helpless, hysterical laughter.
The heavy doors banged back; Chadwick and his colleagues, ashen-faced, hurried from the room. Within the library, tiny, shy, quiet Clara Adler sat and rocked, tears streaming down her face, laughing the laugh of a demented thing.
Once more a servant was sent flying for the doctor; once more the sedatives were administered. The lawyers went away shaking their heads, and the servants scattered to their separate duties, to whisper what they had seen and heard into the ears of fellow servants in other houses. By the next day all of New York knew that Slade’s ward had been struck down, and knew, too, what had caused it.
What many could not understand, however, was the laughter. Tears, perhaps, but never laughter. Clara Adler, taken in by Henry Ogden Slade at the tender age of fifteen, and reared and educated as his daughter for the four years until his death, had been dispossessed, utterly and completely. Her name had not even been mentioned in his will. It was as if she had never existed.
Still, there was nothing funny—nothing funny at all—about losing thirty million dollars.
DEATH IS A GOOD TOPIC for conversation, and never better than when money is involved. The last, lingering illness, and all of it torments, are picked over with morbid glee; and the greater the suffering—the younger the victim—the more the head-wagging preoccupation with it.
The passing, therefore, of a young and innocent girl would elicit much discussion, in voices hushed and solemn, about life’s vicissitudes and the sudden, inexplicable workings of Fate. Should the girl be one about whom hung an air of mystery, and who had not even the consolation of the Christian faith to sustain her in her final hours, the pious platitudes would rain thick and fast, reminding all that even in the midst of life we are in death.
So New York listened for word of the end of Clara Adler, struck down by brain fever at the age of nineteen, in the spring of 1894, the fever brought on by the twin shocks of the loss of her guardian and his estate. The hysteria with which she had greeted the news of the latter had been the onset of her illness. She was not expected to recover.
It was all very sad—and very satisfactory—and the city settled in, with melancholy anticipation, to await her passing. It was no more than what any truly well bred young woman would have done in her place; and certainly there was nothing else for her, with propriety, to do. The only problem, as the days became weeks and the weeks became months, was that she did not do it …
FROM FIFTH AVENUE, with its gleaming carriages and fine, new mansions, and its smell of money only lately won and not yet fully grasped by the minds of its makers, it is merely a healthy stretch of the leg to Gramercy Park.
There, enclosed on four sides by a high, iron fence, a small oasis beckons the passerby: a graceful green rectangle of shady paths and wide, low benches scattered beneath trees thick with years. It is an odd sight: nature penned in amid a forest of brick and stone, and the innocent stranger might be tempted to pass through the black-barred gate, to spend a quiet hour in contemplation of such a wonder. But the gate is locked, and only the privileged few who live on the borders of the little park possess the key that will open it.
Life appears to be sweet for these keepers of the keys of this tiny Eden, and drudgery is evidently not their daily portion. On warm summer afternoons, one can see nursemaids wheeling the infant lords and ladies of the great Republic along the dappled paths, and spy daintily clad children at play beneath the gaze of vigilant nannies.
But the vulgarly obvious wealth of Fifth Avenue is missing here; these houses, for the most part, are vestiges of an earlier day. Red brick and white stone, they stand side by side with not even a handbreadth of space between them, forming a solid square of dignity, and those who dwell within them have no need of pomp to proclaim their worth to casual passersby. Like their houses, their wealth and power were built in bygone days, and possessing them has become a part of the natural order of things, occasioning no more thought than, say, breathing or sleeping. They know what they have, and that is all that matters.
Near the southeastern corner of this demiparadise stands one house different from the rest. Built of drab red brick in a dull, square shape, its front door is the only one which does not face the park, but opens, instead, onto one of the small, cobbled streets that radiate from the green like the spokes of an angular wheel, as if to declare itself even less guilty of ostentation than its neighbors by virtue of its refusal to acknowledge the center of their common universe.
Somber and self-contained, with windows too narrow for the expanse of wall between them, it is a house which does not welcome: a massive, reclusive, indifferent pile of stone, which holds what it has within it, and takes no notice of anything else.
Of the two men approaching it from the direction of Fifth Avenue on this particular afternoon in late May, the house is wholly oblivious, although the many people enjoying the brilliant spring sunshine in and about the little park do not share this disregard.
The men present an interesting contrast in types, for one of them, a pale man of medium build and middle age, is outstanding only in that he is so very ordinary. His companion, however, seems to be the focus of every eye as he passes—women, particularly, seem to find him of uncommon interest—and this fascination could be laid to his height, which is well over six feet, or the exceptional breadth of his chest and shoulders, or even to the cut of his impeccable clothing. About forty years of age, black-eyed and swarthy, he is clean-shaven and well made, and he draws eyes like a magnet, seeming not so much unaware of the glances cast his way as accustomed to receiving them; a man very much at ease beneath the gaze of others.
“I am grateful for your time, Signor Alfieri,” the nondescript man says to his dark companion as they draw near to their destination. “I will waste none of it, for I know that you must have a great deal to do.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Upton”—Signor Alfieri’s heavily accented English fully corroborates his foreign looks and name—“for the first time in years I am completely free and have absolutely nothing to do, at least until the middle of July. Until then, my time is my own.”
“And will you be in New York until then?”
“Until then and after then. I must be in Philadelphia from mid-July to early October. After that I will return here.”
“For the opera season.”
“For the opera season,” the signore agrees, smiling.
“And you have been staying at the Fifth Avenue Hotel since your arrival?”
“A week ago, yes. Originally, I had thought to make the hotel my home while in New York.”
“A year is a long time to live in a hotel, signore.”
“Ah, you see, Mr. Upton? Mr. Grau agrees with you, which is why he sent you to me. And because it would not be right for me to refuse the kind suggestion of the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera House, I am here with you. Also, both Mr. Grau and I feel that my continued presence at the hotel might disturb the other guests—”
“Your consideration does you credit, signore.”
“—and I am absolutely confident that before long the other guests certainly would disturb me.” His smile is amiable. “That has a miserably ungrateful sound, does it not? Nevertheless, you can have no idea of what it is to be pursued everywhere by admirers who have heard you perform. I am afraid, Mr. Upton, that privacy has become a necessity for me.”
Being a house agent, Mr. Upton is both sympathetic and quick to take professional advantage of this opening. “You needn’t fear being disturbed here, sir, I assure you,” he says. “And as for disturbing others, such a thing would be quite impossible. The late Mr. Slade’s house is admirably well built and wonderfully spacious, with absolutely everything Mr. Grau said you would require. Most important, of course, is the music room, which contains a superb grand piano, and even a small eighteenth-century