“Ask him! And then ponder now the possibility of another marriage. You are now, sir, to take me driving. The only marriage which concerns you, is a joint affair.” That afternoon, as they drove through the park under the chaperonage of the amiable Mrs. Volney McMorris, Vreeland unsuccessfully endeavored to allay his recent dissatisfaction at the absence of any womanly background for the highly polished “Western diamond,” which he was soon to win and wear for life. The story of the young heiress was smooth enough and faultlessly delivered. Vreeland forebore to “pump” Mrs. McMorris, for he was well aware that she was “all things to all men,” and her voluble explanations would carry no real conviction. “She helped Alida Hathorn on to the very verge of ruin,” he gloomily recalled. “There might have been a marriage between myself and Elaine but for her vicious intermeddling. “She took that Isle of Wight story in commission and spread it all over New York, while working both sides for coin—a woman Judas!” While he returned the salutations of Messrs. Merriman, Wiltshire and Rutherstone on the social parade, he was vaguely reflecting on the uselessness of his crime as regarded the stealing of the hidden paper and the tapping of the private wires, as well as the mail frauds. It now followed him like his own shadow, and the paper was a source of countless nightmares. If it were only safe! “All that is useless now,” he growled. And he suddenly saw that he was left in the power of Doctor Hugo Alberg, of Justine and of August Helms, the janitor. “There will be no speculation in ‘Sugar’ for months; the market is dead, pending the reorganization and New Jersey reincorporation. “My strange employer is away. She will not be here for months; and she has also taken alarm at the presence of Garston. “The whole lot of them will probably operate in a blind pool now. There will be nothing for me to gain, and everything to lose in running any further risks.” He saw with concern that Alberg greatly missed his wealthy and generous patient, and a few significant hints had proved to him that the German physician was now “money hungry.” “There is Justine always to be pacified, and that brute, Helms, too; he will surely want money. “Once married, and a fixture here, I am ‘nailed to the cross’ for torture by these people—if they should turn against me. “Fear will control Doctor Alberg at the last,” reflected Vreeland. “He has been guilty of half-poisoning his patient. “Justine I can surely rely on as long as I keep her pacified, but, that brute Helms is steadily increasing in his money demands. Some night, when drunk, he may blow the whole thing abroad.” And he had caught a glimpse of Helms and Bagley diving into a saloon together. It frightened him. It was true that Helms had found his way down several times to the Elmleaf to get money, in a half-fawning and half-threatening bluster.