“She means probably to hide her child, and then come back and be Queen of the Street again,” he smiled. “The ruling passion. She has the speculative mania still.” For it was clear to him now that the presence of mother and daughter together in New York City was an unnecessary risk. And so, even on the threshold of his marriage Harold Vreeland feared to trust his bride with the secret of the stolen document. They were to live at the Hotel Savoy on their return, “so as to be near Uncle James, at the Plaza.” With a moral cowardice which he could not explain, Vreeland had as yet declined to face the burning question of the stolen document. The copy he had always carried secreted within the waistcoat lining of his traveling suit. “I can easily leave that over in Europe,” he murmured. “The original. Where shall I hide it?” He was long in the dark. But it was by a devilish impulse, aided by accident, that he found a place in Justine Duprez’s rooms on South Fifth Avenue to safely hide the dangerous original. One of the plates of a door framing had sprung partly loose. A sudden idea seized him. Her rooms were the safest place for many reasons. To gain time for preparation, he sent the old hag away on an errand. Sealed in a cloth envelope, the paper was soon hidden behind the upper framing plate, and with a hammer, covered with his kid gloves, he drove the half-dozen old, rusted nails tightly home. And he gazed in triumph at the neat device. “They will of course think that she stole it, should it ever be found,” he mused triumphantly, as he lit a Henry Clay and gloated over his cunning. “If the house should burn I am safe. In every way it would go up in flames. If I should die, then it makes no difference to me what happens. If she is caught—this would be damning evidence only against her. “And I would never dare to trust myself with either Garston or my wife, and be found out in the custody of that document. “Accidents will happen; I might fall ill, and now no matter what befalls, it never can be traced to me.” He grinned with joy as he contemplated depositing the copy abroad, under an assumed name. “It will there be safe from all American legal process, and the original is here where I can use it if needed, and as it is, it can never be traced to me.” He carefully examined the exterior of the row of solid brick tenements. They were good for a life of fifty years. As he walked away, when he had “finished his letters,” and left a last greeting for Justine, he stood upon the heights of an impregnable position. “It was a stroke of genius, that last idea of mine!” he gaily cried, as his eye rested on an old woman who had just descended the stair. He knew not the burden of her eager soul. She carried his fate!