The Black Envelope
Summary
Creelman, a magnetic mayoral hopeful, teeters on the precipice of insolvency when Olga, a tragedienne whose heart beats only for him, surrenders her last twenty-thousand dollars to bankroll his ascent. Flush with her gift, he storms the hustings, seizes the seat of power, then—drunk on victory and novelty—spies Syble, the porcelain fiancée of newspaper tsar Estaban DeBussy, and pirouettes her into matrimony. Their honeymoon shatters when a poison-ink headline resurrects the forgotten loan, branding Creelman a debtor. He had, in truth, repaid Olga, secreting the receipt inside a black envelope now vanished. DeBussy, jilted and vengeful, filches the paper, corners Syble, and barters it for one nocturnal surrender. She obeys, reclaims the proof, but in the struggle for her own virtue she drives a blade through her tormentor’s heart. Returning home, she confronts a husband whose eyes echo only suspicion; left alone with the stain of blood and betrayal, she folds herself into eternity with a single pistol crack.
Synopsis
Hard pressed for funds in his campaign for Mayor, Jim Creelman does not know where to turn, but Olga Bateman, an actress, who has fallen deeply in love with the handsome politician, offers to loan him twenty thousand dollars to insure his election, hoping that in the end he will marry her. He makes good use of the funds and his campaign is carried to a successful termination. A short time afterwards, however, he meets Miss Syble Chatfield, the fiancée of Estaban DeBussy, the editor in chief of the leading daily paper, and falls desperately in love with her. He wins her away from DeBussy and they are married. In the midst of their honeymoon they are surprised by the announcement in the paper of the loan made to Creelman by the actress Olga, and never repaid, when, as a matter of fact, Jim Creelman repaid the money shortly after his election and obtained a receipt for it. Creelman tells his wife of his old affair with Olga. His wife, believing in his integrity and anxious to help him in any way to defeat the blackmailing scheme to discredit him before the town, helps him to search for the receipt, which had been placed in a black envelope, but they find that it has been stolen from his desk. The revengeful suitor, DeBussy, meets the faithful wife and tells her that the receipt has come into his possession and that he will give it to her if she will come to his house that night. To save her husband's honor she goes, and when she obtains the receipt, in order to preserve her husband's good name, she kills her suitor, after a struggle. Overcome with grief at the unjust suspicions of her husband, and his failure to believe her story, she kills herself as soon as he leaves the house.
