“Very nearly,” said he.  “There’s an old man in this town who has spent his lifetime lending money and hoarding it; he has something like eighty or a hundred millions now, I believe, and once every six months or so you will read in the newspapers that some woman has made an attempt to blackmail him.  That is because he does to every pretty girl who comes into his office just exactly what old Waterman did to you; and those who are arrested for blackmail are simply the ones who are so unwise as to make a disturbance.”

“You see, Lucy,” continued Montague, after a pause, “you must realise the situation.  This man is a god in New York.  He controls all the avenues of wealth; he can make or break any person he chooses.  It is really the truth—­I believe he could ruin any man in the city whom he chose to set out after.  He can have anything that he wants done, so far as the police are concerned.  It is simply a matter of paying them.  And he is accustomed to rule in everything; his lightest whim is law.  If he wants a thing, he buys it, and that is his attitude toward women.  He is used to being treated as a master; women seek him, and vie for his favour.  If you had been able to hold it, you might have had a million-dollar palace on Riverside Drive, or a cottage with a million-dollar pier at Newport.  You might have had carte blanche at all the shops, and all the yachting trips and private trains that you wanted.  That is all that other women want, and he could not understand what more you could want.”  Montague paused.

“Is that the way he spends his money?” Lucy asked.

“He buys everything he takes a fancy to,” said Montague.  “They say he spends five thousand dollars a day.  One of the stories they tell in the clubs is that he loved the wife of a physician, and he gave a million dollars to found a hospital, and one of the conditions of the endowment was that this physician should go abroad for three years and study all the hospitals of Europe.”

Lucy sat buried in thought.  “Allan,” she asked suddenly, “what do you suppose he meant by saying he would follow me?  What could he do?”

“I don’t know,” said Allan, “it is something which we shall have to think over very carefully.”

“He made a remark to me that I thought was very strange,” she said.  “I just happened to recall it.  He said, ’You have no money.  You cannot keep up the pace in New York.  What you own is worth nothing.’  Do you suppose, Allan, that he can know anything about my affairs?”

Montague was staring at her in consternation.  “Lucy!” he exclaimed.

“What is it?” she cried.

“Nothing,” he said; and he added to himself, “No, it is absurd.  It could not be.”  The idea that it could have been Dan Waterman who had set the detectives to follow him seemed too grotesque for consideration.  “It was nothing but a chance shot,” he said to Lucy, “but you must be careful.  He is a dangerous man.”