Adventure Magazine, March 1916 — page 99: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“*> The Secret of Caprice “And there I had suddenly stumbled . upon them all when most important busi- ness was supposed to be keeping me away from the side of my fair fiancée! “Tf you know anything of the Latin tem- perament, you will know that to hoax him in such a way as that, is to insult him beyond the bounds of forgiveness. I realized this, and so did Stephen. He advised me to carry out the joke just for that evening, and I reluctantly agreed to-do so, rather than have it interfere at that crucial time with a favorable turn that our negotiations were taking. So we sent for the sprightly Mrs. Herriot, talked it all over, and I went into the party playing the most unpleasant réle of a lover suddenly arrived.” Blaydon’s expression was so indicative of nausea that Ward laughed in spite of the gravity of the story. “T can. imagine your feelings,’ he said. “You see, I know Mrs. Herriot.” “Yes,” Otto Blaydon continued. “It was Mrs. Herriot who saw her chance in my public admission of our engagement. They have now admitted to me that they planned the first part of their scheme as soon as the party broke up that night. Mrs. Herriot was to threaten to sue for breach of promise. Stephen was to save me—for a substantial consideration. ‘They both knew my ab- horence of scandal. We have never had one in the Blaydon family, and I had hoped that we never would. “So Mrs. Herriot called on me at my New York office and calmly and unblush- ingly informed me that she intended to marry me or make me pay dearly for her supposedly wounded feelings. I made some inquiries about her, and found that she was a woman quite capable of carrying out her threats. For the first time in my life I be- came panic-stricken. I sent for Stephen and told him that,.as he had got me into the scrape, he must get me out of it, or he would never get another cent from me. “The upshot of it was that he proposed the scheme that we carried through. I had intended to break up Caprice, because she was old and unseaworthy, and it would not have been honest to sell her. So Stephen outlined the plan whereby I was to pretend to start for South America in her, and we were to scuttle her off the coast. I was then to make my way down to Key West and take steamer from there to South America, leaving Carter and Savage to help Stephen 7 97 if he wanted them. Stephen was then to tell Mrs. Herriot that I had lost my life, and persuade her to marry some one else, or sign a legal release. For this, I agreed to pay him $50,000, provided he succeeded. “We carried through most of the scheme until Mrs. Herriot quite unexpectedly in- sisted on visiting the wrecked Caprice, and there, with her suspicions aroused that Stephen was not playing fair with her, she wormed a complete confession from him, and evolved her own plot to marry Stephen, with whom she has been in love for a long time, and at the same time put him in pos- session of the part of the estate he was to get at my death.” “TI see,” said Ward. “That was when Miss Nellie and I overheard them talking on the beach.” “Yes; Nellie told me about that. Nellie! She was almost as much in the dark as you were. I did not tell her all of the de- tails of my predicament. I merely gave her to understand that I had got myself en- tangled with this woman, and that I was going to pretend to be drowned with Caprice, so as to avoid a scandal, but that the drowning would be kept quiet. “But Mrs. Herriot became too ambitious. As soon as Stephen told her the whole scheme, she saw her opportunity, and per- suaded Stephen to take advantage of this manufactured evidence of my death, and to have me killed actually. So they got this gang together down the shore, and Stephen sent word to me when I put in to Havana that his scheme was succeeding, but that there was one tangle that I must come back and settle in person. He told me of your discovery of the wreck of the yacht, and said that that was the cause of the tangle. “T was so glad to think that I was getting out of the scrape that I fell into his trap at once. He managed to buy Savage over to help murder me, and Carter pretended that he, too, was bought, because he could not reach me in time to warn me, and thought he might get an opportunity to save me if he was considered one of the gang. Mean- time, Mrs. Herriot sent to New York for this Joe, who was one of the bad men in her younger days in the West. Joe’s part was to get rid of you and Conway and Greiner. ‘“‘They got me up to that camp on the pre- text that you were demanding money to Poor se aS -s nae. eee keep quiet, and that I would have to come- up and buy you off, or you would reveal Gomichboo (E S <o)