Both of these secret agents marveled, in their different interviews, when the Queen of the Street answered the mute inquiries of their eyes:
“Just let him go on; do nothing whatever to interrupt him. Only report all to me.” And onward dashed Vreeland toward unknown reefs of woe.
She knew, too, that a haggard-eyed man often stole over the walls of Lakemere, like a thief in the night, now, to meet Justine Duprez, who was just beginning in her own cowardly heart, to wonder whether a frank confession might not save her.
For there were no “sure tips” now to aid Harold Vreeland’s redoubled plunging, and the “strong spirit of wine” was burning away the brain of the man whose once handsome face was now distorted with racking emotions and bloated by cognac. He was on a steep “down grade.”
“He may kill me!” tremblingly whispered Justine, who secretly counted up her gains safely stored away in Paris. “I might tell them all, and then go away over there. Dare I speak?”
She began to watch, with a sinking heart, the clear, unflinching eyes of her mistress, now glowing in all the awakened love of her satisfied motherhood.
“Not yet, not yet, only at the very last!” was the cowardly woman’s decision, as she crept to the safety of her room. The French maid’s cowardly terror escaped not her mistress’ eyes.
If she had known that “Martha Wilmot” had secretly crossed the Atlantic and was now hidden away under Roundsman Daly’s charge, that news would have brought Justine at once, a shivering culprit, to her mistress’ feet. And now, others than Vreeland were playing a sure and waiting game.
But the downward curve was now slippery under Harold Vreeland’s uneasy feet. He had thrown off all his retentive watchfulness, and he even roughly repulsed Doctor Alberg and Janitor Helms, who hounded him to the apartments at the Elmleaf, where the suave Bagley still welcomed his unhappy master.
Brooding there at night after the double life of his Wall Street duties, and his private plunging, Harold Vreeland at last formulated a direct demand upon Senator Garston for money. He stood now on the brink of personal ruin.