“Tell that smart woman to slip down here and see me before our patient comes back. I’ll be here from four to seven to-day. And, mind that you put her ‘dead on’ to me, as the holder of a hundred pound note for her.”
“Good,” grunted Alberg.
“And, now, my son of Galen, what was it that upset Mrs. Willoughby?” Vreeland was eagerly studying the German’s face.
“The old thing. She has raved all night about her child. I only brought her out of the attack with the strongest anti-spasmodics that man dare to use, short of clear cold murder. It’s a terrible risk,” sighed Alberg.
When Doctor Hugo Alberg left the Elmleaf, he was under the spell of his lying coadjutor, and richer by a few hundred dollars. “This fellow must never even lift the veil of the Temple,” muttered Vreeland. “Only trust to Justine. Only Justine,” he cried, as he threw himself down to sleep, after ordering the wondering Bagley to send Miss Kelly home on her arrival, and also that dark-eyed enigma, Miss Garland. He needed solitude.
“I am ill, and, must have a long sleep. You can take a day off yourself. Clear out for the day and don’t let me hear a single footfall about my rooms,” were the staccato injunctions of the excited schemer.
“If that nurse only comes,” he murmured, as he closed his weary eyes.
It was eleven o’clock when a light step echoed in Vreeland’s hall, and the swishing sound of Justine Duprez’s robe made the banker leap to his door. The French girl had her will at last. She stood amid the splendors of Vreeland’s veiled Paradise—her lover’s home.
She cried out in glee, “Thank God! She is out of the way. I came here from the train. She absolutely forbade me to go with her. I have had the janitor’s boy watching all the trains. This Senator Garston went up the road an hour ago. The smart boy helped us last night in the cloak rooms, and, so, they are off alone together, up there, to-day.”
Vreeland’s eyes blazed in a mighty triumph. “To-night, you must help me, Justine,” cried the eager schemer.