside his personal sorrow there crept a sense of the appalling loss of the people about St. Christopher's.