Free The Devil's Gentleman by Harold Schechter

one’s interest. I sensed a hidden strength and a brute force in him, and it was as natural as breathing that I should capitulate to that!” 7
    On the night of the carnival, after thrilling to Roland’s typically dazzling routine, the three of them repaired to his room to share a bottle of champagne. Though Blanche, who had never seen Roland perform before, gushed over his skill, her thoughts were really on Barnet. Indeed, by that time—less than a week after their first encounter—she was already entertaining highly charged fantasies about him. “Mentally, I had already yielded to him, and I was secretly thrilled at the thought of surrender.” 8
    It didn’t take long for Roland to sense the growing attraction between Blanche and Barnet, and he was quick to stake his claim. One evening shortly after the carnival, while the three of them dined at the club, Barney, in his jocular way, began telling Mollie how much he envied him.
    “Congratulations, old man,” he exclaimed, clapping him on the shoulder. “What a lucky fellow you are.”
    “Why, what does that mean?” said Blanche, feeling a sudden rush of irritation. “Roland and I are not going to be married.”
    “Oh, yes, we are,” Roland coolly replied.
    “But we are not even engaged!” said Blanche, laughing to soften her petulant tone.
    “True, but we are going to be,” said Roland, casting a pointed look first at Blanche, then at Barnet.
    Blanche instantly understood what was going on. Roland had been observing her “growing infatuation for Barnet.” He was “determined to leave no one in doubt concerning his feelings for me, and he would discourage any interest that might develop elsewhere.” 9
    But Blanche was not about to be pressured into marriage. She was not in love with Roland. Nor, for that matter, with his friend. But she was determined to act on the powerful physical attraction she felt for Barnet.
    She knew, of course, that she was playing with fire. But the element of danger only made the situation more “exciting and alluring.” And why shouldn’t she fling herself into an affair with the virile Barnet? After all, she told herself, “I was free, free as air and owed no allegiance to anyone.” 10
    She made that position unmistakably clear on Thanksgiving Day, when Roland got down on one knee and formally proposed to her.
    Blanche—trying to take the sting out of the rejection by assuring him that she might feel otherwise in the future—turned him down.

14
    T he holiday season of 1897 was an unhappy time for Roland Molineux. First came Blanche’s rejection of his marriage proposal on Thanksgiving Day. Then, just before Christmas, his protracted feud with Harry Cornish reached a sudden and—from Roland’s point of view—exceptionally bitter climax.
    The unwitting catalyst was a gentleman named Bartow Sumter Weeks. The son of a Civil War colonel, Weeks had gotten his law degree from Columbia University before going to work in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. In the fall of 1897, he had just entered into private practice with another former assistant DA, George Gordon Battle. Eventually, Weeks would become a New York State Supreme Court justice.
    Besides the law, amateur athletics was the great passion of Weeks’s life. A long-standing member of the New York Athletic Club, he had served as two-term president, chairman of the Athletic Committee, member of the Board of Governors, and captain of the club’s athletic team.
    He was also a close family friend of the Molineuxs and had known Roland for many years.
    In October 1897, the pugnacious Harry Cornish had become embroiled in a dispute with Weeks, accusing him in print of an ethical violation. According to Cornish—who published his charge in
Harper’s Weekly
—Weeks, in his eagerness to win an international meet, had paid a track star named Bernie Wefers, holder of the world record in the 100-yard dash, to switch membership from the Knickerbocker Athletic Club to