Cromwell returned to his office at the bank and quickly settled into the old routine of managing his financial empire. His first project for the day was to write a speech to give at the opening of a sanitarium for the elderly, funded and built through his generosity. Modesty was not one of his virtues and he named the hospital the Jacob Cromwell Sanitarium. He called in Marion Morgan to transcribe his notes on the speech.

She sat in a chair beside his desk and gazed at him. “If you forgive me for asking, Mr. Cromwell, but are you feeling all right? You look a bit pale.”

He forced a smile as he instinctively, lightly, touched his side. “I caught a cold from fishing at night. It’s almost gone away.”

He handed her his notes, swung around in his leather chair, and stared out the window at the surrounding city. “Edit my sanitarium speech, and please feel free to make any suggestions you feel are pertinent.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marion rose to leave Cromwell’s office but hesitated at the door. “Excuse me, but I was wondering if you ever heard from the detective from the Van Dorn Agency again?”

Cromwell swung back around from the window and stared at her curiously. “Isaac Bell?”

“I believe that was his name.”

He could not help a mild grin as he said, “He’s dead. I heard he was killed during a bank robbery in Colorado.”

Marion’s heart felt as if it was squeezed between two blocks of ice. She could not believe Cromwell’s words. Her lips quivered, and she turned away from him so he couldn’t see the shock written on her lovely face. Barely maintaining her composure, she said nothing and stepped from the office and closed the door.

Marion sat at her desk as if in a trance. She could not understand the sense of grief over a man she hardly knew, a man with whom she had shared only one dinner.

Yet she could see his face in her mind as if he was standing in front of her. The short-lived bond between them had been cruelly cut. She could not explain her feeling of sorrow and she didn’t try. She felt as if she had lost a dear friend.

With trembling hands, she inserted a sheet of paper in her typewriter and began transcribing Cromwell’s notes for his speech.

AT FIVE O’CLOCK, late in the afternoon, Cromwell stood on the steps of a new three-story redbrick building on Geary and Fillmore Streets, listening to a long and flowery introduction by city mayor Eugene Schmitz, a close friend of Cromwell’s who had benefited from large contributions secretly transferred to his personal account at the Cromwell Bank. A crowd of five hundred people attended the inauguration, along with members of the city’s fire and police departments, political bosses, and over fifty elderly patients sitting listlessly in their wheelchairs.