Mrs. Chadwick unlocked the door and admitted her husband. He blithely escorted her over to the window, drew up the curtain and flashed the paper in front of her blinking eyes. At first she saw only a smear of black type and a dancing set of little pictures. The type presently resolved itself into a five column headline which told a story that the whole town would be chuckling over in another hour: BANKER SATISFIES GRUDGE; NEARLY BREAKS UP HOMES –––– Fate and Theatrical Press Agent Play Into Hands of Donald McDonald and Give Him Sweet Revenge After Many Years. –––– HE WHO LAUGHS LAST LAUGHS BEST Mrs. Chadwick gazed bewilderingly at the flaming headline and at the pen and ink sketches illustrating the story which followed—sketches picturing with comic effect little scenes like that which transpired at her own breakfast table the morning before. “I don’t understand,” she said weakly. “Read the first few paragraphs and you will,” chuckled her husband. His wife obediently read the introduction to the long story which Crandall had written. On a certain Spring night a score of years ago a certain Baltimorean gazed up at the star spangled heavens on the desolate shores of a little inlet of Chesapeake Bay twenty long miles from a railroad and fifteen from any human habitation and swore by all the nine gods that sometime, somehow, some place he would get even collectively and appropriately with two dozen of his fellow club members who had just played him what he considered the scurviest trick known to mortal man. He had been kidnapped on his wedding night and dumped without ceremony on the loneliest spot in this corner of the world—all by way of a joke. This same man sat yesterday in the living room of his country home with a perpetual grin on his face and a heartful of joy. He knew that every living man of that party of jokesters was suffering something approximating the torments he suffered on that night of nights and that he had stirred up more trouble in a score of households than a half a hundred genuine vampires might have succeeded in doing. Opportunity chose the disguise of a theatrical press agent when she finally knocked after all these years—which statement leads naturally to an account of the real inside of the story of the projected millionaires’ chorus girl joy ride party which amused and startled this city yesterday. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chapter Seventeen