Held to Answer: A Novel

by Peter Clark MacFarlane

That the actress herself, a woman of moods and caprices, had no adequate appreciation of the seriousness of her act in thus attacking the character of Doctor Hampstead was made evident to the reporters, when a telephone call to her apartments revealed that in the very hour when an endeavor to serve the warrant of arrest was being made, the actress was leaving her hotel in the company of a well-known young business man for a pleasure cruise upon the Bay.

The minister saw with satisfaction how completely the facts as developed had been edited into a story, the assumptions of which were entirely favorable to him. That was good. It was also right. That in itself would show this reckless woman that the people would refuse to believe ill of him upon the word of any mere stranger.

Nevertheless, reflection on the sheer impudence of the woman's attack made Hampstead angry, and with a quick, nervous movement he crushed the paper into a ball and hurled it over the side.

Was there ever a story of blacker ingratitude? Was there ever a weaker, more craven specimen of a man? Was there ever a more clever, more devilish woman?

So this was the way she made good her threat. She had set this trap, had persuaded Rollie to pretend to steal the diamonds and to make a false confession to him, during which the minister had actually sealed the diamonds in one of his own envelopes. John wished he could be sure whether the young rascal actually took the diamonds away with him, as he appeared to do, or whether he didn't drop them in a drawer of the desk or about the study, where a search would reveal them.

With facial expression quite unministerial Hampstead's mind raced on to the question whether the story of the defalcation was also trumped up? But at this point his excited mental processes halted, puzzled for a moment; and then abruptly his face cleared, as he saw the untenableness of his suddenly conceived theory. No; it would not do. Rollie had undoubtedly been perfectly sincere, and this scheming Jezebel of a woman had merely taken advantage of him in the moment of confession, and made him either consciously or unconsciously, and perhaps helplessly, a tool of her desperate vengeance.

And vengeance for what? Hampstead kept asking himself that, and never got farther with an answer than the rage of a self-centered, heartless woman at his failure to pay the supreme tribute to vanity by making love to her as once he had done, and giving her the gloating satisfaction of spurning him as she had spurned him before. This was the extent of his crime against her, and this bold, bald attempt to destroy him was the punishment she had devised. Heavens! Had the woman no sense of responsibility at all? No consciousness of all the terrible harm she would be doing to so many others besides himself if she succeeded in ruining him? Think of the men and women who trusted him, the young boys and girls to whom he was pointed out as a shining example, the struggling people who found inspiration and courage in the spectacle of his own dauntless battlings for the right.

John felt that it was not egotism to think of himself in this way. He knew it as a fact because he had to know it, because men told him so continually, and because it was a supremely steadying influence upon his own life. He dared not swerve. Rollie Burbeck was not the only man in the community who owed him for escape from a fall, or who was toiling laboriously upward, with an eye on the minister climbing far above and turning cheerfully to beckon or lower an Alpine rope for part of the weakened climber's load.

And the Dounay woman knew all of this. Some of it he had shown to her in the hope that it would be an inspiration. Some of it she had seen for herself. But now, in her malice and hatred, she took no account of all that. Unable to make him swerve, she was wickedly determined to hurl him down. And having used Rollo Burbeck this far, John had no doubt at all that her genius would be entirely equal to using him still further, by binding him to absolute secrecy as to his knowledge of the minister's innocence.

But this thought brought home another with shocking force,—the realization that Rollie, the one man who could vindicate him of this charge must not vindicate him! For Rollie to speak and ruin himself seemed only fair, rather than for the minister to be ruined; yet for the young man to confess would be a terrible blow to the mother,—would in fact most likely kill her. That was unthinkable. That blow must be prevented at all hazards.