The Last Woman
Stephen Langdon, a Wall Street banker, needs twenty million dollars by ten o’clock Monday or he goes to the wall. The men backing his bond deal pulled out, and one source is left: Roderick Duncan, son of Langdon’s old partner, who has been proposing to Langdon’s daughter Patricia for years and would lend gladly to a prospective father-in-law. She sees the arrangement for what it is, names herself the collateral, and agrees on terms she dictates to a lawyer and signs. From there the book moves through a box at the opera, a house party at a country place called Cedarcrest, a best friend who wants Duncan for herself, and a Montana ranchman courting Patricia in blunt Western talk. The plotting runs to 1909 melodrama, but Patricia carries it, refusing to be sold without setting her own price.
