“I do not dare to accuse her,” he growled, “for Alida’s visits were a treason to my trust. Does she know of them?” He breathed freer at the rumors of the approaching marriage of the golden-hearted Potter with the woman who was his natural mate. “That will keep her mouth shut forever, for her own sake!” meanly exulted Vreeland.
When Justine glided into the dark back room of the janitor, her excited lover cut short all tenderness.
“Tell me, for God’s sake, all you know! We can make an appointment for South Fifth Avenue afterwards.”
He had brought a roll of crisp bills to stimulate Justine’s memory, and when he slipped away half an hour later, his heart was throbbing wildly. He was armed at all points now.
In his mean egoism, he saw the storm lowering only over Justine’s head. “Bah! they will merely chase her over to Paris; a few thousand will close her mouth there.
“And I can surely afford it, when I marry Katharine Norreys, a millionairess in posse!”
He went directly to the Savoy Hotel, after sending up a beautiful corbeille of flowers. His mind was made up at last. “Justine is all right. She dare not talk. And they will seal her lips and send her out of America.” He laughed lightly. “My capricious employer! You are only playing my game for me. For I should not care to have Justine Duprez as a bridesmaid. It will be well to have her out of the way. Garston might use his sly arts on her.”
Lulled by his mean selfishness he forgot all his own risks, in believing the now half-desperate maid to be the single object of suspicion.
He little knew that the police were quietly watching every movement of himself, Doctor Alberg and the now fretful Justine. The cool body servant, Bagley, was a spy by night and day; and even janitor August Helms and the two letter-carriers at the “Circassia” were under the surveillance of roundsman Dan Daly’s friends in plain clothes.
A minute mark on every letter and a special time list enabled Miss Mary Kelly, self-possessed and untiring, to compare daily her list with the chief clerk of Station Z.