“The office business below?” he hesitatingly said.
“Ah! I have given up months to the study of this new arrangement,” thoughtfully said the Queen of the Street. “You are to be master of your own hours.
“Once a day, however, you are to show up at the downtown office. Wyman knows that you will be busied at home a great deal. You will have no awkward questions asked. Endicott will watch the downtown affair.”
“The firm signature?” he said.
“Will never be used. You will sign ‘Harold Vreeland, Trustee,’ and the securities handled daily will be delivered to me at the ‘Circassia,’ on my list of purchases and sales. Your checks and my daily statements are to correspond.”
“In other words, I am, as trustee, your hidden broker?” Vreeland said.
“Under my daily orders,” she gravely answered. “And you are not to deny that you indulge in private speculations. You are not even to avoid Hathorn’s nearest friends.
“Even if Mrs. Volney McMorris should steal into your breakfast room, or a bevy of the gay young matrons, or—even a pretty anonyma—your record as a ‘preux chevalier’ in gayest New York will not suffer. You are to be a young man à la mode.” Vreeland bowed in a grave silence.
That night, when he returned to New York City, to blindly obey his strange patroness, Vreeland’s bosom was big with his happy secrets.
“I am to hold the hidden fort ‘of the Sugar treasure.’”