Page:The Great Harry Thaw Case.djvu/260

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the old man. And that night began another series of events. It was on that night that Stanford White, baffled, his plans disconcerted, went about that theater in Madison Square hunting for his victim, and, finding her not, pistol in hand and with impotent rage in his heart, threatened to shoot the man who had baffled his schemes.

"And that night Harry Thaw, as he walked the streets of New York, found that his footsteps were being dogged by hired malefactors in the pay of Stanford White, and he learned in a few days of the threat of Stanford White and his hirlings. From that moment the dread of his life being taken away by this man added a grim specter to the one that already had been haunting him.

"And he from that time, as she relates to you, began to think himself persecuted by Stanford White. The scurrilous stories circulated in newspapers and elsewhere he attributed to him. He expressed apprehension of personal violence and impressed upon her mind that if he died she was to have his death investigated and to spare no pains.

"He told her he would probably be set upon in New York by some one in the employ of Stanford White. He said the Monk Eastman gang had been hired to kill him and the fear of death constantly haunted him.

"Consider in this connection, consider the strange clause in his will—if you will not take it from Evelyn—the strange clause appropriating the sum of $50,000 to be devoted to the investigation into his death, should it occur.

"In 1904, in the latter part of the year, or the beginning of 1905, a second operation was performed on Evelyn. And when she was convalescent the man who for two years had loved her, the man who had told her sad story to his mother in 1903, who had been refused by her because she thought their union would interfere with his family relations—that man, I say, such was the constancy and fervor