Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/142

 story, and the reader will need a vivid imagination to get an idea of my emotions when this friend exclaimed, "Why, that story has already been used by the 'Journal'!"

"That is impossible!" I exclaimed.

He answered, "I have a copy of it upon my desk."

It was not until I was going on board the steamer that I got a copy of the "final extra" of the "New York Evening Journal," the issue of Monday, December 29, 1913. At the top of the front page, in red letters more than one-half inch high, appeared the caption:

"JOURNAL FINDS MISS BRANCH HERE"

with two index hands to point out this wonderful news to the reader. A good portion of the remainder of the front page was occupied by an article with these headings:

HEART-WIFE IS IN NEW YORK

Found Here by Journal.

"Miss Branch Traced to Well-Known Writer's Home After Secret Flight.

Adelaide M. Branch, for three years the heart-wife of Melvin H. Couch, former District Attorney of Sullivan County, is today in New York City. She is secluded at the home of a well-known sociologist and writer who has interested himself in her case and has offered her a home, at least until she can make definite plans for the future.

Miss Branch was traced to her hiding place in this city by the "Evening Journal." The former "love slave" of Couch told the sociologist that she wished to be absolutely quiet and undisturbed. So for the present it is not possible to give her address.

And so continued a long article, which contained practically everything of what I gave to Mr. Thorpe, sometimes even using the very phrases which I had used in the presence of my wife.

I will not trouble the reader with a description of the state of mind we were in when our steamer set out for Bermuda. I will simply give a brief summary of what else occurred in this incredible affair:

First, someone got, or pretended to get, from the hall-boy at the apartment where I had been staying, an elaborate and entirely fictitious account of how Miss Branch had arrived, and how she had swooned and my wife had caught her in her arms, and how some other people had come and carried her away in an automobile. This account was published in full.