A Race to Splendor Read Online Free PDF Page A

Thayer or imagine the relief that must have washed over him. He had bested her this day and unquestioningly was glad of it. No matter that her parents and his had once been friends. No matter that she had lost her grandfather, the dearest person in her life, and had been robbed of a precious legacy by such outrageous double-dealing. She doubted anything pulled on the man’s conscience.
    Outside the courthouse, her attorney appeared as upset as she by the outcome of the hearing.
    “It’s simply wrong-headed,” John Damler fumed as they walked down the courthouse steps. “We could appeal, Miss Bradshaw, but I fear Thayer and especially Kemp, with his political connections, will put this case before the same political hacks with the same hidebound views, wherever we might file in this state.”
    “You’re probably right. And besides, I can ill afford any more California justice.”
    Her words were tinged with defiance when, in fact, she yearned to simply weep as a child. Once she paid her legal fees, she was virtually out of funds except for the pittance she had remaining from her trip home from France. All she wanted at the moment was to get as far away as possible from Judge Haggerty’s courtroom so she could rage to the heavens or pound a fist against a wall. Indeed, suppressed fury was the only emotion she would allow herself, for if she accepted the truth that the Bay View Hotel no longer belonged to her family, she feared she would behave like a madwoman.
    She blindly handed her lawyer an envelope containing what was owing—which he refused.
    Yet she insisted. “No, please, Mr. Damler. You put on an excellent case. I appreciate your efforts.”
    Just then, J.D. Thayer strode down the courthouse steps. As he passed, he offered attorney Damler and Amelia a civil nod, hurrying in the direction of a large, open-air vehicle parked at the base of the granite stairs. Amelia endured the final indignity of watching Thayer turn the crank and then climb into the driver’s seat of her late grandfather’s pride-and-joy, a gleaming, midnight blue Winton motorcar.
    She turned back to Damler and nearly shoved the envelope into the lawyer’s hands. “You must take this. Perhaps it will further your work in Chinatown.”
    Amelia knew from her brief telephone conversation with Julia Morgan that John Damler also represented Julia’s friend, Donaldina Cameron, the Methodist missionary who ran a shelter for young Chinese women desperate to escape the brothels flourishing mere blocks from Nob Hill. The irony was not lost on Amelia that Miss Cameron was the same person whom both her own mother and the mother of J.D. Thayer had once supported in her efforts to help the city’s poorest women flee forced prostitution.
    And now, Thayer had apparently taken the comely Ling Lee as his mistress and recruited similar young Chinese women to serve in the gambling club—or worse. How could he have become such a blackguard? What would drive a man who had good looks, breeding, and intelligence to use these gifts to such ill purposes?
    Damler clutched the envelop Amelia had forced upon him and flashed her a smile that transformed his earnest expression. “I will use the money to fight for justice for those poor beleaguered women, kidnapped from their homelands and brought here to do the Devil’s work. You’ve made me feel better already, Miss Bradshaw. And you? What will you do now?”
    Amelia turned to watch Thayer, outfitted in goggles and duster coat, shift the motorcar into gear and swiftly pull away from the curb. She knew it was childish, but she felt like throwing rocks at his windshield. Her chest felt hollow, her heart empty of all emotion but a sense of far-flung blackness like the bay on a moonless night. She stared vacantly as her grandfather’s magnificent machine turned the corner and disappeared.
    “What will I do?” she repeated faintly. “I will try to accept the unacceptable, Mr. Damler, and begin to earn my own