Baldwin the elder turned a grave face towards his son. He spoke in business-like tones.

“You had better get out of this affair, Wayne, and go abroad with your sister.”

“Wait a minute, Father,” Wayne cried. “Alice has made some pretty raw statements. She’d better know what she’s talking about.”

Her lips drew into a thin line.

“I think I know what I’m talking about, Wayne.” She arose and came determinedly before him. “There’s a low streak in you, Wayne, and you know it.”

Wayne half turned away and then wheeled back.

“There’s nothing as low as the greed right here.” His voice hit a higher tone. “My mother married my father for his gold bags and he bought her for her social label. We’re all low; you cover your slime with virgin respectability. Thank God, I haven’t your stinking Puritanical mind.”

“That will do, Wayne,” commanded Baldwin Senior. “You’re being insulting!”

But Wayne was carrying high the torch of his indignation.

“Where do you get your purity to question my morals? You’re just a whited sepulcher.”

“Wayne!” his father cried.

Alice, cold with rage, said in biting tones, “I think you should know, Father, that the low woman’s name is Babe Gordon and that she seriously endangered your business by selling drugs in your Harlem store. You may remember the search made by detectives not so long ago. Wayne saved her from the police—for himself evidently.”

“It’s a lie—”

“It is the truth, Father!”

Alice placed one hand on her father’s shoulder.

“The Five and Ten Cent girl who worked back of the perfume counter in your 125th Street Harlem store is also the gorgeous blonde Wayne has been keeping in luxury on Riverside Drive. I have positive proof!”

“You have no such proof!” Wayne shouted.

“I have. Irrefutable proof!”

“From whom?”

“From a person known as Cokey Jenny, who was the bosom companion of your fair Babe Gordon, when they solicited men on the streets!”

Wayne gave a hoarse laugh of derision.

“You believe that lying, blackmailing, gangster woman?”

“I have verified her statements. This Babe Gordon is an underworld seductress with criminal intent upon the Baldwin fortune. No one knows anything about her parentage. Whoever her parents were, they could not have been much to allow a girl of her age to be initiated into the vice and slime of Harlem. She has very likely inherited their miserable traits. I understand she carried on affairs with men when she was a mere schoolgirl. These are true facts.”

Wayne choked with a growing mortification.

“You’ve gone out of your head, Alice.”

Suddenly he felt ashamed in front of his father, who had said so little, but who had regarded him with a not unsympathetic look.

“Son,” his father’s voice reached him, “do you still refuse to go to Europe with Alice?”

Wayne raised his head.