Conyers, adroitly separating the two culprits, hastened to give his directions to Roundsman Daly, who led away Martha Wilmot to begin her preparations for a return voyage. He saw the cogency of Conyers’ smothering policy. “Best end for a bad job all round,” said the blunt policeman.
It was midnight when Daly and Conyers finished the details of the plan, which they quickly carried out.
The new deal left only Justine Duprez, a moody, self-torturing woman, lingering along under surveillance, until she grasped at her safety by an implicit obedience. She was now humbled and eager for departure. She well knew that Vreeland’s grave hid her only friend.
“Thank heaven, Daly!” said Conyers. “I have ‘squared’ all the reporters, you have done the same for the police, and I think after the two men are buried, that a week will find them both forgotten in the swim! So runs the modern world away!”
“I am glad of the whole ending,” said honest Daly. “For as Mrs. Willoughby has promised to give Mary a home of her own, and she needs her services no more, I shall soon ask you to my wedding, and, I also hope to hear of your own.”
“You just go ahead and get married, Dan,” laughed Conyers. “I have waited a good many years, and I am in no hurry. I belong to the great reading public, my hydra-headed master! There is no place for love in the study. Cupid is a poor penman.”
It was a fortunate matter that Senator Alynton was busied for a week with the imposing obsequies of James Garston, for, the private funeral of Harold Vreeland was passed over with little remark by the man who had been his enemy. Alynton had been quieted by the return of the document, and now, no troublesome heirs of Garston could ever unearth the secret compact.
Overspeculation and the pace that kills, told the whole story of Vreeland’s downfall, and a new golden sign, “Wyman & Endicott,” had replaced the last public evidence of Vreeland’s meteoric rise and fall, even before the sod rested upon the forgotten suicide.
Two black-robed women met at the side of Senator James Garston’s coffin in a sad silence.
The face of neither was visible, and when the last solemn words of public farewell were spoken, neither dreamed that under the two impenetrable crape veils were hidden the woman whom he had loved most, and the woman who had once loved him, with all the despair of a lost soul.