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Updated: June 26, 2025
Late that night John Merkle telephoned Bob Wharton to say: "Headquarters just rang me up and told me prepare yourself for a shock Lilas Lynn is dead." "Dead?" Bob cried, in a startled voice. "Dead! How? When did it happen? I can't believe it." Merkle made known the details that had come to him. "Looks like suicide, but they're not sure. Anyhow, she took too much dope of some sort.
She entwined her arms about him and forced him into motion. As she danced away she signaled over her shoulder to Lorelei, who made haste to seek the cloak-room. When she emerged John Merkle was waiting in the hall. A shout of laughter echoed from the banquet-hall, and she started. "That's nothing," Merkle told her. "Bob Wharton is in the fountain. He says he's a goldfish."
This was what Merkle and the club servants and the entertainments and engagements and his mother and the artistic touts and the theatrical touts and the hunting and the elaboration of games and Mrs. Skelmersdale and all that had clustered thickly round him in London had been hiding from him. Those men below there had not been trusted to choose their work; they had been given it.
"I can drag you and your sick wife, and Merkle, and those Hammon women out into the light, and I'll do it, too. I can make you all squirm, so let's get down to cases. There's millions of dollars among you, millions that were squeezed out of my kind of people; now I'm going to try my hand at squeezing. If I lose very well. But I'll holler, and you'll have to stop my mouth or the world will hear.
"Oh, but I can't it's all I've got," Charity exclaimed. Dr. Merkle looked up at her pleasantly from the plush sofa. "It seems you got married yesterday, up to the 'Piscopal church; I heard all about the wedding from the minister's chore-man. It would be a pity, wouldn't it, to let Mr. Royall know you had an account running here? I just put it to you as your own mother might."
It was plain that despite his weakness his mind remained clear. "Listen to me," he ordered. "Prop me up put me in that chair. I'm choking." They did as he directed. "That's better. Now, you mustn't be seen here either of you. We can't explain." He checked Merkle. "I know best. Go home; it's only two blocks I'll telephone." "You'll ring for Orson quick?" Hammon nodded.
The iron-master smiled pallidly as his friend came and knelt beside him. "You got here quickly." "Are you badly hurt, Jarvis?" "The damned thing is in here somewhere." Hammon took his hand away from his breast, and Merkle saw that the fingers were bloody. "Can you get me out of here quietly?" John Merkle rose to his full height, his lips writhed back from his teeth.
It seemed to him, therefore, that the only way of gaining time was to pay Lilas enough to satisfy her. The more he thought of this the more imperative seemed the necessity, but when he ventured to submit the proposition to Merkle the banker curtly refused to entertain it.
The other occupants of the room had listened breathlessly; now Lorelei stirred and Merkle read more than mere bewilderment in her face. He opened his lips, but the wounded man did not wait for him to speak. "You MUST believe me!" he said, earnestly. "It's the truth, and I won't have Lilas involved we've been a great deal to each other. To-night I accused her wrongfully.
Her face was swollen with weeping; she verged upon hysteria. No sooner were the four in the car and under way than she broke down, sobbing wretchedly. "It's all my fault. I might have known he was up to something; but I didn't think he'd dare " she managed to say. "He? Who?" Merkle asked her. "Max Melcher. This is his doing." "What makes you think so?" "He as much as told me.
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