May 15, 2025 • 12 mins
Transplanted from New York to save his familys business in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Price Ruyler quickly ascends to the top of the citys bachelor list. Yet, he remains immune to the local girls advances and their mothers schemes. That is, until he encounters the enchanting Helene, leading to a whirlwind proposal within just a week. As they journey into their fourth year of marriage, Prices love for Helene remains steadfast. However, he begins to sense a shift, sparking questions about her enigmatic past and whether any family secrets were lost in the earthquakes aftermath.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter eleven of the Avalanche by Gertrude horn Atherton. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Lynn Thompson,
Chapter eleven. It was half past eleven when Ryla and Spolding,
masked and wearing colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates
of the Thornton estate in San Mateo, the detective merely
(00:24):
displaying something in his palm to the stern guardians that
kept the county rebel at bay. The mob stood off
rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get closer
to that gorgeous mass of light they could merely glimpse
through the great oaks of the lower part of the estate,
and to the music so seductive in the distance. They
(00:44):
were not a rabble to excite pity by any means.
A few ragged tramps had joined the crowd, possibly a
few pickpockets from the city, watching their opportunity to slip
in behind one of the automobiles that brought the guests
from the station of the estates up and down the valley.
They were, for the most part, tradespeople from the little
(01:05):
towns Saint Matteo, Redwood City, or the wives of the
proletariat or the servants of the neighboring estates. But although
they grumbled and envied, they made no attempt to force
their way in. It was only the light finger gentry.
The police at the Great Iron Gates were on the
lookout for Ryler. If his mind had been less harrowed
(01:27):
by the looming and possibly dire climax of his own
secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this melodramatic entrance
to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends.
He and Spalding had walked from the train, but they
were not detained as long as a gay party of
young people from Atherton who teased the police by refusing
(01:48):
to present their cards or lift their masks. Ryler knew
them all, but they finally sped past him without even
a glance of contempt from mere foot passengers, even though
they looked like a couple of dodging conspirators. He had
met Spolding at the station in San Francisco, and private
conversation on the crowded train had been impossible. When they
(02:11):
had walked a few yards along the wide avenue as
brilliant as day, with its thousands of colored lights concealed
in the astonished pines. Ryla sat deliberately down upon a
bench and motioned the detective to take the seats beside him.
It is time you gave me some sort of a hint,
he said. After all, it is my affair, I know,
(02:33):
but as I said, you might not approve my methods.
And if you balk, all is up. We've got the
chance of our lives. It's now or never. I do
not like the idea that you may be forcing me
into a position where I may find myself doing something
I shall be ashamed of for the rest of my life.
Ryla's tone was haughty. He did not relish being led
(02:57):
round by the nose, and his nerves were jumping. Now now,
said Spalding soothingly, as he lit a cigar. When you
hire a detective, you hire him to do things you
wouldn't do yourself. And if you won't give him the
little help he's got to have from you or quit,
what's the use of hiring him at all. I know
(03:19):
perfectly well that nothing but your own eyes will convince
you of what's up to me to prove, to say
nothing of the fact that I count on your entrance
at the last minute. To put an end to the
whole bad business. For it is a bad business, believe me.
But not a word of that now. You couldn't pry
open my lips with a five dollar have anna. Well,
(03:42):
you say you had a talk with Madame de Lanou
to day, surely you can tell me some of the
things you have discovered. A whole lot I've been waiting
for the chance. Not that I got anything out of her.
She's one grand bluffer, and no mistake, I take my
hat off to her when I told her that I
could lay my hands on the proof that she was
(04:02):
Marie Garnet, although Jim had married her in his hometown
under his own name, and that she'd gone home to
France with the kid when it was five, taking the
cue from her friend Missus Lawton, and sending word back
she was dead. You were equally sure a few days
ago that she was Missus Lawton. That was just my
(04:24):
constructive imagination on the loose. It was a lovely theory
and I sort of hung on to it, but I
had no real data to go on. Now I've got
the evidence that Jim Garnet died two months before the
fire burnt up pretty nearly all the records, and that
his body was shipped back to Holbrook Center to be
buried in the family plot. You see, he was sick
(04:46):
for some time out on Pacific Avenue, and his death
was registered where the fire didn't go. But what put
you on, asked Rayla impatiently. I should almost rather it
had been anyone else. He seems to have been about
as bad a lot as even this town ever turned out.
He was all right, and his father before him, although
(05:07):
they came from mighty fine folks back east. His father
came out in forty nine with a gold rush crowd,
pouned out a good pile, and then, liking the life.
San Francisco was a gay little berg those days, opened
one of the crack gambling houses down on the old Plaza,
plate glass windows you could look through from the outside
(05:28):
if you thought it best to stay out, and see
hundreds of men playing at tables where the gold pieces
often slugs, were piled as high as their noses, and
hundreds more walking up and down the aisles, either waiting
for a chance to sit or hoping to appease their hunger.
With the sight of so much gold, they didn't try
any funny business. For every gambler had a sick shooter
(05:49):
in his hip pocket and sometimes on the table beside him.
Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the
sidewalk in front of the windows, and not a soul
inside would so much as look up. Well, Delano the
first had a short life, but a merry one. He
couldn't keep away from the tables himself, and the first
(06:10):
thing he knew, he was broke. Sold up. He went
back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and
his wife, she had followed him out here, persuaded him
to go back home and live in the old house
on a little income she had, and he bored all
the neighbors to death for a few years about early
days in California, until he dropped off. Her name was
(06:34):
Mary Garnet. That was what put me on the g
in the middle of the name of the man Madame
Delano married. I telegraphed to Holbrook Center to find out
what his middle name was, and after that it was easy.
I also found out that he was born in California,
and I guess that the old wild life was in
his blood. He stood Holbrook Center until he was sixteen,
(06:57):
and then homed back and took up the trade he
had inherited. I figure out that he didn't tell his
wife the truth when he married her back there, not
until he was on the train pretty close to s
F and then he told her because he couldn't help himself.
She couldn't help herself either, and besides, she was in
love with him. He was a handsome, distinguished looking chap
(07:20):
and he kept right on being a fascinator as long
as he lived. I guess that's the reason she left him.
In the end, she stood for the gambling joint town,
although she had a cool, sarcastic way with her that
kept the men who fell for her at a distance.
She was a good decoy and she looked a regular
queen at the head of the green table. She was
(07:41):
chummy with Jim's intimates, two of whom were d. V.
Bimmer and Jean Bisbee, but even Jan didn't dare take
any liberties with her. It was natural that a woman
brought up as she had been should have kept her
child out of it, and I figure that she got
disgusted with Jim and came to the full sense of
her duty to the poor kid about the same time.
(08:04):
But she didn't go until Jim settled so much a
month on her through old Lawton, who used to amuse
himself at Garnets a good deal in those days, and
who was one of her best friends. Well. She also
got Garnet to make a curious sort of a will,
leaving his money to James Lawton to dispose of as
agreed upon. She had a thrifty business head had that
(08:28):
French dame, and she made him by property when he
was flush and put it in her name. Although she
gave a written agreement never to sell out as long
as he lived, he agreed to let her go because
he was dippy about another skirt at the time, and besides,
she played on his family pride lineal descendant of the
(08:48):
Delano's Garnets and so forth. He'd never seen the kid
after it was taken to the convent, but I guess
he liked the idea all right, of its being brought up,
wearing the old name and getting rid of Marie. At
the same time. She was too canny to leave him
a loophole for divorce, even in California, but I guess
that didn't worry him much. If the earthquake and fire
(09:12):
hadn't come so soon after the will was probated, there
might have been a lot of speculation about it among men.
At least those old gossips in the club windows would
soon have been putting two and two together. But the
calamity that burnt up all the club windows just swept
it clean out of their heads. I figure out that
(09:32):
old Lawton continued to pay Madame Delano the income she'd
been having both from Jim and her properties, out of
his own pocket, until the city was rebuilt and he
could settle the estate. He had to borrow the money
to rebuild the houses Jim had put up on his
wife's property, and when things got to a certain pass,
he wrote Madame Dee to come along and take over
(09:53):
her property. She'll be good and rich one of these
days when all the mortgages are paid off. Lawton paid back,
but it was wise for her to stay on the job.
Lawton is dead straight, but his partner is sewing wild
oats in his old age, good old s f style,
and I guess it ain't wise to tempt him too far.
(10:15):
Get me, it's atrocious, Oh not nearly so bad as
it might be. Just think if it's a been Gabrielle
or Pauline Marie or even Missus Lawton. That's the worst
kind of bad blood for a woman to inherit. Marie
Garnet hung on like grim death to what the grand
society you move in pretends to value most. And the
(10:37):
Lord knows she'll never lose it now, nor need there
be any scandal to drive your family to suicide. The
thing to do is to hustle Madame de Laro out
of San Francisco. She'll go all right with you to
look after her interests. She don't fancy being recognized and blackmailed,
or I miss my guests. You may have to pay
(10:57):
Bisbee something, but v D's not that sort, and I
don't think anybody else is on. If they've suspected, they'll
soon forget it when the old lady disappears from the
palace Hotel Gi. But she has a nerve. She is
an old cynic. If she had any snobbery in her
she'd be here to night, rubbing elbows with the women
(11:18):
who never knew of her existence twenty years ago, although
their husbands did. It has satisfied her ironic French soul
to sit in the court of the Palace Hotel day
after day and defy San Francisco to recognize Marie Garnet
in the obiste Madame Delano, whose daughter is one of
the great ladies of the city, to whose underworld she
(11:39):
once belonged, and from whose filthy prophet she derives her income.
Good God. He sat forward and clutched his head, but Spalding,
who had drawn out his watch, tapped him on the shoulder.
Come on, he said, time's getting short. The stunt is
to be pulled off just before supper. End of chapter eleven.
Chapter eleven of the Avalanche by Gertrude horn Atherton. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Lynn Thompson,
Chapter eleven. It was half past eleven when Ryla and Spolding,
masked and wearing colored silk dominoes, entered the great gates
of the Thornton estate in San Mateo, the detective merely
(00:24):
displaying something in his palm to the stern guardians that
kept the county rebel at bay. The mob stood off
rather grumblingly, for they would have liked to get closer
to that gorgeous mass of light they could merely glimpse
through the great oaks of the lower part of the estate,
and to the music so seductive in the distance. They
(00:44):
were not a rabble to excite pity by any means.
A few ragged tramps had joined the crowd, possibly a
few pickpockets from the city, watching their opportunity to slip
in behind one of the automobiles that brought the guests
from the station of the estates up and down the valley.
They were, for the most part, tradespeople from the little
(01:05):
towns Saint Matteo, Redwood City, or the wives of the
proletariat or the servants of the neighboring estates. But although
they grumbled and envied, they made no attempt to force
their way in. It was only the light finger gentry.
The police at the Great Iron Gates were on the
lookout for Ryler. If his mind had been less harrowed
(01:27):
by the looming and possibly dire climax of his own
secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this melodramatic entrance
to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends.
He and Spalding had walked from the train, but they
were not detained as long as a gay party of
young people from Atherton who teased the police by refusing
(01:48):
to present their cards or lift their masks. Ryler knew
them all, but they finally sped past him without even
a glance of contempt from mere foot passengers, even though
they looked like a couple of dodging conspirators. He had
met Spolding at the station in San Francisco, and private
conversation on the crowded train had been impossible. When they
(02:11):
had walked a few yards along the wide avenue as
brilliant as day, with its thousands of colored lights concealed
in the astonished pines. Ryla sat deliberately down upon a
bench and motioned the detective to take the seats beside him.
It is time you gave me some sort of a hint,
he said. After all, it is my affair, I know,
(02:33):
but as I said, you might not approve my methods.
And if you balk, all is up. We've got the
chance of our lives. It's now or never. I do
not like the idea that you may be forcing me
into a position where I may find myself doing something
I shall be ashamed of for the rest of my life.
Ryla's tone was haughty. He did not relish being led
(02:57):
round by the nose, and his nerves were jumping. Now now,
said Spalding soothingly, as he lit a cigar. When you
hire a detective, you hire him to do things you
wouldn't do yourself. And if you won't give him the
little help he's got to have from you or quit,
what's the use of hiring him at all. I know
(03:19):
perfectly well that nothing but your own eyes will convince
you of what's up to me to prove, to say
nothing of the fact that I count on your entrance
at the last minute. To put an end to the
whole bad business. For it is a bad business, believe me.
But not a word of that now. You couldn't pry
open my lips with a five dollar have anna. Well,
(03:42):
you say you had a talk with Madame de Lanou
to day, surely you can tell me some of the
things you have discovered. A whole lot I've been waiting
for the chance. Not that I got anything out of her.
She's one grand bluffer, and no mistake, I take my
hat off to her when I told her that I
could lay my hands on the proof that she was
(04:02):
Marie Garnet, although Jim had married her in his hometown
under his own name, and that she'd gone home to
France with the kid when it was five, taking the
cue from her friend Missus Lawton, and sending word back
she was dead. You were equally sure a few days
ago that she was Missus Lawton. That was just my
(04:24):
constructive imagination on the loose. It was a lovely theory
and I sort of hung on to it, but I
had no real data to go on. Now I've got
the evidence that Jim Garnet died two months before the
fire burnt up pretty nearly all the records, and that
his body was shipped back to Holbrook Center to be
buried in the family plot. You see, he was sick
(04:46):
for some time out on Pacific Avenue, and his death
was registered where the fire didn't go. But what put
you on, asked Rayla impatiently. I should almost rather it
had been anyone else. He seems to have been about
as bad a lot as even this town ever turned out.
He was all right, and his father before him, although
(05:07):
they came from mighty fine folks back east. His father
came out in forty nine with a gold rush crowd,
pouned out a good pile, and then, liking the life.
San Francisco was a gay little berg those days, opened
one of the crack gambling houses down on the old Plaza,
plate glass windows you could look through from the outside
(05:28):
if you thought it best to stay out, and see
hundreds of men playing at tables where the gold pieces
often slugs, were piled as high as their noses, and
hundreds more walking up and down the aisles, either waiting
for a chance to sit or hoping to appease their hunger.
With the sight of so much gold, they didn't try
any funny business. For every gambler had a sick shooter
(05:49):
in his hip pocket and sometimes on the table beside him.
Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the
sidewalk in front of the windows, and not a soul
inside would so much as look up. Well, Delano the
first had a short life, but a merry one. He
couldn't keep away from the tables himself, and the first
(06:10):
thing he knew, he was broke. Sold up. He went
back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and
his wife, she had followed him out here, persuaded him
to go back home and live in the old house
on a little income she had, and he bored all
the neighbors to death for a few years about early
days in California, until he dropped off. Her name was
(06:34):
Mary Garnet. That was what put me on the g
in the middle of the name of the man Madame
Delano married. I telegraphed to Holbrook Center to find out
what his middle name was, and after that it was easy.
I also found out that he was born in California,
and I guess that the old wild life was in
his blood. He stood Holbrook Center until he was sixteen,
(06:57):
and then homed back and took up the trade he
had inherited. I figure out that he didn't tell his
wife the truth when he married her back there, not
until he was on the train pretty close to s
F and then he told her because he couldn't help himself.
She couldn't help herself either, and besides, she was in
love with him. He was a handsome, distinguished looking chap
(07:20):
and he kept right on being a fascinator as long
as he lived. I guess that's the reason she left him.
In the end, she stood for the gambling joint town,
although she had a cool, sarcastic way with her that
kept the men who fell for her at a distance.
She was a good decoy and she looked a regular
queen at the head of the green table. She was
(07:41):
chummy with Jim's intimates, two of whom were d. V.
Bimmer and Jean Bisbee, but even Jan didn't dare take
any liberties with her. It was natural that a woman
brought up as she had been should have kept her
child out of it, and I figure that she got
disgusted with Jim and came to the full sense of
her duty to the poor kid about the same time.
(08:04):
But she didn't go until Jim settled so much a
month on her through old Lawton, who used to amuse
himself at Garnets a good deal in those days, and
who was one of her best friends. Well. She also
got Garnet to make a curious sort of a will,
leaving his money to James Lawton to dispose of as
agreed upon. She had a thrifty business head had that
(08:28):
French dame, and she made him by property when he
was flush and put it in her name. Although she
gave a written agreement never to sell out as long
as he lived, he agreed to let her go because
he was dippy about another skirt at the time, and besides,
she played on his family pride lineal descendant of the
(08:48):
Delano's Garnets and so forth. He'd never seen the kid
after it was taken to the convent, but I guess
he liked the idea all right, of its being brought up,
wearing the old name and getting rid of Marie. At
the same time. She was too canny to leave him
a loophole for divorce, even in California, but I guess
that didn't worry him much. If the earthquake and fire
(09:12):
hadn't come so soon after the will was probated, there
might have been a lot of speculation about it among men.
At least those old gossips in the club windows would
soon have been putting two and two together. But the
calamity that burnt up all the club windows just swept
it clean out of their heads. I figure out that
(09:32):
old Lawton continued to pay Madame Delano the income she'd
been having both from Jim and her properties, out of
his own pocket, until the city was rebuilt and he
could settle the estate. He had to borrow the money
to rebuild the houses Jim had put up on his
wife's property, and when things got to a certain pass,
he wrote Madame Dee to come along and take over
(09:53):
her property. She'll be good and rich one of these
days when all the mortgages are paid off. Lawton paid back,
but it was wise for her to stay on the job.
Lawton is dead straight, but his partner is sewing wild
oats in his old age, good old s f style,
and I guess it ain't wise to tempt him too far.
(10:15):
Get me, it's atrocious, Oh not nearly so bad as
it might be. Just think if it's a been Gabrielle
or Pauline Marie or even Missus Lawton. That's the worst
kind of bad blood for a woman to inherit. Marie
Garnet hung on like grim death to what the grand
society you move in pretends to value most. And the
(10:37):
Lord knows she'll never lose it now, nor need there
be any scandal to drive your family to suicide. The
thing to do is to hustle Madame de Laro out
of San Francisco. She'll go all right with you to
look after her interests. She don't fancy being recognized and blackmailed,
or I miss my guests. You may have to pay
(10:57):
Bisbee something, but v D's not that sort, and I
don't think anybody else is on. If they've suspected, they'll
soon forget it when the old lady disappears from the
palace Hotel Gi. But she has a nerve. She is
an old cynic. If she had any snobbery in her
she'd be here to night, rubbing elbows with the women
(11:18):
who never knew of her existence twenty years ago, although
their husbands did. It has satisfied her ironic French soul
to sit in the court of the Palace Hotel day
after day and defy San Francisco to recognize Marie Garnet
in the obiste Madame Delano, whose daughter is one of
the great ladies of the city, to whose underworld she
(11:39):
once belonged, and from whose filthy prophet she derives her income.
Good God. He sat forward and clutched his head, but Spalding,
who had drawn out his watch, tapped him on the shoulder.
Come on, he said, time's getting short. The stunt is
to be pulled off just before supper. End of chapter eleven.
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