The manner of her meeting with him was curious, and almost like the work of Fate. But the manner of her engagement as his secretary was still more curious, yet characteristic of the man.
It happened on the railroad. She was returning from the west coast with her then employer, Henry Louth, one of the most daring of the Chicago wheat men. Perhaps a better description of him would have been "reckless," but the newspapers reported him as daring—until after his death.
Like many another speculator in the past, this man had become disastrously involved in a wild endeavor to corner wheat. But he found, as others had found before him, instead of completing the corner he hoped to make, he had only created a Frankenstein which threatened him with destruction. So far did he suddenly find himself involved that only financial assistance on an enormous scale could have saved him from ruin. His thoughts turned at once to Alexander Hendrie, who was then in Vancouver. He was the only man who could afford him adequate help. There was nothing for it but a desperate rush across the continent on his forlorn hope, and he undertook the journey at once, accompanied by Monica.
But like the majority of forlorn hopes inspired by ill fortune, the journey ended in dire disaster. When Louth put his proposition to the millionaire he learned to his horror that this man was actually the head of the syndicate who had been his undoing. It was an absurd blending of comedy and tragedy, yet the situation was wholly characteristic of the methods of Alexander Hendrie. The work had been carried out with all the subtlety of the astute mind which had lifted the man to his present position. It had been carried out by secret agents, and never for one moment had his name been allowed to figure in the affair. But it was Hendrie who was responsible for the shattering of the edifice of monopoly Louth had so recklessly attempted to set up; and the latter set out on his return journey a broken and beaten man.
Monica would never forget that journey, and all it meant to her. While the train was held up by a heavy snowfall at a place called Glacier, in the Rocky Mountains, Henry Louth, in his private car, took the opportunity of shooting himself. The sensation, the hubbub, the excitement the affair caused was intense; and Monica attended him during his dying moments, afterwards watching at his bedside until his body was removed by the authorities.
It was during this latter period, when the excitement had died down, and all was quiet again, that a large man entered the car from another part of the train. He came straight to the bedside and looked gravely at the dead man. Then he turned to the beautiful woman beside the bed, and looked at her with unsmiling eyes.
She knew him at once, and returned his look unflinchingly. It was Alexander Hendrie. She recognized the strong, rugged face of the man, and his abundant fair hair.
In a moment a cold resentment at the intrusion rose up in her, and, for the life of her, she could not restrain the impulse to give it expression.
"Well?" she inquired. "Are you satisfied?"
"How?"