Isabel Ostrander

“ Creveling, as it is," McCarty spoke a trifle grimly. "You told me, Hill, that he'd never touched a card in years, for one thing, but I've learned different."
"You mean those games at Mr. Cutter's, sir?" Hill paused. "Mr. Creveling was always great for gambling, from the old, wild days when I first came to him before he was married. He'd bet a small fortune on anything, but cards were always a passion with him. He used to run terrific games himself in that study where you found him dead ”

“ Creveling to buy with Ilsa's freedom; they showed plain that Mr. Creveling had been threatening people to make them pay up card debts or lend him money, and if they ever got in the newspapers she wouldn't have been able to hold up her head again. It seems rotten to fight a woman like that, maybe, sir, but she hadn't spared Ilsa!
"When I'd destroyed the letters that didn't mean anything to me I put the rest in my pocket together with that one I had taken from Mr. Creveling's clothes in the morning, and went to the corner drugstore and called up Mr. Alexander ”

“ I've seen all sides of it, sir, and said nothing until now, but if some of the married men only realized the dangers they were exposing their wives to in letting them further their social advancement so—so promiscuous like, with people they really don't know anything about, they'd think twice before they got in with a set of so-called gentlemen gamblers. Mr. Ford was one of the latest that got stung, I hear—but it was Mr. Creveling you wanted me to tell you about!"
"And more than his gambling," McCarty remarked. "I've heard talk of his affairs with women, and of a quarrel with Mr. ”

“ Then he'd plunge and lose more and win back more yet, and so they'd play him until he risked everything and lost, and that time there'd be no come-back. Of course, he'd think they were bully good fellows until the showdown, and she'd think she was having the time of her life and getting in with the real people. ”

“ Did you know that, Hill?"
"I suspected as much, sir, and more. I've heard whispers that the games weren't altogether straight and that Mr. Creveling and—and one of the other gentlemen knew as much." Hill hesitated. "Butlers and valets and ladies' maids see more than their employers ever stop to think about, and I watched people come and go in their crowd, and they all ended the same ”

“ What do you know about it?"
"Only what the butler, Rollins, told me, sir, and that's not much. Of course, before Mr. Creveling married it was just one affair after another and what with breach of promise and divorce suits threatened or pending, it was a miracle he wasn't shot long ago," Hill said frankly. "I never saw him fall so hard, though, as he did for Miss Alexander, and when they were married I thought he'd settle down ”