“Now what business could take a decent woman out a night like this?” But he had substantial cause for rejoicing, and he blessed her on her way. For she paid him the price of a life—all unknown to his gratified cupidity.
There was silence in the halls of the “Circassia” as Mrs. Elaine Willoughby swept down the corridors now draped only in her white dinner dress. The dark wraps, cast away on the servants’ stairway, told no story of the undetected outing, and, with a trembling hand, the frightened woman opened the side door of the Pearl boudoir.
An hour later there was hurrying to and fro in her household. “It is one of Madame’s old attacks,” Justine explained to Doctor Anderson, hastily summoned by the private secretary.
For after instinctively hiding away the document thrust into her bosom, the paper which gave to fatherless Romaine Garland a fortune, Elaine Willoughby had fainted away, with her hand upon the bell, as she mechanically summoned help in the hour of her agony. And the price of her safety was a near approach to the grave!
On the next morning the journals of fifty cities told millions of readers of the sudden death of the Western magnate, Senator James Garston, and the various political cabals were busied with selecting his successor. Death had robbed him of the civic crown, and a stately head was lying low.
Senator Alynton, while hurrying from Washington to New York on business, read all the details of the attack of heart failure which had cut off the strong man in the flower of his life.
“This is a serious business,” he murmured, but his impassive face never showed his secret solicitude lest the papers of the dead man might expose the operations of a syndicate “for revenue only.” He wore the impassive mask of the millionaire politician.
There was the look of a wild despair in Katharine Vreeland’s eyes when she awakened her heavy-eyed husband from the sleep of exhaustion the next morning.
“Get up!” she sternly said.
“Here is news to frighten even you into being a man for a day. Senator Garston died last night of heart disease at the Hotel Belgravia.”