I ["The Professor" on a Spree]
II [The Prettiest Girl]
III [Friendly Strangers]
IV [An Unscrupulous Reformer]
V [Alicia and the Motives of Men]
VI [Stage-Setting]
VII [Boy and Girl]
VIII [Passages with Mayor Black]
IX [Aunt Mary]
X [A Senator Missing]
XI [Confessions of Waiter No. 73]
XII [Grapefruit and Telegrams]
XIII [A Change of Management]
XIV [Holding the Fort]
XV [Council of War]
XVI [The Senatorial Dinner]
XVII [A Devious Journey]
XVIII [Jennie]
XIX [A New Antagonist]
XX [An Eventful Supper Party]
XXI [Flash Lights]
XXII [Virtue Triumphant]
XXIII [Return]
XXIV [The Reform League]
XXV [Second Council of War]
XXVI [The Business of Being an Impostor]
XXVII [The Code Telegram]
XXVIII [Simpson as Detective]
XXIX [The Final Dilemma]
XXX [Mollie June]
MOLLIE'S SUBSTITUTE HUSBAND
CHAPTER I
"THE PROFESSOR" ON A SPREE
John Merriam, Principal of the High School at Riceville, Illinois--"Professor" Merriam, as he was universally called by the citizens of Riceville--was wickedly, carnally, gloriously happy. He was having an unwonted spree.
I fear the reader will be shocked. The principal of a high school, he will say, has no right to a spree, even an occasional one. The "Professor" has girl students in his classes--mostly girls, indeed, and usually the prettiest ones in town--and women teachers under his supervision. Every seventh day he teaches a young people's class in a Sunday School. He makes addresses at meetings of the Y.P.S.C.E., the Y.M.C.A., and other alphabetically designated societies that make for righteousness and decorum. He should at all times and in all places be a model, an exemplar, to the budding young men and women of the community in general and his school in particular.
In this reasoning the reader is in strict accord with what the sentiment of all Riceville would have been if it had known--if it could have known.
Nevertheless, it is the regrettable and shocking fact that John Merriam was sitting on that pleasant April evening in the Peacock Cabaret of the Hotel De Soto in the wicked city of Chicago. He was attired in evening clothes, a fact which, in itself would have seemed both odd and reprehensible to Riceville, and he was alone at a tiny table with a yellow-silk-shaded lamp. He had just been guided to that table, and pending the arrival of a waiter, he was gazing eagerly, boyishly about him at such delights as the somewhat garish Peacock Cabaret displayed.
For John Merriam, though a "professor," was young. He was only twenty-eight. He was tall and blond and athletic, as young men who grow up on farms in the Middle West and then go to college have a way of being. And after his season of strenuous and highly virtuous labours at Riceville he was really hungry, keen, for something--well, just a little less virtuous.
A distinguished looking gentleman in a dinner jacket, conspicuously labeled with a number, somewhat haughtily and negligently approached, bearing a menu card.