Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1914-Jan 1915)

THE VIPER 41 by in a brooding sorrow that threatened to keep pace with her thru all the years she had to live. The only softening touches were her father's unvarying dearness and the understanding, the silent, unpresuming, perfect understanding of Wilder Kent. Today she sat alone in her own private den, her forehead pressed tightly against the frosted window-pane. Her eyes were halfclosed, and she watched the passing and repassing people with a sensation of one utterly apart. The maid brought her in a note and retired discreetly. Mary broke the seal listlessly, and the contents leaped up to meet her eyes : Your husband owes me considerably more than he is able to pay. If you will send me an I 0 U promising payment I will waive the prosecution of him. Stanley Baxter. Stanley Baxter! That name remained. He was the mcst notorious gambler in the city. He was one of the most dissolute characters. His associates were the black sheep of the upper circles, the habitants of the underworld, and Harry was one of the circle. Harry, weak, facile, yielding Harry! To what depths would he sink ere he finished — with himself, with her, with her poor, tormented father? How low in the mire would he see fit to drag their names0? How much purchase money would her father be forced to give up ? Mary's blood, torpid from long despair, suddenly ran afire. It was his hour for home-coming, when he returned at all. She went down the stairs, not in wifely greeting, to confront him. The front door opened, and he faced her, more or less unsteadily. "Harry" — her voice was strained, accusing — "this note has just come to me. I want you either to explain it away or settle it without any assistance from father or myself." "Cant explain it away, m'dear — being there," rejoined Crane, chuckiingly. "An' you an' 'father' can manage to part with the li'l sum re quired more easily than your poor, needy husband." "You will not speak to my father — do you understand me — you — you weakling '? He has done too much for you — God knows how far too much!" "Too much?" Crane wheeled in the stress of his indignation. "Too much? That's pre' good. An' me living here on my salary — my paltry, drivelin' salary. "Wha's the old codger good for " "Dont dare!" Mary stepped close. Her voice shrilled. A hand was laid on her shoulder, and her father's voice said firmly : "Go into my study, Mary — I 'd rather you were not mixed up in such brawls." One weakling; one impotent, erring, wrong-doing person can create more chaos than any moral Samson. By their very weakness they corrode the links that bind them to the strong. They disrupt households, break hearts, ruin fortunes and create a havoc out of all proportion to their abilities. When Harry Crane left his father-in-law's house that wintry night, bearing the wherewithal to meet his debt, a train of horrors followed that left Mary spent and wearied; her first youth irrevocably gone ; the bloom rubbed forever from her faith and trust. The money had gone the way of all preceding sums ; the gambler had sunk a fathom lower ; the thief had emerged. Like something cataclysmic had come Crane's exposure as a thief — a thief at her own father's safe; the fight with the butler who had discovered him; the telephone call from her father^ the murder unwittingly done ; Crane's hat found grasped in the butler's stiffened hand ; Crane 's vanishing. Once again Endicott Putnam used his good name, his good money, his utmost endeavor to shield the name of his sonin-law. Once again, and because of these things, he was successful; and then came the burning of Stanley Baxter's houseboat, with only one death — Harry Crane's. For days the horror of her release permeated Mary's heart and soul to