Breakfasting leisurely, he read the partly humorous, partly contemptuous account of the sordid affair. Afterward he sent for all the morning papers. But in none of them was Ruhannah Carew mentioned at all, nobody, apparently, having noticed her in the exciting affair between Venem, Brandes, the latter’s wife, and the chauffeur.
Nor did the evening papers add anything material to the account, except to say that Brandes had been interviewed in his office at the Silhouette Theatre and that he stated that he had not engaged in any personal encounter with anybody, had not seen Max Venem in months, had not been near the Hotel Knickerbocker, and knew nothing about the affair in question.
He also permitted a dark hint or two to escape him concerning possible suits for defamation of character against irresponsible newspapers.
The accounts in the various evening editions agreed, however, that when interviewed, Mr. Brandes was nursing a black eye and a badly swollen lip, which, according to him, he had acquired in a playful sparring 136 encounter with his business manager, Mr. Benjamin Stull.
And that was all; the big town had neither time nor inclination to notice either Brandes or Venem any further; Broadway completed the story for its own edification, and, by degrees, arrived at its own conclusions. Only nobody could discover who was the young girl concerned, or where she came from or what might be her name. And, after a few days, Broadway, also, forgot the matter amid the tarnished tinsel and raucous noises of its own mean and multifarious preoccupations.
CHAPTER XIII
LETTERS FROM A LITTLE GIRL
Neeland had several letters from Ruhannah Carew that autumn and winter. The first one was written a few weeks after her arrival in Paris: