About three-thirty a scene was being enacted in the apartment of Mrs. Howard Crend in a building some four blocks away.
Mrs. Howard Crend was artificial in every thought, word, and deed, a specimen of the hothouse sort of woman. She liked to be thought ultrarefined, delicate, helpless, and managed to demonstrate to the knowing that she was quite a distance from true refinement indeed.
At three-thirty she was pacing back and forth in the living room of her apartment, her face aflame, her hands doubled at her sides, breathing stertorously. Her husband was sprawled across the foot of a divan, puffing a cigarette and watching his wife. He was listening to her tirade, too, because he could not help himself.
Mrs. Howard Crend was the sister of Mrs. Madge Lennek, who had been a widow for a little more than a year. She was three years the older and formerly had dominated her younger sister to a great extent. But Madge had married Lennek, the millionaire shoe man, who had a hundred dollars where Crend had a cent, and that had changed things.
While Lennek was alive, his wife lorded it over her elder sister, and Mrs. Crend felt that she should tolerate it. But when Lennek died, she attempted to become the domineering elder sister again and deluged Madge Lennek with advice, not all of which was good.
But Madge Lennek had learned the lesson of independence and refused to allow her elder sister to manage her as she had before her marriage. Hence, there was a continual turmoil, almost a warfare.
And on this Sunday afternoon she paced the floor in a state of excitement and anger, until her meek husband felt called upon to protest.
“Quit it!” he advised. “You’ll be a nervous wreck!”
“I am a nervous wreck already,” his wife informed him. “Quit it, indeed. Stand idly by and let things go to the dogs, I suppose!”
“I fail to see how you can better things,” Crend retorted.
“Something must be done about it! Are you spineless? Haven’t you brains that can be put to some use?”
“What can I do?” Crend asked. “Do you want Madison Purden for a brother-in-law?”
“Not if it can be avoided,” Crend admitted. “Madison Purden isn’t quite my idea of a man. But what can I do about it? Can I go to Madge and demand that she cease receiving Purden? That would be the surest way of driving her into the scoundrel’s arms — and her fortune with her.”
“I am glad that you finally thought of the fortune,” his wife said with some sarcasm in her voice. “If Madge does not marry again, I shall inherit her money. If he marries Madison Purden, we’ll not get a cent of it.”
“Seems to me you’re shooting rather wild,” Crend observed. “Madge is a bit younger than you and is in excellent health. The chance are that she’ll outlive you by ten years or more.”
“Accidents may happen,” Mrs. Crend reminded him. “A person never can tell.”
“That is true, of course. But I do not anticipate any accident of a serious nature happening to Madge. She is the sort that always dodges accidents.”
“That man, Madison Purden, has infatuated her,” Mrs. Crend declared. “He began to attract her before Lennek had been dead a month. He played on her sympathy. She’ll not listen to me any more. I told her the truth about Madison Purden — that he’s a schemer and a scoundrel, and that decent men won’t have anything at all to do with him. And she told me to attend to my own business, that she was capable of picking her friends without any outside assistance. Outside assistance! Her own sister!”
“If you ask me what to do, I say drop the whole thing,” Crend said. “Ignore her little affair with Purden, or laugh at it. Kill it with ridicule. Let her get over it. Madge is a sensible woman. Purden will make some fool break that will show her just what kind of man he is. Leave it to Madge!”
“She’ll marry him — that’s what she’ll do!” Mrs. Crend declared. “I’m a woman, and I can read the workings of another woman’s mind. Don’t you suppose that I can see how things are going? She’ll marry him — and he’ll run through her fortune. We’ll not get a cent of it.”
“We haven’t a chance, anyway,” Crend assured her. “I’d just drop the whole thing.”
“She is my sister, and I want to save her, aside from any thoughts of the money.”
“That is very noble of you,” Crend replied sarcastically.
The telephone rang. Since the maid had gone out for the afternoon, Mrs. Crend answered the call herself. The anger was gone suddenly from her voice. She did not know who might be at the other end of the line.
“Hello?” she called.
“Is that you, Laura?”
“Yes, Madge.”
“I just called you up to — to say good-by.”
“Good-by? Madge, what do you mean?” Mrs. Crend cried.
“That’s all — good-by!”
The receiver at the other end of the line was snapped into place. Mrs. Crend whirled toward her husband.
“Now, what do you make of that?” she asked, excited again. “That was Madge. She said she called up to say good-by.”
“What?” Crend cried.
“That’s all she said — and then she hung up. You — you don’t suppose she’s eloping with Madison Purden? That would be the last straw. Get your hat — we’re going right over there.”
She rushed for her own hat. A little clock in the corner of the room chimed the half hour. Howard Crend glanced at it — half past three!
A few moments later, Attorney Milton Garder, a successful man of fifty-five, sat in his library reading of an interesting case before the supreme court of the State. Attorney Garder handled but big things now, among others the fortune left by the late Mr. Lennek. A buzzer sounded, and Attorney Milton Garder put down the pamphlet he had been reading and reached for the telephone.
“Hello!” he said.
“Mr. Garder?”
“Yes. That you, Mrs. Lennek?”
“Mrs. Lennek — yes! I— I wish you would come to my apartment, Mr. Garder — at once.”
“My dear lady! Is it something that cannot wait until to-morrow?” the attorney asked.
“It — it is very important, Mr. Garder. Please come at once. It is a matter of — of life and death.”
“My dear lady! What on earth—”
Attorney Milton Garder realized at that instant that he was talking into a dead telephone. He grunted his disgust and returned the receiver to the hook. There had been something tragic in the words that had come to him over the wire, and in the tone in which they had been spoken. Mrs. Lennek, the attorney reflected, was not much given to tragic utterances.
Attorney Garder punched a button that notified his chauffeur to get the car in front of the house as speedily as possible. He got up and hurried from the library toward the front of the house. From force of habit he glanced at his watch.
It was three minutes after half past three.
CHAPTER III
NOT SUICIDE
It took Attorney Milton Garder about fifteen minutes to motor from his residence to the apartment house where Mrs. Madge Lennek had her expensive suite. On the way he fussed and fumed and told himself that it probably was nothing important at all, and that silly women who had been left fortunes were the bane of his existence.
Mrs. Lennek probably had suddenly made up her mind to purchase a country place, or something of the sort, and thought that the matter of funds, title, and deed transfer could not wait for twenty-four hours. Attorney Garder told himself that he would be sarcastic with the lady.