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Show The Trey O' Hearts A NoreUioa Version of the Motion Picture TV , P"Wd by th. Univl , Sm' N 1 ' By LOUIS JOSEPH VANCE " M"ttl with PUp, rr.i tk. picblr. fniacSiim ' I . Copyright, 1914, by UHU JosserVe!""" 15 SYNOPSIS. The S of Hearts la the "death-Sinn" employed em-ployed by Seneca Trlno, an aod and crippled crip-pled monomanlao, in the private war of renganoe which ha wasos against Alan Law, son of the man (now dead) who was Innocently responsible for the accident which rendered Trine a helpless Invalid for life, Alan falls In love with Rose, Trine's daughter, and his love ts returned. Judith, Rose's twin and double, but a woman of violent passions and erratlo temper, promises her father to compass Alan's death; but under dramatlo clrcum- . stances, Alan saves her life and go, unwillingly un-willingly wins her love. Judith then turns against her father and successfully op- poses his efforts to cause Alan to be as- sasslnated by his aides and mercenaries. After many adventures Alan, Rose, Judith and Barous, Alan's best friend, escape to the mountain country of southern California Cali-fornia and there leave Trine helpless and friendless through causing tha death (In elf-defense) of his two first lieutenants. CHAPTER LI. The New Judith. From sleep as from drugged stupor Judith Trine awakened, struggling back to consciousness like some exhausted ex-hausted diver from the black depths to the star-smitten surface of a night-bound night-bound pooL At first she could by no means recognize rec-ognize her surroundings. This rude chamber of rough plank walls and primitive furnishings; this wide, hard ( . couch she shared with her still slumbering slum-bering sister, Rose; the view revealed by an open window at the bedside; a fair perspective of tree-clad mountains moun-tains through which a wide-bosomed canyon rolled down to an emerald plain, conveyed nothing to her intftl-Ugenca. intftl-Ugenca. A formless sense of some epochal change In the habits and mental processes proc-esses of a young lifetime, added to ber confusion. What, Indeed, had become of the wild thing, Judith Trine of yesterday? Surely she had little enough In common com-mon with this Judith of today, in whose heart was no more room for envy, hatred, malice or any uncharit-ableness, uncharit-ableness, so full was It of love which, though It was focused upon the person of one man, none the less embraced all the world even her Bister and successful rival in that one man's affections. i This change had not some upon her without warning. S1S3 had been almost al-most insensibly aware of Its advent through the gradual softening of that old Judith's hard and vengeful nature in the course of the last few days. But now that the revolution was accomplished, ac-complished, she hardly knew herself she hardly knew the world, indeed, bo differently did she regard it not without something of the wide-eyed wonderment of a child to find all things so new and strange and beautiful. beauti-ful. And this was the work of Love! Now the chain of memories was quite complete, no link lacking in its continuity. She recalled clearly every Incident that had marked ths slow growth of this great love she had for Alan Law, from that first day, not yet a month old, when he had escaped the fiery deathtrap she had set for him and repaid her only by risking his life anew to save her from destruction, down to this very morning when the stream from a hydraulic nozzle had swept over the brink of a three hundred-foot precipice a crimson racing automobile containing two desperate men bent upon compassing the death of her beloved. . By that act of sheer gelf-defense the world was richer for the loss of two black-hearted blackguards, and Alan Law might now be considered safe from further persecution since there now remained not one soul loyal enough to Seneca Trine to prosecute his private war of vengeance against Alan. And though that aged monomaniac mono-maniac had means whereby he might purchase other scoundrels and corrupt cor-rupt them to hlB hideous purposes, Judith was determined that he should never again have any opportunity so to do. Though Alan, sne Knew, wouiu never lift his hand to hinder her father's freedom of action, she, Judith, meant to take such steps as his persecution perse-cution railed for. If there were any Justice la the land if there were any alienists capable of discriminating between be-tween Trine's apparent sanity and his deep-rooted mania then surely not many days more should pass Into history his-tory without witnessing his consignment consign-ment to an institution for the criminal crimi-nal insane. She, Judith, would see to that, and then . . . The woman Ighed once more. Then Rose and Alan would marry and live happily ever after. But what of Judith? She made a small gesture of resignation resig-nation to her destiny. What became of her no longer mattered, so that Alan were made happy in such happiness hap-piness as he coveted. And now the thought stirred her sharply that what was to be done must be done quickly, if at all. And the almost level rays of the Declining sun, striking In through the open window, counseled haste If Judith Wore to accomplish her Intention of leaving this place and finding her Jather again before nightfall. With the utmost care she rose from ha bed, crept to the door of the room cow recognize! a tha gvwtaxs of tha foreman of the hydraulic mining out-a out-a a.?lOUt lnt0 tne roonl adjoining behind her. she paused and for many minutes stood in tensestrung contemplation contem-plation of the man she loved-Alan Law asleep in a chair beside a table his head pillowed on his folded arms. 1 his was leave-taking between them and he would never know Far better so: Judith felt she could not trust herself to say farewell to him without breaking down and confessing con-fessing the utter wretchedness that threatened to overwhelm her each time she forced herself to face the thought that this parting must be final. Like a thief Bhe stole across the creaking floor to Alan's Bide, hesitated bent her head to his and touched her lips to his cheek a caress so light that he slept on in ignorance of it. Then, as she lifted her h6S5 and stood erect, bosom convulsed with silent sobs, she looked squarely into the face of Rose. CHAPTER Lll. The Old Adam. A long minute elapsed before either woman moved or spoke. Transfixed beside Alan's chair, steadying herself with a hand upon Its back, Judith stared at the figure in the doorway, In a temper at once discomfited dis-comfited and defiant. With this she suffered a phase of Incredulity, was scarce able to persuade herself that this was truly Rose who confronted ner Rose whose sweet and gentle nature had ever served as the butt of Judith's contempt and ruthless ridicule. Here was revolution with a vengeance, venge-ance, when Rose threatened and Judith shrank! It was as if the women had exchanged ex-changed natures while they slept. The countenance that Rose showed her sister was a thundercloud rent by the lurid lightning of her angry eyes. Her pose was tense and alert, like the pose of an animal set to spring. In her hand hung a revolver, the same (Judith's hand sought the holster at her hip and found it empty) that her sister had worn and forgotten for-gotten to remove when she dropped, half-dead with fatigue, upon the bed. And slowly, toward the end of that long, mute minute, the girl's grasp tightened upon the grip of the weapon and its muzzle lifted. Remarking this, a flash of her onetime one-time temper quickened Judith. Of a sudden, with a start, she crossed the floor It) a single, noiseless stride, and threw herself before her sister. "Well?" she demanded hotly. "What are you waiting for? Nobody's stopping stop-ping you: why don't you shoot?" The upward movement of the hand was checked: the weapon hung level to Judith's breast as level and unequivocal un-equivocal as the glance that probed her eyes and the tone of Rose's voice as she demanded: "What were you doing there?" "If you must know from me what you already know on the evidence of your eyes I was bidding good-by to the man I love kissing him without his knowledge or consent before leaving leav-ing him to you for good and all!" "What do you mean?" "That I'm going away that I can't stand this situation any longer. Marrophat Marro-phat and Jimmy are dead, my father's helpless and I mean to see that he remains so. Nothing, then, stands in the way of your marrying Alan but me. And such being the case and because he's as dear to me as he is to you I'm going to take myself off and keep out of the way." "For fear lest he find out that you love him?" Judith's lip curled. "Do you think him so witless he doesn't know that already?" "And so you leave him to me out of hfrtvi Ta that it?" "Any way you like. But if it's so intolerable to you to think that I dare love him and confess it to you If you begrudge me the humiliation of stooping to kiss a man who doesn't want my kisses if you are so afraid of losing him while I live and love him very well, then!" With a passionate gesture Judith tore open the bosom of her waist, offering her flesh to the muzzle of the revolver. A cry broke from the lips of Rose that was like the cry of a forlorn child punished with cruelty that passes its understanding. She fell back against the wall. The revolver swept up through the air but its mark was her own head rather than Judith's bosom. But before her finger found strength to pull the trigger the man at the table startled from his sleep by the sound of angry voices, leaped from his chair with a violence that sent it clattering to the floor, and hurled himself him-self headlong across the room, imprisoning im-prisoning the wrist of his betrothed with one hand while the other wrested the weapon away and passed it to JU"Rose'" he cried thickly, "what does this mean? Are you mad? Judith-" Dragging the bosom of her waist together, Judith thru Ite weapon: Into its holster and turned away. "Be kind to her, Alan," Bhe said in an. uncertain voice: "She didn't understand under-stand ai.i and I goaded her beyond endurance, I'm afraid. Forgive me but be kind to her always!" Somehow, blindly, she stumbled out of the cabin into the open, possessed by a thought whose temptation was stronger than her powers of resistance. resist-ance. What Rose had failed to accomplish ac-complish might now serve to resolve Judith's, problem. . . . None, Bhe told herself, bitterly, would seek to hinder her. But she meant so to arrange the matter that none Bhould see or suspect sus-pect and be moved to interfere. Round the shoulder of the mountain, moun-tain, on the road along the edge of the cliff, she was sure of freedom from observation. And yet, such is the inconsistency of the human animal, the instinct for self-preservation was stronger than her purpose: when a touring car swung round the mountain and shot toward her, she checked herself haBtlly and jumped aside in ample time to eBcape being run down. The next instant the machine was lurching to a halt and the sonorous accents of Seneca Trine were saluting her: "Judith! You here! What the devil! Where've ye been? Where are Marro-phat Marro-phat and Jimmy?" Digging the nails of her fingers painfully pain-fully into her palms, she breathed deep, fighting down hysteria, reasserting reassert-ing her self-control in bo short a Bpace of time that her father failed to appreciate ap-preciate that there was anything uncommon un-common In the mind of the girl. "Where?" he demanded angrily as she approached the car, "where, I want to know, are Marrophat and Jimmy? Jim-my? Haven't you seen or heard anything any-thing of them? They left me at six o'clock this morning, to go after " "Dead!" the girl interrupted, sententious, sen-tentious, eyeing him strangely. "I don't believe it!" the old man screamed, aghast. "I won't believe it. You're lying to me, you jade! You're lying" "I am not," she broke in coldly. "I am - telling you the plain truth . . . They followed us all morning in that red racer, firing at us all the while. Finally they caught up with us here, Lightning Kills Trine and Strikes Down Alan and Rose. about noon came up this road Bhoot-ing Bhoot-ing over the windshield. It was our lives or theirs. We turned the hydraulic hydrau-lic stream on them and washed the ccr over the cliff. If you don't believe me, get somebody to show you their faces." She indicated with a gesture two forms that lay at a little distance back from the roadside, motionless beneath a sheet of canvas the bodies of Trine's creatures, recovered by the mining gang and brought up for a Christian burial. The last bitter drop that brimmed his cup of misery was added when Alan Law himself appeared, leaving the ' miners' cabin in company with his betrothed Rose now soothed and comforted, smiling through the traces of her recent tears as she clung to her lover, nestling in the hollow of his arm. To Alan, on the other hand, this rencontre seemed to afford nothing but the pleasantest surprise imaginable. imagin-able. "Well!" he cried, releasing Rose and running down to the car. "Here's luck! And at the very moment when I was calling my lucky ' star hard names! How can I ever reward your thoughtfulness, Mr. TrlneT It beats me how you do keep track of me this way happening along like this every time I need a car the worst way in the world!" "Drive on!" Trine screamed to the chauffeur. "Drive on, do you hear?" But Judith had stepped up on the running board and was eyeing the driver coldly, with one han.d significantly signifi-cantly resting on the butt of the weapon at her side. The car remained at a standstill. Sulphurous profanity followed, a pungent stream of vituperation that was checked only by Judith's interruption: inter-ruption: "We've had to gag you once before, you know. If you want another taste of that keep on!" "But Where's Barcus?" Judith demanded de-manded when, after helping Rose into the car and running off to thank their hosts Alan returned alone to the car. "Goodness only knows," the young man answered cheerfully. "He would insist on rambling off down the canyon can-yon in search of an alleged town where we could hire a motor car somewhere down there. I trlal to make him understand that we had plenty of time, but he was mulish as he generally is when he gets a foolish notion Into his head. So I daresay we'll meet him on his way back or else asleep somewhere by. the roadside!" Taking the seat next to the chauffeur, chauf-feur, he gave the word to drive on; and they slipped away frpm the location loca-tion of the mining camp, saluted by cheers from the miners. Half an hour passed without a word spoken by any member of the party. Each was deep in his or her own especial es-pecial preoccupation: Alan turning over plans for an early wedding; Rose hugging the contentment regained through her lover's protestations; Judith lost in profoundest melancholy; Trine nursing his rage, working himself him-self up Into a silent fury whose consequences conse-quences were to be more far-reaching than even he dreamed In his wildest moments. Its first development, for all that, was desperate enough. The r.ged monomaniac occupied the right-hand corner of the rear Beat Thus his one able hand was next to Judith, In close Juxtaposition to the revolver In the holster on her hip. Without the least warning his left hand closed upon the weapon, withdrew with-drew It and leveled It at the back of Alan's head. As he pulled the trigger Judith flung herself bodily upon the arm. Even so, the bullet found a goal, though In another than the Intended victim. The muscular forearm of the chauffeur received It. With a shriek of pain the man released re-leased the wheel and graBped his arm. Before Alan could move to prevent the disaster the car, running without a guiding hand, caromed off a low embankment to the left and shot full-tilt full-tilt Into a shallow ditch on the right, shelling its passengers like peas from a broken pod. Alan catapulted a good twenty feet through the air and alighted with such force that he lay stunned for several moments. When he came to, he found Barcus helping him to his feet; a heavy seven-passenger touring car halted in the roadway indicated the manner In which his friend had arrived on the scene of the accident When damages were assessed it was found that none of the party had suffered seriously but the chauffeur and Seneca Trine himself. The former had only his wound to show however, i,.. . ...:.:..,.,fr .4 v'- ? while Trine lay still and senseless at a very considerable distance from the wrecked automobile. Nothing but a barely perceptible respiration and intermittently fluttering flutter-ing pulse persuaded them that the flame of life was not extinct in that poor, old, pain-racked body. CHAPTER Llll. The Last Trump. Toward the evening of the third day following the motor spill, Judith sat in the deeply recessed window of a bedchamber on the second floor of a hotel situated in the heart of California's Cali-fornia's orange-growing lands. Behind her Seneca Trine sat, apparently ap-parently asleep, in a wheeled invalid chair. There was no occupant of the room. Though he had lain nearly two days in coma, her father's subsequent progress toward recovery of his normal nor-mal state had been rapid. Now, according ac-cording to a council of surgeons and physicians who had been summoned to deliberate on his case, he was in a fair way to round out the average span of a sound man's lifetime. He had apparently suffered nothing In consequence of his ' accident more serious man prolonged unconsciousness. unconscious-ness. For the last twenty-four hours he had been in full possession of his faculties and (for some reason impossible impos-sible to Judith to fathom) uncommonly uncom-monly cheerful. From this circumstance she drew a certain sense of mystified anxiety. Twice in the course of the morning she had caught his eye following her with a gleam of sardonic exultancy, as though he nursed some secret of extraordinary potentialities. And yet (she argued) it was quite impossible that he should have some fresh scheme brewing for the assassination assassin-ation of Alan. Not a soul had had any sort of communication witn him since his recovery but the attending surgeon, sur-geon, a man of unimpeachable character, char-acter, a meek mannered trained nurse, and herself, Judith. Under such circumstances cir-cumstances he simply could not have set a new conspiracy afoot And yet . . . She was oppressed by a great uneasiness. Parhaps (she reasoned) the weather weath-er was responsible for this feeling, in some measure at least. The day had been unconscionably hot, a day without with-out a breath of air. Now, as It drew toward its close, its heat seemed to become be-come more and more oppressive even as Its light was darkened by a portentous por-tentous phenomenon raM pali of , Inky cloud shouloerlng up over the mountains to the music of distant rumblings. rum-blings. Nor was this all; a considerable degree de-gree of restlessness was surely pardonable par-donable In one who, from her window, watched a carriage-drive populous with vehicles (for the most part motor mo-tor cars) bringing to the hotel gayly dressed men and women, the guests Invited to the wedding of Rose Trine and Alan Law. Within another ten minutes the man Judith loved with all her body and Boul would be the husband of her sister. She had- told herself she was resigned; re-signed; but she was not, and Bhe would never be. Her heart was breaking break-ing In her bosom as she sat there, watching, waiting, listening to the ever heavier detonations of the approaching ap-proaching thunderstorm and to the Jubilant pealing of a great organ down below. The had told herself that, though resigned, she could not bear to witness wit-ness the ceremony. Now as the moment mo-ment drew near when the marriage would be a thing finished, fixed, Irretrievable, she found herself unable un-able to endure the strain alone. Slowly, against her will, she roae and stole across the floor to her father's fa-ther's chair. His breathing was slow and regular; regu-lar; beyond doubt he slept; unquestionably unques-tionably there was no reason why she should not leave him for ten minutes; even though he waked it could not harm him to await her return at the end of that scant period. ' Like a guilty thing, on feet as noiseless noise-less as any sneak thief's, she crept from the room, cloBed the door b1-lently, b1-lently, ranj down the hall and descended de-scended by a back way, a little-used staircase, to the lower hall, approaching approach-ing the scene of the marriage. Constructed in imitation of an old Spanish mission chapel, It contained one of the finest organs in the world; at this close range its deep-throated tones vied with the warnings of the storm. Judith, lurking in a. passageway passage-way whose open door reven'ied the altar steps and chancel, was shaken to the veryv marrow of her being by the majestic reverberations of the music. Since they had regained contact with civilization in a section of the country where the Law estate had vast holdings of land, the chapel was thronged with men and women who had known Alan's father and wished to honor his son. . . . Above stairs, in the room Judith had quitted, Seneca Trine -opened both eyes wide and laughed a silent laugh of savage triumph when the door closed behind his daughter. At last he was left to hisown devices de-vices and at a time the most fitting imaginable for what he had in mind. With a grin, Seneca Trine raised both arms and stretched them wide apart. Then, grasping the arms of his chair, he lifted himself from it and stood trembling upon his own feet for the first time in almost twenty years. This, then, was the secret he had hugged to his embittered bosom, a secret unsuspected even by the attending at-tending surgeon; that through the motor accident three days ago he had regained the use of limbs that had been stricken motionless strangely enough, by a motor car nearly two decades since. Slowly but surely moving to the bureau in the room, he opened one of its drawers and took out something some-thing he had, without her knowledge, seen Judith put away there while she thought he slept. Then, with this hidden In the pocket of his dressing gown he steered a straight if very deliberate course to the door, let himself out, and like a materialized specter of the man he once had been, navigated the corridor to the head of the broad central staircase and step by step, clinging with both hands, negotiated the descent. The lobby of the hotel was deserted. As the ceremony approached its end every guest and servant In the house was crowding the doorway to the chapel. None opposed the progress of this ghastly vision in dressing gown and slippered feet, chuckling insanely to himself as he tottered through the empty halls and corridors, corri-dors, finding an almost supernatural strength to sustain him till he found himself face to face with his chosen enemy and victim. The first that blocked his way Into the chapel, a bellboy of the hotel, looked round at the first touch of the claw-like hand upon his shoulder and shrank back with a cry of terror a cry that was echoed from half a dozen throats within another instant. As If from the path of some grisly visitant from the world beyond the grave, the throng pressed back and cleared a way for Seneca Trine, father fa-ther of the bride. And as the way opened and he looked up toward the altar and saw Alan standing hand In hand with Rose while the minister invoked a blessing upon the union that had been but that instant cemented, added strength, the strength of the Insane, was given to Seneca Trine. When Alan, annoyed by the disturbance dis-turbance In the body of the chapel, looked round, it was to see the aged maniac standing within a dozen feet of him; and as he looked and cried out In wonder. Trine whipped a revolver re-volver from the pocket of his dressing gown and swung It steadily to bear upon Alan's head. At that Instant the Btorm broke with infernal fury upoD the land. A crash of thunder so heavy and prolonged that It seemed to rock the very building upon its foundations, accompanied the shattering of a huge stained-glass window. a Kilt of olulsa Lam oi dazzling brilliance slashed through the wlTsdmr like a flaming sword and smote tk pistol In the hand of Seneca Trin. discharging the weapon even as tt struck him dead. As he fell the bolt swerved anl struck two others down Alan Law' and the woman who had just btaaj made his wife. CHAPTER LIV, The Wife. Again three days elapsed; and Judith, Ju-dith, returning from the double funeral fu-neral of her father and sister, doffed her mournlnx for a gown less somber and more suited to the atmosphere of a sickroom, then relieved the nurse In charge of Alan, He remained as he had been ever, since the falling of the thunderbolt In absolute coma. But he lived, and or the physicians lied must soon regain consciousness. Kneeling beside hlB bedside Judith prayed long and earnestly. When she arose It was to answer a tap upon the door. She admitted Tom Barcus and suffered him to lead her Into the recess of the window, where they conversed in guarded tones In spite of the fact that the subject of their communications could not possibly have heard them. "I've oome to tell you something," Barcus announced with characteristic awkwardness, "I've known It tpr three days ever since the wedding, in fact and kept it to myself, not knowing whether I ought to tell you yet or not." He paused, eyeing her uncertainly, unhappily. "I am prepared," Judith assured him calmly. "You're nothing of the sort," he countered. argumentative. "You couldn't be. It's the most amazing thing Imaginable. . . . See here . . "Well?" i.- . -- "You understand, don't you, that Alan must never know that Rose wa killed by that lightning stroke V "What do you mean?" "I mean," the man floundered mij erably, "you see, he loved her mo I thought I'm sure it would be best I if you can brine vnnrsulf tn If tn lot him go on believing it wasn't Rose who was killed, but Judith. And that' skating so close to the truth that it makes no difference: the Judith Alan knew and the Judith I knew in tha beginning is gone as completely ai though she and not Rose had been, killed." After a long pause, the girl asked him quietly: "I understand. But I it possible you don't understand that, if I were to consent to this proposition, proposi-tion, lend myself to a deception which I must maintain through all my lifei to come Alan would consider me hl , wife?" "Well, but you see you are his wife. ... Oh, don't think I'm off my bat. I'm telling you the plain, unvar nished truth. You are Alan's wife. . . . No, listen to me. You remember remem-ber that day In New York when you substituted for Robo, when Alan tried to elope with her, and you went with him to Jersey City, and stood up to be married by a preacher-guy named Wright and Marrophat broke in Just at the critical moment and busted up the party?" "Well?" she demanded breathlessly. Barcus produced a folded yellow paper pa-per from his coat pocket and proffered prof-fered it. "Read that. It was handed to me as best man, Just before the ceremony. cere-mony. Seeing It was addreesed to Alan and knowing he was in no frame of mind to be bothered by telegrams, I slipped It into my pocket and forgo(t all about it temporarily. When 1 came to find it, I took the liberty of reading It But read Jt for yourself." The typewritten lines of the long message blurred and ran together almost al-most indecipherably in Judith's vision. None the less, she contrived to grasp the substance of its meaning. "WHY DIDN'T YOU WIRE MB SOONER," It ran: "MARRIAGE TO ROSE IMPOSSIBLE. REV. MR. WRIGHT INFORMED ME YOUR MARRIAGE TO JUDITH LAST WEEK HAD GONE TOO FAR WHEN MARROPHAT INTERRUPTED. JUDITH JU-DITH LEGALLY YOUR WIFa WOULD HAVE ADVISED YOO SOONER HAD YOU LET ME KNOW WHERE TO ADDRESS YOU. HOPS TO HEAVEN THIS GETS TO YOO BEFORE TOO LATE." The message was signed with the name of Alan's confidential man ol business In New York. When Judith looked up ahe was alone in the room, but for the silent patient on his couch. Slowly, almost fearfully, she crept to his bedside and stood looking down Into the face of her hUBband. And while Bhe looked Alan's lashea fluttered, his respiration quickened, a faint color crept into his pallid cheeks and his eyes opened wide and looked into hers. His Hps moved and breathed a word of recognition: "Judith!" With a low cry of tenderness, the girl sank to her knees and encircled his head with her arms. "Judith," she whispered, hiding her face In his bosom, "Judith Is no more . . ." A pause; and then the feeble voice:' "Than, If I was mistaken, IX you aren't Judith, you must be Roa my wife!" She said steadily: "I am your wife." His hands fumbled with her face, close upon her cheeks, lifted her head until her eyes must look Into his. And for many minutes he held her so, looking deep Into the soul of the woman. Then Quietly he said: "I know . . ." THE END, |