The Project Gutenberg EBook of Vera, by Richard Harding Davis

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Title: Vera
The Medium

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Posting Date: November 23, 2008 [EBook #1843]
Release Date: August, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VERA ***

Produced by Jeetender B. Chandna

VERA, THE MEDIUM

By Richard Harding Davis

Part I

Happy in the hope that the news was "exclusive", the Despatch had thrown
the name of Stephen Hallowell, his portrait, a picture of his house, and
the words, "At Point of Death!" across three columns. The announcement
was heavy, lachrymose, bristling with the melancholy self-importance
of the man who "saw the deceased, just two minutes before the train hit
him."

But the effect of the news fell short of the effort. Save that city
editors were irritated that the presidents of certain railroads figured
hastily on slips of paper, the fact that an old man and his millions
would soon be parted, left New York undisturbed.

In the early 80's this would not have been so. Then, in the uplifting of
the far West, Stephen Hallowell was a national figure, in the manoeuvres
of the Eastern stock market an active, alert power. In those days, when
a man with a few millions was still listed as rich, his fortune was
considered colossal.

A patent coupling-pin, the invention of his brother-in-law, had given
him his start, and, in introducing it, and in his efforts to force it
upon the new railroads of the West, he had obtained a knowledge of their
affairs. From that knowledge came his wealth. That was twenty years
ago. Since then giants had arisen in the land; men whose wealth made
the fortune of Stephen Hallowell appear a comfortable competence, his
schemes and stratagems, which, in their day, had bewildered Wall Street,
as simple as the trading across the counter of a cross-roads store. For
years he had been out of it. He had lost count. Disuse and ill health
had rendered his mind feeble, made him at times suspicious, at times
childishly credulous. Without friends, along with his physician and the
butler, who was also his nurse, he lived in the house that in 76, in
a bur