The Pulaskian., 1917-01-12
CHAPTER VIII.
EnfrIacte

Dawn of Sunday found Whitaker still awake. Alone in his uncheerful bedchamber, his chair tilted back against the wall, he sat smoking ard thinking, reviewing again and again every consideration growing out of his matrimonial entanglement. He turned in at length to the dreamless slumbers of mental exhaustion.
 The morning introduced him to a world of newspapers gone mad and garrulous with accounts of the sensa- ton of the preceding night. What they told him only confirmed the history of his wife's career as detailed by the gratuitouS Mir. Ember. There was, however, no suggestion in any report that Drummond had not in fact com mitted suicide. There had been, ap- parently, but q single witness of the felo de SC, who in the subsequent con fusion had vanished. No one dreamed of questioning the authenticity of the report. Several sensational sheets ran exhaustive resumes, elaborately illus trated, of the public life of "The De stroying Angel" It seemed to be an unanimous assumption that the news of Drummond'S suicide had in some manner been conveyed to the woman while on the stage.
 In the course of the forenoon a note for Whitaker was delivered at the ho- tel.
 The heavy sheet of white paper, stamped with the address i'll Fifty-sev- enth street, bore the message in strong but nervous hand:
 rely upon the generosity you promise me. This marriage of ours. that is no marriage, must be dissolved. Please let my attorneys-I 4anders GrimShaW & Clark, 149 Broadway-know when and where you will accept service. Forgive me if I seem ungrateful and unfeeling. l am hardly myself. And please do not try to see me now. Some day I hope to see and thank you; today-its impossible. l am going away to forget if l can
 Mary Ladislas Whitaker.
 Before nightfall Whitaker had sat isfied himself that his wife had, in truth, left her town house. The serv- ants there informed all who inquired that they had been told to report and to forward all letters to Messrs. Lan- ders, Grimshaw X Clark.
 Whitaker promptly notified those at torneys that he was ready to bc served at their convenience. But be- yond their brief and businesslike ac- knowledgment he heard nothing more of the action for divorce.
 He sought Max several times with out success When at length run to ground infthe roulette room of q Forty fourth street gambling house, the man. ager was grimly reticent. Warned by the managers truculent and suspicious tone that his secret was, after all, buried no more than skin deep, Whita- ker dissembled artfully his anxiety, and abandoned Max to his pct vices.
 The newspapers reported Sara Law as being in retirement in several wide ly separated sections of the country. She was also said to have gone abroad, sailing incognito by second-class steamship from Philadelphia.
 The nine-days' wonder disi.ltegrated naturally. The sobriquet of sThe De stroying Angel' disappeared from the newspaper scare-heads. So also the name of Drummond. Hugh Morten Whitaker, the dead man come to life, occupied public interest for a brief halliday. By the time that the execu- tors of Carter Drummond and the at torneys representing his clients began to make sense of his estate and in- terests, their discoveries failed to com mand newspaper space.
 Drummond had appropriated to his own uses every dollar of the small fortune left in his care by his erstwhile