The Duke Decides By: Headon Hill (1857-1927)
First Page: THE DUKE DECIDES By HEADON HILL Author of By a Hair's Breadth , etc. New York A. WESSELS COMPANY 1904 Copyright, 1903, by A. Wessels Company Published, 1903 PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. [Illustration: Leonie Sherman ] CONTENTS CHAPTER I The Man with the Mandate CHAPTER II On Board the St. Paul CHAPTER III A Task master in Goggles CHAPTER IV The Lady in the Landau CHAPTER V Ziegler Begins to Move CHAPTER VI The General is Curious CHAPTER VII The Men on the Stairs CHAPTER VIII The Cut Panel CHAPTER IX The Strategy of the General CHAPTER X A Duty Call CHAPTER XI On the Terrace CHAPTER XII The Man Under the Seat CHAPTER XIII At the Keeper's Cottage CHAPTER XIV Too Many Women CHAPTER XV A New Cure for Headache CHAPTER XVI A Delicate Mission CHAPTER XVII Where is the Duke? CHAPTER XVIII The Senator and the Securities CHAPTER XIX In the Crypt CHAPTER XX In the Muniment Room CHAPTER XXI The Honor of the House LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Leonie Sherman A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her? The procession of three led by the stranger. I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton. CHAPTER I The Man with the Mandate At six o'clock on a May evening, at an uptown corner of Broadway, in New York City, the bowels of the earth opened and disgorged a crowd of weary faced men and women who scattered in all directions. They were the employees of a huge "dry goods store," leaving work for the day. It was a stringent rule of the firm that everyone drawing wages, from the smart managers of departments and well dressed salesladies down to the counting house drudges and check boys, should descend into the basement, and there file past the timekeeper and a private detective before passing up a narrow staircase, and so out by a sort of stage door into the side street. The great plate glass portals on the main thoroughfare were not for the working bees of this hive of industry only for the gay butterflies of fashion by whom they lived. The last to come out was a young man dressed in a threadbare suit of tweeds, that somehow hardly seemed American, either in cut or fabric. There might have been a far away reminiscence of Perthshire moors clinging to them, or earlier memories of a famous creator in Bond Street; but suggestion of the reach me down shops from which New York clerks clothe themselves there was none. A flush of anger was fading on their owner's face as he came out into the sunlight, leaving a mild annoyance that presently gave place to a grin. The firm's detective, rendered suspicious by a bulging pocket, had just searched him, and had failed to apologize on finding the protuberance to be nothing but a bundle of un eatable sandwiches that were being taken home to confound the landlady of the young man's cheap boarding house. The indignity did not rankle long. It was only a detail in the topsy turvydom that in one short year had changed a subaltern in a crack English cavalry regiment into an ill paid drudge in a dry goods store. Twelve months before Charles Hanbury had been playing polo and riding gymkhana races in Upper India, but extravagance beyond his means had brought swift ruin in its train. Tired of helping him out of scrapes, his connections had refused further assistance; and, leaving the Army, he had come out to "the States" with the idea of roughing it on the Western plains... Continue reading book >>

The Duke Decides By: Headon Hill (1857-1927)

First Page:

THE DUKE DECIDES By HEADON HILL

Author of By a Hair's Breadth , etc.

New York A. WESSELS COMPANY 1904

Published, 1903

PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.

[Illustration: Leonie Sherman ]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I The Man with the Mandate CHAPTER II On Board the St. Paul CHAPTER III A Task master in Goggles CHAPTER IV The Lady in the Landau CHAPTER V Ziegler Begins to Move CHAPTER VI The General is Curious CHAPTER VII The Men on the Stairs CHAPTER VIII The Cut Panel CHAPTER IX The Strategy of the General CHAPTER X A Duty Call CHAPTER XI On the Terrace CHAPTER XII The Man Under the Seat CHAPTER XIII At the Keeper's Cottage CHAPTER XIV Too Many Women CHAPTER XV A New Cure for Headache CHAPTER XVI A Delicate Mission CHAPTER XVII Where is the Duke? CHAPTER XVIII The Senator and the Securities CHAPTER XIX In the Crypt CHAPTER XX In the Muniment Room CHAPTER XXI The Honor of the House

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Leonie Sherman A countrywoman of yours. I wonder if you know her? The procession of three led by the stranger. I am very far from being indifferent to Mrs. Talmage Eglinton.

CHAPTER I The Man with the Mandate

At six o'clock on a May evening, at an uptown corner of Broadway, in New York City, the bowels of the earth opened and disgorged a crowd of weary faced men and women who scattered in all directions. They were the employees of a huge "dry goods store," leaving work for the day. It was a stringent rule of the firm that everyone drawing wages, from the smart managers of departments and well dressed salesladies down to the counting house drudges and check boys, should descend into the basement, and there file past the timekeeper and a private detective before passing up a narrow staircase, and so out by a sort of stage door into the side street.

The great plate glass portals on the main thoroughfare were not for the working bees of this hive of industry only for the gay butterflies of fashion by whom they lived.

The last to come out was a young man dressed in a threadbare suit of tweeds, that somehow hardly seemed American, either in cut or fabric. There might have been a far away reminiscence of Perthshire moors clinging to them, or earlier memories of a famous creator in Bond Street; but suggestion of the reach me down shops from which New York clerks clothe themselves there was none. A flush of anger was fading on their owner's face as he came out into the sunlight, leaving a mild annoyance that presently gave place to a grin.

The firm's detective, rendered suspicious by a bulging pocket, had just searched him, and had failed to apologize on finding the protuberance to be nothing but a bundle of un eatable sandwiches that were being taken home to confound the landlady of the young man's cheap boarding house.

The indignity did not rankle long. It was only a detail in the topsy turvydom that in one short year had changed a subaltern in a crack English cavalry regiment into an ill paid drudge in a dry goods store. Twelve months before Charles Hanbury had been playing polo and riding gymkhana races in Upper India, but extravagance beyond his means had brought swift ruin in its train. Tired of helping him out of scrapes, his connections had refused further assistance; and, leaving the Army, he had come out to "the States" with the idea of roughing it on the Western plains... Continue reading book >>

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