Produced by Darleen Dove, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries. THE DUKE DECIDES By HEADON HILL Author of _By a Hair’s-Breadth_, etc. _New York_ A. WESSELS COMPANY 1904 Copyright, 1903, by _A. Wessels Company_ Published, 1903 PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. [Illustration: _Leonie Sherman_] ———— CONTENTS CHAPTER I—_The Man with the Mandate_ CHAPTER II—_On Board the_ St. Paul CHAPTER III—_A Task-master in Goggles_ CHAPTER IV—_The Lady in the Landau_ CHAPTER V—_Ziegler Begins to Move_ CHAPTER VI—_The General is Curious_ CHAPTER VII—_The Men on the Stairs_ CHAPTER VIII—_The Cut Panel_ CHAPTER IX—_The Strategy of the General_ CHAPTER X—_A Duty Call_ CHAPTER XI—_On the Terrace_ CHAPTER XII—_The Man Under the Seat_ CHAPTER XIII—_At the Keeper’s Cottage_ CHAPTER XIV—_Too Many Women_ CHAPTER XV—_A New Cure for Headache_ CHAPTER XVI—_A Delicate Mission_ CHAPTER XVII—_Where is the Duke?_ CHAPTER XVIII—_The Senator and the Securities_ CHAPTER XIX—_In the Crypt_ CHAPTER XX—_In the Muniment Room_ CHAPTER XXI—_The Honor of the House_ LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Leonie Sherman A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her? The procession of three led by the stranger. I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton. ———— CHAPTER I—_The Man with the Mandate_ At six o’clock on a May evening, at an uptown corner of Broadway, in New York City, the bowels of the earth opened and disgorged a crowd of weary-faced men and women who scattered in all directions. They were the employees of a huge "dry-goods store," leaving work for the day. It was a stringent rule of the firm that everyone drawing wages, from the smart managers of departments and well-dressed salesladies down to the counting-house drudges and check-boys, should descend into the basement, and there file past the timekeeper and a private detective before passing up a narrow staircase, and so out by a sort of stage-door into the side street. The great plate-glass portals on the main thoroughfare were not for the working bees of this hive of industry—only for the gay butterflies of fashion by whom they lived.