BOOK III.

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the

Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE MIDNIGHT PASSENGER

A NOVEL

By RICHARD HENRY SAVAGE

THE MIDNIGHT PASSENGER

BOOK I

UNDER THE ARCH

I. The Danube Picture

II. Tidings of Great Joy

III. In Magdal's Pharmacy

IV. Under the Shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge

V. Breakers Ahead! Checkmate! Mr. Arthur Ferris Works in the Dark

BOOK II

AN INSIDE RING

VI. Dreaming by the Sea

VII. "This May Be My Last Bank Deposit"

VIII. The Strange Tug's Voyage

IX. The Lightning Stroke of Fate

X. A Cruel Legacy

BOOK III

THE MESSAGE FROM AMOY

XI. The Girl Bride's Rebellion

XII. The Lonely Pursuer

XIII. On the Yacht "Rambler"

XIV. Irma Gluyas

XV. Miss Worthington Shares Her Secret

BOOK I.

UNDER THE ARCH.

CHAPTER I.

THE DANUBE PICTURE.

There was no air of uncertainty upon the handsome countenance of

Mr. Randall Clayton as he stepped out of the elevator of a sedate

Fourteenth Street business building and approvingly sniffed the

April morning breeze.

On this particular Saturday of ninety-seven, the shopping multitude

was already pouring from the Scylla of Simpson, Crawford & Simpson's

on Sixth Avenue--and its Charybdis of the Big Store--past the

jungles of Altman's, Ehrich's and O'Neill's--to dash feebly upon

the buttressed corner of Macy's, and then die away in refluent,

diverted waves, lost in the fastnesses of McCreery's and Wanamaker's,

far down Broadway.

The pulses of the young man were vaguely thrilled with the coming

of spring, and so he complacently took in the never-ceasing tide

of eager women, on the street's shady side, with one comprehensive

and kindly glance.

For six long years he had cautiously studied that same sea of

always anxious faces! He well knew all the types from the disdainful

woman of fashion, the crafty daughter of sin, the vacuous country

visitor, down to the argus-eyed mere de famille, sternly resolute

in her set purpose of making three dollars take the place of five,

by some heaven-sent bargain.

Countless times he had threaded this restless multitude, with an

alert devotion to the interests of the Western Trading Company. He

was, to the ordinary lounger, but the type of the average well-groomed

New York business man.

And yet, his watchful eyes swept keenly to right and left, as he

breasted the singularly inharmonious waves of the weaker sex.

His left hand firmly gripped a Russian leather portmanteau of

substantial construction, while his right lay loosely in the pocket

of his modish spring overcoat.

To one having the gift of Asmodeus, that well-gloved right hand

would have been revealed as resting upon the handle of a heavy

revolver, and the contents of the tourist-looking portmanteau been

known as some thirty-eight thousand dollars in well-thumbed currency

and greasy checks of polyglot signatures.

It was the "short day" of the week's business, and the usual route

for making his bank deposit lay before him. Down University Place

to Eighth Street he was bent, thus avoiding the Broadway crush,

and over to the shaded counting rooms of the Astor Place Bank.

Clayton's mind was concentrated, as usual, upon his important

business. Few of the neighbors in the great office building knew of

the vast interests represented by the modest sign "Western Trading

Company."

Certain gray-bearded bookkeepers, a couple of brisk correspondents,

a stony-faced woman stenographer, with a couple of ferret-eyed

office boys were the office force, besides the travelling manager

and Mr. Randall Clayton, the cashier and personal representative of

the absent "head," who rarely left his Detroit home to interfere

with the well-oiled movements of the "New York end."

But daily, rain or shine, Mr. Randall Clayton himself took his

way to the bank to deposit the funds to meet their never-ceasing

outflow of Western exchange. There was an air of grave prosperity

in the sober offices of the great cattle company which impressed

even the casual wanderer.

Silence and decorum marked all the transactions of the weekly

messengers, paying in the heavy accounts of the hundreds of New York

butchers who drew their daily supplies from these great occidental

cattle handlers. The various departments of the great business were

always kept as sealed books to each other, and only Emil Einstein,

Clayton's own office boy, knew how much treasure was daily packed

away into that innocent looking portmanteau.

Mr. Somers, the head accountant, with a grave bow, always verified

the sealed delivery slip of the funds, and compared it with the

returned bank books, carefully filing away all these in his own

private safe with Clayton's returned list of Western and Southern

exchange.

On the sunny April morning, Randall Clayton was weary of the confining

life of the silence haunted office rooms, where he patiently bore

the strain of his grave duties, with a cautious avoidance of useless

communication, fencing him even from his fellow employees.

As he strode along the crowded street, his jaded soul yearned for

the wild majesty of the far off Montana mountains, and the untrammeled

life of the Western frontier, given up perforce, when his father's

death had left him, twelve years before, alone in the world.

"The same old daily grind," he murmured. "Oh! For one good long

gallop on the lonely prairies--a day in the forest with the antlered

elk, an afternoon among the gray boulders of the McCloud River."

He sighed as he recalled his drudging rise in business, since his

father's old partner had set his life work out before him, when

the lonely boy had finished with honor his course at Ann Arbor.

Four years at college, two with "the chief," under his own watchful

eye, and then that six years of a dragging upward pull in the New

York office had made a man of him; but, only a self-contained and

prematurely jaded man.

"It's too much to lose," he muttered, as he thought of his hardly

earned promotion, his four thousand a year, and--the future

prospects. He was the envy of his limited coterie, even though his

few intimates looked with a certain awe upon a man who was obliged

to file a bond of fifty thousand dollars for his vast pecuniary

handlings.

For the great association of Western cattle men were hard taskmasters

and only the head lawyers in Detroit knew that Hugh Worthington

had annually sent in his own personal check to the Fidelity Company

to pay the dues of the bond of the son of a man to whom he had owed

his own first rise.

"It's too hard," mused his patron, "to spy on the lad and then

make him pay for it. But it has to be," he sighed. "There are the

snares and pitfalls."

Many an eye approvingly followed the stalwart young man still in

the flush of his unsapped vigor, at twenty-eight, as the tall form

swept on through the crowds of polyglot women.

There was a healthy tan on Clayton's face, his brown hair crisply

curled upon a well-set head, his keen blue eye and soldierly mustache

finely setting off a frank and engaging countenance.

The grave sense of gratitude, his place of trust, the stern admonitions

of his sententious patron, Worthington, and the counsel of his

only chum--a hard-headed young New York lawyer--had kept him so

far from the prehensile clutches of the Jezebel-infested Tenderloin.

Clayton had fallen judiciously into the haven of a well-chosen

apartment, sharing his intimacy only with Arthur Ferris, the

brisk-eyed advocate whose curt office missive always enforced the

lagging collections of the New York branch.

Simultaneously with his last promotion, however, there came to

Clayton the knowledge that he was continuously and systematically

watched by the unseen agents of the Fidelity Company.

And, yet strong in his own determination, he bore as a galling

chain, growing heavier with the months, the knowledge that the eye

of the secret agent would surely follow him, in all the "pleasures"

incident to his time of life and rising financial station.

The sword hung over his defenceless head!--too busy for the gad-fly

life of the clubs--a strong, lonely swimmer in the tide of New York

life, he was as yet a comparative stranger to Folly and her motley

crew of merry wantons in gay Gotham.

The theater, some good music, his athletics, and the hastily

snatched pleasures of vacation, together with the limp reading of

an overwearied man, afforded him such desultory pleasures as fell

in his path.

On his way now to a luncheon engagement with his comrade Ferris,

at Taylor's, his mind was busied only with the care of the daily

treasure trust.

Serenely confident, he swung along, his two score thousand

of dollars being a mere ordinary deposit, in a business which, in

holiday seasons, and at times of monthly settlements, often stuffed

the portmanteau with sums rising the hundred thousand.

His callous eye vainly rested on the peopled loneliness of the

bustling crowd, intent only upon the possibility of a sudden dash

of some sneak thief, or the chance malignity of some swell "mobsman."

Suddenly Randall Clayton paused in his swinging stride. For a

face, rapt in its intense earnestness, broke in upon his gnawing

loneliness. A lovely vision, a very Rose of Life's Garden!

"By Jove!" he murmured, as with a new-born craft he lingered for

a moment before a window with an "art" display, only to watch the

receding form of the unknown beauty, whose single glance had left

him standing there spellbound.

There was an exquisite artist proof of a romantic scene upon the

Danube displayed in the place of honor, a view of one of the grandly

witching defiles where the mighty stream immortalized by Strauss

breaks out of the smiling Austrian plains, dashing along into the

Iron Gates of gallant Hungary.

He could not, as yet, tell what manner of woman she might be, but

his spirit burned within him as he felt the lingering spell of

those dark, witching eyes, for they had rested upon his own, in an

instant, unguarded glance of sympathy.

Mechanically following on, Clayton noted the refinement of the

daintily cut dark dress, veiling a form of ravishing symmetry.

There was a single red rose in the Polish toque, and that one touch

of color guided him as he followed the gracefully gliding unknown

beauty.

Strangely stirred at heart, he marked the distinction of the lady's

bearing, her well-gloved hand, clasping a music roll--and even

the natty bottines had not escaped him. He saw all this before he

was aware that he had passed on beyond University Place, with no

other purpose than to gaze into those sweetly earnest eyes again.

"Twenty-three--no, twenty-five," his keen perception told him, by

right of the supple and imperially moulded form of womanly ripeness.

And he wondered vaguely what daughter of the gods this might be--what

heiress of the graces of the laughter-loving goddesses of old!

He quickened his pace in the narrow space between University Place

and Broadway, fearful that he would lose that dark-eyed vision in

the human breakers at the Broadway curve. But his grasp mechanically

tightened upon his treasure, his right hand clutched the pistol

butt more firmly, as his cheek reddened with an involuntary blush.

He had seen just such faces on the Prater in sparkling Vienna, and

in the antique streets of Buda-Pesth on the one summer European

run, snatched from the Moloch worship of the Almighty Dollar!

Such eyes, now soft and dreamy, then lit up with a merry challenge,

had rested on the handsome young American tourist in the vaulted

halls of the Wiener Café, where the Waltz King's witching melodies

ruled the happy hour.

And supple forms like this he had often seen flitting among the

copses of the Margarethe Insel, when the yellow sunset rays shone

golden on the gleaming Danube, and the purple shadows began to steal

over the old fortress high uplifted there above Hungary's capital.

Here was a truant beauty escaped from a land of dreams.

Clayton had followed the unknown over Broadway's dangerously choked

throat, before the music roll gave him his clue. He was now in the

musical center of New York, and in proximity to the modest foreign

theaters where a conscientious art flourishes, as yet unknown to

the garish play-houses of upper Broadway.

Some visiting singer, some transplanted "Künstlerinn," he conjectured

as, never ceasing that queenly stride, the unknown crossed Fourth

Avenue toward the vicinity of Steinway's and the Irving Place

Theater.

As yet he had not seen that bewitching face again, for he was a

laggard in pursuit, his coward conscience smiting him for his first

errant detour.

It seemed as if the money in that portmanteau rustled a portentous

warning, but "a spirit in his feet" led him to execute a quick

left-flank movement as he sped first across the triangle, passing

under the shadow of the Washington statue (pride of the job brass

founder), and, with a stolen side glance, he surveyed the lady

once more, as she leisurely mounted the steps of the "Restaurant

Bavaria."

His eyes dropped in a strange confusion as he once more met the

sweetly serious glance of those wonderful eyes, now resting upon

him with a gleam of vaguely timid inquiry. The delicately moulded

arm and slender hand were revealed, as with a graceful sweep the

lady lifted her rustling drapery and disappeared within the doors

of the one foreign café lingering reluctant on Union Square.

With a sigh, Randall Clayton turned back toward the south, for a

hasty glance at a clock face told him that there was left him but

fifteen minutes wherein to reach the Bank, before the brazen bells

would clang high noon. His heart was beating strangely as he retraced

his steps, for the ichor of young blood was boiling in his veins

at last.

He was lost in a clouding day dream, as he recrossed Fourth Avenue

and only dimly saw the foxy face of his office boy flash out of

the jostling crowd on the corner before he darted over.

As he resolutely stemmed the tide pouring eastward, he had turned

down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile

of recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message

in the dark splendors of the gleaming eyes.

Could it be? They had lingered but a few moments together gazing

on the pictured glories of the distant Danube. Clayton felt that

some new influence had suddenly loosened all the pent-up longings

of his ardent nature. He was above all the vulgar pretenses of

the "boulevardier." He now realized in a single moment the hollow

loneliness of a life made up only of so many monthly pay days and

so many dull returns of the four unheeded seasons. For his life had

only been a heavy pathway of toil up an inclined plane of manifold

resistances.

He recalled, how on his one European voyage, the distant gleam

of a single silver sail far out on the blue rim of the pathless

ocean had suddenly broken in upon the eternal loneliness of that

watery waste.

And now, in all the peopled loneliness of all New York--hitherto

a human desert for him--the glance of these same alien eyes had

suddenly awakened him to yearnings for another life.

He was half way down the bustling Broadway to the bank before he

dared ask himself if the bright, shy glances of these unforgotten

eyes were meant for him.

"Perhaps," he muttered, and then his whole nature stifled the

unworthy suggestion. No! On that fair face only truth and honor

were mirrored. He was left alone absently checking up his deposit

list before he recalled all the proud and womanly bearing of the

beautiful unknown.

There was in her every motion the distinction of an isolation from

the contact of the meaner world! How hungrily he had watched her

onward path he only knew now.

And, with a secret pride, he recalled how daintily, like the swift

Camilla, she had sped onward through all those human billows heaving

to and fro, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot."

He pocketed all his deposit slips, then glanced mechanically at

the bank-book's entries, and wearily parried the badinage of the

bright-faced young bank-teller.

Clayton slowly wandered over toward Taylor's, and he was still lost

in his day-dream when he joined his chum, Arthur Ferris, finding

the modest feast already on the table.

"By Jove, old man! You're 'way behind time," began the nervous

lawyer. "I've got to hustle. I leave for Detroit on the evening

train."

"What's up, Arthur?" demanded the laggard.

"I've just had a wire from Worthington," seriously replied his

room-mate. "He is going to take a trip around the world, via San

Francisco. It seems that Miss Alice's health is precarious. And,

the 'Chief' is going to put me in special charge of all his personal

interests during this stay of six or nine months. I am to go out

for my instructions, travel on to the Pacific Coast with them, and

then, returning, inspect all the cattle ranches on my way back to

Detroit."

"I'm right glad to hear it, Arthur," said Clayton, warmly grasping

his friend's hand. "I know Hugh Worthington's mental processes well!

He wants some one to watch over all his home business machinery

while he makes the grand tour. And he has selected one not in the

local ring. It means a substantial promotion for you."

"I fondly hope so," replied Ferris. "He must have some such ideas,

for I'm to turn over all my New York matters here to the senior

in our firm, and I'm also to have a special power of attorney from

the Chief. The annual election comes off before his return."

The two young men had finished their luncheon before Clayton thought

of the loneliness which his chum's absence would entail upon him.

There were many matters of detail to talk over, and Clayton hastened

his return to the office to deposit his bank-book in order to be

free to give the afternoon to his departing friend.

"I've only my office desk to clear up; it's a short horse and soon

curried," laughed Ferris. "I'll run over to my place and then meet

you at our rooms, so you can see the last of me. We can talk things

over while I pack up."

Ferris was busied with the cashier as young Einstein darted into

Taylor's. The lad's face brightened as he saw Clayton.

"I brought you down this telegram marked 'Rush,'" he said, all out

of breath. "I feared that you might go away for the afternoon." He

was off like a shot, before Clayton tore open the yellow envelope.

It was a private despatch from Hugh Worthington announcing his own

impending departure, and then directing all his mail to be forwarded

to the Palace Hotel, San Francisco.

The last words were: "Kindly send me a private letter by Ferris, and

give me any personal suggestions for handling the firm's business

in my absence. Will write you fully on private affairs from San

Francisco."

When Clayton parted with Ferris at the door of Taylor's, the two

young men wended their separate ways, each busied with the vision

of a fair woman.

Arthur Ferris, the dark "Pride of Columbia," as his college-mates

fondly called him, now dreamed of nothing but Alice Worthington's

golden hair and sapphire blue eyes, as the cable-car bore him swiftly

downward to the office of Hatch & Ferris, at 105 Broad Street.

Seven years older than Clayton, the already successful lawyer

recalled on his way the first confidences of the great capitalist,

when Clayton was sent into Manhattan Island business whirlpool.

The silver-haired Detroit widower had forgotten that even New York

City lawyers have hearts, when he had frankly admitted to Ferris

the reasons for detaching Randall Clayton from his own household.

"You see, Ferris," reminiscently said the money magnate, "I owed

my own rise to Clayton's ambitious father. When he retired from

the old firm of Clayton & Worthington, Everett Clayton had a cool

million. It was 'big money' in the days of seventy. But, plunging

into a new railway with an end left hanging out on the wild prairies,

the panic of '72 soon carried Clayton down.

"When he died, out West, I helped the orphan lad along. There was

no trouble until Randall became an inmate of my household, after

his graduation.

"I woke up, however, one day to find that my little Alice had leaped

into womanhood at a bound. And so I have decided to push Clayton's

fortunes from a safe distance. For, the social freedom of the

college lad and the schoolgirl in short frocks cannot be allowed

to the man of twenty-four and the blossoming girl of sixteen."

Hugh Worthington, giving over his protégé to the watchful care of

Arthur Ferris, old beyond his years, never realized the boundless

ambitions of the aspiring New York lawyer.

Ferris, with an eye ambitiously fixed upon the Senate of the United

States, had quickly become a living spirit of boundless energy in

the Western Trading Company's service, and Miss Alice Worthington,

on her New York visits, a girlish tyro, saw only the man, and not

the lawyer, in her accomplished metropolitan cavalier.

And so the coming young advocate's heart bounded with delight at

the six-weeks' future companionship of the woman whose unguarded

heart had silently drifted toward him "along the line of least

resistance."

Arthur Ferris burned now to make his calling and election sure, before

this "round the world" trip should present an endless succession

of fortune hunters to the gaze of the Detroit heiress.

Clayton, hastening back toward the office, was only intent upon

the answer to his chief's despatch and he never noticed, across

the street, the progress of Emil Einstein, threading the crowds

swiftly, and yet furtively watching his master's progress. He

reached Fourteenth Street two blocks in advance of his unsuspecting

employer, and then paused for a moment in the shaded corridor of

a photographer's atelier.

With a whispered word, the young spy slipped, eel-like, into the

crowd and had regained his desk long before Randall Clayton reentered

the office. The lad's face glowed with a secret triumph.

Clayton's countenance was flushed by some strong emotion as he

absently entered the private office of the head accountant. The

sharp clang of his bell brought the office boy at once to his side,

when, ten minutes later, the young cashier handed to Einstein a

telegram.

The doors of the various rooms were now clanging with the snap of

the locks as the boy respectfully said, "Anything else for this

afternoon, sir?" Clayton carelessly nodded for the lad's dismissal

and then bowed his tired head upon his hands, as the nimble youth

eagerly sped away to the telegraph office and his half holiday.

The office staff were all filing out, wearied with the week's work,

and Robert Wade, Esq., the chief manager, stared in surprise as

Clayton passed him without a word, in answer to his stately greeting.

He watched the young man, who slowly descended by the stairway,

forgetting the ready elevator service. "What's up with Clayton?"

murmured the pompous official. "He forgot his manners!"

All unconscious of his strange actions, Randall Clayton slowly sought

the street level, waiting until his colaborers had all departed.

He then moved along again toward the window where the Danube view

still charmed the passerby.

Then, turning abruptly, he hurried away to a Broadway car, seeking

the solitude of the cosy apartment in the still respectable

"Thirties," which he had so long shared with Ferris.

He dared not, as yet, ask himself why Fate had shown him, a second

time, at that very window, the graceful figure of the beautiful

unknown.

But, there, with the slender music roll still clasped in her

delicate hand, she stood, lingering a beautiful Peri in his path,

on his return from the meeting with Ferris.

And he was not deceived this time. For the blush of semi-recognition,

the womanly embarrassment as their eyes met in a sudden surprise,

told him that she also had lingered for a moment at their involuntary

trysting place.

It was in vain that he sought for any cogent reason for the

reappearance of the unknown dark-eyed beauty.

There was no veiled suggestion in her wistful eyes, no lure of the

fisher of men in the restrained mien of the lovely unknown. He

paced his room for half an hour, until the arrival of Ferris brought

about an active discussion of all their personal and business affairs

which lasted until the coupé arrived to bear them to the station.

In the long examination of their mutual interests, Clayton had strangely

forgotten to even mention the name of Miss Alice Worthington, for

he was still keenly aware of the gradual fading away of the ties

of friendly family intimacy which had once bound him to the Detroit

household.

Moreover, loyal to his chum as he was, he could not forget how

often, in the past two years, he had seen letters lying on Ferris'

table, bearing the superscription of the woman who had been graduated

by Fate from that dangerous rank of "Little Sister."

Before Ferris finally turned over his keys, the cool lawyer laid

his hand gravely on Clayton's shoulder.

"Randall, my boy!" he said. "It's only fair to you to tell you that

the Fidelity Company makes private reports to Hugh Worthington upon

the inner life of all the bonded employees. Some of these documents

have always been forwarded through me. Evidently there have been

some new directions given on this matter.

"Worthington is a man who forgets nothing. You will be left alone.

You know your dangerous trust. Be always on your guard!

"For, even though born in its whirl, there are dangers in New York

which are sealed books to me, even now; and, you are a stranger

here, after all.

"Take care of yourself! Be watchful! There will be many jealous

eyes spying upon your every movement, and strange eyes at that."

They entered the carriage in a constrained silence, in the early

nightfall, and were soon whirled away toward the Forty-second Street

Depot. Some overhanging shadow seemed to dampen the ardor of that

friendly farewell, when the gliding train bore the lawyer away from

his friend's sight.

At that very instant the office boy, Einstein, darted out of the

great depot's main entrance and mingled with the passers by. "Now

for Fritz Braun," he chuckled. "She has caught on at last! He

followed her to the 'Bavaria.' The lawyer is gone for good! The

field is clear. There's a twenty now in sight, and many a twenty

to follow."

CHAPTER II.

TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY.

While Randall Clayton was lingering moodily over a lonely dinner

at the Grand Union, his office boy was dallying with a cigarette

on the front platform of a Fourth Avenue car.

Emil Einstein had safely sized up the friendly adieu of the two

room-mates, and was now hastening down to report his successful

infamy.

"Too late for Sixth Avenue!" the hard-faced boy muttered. "Catch

him at 'the Bavaria,' sure."

The round, gloating eyes of the young New York-nurtured Jew were

ablaze with a fierce thirst for pleasure.

Round shouldered, strongly built, his Semitic countenance was all

aglow with a superabundant vitality, and the pleasure-loving mouth

alone belied the keen intelligence of the wide set Hebraic eyes.

An elève of the gutters of New York's East-Side ghetto, dangerously

half educated at the free public schools, Einstein, now nearing

seventeen, joined the dashing villainy of the Bowery tough to the

crafty long-headed scheming of the low-grade Israelite.

He had drank in all the precocious wiles of the Manhattan urchins

quickly after his sturdy Odalisque mother had dragged him, a

squalling urchin, out of the steerage confines of a cheap Hamburg

steamer.

A reckless, resolute, conscienceless sinner was the handsome Leah

Einstein; already, when, on the voyage, she fell under the influence

of a man who found his ready tool in this greasy but symmetrical

Esther, clad in her Polish rags.

When the decamping Viennese pharmacist had wearied of his low-life

Venus, their joint operations soon made the East Side too hot for

the man who boldly dared all, and who now yearned for a share of

the fleecing of the fatuous New Yorkers.

The Austrian criminal fugitive, after some years of varied adventure,

had circled back to New York City at last, and rejoiced to find in

Leah's son, now a burly youth, a fit companion and second for his

own craftily laid villanies. It was a capital for him, the legacy

of her nurture and his own training.

Mr. Fritz Braun's broad white brow was gathered in an impatient

frown as he strode out of Magdal's Pharmacy on Sixth Avenue and

paced with dignity past all the minor notables of the street.

Hulking policemen, loquacious barber, marketman and newsdealer,

small shop-keeper, and the saloon magnates, all knew the stolid

reticent German who presided over the veiled mysteries of Magdal's.

The whole region of Sixth Avenue, between Twenty-third and Thirtieth,

had its floating contingent of "sporting" men and women who well

knew the crafty wisdom lurking behind the blue spectacles which

veiled the pharmacist's piercing glances. Fritz Braun's "contingent"

were a brood of the Devil's own children.

Fritz Braun was strangely three hours late upon this especial

evening, but his step was evenly sedate as he entered Zimmermann's

for his before dinner Kümmel. A prosperous figure was he in his

mouse-colored top-coat of fashionable cut, his immaculate silk hat,

with the red dogskin gloves, and the heavy ivory-headed cane.

With his antique cameo scarf pin, his coat collar turned up around

his flowing golden beard, he was the very type of the sedate burgher

of Dresden or Leipzig. And yet many a dark secret lurked in that

busy brain of his.

A dozen necks were craned after him, though, as he silently left

the saloon and caught the down-town car.

For from Greely Square to Eighth Street, from the cork room of

Koster & Bial's to the purlieus of old Clinton Place, all the "off

color" men and women of New York's "fly" circles knew and feared

the steady eyes gleaming through the cerulean lenses.

"He's a deep one, the Professor," grunted the Hanoverian barkeeper.

"Vat a lot 'e knows!" The Teuton rinsed his beer glasses with a

vicious twirl as he exclaimed: "Like as not, choost so like, he's

up to some new devilment! Niemand know vere 'e hangs out! He's a

wonder, he is, dat same Fritz!"

But the pharmacist lost all his sedateness as he sprang out of the

crosstown car after his transfer at Fourteenth Street and Fourth

Avenue.

He was the nimblest crosser of the busy corner, and then gazed

anxiously up and down the street, in front of the Restaurant Bavaria.

Wasting but a moment he smartly entered the café and then, with an

air of proprietorship, entered a curtain-shaded alcove.

The waiter silently placed the carte du jour before him, and merely

shook his head when Braun sharply demanded, "Any one here for me?"

A luxurious dinner was ordered, and the silent man was busied scanning

the convives when Emil Einstein, cautiously entering without haste,

furtively regarded all the diners.

They were the better class of artists--musical virtuosos, and

floating foreigners of the Teutonic business circles of lower New

York.

Frank, pleasure-loving continental women mingled freely with these

materialistic Romeos, who preferred the comforting cuisine to the

fiery and seductive cocktails of "The Opera" on the corner.

The artful Einstein was warily assuring himself that he was quite

unknown to the convives before making his report to his real master

and evil genius. For, young as he was, Emil Einstein well knew that

the tyrant master, who had been his mother's cruel lover, might

some day lure him on to the electric chair.

A guilty pride thrilled the depraved boy's heart to feel that he,

alone, in all the crowded ward, knew what manner of human devil

lurked behind those innocent-looking blue spectacles.

He had seen the ferocious grin which relaxed Fritz Braun's bearded

lips into a cruel grin, as the sly lad made a gesture which

indicated tidings of great joy. Einstein's dress and bearing was

fully worthy of his respectable business station. He might well be

taken for the precious "only son" of some well-to-do Jewish-American

merchant.

Quick to learn, he had aped the mien of his American fellow

employees, and his "educational evenings" at the "Irving Place,"

the "Thalia," and the "Germania" had given to his bearing what he

fondly deemed an "irresistible social swing."

Greedy of pleasures, gluttonous and covetous, the young Ishmael

ardently looked forward to a comfortable ill-gotten revenue at the

hands of the man, who--through a skilful manipulation of the German

janitor of the Western Trading Company's office--had obtained the

place of office boy, "with substantial references," for the son of

his cast-off paramour.

Leah Einstein had long forgotten the face of the reckless Polish

country noble who was the real father of this budding criminal, and

the lad himself but dimly discerned the drift of his Mephistophelian

patron's proposed villainy.

Timid and cowardly at heart, the young waif would have shuddered

had he known of the callous-handed and desperate murders which had

shocked Vienna just before Hugo Landor, a talented and handsome

young chemist, disappeared forever in flight, lost under a cloud

of scandal caused by drink and a maddening devotion to a baby-faced

devil of the Ring Strasse Theater chorus, a woman at whose

feet the hungry-eyed aristocrats had knelt to sue, a man-eater, a

hard-hearted, velvet-eyed, reckless and defiant devil.

At an almost imperceptible nod Einstein drew near to his patron,

taking the vacant place in the little alcove, à deux, with his

back prudently screening him from any chance visitor who might know

the Western Trading Company's personnel. Braun was eager for his

spy's report now.

"All right, at last!" the youth huskily whispered. "I watched him

meet her, at the picture window, you know. I had posted her! And

then he slyly followed her over here and went three blocks out of

his way to pipe her off here! So, after his lunch at Taylor's, I

put her again onto his homeward way! And he's caught on! No matter!

She will tell you the rest herself!"

When the eager lad had finished, Fritz Braun growled under his

breath, "You are sure you made no bungle?"

"Dead sure," gaily answered the boy, draining his bock of Muenchner,

"I followed him to the bank and to Taylor's, and he is unsuspecting

of any plant, I know."

Braun's face relaxed as he pushed over a twenty-dollar bill to the

young Judas. "Come in Monday, about ten," he said, carelessly. "You

can go, now! I must hurry over to the river. I am late!"

There was a shifty light in Einstein's eyes as he mumbled, "I

can tell you something else, if you'll do the right thing." Braun

searched the young villain's face. "Go ahead! I'll pay you."

Emboldened by his success, Einstein loudly rapped to replenish his

glass. He was now panting to escape for certain tender engagements

of his own.

"The firm's lawyer, Ferris, the man who lived with Mr. Clayton,

has gone West for six months, so he will be left alone! I followed

them and saw Ferris off on the train. I took a telegram to the

office for Ferris and Clayton, so Clayton will be alone in the

rooms. He's going to keep them, and I'm to go around there Monday

and pack up all Mr. Ferris' little things."

"Good, capital!" said Fritz Braun, his eyes gleaming. "You must

manage to get me a duplicate key of Clayton's rooms!"

"Easy enough," proudly answered the young rascal. "Mr. Clayton

trusts me in all things, and often gives me his latch-key and the

room keys when he wants anything from the apartment. Anything else?"

"Yes," stammered the lad, surprised at the stern glare of Braun's

expectant eyes. "The Fidelity fellows have been piping off all Mr.

Clayton's movements. They watch him on account of the big money that

he handles every day. I know the man who shadows Clayton, twice

a week, regular, on all his evening trips. They've got their

spotters, too, in all the big bar-rooms, and all around the gambling

houses, the race courses, Wall Street and the Tenderloin.

"Now, after Clayton left, to-day, Ferris the lawyer came in and

told Mr. Robert Wade, that's our chief manager, that the Fidelity

Company would make their written reports twice a month to him,

while the lawyer's gone."

"I must have these reports!" cried Braun, forgetting the raised

pitch of his voice, but the Venus and Tannhauser coterie around

were all now fondly busied with each other.

"I can get them! I have a key to Wade's own desk," glibly mouthed

the young spy.

"How did you get it?" eagerly demanded the astonished Braun.

"I had it made to get at his cigars," proudly boasted the unabashed

lad. "Wade keeps a couple of boxes of the best Havanas on Company

account, for the 'big customers.' Yes, and a drop of good old

cognac, too.

"There's often a bit of fun behind the ground glass partitions.

I've scraped a little eye hole."

"You are your sly mother's own darling imp," growled Braun, bringing

out his pocketbook. "She was the devil's own, too, before she got

old and lost her good looks," he sighed.

"Tell me," said he, selecting a note with grave deliberation, "how

much did Clayton deposit to-day?"

"Only thirty-eight thousand," contemptuously answered the boy, as

he clutched the note now held out to him. "Sometimes it's a round

hundred thousand," continued Emil, eager to show off his knowledge,

"and on the annual settlements, July 1 to 4th, last year we put

in two hundred thousand into the Astor Place. That's our biggest

monthly settlement. I always help Mr. Clayton pack it up, in his

own room, after he verifies the accountant's tabs."

Fritz Braun suddenly awoke from a reverie. "Get out of here now, and

see that you post me on all that this Clayton is up to at night,

on his Sundays and vacations. I'll give you a third twenty for

the two keys. I may want to take a look at his rooms some Sunday

when you are sporting out of town.

"And watch the spotters, too! You might do a good turn in pocket

money by posting him, but only as I tell you, mind that! Now, don't

go to the devil too fast. Do you ever give your mother any money?"

Einstein's vicious leer was a silent answer. "Tell her she shall

have a new silk dress from me, if you keep your wits about you.

Remember, Monday!"

The lad sped away at a curt nod of dismissal, and was soon lost in

the devil's whirlpool of the Bowery.

But, as Mr. Fritz Braun sedately finished his cosy dinner, he saw

strange golden gleams in the blue, wreathing smoke mists of his

Perfectos.

"Two hundred thousand; that would be a stake. And July, too; this

lawyer fellow gone. What a chance! There must be no mistake now! He

must lead himself on, now. One prick of the hidden hook and this

fat trout would be off forever I must see Irma and coach her.

Donnerwetter! It's too good to be true. After all this waiting.

And now I've got to keep my eyes on both the spider and the fly.

Irma is such a tempestuous devil. If Leah only had her years and

looks and dash, she would twist any man in the world around her

finger. But I can never teach this Hungarian madcap, Leah's velvet

softness and never-tiring patience."

The prosperous pharmacist gleefully paid for his dinner and nimbly

chased an East-side ferry-bound car. He laughed in spite of himself

at Emil's unflagging deviltry. "He is a credit to Leah's Polish

blood and my Austrian nurture," mused Braun. "The young wretch

might be dangerous, too. He must know nothing of my deep game."

"If this Clayton will only break into the flirtation in the right

way, the victory is assured. But, if he were to show her off around

town, or try and dodge these spotter fellows in New York, then I

should lose a year's time, my expenses, and this heavy money stake.

It's the one chance of a life time."

In half an hour, Fitz Braun, crossing on the Tenth Street Ferry to

Greenpoint, was soon lost, as was his wont, in the human hive of

Brooklyn toilers. Men had seen him go over for years invariably on

this ferry, his burly figure was always seen on the Fulton Ferry

daily at half-past eight each morning, but not a soul among the

thousand clients of Magdal's Pharmacy knew where the human fox,

Fritz Braun, laid his head to rest at night.

From nine till four he lurked behind the high dispensing screen

of Magdal's Pharmacy, his inner life and antecedents a sealed book

to all the sleuth-eyed votaries of vice on Sixth Avenue.

And yet, for all his craft, on this balmy night of spring, the

man who had buried Hugo Landor's stormy past forever under staid

Fritz Braun's impenetrable mask, shivered while plotting his new

iniquities lest the panther-footed pursuer might even now demand at

his hand a life in return for those victims who had lain, staring

eyed, cold in death, mute witness against him in far away Vienna.

The terrible record of his past evil days haunted his every footstep

now. He saw these avenging eyes even in his dreams.

There was but one who could lift the veil of the awful past. On

this eventful night Fritz Braun hid, within his heart, an awful

resolve, born of the fear of the disguised felon, floating uneasily

in the maelstrom of a great city. "If she should betray me, and

women are women, after all," he mused in his cowardly ferocity.

"If she pulls this off for me, I'll"--he ceased, with an inward

shudder, for he dared not give the awful thought its fitting frame.

"Only at the last," he murmured, as he sped along in Brooklyn's

dingy water streets to take on another mask to veil his wolfishly

evil life.

While snares and pitfalls were being laid for Randall Clayton's

careless feet, that gentleman sat in a wrathful mood, pondering

over Arthur Ferris' half-hearted disclosures. Clayton's face had

frankly disclosed his displeasure at the false attitude of his

chum, when Ferris reluctantly disclosed the fact of the secret

financial espionage.

The three years of their past intimacy now took on a different

color, at once, to the jaundiced eyes of the young cashier.

He had almost abruptly declined Ferris' invitation to spend Sunday

at Seneca Lake, with the prosperous lawyer's mother and two sisters.

A feeling of bitter envy gnawed at Clayton's heart as he counted

up the rapid rise of his quondam friend.

"So, he has been playing this double game for years; it must have

been at Worthington's bidding. And why?"

It began to dawn at last upon Clayton that his Detroit patron had

certainly followed a singular course in his apparent beneficence.

All unused to social intrigue, Clayton ignored the possible effect

of his further presence in Worthington's household as an attractive

young man when little Alice, at a bound, passed through the gates

of girlhood and became the beautiful Miss Worthington. He had

never seen the angel at his side, and yet Ferris, clearer eyed,

had conquered in silent craft a golden future.

Clayton lingered at his table in the Grand Union café long after the

waiter had removed his half-tasted dinner. He ordered an unaccustomed

"highball" as he pondered over some means of circumventing the

social treason of his dethroned "friend."

Clayton easily found a valid reason, for the semi-treason of Ferris.

"He is, after all, a stranger to me. His ambition leads him onward

and upward. He would tread on my body gladly in mounting to the

great monopolist's confidence. It is easy enough to see why Ferris

has played both the spy and lickspittle. It has paid him well.

Here's a jump to handling Worthington's power of attorney. Of course,

Ferris seeks the position of the one Eastern lawyer of the great

Trust.

"But," and a wave of anger swept away all the grateful memoirs

of his youth, "why did this cool old badger, Worthington, take me

to his home, later back me through college, and then, and there

railroad me off here to be fenced around with his spies? He could

have easily dropped me at any time. If he really cared to advance

me, why not have made me a lawyer and breed me up to share his

secrets?" There came no answer to his troubled mind as he sat there,

alone, despising Ferris and doubting even Worthington's candor.

He had revolved several future plans of action in his mind before

reaching the vitreous substratum of the generous high-ball. His

first indignant impulse was to give up the joint apartment in a

fortnight.

May the first was rapidly coming on by Nature's calendar of leaf

and bird, of deepening green in the park and light-hearted woman's

smartening attire.

"No," he resentfully cried, as he threw his cigar away and paid his

bill, "that would only show them my hand. I'll make no open enemy

of Ferris."

"But I will dodge Worthington's spies and then lock up my heart.

I will keep on good terms with Worthington's lickspittle and try

and later reach the secret of all this strange behavior. The old

man seems unwilling to let me go out of his control, and yet he

has tied me down to this ironclad money mill--as a slave rubbing

the lamp for him." It opened a gloomy future to him, this dreary

hour of introspection.

Randall Clayton had not lost all the opportunities of his New York

life for a peep behind the metropolitan scenes. He knew that there

was an inside view to be had of the clubs, the great hotels, the

show life of the smart set, the pretentious apartment houses, the

banks and theaters, the ambitious schemes of business and professional

men.

One by one the shams had yielded to his prying gaze, and, but too

well, he knew the truth of Tom Moore's trite remark, "False the

light on glory's plume!"

But, straightforward and sincere, he had never watched his

own environment. The loss of his mother in his childhood and his

father's lonely struggle to retrieve his fallen fortunes had left

the boy without happy memories of boyhood, with no family history

to aid him, and the embarrassment of his dependence upon Hugh

Worthington had robbed him of the confidences incident to young

manhood.

Only in his books had he learned of the passionate, hot hearts

beating behind the silken armor of womanhood.

For who had noticed the dependent, the poor, plodding college boy?

Worthington's Detroit home was a mere social machine-shop, a place

of vanished glories during the adolescence of Miss Alice, and no

Diana had stooped to kiss the forgotten young Endymion sleeping

in the Lethe of a New York business obscurity. Clayton's life had

been gilded by few joys.

His whole nature rose up in a sudden rebellion against this "personally

conducted" career in life. "I am to be a mere hoodwinked worker

in this millionaire's treadmill. A bond slave to one of the great

Trusts which are chaining the whole American population to the

galley-oar for life.

"I must be fairly paid, decently dressed, sufficiently fed, to play

my part as a decent workman; that is all. We will see!"

He had now crushed out all lingering remnant of a friendly feeling

for Ferris.

Even the last social invitation rankled in his mind. "I suppose

that he wanted to pump me, at ease, under the guise of a homelike

hospitality. If there is any little game being played around me,

I will now take a hand in it."

As he moved to the door, the memory of that bewitching woman's

face rose up once more to thrill the very core of his lonely heart.

"She looked lonely. Perhaps she is, like myself, a solitary sail on

Life's lonely ocean. And I shall never see her again! Lost in New

York's human flood. But I'll buy that picture, if I live till Monday.

It will call her back to me; bring back her vanished loveliness."

A motley crowd was pouring into the various doors of the huge

hostelry, for the evening trains were depositing the flotsam and

jetsam of humanity into busy Gotham.

Prosperous tourists, crafty schemers, brazen politicians, overdressed

drummers, and flashy sporting men were pouring in to seek the "first

aid to the weary," which the nearest available hotel affords to

the cramped and jaded traveler.

Even the sidewalks were now thronged with anxious-eyed women, some

of them with wildly-beating hearts, awaiting the kind "gentleman

friend" who so often mysteriously appears at the cross-roads of

Life.

From the Forty-second Street Station the "new departure" of many

a life has begun, the radial lines often curving downward into the

sheer depths of ruin of the Morgue, or the darkened abysses of the

Tenderloin.

Alas! That no angel with a flaming sword stands ready to warn away

the helpless from the gates which close behind the unwary with a

deadly clang.

Randall Clayton drew back as a stalwart traveler jostled him, only

to spring forward in the ardor of mutual recognition.

"Jack Witherspoon, by all the gods," cried the delighted New

Yorker. "What brings you here?"

"The Chicago Limited, my boy!" coolly answered the jovial Westerner

as he dragged his friend back into the café. "I do confess the need

of an 'eye-opener' after my meal of cinders."

In ten minutes Clayton knew all the salient facts of Jack's career.

Their lives had diverged at the college gates, and the bustling

Witherspoon, now the lawyer of a great Michigan railway company,

was on his way to Europe for a six-months' tour.

Clayton's spirits vastly rose in their reminiscent chat, and, in

ten minutes, the two ex-collegians were on their way to Clayton's

apartment. Members of the same fraternity, it was natural that

Witherspoon should gladly accept the offered hospitality of his

old-time comrade,

"I am tied down to business," said Clayton, "but I can put you up

here far better than Room 999 of any Broadway hotel. We can have

our nights together, at least, until the 'Fuerst Bismarck' takes

you out on the blue."

They had returned from a jolly supper, after dismissing the

carriage, and the pipes were lit before Witherspoon found time to

go into his friend's affairs. The memories of old days were still

upon them when the Detroit lawyer, after a close study of his

friend's face, demanded flatly, "And are you satisfied here?"

"You see my surroundings, Jack," replied Clayton. "I've told you

about where I stand."

"But," protested his friend, "your life is too lonely. You know

what a genial circle we have in Detroit. You would have already

risen to be a man of mark among us! And our old set are now rising

to be the men in power. You were easily our leader."

Clayton uneasily replied, for he saw the questioning glances of his

friend's eyes, "I have very little time to throw away. And I have

had Arthur Ferris with me here."

"In your position you should have already married and settled down,"

resolutely contended Witherspoon. "Besides, you'll lose Ferris

soon. He's slated to marry Alice Worthington, I hear."

The smoking-table between them went over with a crash as Clayton

sprang to his feet.

"Impossible!" cried the cashier. "Ferris never told me anything of

it."

"Certainly not," calmly replied Jack Witherspoon, as Clayton busied

himself with the wreck and ruin. "It's not in his game to do anything

but hoodwink you. What did he tell you now of this Western trip?"

Clayton frankly unbosomed himself to his visitor, pacing up and

down in a sudden indignation.

"All that story of Miss Worthington's illness is mere moonshine,"

confidently answered the Western lawyer. "Hugh Worthington is one

of the coldest business calculators in America."

"Our road and its allies are naturally inside of all the secrets

of the big cattle trust. I have watched the old Croesus' career for

years. It's only since I got into possession of the law business

of this branching-out railroad that I have been able to fathom old

Worthington's designs.

"He has used young Ferris for years to quietly gather in all the

loose stock of his unsuspicious partners. You may not know that

Arthur Ferris is the favorite nephew of Senator Durham, Chairman

of the Committee on Interstate Commerce.

"This Western visit of old Worthington's is only a betrothal trip

for Ferris and Miss Alice. The Senator and his friends will put

up the legislation.

"Worthington is craftily frightening out all his Western partners

and Mr. Arthur Ferris will bob up at the annual election with a

stack of proxies and a power of attorney from Worthington.

"The new deal will follow the annual election, old Hugh captures

the whole concern, Mr. Ferris will be not only Hugh's son-in-law

but the new managing vice-president in the East. The trick will

double old Hugh's fortune. Once husband of the old miser's only

child, he can be trusted to guard his own. So, look out for yourself!"

Clayton's eyes burned with a sudden anger.

"You asked me why I did not marry," he fiercely cried. "I have

a fair salary. True; but at a word, on a single telegram from old

Hugh, out I go. Dropped, cast off like a squeezed lemon." Clayton's

eyes gleamed in a sudden rage.

"Have you saved much?" demanded his friend. Clayton shook his

head. "I have a couple of thousand in bank, that's all."

"Then you are dependent upon this old skinflint's bounty," answered

the lawyer, "for you have no profession, no backing, no capital.

He wished to leave you helpless in his hands; I see it all. The

crafty old fox! To watch you during your boyhood, to railroad you

away from Michigan, and to hoodwink you as to your possible rights.

Never mind, old man; I will be back in three months, and if you

will confide in me, we may frighten a good sum out of Worthington.

"But you must let this annual election go on undisturbed. Smile

and keep your counsel. Let this sleek ferret Ferris, go on and marry

the girl, for I, alone, can aid you. Worthington fears me. I know

too much of his secret operations.

"When I get you a slice of your lost patrimony, you can break loose,

find yourself a fitting mate, and lead the life of a man, and not

a galley-slave. Oh! It has been a beautifully worked scheme. The

parchment-faced old wretch!"

"What do you mean? Explain yourself! Have I been tricked like a

dog my whole life?" cried Randall Clayton, the hidden espionage

and Ferris' duplicity returning to arouse him into a glow of rage.

"I mean only this," coolly answered Jack Witherspoon, "our railroad

has just agreed to pay Hugh Worthington two millions of dollars for

two hundred acres of outlying city lands, to be used as our lumber

and ore and stock-handling depots. The lake commerce has increased

a thousand fold.

"I had still supposed it was only railroad rivalry which caused our

people to keep the purchase secret and to record only a ninety-nine

year lease, when they had Hugh Worthington's guarantee deed in

their possession.

"He takes the whole purchase price out in freights, paid in to him

by your cattle trust, and with this same money he buys the majority

of the outlying stock."

"How does this touch me?" cried the now thoroughly angered Clayton.

"Because your father deeded all the real estate holdings of Clayton

& Worthington to his partner before the old trouble came on. Only

this, a then valueless, tract was forgotten.

"In honor and equity you are entitled to one-half as Everett

Clayton's heir."

The young cashier clenched his fists in anguish, as Witherspoon

sadly said: "But he has had twenty-one years' unbroken possession.

You were of age seven years ago, and he allowed it to be sold

for taxes every year, and has also secretly bought up all the tax

titles. It is too late. But wait, keep silent, and trust to me."

CHAPTER III.

IN MAGDAL'S PHARMACY.

Randall Clayton and his friend heard the "chimes at midnight" after

the disquieting disclosures. Witherspoon finally allayed Clayton's

sudden distrust. The Detroit lawyer succeeded in lamely explaining

his own delay in making the fraud known.

"You see, Randall," he finally said at parting for the night, "I

must live my life in Detroit under the heel of these great operators.

"I intended to take this long hidden matter up on my return from

this trip, but I have been carried on, into a premature confidence.

"Just take care of yourself and bide your time! I want Worthington

to consummate the whole deal. I wish the marriage and the election

to take place undisturbed by clamor. For Worthington has put a

fancy price on the land. It is to-day only worth a million at market

rates. We, however, get immediate possession and pay in hauling,

but the real extra million comes out of the pockets of the Cattle

Trust, for as President, Worthington sells his own land really to

the Cattle Company for two million dollars.

"He has duties as a Trustee to all the stockholders of the cattle

association. When all is over, when Ferris is his son-in-law,

I will have Senator Durham connected with this matter. The young

couple will set up in royal style.

"I will then open out on Hugh Worthington, lay all the uncontested

facts before him, and bring him to bay! I will soon squeeze out of

him a fortune for you and also one for me. I only want twenty-five

per cent. of the recovery. That will be a guarantee against my

losing my place as railroad attorney. But old Hugh will never dare

to "squeal." He wants social quiet, and he does not care to have

his toga of respectability ripped up."

"Your motive?" agnostically demanded Clayton. I am poor, friendless;

you will risk much in this."

"There's a sweet little dark-eyed French-descended angel in

Detroit, whom I will then marry at once," smilingly answered Jack

Witherspoon, "that is, as soon as Papa Worthington has given me the

sinking fund. Any college man is a fool now who marries in these

days unless he has the assured income on the principal of a quarter

of a million."

"Money is the one thing, my boy," sighed Jack. "Without it, Venus

herself, ever young and ever fair, would be a millstone around

any man's neck, in these later days. Great God! How you missed it!

If I had only stumbled on this discovery sooner. You could have

antedated Ferris' crafty game.

"You could have easily married Alice. She has often told my Francine

that you were the noblest of men."

But the moody Randall Clayton had tired already of hearing Miss

Francine Delacroix's praises in divers keys.

"Poor Little Sister," muttered Randall Clayton. "Traded off

to a senator's nephew, for an illicit government pull. Damn all

treachery!" he growled, as he stalked off to bed.

He felt that he was powerless in his calculating friend's hands,

and yet, the possibilities of a coming future swept him from his

feet. He wanted money now but for one purpose--revenge upon Arthur

Ferris.

"Of course," he growled, "the dog knew the whole deal, and has

been a secret guardian over me, in the interest of the thief who

has robbed my father's grave. Poor, dear old Dad! If he had only

remembered these cheap lands and set them aside for me. It was

the only real estate holding forgotten in the hard-driven bargain

which vastly enriched old Hugh. But old Hugh shall pay; yes, to

the last farthing. I will lock up my heart. I will circumvent his

spies, and then await my own hour of triumph. It will be a fight

to the finish and no quarter asked or given. I swear it!"

A thorough confidence was reestablished between the two collegians

before the coming of Monday morning took Randall Clayton back

to his money mill. His first impulse to give up the apartment had

returned to him. He now loathed the memory of Arthur Ferris as the

slimy snake in the grass; and yet he resisted his desire to shove

all the traitor's traps into a storage warehouse.

"Be ruled by me, Randall," urged Jack Witherspoon, as he set out

on Monday morning for his last business conferences with the New

York end of his railroad employers.

"I will surely make Hugh give up the million. You shall have your

three-quarters, for it would be ruin to Worthington to drag out

his relations with Durham."

"Play the honest Iago. Keep your counsel. Dismiss this from you

mind. Make love to some pretty girl, amuse yourself. Do anything

but drink or gamble. Keep up a jolly mien. Go in to the summer

pleasures a little. It will throw these two crafty ones off their

guard. The weeks will soon roll around. I will cable you of my

return.

"Then we will jointly descend upon this new combination of

Worthington, Durham, and Ferris. But I must first be in Detroit,

back in my impregnable railroad law fortress. Then, at my nod,

he settles or down come the gates of Gaza on him! Remember that

you have no one in your matrimonial eye. I want to win Francine

Delacroix's home from these robbers. And then install the little

dainty therein. I will go in and win for you!"

The college comrades had now unravelled all the past, and their

Sunday outing had after all been a jolly one. Thoroughly reassured,

Clayton had given Jack Witherspoon his whole history, and the future

campaign was laid out in all its details.

"As for these Fidelity Company men," said Jack, "you can give them

the go by in only frequenting secluded places.

"As long as you avoid the public resorts of New York, they cannot

reach you. But keep your eyes always open. And, remember, secrecy

above all. If Hugh Worthington should divine our plan to unveil

his devilment, you might be the victim of some 'strange accident!'

"Money has a long arm in these days," ominously said the lawyer,

"and, it can strike with remorseless power. So, keep on here, but

look out for yourself.

"I shall not come back to your rooms. I will send for my luggage;

go down to the Astor House, and you must not be seen in the streets

with me. I want Worthington to think that I have dug up his villainy

all alone.

"Otherwise you would suffer in some strange way.

"When I open my battery, you must publicly resign your place by a

simple telegram. And then jump out of New York to some secret haunt

until I telegraph you to come to Detroit and make your deeds for

the stolen property."

Clayton saw the cogency of his friend's reasoning, and, after

agreeing to meet Witherspoon in the Astor Rotunda each evening until

the sailing of the "Fuerst Bismarck," he proceeded to the office

to take up the white man's burden.

Swinging down Fourteenth Street from Broadway, he paused once more

to look at the lovely Danube scene smiling out from the window of

the Newport Art Gallery.

It was an exquisite artist proof and bore the name of the Viennese

artist and a pencilled address. "I'll buy it at once," thought the

man whose memory now brought back that lovely, wistful face.

As his foot was on the doorstep he paused. "No! It may bring her

back to me! When I go out to the bank I can step in and secure it.

It can remain on exhibition in the window for a few days. She may

be there again to-day, who knows?"

He was under the spell of the unknown beauty again, as he absently

exclaimed, "Pardon me!" when he rudely jostled a sedate-looking

gentleman emerging from the gallery. "My fault, sir," courteously

remarked Mr. Fritz Braun, beaming benevolently through his blue

glass eye screens.

The pharmacist turned and raised a warning finger as Clayton hastened

away to resume his morning duties.

In the doorway, following Braun's mouse-colored overcoat, as he

mingled with the "madding crowd," stood Mr. Adolph Lilienthal, the

proprietor of the "Art Emporium."

Briskly rubbing his hands, the art dealer murmured "Vot devilment

is Fritz up to, now?"

He was only one of the many comrades in evil of the Sixth Avenue

chemist, for Mr. Lilienthal boasted a "private view" room, in rear

of his pretentious "Art Gallery," where many conveniently arranged

interviews habitually took place.

Not one in one hundred of his patrons knew the secret of that room

with its cosy divans and a private entrance to the stairway of an

adjoining fashionable photograph gallery.

But the dealers in the "queer," the handlers of lottery tickets,

the pool-sellers, the oily green-goods man, and many a velvet-voiced,

silken clad Delilah knew the pathway to that inner room.

Benevolent-looking old capitalists with gold-rimmed spectacles;

soft-eyed sirens of the Four Hundred, and the splendid Aspasias of

the apartment-house clique, brisk clubmen, and the reckless jeunesse

doreé, were all in the secret of the "private view" rooms.

A meek, furtive cat-like connoisseur was Mr. Adolph Lilienthal,

and the "diamond coterie" of smugglers often hastily exchanged in

the safe retirement of the "art parlors" packages of glittering

gems all innocent of Uncle Sam's imposts. The "Newport Art Gallery"

was a gem, a very gem in itself and judiciously protected.

Mr. Fritz Braun enjoyed the crystalline spring air as he hastened

along to catch his avenue car. There was a gleam of triumph behind

the blue shields as he murmured, "If she only plays her part as I

laid it down yesterday, he is a hooked fish, sure enough."

Randall Clayton sat for an hour in his office, dispatching his

accumulated two-days' mail, all unobservant of the cat-like tread

of Einstein, the office boy, moving in and out. He lingered in a

gloomy reverie, after checking up his correspondence, and a half

hour's sharp dictations, absorbed in the cautious letter of Hugh

Worthington, Esq., the man who had robbed him of his birthright.

It was in vain that he tried to be cool. Every drop of blood in

his heart now throbbed through his pulses in an eager unrest. He

had suddenly lost faith in all men. "Wait, only wait," he murmured,

and then started up as Einstein touched his arm.

"Mr. Somers has the deposits all ready, now, sir. It's a quarter

of twelve," the boy remarked, with a veiled scrutiny of the

restless-eyed cashier. Clayton sprang to his feet and then, with

lightning rapidity, packed up the treasure which the old accountant

had gathered out of the morning mail, and received from the prompt

and timorous debtors fearful of having their "credit cut."

He was fifteen minutes late as he stepped out upon Fourteenth Street,

valise in hand and the ready pistol once more in his pocket. The

day's "haul" was rich in checks and light in cash, but the total

was a considerable fortune.

"Serve the old brute right if I'd bolt some day with a good stake,"

wrathfully murmured Clayton. "He would be in for fifty thousand

dollars' bond! Damn his famed benevolence. He wished to anchor me

here for life, and, so cover his tracks. He might even put up a

fancied theft on me if I quarrel. I'll be out of this slavery the

very moment that Jack opens his guns. And he shall pay the last

score, to the last stiver!"

In a vain effort at self deception Randall Clayton avoided glancing

at the art window where he had seen the mysterious beauty until

he was abreast of it. But his beating heart told him already that

she was not there. He paused a moment, once more to feast his eyes

upon the picture which he proposed to order reserved for him on

his return from the Astor Place Bank. It was gone!

He started back in surprise as he saw the place of honor vacated.

There was only a mawkish color reprint of "Mary Stuart and Rizzio"

parading its faded romance in the show window. Resolutely entering,

he quickly called for the proprietor.

In his momentary excitement, Clayton failed to notice the sly twinkle

of Mr. Adolph Lilienthal's crow-footed eyes. "You had a beautiful

artist proof of a Hungarian scene in your window this morning,"

began Clayton.

"Sold, sir; you are but a few moments too late," blandly replied

Lilienthal, in his best manner. "We are just packing it up for a

lady. An exquisite thing; sorry I cannot replace it, sir," remarked

the vendor, "Show you anything else?"

"You could not order me another, could you?" blankly demanded

Clayton, with a baffled sense of losing both the lady and the art

gem.

"It was a unique proof," volubly continued Lilienthal. "I might,

however,"--he briskly turned to an assistant, and after a few words,

led the annoyed Clayton back to a counter.

There a packing case was lying, plainly marked "Fräulein Irma

Gluyas, No. 192 Layte Street, Brooklyn."

"I might open it," hesitated the dealer, "and yet, the lady might

not like it. She paid a round price for it, a hundred dollars. And

some persons do not like to have a proof duplicated. Still, I could

get the artist's name and address, and then my agents in Vienna

perhaps could get one. I might see the lady. She is a patron of

mine. This is Mr. Randall Clayton, is it not?"

The young man started in surprise, as his hand involuntarily

closed upon the handle of his portmanteau. "Oh, we are neighbors,"

laughed Lilienthal. "Your Mr. Robert Wade frequently drops in here

to pick up an etching or a bit of French color. I do a good deal

of business with the gentlemen of the Western Trading Company."

Clayton dropped his hand, instantly mollified. "I wish you would

see what you can do," he cordially said. "Perhaps the lady only

purchased it to fill a place on the walls of her drawing room. I,

at least, would like to be allowed to open it and have you take the

particulars. If she has no objection, you might be able to order

me a replica."

Lilienthal stood musing for a moment with his ferret eyes gleaming

under their bushy brows. "I might try! Suppose you look in here

after your lunch. The fact is," laughed the dealer, "Fräulein

Gluyas only took a sudden fancy to the Danube view a few days ago.

And she has gone down to the bank to get the money to gratify her

whim. She seemed to think some one else might claim it, and she

dropped in a half an hour ago, and ordered it packed up. She will

take it home in her carriage, as such a proof can be easily injured."

Randall Clayton's eyes were fixed on the floor, as he nodded an

assent. "I'll be back in half an hour. See what you can do," he

pleasantly said. "And at any rate, I'll be thankful to be allowed

to have the data."

"I think I can fix it all right," genially remarked Lilienthal.

"Fräulein Gluyas is a Hungarian prima donna of rare merit, an artist,

too, of no mean order. She may be heard here in grand opera this

winter. She is living in retirement until Mr. Grau's return, as

she does not want to be heralded before the public."

Clayton tried to appear unconcerned as he asked, "Is she married?"

"She is single," carelessly remarked Lilienthal, showing Clayton to

the door. "And I am told she has refused some very eligible offers

at home. But she is a Magyar of an old and noble family and they

detest the Austrian nobility, who have now all the fortunes and

privileges of the old Hungarian noblesse."

With crimsoned cheeks Randall Clayton was speeding away to the bank

before he had digested the crafty dealer's story. He was reassured

at the mention of Robert Wade's name and, hemmed in, all in ignorance

that his grave-mannered superior often met a bit of very lively

"French color" in the luxurious solitude of the "private view"

room, as yet a terra incognita to the young cashier.

For Mr. Robert Wade had a "Sunday-school reputation" to support,

and was dignified, worldly wise, a pillar of a fashionable church,

and hence, duly sly. His left hand often wisted not the doings of

his right hand, and Lilienthal found in Mr. Robert Wade a judicious

and accommodating patron.

"This is a simple-minded youth," grinned Lilienthal, as he turned

away. "He has swallowed my story, and--I fancy I see Mr. Fritz

Braun's little game. I wonder if the Vienna witch is still over

there. I must hurry up and post her. This young chap may be a good

customer, for he handles plenty of money." And the brisk Figaro darted

away, his eyes gleaming in the ardor of the undying covetousness

of the Israelite.

While Mr. Adolph Lilienthal was cautiously conducting a Philadelphia

money magnate into the "Private Gallery," a closely veiled lady

was entering that sanctum from the photographer's hall. The secret

of the two double rings of the push button admitted her to the

"packing room," where an innocent-faced young German lad stood guard

over the complicated system of letter boxes, telegraph racks, and

telephones in that jealously guarded "packing room."

It had been a busy morning with the astute Lilienthal, and the sudden

arrival of the "big fish," a wary "customer" from the Schuylkill,

caused the dealer to temporarily forget Randall Clayton. He scented

only an ordinary amorous intrigue in the young man's ardent desire

to make that particular "artist proof" his own.

Besides, the postman had just staggered in with a considerable

bundle of letters all addressed to the Newport Art Gallery. There

was a good hour's work for the rosy-faced graduate of a Viennan

cafe in removing the decoy wrappers and assorting the private

correspondence which alone paid the rental of Mr. Lilienthal's

"emporium."

Randall Clayton was already hastening back from the Astor Place Bank,

forgetting his own luncheon in his eagerness to hear once more of

Fräulein Irma Gluyas, when Mr. Fritz Braun had at last disposed

of the morning swarm of "privately attended" customers at Magdal's

Pharmacy.

The blue-spectacled chemist had been working with lightning rapidity

behind his effective screen, following the whispered directions

of his depraved London assistant. It was for him an anxious morning.

His heart would have leaped up in a wild joy had he known how

carefully Randall Clayton had already entered the accidentally

found address in the little silver-clasped address book, in which

he had recorded, with judicious cabalistic cloudiness, the combinations

of his safes and certain vital private business memoranda.

These secrets were all hidden in a mass of artfully inserted

characters so as to defy the curious eye of any stranger in case

of mishap, but the young cashier's fingers trembled with eagerness

as he had paused on his way in a corridor to boldly enter an already

beloved name.

"I can easily find her out over there," Clayton murmured. "She

shall not drift out of my life. I must some day read the secret of

those wistful eyes."

But Fritz Braun, anxiously waiting in his den on Sixth Avenue, was

chafing until his labors of the day should cease. "I'm all right,"

he mused, "if that sheepshead Lilienthal does not blunder. I do

not dare to tell him too much. And then, if only Irma follows my

instructions.

"But the wild-hearted witch may speculate in love a little on her

own account. She is only to be trusted as far as any other woman."

He snorted in disdain. "And the fellow is young, eager, good

looking. At any rate, I shall steer them both out of Lilienthal's

clutches. The game is too risky for 'mein frent Adolph.' He is

wrapped up in his greed, his blackmail schemes, his 'sure thing'

villainies.

"Here is the prize of a life to fight for, and--the electric chair

to face--should I be betrayed. Neither of them shall ever know my

little game." The master plotter was busy with dreams of an ill-gotten

harvest soon to ripen.

Braun peered out into his shop, sneeringly glanced at two shop girls

lingering at the soda fountain, drew up a chair, picked up the

Staats-Zeitung, and lit a cheroot, while he waited for the advance

guard of the afternoon customers.

"I dare not go over to the 'Bavaria' until three o'clock," mused

the chemist. "It will never do to let Clayton see me with either

Irma or Lilienthal. Once hooked, though, I can give him plenty

of line, and play him, in the shadows of water too deep for him.

Einstein has given me a fair insight into his character and habits.

I must go and see Leah and take her that promised dress. I need

that boy, for he is true to Leah, his dam, and she at least loves

me as fondly yet as the dumb dog that licks the hand. The other one,

I can never rule that way. Never mind, you proud-hearted Hungarian

devil, I'll tame you yet." There was an ugly cloud on his broad

brow as he dreamed of a yet unshapen crime.

Fritz Braun, gliding out behind the high sample cases, swept the

morning's receipts out of the large bill compartment of the cash

drawer. "Seventy-five dollars. Not so bad," he grinned, as he

clutched the only thing on earth which he loved.

The crumpled, greasy green bills! Passed from hand to hand, as the

hard wage of toil, the prize of infamy, the badge of shame! Tossed

from the fingers of the spendthrift, dragged from the reluctant

miser, filched from yokel and rounder, slyly stolen by thieving

domestic or dishonest clerk, still the "long green" was as sacred

to Fritz Braun as Mahomet's emerald banner hanging over the pulpit

of magnificent Saint Sophia to the Moslem heart.

Magdal's Pharmacy was an innocent enough looking place of business.

Few of the neighboring shopkeepers dated back to the time, long

years ago, when the real Magdal ran upon the breakers of bankruptcy

and disappeared in the "eternal smash" of a final pecuniary ruin.

The crafty Braun, once a co-laborer with Magdal, had jumped

eagerly at the opportunity of burying the identity of Hugo Landor,

the criminal fugitive, under the banner of the hopelessly wrecked

Magdal.

Fritz Braun had been a good enough name to use until the crafty

employee had robbed drunken old Magdal's till of money enough to

purchase the now valueless fixtures.

Magdal, the victim of an expensive liason with a dashing neighboring

French modiste, had tried to keep up a "regular" business.

All this was foreign to the ideas of the quick-witted Braun, safe

now under his humble alias, and his flowing false beard and the

never absent blue glass eye screens. Braun duly closed the doors

for a "reopening."

A few dollars spent in paint and gilding, a "gorgeous" soda

fountain "on lease," had soon transformed the dingy interior. A

couple of dozen cheap red plush stools wooed the tawdy Phrynes of

Sixth Avenue, and the light-headed shop girls to a repose from the

crash and roar of the shopping street.

From a dealer in "fake" goods, Braun cheaply obtained the empty

packages, the jars of colored water, and the stacks of imitation "put

up" goods, which gave to the pharmacy its air of rosy prosperity.

To cater to his natural patrons, cheap perfumes, confectionery,

gaudy nostrums, theatrical make-up, and a round of disguised

narcotics and "headache" medicines were always at hand.

Braun picked up a waif of the street, an ex-Prussian soldier, who

for a pittance and his daily "rum," slaved in the "Pharmacy" like

a dog, polishing and cleaning until it was the smartest show place

of the neighboring blocks.

But the citadel of the real business was the huge marble soda fountain,

with its bewildering array of gaudy silver-plated faucets. Above

the rows of bottled "bitters," the fiery drink of the temperance

frauds, high over the three score jars of "nervines" and pick-me-up

preparations, towered a life-size marble statue of Hygeia, glowing

in a voluptuous Parian nakedness.

Behind the fountain counter, with its serried rows of crystal

glasses in artistic silver holders, there lurked on watch, now,

the factotum, the thieving London-bred drug-clerk who had escaped

"transportation," at Her Gracious Majesty's behest, by slipping

over to New York City disguised as a stoker.

To him alone was entrusted the traffic in slops and the flimsy

produce of the soda fountain, to him the drudgery of the illicit

Sunday liquor trade, when the "regulars" entered by the side door

from the hall, bearing the portentous sign, "Hugo Adler, M.D.,

Physician and Surgeon."

No mortal had ever gazed upon the legendary Adler, but Timmins

the cockney, and Braunschweiger the ex-Prussian grenadier, gaily

dispensed from jugs and bottles the "spiritual comforts" stacked

up in the "dark room" every Saturday against the Sunday of legally

enforced thirst and resultant sadness.

But while these minor villains slaved for the master who greedily

snatched every bill from the till, and held them up to a keen return

for every measured drink in the stock of the Sunday "bar" of the

mock drug-store, it was the taciturn Fritz Braun himself who murmured

in confidence to the important patrons of the den.

The morning run beginning at nine, embraced the haggard-eyed devotees

of pleasure--Wall Street men, clerk and financiers, habitues of

the Tenderloin--actors and men about town.

In subdued murmurs the skilful Fritz Braun trafficked with these

"shaky" mortals, while Timmins covered their "prescriptions" with

an innocent layer of Vichy.

Sometimes the favored few entered behind Braun's screen, until the

chemist solved their varying problems by manipulating his vials in

the closely locked cabinet, the key of which never left his person.

There were little packages by the gross ready in that capacious

lock box. Opium, hasheesh, chorodyne, sulphonal, cocaine, "dope,"

all the life-stealing narcotics in every form.

There were medicines the traffic in which leads even the innocent

behind the bars.

And it was from the sale of these "nervines," forbidden medicines,

and poisonous agents that the runaway Vienna criminal drew his

increasing revenue. There was an aristocracy among the motley

customers.

From the "hypodermic" regulars, men and women, laying down their

syringes to be filled with the soul-stealing morphia solution--faded

men and trembling women, down to the shattered wretch, with his

pitiful twenty-five cents for a bit of "dope," no one with money

was turned away.

Yet all of these passed under Fritz Braun's watchful scrutiny.

The disguised criminal trembled lest some ugly-minded detective or

crank journalist might entrap him into the meshes of the law.

Alas! Nearly all the customers bore the seal of safety in their

imploring eyes. By the freemasonry of the degenerates, Magdal's

was a known haven of refuge to all the weaklings of Manhattan.

The frequent ringing of "Doctor Adler's" bell admitted to the

little dimly-lighted rear room the sullen-eyed visitors who bore

away the colorless vials of "knock-out drops," for which five- and

ten-dollar bills were eagerly thrust into Braun's itching palm.

This important traffic was confided to no one but the real proprietor.

And stealthily-treading, matronly-looking women often found their

way into the den, where nameless "remedies" were sold, often for

their weight in diamonds, the weapons of that hidden guild which

paves New York's streets with the bones of ignorant and martyred

women. For all the thirty-third degree trade of the "consulting-room,"

an "introduction" was stiffly demanded.

Thanks to his craft, to his fear of the awful doom hanging over

him from the unpunished Viennese murders, Hugo Landor had so far

defied detection and avoided all awkward inquiry. Mr. Fritz Braun

always had a prime cigar and a drop of "medicinal cognac" at the

disposal of the visiting policeman. His perfunctory "loans" had

gladdened the hands of several minor officials, whose argus eyes

had noted the Sunday run of Dr. Adler's many friends.

All these dangerous wares were distributed in unlabelled vials,

and no witnesses had ever verified the transfer of the felonious

knock-out drops. Each week brought to Braun customers from adjacent

cities, many of whom, disguised or veiled, hurried away with the means

of cowardly crime to work the devil's charms at a safe distance.

Taciturn, morose and keeping his own counsel, Fritz Braun was a

cautious trader with the great supply houses. His bills of purchase

were made out to the welcome "Mr. Cash," and the old prescription

books of Magdal were ostentatiously displayed with a few family

orders dropping in now and then from some befogged physician. The

bond between Lilienthal and Braun had been strengthened by the aid

of the "picture dealer" in smuggling from Hamburg and Bremen much

of the dangerous ware of this mind-wrecking business.

And so, peddling the means of murder, filling his yawning pocketbook,

Fritz Braun had thrived in solitude until Irma Gluyas sought the

refuge of New York City.

For the discovery of her picture in the stiffened hands of a suicide,

a young noble officer, ruined by her extravagance, had caused the

Viennese siren to flee the vengeance of a powerful Austrian family.

And so the lives of these two, linked by folly, sin, crime and mad

extravagance, had run together again far from the scenes where,

led on by her dark eyes, Hugo Landor had stumbled along on the dark

road from theft and forgery to callous murder.

On this particular April early afternoon, the eager plotter was

willing to leave his afternoon customers to the sly Timmins. The

actresses and lazy demi-monde queens fluttered in always before

sunset, together with a bevy of quacks, whose doubtful prescriptions

were always put up by Timmins, easily capable of brazenly swearing

to "a mistake," or denying upon oath the sale of any clumsy weapon

of medical butchery.

It was also the time when the floating "shopping women" drifted in

to reinforce their luncheons with Timmins' artfully veiled alcoholic

preparations.

His row of bottles labelled "Vin Mariani," "Moxie," and "Nervura"

were never empty, and the oldest toper would have found them

veritable "well springs of joy in the desert."

All the simple machinery of the mock pharmacy was so well oiled

that even an expert could detect no commerce more dangerous than

Lubin's Powders, crimson lip salve, or a powder puff.

"Fritz Braun, Manager," came and went with regularity, no man

knowing of his home or family ties; the old golden sign of "Magdal's

Pharmacy" covering whatever mystery was not hidden behind those

gleaming blue glasses.

Save for his regular luncheon at the Café Bavaria, no Sixth Avenue

habitué had ever seen Mr. Fritz Braun at concert, theater, or any

of the places of local or suburban amusement.

As to woman, he seemed to be sternly indifferent, Save to the

semi-professionals who were as anxious to escape Sing Sing's gloomy

embrace as the man who supplied them with the drugs for their various

"Ladies' Homes." These were welcome "Greeks bearing gifts" of the

coveted "long green" which was Fritz Braun's god.

Braun was never in the pharmacy after six o'clock, and from that

evening hour when all well-conducted men and women turn to dinner

as the day's culmination, no one had ever set their eyes upon the

bustling manager.

Friendless he seemed, yet ever cheerful, a man distantly respected

for the open frankness of his business dealings, the order and quiet

of his shop, and his rare capacity for minding his own business.

It was only in the evening that Mr. Ben Timmins' reign was uncontested.

The flashy young fellows of his caught-up friendships then lurked

around Magdal's Pharmacy where Timmins dispensed complimentary drinks

and lorded over his fluctuating harem of unemployed "soubrettes"

and light-headed shop girls freed from their daily toil.

In a rough average at a half-way honesty, Timmins "turned in"

habitually about half of the evening's receipts of the "joint,"

which, to use his own language, he "ran for all it was worth."

He had soon lost all fear of his stern employer visiting him at

random, and the clever London rascal now laughed detection to scorn.

For he always kept in hand one day's stealings so that, if suddenly

"called down," he could glibly explain, "Slipped it in my pocket

in my hurry! The shop was full!"

While Timmins, returning from his breakfast on this busy Monday,

wondered at Mr. Fritz Braun delaying his comfortable luncheon,

Mr. Adolph Lilienthal was anxiously awaiting his secret partner in

villainy at the "Newport Art Gallery."

Perhaps the crowning secret of Braun's remarkable success was his

clear-headed avoidance of mixing up the details of his various

schemes.

Lilienthal knew nothing of Braun's whereabouts as to a real residence,

and the colloquies and settlements of the two always took place in

Lilienthal's little private office, proof against all eavesdroppers.

The Art Emporium, thronged with the curious, was the safest place

in New York City for casual meetings, and, with a keen suspicion

of his man, Lilienthal never visited Magdal's Pharmacy. He realized

that there might be danger and deception in his fellow villain's

hospitality.

A doubt of Braun's ultimate end as a citizen had caused the smug

dealer to always avoid Braun at the jolly Restaurant Bavaria, where

the good-natured foreign convives often joined each other over a

stein.

The "private interests" of the Newport Art Gallery were as jealously

guarded as the inner secrets of Magdal's Pharmacy; furthermore, the

hidden post-office, telegraph exchange, and "private room" busied

the dealer from morn till eve.

Lilienthal was in a particularly good humor when he at last dispatched

the Danube "artist proof" by an especial messenger to Mr. Randall

Clayton's own rooms. It had all fallen about in a spirit of graceful

courtesy. And three hearts bounded with a hidden delight when the

happy incident occurred.

When Randall Clayton returned from the Astor Place Bank he had

discovered Mr. Adolph Lilienthal in a particularly cheerful frame

of mind. The young cashier had hastened to his office and delivered

over his bundle of exchange and checked-up bank-book. "I shall be

out for an hour," he sharply called to Einstein. "Wait here in my

office and let any callers return at two o'clock!"

There was a glow of expectancy on the handsome face of the customer

as Lilienthal rubbed his hands. "I have been fortunate enough to

carry out your wishes, Mr. Clayton," he obsequiously said. "Fräulein

Gluyas has called and paid for her picture. I have told her of your

longing for a replica, and, by telephoning down to my importer,

I have learned that I can get a duplicate in six weeks.

"She is not altogether satisfied with the framing of this one, and

I have begged her to allow me to sell you this one, so that I can

import one for her framed in our own Viennese manner.

"The lady awaits your wishes, through me. It certainly is very

courteous on her part. I have done her certain little business

favors and she is kindly willing to oblige."

"If I could only meet her," murmured Randall Clayton, with lips

dry with all the eagerness of a newly born passion. He was in a

defiant mood now, his whole being stirred with the treason of the

friend of years and the unmasked villainy of his pseudo-benefactor.

This fair mystery allured him strangely.

"Nothing easier," smiled the dealer, reaching out for his silk

hat. "The Fräulein is taking her usual luncheon at the Restaurant

Bavaria, and I agreed to notify her of your wishes, as she may

travel, and would be willing to wait for the arrival of my Vienna

importation. I will be very glad to present you to her."

The world took on a new brightness as Randall Clayton passed out

of the shop with the dealer. He scarcely dared to trust himself to

bring up the subject now nearest his heart.

But the careful directions of Mr. Fritz Braun had given Lilienthal

his cue. The dealer babbled on of pleasant trivial things as they

stemmed the tide of the crowded streets. "I hope that Fräulein

Gluyas will soon appear in opera and achieve the success which she

deserves. She is really here incognito, and spends all her time

in private musical practice at Chickering Hall and the study of

languages."

"Why this secrecy?" asked Clayton.

"Ah! My dear sir! These are the ways of impresarios. If Grau does

not secure a certain great operatic star with whom he has quarrelled,

then Fräulein Gluyas will be brought out with a great flourish of

trumpets under a stage name to be selected later. She will then

be heralded as a 'wonder of the world.' It will pay Grau, and he

will also have his revenge!"

"And if the great star relents?" smilingly asked Clayton, as they

neared the Restaurant Bavaria.

"Then," cheerfully answered the dealer, "the lady will make a grand

concert tour, adequately supported. It is for that contingency

she is studying English ballads and the language."

Clayton suddenly remembered the unromantic address of 192 Layte

Street, Brooklyn. "Fräulein Gluyas resides in Brooklyn?" he said,

with a fine air of carelessness.

Lilienthal's eyes swept obliquely the young man's distrustful face.

"Fräulein Gluyas ordered the picture sent to the rooms of her

music master, 192 Layte Street, Brooklyn. Poor old Raffoni was once

a world-wide star, a velvet tenor. Now he is literally a voice maker,

a master of technique for Maurice Grau. The Hungarian nightingale

studies there, and only takes her hall practice here in the off

season, in Chickering's empty salon. There is a jealous professional

mystery in this secrecy. The summer is the opera's off season,

just as the winter is the same for the great circus and travelling

shows. The hardest work is thus veiled from the public. The impresario

is always a wily individual."

"And the lady's real residence?" impatiently queried the budding

lover. "That is an absolute secret, for Grau carefully hides away

his coming stars. Somewhere on Long Island an old Hungarian noble

family have had a retreat since the days of Kossuth.

"The Fräulein is their guest, and, for other reasons than complete

faith with Grau, she receives no one. She is as proud and haughty as

she is beautiful, and rumor has it that the pursuit of an Austrian

Archduke drove her to the safety of our shores. All this I have

gathered from my old friend, Signore Raffoni."

Clayton mutely followed Lilienthal to the door of a private room

in the "Bavaria" and, with a wildly beating heart, was bowing low

before the woman whose shining eyes had brought to his bosom such

strange unrest.

"It is like a page from a novel," the flute-like voice murmured,

"that this lucky picture should have brought us together again, as

it strangely did once face to face."

Randall Clayton's ears drank in that soft, wooing accent, and all

the ardor of his eyes betrayed the instant recognition which lay

behind the diva's merry words.

When he had murmured his thanks, the presence of Lilienthal seemed

to be a bar to any rapprochement. Clayton was fain to accept Fräulein

Gluyas' courtesy in allowing him a choice as to the handling of

the picture or its replica.

"If Mademoiselle will allow me," said Clayton, "I will give Mr.

Lilienthal my cheque for the coming proof, and retain in my possession

the one framed in our American manner."

This was soon settled, and then, with a glance at his watch, the

dealer, bowing low, hurried away.

"We artists have to be unconventional," frankly said the Magyar

beauty.

"I await Madame Raffoni here for a little tour of the wonderful

New York shops."

It was a natural passage from the picture to the memories of the

Danube, and then, under the kindling glances of the diva, Randall

Clayton talked, with spirit, of his happy summer ramblings through

Austria and Hungary.

Irma Gluyas' magnetic eyes burned into his soul as she followed

the young stranger in his itinerary. It was only when the maître

d'hôtel entered, announcing Madame Raffoni as in waiting in her

carriage, that Randall Clayton's castle in Spain came crashing down

around him.

The Magyar witch dropped her eyes when Clayton took her hands in

adieu. "You have made me forget time, and my workaday world," he

said. "I have now something to live for--to hear you sing! It seems

so hard to meet only to part. I may never see your coming picture;

you may never see mine again. But I cannot lose you from my life.

It seemed, Fräulein Irma," he said, earnestly, "when I first met

the glance of your dreaming eyes, that I had known you in some

other world."

"I receive no one; I am a recluse," murmured Irma, with eyes

smiling through down dropped lashes; "but, if you care, you may

come, a week from to-day, and breakfast with me here! Dear old

Raffoni will play propriety. As for the singing, I am pledged to

be mute, parôle d'honneur. But you must be in my first audience.

I must keep an artist's faith with my manager."

"I shall have the loge d'honneur at your début," enthusiastically

cried Clayton, as he lingered over her frankly extended hand after

murmuring his acceptance.

The woman who sat, with her head bowed upon her hands, listened to

his receding footsteps. "Il Regalantuomo," she murmured. "It is a

pity, too! What does Fritz want of him?"

Then gliding serpent-like from the darkened corridor, she joined

the waiting woman in the carriage below, a woman whose form was

but dimly defined beyond the half-lowered silken curtain of the

carriage as Randall Clayton sped along to his money mill.

Some indefinable impulse kept Clayton from speaking of his breakfast

engagement as he strode into the Newport Art Gallery. His cheque

for one hundred and twenty-five dollars was soon transferred to

Lilienthal in return for the coveted picture, which was dispatched

to the young man's lonely apartment.

"Not a bad turn," mused Adolf Lilienthal. "I raised him seventy-five

dollars! He paid like a prince, and, if I mistake not, this is his

first and last transaction here. The picture that he wanted is

burned into his heart now."

It was but one of a hundred similar intrigues to which Lilienthal

had been the successful Leporello, and he calmly betook himself to

the continued villainy of his daily life. He feared also to follow

on the footsteps of the crafty Fritz Braun, for in the years of

their illicit dealings the weaker nature had been molded by the

daring master villain into a habitual subjection. "He has some

little game of his own," chuckled Lilienthal. "Friend Fritz is a

sly one."

But the man, now burning with a new purpose in life, the puppet of

strange destinies, dreamed only of a golden future as he lingered

late that night at the Astor House with Jack Witherspoon.

It was two o'clock before he returned to his lonely rooms to gloat

over the picture and its promise of the future meeting.

"I shall be rich," he mused, "and I will follow her to the end of

the earth until I read the secret of those wonderful eyes."

He little dreamed that even before he had paid Lilienthal the

cheque, a carriage had stopped for a moment before Magdal's Pharmacy,

and Mr. Fritz Braun had heard, with a wild delight, the whispered

words, "The game is won; he will come!" The busy devil prisoned in

Braun's heart laughed for very joy.

CHAPTER IV.

UNDER THE SHADOWS OF THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE.

When the "Fuerst Bismarck" moved grandly away from her wharf and

glided down the stream, Jack Witherspoon paced the deck with clouded

brows. The acute Detroit lawyer had rightly estimated the crushing

effect of his disclosure of Hugh Worthington's treachery.

The two college mates were now banded together, however, by a secret

compact, and both of them realized the craft of the foe whom they

were fighting. "Not a letter, not a cable, not a single scrap of

paper," said the wary Jack. "And you must keep away from me and be

sure to dissemble all your wrath."

Clayton appreciated the prudence which had separated them in

the last three days of his friend's stay, and minutely followed

Witherspoon's final descriptions of the hidden plans of the great

syndicate. "You must be ever on your guard," said the new champion,

"and remember the annual election and this strange wedding must be

allowed to take place without suspicion.

"On my return I shall frankly mingle with the 'upper ten' of the

Trust. You are never to be seen alone in my company. But you can

meet me over in Jersey City; there we can arrange a simple cipher

for future use, and, when the blow falls, you are then to demand

a month's leave of absence. So no word to any one of your destination.

"If Hugh Worthington lurks on the Pacific Coast until he has made

the coup, I will find him out there. You can be in hiding near,

ready to appear, and then boldly claim your rights. Arthur Ferris

will probably be back in New York City in charge, and Worthington

will yield rather than have the world, his beloved daughter, and

all society know of his inward baseness. I shall delve further

into the old records, under pretense of following up the title to

our purchase. Perhaps we may even now unearth other unconveyed

property."

Randall Clayton, brave as he was, shuddered when Witherspoon solemnly

said: "Remember! Your life is in your own hands. For God's sake,

be prudent! One little self-betrayal in sudden anger, and then

either Worthington or Ferris would surely compass your death for

this tempting million. You will fight for your birthright, and I

for the future happiness of darling Francine Delacroix."

When they wrung each other's hands in the last good-bye, "each

heart recalled a different name."

For, burning on the altars of that lonely heart of Clayton's

was the fierce fire which bound him now as the worshipper of the

velvet-voiced Magyar witch. He, too, had some one to fight for

now, and his ardent fancy painted her in every glowing color of

the passion of young manhood.

Left alone to his daily affairs, Randall Clayton now lived behind

an impenetrable mask. He knew not which of the higher employees

was charged with that secret espionage so necessary to the final

success of the Worthington, Durham and Ferris conspiracy.

Was it the pale-faced Somers, the smooth old accountant, his

pompous chief, Mr. Robert Wade, or some one of those who had broken

his bread and drank his wine in the occasional friendship of the

business coterie. And now Clayton hated the old money-lover who was

foisting a husband on his only child merely to chain a Senator to

the wheels of the money chariot.

Seated alone, in the evening, watching the treasured picture, and

waiting for the day of the diva's breakfast, a fierce desire for

stern reprisals took possession of Clayton. "I have it!" he murmured.

The pathway seemed clear at last. And the next day, following out

his self-protective scheme, he directed the bright-faced office

boy Einstein to report at his rooms on the ensuing evening.

There was a broad grin on the young rascal's face when he finally

left his master. He darted away with a ten-dollar bill in his purse,

the earnest of a secret monthly stipend. "Some strange fellows

are following me, spying upon me, my boy," said the man who now

doubted all men but one, on earth, and who was fast falling under

the spell of his dreamy adoration of an utterly unknown siren.

"It matters not who they are or what they want. I wish you to

follow me up, with a good deal of care, in my evening wanderings,

and shadow these spotters.

"There is a new hundred-dollar bill ready for you when you find

who they are, and where they come from, and who they report to.

You can keep hovering around at a safe distance, and never address

or notice me. Spend what money you like in following my evening

rounds. I'll repay it all. I am going to lead them a merry dance.

Every day, before I leave the office, I will give you a different

rendezvous, up to midnight. You are simply to hover around, ignore

me, and then skilfully shadow my pursuers."

The service of the Western Trading Company now galled Randall

Clayton like the galley slave's chain. And yet Jack Witherspoon's

counsel had been most wise. For Clayton knew not who had replaced

the treacherous Ferris in that secret espionage, so necessary to

Worthington until the great "deal" had been consummated.

"Lies, lies, all lies," muttered Clayton, as he read the friendly,

almost fatherly, letters of Hugh Worthington announcing his intended

tour around the world. "The old fox," sneered Clayton, as he read

the "rider" to the capitalist's letter.

"Ferris will have my power of attorney, and he alone will communicate

with me. If Alice's health demands it, I may vary my route and look

around in the Sierras, or take the summer run to Alaska. I fear

the heat of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. But all will depend

upon the doctors and their advice.

"Report only to Ferris as to any thing you wish to reach me. He

will have my private cipher. All the rest is mere routine."

But the words of the old money-grabber angered Clayton less than

Ferris' effusive friendly epistles from Detroit.

"I can excuse Worthington," growled Clayton, as he paced his private

room like a caged tiger. "He has his old crime to cover up, his

only daughter to shield, his vast plans to further. I am only a poor

pawn in his fevered game of life; but Ferris, 'mine own familiar

friend,' he is a traitor, a needless traitor, to his black heart's

core.

"For it is the sale of a soul, his dirty traffic in my heart's

secrets, a Benedict Arnold of the heart, for mere dirty gain. And

his cold ensnaring of this innocent girl is an outrage; it is a

crime to make her the hostage of Senator Durham's corrupt friendship."

And yet, mindful of Jack Witherspoon's counsel, he took up the

trade of an honest Iago, and hid his raging hatred behind the mask

of an olden gratitude to the one, a loyal friendship to the other.

The searchlight of his mind was turned only on the Western conspirators,

and he feared no villainy in the world save the Detroit schemer who

had robbed him of his birthright. "By Heavens! I'll give up trade,

the service of this greedy octopus. I will go abroad and so escape

Worthington's vengeance, and Ferris' duplicity."

He began to secretly watch every one of the leading New York officials

of the company in order to detect Ferris' successor in the hidden

watch upon his movements.

It was with a secret longing for the coming Monday of the breakfast

that Clayton passed Lilienthal's window, three days after Jack's

sailing, in company with the grave-featured Robert Wade. His runaway

heart was all unsuspicious now.

Thank Heaven! There was no longer the graceful woman lingering there

fascinated by the picture whose sunset glories lit up in gold and

purple the lonely man's rooms. But the suave dealer, waiting at

his door, salaamed with effusion as the manager passed. His salute

distantly included Clayton, and the action was not lost upon Robert

Wade.

"Do you know Lilienthal?" somewhat sharply asked Wade.

"Not at all," carelessly answered the younger man. "I happened

to drop in and buy a bit of a landscape from him the other day. He

mentioned when I gave him my cheque that you occasionally patronized

him."

"He is a rare art connoisseur," musingly said Wade, "and I've picked

up a few pretty bits of etching now and then at his shop. You must

come up and see my collection some day."

Clayton, busied with his day dreams, did not notice the sudden

paleness of the pompous manager. In his own ignorance of the mysteries

of the "private room" and its secret "facilities for patrons," he

never dreamed that the man at his side was "light of foot, fierce

at heart" as the tiger when he stole to the rendezvous arranged

by Lilienthal, who had indeed offered many "choice bits" to the

astute manager. Clayton had stumbled along in New York, blinded to

its dual existence, its gilded shams.

"I will never set foot in that place again," remarked Clayton, as

he strode alone down University Place to the bank. "Lilienthal must

never know of my further acquaintance with the Fräulein."

And so, each keeping his own secret hugged closely to an anxious

heart, the two men went along on their different paths, each drawn

along by the invisible threads of life--the one dragged on by a

sudden romantic, resistless passion, the other by the glowing links

of the iron chains of habit, the ruling appetite of a remorseless

lust. And yet both of them were only blinded fools of passion.

The dragging days until the trysting time for the breakfast were

filled up with business cares, but Randall Clayton had roamed

the streets of New York at night, restlessly, since Witherspoon's

sailing. In a feverish unrest, he had visited concert halls,

theaters, and searched the now deserted club-rooms for a familiar

face.

A Sunday drive in the Park, and late excursions among the

kaleidoscopic crowds of midnight New York filled up his time until

he should again meet Irma Gluyas.

He had always turned away in disgust from the painted faces of the

leering sirens of the Tenderloin, and now he sat gloomily eying the

vacuous stare of the rabbit-faced stage beauties capering in their

mock diamonds. For a higher womanly ideal reigned in his lonely

bosom.

Back, back to the speaking silence of his lonely rooms he wandered,

to gaze through the smoke wreaths upon that picture which had so

strangely brought Irma Gluyas into his life. Gloomily recalling

the past, he went over all the brief memories of his boyhood, and

tried to recall his stern father's few confidences, or picture to

himself the mother whom he had never known. All was a gray blank

of toiling days and carking cares. And Worthington had robbed him

and made him eat the bread of dependence.

He lived now only to wreak a vengeance upon the man who had shared

his father's early speculations and deserted him in his time of need.

The ruin of Everett Clayton was now explained. And but one gracious

memory lingered with him to lighten the gloom of his dependent

boyhood.

Golden-haired Alice Worthington, the child-angel of the house,

the frank girlish little playmate, the slim, shy school girl, the

"Little Sister" of his striving college days. And now she was

doomed to be the deluded prey of a vulgar money conspiracy--sold,

body and soul.

He groaned as he thought of the deliberate sacrifice of the girl's

glorious young womanhood to the vicious ambitions of her father's

mad race for wealth and power.

"Shall I warn her?" he bitterly mused. And then all his manhood

rose up against discovering a father's shame. "Never!" he cried. "I

have eaten his bread and salt. My quarrel is with him alone! Ferris

is to be the coming bridegroom. He is like all the rest--greedy of

money and power. He will surely make her a "good husband" of the

plutocratic code. Her money, his uncle's influence, bartered off

for each other, will tie them firmly together. She shall never know

from me. But I will fight Hugh Worthington a silent battle to the

death. It will be a life and death struggle under the Black Flag."

It was this oath which made Clayton resolve to now hide his own

private life slyly from all his colleagues. And it was a most

needful precaution. For one single imprudence would give to his

enemies the secret of his devotion to the dark-eyed woman whose

eyes seemed to shine through all the clouds around him.

And, strange to say, the watchful Einstein had as yet made

no report, though each night during the week Clayton had seen the

youth hovering afar, at varied times, and in strangely incongruous

changes of external adornment.

It was while Clayton was hastily packing up his bank deposits,

upon the Monday morning, which had at last arrived, young Einstein

glided into the room and drew Clayton to the door, left slightly

ajar.

"There, quick," he whispered. "Those two fellows at the elevator,

now. They have just come out from reporting to old Wade. I was in the

office, waiting for Mr. Somers to give me the last mail deposits.

"Get out and follow them," whispered Clayton. "Come to my rooms

at eight to-night. Your hundred dollars await you." The agile

lad nodded and stole out, springing down the stairs to await the

slowly-descending elevator.

"Now," growled Clayton, as he viciously snapped the lock of his

portmanteau. "I will hide my every movement from you, my marble-faced

old sleuth. You are the heir of Ferris' infamy."

And yet, as Clayton descended in the elevator, he realized that

he had no claim whatever upon Robert Wade's friendship. "He has

not betrayed me," murmured the now defiant cashier. "He is only the

human 'transmitter' in Hugh Worthington's 'long-distance telephone'

of villainy."

But, deep down in his angered heart, Clayton swore an oath to

lead them all a merry dance. "No man among them shall ever have my

confidence, and I will find a way to hide my every movement."

He would have made a total change of residence at once but for Jack

Witherspoon's friendly caution. And so he sadly dismissed a plan

to follow Irma Gluyas, to find out her real residence, and to be

near her in the hours which she could make a paradise.

He smiled as he thought of the magnificent corbeille of flowers

which he had already sent over to the Restaurant Bavaria to be

placed in the breakfast-room. He had stolen away for a quarter of

an hour to give his own directions to the grave-faced "Oberkellner,"

who was all discretion, as he pocketed Clayton's ten-dollar bill

and said, "I perfectly understand. Madame already ordered the

breakfast on Saturday. The same apartment. And you can trust to

me." The suave politeness of the well-greased palm.

There was a mild-eyed wonder in the eyes of the dashing attaches

of the Astor Place Bank as Randall Clayton entered on this fateful

Monday morning. For, with that unconscious desire to please of the

lover, Clayton's attire bespoke an unaccustomed elegance.

And yet a discreet silence was observed as the sixty thousand

dollars was transferred, and the flying fingers of the lynx-eyed

clerks filled up the dozen drafts which Clayton impatiently awaited.

In his haste Clayton hailed a passing coupe, dashed away to

the office, and quickly snapping his door after delivering over

his trust, glided down the stairs. "To the Irving Place Theater,"

ordered the impatient lover, and then the minutes seemed hours till

he had paid off his man, and then, by Fourteenth Street, hastily

entered the darkened hallway of the Restaurant Bavaria.

He was but vaguely aware of the presence of Madame Raffoni, as he

bowed low before his hostess. The incognito diva was a dream of

beauty in her ravishing Viennese morning dress. Randall Clayton

drew a new courage from Fräulein Irma's murmured remark, "Madame

Raffoni, unfortunately, speaks no English," and the young enthusiast

only noted that the ex-professional still possessed splendid eyes,

and showed the remains of a considerable personal beauty.

His whole cares fell away from him as Clayton joined in the merry

mood of his beautiful enchantress. The little dejeuner was a perfect

rapprochement, in the light-hearted happiness of the hour.

Clayton had cast aside all suspicion when he left the doors of the

Western Trading Company, and over the Liebfrauenmilch and Tokayer

he found a new eloquence. His Western stories, his European

experiences vastly interested the dark-eyed enchantress, and, led

on by the spell of those wistful eyes--Othello-like--he told her

the whole story of his life. For he stood before her, all unarmed

in his sudden love fever.

Two hours sped by in a lingering day dream, until, yielding to

his murmured entreaties, Irma Gluyas sat down at the piano, and

in thrilling half voice, sang him the songs of the far off Magyar

land.

As Merlin forgot his wisdom before the wily white-bosomed Vivien,

so did the stormy-hearted American yield to the charm of the woman

who sat there, with the choicest flowers of his offering clustered

over her sculptured breast. Love's old, old story of a total

surrender.

And then, as the last melody died away, the Hungarian witch softly

sighed, "The shadows are already stealing in! We have stolen a few

happy moments, mon ami. Ships that meet, and speak, and pass. I

will not say Adieu! I will only say that I hope to meet you again.

But your world and mine are so different. I have my career to

make, and you must go on and be a money prince. There are no other

princes in your workaday America!" Madame Raffoni was nodding in

an alcove when the enraptured Randall Clayton caught the diva's

hand. For he could not bear to lose her now; his heart clamored

for her love.

His kisses warmed its veined marble as he whispered, "I must see

you again. We two are alone in the world. I owe you a return of

your gallant hospitality."

Her bosom was heaving in a tumult of vague emotion as she whispered,

"I am fenced off from the whole world. My career depends upon my

fidelity to those who trust me. I am absolutely incognito. I live

apart from the world, and I dare not take you to my home. There

is no way. The artist has no home life, no heart life. The world

claims us; all our youth, beauty, talent, even our last energies

are given up to the insatiate public.

"You must call me back when you look at our Danube picture, and,

when the ban is lifted, if I succeed, you will hear of me. If I

fail," she brokenly murmured, "then, forget me--think of me as only

one who, a stranger in a strange land, has shared Life's cup with

you, in a gleam of passing sunshine." There were bright tears

trembling upon her down-dropped lashes.

"And I shall have nothing of you! Not even a picture," hoarsely

murmured Clayton. "I will not be denied. I shall see you again. I

will follow you!"

He was startled by the ashen pallor of her face.

"You must not! You dare not!" she cried, in a sudden agitation. "It

would mean our eternal parting! For I will not have my plighted

honor forfeit. Promise me, if you ever hope to see me again, that

you will not follow me!"

There was the ring of truth in her words, and even the accent of

fear in her appeal.

Catching at a last straw, Clayton pleaded before the word of

dismissal should fall from her trembling lips.

"I must see you again," he begged. "I leave all to you, and I swear

to obey you in all things."

The beautiful woman bowed her head in her hands.

"See how I trust you," she brightly said, meeting his glance frankly

at last. "Be at the arch in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, next Sunday

at two.

"If you have a closed carriage we can drive an hour in the park.

If we must say farewell, we can say it then. For even when I met

you first, in that crowded street, I felt that in some strange

freemasonry of Life, we were to be friends."

A single frightened, warning gesture recalled him to his senses,

as Irma pointed to her nodding companion. "You do not know how

jealous artists are.

"One single imprudence would be my professional ruin; my career

would be blasted. Trust to me! Obey me; swear that you will not

follow me, and we shall meet again, for I would not lose you from

my life." He took the roses from her bosom and kissed them.

"Go, now," she whispered, "but only that we may meet again! I have

your promise."

"Loyal to the death," swore Clayton, as he kissed her trembling

hands and then stole away, leaving her there alone with pallid lips

and a wildly beating heart.

Clayton had taken up the burden of his unfinished day's business

before the carriage left the "Bavaria," and swiftly traversing

Fourth Avenue, passed along to the Thirty-fourth Street ferry.

There was but one occupant, however, for Madame Raffoni had silently

disappeared before the diva, heavily veiled, entered the vehicle.

Clayton wondered at the protracted absence of his office boy,

ignorant that the young double spy was standing before the Restaurant

Bavaria watching Leah Einstein's furtive disappearance.

And neither the lad, astounded as his mother's unaccustomed finery,

nor the love-blinded Randall Clayton ever knew that "Madame Raffoni"

hastened to Magdal's Pharmacy to whisper to Mr. Fritz Braun tidings

which brought a surging swell of triumph into that arch plotter's

heart.

"Leah! You are a wonder, after all," was the comment of her old

lover. "Keep this whole matter quiet. Hoodwink them all! And that

pair of diamond ear-rings you dreamed of may fall your way at last!"

The poor cast-off woman swore a blind obedience to her lover once,

her tyrant still.

The adroit Timmins laughed in his heart when his employer, deliberately

closing his cabinet, left the shop an hour earlier than usual on

this particularly auspicious afternoon.

Fritz Braun's eyes gleamed viciously behind the blue glass screens

as he sedately boarded his car. "Things are coming my way at last,"

he said. "I must not hurry, I must make no mistake, and I must let

that Magyar devil fancy that she is playing this game herself, for

one false step would ruin all." And he vowed to deceive the daring

woman whom he feared to curb. "She shall work my will and not know

the finale in the third act."

The office doors of the Western Trading Company closing, one by

one, with a resounding clang, awoke Randall Clayton from day dreams

which he dared not break off.

The office boy had not returned when Clayton, now on guard against

every one in the employ of the Western robber baron, went out into

the crowds pressing homewards.

He had given up, in a mad impulse, the whole faith of his unspent

life to the woman who had whispered, "Go now, that we may meet

again."

The thrilling accents of her voice, sweet and low, seemed to vibrate

in his soul, and so, hugging his darling secret to his heart, he

vowed to baffle Worthington's spies. "For her," he murmured, "I

will outwit them all."

No shade of suspicion rested upon the lovely image dwelling now on

the throne of his heart. For in the matchless beauty of her delicate

face he saw only the royal mint stamp of a noble soul. He had called

her to his side out of all New York's thronging thousands, by the

mute appeal of his lonely, longing eyes. It was Nature's mesmerism.

And as that grand hailing sign had been answered by Fate's decree,

he was blind to the pathway leading on. For, in his fond conceit,

he only knew Worthington and Ferris as enemies.

With a restless impatience, he awaited the coming of his office boy

after he had trifled the time away over his dinner at the Imperial.

Leaning back in his chair, he keenly watched the voluble lad, in a

growing wonder, as Einstein triumphantly recalled every detail of

his master's evening movements of the past week.

"I didn't get on to them well, sir," concluded Emil, "but the last

two nights one or the other of them has kept you in sight all the

while.

"Daly's, the Imperial, Hammerstein's, the Waldorf, up where you

bought your outing goods, down to Proctor's, up the Boulevard to

the Colonial Club, they piped you off. You see I only got familiar

with them after a few nights. But now I have them dead to rights."

"And where did they go from there?" growled Clayton. "After they

reported to the old man," irreverently answered Einstein, "they

went together down to the Fidelity Company. I followed them in and

brought away a card. That's all, sir!"

Randall Clayton paced the floor in silence a few moments. Then,

taking out his pocketbook, he handed the eager youth a hundred-dollar

bill. "Keep this matter all to yourself, Emil," he gravely said.

"I will let you off now for a couple of weeks. Then I will take

you on again and will see if these 'spotters' are still on duty.

I will look out for you, and see you promoted."

When the boy had departed, Randall Clayton sank back in his chair.

"Whatever happens," he musingly decided, "I will never expose Irma

to the dangers of this espionage. They may have other agents by

day, who knows! And, if I wish to safely meet her, it must be over

there."

His thought were wandering far away across the black, flowing tide

of the East River, where the Brooklyn Bridge was now traced in line

of living light against the darkness of night.

Over there, beyond the gloomy river warehouses, with their forests

of masts, across the swiftly rushing tide seeking the unknown sea,

the graceful Queen of his awakened heart was hidden from him. "I

shall find her out; nothing shall part us; she shall hear me yet;

she shall learn to look for my coming, and she shall open the gates

of her home to me. Her heart shall beat against my own."

For, in all the sweep of a lover's imagination, he only saw her,

at the end of the veiled pathway, with love lighting her softly

shining eyes, and her beloved hand waving him on.

While he still wandered in a Fool's Paradise, the crafty office boy

was hastening across the great span which hangs its curving arch

from Manhattan to Long Island.

Einstein was driven on by his gnawing greed of money. "Fritz must

know this at once," he muttered. These business detective fellows

are dangerous, and could easily break up his little game.

"For if Clayton gets into any trouble, out he goes! There's no

money in him then, and he's no good to Fritz Braun, no more to me.

This news ought to fetch me a couple of twenties if well played."

It was ten o'clock when Emil Einstein sprang down the stairway of

the eastern terminus of the Brooklyn Bridge. The lad was blithe at

heart as he turned to the left and, passing through the seething

press of the crowds congested under the electric lights of Sands

and Fulton Streets, carefully reconnoitered a gorgeous saloon on

the corner of Layte and Dale Streets.

Einstein peered in through the two swinging doors of the front,

and then betook himself to the side entrance on Dale Street, where

the "Family Entrance," the private corridor, and one or two halls

admitted him to the restaurant, card rooms and private rooms of the

ground floor of the five-story corner brick building. The youth

recoiled, after a peep through a ground glass door left ajar, at

the glories of the main hall of the famous "Valkyrie" saloon.

"What am I to do?" he mused, as he lit his cigarette in a dark

doorway outside, parrying the coarse advances of two fleeting Cyprians

with a retort which brought the blood to their cheeks, leaping up

under the plastered rouge. "I've been forbidden to call him out of

192; he and my mother are both now fooling the Duchess; I am playing

a double game with Clayton, and, by Hokey, old Wade's watchful men

may drop on to me. I may lose the best job in New York if these

people get all tangled up. What the devil is going on, anyway?"

He crossed the street and gazed up at the glaring red pressed-brick

walls of the Valkyrie corner. All the two score of windows on Dale

Street, and the score on Layte Street were closely guarded with

solid shutters of a green hue.

"God knows what deviltry is going on here," muttered the lad, a coward

at heart. There were fleeting figures of veiled women gliding past

him through the dim entrances, the refluent stream of the Devil's

daughters.

Down the gloomy side street the blue gleam of the pitiless river

showed light against the somber night, the yellow blinking lights

of the tugs flitting about like corpse candles.

In the dark shadows of the involved angular corners, thug and ghoul

lurked until midnight should bring them their prey, the careless

roysterer, or the belated prosperous citizen. Out on Layte Street

the flashy throng was still pouring toward the Fulton Ferry.

"I wonder if I dare," mused the lad, as he walked around the corner

and paused before No. 192 Layte Street. The sober splendor of the

richly decorated old five-story brownstone told of the vanished

glories of the ante-bellum days.

A stately mansion in whose halls there had been royal cheer in the

departed days when Brooklyn had its proud burghers and New York its

simple citizens of worth. But the pressure of commerce, the havoc

of the bridge construction, the onrush of warehouse, shop, and the

pressure of the street railway octopus had left the sedate mansion

a relic of better days in an incongruous medley of little shops,

doubtful lodging-houses, vile man-traps, and clustering saloons.

Here the Juggernaut car of King Alcohol was rolling on remorselessly,

crushing out all life save the frenzied dream of the dipsomaniac.

But the lad paused and shook his head as he noted the windows of

the old English basement tightly barred. The parlor floor, bearing

the gilded sign, "Parisian Millinery Repository," was darkened, and,

above, the three upper floors presented only an array of undraped

windows solidly shut off by white-enamelled inside folding blinds.

The decorous-looking main entrance bore but one card, in script,

"Raffoni, Musical Director."

For years the neighborhood had forgotten its curiosity over the

foreign-looking men and women who passed the vigilant Cerberus at

the stately oaken door. No daring book-agent, no pedlar of indurated

cheek, no outside barbarian had ever crossed that guarded portal,

for a brass chain of impregnable strength prevented any intrusion,

and only a glimpse of the old tesselated marble floor rewarded the

frightened interloper.

It was "No Thoroughfare" to the multitude, and the quaint visitors

were either personally conducted or used latch-keys.

The over-fed policeman sucking his club in front of 192 Layte only

smiled in answer to vague inquiry, "Private house, belongs to old

family estate, people in Europe," and then with a leer would drop

into the "Valkyrie" for a fistful of good cigars and a flask of

the very best.

The timid young scoundrel lingering before 192 on this fresh,

starry night was the only "outsider" who knew what deadly master

mind controlled the mysteries of the "Valkyrie" saloon and 192

Layte Street, its sedate neighbor.

The particular use of the "fake" millinery repository, the hidden

life of the upper floors of the old mansion, were only known to

the man whom Emil Einstein feared to meet in anger.

But in the Devil's auction of the corner building, man, woman and

child were knocked down to the highest bidder, for the hell-minted

price of human souls.

Gambler, crook and thief; wanton, decoy and badger; racing tout,

fugitive, smuggler, and counterfeiter; lottery sharp and green-goods

man, all welcomed the white, red and blue lights gleaming over the

"Valkyrie" saloon as the harbor-lights of their safe port in any

storm.

"I have it," muttered Einstein, as he boldly threw open the swinging

half door of the "Valkyrie." Shading his eyes in the flood of

garish light, he gazed around at the twenty round tables. Six alert

barkeepers lurked in front of the superb mirrors behind the rich

walnut counters gleaming with crystal and silver.

The music of the Orchestrion bore away on its flood of Strauss

waltzes the shrill chatter of women's laughter in the inside hell

of the private rooms.

Opening doors admitted fragments of poker gabble as the white-aproned

waiters rushed around with their trays of drinks.

With artful geography of arrangement, gaudy women from the side

street, at tables, were parading their too evident charms before

the crowd of clerks, men about town, warrant officers, railroad

employees, old roués, sporting men and belated "slummers" who leered

at every arrival of "fresh fish."

Young Einstein, scribbling the single word "Emil" on a card, approached

the parchment-faced German lad who sat in state, manipulating the

bewildering keys of the "Cash Register."

"Send this to the boss at once," said Einstein in a low voice.

"You can't see him," contemptuously announced the insolent

Jack-in-office, tossing back the card. He scented a possible

successor in this vulpine-looking young stranger. But Einstein

resolutely came back to the charge. "It's his business, and he'll

jerk you out of your job if you throw me down. I will not stir a

step till I see him. Send it up."

And Emil made a significant gesture with a defiant thumb.

Audacity carried the day! Young Einstein, coolly purchasing

a Regalia and seating himself at a table, grinned a last defiance

as a "Kellner" finally touched his arm and led him into a vacant

card-room.

Down a stairway came the sounding tread of a heavy man, and Einstein

was in the presence of Mr. Fritz Braun.

"It's about him, Clayton," faltered the boy, awed at his employer's

lowering face.

"Come with me," harshly said Braun, as he led the lad up to the

third floor. When they had entered a rear sleeping-room, Braun

locked the door. "Tell me all," he anxiously cried. "Out with it.

If you lie you'll never leave this house, remember!"

With chattering teeth, the lad delivered himself of his discovery.

It was only after half an hour of cross questioning that Braun was

satisfied with the details of Robert Wade's espionage of Randall

Clayton. "You've done well, for yourself," said Braun, at last,

handing the boy a roll of bills. "But never come here again. I'll

give you an address to-morrow where you can call, telephone or

telegraph, and a name. Post me on all. Keep this from your mother.

I'll handle her myself. Now, by day you can slip over to the store,

by night use the new address. Get home now. Go over the ferry."

He filled the boy's hand with loose silver. "I'll stay here. Speak

to no one. Get out quickly by the side door."

Emil Einstein was safely across the Fulton Ferry before he had

realized the startling change in Fritz Braun's appearance. The flowing

golden beard, the blue glasses, the padded clothes of middle-age

cut were gone. Fritz Braun, lithe, sharp-faced, with piercing eyes,

a dashing cavalry mustache, and dapper Wall Street tailoring, was

twenty years younger, and another man.

His diamond jewels, rakish air and "loose fish" manner bespoke the

flush book-maker or the flashy "boss."

"Here's for a night on the Bowery," gleefully cried Einstein,

counting his Judas gains, while he tried to forget Fritz Braun's

lightning change.

That dapper gentleman, stepping into a closet, passed swiftly

through the door from the Valkyrie into 192 Layte Street. His

hidden pool-room, gambling den and exchange for soul and body was

temporarily forgotten by "Mr. August Meyer," owner of the peerless

"Valkyrie Saloon."

"I'll get a carriage and drive over to Irma," he growled. "She must

never cross the river again. We must lead him over here; but how?

Perhaps the pretty devil can help me. I must throw Wade off the

track. Irma can fool this young greenhorn. The job must be done

over there. For a fortune, for his life or mine; and he must be

teased along till the July holidays."

Then Mr. August Meyer of Brooklyn proceeded to leisurely array

himself as a clubman of fashion.

CHAPTER V.

BREAKERS AHEAD! CHECKMATE! MR. ARTHUR FERRIS WORKS IN THE DARK.

Randall Clayton was an enigma in his altered personal bearing

to his old confrères when he entered the manager's office at his

summons on a balmy afternoon of the dying days of June.

The two months since Jack Witherspoon's departure had changed the

frank young fellow into a taciturn man of feline secretiveness. The

discovery of Worthington's treachery, the knowledge of the dogging

spies at his heels, had been a suddenly transforming influence. He

now ardently burned for the return of his one confidant, for the

annual election was but a few days distant.

The ripening summer was coming on fast. On Fifth Avenue the delicate,

haughty-faced young Princesses of Mammon now bore the June blush

roses in their slender pitiless hands. The annual hegira pleasureward

was beginning.

And as yet only Randall Clayton's burning eyes marked the conflict

raging in his soul. But he longed to leap into the open, and boldly

defy Worthington. For a new purpose had stolen upon him in these

weeks--the sudden desire for wealth.

He craved money for but one object--to cast it at the feet of

Irma Gluyas and then to bear her away from a world of lies to the

storied Danube, where woman's rosy lip rests in clinging transports

upon lips speaking the wild love of the gallant Magyar land. He

now knew the power of wealth. Clayton had become as secretive as

the young Pawnee on his first warpath. He was now watching the

enemy's camp and awaiting the moves of both the guilty employer

and false friend.

Through the still subsidized Einstein he knew that the bootless

espionage upon his leisure hours had been given up at last. He had

baffled his enemies.

It had not been done by fear of the clumsy artifices of Robert

Wade, but a desire born of his overmastering love for Irma, to

guard her every footstep. His heart melted in its memories of that

crowning hour of the avowal of his love, when she had whispered,

"I dare not take you to my home! Wait, Randall, wait, and trust

all to me."

Two months past had seen him plunging deeper into the mad love,

more blindly, every day, sinking into the hungry passion, waxing

into a fond delirium, under the artful orders of a veiled Mokanna.

"You must lead him on, far as you can; make him forget everything

in the world but yourself; promise him all, and grant him nothing."

A thousand plans had been revolved by Clayton for the future, but

the delicious thralldom of his love drew him to Irma Gluyas as the

moon draws the sea.

It had been his own jealous lover heart which bade her meet him in

all distant places, but to always shun the city with Wade's baffled

spies still on the watch.

For once, the orders of the double traitor Einstein were identical,

as neither the artful Braun nor the anxious lover cared to risk

the dangers of Irma's face meeting the gaze of the watchful Wade.

In a guarded silence the young cashier awaited Mr. Robert Wade's

official action on this June afternoon. He was only vaguely

aware by rumor that Hugh Worthington and Miss Alice still lingered

somewhere on the Pacific Coast.

There had been no further word from Arthur Ferris, and the

all-important election was but a week distant now. Clayton keenly

watched the solemn-faced manager as he drew out some papers from

a bulky envelope. There was but one phase in his now double life

of which Clayton naturally feared the exposure.

Warned by Witherspoon, Clayton had watched the steady rise of the

Western Trading Company's stock, week by week, during the absence

of the arbiter of its destinies. His veins were filled with the

tide of a new-born passion.

Clayton had boldly risked all his savings in the margining of

large blocks of the stock, dealing constantly through a Wall Street

friend.

Three times he had fortunately turned over his capital since

Witherspoon had unveiled the scheme to draw in a majority of the

shares, and he was now sixteen thousand dollars to the good. Even

after lavishing a goodly part of his gains upon the mysterious

diva, in every fantastic way possible, in their stealthy meetings,

Clayton still had pyramided his capital and now was sure of another

harvest. And he only wondered at the reluctance with which the

lovely Hungarian accepted the jewels thrust upon her.

"I will sell out the day before the election," mused Clayton, as

he awaited the manager's slow mental processes. "Then I can even

stand a discharge," he defiantly thought.

The young man's face paled suddenly as Wade handed him a telegram

addressed in the care of the manager. "When you have carefully read

this," said Wade, "I will give you Mr. Worthington's own ideas,

from his confidential instructions to me."

Conscious that he was now environed in the house of his enemies,

Randall Clayton sat for some time there, silently pondering the

suddenness of a proposal which affected his whole future career.

"You are wanted as general superintendent of all of our Western

ranches. Headquarters at Cheyenne. Please telegraph acceptance,

and meet Ferris at Cheyenne in four days. He leaves to-day. Answer.

Wade has my full instructions."

The blood surged back to Randall Clayton's heart in a defiant flood.

"They know nothing; but I'll hear him out."

It was twenty minutes before the manager had finished the explanation

of the measure proposed and had dilated upon the advance of salary,

the future prospects, and all the ultimate benefits of the parties

to this autocratically suggested change. "He has been secretly

coached up by Ferris," thought the suspicious Clayton. But he gave

no sign of his secret distrust.

"Of course," purringly remarked Robert Wade, "it is a little sudden;

but I am authorized to make you a half year's salary allowance for

first expenses and outfit, and so you can easily get away to-morrow

night. That will bring you out to Cheyenne in time to meet Ferris,

and then get your instructions. He is coming on to look at the annual

accounts and give Mr. Worthington's views as to your successor."

Wade pushed over a telegraph blank. "Just write out your telegram,

and I will send it on at once. You will accept, of course."

Randall Clayton had schooled himself since Jack Witherspoon's

departure in every defensive measure against the secret plotters.

And so his voice was suave and measured as he simply said, "I think,

Mr. Wade, that I shall have to regretfully decline this promotion.

I am perfectly well satisfied as I am. I know nothing of the details

of our great Western business. I have forgotten the frontier now."

The lines in Wade's face hardened. "Is that your only reason? You

will soon pick up the technique!"

Clayton stood the fire of the vulpine gray eyes without a quiver.

Jack Witherspoon's warning injunctions returned to his mind. "Look

out, my boy, that they don't get you sidetracked in some lonely

place. They would kill you like a rat if our design to uncover

the past was ever discovered."

Clayton but too well knew how easily a man could be lost forever out

in the Black Hills, or along the lonely Platte. "It is their grand

final move before bringing out Ferris as the new-made capitalist.

My life would not be worth a pin-head. And Witherspoon would be

far away out of reach. Irma lost to me forever!"

The jealous lover could almost see the crowded opera-house and

hear that now familiar witching voice. He knew that men would

bow before her beauty; that flowers, jewels, flattery and fortune

would be showered upon her. The hungry "upper ten" pine for new

victims with unsatisfied maw. He had already dedicated his coming

fortune to her; she should be his heart-queen, and together they

would go back and buy the old family castle, whose legends had

fallen from her lips in the stolen hours of the long love trysts

of the last two months.

"I cannot accept this flattering offer, Mr. Wade," resolutely said

the young man, who now saw a steely anger in the manager's eyes.

"I have given the flower of my youth to Mr. Worthington's service;

but this is a total change, a sudden break-up of all my private

plans. I beg that you will at once telegraph him my respectful

declination."

Clayton rose with a look on his face which completed Wade's thorough

annoyance. "Stop, sir; stop! Think before you throw away all your

chances in life! You can have a whole day to think this over. Would

you forfeit Mr. Worthington's regard and so lose your place?"

There was a strident anger in the manager's harsh voice. But Clayton,

realizing that he had even till now not been able to gain Irma's

pictured face, looked forward to the heart-wreck of this enforced

absence. "If I am to be cast out like a dog after my faithful

service, then you must do it, sir," gravely said Clayton, Witherspoon's

warnings returning to stiffen his resolution. "Why not await Mr.

Ferris' arrival? I may be able to reach Mr. Worthington's second

thoughts through him." The agent of the two far off conspirators

lost his self-control at last.

"I'll await nothing," roared Robert Wade. "That will do, sir!" And

as the defiant Clayton retired, the manager rang for a telegraph

boy.

"I have given them checkmate," mused Clayton, as he snapped his

door behind him. "Their plans probably included making away with

me, out West, after Ferris has done his work and returns to openly

claim Alice's hand. It is a fight for my life now. I must reach

Irma at once. I must tell her all."

Suddenly he thought of the future. His heart sickened. "Wade will

undoubtedly recommend my discharge. If Jack fails me, I am then

to be cast out in the streets, and the influence of the Trust will

surely keep me from holding any other position longer than they

can find out where to reach me."

He absently broke the seals of a couple of letters dropped on his

desk in his brief absence.

He sprang up, a new man, as he read Jack Witherspoon's few words.

The missive was dated from Paris. It bore in its light-hearted

chatter a few words which sealed his fate in life.

"Am coming home at once. Will be with you in ten days. Let nothing

prevent our meeting in New York. Will act instantly in your matter.

Have had private news. They were secretly married a month ago at

Tacoma. Be on your guard!"

Seizing his hat, Randall Clayton hurried away to the nearest

telegraph office, where he felt safe from Robert Wade's spies.

"Thank God for Irma's wit," he said, in his heart, as he sent the

veiled words which would bring her to that quiet hotel on Staten

Island, where, among Richmond's leafy bowers, they now defied all

possible detection. It had been her own plan. The long weeks of

Clayton's complete self-surrender had brought about no forward step

in Irma Gluyas' intimacy.

The still silent Madame Raffoni was the careful guardian of the

veiled beauty, and Clayton, loyal to a frenzy of romantic faith,

had never broken his promise.

For he lived only now in Irma's whispered promise, "Wait, and trust

to me. You shall come to me as soon as I can break my bonds. It

shall be then you and I, for the rest of our days, if Love still

holds the helm."

It was long after midnight when the defiant lover returned to his

apartment. The Magyar witch had finally learned the last secret

of his honest heart, and with clinging arms had whispered through

her kisses, "If you leave me, Randall, it is the death of our love."

And, trusting blindly to his honest love, Clayton wagered his life

upon a woman's faith.

Under the door of his room lay a yellow envelope, and as the now

resolute man read it he smiled grimly. "Victory!" he cried, for

Ferris' words assured him of a coming triumph, a crown of life and

love. It seemed that Irma's love had conquered after all.

"Await me in New York. I think that we can arrange all for your

remaining as you are." The signature was that of the artful Ferris.

"And I think that Jack and I can handle you, my false friend!"

sneered Clayton.

While the young lover read the words which gave him a new hope, far

across the Brooklyn Bridge, Mr. Fritz Braun, in his own private

lair, was pondering over the words of Madame Raffoni, who had just

left the man who was the iron tyrant of her soiled life.

"I must give him a little more line! And I must either land the

fish now or lose him forever."

There was a steely gleam in the sleepless eyes of him who pondered

upon his clouded pathway. "It must be done! And she must help in

some way. She holds the winning cards now. Nothing else will draw

him!"

The masquerading criminal was almost desperate. It had been his

by-play for years to play at hide and seek with humanity, using his

duplex characters at first to throw off any pursuit of the Vienna

police; and, later, to hide his nefarious operations on the New

York side.

Greedy for money, before Irma Gluyas had been driven to his arms by

adverse fortunes, Fritz Braun had at first made his refuge at the

"Valkyrie," then owned by Ludwig Sohmer, whose passion for "playing

the races" had at last dragged him down.

The Viennese fugitive diligently plied his erstwhile patron with

drink and smilingly enmeshed the brutish peasant-bred Sohmer in a

series of compounded loans.

It was not long until all the employees recognized in the alert

"August Meyer" the mainstay of the decaying fortunes of the half

bankrupt Sohmer.

Every evening, without fail, the sharp commands of Fritz Braun

were now conveyed to the responsible underlings! Sohmer, staggering

homeward with his greedy Aspasias from the Waterloo conflicts of

the race-track, sullenly assented at last to the chattel mortgages

and bills of sale which placed the "Valkyrie" and the whole building

under August Meyer's name. Then, taking the downward road, Sohmer

tried to drown himself in drink, and succeeded.

When Sohmer was found dead in his bed, the millionaire brewer who

backed the "Valkyrie," and the owner of the ground on which the

building erected by Sohmer stood, gladly took on the active August

Meyer in loco the departed Sohmer.

The solidity of the new tenant's finances was vouched for by the

agents of the old estate from whom Fritz Braun had already leased

192 Layte Street, in his Brooklyn name of "August Meyer."

Strange to say, the keen-eyed officials of the German Consulate-General

had issued to the acute pharmacist a regular passport, upon the

military and family papers of Braun's poor soldier drudge at the

Magdal Pharmacy.

It had been an exchange acceptable to both parties: an ocean

of drink, a weekly pittance of food and raiment, for the valuable

attested documents which gave the disguised Viennese fugitive the

right to boldly claim the Kaiser's official protection as "August

Meyer." It was the very citadel of Braun's rising fortunes!

And so, with Sohmer soundly sleeping, whether well or illy, "after

life's fitful fever," the foxy Viennese rejoiced in his assigned

ground-lease, Sohmer's business, and the gold mine of the hidden

pool-room, gambling den and disguised harem of No. 192 Layte Street.

Fritz Braun had allowed a few months to pass before he secretly

opened the party walls between the two buildings to allow his

choicest patrons to enter No. 192 Layte Street all unobserved; but,

for reasons of his own, he had made one or two private alterations

in the two buildings which enabled him to enter the different floors

by his own judiciously veiled private entrances.

The cellar of No. 192 Layte Street had been piped for cold-storage

of the wines and beer of the "Valkyrie" under Fritz Braun's own

supervision when he gave up the basement of the "Valkyrie" to the

kitchens of the restaurant, which drew the attractive women of the

quarter into the safest possible association with their victims

crowding the "Valkyrie" saloon.

A vigilant business man, August Meyer came each evening to settle

the days' affairs and personally watch the money mill next door,

which ran noiselessly on golden wheels from nine o'clock till

midnight.

No one had Meyer's confidence; he left no tell-tale papers to connect

him with the gruff pharmacist of Sixth Avenue, and at midnight he

always vanished to his own private home, a diligently guarded terra

incognita to all men.

A sphinx-like "Oberkellner" received the orders of the proprietor

each evening; a steward of equal taciturnity "ran" the restaurant,

and August Meyer himself, with autocratic power, directed the

villainous operations of No. 192 Layte Street.

Popular with the police, exact in his monthly settlements with the

ground landlords and the despotic brewery king, Fritz Braun avoided

both the failings which had wrecked the golden fortunes of the dead

Sohmer.

But, alas! no man is equally strong against all temptations. Deaf

to woman's wail; brutal and heartless; too fearful of his past

record to give himself up to the bowl, Fritz Braun, blasé and tired

of every side of human life, had drifted easily into the desperate

craze of the insatiate gambler.

It was months after he had found No. 192 Layte Street to be

a never-failing mint, when Braun became fascinated with the whirr

of the roulette ball, the varying chances of the faro box, and, at

last, the fine peculiarities of "unlimited poker" swept away his

once callous prudence.

Night after night, in the grim quartette of a ruinously high game,

August Meyer "held his hand" recklessly, while a street railroad

magnate, a millionaire importer, and a reigning politician swept

away the revenues of the "Valkyrie." He was rolling the stone of

Sysiphus up hill now. He had forged his own ruin.

Alone in the world, a desperate Ishmael, Fritz Braun needed the

secret protection of these powerful plutocrats. Silently he had

suffered his huge losses, waiting for the luck to turn, and now, on

the eve of his great coup of criminal sagacity, he awoke at last

to his own imperiled fortunes, and yet he feared to own that he

dared not cease gambling, that he could not "throw up his hand."

And, by one of the fantastic turns of luck which haunt even

the safest "dealing" games, he had seen the tide of Fortune turn

viciously against his banking dealers several times. The "bank"

had been broken at several of his tables until he had hypothecated

all his reserve securities. Ruin stared him in the face, for it

had come at last.

Possessed of his regular passport, safe now in any voyage in Germany,

the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, in Russia, Fritz Braun

had long desired to break off his slavery to the "painted ladies"

of the cards.

He had always kept some jewels of great value with him as a final

reserve, and a nest-egg of a few thousands deposited in a Frankfort

banking-house, with whose New York agents he had effected many

clearings of considerable size.

Fate was now swiftly sweeping him along, he knew not whither, and

on this night of discontent he bitterly calculated the chances of

a stormy future.

"Ten thousand dollars only left, and whatever more my jewels will

bring," he growled. "I am safe enough, though. Timmins can run the

pharmacy, and the brewery will put an agent in here if I say that

I need a few months' rest abroad."

"But there's Irma to be got rid of! If she does not help me to

this one crowning stroke of luck, then I've either got to put her

out of the way or take her with me. She knows my one dangerous

secret."

A busy devil in his heart whispered an excellent suggestion. He

grinned in self-satisfied malignity. "Yes! That's the trick! If I

win we'll take a Hoboken steamer together. Any one of our smuggling

stewards and agents over there will take care of us on the way

over.

"If I lose, she must go with me; and there are a few lonely lakes

in Norway, a few deep fiords with leaping waterfalls. I might lose

her there, and only that coward Lilienthal would perhaps suspect.

He would have to keep his mouth shut, for he has his own tracks

to cover, and he would easily believe that the pretty jade has run

off and left me. And he fears publicity.

"As for Leah, she loves me blindly, with a dog's fidelity; her boy

will be true to his dam and drift on in silence--a sharp scoundrel!

The world is an easy oyster for him to open.

"If--if I lose Irma, I'll have Leah over there with me. My passport

as August Meyer makes me invincible."

And the scheming villain threw himself down to dream of a stroke of

luck which should make him safe in Northern Europe, in the assumed

character of "August Meyer," a second self which fitted him like a

Guardsman's uniform. "I can easily play off a long sickness, turn

over the leases, and the brewer will run the 'Valkyrie.' My one

hope and fear is Irma. If she pulls this off I'll fix her; yes,

I'll fix her!"

He drifted away into a land of dreams, a far-off land, where,

under the black shadows of the Norway firs, he could see the gleam

of white hands thrown up despairingly in the icy waters. It was a

fiend's prophecy of a nameless horror to come.

When Randall Clayton noticed the returning suavity of Manager Robert

Wade's demeanor on the days ensuing the abortive attempt to lure

the young cashier out West, he vowed to redouble his own crafty

policy of secret resistance. It all seemed so clear to him now.

"Wade and Ferris wish to conceal the marriage until the election

is over. I would be exposed, perhaps even here, to their deadly

resentment if I openly rebelled.

"But once that Jack Witherspoon is back, and Ferris anchored here,

Jack can go on and face old Worthington. I will affect ignorance,

and then a brief campaign of victory will put Irma in my arms."

Startled by Einstein's revelations, Randall Clayton had carefully

removed every scrap of his private papers from his apartments, and

his little fortune, his stocks and personal archives, were all safe

in a down-town Safe Deposit.

The address and all the details of the Trust were lying in a sealed

envelope in the safe of Jack Witherspoon's club, in Detroit, awaiting

that legal champion's return.

And so, his heart thrilled with the fear of losing the Hungarian

singer, Randall Clayton made friends with all in the office until

his friend and enemy should pass each other in New York City.

The business and social atmosphere had visibly cleared before the

day of the annual election came on.

Clayton's eyes were now fixed only on his friend Witherspoon,

whose steamer was now picking him up at Boulogne. The approach of

the Fourth of July, with a triple holiday--Saturday, Sunday and

Monday--caused Clayton to toil, early and late, in the vast annual

settlements of the end of the fiscal year. It was upon the basis

of the settlement of June 30th that the reports of July 1st, the

annual election, were to be made.

But one thought now filled Clayton's agitated heart.

It was Irma Gluyas' future. Her resolute policy of holding him off

had inflamed Clayton's lover ardor to an overmastering passion.

Gallant and loyal, he had taken her at her own word. The unconventional

artist life, her romantic early history, her foreign birth, her

carefully veiled coming début, all this conspired to cover the

singular reticence of the diva as to her home life.

He never had demanded her whole heart confidence, for he had been

forced to veil from her his hopes of winning a fortune by one fell

swoop upon the astounded Worthington.

"And then," murmured the passionate, heated lover, "I can tell her

all. I can give her a home, the power of wealth to set my jewel

off, and there shall be nothing hidden between us."

From first to last he had concealed nothing from her, save the

mechanism of the short, sharp struggle which was to make him almost

a millionaire, if Jack Witherspoon's bold plan succeeded.

It had been for her sake as well as his own that the veiled star,

Irma Gluyas, had laughingly searched the map of New York and vicinity

to find places of safe meeting.

To avoid Robert Wade's spies, to preserve Irma's incognito, they

had exhausted the "lions" of every Long Island, Staten Island,

and New Jersey village. They had canvassed every place of resort

within fifty miles of New York City.

With a dumb fidelity Madame Raffoni had accompanied her beautiful

charge. There was a wholesome innocence in these strangely arranged

stolen interviews.

Clayton often searched that lovely face to read what malign influence

kept her from opening her whole life to him.

But it all seemed so clear. Her wild artist nature yearned for the

honors of a world's applause; it was agreed between them that, be

it opera season or concert tour, that, once success was achieved,

the eclipse of Love should hide her from the eager moths who flutter

around the risen star.

"She trusts me; I have not told her all. When I can give her

my whole life and a fortune," thought Clayton, "then I shall say,

'Irma, open the sealed books. There must be nothing hidden between

us.'"

With a serene confidence in Madame Raffoni, Randall Clayton always

came home alone and by circuitous routes, artfully varied, from

these strange trysts.

This stolen time seemed all too short to speak of their future,

gilded by a love which thrived strangely in the difficulties

besetting the strangely-met couple.

Clayton's mind was unclouded by suspicion. He had given his whole

destiny over to the keeping of the small blue-veined hands, which

lingered so lovingly on his heated brow. His watchfulness was only

turned upon Robert Wade's disgruntled spies.

From the heavily subsidized Einstein, Clayton gleefully learned that

the weekly "report" of one or the other of the Fidelity Company's

men consisted of a morose shake of the head and the single word,

"Nothing!"

The cashier laughed at Emil's report of Wade's accidentally overheard

angry growl, "Where the devil does he keep himself, any way?"

For Love had taught Clayton a strange, new craft, and he easily

outwitted the two brutes who always came to "report" during his

bank absences, and had vainly rifled his deserted rooms during his

long Sunday and evening absences.

There was no tell-tale clue in the lonely apartment, where the dust

of many long weeks had gathered in Arthur Ferris' vacant rooms.

Unable to absent himself on the near approach of the great annual

settlement, driven at last to extremity, Randall Clayton arranged

his last meeting with Irma, before the return of Ferris and

Witherspoon, at Manhattan Beach.

For the summer boats were already running, and, on the broad piazzas

of the Oriental they could safely meet.

It was so easy for Madame Raffoni to pilot the incognito diva by

the railway to the Manhattan Hotel. A double veil and a judiciously

fringed sunshade would make Irma Gluyas impregnable to the flaneur.

"Alas! The days of Aranjuez are over," sighed Clayton, for this

tryst of Thursday was to be followed by the election on Friday.

As yet Arthur Ferris had given no sign of his impending arrival.

Some gloomy foreboding weighed down Randall Clayton's soul with a

fear of coming disaster. He felt how powerless he was in the hands

of the cruel conspirators who had robbed him of his fortune.

He never doubted that Senator Durham and the treacherous Ferris

both possessed Hugh Worthington's dastardly secret, and that they

all stood ready to crush him.

The innocent four-line advertisement of the annual election had

been duly inserted in the obscure corners of certain fourth-class

journals, "as required by law."

There was an oily grin upon Robert Wade's self-satisfied face,

and, with no single word from Worthington or Ferris, Clayton felt

the toils closing around him. He was left out of the game--a mere

poor pawn.

It was on the night before his five-o'clock tryst at the Manhattan,

when Clayton suddenly sprang from his chair. "By God! I have it!" he

cried. "Old Wade has failed to trap me. Ferris, the smug scoundrel,

will glide back here and try to steal into my intimacy. He can post

his slyly posted spies. I cannot then keep him off. And he will

reiterate Worthington's plans, cling to me, and run me to earth. He

will take up his Judas trade, and either trap me or else, baffled,

will telegraph Worthington and have me discharged. Why has

he concealed this secret marriage? And, damnation! I cannot ever

meet Jack Witherspoon in private without giving myself away. I must

have some one meet Witherspoon at the steamer and arrange for one

meeting out of town. He must go over to Philadelphia and await me.

I can take an evening train over, and be back here, even if Ferris

hangs on my track. I will go out alone, as if to the theater, and

then turn up belated. Ferris must not know. It is for my life, for

Irma, and for my fortune that I struggle now. My God! Whom can I

trust now, and they have poisoned Alice's mind against me. I see

their damned villainy. Poor Little Sister! Another man's wife now.

She will never know."

In his lover's second sight Randall Clayton had really stumbled

on the artful measure by which the old Croesus had deliberately

shifted Alice Worthington's love for her old-time playmate.

Over his gold-bowed spectacles, Hugh Worthington, the "surviving

partner," had sadly read aloud the details of Randall Clayton's

"New York career." "Forget him, Alice," the old man sternly said.

"He has fallen on evil ways." "And yet you still keep him in your

employ, father?" answered the clear-eyed girl, her wondering glances

gleaming out under a brow of truth.

"Yes, yes!" harshly said the startled old miser. "But it must soon

come to an end. I have delayed the inevitable. But he must go. You

are right; he must go."

And with this colloquy by the far Pacific, the old man dropped

Randall Clayton's soiled memory, while the despoiled heir had turned

at bay to fight for his own.

While Randall Clayton paced his lonely rooms in Manhattan, gazing

sadly on the glowing Danube scene, there was a woman seated in

a shaded corner of the old library of the lonely mansion on Layte

Street. The second drawing-room and library on the ground floor

were a dream of luxury. It had once pleased Mr. Fritz Braun to make

them worthy of a Sultana.

And he stood there now, regarding the graceful figure of one whose

head was hidden in her hands.

The diamonds on the adventurer's bosom flashed fitfully in the

yellow gaslight, as he slowly said, "And now you know all your

part. Will you play it?"

Irma Gluyas sprang to her feet and clutched his arms with a

despairing clasp. "Swear to me that no harm shall come to him!"

Fritz Braun growled an assent. "Not a hand shall be laid on him. I

swear it!" And then, through falling tears, the Magyar witch gave

her word to do her master's bidding. She had glided from the room

before the man started, as the street door clashed and the roll

of wheels was heard. He poured out a draught of brandy and threw

himself into a chair. "One week more and I would be too late. I

must hoodwink her!"

BOOK II.

AN INSIDE RING.

CHAPTER VI.

DREAMING BY THE SEA.

Five o'clock on Thursday afternoon found Mr. Randall Clayton

hovering around the grounds of the more democratic Hotel Manhattan,

while the early birds of fashion sought the more pretentious splendor

of the Oriental.

There was an anxious look upon the young man's face, and deep hollows

under his eyes told of unaccustomed vigils. A couple of wandering

peris gazed wishfully at the hand bundle carefully enveloped in

silvery tissue paper. It was true that dark blue Russian violets,

the starry forget-me-not, and the peerless lilies of the valley were

therein hidden, but a keener emotion than expectant love shone in

the young man's haggard eyes.

He was anxiously gazing around for the now well known form of Madame

Raffoni. Clayton dared not exhibit himself before the couple of

hundred staring eyes upon the pavilion and broad porticos.

An unknown fear of being entrapped drove him restlessly about.

"Would to God that Jack Witherspoon had arrived!" muttered the

lover. "I may have the trap sprung on me at any moment. Another

week; a long, long week! And God knows what may not happen in that

time." Some burning fever gnawed at his unquiet heart, some veiled

danger weighed him down.

Clayton was waiting for the approach of the wife of that mysterious

musical director whom he had never seen.

A fortunate sort of lingua Franca had been patched up between the

unsuspicious Clayton and the dark-eyed duenna. A few words of

German, a little scattered French, and a bit of gibberish English

enabled the two to hold occasional brief and amiable intercourse.

"What language does she really speak?" often cried the baffled

Clayton to the mocking Irma.

"Only pure Czech, my comrade," laughed the diva. "And I will teach

you the softest language of Love myself when we wander back into

the blue Bohemian mountains to proud old Georgsburg. My father was

a Magyar, my mother," she softly said, "a Czech princess."

While Clayton moved around, cautiously exhibiting himself as agreed

upon, his mind was agitated with a hundred unknown fears. He knew

not the designs of his panther-footed enemies.

To his astonishment, Robert Wade was absent the whole last business

day of the year from the Western Trading Company's offices, and

this, too, when every pen was busied up to five o'clock.

And, the momentous election was to occur in the morning!

He had lingered with his own annual summary until three o'clock,

when the dejected face of Somers, the head accountant, had appeared

at his office door. "I have a telegram that Mr. Wade is sick in

his bed. I am to take the consolidated accounts up to him to-night."

And so Randall Clayton handed over his papers without a word. "It

will probably be the last account I will ever render here," he

savagely mused, as he clashed his roll-top desk. "I wish that I had

broken it all off when Wade brought on the half quarrel. I should

have taken a friend with me, drawn out my little hoard, gone West

and faced Worthington before he successfully works this infamous

deal.

"Now I am powerless. He may tell us both to go to the devil."

And then Clayton sadly remembered that he depended only on Jack

Witherspoon's mere hearsay for any proofs of wrong-doing. "Yes!

I've only Jack's eagerness to marry that dainty Francine Delacroix

to thank for my fortune--if I ever get it. A woman whom I never

have seen decides my whole destiny, while I would give my life up,

my last drop of blood, for Irma!"

Ah! All unknown to him, a dozen busy minds were weaving snares for

his wandering feet. While Clayton, at last, saw Madame Raffoni

cautiously approaching, in his superb Fifth Avenue residence, the

sick man, Robert Wade, was closeted with the wolfish-eyed Arthur

Ferris, the parchment-faced Somers, and four of the seven directors

of the Trading Company.

On guard, lingering around Clayton's apartment, two mercantile

agent's spies were waiting to pipe him off and report his every

movement secretly to the returned Ferris, now breathless with

anxiety for the greatest financial coup of the season.

Mr. Fritz Braun was artfully busied at Magdal's Pharmacy with giving

Timmins a few last directions, and with the quiet destruction of

a few necessary professional memoranda which he did not care to

leave behind as dangerous weapons in the hands of the law or any

thieving clerk.

In the pocket of Mr. Fritz Braun's well-known brown overcoat

now reposed a bulky envelope, with a passport for Mr. and Mrs.

August Meyer, his Frankfort bank exchange, and several letters of

introduction to responsible merchants in Upper Germany. He was, at

least, armed for flight, and fortified beyond all attack.

Ben Timmins looked forward, with delight, to a six-months' suzerainty

of his master's drug business. "I have given Mr. Lilienthal my power

of attorney," said Braun soberly, "and I figure that you should

turn him in at least two hundred dollars a week profit, and also

keep the stock up. He will look in once or twice a week. If you

need help, he will get you a man. If you don't do your duty, he

will promptly kick you out."

"Thank you, sir," submissively remarked Timmins, who felt sure of

declaring himself an equal cash dividend every week.

"Now remember," said Braun, "I am going over to see Lilienthal. If

any one asks for me, I have gone over the water, that's all.

"For how long, is nobody's business, and you can refer all inquiries

to Lilienthal direct. All that you have to do is to mind your

business and mine. Lilienthal will let you know when I am coming

back, and advise you."

The two lovers had met, far away at Manhattan Beach, after Madame

Raffoni had discreetly piloted Clayton over to a sandy hollow where

a half-burned spar gave a convenient resting-place, before Fritz

Braun and Lilienthal had finished an acrimonious settlement of

some private money matters.

"I'm not a wolf," growled Braun. "You square up as if you were

never going to see me again. You need me more than I need you."

They were in the safe seclusion of the "Private Room" of the Newport

Art Gallery, judiciously vacated for the occasion, when a strange

fear took possession of the sly pleasure pander, Mr. Adolph

Lilienthal.

"See here, Braun," he huskily said, a mean suspicion seizing upon

him, "You're not cutting stick for good! You're not going to 'blow

on me' and 'give me away!' By God! I believe it," he said in fright,

as he noted Braun's pale face.

"It's two months since I've seen Irma Gluyas. Damn you! You've sent

her over to the other side, and got all your papers safe! You've

turned revenue spy! I see your game!"

Before the words were out of his mouth, Braun had dragged the

venal scoundrel down in a strangler's grip. Planting his knee on

his chest, he hissed, "One more word and I'll throttle you here!

I can go out by the side entrance! You dare not scream! You fool!

Don't you know Irma, the pretty baggage, cleared out six weeks ago

with a New York millionaire whom she picked up?"

"Swear to me that you'll keep your mouth shut or I'll go out and

denounce you now. I have nothing to lose. You have. You have robbed

me in our past dealings. You are rich and I am poor. I am going to

follow that woman over the world till I find her, for I loved her.

That's all! Swear that you'll keep my secrets or I'll kill you now.

I've burned every paper I have in the world."

When Braun's desperate mood had passed, he allowed the pleading

man to rise, and then listened morosely as Lilienthal, the veriest

coward at heart, begged for a reconciliation. "I didn't know of

your trouble," gasped Lilienthal. "See here, if you'll go on to

Hamburg and Bremen and fix up that 'phenacetine' business for me,

I'll advance you five thousand dollars now. I didn't know you were

so hard up." He whispered an address in the victorious druggist's

ear.

The half-crazed gamester felt that he had gone too far, and in half

an hour he departed richer by a cheque for five thousand dollars.

But his mind was far away on Manhattan Beach, with the wandering

lovers, as he told Lilienthal that he should not call again. "I'll

jump on the first steamer I can catch! Timmins knows all. Just

watch him, and don't put yourself in his power, till I return. He

can run the shop to a good profit in 'dope' and drinks till I am

with you again. I'm damned near crazy at losing that woman." And

the cowardly Lilienthal believed his rugged master.

When he had stalked away through the snaplock-guarded private entrance,

there came over Lilienthal's face a spasm of deadly hatred. "The

dirty dog!" he growled, as he unlocked a cabinet and drank heavily.

"It must be true. This young fellow Clayton is here on duty every

day; he looks wolfish, too. I wonder if he really loved the girl.

Well, I shall soon have my day. If Braun ever presents that letter

in Hamburg the friends there will have received my secret message

by our No. II, who goes over this trip. A walk around the docks,

and a knife stab in the back will settle Braun. He knows too much

to be allowed to run loose in Europe. He would like to spoil our

game; he shall spoil his own." And the traitor hastened away to

entrap Braun, little dreaming that the acute druggist would never

trust himself to the hands of the "gang" at Hamburg.

Randall Clayton had been startled by Madame Raffoni's eager

disclosure as he approached the place of rendezvous. He had studied

the still handsome face of the disguised Leah Einstein when she told

him that the Fräulein was really ill and most unhappy. He managed

to pick out from her dialect that the diva had been plunged in some

secret sorrow.

Quietly restraining himself, he watched the voluptuous form of

the Jewess mingle with the crowd of guests on the hotel terrace.

"That poor woman, a worn-out theater beauty, is without guile. What

can this mean?"

He had rightly judged the good-hearted Leah's concern, and he never

knew of the long hours of the discarded mistress' ministrations

to the "reigning beauty."

Timorous at heart, Leah Einstein's evil career had been only one

of petty wheedling craft, and an easy self-surrender.

Violence she both feared and abhorred, and now, in the wane of her

beauty, she was easily content with such crumbs of money profit as

could be picked up by an easy code of a plastic surface morality

which covered only her petty intrigues.

Loyal to Irma Gulyas, Randall Clayton dared not question the poor

mock duenna; in fact, her jargon vocabulary would have failed her,

but there had been no deceit in the sympathetic tears which clung

to Madame Raffoni's eyelids.

Seated on a half-burned spar, there where the roar of the restless

waves reached their ears, with her face veiled, the Magyar witch

awaited her all unsuspicious lover. The golden sunset faded now

far in the west, the piled up purple clouds were turning blacker,

and around them

"The mists arose, the waters swelled,"

"Gulls screamed, their flight recalling."

The woman's heart was racked with the deceit which had entrapped

a man she now madly loved.

The freshening wind was driving the black smoke of the steamers,

far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake,

and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in anticipation of

the coming storm.

An infinite tenderness seized upon Randall Clayton as he motioned

to Madame Raffoni to leave them, and then took that beloved head

to its shelter upon his breast.

His heart panted for the day when they could be all in all to

each other. He felt the clouding spell of some mysterious enmity

descending upon them, and clouding their love as he kissed the

white and trembling hands which had so nervously clasped his own.

For Irma Gluyas feared for her own life. She dared not betray the

tiger-like Fritz Braun, whose veiled scheme of plunder or blackmail

she could not fathom.

Hitherto all had gone well with them, in their merry will-o'-the-wisp

game with Irma's jealous unknown guardians, with his concealed

enemies.

But Clayton well knew that no mere pretense would baffle Arthur

Ferris' thorough knowledge of all of his past social habits.

He dared not openly quarrel with Ferris until Jack Witherspoon's

return. He only lived now to see the Detroit lawyer speeding west,

far on ahead of the deceitful Ferris, who would be detained in

New York by the quiet consummation of the big deal.

Clayton was but too well aware that his only weapon was his knowledge

of Ferris' secret marriage--an outrage upon Alice Worthington's

unguarded girlhood.

And yet he dared not openly use that weapon; how easy for the old

capitalist to frame a suave excuse for the "maimed rites" of that

Western bridal.

One longing burned now in Clayton's heart, the honest wish to find

some dignified and safe place of meeting with the woman upon whom

he would shower the gold soon to be his own.

"If anything should happen," he thought.

Of course, his own face was too well known to adopt any mere hiding

tactics. Irma was ever fearful of her jealous artist guardians,

and in this lovely evening hour the lover's heart rose up in all

its stormy tenderness to beg her to lift the veil from her incognito.

Even while they murmured again their vows and drifted away into

dreams of the unclouded future, the heavens were blackening around

them.

Irma seemed strangely frightened as she cowered in her lover's

arms, while he begged her to lift the veil of her privacy.

"I must be with you--near you," he cried. "Listen! I have even

now grave matters hanging over me which may summon me suddenly

away from you. You know not my abode. You cannot write or telegraph

safely to my office.

"There are veiled spies, jealous rivals, there, who would rob me

of place, power, and the money which will yet be ours, in the dear

far-off Danube land.

"You have been ill, distressed," he fondly said. "Nay, do not deny

it! Madame Raffoni has told me all."

"My God!" whispered Irma. "She has told you"--

"Only that you have suffered, my darling," said Clayton, folding

her to his breast.

"Ah! I must make an end of it!" the loyal lover cried, as Irma lay

sobbing on his breast. "If I could only come to you; how shall I

know? Can you trust no one? There is Madame Raffoni," said Clayton.

"She knows where my office is. I have bribed her, with flattery

and a few little kindnesses, to come and tell me of you, several

times, when we have been separated in these long weeks. We have

not even gone to the 'Bavaria'; I have shown her my office. I care

not to force myself upon your loyal secrecy. I respect the promise

upon which your artistic future depends; but think of me. If you

were ill, and we were separated by Fate, I should go mad! I could

not live! Can you not trust her to bring me to you?" Fear and love

were striving now in the singer's throbbing heart.

The Magyar witch clasped her arms around her gallant lover in

a mad access of tenderness. "And you do love me so, Randall," she

cried, in a storm of tears.

"More than my life," said the man who now felt her heart beating

wildly against his own.

"Ah! God!" sobbed Irma. "If we had only met in other days, in

another land, in my own dear country!"

"Listen, Irma," pleaded Clayton. "I will soon take you away, far

over the seas."

"In a few weeks I shall be free, and you shall be my own, my very

own! For I will then come to you, free to give you all that life

and love can give.

"But promise me now that Madame Raffoni shall lead me to you if

you need me. You can trust her. I will come to her home. I cannot

bear this agony, and I am watched, also!"

Even as he spoke, the heavens blackened and a stormy drift of rain

swept athwart the sky. There was a muttering roll of thunder. The

white-crested waves dashed menacingly upon the shore!

Irma Gluyas clung to her lover as the affrighted Madame Raffoni came

rushing toward them for shelter in the storm. The red lightning

flashed, and the fury of the storm was upon them. It was a wild

tempest which raged around them. The women were helpless with

fear.

In despair, Randall Clayton gazed at the distant hotels; there was

shelter and safety. But now a new fear beset him. His well-known

identity, Irma's marked beauty, the strange attendant duenna, there

would be certain discovery and scandal. And he would be Ferris'

easy victim if discovered.

Irma Gluyas shrieked as she clung to her lover and bade him save

her as the wild lightning bolts rent the darkness. It was a horrid

elemental tumult!

A few hundred yards away a heavy closed carriage was slowly creeping

along the drive between the hotels. "Run for your life!" shouted

Clayton to the eager Madame Raffoni. "Stop that carriage. Offer

him anything, everything! I will carry her. I must save her."

Bending himself to the task, Clayton raised the fainting form of

Irma Gluyas. Her long hair lowered, swept around her in the storm;

her sculptured arms clung to him, and her warm heart thrilled him

as he sped on through the driving torrent. He was possessed with

Love's last delirium.

In the violence of the storm, Clayton could only motion "forward"

as he closed the door of the carriage and the frightened horses

set off at a mad gallop. The inmates of the carriage never saw the

bridge as the vehicle swayed from side to side in the blue-flamed

lightning flashes.

They were nearing Brooklyn when, in the still driving storm,

Clayton descended and procured some restoratives at a pharmacy.

He poured a draught of strong wine between the affrighted woman's

pallid lips, and then whispered, "You must tell me where to take

you. It is life or death now."

And then Irma Gluyas, her head resting on Madame Raffoni's bosom,

feebly whispered, "To my home, 192 Layte Street."

There was not a word spoken as, in the midnight darkness of the

storm, the horses struggled along until, under the shelter of the

high houses, the carriage stopped before the desolate-looking old

mansion.

There was a look of terror on Madame Raffoni's face which was not

lost upon Clayton. "Get the door open," he hoarsely cried. "I will

carry her in. Then, I swear to you, I will leave her at once."

The strong man sprang from his place, and in a few moments he stood

within the veiled splendors of the old drawing-room.

Kneeling by the bed, wherein he had deposited the senseless woman,

Clayton chafed her marble hands in an agony of despair.

But, even in his lover's exaltation, he listened to Madame Raffoni,

who knelt before him in passionate adjuration. "Go, go!" she cried

in broken pathos. "I will come to you to-morrow."

And she dragged him to the door. "I will all do; everything! I

swear! Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!"

With one last despairing look, raining passionate kisses upon the

marble lips of the woman he loved, Randall Clayton left the dusky

magnificence of the superb apartment, and only halted at the door

long enough to whisper to the Raffoni, "Bring me to her to-morrow,

and I will make you rich!"

And the poor woman dumbly covered his hands with obedient kisses.

"Go, go!" she cried. "I will come!"

And, touched with the woman's frantic fears, Randall Clayton sprang

into the carriage. Through the blinding storm he had reached the

New York side before he thought of his own movements, of the morrow,

of his coming friend, and of his wary enemies.

Then he resolutely made up his mind to fight the warring Fates to

a finish.

He drove to the Astor House, dismissed his driver with a ransom

fee, and there hid himself in an upper room.

When he presented himself at the half-deserted office of the Western

Trading Company, upon the next morning, he was clad in unfamiliar

garb.

His blood-shot eyes told of a vigil of mental suffering, and he

dared say nothing as he gruffly bowed when Mr. Somers told him of

Robert Wade's continued illness.

"I am going down to the election," said the old accountant. "And

so you will be in charge, as Mr. Ferris has not been heard from.

There is no one here but you to represent the management."

"Trapped," muttered Clayton, who listened every moment for some

tidings of the woman whose silken hair had wound its delicate meshes

around him in the storm. "Dying; dead, perhaps," he groaned, in an

agony of excitement, and then and there he swore that, upon the

arrival of Witherspoon he would leave the cave of his enemies, await

his fate, and bear Irma Gluyas away to farther and fairer lands.

The long morning dragged on in a semi-stupor as he sat there

listening to the hollow footfall of the casual passers-by.

And yet there was no word from Madame Raffoni, the only holder of

the secret of Irma Gluyas' life. His foot was on the threshhold to

leave at last, when Arthur Ferris calmly entered.

Randall Clayton mastered himself with a mighty effort, as Ferris

glibly murmured, "I am only here for a few moments! Come into the

private office."

The few minutes before they were at their ease in Robert Wade's

impregnable sanctum enabled Clayton to steel himself against the

secret bridegroom's duplicity. Clayton's quick eye noted Ferris'

satchel, his top-coat and umbrella carelessly thrown down on Wade's

reading-table.

"Have you been at the rooms?" carelessly remarked Clayton, tossing

Ferris' private keys upon the table. "No," curtly replied Ferris.

"I came here directly from the train. I wished to stop and see my

mother and sister; but Wade's illness has upset all my plans.

"I have to go on to Philadelphia at once on some private business

for the Chief. You know he is a very heavy stockholder in the Cramp

Shipbuilding Company. I will not be back for several days."

"And what about the election?" deliberately replied Clayton, now

anxious to draw his enemy out. "I have nothing to do with that,"

said Ferris, dropping his eyes to veil a slight agitation. "Wade

has all that in charge, and he has given Somers his proxy."

"I thought that you held Worthington's private power of attorney,"

stoutly said Randall Clayton.

"Only for his outside matters, Clayton," coaxingly said Ferris.

"The fact is, we may expect many changes. Hugh has several plans

of great importance in his mind.

"Yes; I have lived in an atmosphere of change for some time, Ferris,"

said Clayton, bluntly. "I have only been waiting for your return

to consult with you about giving up our joint apartment.

"I reserved that privilege on May 1st, and you can either keep the

rooms or sublet them. I have paid the rental for the last three

months in your absence."

"See here, Clayton," sharply said Ferris, throwing off the mask.

"I am not a man for any mysteries. I don't know why I should be

forced to tell you things that I do not know myself.

"Now, I will be several days busy with these outside matters at

Philadelphia. You had the one opportunity of your life the other

day.

"I expect that you will have reconsidered your refusal to Wade,

to obey Hugh Worthington's orders by my return."

"So you know all about it, do you?" fiercely retorted Randall Clayton.

"I fancied that Wade was dealing directly with Hugh, himself, by the

tone of the Chief's letters and the telegrams which I have received."

"The matter has been referred to me," hotly answered Ferris, who

dared not openly use his new power. "But I will not wait here to

discuss this matter. I may miss my train."

Arthur Ferris sharply rang a bell, and then, with a nod of recognition,

directed the young Einstein to take his traps down stairs and call

him a carriage.

The door clanged and the two secret enemies were left facing each

other.

"I had fancied," said Clayton, bitterly, "that a lifetime spent

in Hugh Worthington's service would at least win me a dismissal at

first hands.

"Wade has tried to force me to throw up a position for which I was

previously named by Worthington. I imagined that the Chief was

really going abroad. He seems to have changed his plans. I have no

means of reaching him direct.

"And now, sir, you will find the keys of our rooms with the janitor

on your return. All that I wish to know is whether I shall deal

with you or Wade in giving my final answer to the suspended orders

for me to go West."

"You stand ready to throw up a life position?" harshly cried Ferris,

white with secret rage pausing with his hand on the door.

"I shall certainly wait until I hear from Mr. Worthington,"

gravely answered Clayton. "It matters little about me. Your own

life position is secure!"

"What do you mean by that?" cried Ferris, springing forward in a

sudden anger which made him forget all his plans of crafty concealment.

But the tall Westerner, with one wave of his arm, swept Ferris'

delicate form away from the door and passed out of the presence of

the budding capitalist.

Arthur Ferris cast stealthy glances to right and left as he sought

the elevator. He breathed freer when he reached the sidewalk.

Fortunately, no one had overheard the unseemly quarrel.

His hand was on the carriage door when his glances fell upon the

questioning face of Emil Einstein.

"Anything further, sir?" demanded the eager office boy. "Yes! Jump

in with me and ride down to the Pennsylvania Ferry. I may need

you."

Ferris' brain was in a whirl. He had intended to double around

and reach Wade's house, where he was a secret guest, during the

excitable ordeal of the election.

Too well he knew the dangers of setting his own foot in Wall Street.

Keen brokers, great operators, lynx-eyed newspaper reporters would

soon corner him.

His slightest word would be misconstrued, and there was still time

for some unforeseen plot before the polls of the stockholders'

election closed at three o'clock.

Clayton's defiant manner had aroused his jealousy to a keen rage.

"Does the fool know anything of my marriage?" he mused. "How could

he?" Ferris smiled, for his girl wife was still in Tacoma, by her

father's side, and the marriage had been a secret one.

The crafty lawyer hated Clayton, at heart, for too well he knew that

no word clouding Clayton's character could be uttered unchallenged

in Alice Worthington's presence.

Once he had tried, to probe her opinions, with faint sneers, but

his voice had died away under the indignant protest of the heiress.

"I do not know who has poisoned my father's mind," resolutely said

the Little Sister, "but Randall Clayton has been the brother of my

heart, and always will be. If he had never left us we would all

be happier to-day."

The clear-browed woman did not know how truly this arrow had sped

to its mark. It silenced forever Arthur Ferris, and lent a new

caution to the scheming plans of the old money grabber.

"If I only had my cipher book," was the first thought of the excited

Ferris, "I must telegraph to Hugh and put him on his guard. What

the devil can Clayton have picked up?"

There was yet two weeks before the final arrangement of the "great

deal," and the repayment of the two millions could be substantially

arranged.

As the carriage dashed along to the Christopher Street Ferry, Ferris

rapidly made up his plan of action. "I can go over to Taylor's

Hotel at Jersey City. Old Somers will cast the majority vote at a

quarter of three.

"I can call him up at the down-town office by telephone, and then

telegraph direct to old Hugh at Tacoma.

"And Wade must come over to me at Philadelphia and spend a day or

so, for appearance's sake. But a light rein is needed for this wild

ass of the West, Clayton. Oh! to have him out there in Cheyenne

for one month.

"Yes! By Jove, I have it! Hugh must invite him to meet him there.

I will telegraph him, and the old man can smooth Clayton down."

A sudden desire to know of Randall Clayton's private life seized

upon Ferris, who already contemplated a sweet revenge. "Damn

him! I must keep him and Alice apart. She would side with him, on

sentimental grounds. But, as soon as I get back, I can cipher Hugh

that he must settle this fellow, in some way, on that Western visit.

The old fox can find a way, and both Alice and I will be out of

it."

Deliberately selecting two one hundred dollar bills from his wallet,

Arthur Ferris held them up to the astonished gaze of Einstein.

"Mr. Clayton has been a little strange in his behavior lately," he

said. "In some tiff he has thrown up his old rooms, and is going

to move. I will be away three or four days. When I come back, I

want to know just where he is located, and--all about him; who his

friends are, and so on. There is more where this came from."

"I understand," smoothly answered Emil, pocketing the bills with

a grin.

In the meantime Ferris had scribbled a few words on a card. He stopped

the carriage. "Jump out and take a coupe, and get instantly down to

Wall and Broad. You'll find Mr. Somers waiting in the election-room.

Tell him not to leave there till I get him on the 'phone from

Jersey City. And my address you can give him as Lafayette House,

Philadelphia. I'll be there three days." The lie was deliberate,

and even the triple spy believed him.

The long hours crawled away while Randall Clayton resolutely paced

his lonely office. Only the busy under-accountants came in now and

then for a word of directions, and the ticking of the office clock

sounded like the hollow tapping of hammers upon coffin-lids to the

solitary man who was crazed with his loving anxiety to hear from

the woman who now ruled his every thought.

He forgot the absence of Einstein in his eager waiting for some

intelligence of the woman whom he had shielded from the storm. Poor

Madame Raffoni had mumbled some obscure words about "die herz-kranke."

"Heartsick, my God! I am heartsick," cried Randall Clayton. "And,

she may be alone; there may be no one to send."

Clayton tried to recall the last directions which he had given

to the disguised Leah Einstein. All that he could recall was the

murmured pledge, "I will come, I will come!"

The lover's heart told him that Ferris' spies would now follow in

his every movement. He lingered, in a trance of agony, until long

after the parchment-faced Somers had returned from Wall and Broad

Street.

"It was a very quiet election," murmured Somers, who started at the

appearance of the young man's haggard face. He was astonished to

see Clayton lingering there to the confines of darkness.

The faithful old tool of Mammon had crawled back to turn all his

combination knobs and cast a last glance over the rooms into which

his life had grown as the silkworm into its cocoon.

"You must go away, my boy," kindly said old Somers, "you need a

long rest."

"Yes, yes," mournfully replied Clayton, thinking of the five days

of agony before Jack Witherspoon would arrive to run the gauntlet

of the treacherous Ferris. "I must go away--go away--and, have a

long, long rest!"

The old accountant watched his listless steps as he departed. "Head

or heart--which?" he murmured. "That man is in a bad way."

CHAPTER VII.

"THIS MAY BE MY LAST BANK DEPOSIT."

There was an air of supreme content upon the usually impassive face

of Arthur Ferris when he hung the receiver of the public telephone

up upon its hook, at precisely fifteen minutes past three o'clock,

in the office of Taylor's Hotel.

The astonished girl gazed admiringly after the young lawyer, when

he dropped a two-dollar bill into her hand, saying, "Never mind

the change."

"It's my lucky day," murmured Ferris, as he sought the telegraph

office. The measured words of Accountant Somers were still ringing

in his ears:

"A very quiet election; no opposition to our ticket. Directors'

meeting pro forma. Vice-President Selden cast majority vote

for new officers. Reports endorsed. Selden, president; yourself,

vice-president; Hugh Worthington, managing director. New officers

published to-morrow. Too late for afternoon press. Will go and

report to Mr. Wade."

The first official act of Vice-President Arthur Ferris had been

to order Accountant Somers to send a cheque for one month's extra

salary to each of the office force, and then to add, "I shall

be in Philadelphia for some days, remember; Lafayette House. Use

telegraph business cipher only. I will be too busy to come to the

telephone. Shall be at Cramp's yards taking a look with a view to

further investments there."

No flush of triumph colored Arthur Ferris' pale face as he pondered

over his dispatch to Hugh Worthington. He suddenly paused, with

his pencil in the air.

"By God! I have it! We will soft-soap this fellow. Violence in

quarrel is always a clumsy mistake. I need to keep in touch with

Clayton; at least, until old Hugh gets his claws upon him. What if

the fool resigns and throws all up in a huff? There is no way to

lure him out West then. It would not do to have anything happen to

him here. And I'll ring in the Auld Lang Syne a bit, also."

He smiled artfully as he read over his two telegrams before handing

them to the waiting operator. The anaemic girl was sadly disappointed

in their tenor. She had scented an intrigue in the presence of the

dapper young lawyer with his distinctly clubman air.

"Pshaw! only business," she murmured, as she dashed her hand into

the cash till for the change of a five-dollar bill.

But Arthur Ferris' resolute eyes recalled her to duty, as he

impatiently said, "Repeat them both back to me, at Lafayette House,

Philadelphia. Take out the extra charge, and please give me a press

copy of each."

"I'll run over to Philadelphia, drop in at the clubs, have a good

time, and then disappear via Pittsburgh 'for New York,'" he said.

"It will give time for Randall Clayton to cool off. And, after

all, the smooth way is the best way. I can hold him over till Hugh

works him 'on the easy pulley.'"

He was proud of these two telegrams, as he sat at his carefully-chosen

early dinner. He read them over with a secret glee.

"He is ours. No one can snatch him from our clutches. The old man

can cajole him with Alice's wish that he should join the family

party. That'll fetch him. Fool! that he did not make the running

while she was at his side. The 'Sister' business is always a rank

failure. But he has made me a millionaire for life."

Arthur Ferris had no pity for the man whose life secrets he

had sapped in those four long years of treason to friendship. He

recalled with a secret complacence the steps which had led him,

bit by bit, into Hugh Worthington's confidence, through the frank

disclosures of Clayton.

And so, fortified by the single-hearted man's intimate relations

with the Detroit household, Arthur Ferris had taken up every thread

as it slipped through Clayton's busy fingers.

The knowledge that he would enjoy Randall Clayton's real patrimony;

that he had stolen a charming wife from the man who was bound by

an unearned gratitude to Worthington, made this hour of triumph a

most delicious one.

"Old Hugh needed me; he needed a man who would be a safe intermediary

with Durham; one who was a Safe Deposit for both senator and

millionaire.

"Now I hold every trump in life, and Clayton, the dolt, has thrown

away his fortune and made mine."

Then the thin-lipped lawyer recalled Balzac's remark, "One, in

order to succeed, must either cut one's way through life like a

sword, or glide through the world quietly like a pestilence."

"I'll let Hugh use the sword," he laughed, as he enjoyed his

well-warmed Chamberton. "I am beyond all the storms of Fate now.

"What more could I desire? On the road to a million, a charming girl

wife, one whom I can mould like clay, and Durham and Worthington

can easily send me to Congress." He saw the Senate chamber opening

to him, through the rosy light of the wooing Burgundy.

And again his eye sought the telegrams. "Not a word to alter," and

he smiled as he read.

"Hugh Worthington,

"Palace Hotel, Tacoma:--

"A quiet election. All arranged. New officers published to-morrow.

Telegraph Clayton to meet you at Cheyenne for conference. Have Alice

join. Suggest month's vacation. He is irritable and suspicious.

Full code telegrams to you at Cheyenne. Will wait here until you

have met him and disposed of his case."

Ferris had added a key-word, which no one would suspect meant

"Imminent danger," and signed an alias known to Hugh Worthington

alone.

But to Randall Clayton his Judas words of brotherly cordiality were

as frank and open as the unsuspecting nature of the defrauded man

demanded.

The unhappy Clayton was troubled at heart as he opened this yellow

paper, livid with its living lie, as he waited aimlessly at his

rooms for some tidings from Emil Einstein, whose long absence had

astonished him.

In the lonely rooms, with his eyes fixed on Irma Gluyas' superb

artist proof, Clayton gave himself easily up to Ferris' crafty

subterfuge.

He had already repented the violent quarrel. "This marriage may

be a mere rumor," he mused. "Jack Witherspoon must make his words

good when he comes."

He had already half determined to frankly meet Hugh Worthington

with a demand for a clearing up of the whole mystery of his youthful

dependence.

The telegram from Jersey City disarmed all his resentment. It was

addressed:

"Dear Old Boy: Forget hasty words. Am tired with travel; worn out.

Remember the old friendship. Stay in our rooms. Will return in

three days. You shall choose your way to arrange with Worthington.

If you wish to stay on here, I'll telegraph jointly with you. Meet

me at dinner Monday night, Century Club."

When he had read the last words, "Answer, Lafayette House,

Philadelphia," Randall Clayton went out into the early evening

and listlessly dispatched the words, "All right. Will stay on as

requested," and then he slowly returned to his rooms. On his return

he found Emil Einstein awaiting him before his door.

Clayton's beating heart told him that the unusual had happened.

"Speak! What is it?" cried the half-crazed lover. And the boy then

hurriedly told him of his late return to the office, after executing

many errands for the absent Ferris.

"There was a woman--a lady," hesitated Einstein, "trying to find

your office. The elevator man told her that you had gone. She only

spoke a little English, and, as I speak German, I tried to keep

her"--

"She dared not stay!" almost shouted Clayton.

"She left word your friend is very ill, and that she cannot leave

her. You cannot go there to-night, but the lady may come back

to-morrow morning for you if anything happens. She was very much

frightened."

"And you?"--demanded Clayton, grasping the boy's arm. "Why did you

not bring her here?"

"She could not stay. She had waited a long time before I came back.

And I told her it was a half-holiday to-morrow, the three-days'

holiday coming on"--

"Would you know her again?" anxiously demanded Clayton.

"Certainly," murmured the sordid liar, speaking the truth for once.

"Describe her," hastily ordered the excited man. And Master Emil

Einstein gave a not too glowing description of the charms of his

own mother.

"Listen," said the half-demented Clayton. "You must watch all

to-morrow morning, down below, upon the sidewalk, and around the

entrance.

"If that lady comes, just detain her down there, and I will join

her at once. Not a word to a living soul. Swear that you'll keep

this secret, and I'll make your fortune yet."

"I swear on my life," said the startled boy, frightened at the

ghastly pallor of Clayton's face.

He hastened away, leaving the cashier disturbed at his last disclosure.

"I forgot to say that she fears they may move your friend to-night,

some place, God knows where: perhaps to some hospital, and then,

of course, she couldn't come."

Randall Clayton sank into a chair with a smothered groan. For the

one haunting fear of his last three months was proving true. Here was

the separation from Irma Gluyas, and on the verge of his fortune.

"My God! It is terrible," he cried. He waited until the boy had

scuttled away.

"He must not know. One false step now would ruin all," thought

Clayton. "My love for Irma once suspected, and she would be spirited

off to Europe or lose her artistic future. If she were cast out,

I have nothing to offer yet, nothing but castles in Spain."

But the lad, hidden in a dark doorway, was greedily counting the

loose bills which Clayton had hastily thrust into his hand. "Paid

for not giving away my own mother's secrets," the boy laughed

viciously. "The old girl is safe, but what the devil is she up

to?" He decided that he would cautiously watch over Clayton, but

he feared to report this last entanglement to Fritz Braun, whose

gripsack and office luggage he was to remove from the pharmacy.

Before Einstein had reached the pharmacy, driven on by a mad unrest,

Randall Clayton threw on a loose top coat, slipped a loaded pistol

in his pocket, and then, hailing the first empty carriage, dashed

down to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was only by taking up his course

on the evening of the storm, on foot, that the restless lover could

make his way over to the corner where the pretentious newness of

the "Valkyrie" building shamed the rich old mansion sheltered under

its lee.

At the Magdal Pharmacy, Mr. Fritz Braun suspended his last looking

over his private desk, just long enough to whisper a few final

directions to Emil Einstein. The boy had nothing special to report.

But the crafty pharmacist well knew how to reach the softest spot

of the young Hebrew's indurated heart.

"See here," he said, as he drew the boy into a dark corner. "After

all said and done, your mother is the only human being in the world

that I trust. For Leah has always been true to me. I'm getting

a bit old. I'm going to settle down after I've made this trip. If

you watch my interests while I'm away, your mother may have a home

for life with me, in charge of my home; and you, you young rascal,

I'll push your fortune. So, a shut mouth; look out and don't babble

to Lilienthal. He is a chatterer. Timmins, here, is a drunken

loafer, and will burn the block up some night, but I need him a

little while yet.

"I may even give you this place, and set you up with a good

pharmacist, if I can find a man over there. Timmins can show him

the secret side of the business; then, we can throw this London

cockney out, and you'll find Magdal's to be a gold mill. I shall

have something else to do, my boy. Now, be off with my traps."

"Take them to 192 Layte Street. Ring the front bell three times;

you'll find your mother there. Give her the traps, but do not enter

the house. She will tell you anything I wish to-morrow; and, so,

remember I can make your fortune. Obey your mother; there's one

thing about her, she has got some head and heart." The boy hastened

away on his quest.

Fritz Braun, left alone, stooped and picked up a little piece of

paper which had fluttered down on the floor at his feet. He was

careful to "leave no black plume as a token."

And now there was not a vestige left of his past nefarious traffic.

"Timmins can do no harm now," sneeringly laughed Fritz Braun. "For

I carry these things in my head, and he must trust to some member of

the craft. What blockheads these fat-witted English practitioners

are."

Braun's hollow laugh echoed from behind the flowing false beard,

as he read over the faded prescriptions he had idly picked up. It

was a powerful agent of evil--a tool of the deadly thug.

"By God! I may need this old friend. How did I come to forget it?

It may purchase my safety, or else give some poor devil peace and

rest."

"My last appearance on any stage," he muttered, as his hands were

soon busied with the familiar phials around him. "I'll have a few

doses of this 'Sinner's Friend' with me," he muttered. "Who knows

where I may not need it. It is the only paralyzer."

Seizing a three-ounce flask, he cast aside his blue goggles for

a moment as he measured his ingredients. One by one he carefully

added them, until the small bottle was filled with a colorless

mixture.

He read the innocent-looking scrawl a last time, and then burned

it at a fluttering gas jet. The words seemed burned in upon his

brain. His practiced glance ran over the bottles on the shelves

ranged there like soldiers in their silent ranks. His eye gleamed

vindictively as he murmured: "First, my old friend chloral hydrate--there

you are. Now, your reliable brother, chloroform"--He shook up the

growing mixture with a secret pride. "Just the right amount of

muriate codine"--There was a pause, as the codine dissolved with

the other ingredients. "And now," he gaily murmured, "distilled

water," the last element needed to bind these together as a water

of death. It is a royal secret of the rogue's pharmacy--the best

garment for a flitting soul, tasteless and painless.

"Warranted to fit the largest man or the smallest boy," laughed

the scoundrel, replacing his goggles, as he fitted a ground-glass

stopper tightly to the flask. "I am not particularly anxious to be

caught with this on me. It would mean two to five years of 'voluntary

assistance' to the State at Sing Sing. But one little well-regulated

dose of this soothing charm, and the strongest man drops helpless

at my feet."

Braun slipped it in an inner pocket, and passed out, with a careless

nod to the overjoyed Timmins. "Remember, Lilienthal is your only

adviser. Six months from now, I'll put a new life into things here."

When Braun had disappeared, Ben Timmins drained a brandy and soda

to his eternal discomfiture. "'Ere's 'oping the bloomin' ship

founders with the old beggar," growled the Londoner, who had noted

Braun sweep away the last thirty dollars in the till. "'E might

have left me a few pennies."

It was ten o'clock when Randall Clayton, pacing up and down the

street, nervously eying the darkened front door of 192 Layte Street,

saw a lad nimbly dart up the front steps, touch a bell-push, and

then vanish in a few moments, as the door closed. Ciayton could

only distinguish vaguely the bundles with which the boy had been

loaded down. He lingered there in agony, afraid to approach that

portal.

But, a half-hour later, a portly man, in a light-colored coat,

with easy leisure, strolling up the steps, inserted a latch-key,

and the baffled lover could only see that the hallway was dark,

with one half-turned-up gas jet.

Clayton cautiously explored the rear of the house, finding an

alleyway suitable for unloading the bulky wares of the "Valkyrie"

saloon.

A broad flight of steps led down to the cellarway of the "Valkyrie,"

and a similar one to the basement of the old mansion.

"The basement is used for business storage, evidently," mused the

puzzled Clayton; but even with his brief experience of the night

before, he could tell that the great rear drawing-room and library

were the rooms into which he had borne the senseless form of the

woman he madly loved. Through a chink of the enamelled white shutters

a faint pencil of light shone out in the gloomy darkness.

"Good God!" he groaned, "I would give my life to be within that

room." For his heart told him that Irma Gluyas lay helpless within

there, and he only wandered away at midnight, when a stray policeman

suspiciously eyed him lingering in the alley.

"Einstein is my only hope," he despairingly cried, as he wandered

back to the bridge and sought his lonely rooms. The silky-gray

dawn found him still dressed, lying on a chair, with his eyes fixed

upon the picture, the first sight of which had been the beginning

of his fevered dream.

And then, suddenly recalling himself, he put out the flaring lights,

bathed his throbbing temples, and went out to seek an early-opening

coffee-shop. "I must be myself to-day," he muttered, after the

drowsy waiter had forced some breakfast upon him.

"For the three-days' holiday begins at noon, and I shall be free

then. I must do my bank business alone, and keep Einstein on the

watch."

By sheer force of habit, he had opened the damp morning--paper

thrust upon the swell customer.

"Some young fly by night, throwing his money and his life away,"

mused the experienced Celtic attendant. "Give me the Tenderloin

for fools. And there's a new crop every year!"

Suddenly Randall Clayton started. There was the confirmation of Jack

Witherspoon's prophetic warnings. The words "Important Financial

Changes" met his eye, with the announcement of the "cut and dried"

election of the Western Trading Company. "So, Mr. Arthur Ferris,

you are the new vice-president, and Mr. Hugh Worthington the

managing director." He saw how he had been duped.

Throwing a few coins on the table, he sped homeward and made a

careful toilet. "Jack will be here in three days, now! I will meet

them and beat them at their own game. Craft for craft, and I can

wait. For Irma's sake!"

On his way to the office for the first time he steadied his nerve

with the bar-keeper's aid. The blood bounded in his pulses under

the unaccustomed stimulant.

He was devil-may-care in his manner as he listlessly turned over his

morning mail, thrusting his pistol back into the bank portmanteau. The

sight of the familiar case recalled to him his dangerous position.

"I must play my policy game softly now," he mused. "Whatever

happens, I must meet Ferris smoothly; but once that Jack Witherspoon

is safely out of town to the West, I'll have him face up old Hugh.

It's either life with Irma, or death without her!"

Mechanically carrying on his routine, he opened his mail, after

exchanging a few careless words with Somers over the "new deal"

in the company's management.

"I shall get your bank deposits ready early," kindly said old

Somers. "I'm glad to see you looking better. I go away at noon

for the three-days' holiday. You can keep the bank-book, and we

can get the exchange Tuesday at noon.

"I will finish my trial balance papers while I'm up at Greenwich.

I'm only a stray few cents out."

And then Ralph Somers told Clayton of the month's gratuity. "I

guess I'll go in for a gay old Fourth!" cheerfully said Clayton,

who picked up a telegram just brought in by a boy.

His face softened strangely as he read words which waked all the

happy memories of his lonely boyhood.

Here, at last, vas a message from the woman who had been the

"Little Sister" of the few bright years of his shaded life. And

her truthful, girlish face rose up before him again, as he read

the words which touched his wavering heart. The dispatch was from

Hugh Worthington at Tacoma, and the old fox had well chosen the

only way to disarm Clayton's watchful suspicions.

The words seemed frank enough, and Randall Clayton's fingers

trembled with a certain pleasurable thrill as he read.

"She still thinks of me, poor Little Sister, after all these

years of estrangement. Perhaps only the greed of gold lies behind

the whole thing. He seized a telegraph blank and studied over his

reply.

"What shall I wire to him?" the puzzled man vainly demanded. He

tried to mark out the false and true between the words of father

and daughter. It all seemed fair enough in a way, according to

their different natures.

"Tacoma, July 2, 1897.

"Come at once to Cheyenne. Am leaving here to join you. Alice wishes

to see you particularly before she sails for Japan. Take a month's

leave. Turn your cash business over to Secretary Edson. You can

go back to Pacific Coast with me after seeing our ranches. If

you don't like assignment out West, you can go back to New York.

Telegraph me to Cheyenne date of your arrival, and also answer

Alice. Palace Hotel, Tacoma. Don't fail. Imperative."

Randall Clayton was left without lights to guide. "By Heavens!" he

cried. "Jack has surely been deceived as to the marriage. I must

answer Hugh. I dare not leave Alice without an answer. And Jack

only three days away!"

After a half-hour's study he sprang from his chair.

"Eureka!" he muttered. "There's Doctor Billy Atwater, the only

man I know of Jack Witherspoon's college fraternity, and of my own

Chapter here. I can have him meet Jack at the steamer and give him

a sealed letter to follow me on to Cheyenne. I can telegraph Jack

at Detroit. Arthur Ferris will be busied here."

"Ringing a bell, he sent a boy up town to his stable to order

a carriage to wait for him at the corner of Fourteenth Street and

University Place. When I go to the bank I can drive up and be sure

to catch him at his office. He may be going off for a three-days'

holiday, also. I must not miss him."

Then he resolutely traced his telegram accepting Hugh Worthington's

offer, and penned a few lines to "Miss Alice." "What a sham our

modern plutocratic life is," bitterly murmured Clayton. "Is it

really Miss or Mrs.? Where does the truth lie? I'll stake my life

that Alice has not deceived me!"

The hoodwinked Clayton never knew of the fierce secret battle at

Tacoma, in which Arthur Ferris had flatly refused to come East and

make the great quiet coup de finance until Worthington had agreed

to a private ceremony before his departure. "Give what reasons

you wish to Alice; you can even take her over to Japan and back

as Miss Worthington; but I will be made safe, or I'll not turn the

cards for you."

"Very good, then," growled old Worthington, to whom Senator Durham's

friendship was the one factor of success. "You put Durham into our

partnership; I my daughter; but she remains Alice Worthington, and

does not leave my side until you have brought Durham into line on

the Inter-State Commerce. Then I've got my senatorial partner, and

you your wife."

"Yes, and I am only sure of my life position when the marriage

has taken place," placidly replied Ferris. "I care not for any

publicity, but I know you will deal fairly with your daughter's

husband. Then we can trust each other, for we must!"

It had been even so, and Arthur Ferris left his girl wife, still

a stranger to him, in the care of the father who demanded the New

York deal with the senatorial ally as the price of the strangely

deferred honeymoon joys.

The girl bride, with a tranquil heart, awaited the return of

Ferris for the Japanese voyage which was to be a married lovers'

wandering in fairyland. She had taken the dross of Ferris' heart

for minted gold, led on by a father's lure.

Clayton's words were laconic, but his faith went with them. To the

millionaire he telegraphed:

"Will start for Cheyenne Monday. Must go to Bay Ridge to see Edson.

Will telegraph arrival from Omaha."

But to Miss Alice Worthington, Palace Hotel, Tacoma, he dispatched:

"I am coming West, but only to see you, after many years. Your wish

is my law. You are still my 'Little Sister,' and I am, as of old,

your

"BROTHER HUGH."

These telegrams copied in his manifold book, into which he had

carelessly thrust Hugh's dispatch, he picked up a letter in Arthur

Ferris' well-known hand-writing.

It seemed to be a few frank words following his telegram, and was

dated from Jersey City. Randall Clayton's brow grew grave as he

followed these seemingly candid lines:

"We parted in anger, old chum and comrade. I cannot tell you all

that I hear in gossip as a lawyer or as Worthington's special agent.

You should try and yield to Hugh's whims. He is old, and has vast

plans afoot. I can now safely explain his recent changes. I simply

staid away from the annual election to prevent jealousy among our

old employees. Hugh means as well by you as he does by me. He is

now the master of the Trading Company. Meet him, if he sends for

you, or writes you, in a yielding spirit. I tell you this because,

in my absence, he has had reports of your changed life. The Fidelity

Company fear that you are either speculating or gambling. They

have reported your altered behavior. Now, all this can be cleared

up. If you have any little private side to your life, confide in

me. I can square all with Hugh. He only wished to get you out West

to break off any possible entanglement. You are not in Wall Street,

are you? It is a seething hell. Now, forgive, forget; meet me

frankly at the Century for dinner, and I may be able to make your

fortune and save your friendship. Burn this; don't answer, even

by wire, as I shall be swinging around by Pittsburg. Wade is your

only critic. He wants the place for his nephew, Tom. We can't blame

him. Blood is thicker than water, after all; but we'll beat him at

his own game. Rely on me till death."

"This man is either a true friend or else the damnedest villain

alive," muttered Clayton, as he tore the letter into a thousand

fragments. "In two weeks I will know all. The game is made; once

that Jack Witherspoon faces my quondam guardian, I will soon know

whether I am to be prince or pauper."

It only lacked a quarter of eleven when the silver-haired Somers

called Randall Clayton into his wire-screened den, and opened the

door of the high-walled private compartment with its ground-glass

sides.

"Here's your deposit, an unusually large one, Mr. Clayton," murmured

Somers, awed by the concrete wealth lying before him. "You can run

over the cheques. The money I will give you an invoice tag for

a clean one hundred and fifty thousand. The cheques go nearly a

hundred more.

"Here's the list and tag total; they are all endorsed.

"Just have the whole put on our book as cash and cheque deposit. I

must be off! By the way, should you not take a man with you to-day?"

"I have a carriage below," quietly said Clayton, "so I'm all right.

No one will know what's in my bag. I will drive back and put the

book in my own safe. It may be late when I do, as there'll be a

hundred heavy depositors at the Astor to-day. No one wants to keep

funds locked up three days."

Sweeping the bundled bills into the portmanteau, and then locking

up the great wallet of cheques, Randall Clayton absently shook

hands with the fidgety old accountant, now eager for his leave.

"Must catch my train. Take care of yourself," was Somers' hearty

adieu, as he vanished with his ten-year-old umbrella in hand.

Clayton walked across the hall, with the concealed fortune locked

in the travelling bag, and then remembered his pistol thrown into

his desk drawer.

He had just slipped it in his pocket when Emil Einstein glided

into the room.

"Come down," he eagerly whispered, "She's there,--and--there's some

bad news, I fear."

Never waiting for the elevator, Clayton grasped his hat, hastily

donning his top-coat, and snatching the bag, cried, "Lock up my

desk and keep my keys till I come back. Don't leave; remember!"

Everything but Irma Gluyas faded from the excited lover's mind as

he saw the portly form of Madam Raffoni lingering in the darkened

hallway of the ground-floor entrance.

There were tears in the woman's eyes as she sobbed, "She is dying!

Kommen sie schnell!"

The golden daylight turned to darkness before Clayton's eyes, as

he reeled and staggered.

Then, a mental flash of hope allured him.

"Where?" he hoarsely cried. The woman's jargon made plain that the

beautiful singer still lay in the darkened rooms whither his loving

arms had borne her.

"The carriage, yes; my God, we must hurry!" was Clayton's first

returning thought; and then, motioning to the woman to follow, the

cashier darted along Fourteenth Street.

He was already within the vehicle when Leah Einstein timidly

entered.

"To the Fulton Ferry. Hurry!" called out the excited Clayton, as

the burly policeman drove away a knot of "extra"-peddling urchins.

"I can easily reach the bank by two o'clock; they never shut the side

doors till three," murmured Clayton, as his eyes rested upon the

Russia-leather portmanteau. He instinctively gripped his revolver.

It was all right.

And then, with a sinking heart, he essayed to gain some connected

story of the Magyar songbird's grave peril.

But, the woman sobbing there was all too overcome for a connected

story.

There was only death in the air--there was the open grave yawning

for the woman he loved, and the brightness had gone out of Randall

Clayton's life forever when, with white lips, he asked himself,

"Will we be in time? Irma! My God! Irma, my own darling!"

He had only time to dismiss the carriage and drag Madame Raffoni

on the ferry-boat when the chains barred out a score of the rushing

crowd.

Twenty minutes later, his heart beating a funeral knell, Randall

Clayton, portmanteau in hand, passed within the portals of the old

brownstone mansion. As the woman softly closed the door, which she

had opened with a pass-key, she laid her finger on her lip.

Then Clayton, on tip-toe, stole softly after her into the darkened

chamber where a white-robed form lay motionless on the great canopied

bed.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE STRANGE TUG'S VOYAGE.

"Dead, dead, my darling!" almost shrieked Randall Clayton as he cast

himself down on his knees at the side of the woman whose faintly

fluttering eyelids alone told of the vital spark of life. The dark

eyes of Madame Raffoni gleamed pityingly as she drew the young man,

almost by force, away.

With an agony of sudden terror she pointed to the hallway, and laid

her finger upon her lip. And then, in a hoarse whisper, the woman

told, in her patois, broken with sobs, of the alternate spells

of fainting and exhaustion which had brought Irma Gluyas nigh to

Death's door.

The darkened rooms were closed, and the air redolent of the pungent

narcotic drugs of the sickroom. Utterly unmanned, Randolph Clayton

stole back to the old drawing-room, whose rich gilding and frescoed

beauties mocked the pale, silent face lying there below.

Forgetting all prudence, he covered the limp, helpless hand with

burning kisses, gazing into the drooping eyes where he would fain

call back a glance of life and love. In this supreme moment she

belonged only to him, by right of his loyal love. In the arched

doorway of the library stood the timid woman messenger with her

hands pressed to her panting bosom.

Suddenly Irma Gluyas opened her eyes and a faint murmur broke the

silence.

"Go, go; for God's sake. They must not find you here. Go! FOR YOUR

LIFE!" Her head fell back, but her fingers were closed upon his

hand in a despairing clutch. Then Randall Clayton staggered to the

library window for breath of air.

His heart was beating wildly. Was this the end of all. Life seemed

to have fled those beloved eyes; he could see Irma's motionless

form lying there, the very apotheosis of Love. He threw himself in

a chair, and his pent-up nature gave way at last.

Mechanically he swallowed the glass of wine handed him by the watchful

Leah, and yet before she had stolen behind a curtained alcove the

room seemed to whirl around him.

He made a last desperate effort to rise, but reeled around unsteadily

and then fell prone upon the tufted carpet. A danger signal had

aroused him at last, the sliding of heavy doors which cut off the

room where the Magyar witch lay now helpless in the stupor of the

criminal's deadliest narcotic. And the frightened Leah Einstein

fled away upstairs. She only divined Fritz Braun's purpose as an

intended robbery, or some audacious blackmail. Murder had never

entered her mind!

The strong man lying there upon the floor, with glazing eyes, saw

in his last gasps a wolfish face lit up with the fires of hate

bending over him. Clayton struggled to draw the pistol which had

been his faithful guardian of years.

One last flush of expiring reason showed him his life, honor, and

a future betrayed into the hands of nameless thugs.

But there were sinews of iron in the arm of his unknown assailant

now throttling him. A hand of steel grasped his relaxing wrist and

the weapon was hurled far away.

Standing there, a triumphant Moloch, the unmasked Hugo Landor

watched the last struggles of the man relapsed into a helpless

insensibility. "Fool, the powder in those cartridges was drawn

weeks ago," muttered "August Meyer," as he growled, "This first!"

He seized upon the bank portmanteau and then disappeared for

a moment. Darting back, he dragged the prostrate form of Randall

Clayton out from the corner where it lay.

With one mighty effort he raised the heavy body and stealthily

descended the stairway into the long-unused basement.

Alone, in the darkened horrors of that grewsome cellar, the

triumphant criminal hastened to strip the body of the man whom he

had lured to a horrible death.

The deadly poison in the drugged wine had killed the unfortunate

lover almost instantly.

Braun hastened up the stairway with the plunder of the corpse,

and yet he paused a moment as three light taps resounded upon the

closed folding doors. "She is sound asleep; I cannot waken her

now," whispered Leah Einstein. "Then help me to carry her upstairs.

You must not leave her for an instant till I am done."

Meyer sprang into the room, and in five minutes returned with a

grin upon his hardened face. "Leah is safely locked in the second

story. Fear will keep her mouth shut, and she can quiet the other

light-headed fool."

The temporary eclipse of the gambling-rooms gave the disguised

criminal an opportunity to work in perfect safety.

With lightning rapidity he had examined all the spoil of his victim's

pockets. A horrid silence had settled down over the deserted old

mansion.

In his stocking feet the scoundrel stole down-stairs, and there

toiled alone, with the inanimate thing, once a stalwart man, lying

there helpless and prone in death before him.

"The chloroform finished him!" muttered Meyer, as he sought fresh

air from an open grating leading into a sunken window opening. It

was in the old unused laundry-room that "Braun, the specialist,"

hastily burned all Clayton's clothing in a long-idle furnace.

"His hat and shoes can go in with my trash; the pistol I can drop

overboard," murmured the cowardly wretch. He cast a callous glance

now and then at the body of his victim, cut off in the flower of

life and hope.

"No body marks, no tell-tale finger rings; that's good," the crafty

villain mused. "He is stone dead now; he will need no watching,"

was the brute's final verdict.

And then he stole cat-like up the stairs to gloat over the contents

of the bank portmanteau. He hastily transferred the ill-gotten

fortune to a heavy black valise and, cutting the rifled portmanteau

in pieces, he sought the furnace-room once more.

There was no sound in the rooms above as the villain toiled on,

but Leah Einstein, closeted there with the drugged woman who had

been used as a fatal decoy, could hear the sound of hammering below.

She fancied that Braun was preparing to escape, having removed

the dazed victim of the knock-out drops by the help of confederates

from the saloon.

It was nearing sunset when Fritz Braun himself brought food and

wine to his frightened accomplice.

He cast a searching glance upon the sleeping beauty and then said

roughly: "Eat and drink. You can surely trust me. The job's done.

The poor fool is miles away now, in a safe place."

But Leah Einstein's pallid lips were silent. She was awed into

a stupor by the haunting presence of an unknown majesty. For the

King of Terrors ruled in the sickening atmosphere of the deserted

mansion house, and Leah feared only for herself now! Braun saw the

woman's helpless terror and so left her alone with her helpless

charge. "I won't need the useless fool to help me," he mused as he

stole away.

A horrible suggestion seized upon him. "Why don't I make sure of

her?" In a few moments his nerve returned.

"She saw nothing. She knows nothing. She thinks I only robbed him,

and she has a neck to save. She shall come to me--over there. But

Irma--she follows her lover, by and by."

It was nine o'clock, the streets were dark and dismal, and a heavy

rain was falling, when a carriage drew up before No. 192 Layte

Street.

The driver was huddled up in his oilskins and scarcely glanced

toward the muffled form of the woman who was tenderly assisted into

the vehicle by the sturdy Leah and her male companion.

As the door closed, Fritz Braun sharply gave the driver his last

injunction. "Follow the express wagon down to Atlantic Basin. I

will ride on it."

Standing on the steps, Braun saw the hackman drive a few doors

away into the shadows of the neighboring houses and halt awaiting

the baggage team. He tightly locked the door on the inside.

"Lucky the front shop was closed for the holidays," he mused as

he made a last examination of the rooms above and below. There was

nothing left to betray him.

"Leah is a cunning one," he gleefully said, as he slipped on the

well-remembered brown top coat of the "pharmacist," and adjusted

anew his false beard and goggles. He felt for Clayton's useless

pistol and placed it in his outside pocket.

"Overboard you go, my friend, as soon as I reach the dock." Then

seizing his black valise, he passed out of the cellar entrance in

the rear and clambered upon the high seat of the great luggage van.

"Where to?" gruffly demanded the waiting driver, who, with his

burly mate, was drenched with rain.

"To the Atlantic Basin," sharply said Braun. "I've an extra ten

dollars in my pocket for you. It's a wild night." His only task

now was to rid himself of the stripped body of his victim, and he

had acted with a devilish ingenuity of forethought.

Then, turning the corner of the "Valkyrie," Fritz Braun led the

way along to where a snub-nosed tug lay with her hissing steam

escaping, as she tossed up and down on the frothy waves of the

yacht mooring.

The ringing of bells in the engine-room, the heavy trampling of

feet, aroused the helpless, half-dazed Irma Gluyas, as Fritz Braun

tenderly ordered the men to bear her into the little cabin.

"Give her a spoonful of this mixture," significantly said Braun,

"I must look out for the luggage."

With a delighted grin, the two expressmen received Fritz Braun's

liberal donation.

"Happy voyage, boss," they screamed, as the stout little vessel

twisted around on her hawser and moved out on the blackened waters,

throwing the yeasty spray high up with the saucy thrusts of her

blunt bows.

"Never mind that old trunk," cried Braun, as the sailors busied

themselves with throwing tarpaulins over the traveller's half dozen

boxes.

It was a heavy package left dangerously near the gunwale of the

boat. Mr. Fritz Braun was in a fever of good humor. He had dropped

overboard something which glittered a moment as it disappeared under

the black surges of the freshening waves. The faithless pistol of

the dead cashier now lay twenty fathoms under the dark tide.

While the tug's crew busied themselves with their duties and hastily

cast off the lines, the two women were crouching in the dingy cabin.

Fritz Braun, his cigar gleaming out a red defiance, watched the

light of the Battery glide by him. He had taken a deep draught of

brandy as a final libation to Fortune. "What fools those brewery

fellows are," chuckled Braun. "They imagined that I was only dodging

a few unwelcome legal papers."

"By Heavens! I have turned over a gold mine to them, and they won't

kick. If it had not been for my damned gambling craze I would have

had a cool hundred thousand more.

"And they will surely keep the secret of 192 Layte Street, for they

wish to run their own 'joint' there. All they want is silence, to

change it a little, and no police interference. They are bound to

play my game to save themselves from police interference."

The villain laughed aloud in his glee. "And Emil and Lilienthal,

even Timmins, know nothing. It has been a great stroke of nigger

luck. This fortune is safe. Now for the last touch."

He groped his way aft to where the cheap heavy-looking package lay

with one side balanced upon the rail. It was a huge coarse packing

trunk. The crew were busied in watching the light of the South

Ferry and avoiding the floats and tugs groaning along in front of

Governor's Island.

There was no one aft as the muscular scoundrel seized a handspike

and tilted the rough-looking packing trunk overboard. It sank

instantly, though Braun started as he fancied he heard a crash.

"If the propeller struck it, no matter," he growled. "There's a

hundred pounds of broken stairway irons lashed on him. And I will

soon be thousands of miles away."

He shook the rain off like a burly water dog as he glanced in at

the cabin window of the tug. There was Irma Gluyas, lying sleeping

peacefully, with her head upon Leah Einstein's lap.

"Safe enough," he muttered, as he sheltered himself under the

overhanging deck roof.

But as the murderer's eye fell on the black valise, he smiled with

an infernal glee. "There it is landed--this prize--after months!

"And they will think that the fool cleared out with it. Thank God!

Steward Heinrichs is on the 'Mesopotamia.' He will look out for

us; but if he knew what was in that valise I'd have to fight for

my life."

The tug now swung around into the North River, and the driving

spray forced the absconding scoundrel into the Captain's little

stateroom. "How long now?" shouted Braun, in the whistling tempest.

"I'll have you alongside the 'Mesopotamia' in twenty minutes,"

answered the skipper. "The 'Falcon' is the fastest tug on the

Brooklyn front."

He pushed out a black bottle, which Braun, in his character of

"jovial tourist," liberally sampled. "You take an expensive way of

getting to Hoboken," smilingly said Captain Jake Ashcroft. "Ah! My

wife has been very ill since the loss of our child," was Braun's

ready response. "So feeble that I did not dare to drag her across

New York. At least, she has some comfort in this way. Poor thing!

She is fast asleep! We have to give her sedatives; her nerves are

simply wrecked. I hope that a couple of years abroad will restore

her."

Braun handed the Captain fifty dollars. "I have a five for your

crew," he said, good humoredly, "if we make a neat landing alongside."

It was eleven o'clock when the stout tug ran alongside the

'Mesopotamia.' The old ex-liner was an "occasional" now, and all

ready to depart for Stettin.

On Braun's hail, a burly chief steward descended the companionway,

with a half dozen assistants.

In the pelting rain, Irma Gluyas, an unresisting bundle, was safely

borne by willing arms to the bridal stateroom of the huge steamer,

once the pride of the German merchant navy.

The luggage was hastily hoisted on board, and Mr. August Meyer

heartily shook the Captain's hand. "Here's the men's beer money.

It has been a famous voyage," said the happy villain, as he personally

examined the tug's cabin.

"Nothing left! So good-bye to you!" And away churned the tug,

dashing out into the midnight darkness, the red light gleaming like

the eye of some angry sea monster.

In a couple of hours the creaking donkey-engines ceased their rattle,

and Mr. August Meyer bounded up the gang-plank of the "Mesopotamia."

A burly Hoboken hotel-keeper stood waving the solitary adieu to

the victorious murderer.

They had seen Leah Einstein depart for New York City, her velvety

eyes glistening with joy, for Braun had, in the seclusion of the

Hoboken Hotel, handed her three five-hundred-dollar bills.

A handful of small change was tossed to her as a last offering.

"Remember, Leah," whispered Braun. "The driver is paid, drink money

and all. Let him set you down on Fourth Avenue. Get home, dream

of me and of our happy meeting next spring. You have the address.

Never forget it. Don't even give it to the boy. And never trust it

to paper."

"I'll not forget," cried the frightened woman, as she clung to

him in her frenzied "Good bye. You'll take care of me!" "For your

whole life," answered Braun. "You need me, and I need you. I'll

soon get rid of this baby-faced fool! She actually loved that

fellow, damn him! But she will remember nothing. She was too well

doped. The knock-out drops muddled her; but he went down like

a log. And he is disposed of! All you have to do is to keep your

mouth shut forever. I will make you rich."

As Leah clung to her partner in crime, Fritz Braun gave her

a handful of gold--his last peace offering. "Never go back again

to Brooklyn," he hoarsely whispered. "Remember, and keep ready to

come to me."

Braun stood alone on the deck of the "Mesopotamia" as the huge

bulk slowly swung around and gathered headway. The yellow lights

of Hoboken gleamed out faintly to the right, and to the left New

York's irregular skyline was lit up with a lurid reflected glow.

But he shuddered as he saw the airy line of the arch of Brooklyn

Bridge and the gleaming beacons below, where vice and virtue,

craft and candor, stupid drudge and lazy child of luxury had all

forgotten the cares of the weary day.

He started in alarm as the hoarse siren of the "Mesopotamia"

screamed out its bellowing note of departure.

A spasm of rage shook his trembling frame. He challenged some dark

spectre seemingly floating on the midnight winds. "Down, down," he

growled. "You are gone forever, under the black waters. Never to

rise, and there's not a weak joint in my armor. I defy the very

devil himself! With Heinrich's help I can evade all customs' search

at Stettin; a few thalers will fix that. The whole New York lot

are powerless; and as for Leah, poor devil, love will keep her

faithful, fear will lock her tongue, even if she wished to speak."

Stealing down the stairs, he went into Irma Gluyas' superb room. A

jaded stewardess sat watching faithfully over the sleeping woman.

He touched her arm. "I will fill your purse for you," he kindly

said. "See that my wife wants nothing. You must watch her like a

child.

"She is sadly broken in health. Don't mind her babblings!" He

touched his forehead significantly.

He had already carefully bestowed his valise of treasure under the

cosy lounge berth by the great portholes, and his rugs and wraps

covered it.

Leaving the ox-eyed woman there on watch, Fritz Braun hastened to

join the steward, an old friend of the days of the pharmacy and

its secret international smuggling trade. He had tossed his false

beard overboard and tied a sea-cap with ear-flaps upon his head.

"Just as well to drop 'Fritz Braun' forever now," he laughed. "'Mr.

August Meyer' has his passports in his pockets! So, here's for a

new life. I am born to a new name and safe, even in Germany."

It was only when Sandy Hook light was far astern that August Meyer

gave up the wild potations which even astounded Heinrichs. "One

doesn't go away on a vacation every day," joyfully cried August

Meyer. "One more bottle of the Frenchman's sparkling wine, and then

to turn in and wake far out on blue water!" The fool, safe in his

own conceit, forgot the curse of Cain branded upon him now. But

the vengeance of God was following him out on the dark waters!

The lonely gulls, screaming and soaring at daybreak, skimming the

waters of New York Bay, dipping and struggling over each bit of

flotsam, rested upon the fragments of a broken trunk floating idly

along upon the sunlit waters.

There was nothing to indicate the previous contents of the package

which had been shattered by the screw of a passing vessel; there

was neither mark nor token of its past history.

And so it floated idly up and down, borne hither and thither by

the veering tides, while far below, on the ooze, the heavy irons

still weighted down the corpse of the man who had been lured to

his death by the noblest impulses of the human heart.

And the sun came gaily up, upon the day of repose, God's own

appointed day of rest, the glittering beams played upon the closed

windows of the stately old mansion, where nothing remained to

tell of a "deed without a name" save a heap of dead ashes in the

blackened grate of the laundry furnace. The pathway of the criminal

seemed covered to all mortal eyes.

The cautious patrons of the "Valkyrie," stealing in by the side

entrances, talked in whispers of the re-opening of the pool-room,

and the sleeping "blind tiger."

"Come around any evening next week, after the Fourth," was the message

given to the "safe" patrons, "and we will be happy to accommodate

you."

There was no human being in the offices of the Western Trading

Company save the janitor, busy at his semi-annual clean-up, and the

Monday holiday approached with no suspicion of Randall Clayton's

disappearance.

"All New York" had hied "out of town" with its usual unpatriotic

snobbishness, and only the attendants of Mr. Randall Clayton's

rooms noted his absence.

"Singular young fellow," said the janitor to his sturdy wife.

"Comes and goes like a ghost; no friends, and has no life of his

own. Good-looking young fellow, too. Ought to have a wife and family

around him.

"It's the old story: hotel and flat life are crowding out the American

family. Men and women live on the single, and prey on each other.

One half are sharks, and the other half are their victims!"

But there were two persons in New York City who now feared to

approach each other. Emil Einstein, after a whispered conference

with his pale-faced mother in her shabby den on the East Side,

hastily called a wagon and transported all his slender effects

to the little room in rear of Magdal's Pharmacy, where the bogus

doctor had had his Sunday conferences with his bibulous patrons--the

regular "sick people"--sick of a thirst, beginning officially with

Saturday midnight and ending, providentially, on Monday morning.

Bob Timmins and Emil Einstein were already secret allies and the

Don Juans of a coterie of haphazard Sixth Avenue beauties. There

was a usefulness to both in the new alliance, and Einstein was

already the destined secret patron of the degraded Timmins.

"It's a good shelter for me," mused the adroit Hebrew, "but I'll

never tell him a word of the old man."

The parting between Leah and her hopeful son had been a wild access

of maternal tenderness. "You see, I've got to," growled the boy.

"You don't want to go to the chair, or get into Sing Sing, if this

fellow Clayton turns up a stiff. I don't know what the 'old man'

was up to.

"You do! And I don't ever want to! The only way we can meet is once

a week in the crowd around the Germania Theater on Astor Place.

"I'll come there afternoon or evening each Saturday, and hang around

till I see you. You can take a seat in the theater. I'll go up in

the gallery, and nobody will drop on us. If any one asks for me,

say I've gone away by myself to room. That I'm going to be married."

"And at the business?" timidly sobbed Leah. "Oh! I've got to stay

on there," the boy stoutly answered. "I know nothing; just keep a

shut mouth. There'll be hell to pay now. Remember, don't you ever

dare to look me up. If you should be sick, send word to Ben Timmins

at the Magdal Pharmacy. He will give me the message, and then I'll

find a safe way to see you. It's a life and death matter, remember."

The boy was eager to get away, for he feared his mother's plaint

for money. He knew nothing of the three five-hundred-dollar bills

now sewed up in the buxom Leah's corset.

"If they've buncoed him or done him up, there'll be a great run!

Holy Moses! The papers!" Emil Einstein fled away from the wrath

to come, and, even in his high-rolling evening hours with Timmins

that night he trembled.

For he had slyly gone to Mr. Randall Clayton's apartments. The

old janitor of the apartment-house met him with an anxious face.

"Here's Mr. Ferris, back from the West, hunting Mr. Clayton all

over town. They were to dine together. Where is he?"

The startled boy lied glibly, after the fashion of New York office

boys. "I don't know. Gone off on some trip, I suppose. He sent me

away on an errand yesterday, and I didn't get my week's salary.

I suppose that he has it. The pay clerk always gives it to him.

That's what I came for."

And then, whistling a rakish air, but with a nameless terror in his

heart, Emil Einstein hied himself off to Magdal's as a safe haven.

There was not a human being in all Manhattan who had seen Mr. Randall

Clayton on his hasty departure, save the smart-faced policeman,

Dennis McNerney, who had noted Clayton put the hesitating Leah

Einstein into the carriage on University Place.

"Something new for him," smilingly thought the policeman. "But he's

not beauty hunting; that's no charmer. Looks more like somebody's

housekeeper."

And yet, shake it off as he would, the guardian of the peace recalled

that night that he had seen the woman lingering in conversation with

one of the Western Trading Company's office boys, as he made his

circuit of the block. "It is a little singular, this new departure."

With a smile he dismissed the suspense, murmuring "Young men all

have their little 'side issues.' Half New York would go crazy if

it knew what the other half does, and how they dodge each other,

God alone knows."

It was merry enough in Magdal's Pharmacy that Fourth of July night,

while Arthur Ferris, rage in his heart, at last descended at Robert

Wade's mansion and spent the evening with that sly old financier.

He dared not bring up Clayton's name, for Mr. Robert Wade was now

his inferior, and all ignorant of the dark bond between Worthington

and his unacknowledged son-in-law.

But in the pharmacy Einstein hazarded a test question. "Where's

the old man, Ben?"

"Took one of the cheap Saturday afternoon boats from Hoboken for

the other side," said Ben, handing Miss Daisy Vivian a "slight

refreshment."

"Go alone?" said the curious Emil.

"Certainly," smartly said Timmins. "He is too mean to pay a woman's

passage over the ferry, much less to the Old Country!"

Whereat, in the general laugh, the frightened Emil gladly observed

that Timmins really knew nothing.

They were both, however, on their guard when the oily face of Adolph

Lilienthal suddenly appeared at the soda fountain.

The picture-dealer's crafty face shone with a benevolent smile

as he said to Timmins, "I've mislaid Mr. Braun's address, the last

one he gave me!" The two young men exchanged startled glances, but

Timmins resolutely answered, "You must find it out for yourself.

The boss didn't even tell me what steamer he sailed on. I was to

see you about all."

And finally Adolph Lilienthal retired crestfallen. He dared not

admit to the clerk the quarrel which had left him in Braun's power.

"You'll have a letter surely, from him in a week or so," smoothly

answered the cockney, finally.

And then the owner of the Newport Art Gallery sadly departed.

"I am in his power," he musingly said. "He knows all about me; and

I nothing of him. He is a fiend, that fellow; and he will perhaps

keep clear of my friends on the other side. He is too smart to

commit himself." The only clue possible lay in watching the doltish

London clerk. And on his way home the picture-dealer gave that up

as hopeless. "Braun would never trust that fool. He's only a human

sponge, a confirmed soak."

Far out on the waters the "Mesopotamia" was plowing along, the blue

water curling merrily away from her bows. Mr. August Meyer, blithe

and light-hearted, gaily waved his cigar in answer to the lights

of a passing steamer bound homeward. "My compliments to Mr. Randall

Clayton!" he laughed, as he strode along the quarter deck, the only

cabin passenger. "We have given Fate a clean pair of heels. I defy

the Devil to touch me now. It was simply to hold the bag open.

That fool ran his head into it. The stroke of a lifetime!

"God! What a row there'll be; but it will take a month to find out

that he has not skipped. I will be in hiding; but to-morrow I must

face this Magyar fool. What shall I tell her?"

Mr. August Meyer tramped the deck alone until he hit upon a plausible

explanation of the awakening which would arouse the Magyar songbird's

gravest suspicions. "When she awakes and finds herself far out at

sea, there will be a devil of a racket, unless I can find a way

to control her. Should she denounce me, I might be detained by the

Captain, subject to an examination. And the money; it would have

to go overboard or else I would go to the electric chair."

He gave up his surest way of stopping the unruly woman's mouth. "No!"

he mused. "That would never do here--on shipboard. The steward,

old Heinrichs, is too smart for all that. I must get her away into

some lonely place abroad. For only in that way can I hide Clayton's

fate from her. They never reprint American news in Poland or Eastern

Prussia and Silesia. Perhaps Russia will hide me. First, to quiet

her; next, to make the money safe; lastly, to get rid of her."

But friendly devils aided him with adroit whispers. His brow was

unruffled as he bade his carousing chum, the steward, adieu at

midnight. The good ship dashed merrily on breasting the Atlantic

waves.

It was long after eight bells the next morning when Irma Gluyas

slowly opened her eyes and wonderingly gazed at her tyrant master

watching her with steadfast eyes. Neither spoke until the pale-faced

woman realized the onward motion of the sturdy old liner, and her

deep-set eyes had wandered over the nautical surroundings. Then

she buried her face in her hands and a flood of stormy sorrow shook

her frame.

The acute-minded Fritz Braun knew that he had her at his mercy, for

the regulated doses of the narcotic had brought about a profound

reaction. Helplessness, coma, stupor, hallucination, dejection;

she had passed through every phase.

Turning her wan face toward him at last, the singer, in a hollow

voice, curtly said, "Explain all this!" There was a glance in

her recklessly brave eyes which made the soi disant August Meyer

relapse into a whining tenderness. "The high hand won't do here,"

he quickly resolved.

"You have been ill, my poor comrade," he tenderly said. "It's all

right now. That thunder-storm drove you frantic; you had a heart

seizure, and I had all I could do to get you away from New York

in secret." The woman eyed him doubtfully. "Whither are we going?"

she resolutely asked. "To any safe retreat in north eastern Europe

you choose," coaxingly replied Braun.

"Why?" demanded Irma, raising herself on one arm and pointing an

accusing finger. "If you have broken your oath, God forgive you!

It's your life or mine, then!"

"She does love him," was Braun's inward comment. "Stop your high

dramatic play-acting," soberly said Braun, holding a glass of

Tokayer to her lips. "Lilienthal was pounced down upon for smuggling

phenacetine. My own drug-store was searched. Thank God! none was

found there. He gave bail, the honest fellow managed to telegraph

me the agreed-on tip. I was watching over you in Brooklyn.

"I bundled you in a carriage, as you were so ill, caught a tug, ran

around to Hoboken, reached this ship just as it sailed! He knows

not who betrayed him, but the staunch old boy got five thousand

dollars to me, and the 'brotherhood' over here will take care of

me.

"I will lie by in hiding for a season, and I can send the usual

goods in by Norwegian tramp steamers. I have a square friend on

board here, the head steward, one of the Baltic smuggling gang's

best men. So, my dear girl, look your prettiest when we land in

Stettin."

It was only by a grand effort of will that he faced her coldly

searching gaze. "And Clayton; what was your hidden purpose with

him, you devil?" she boldly said, but half convinced by his smooth

story. "I may as well let the cat out of the bag," laughed Braun,

taking a deep draught of the golden wine.

"I wanted to lure him over to Brooklyn and let him fool his time

away with you from Saturday to Tuesday morning. I intended you to

lead him a will-o'-the-wisp dance out on Long Island. For Lilienthal

and I had learned from the office boy that a quarter of a million

would be locked up in the Trading Company's vaults, only guarded

by the janitor and the special policeman. The janitor was with

us, that devil of a boy got us the combination, bit by bit; but

you went out of your head after the storm, and Lilienthal was half

betrayed by a drunken underling in our smuggling company. I had

to clear out. I could not leave you to starve. It's the fifth of

July, and we sailed the third. I lost the chance of my life!"

"You swear this is true!" murmured Irma. Braun bowed his head. "I

will only believe it," she said, "when I have a letter from Clayton.

I love him. I would die for him. God help him; he would marry me!"

She was astounded when Braun said, kindly, "All in due time. You

shall have your letter through Emil. The boy is one of our gang!"

CHAPTER IX.

THE LIGHTNING STROKE OF FATE.

While the "Mesopotamia" skimmed along over the crisp, curling seas

upon this sunlit Tuesday morning, she bore onward a man whose breast

was now filled with a vague unrest. The robust passenger known

as "Mr. August Meyer" was unusually jovial at breakfast, when he

informed the bluff Captain that Mrs. Meyer was rapidly recovering

and would soon be able "to grace the deck," in the language of the

society journals.

The absconding murderer was delighted that Irma and himself were

the only first-class passengers, although accommodations for fifty

had been retained in making a "freighter" of the one-time "record

liner."

Leaving Irma, at her wish, to dream of a future meeting with Clayton,

Fritz Braun was left free to retire to his own capacious cabin.

"Take the whole twenty staterooms," cried the jolly old skipper,

highly propitiated with Braun's wine-opening and the druggist's

superb cigars. And this Tuesday afternoon Braun proposed to devote

to a careful examination of his rich plunder.

As yet he had not verified the whole stolen treasure. When all

his own luggage was arranged in his own double room, he carefully

threw overboard all of the murdered cashier's private articles.

The hat and shoes, which he had feared to burn, were cast into

the foaming wake of the vessel, and even the veriest trifle of the

contents of the deceived lover's pockets.

Braun, greedy at heart, shut his eyes as he tossed the watch-chain

and locket overboard, and even the scarf-pin, links and studs of

the victim. It was an hour after he had locked himself in when he

threw over the last shred of paper and the emptied pocketbook and

purse.

Braun smiled grimly as he carefully transferred to his wallet the

double-month's pay which had been handed to the cashier by accountant

Somers when he hastened away on his furlough.

"Nearly seven hundred dollars," laughed Braun. "My dead friend pays

my way over." There was, moreover, a few dollars in change in the

purse, which was tossed away to follow the other tell-tale objects,

after Braun had extracted Somers' test slip of the deposits. It

brought a frenzy of joy to the murderer's heart to read the lines,

"Currency, $150,000; cheques, $98,975."

He smiled grimly. "The last thing which could betray me is overboard.

I'm safe now! No fool to be caught, even by a tell-tale ring!" He

had hurled poor Clayton's college pin and seal ring far out into

the sapphire blue, and then resolutely screwed up the porthole.

"Now to see if my cashier's tag lies!"

Braun stopped, with his hand on the straps of his valise, a glooming

foreboding seized him. "I must watch this devilish woman! She was

far too placid. She has not swallowed all my story. If she should

try to cable, or to communicate." He paused, and the cold sweat

gathered upon his brow. "I'll closely watch her. I'll rush her

through Stettin. I'll hide her in some little hole on the Polish

frontier. If she tries to follow up her mad love for this fellow,

I'll finish her."

Already he looked forward with longing to the time when he could

safely call Leah Einstein to his side. "She will be true as a dog

to me, poor wretch! And I must get Irma out of the way. Perhaps

in some Polish marsh; they would not find her bones. There's the

wolves, too.

"But, my lady, you are only sleeping with one eye shut. Your first

false movement means"--He gloomily ceased, and then feasted his eyes

on the green bundles in the common-looking valise. "I am a prince

for life," he murmured, "if I can realize on these cheques." He

opened a bundle; they were all flat endorsements.

"About half of these are good anywhere," he mused. "Our gang can

handle them; and for the others, we may get a reward to return them

later," he grimly smiled.

But as he busied himself, the inscrutable face of Irma Gluyas

returned to madden him.

"She does suspect!" he growled. "She only plays policy because she

is in my power. Never mind, my lady; you are knitting up your own

shroud."

Seven hundred and fifty miles away, the streets of New York City

were filled with the refluent crowd of holiday absentees. The

great Babel had again taken up its round of toil and pleasure, its

burden of care and crime, its chase for the bubble "reputation,"

its hunting away of the urban wolf from the door.

In inverse order of importance, the shutters had come down, the

toiler had been out, dinner-pail in hand, for hours, when Milady

yawned over her morning coffee and the magnates of finance appeared

in their triumphal procession down Broadway to Wall Street.

There was a careworn look on Arthur Ferris' brow as he sprang out

of a coupe at Randall Clayton's deserted apartments at nine-thirty.

He had sullenly enjoyed Mr. Robert Wade's Fourth of July cheer,

his mind haunted with Randall Clayton's strange breach of social

faith. In vain he reassured himself. "He could not know where

to reach me with a 'phone or a wire," and his agitation increased

when the house janitor gravely said, "Mr. Clayton has not been here

since Saturday morning, sir. It's very strange. He took no travel

bag with him. I just took a peep at the room. The bed's not been

slept in, and here's a lot of mail. He's most regular.

"May be sick somewhere, sir. He looked very strange when he went

out Saturday. He'd been up in the night. I heard him moving around

very late."

"Let no one open the room till I return," sharply ordered Ferris,

and he then started his coupe off on the run for the Western Trading

Company's office. Bidding the man wait below, Arthur Ferris took

the elevator and, darting along the hall, smartly rapped at Randall

Clayton's door. It was locked, but the agile Einstein was at once

at his beck and call. "Mr. Clayton's not down yet. I fear he's

ill, sir," respectfully said the lad. "Here's all his office mail

in the ante-room."

Arthur Ferris sharply ordered the lad to watch over the closed

rooms. "Let no one open those rooms," he said. "You'll find me in

Mr. Wade's private office. Let me know the very instant Mr. Clayton

arrives."

Ferris at once rang on Mr. Robert Wade's private telephone, and was

relieved when he learned that the manager had just left his Fifth

Avenue home for the office. There was a crowd of the senior employees

waiting around the door to congratulate the new vice-president, when

old Edward Somers tottered in, his face ashen with fright. Ferris

dropped the telephone ear-cup and sprang forward.

"Speak! What's gone wrong?" he cried. He feared to learn that within

that locked office the moody Clayton lay cold in death--a suicide.

But the old accountant only raised his head and babbled, "There's

something gone wrong with Mr. Clayton. The bank has just sent me

a messenger."

"Our Saturday deposit never reached the bank! He's in there now.

Oh! My God!"

Rapidly turning on the District call for the police, Ferris darted

into Secretary Edson's room.

"Wallace," he cried, "take two of your best men; get pistols. Shut

the offices! Let no one leave! There's been a gigantic robbery

here; perhaps a murder!"

Wallace Edson sprang up, brave and resolute, as Ferris dashed back

to the broken old man.

"How much?" he sharply demanded. "Nearly a quarter of a million!"

the old accountant faltered.

"Where's the bank-book?" cried Ferris, his presence of mind

returning.

"Clayton has it," the bookkeeper sadly said.

Opening a door, Arthur Ferris called in the treasurer. Frank Bell,

jolly and debonnair, had just returned from "no end of a good

time."

"Look out for Somers, here," he ordered. "There's been a great

disaster. Let no one speak to him." And then the young vice-president

went out to meet the arriving police.

Mr. Robert Wade, slowly pacing along Fourteenth Street, had stopped

to whisper a few words in Lilienthal's attentive ear. There was

a delectable "private view" which was arranged for two o'clock on

this happy afternoon.

As the smug "dealer" bowed, his mind reverted to Mr. Wade's handsome

employee, Randall Clayton, and then the picture episode, and the

entrancing Magyar witch.

"I wonder, now," mused Lilienthal, "if young Clayton stole that

pretty devil away from Fritz Braun! Braun was really crazy over

her, it seems, and he, the black-hearted wretch, has gone over to

Europe to hunt for her. The pretty minx may be in hiding somewhere

up on the West Side, with Clayton. And yet I never saw or heard

of them together again. It may be he only wanted the picture, not

the woman!"

Mr. Lilienthal's laughter at his own joke was cut short by the racing

past of four policemen and two detectives. He was still standing

gaping in wonder when Robert Wade forced his way into his own office

and found all in an uproar.

Only Arthur Ferris was cool and collected, as he stationed the

police and called two stenographers into the room where old Somers

and Emil Einstein awaited the opening of an inquisition.

"There's been a robbery of a quarter of a million of our company's

funds, Wade," sharply cried Ferris. "We want to find out where

Clayton is. Take hold now and get these men's statements. I'll bring

in the bank messenger, and then try and hold Hugh Worthington on

the telegraph. The Chief should be even now nearing Cheyenne."

Ferris grasped Einstein's arm and drew him out of the room, as

Wade pompously began his Jupiter-like procedure. "I'll send for

the detective captain, and the Fidelity Company's people," said

Ferris; but he dragged Einstein into a vacant room. "You can open

his office, you young devil?" he whispered.

"Yes; side door key," said Einstein, conscious now of a protecting

friend.

"Get me in there, quick!" said Ferris, his eyes aflame. In a few

moments they stood in the vacant room. Ferris pointed to the desk.

"Remember what you told me!" he sternly murmured. And as the lad

drew out his stolen key, Ferris watched the roll-top desk slide

open. He grasped the bundle of telegrams and lone papers on the

pad, and motioned for the trembling boy to lock it.

Then, darting back into the ante-room, he dashed off two telegrams,

the first addressed to his secret partner at Cheyenne, and the

other to his wife in fact, but not name, "Miss Alice Worthington,

Palace Hotel, Tacoma."

"Not a word of this to any one; I'll pay you," said Ferris, as

he stuffed the papers in his pocket and rang for a telegraph boy.

"Come in, now, and tell your story--all but this!"

Holding the shivering lad while he sent a brace of messengers for

the detective chief and the Fidelity Company's expert, Arthur Ferris

muttered, "Is it murder or a daring robbery? Is it flight? Has he

discovered his rights and robbed Peter to pay Paul? Old Hugh must

come, and until then, silence!"

When the noonday sun burned down upon Manhattan Island, a thousand

offices had received the message:

"Look out for Randall Clayton, absconding cashier of the Western

Trading Company. Age 28, height 5 feet 11 inches; gray eyes, brown

hair, well built, weight about 170; speaks French and some German;

born Detroit; slight Western accent. Missing since Saturday noon,

July 2, with $150,000 currency and $100,000 endorsed cheques. Watch

all trains and steamers. Photographs by mail to-morrow. Presumably

alive; no woman in the case."

And in the spacious rooms of the Western Trading Company the

usual business was now moving on, while a detective sat on guard

in Clayton's office, and another in his deserted rooms, where the

Danube picture smiled down upon the callous stranger, who murmured,

"The old story, 'Cards, women, the Tenderloin, Wall Street, and

fast life!' Another man gone to hell with his eyes open."

But in the mob of reporters now filling the affable treasurer's

room there was the ball of angry contention tossed vigorously too

and fro.

Reporter Snooks of the Earth coldly bluffed Sears of the Ledger

with a bet, "Two to one on his skipping out; even money on a murder;

even money on a bunco."

And so "lightly they spoke" of the man who had yielded up his

unstained honor in a mad chivalry for the sake of a woman whose

love had innocently led him to a horrible taking off!

Within the manager's room, the preliminary inquisition was rapidly

moving on. Arthur Ferris, with burning eyes gazing intently as each

word fell from the lips of the frightened witnesses.

It was while this drama was being played that the "Fuerst Bismarck"

swept grandly up the North River, and the returning lawyer tourist,

Jack Witherspoon, hastened up town, eager to meet his client.

"I will prospect a little," mused the cautious Witherspoon, as he

registered at the Hoffman House. "Somebody may know me; and no

human being must see Clayton and I together in New York! One chance

spy and Hugh Worthington would be on his defense, and I would then

lose my place in a jiffy and all power to make him disgorge."

He was pondering over the best way to reach Clayton, and had just

decided to wait after dark at the rooms for his old class-mate,

when he remembered the annual election.

"By Jove!" mused Witherspoon, now burning to with Francine Delacroix's

dowry from the enemy.

"Ferris will surely be nosing around here. I must not show myself

at Clayton's rooms. There are two ways: one to call him by telephone,

and the other is to telegraph to the Detroit Club and have the

Secretary then telegraph to Clayton to call at once at Room 586,

Hoffman, on 'Alpha Delta Phi' business. They might have a clerk on

at the telephone over at the office, and if I was asked who wants

Mr. Clayton, I might be trapped."

He suddenly remembered his last agreement with his prospective

client, that if anything unforeseen occurred, Clayton would write

or telegraph to his comrade at the Detroit Club, and so, Witherspoon

added a few words of direction to the secretary, to his request

that Clayton be bidden to an "Alpha Delta Phi" secret reunion at

Room 586, Hoffman.

Witherspoon had already purchased a week's file of the New York

journals in order to follow up the financial columns, and was

moving toward the elevator from the telegraph stand, when a boy

thrust an extra into his hand.

"Heavy Robbery by Absconding Cashier! Randall Clayton Lets the

Western Trading Company in for a Quarter of a Million. Another Case

of a Double Life!"

With a supreme effort the Detroit lawyer mastered himself and

sought the seclusion of his room. In ten minutes he had recovered

his legal acumen. The two columns of the extra gave a list of

the new officers of the company, and the statement that Mr. Hugh

Worthington was at Tacoma with his invalid daughter, was supplemented

by the statement that Arthur Ferris of Heath & Ferris, 105 Broad

Street (the recently elected vice-president), was in charge of the

whole situation.

When Jack Witherspoon had cooled his heated brows, he swore a deep

and mighty oath of vengeance. "I don't believe a word of this

whole rot," he stoutly said to himself. "Either Clayton has been

frightened off, and is waiting for me near Detroit, or they have

trapped him in some way. Something has brought things to a crisis.

And yet, I must handle Mr. Arthur Ferris with velvet gloves!"

He reflected now upon the imprudence of his registration at the

Hoffman. The railroad attorneyship had brought him in close contact

with Ferris. "I must go around there and show up at once! They

would surely see my arrival in the papers!"

He had just finished his professional toilet when a telegram was

brought to his door. He tore it open with a wild anxiety.

"No news of friend here. Have sent dispatch as agreed. There is

sealed box of valuables here for you, deposited a month ago by your

friend; sent by special express commission. Telegraph your directions."

He sought the telegraph office and wired orders to have the deposit

instantly expressed to him, at Adams & Co.'s general office. "Take

receipt in my name for twenty-five thousand dollars' value," was

his last prudent order.

And then, jumping into a coupé, he departed for the Western Trading

Company's office. "They will have the telegram," thought Witherspoon.

"Thank God! Ferris is a Columbia College man, and no member of our

'frat.' I can tell him that some of our New York chapter proposed

to celebrate my return, unknown to me. There's Doctor Billy Atwater.

I must look him up to-night. I can leave him here on guard while

I go and face Hugh Worthington. Either Hugh or Ferris has put up

this job!"

Suddenly an awful thought came to him.

"My God! Have they made away with him?"

He saw his course plainly now. The untiring pursuit of the wolf,

the silence of the crouching panther!

"Never!" he proudly declared in his heart. "Randall Clayton a thief!

Never! I will be the second shadow of Mr. Arthur Ferris. If any

one has the key of this mystery, he has. Clayton never went away

willingly. It would be his ruin for life to let his name be blackened.

And, the money! Who has it?"

The prominence of Mr. John Witherspoon as the Detroit counsel of

the Trading Company's great syndicate carrying agents insured his

instant admission to the general manager's room. There was a sober

gathering of a dozen magnates, and Arthur Ferris sprang up, somewhat

disconcerted, when he saw Witherspoon's anxious face.

The young vice-president left the detective captain, Manager Wade,

the haggard old Somers, and two great lawyers, and drew Witherspoon

away into Randall Clayton's deserted rooms.

"Where did you drop from?" curtly demanded Ferris. "I've been some

months in Europe," simply said Witherspoon, now wearing the oily

mask of his profession. "I arrived on the 'Fuerst Bismarck' to-day,

and was going to take to-night's train West. But some fellows of

my college 'frat' had fixed up a 'surprise banquet' for me at the

Hoffman.

"So, after all they had to tell me to hold me over, I was just

opening my accumulated mail, when by accident I picked up an extra.

I thought poor Clayton was away on a summer vacation."

"He's away on a devilish long one!" snarled Ferris. "Took French

leave with a quarter of a million. Who, in God's name, would have

taken him for a thief!" The mournful ring of Ferris' voice almost

deceived his secret adversary; but Ferris was, in secret, pondering

over the Detroit dispatch to the absent Clayton, which he had opened

and secreted.

"This man knows nothing," decided the wary Ferris, for Witherspoon's

face was frankness itself.

Jack looked around at two men vigorously working away at a huge

safe standing in the corner. "They're now opening Clayton's safe,"

bitterly said Ferris. "Of course, there will be nothing found

there. No! It's either a case of secret gambling, mad Wall Street

plunging, or a crazy woman intrigue."

"What do the detectives say?" soberly queried the Detroit lawyer.

"Case of sharp thief, got three days' start of us by clearing

out Saturday at eleven. I've suspended that old fool, Somers, for

trusting such a deposit to one man alone! It's a crushing disgrace

to the New York management. I shall sweep it all away as soon as

I can get Hugh's orders. I'll take charge myself, now!

"I suppose you go on to Detroit at once. We are readjusting our

whole freight schedules!"

"Yes," gravely said Witherspoon, "unless I can help you here. I'll

telegraph my people at once. Will you telegraph Hugh and see if he

might need me here? I suppose he will come on at once."

"I can hardly say," replied Ferris, caught off his guard. "He was

to have met Clayton to-day, in Cheyenne!"

In an instant Ferris regretted the lapse, and hastily added, "Of

course, you might wait a couple of days. Worthington can give

you his ideas, and then you can save time in closing the railroad

deal. Old Hugh has a clear majority of our stock now."

Though Witherspoon had instantly grasped the significance of Ferris'

dropped hint, he stilled his beating heart. "What have you done

with Clayton's rooms?" he quietly said. "You had an apartment with

him. You should search it."

Ferris started. "By Jove! Yes! I forgot all about that. I've two

men watching them now."

After a short pause, Witherspoon said calmly, "There may be some

sudden sickness, some accident in the country, some mysterious

happening. His rooms should be carefully examined."

"You are right," answered Ferris, "and I have my duplicate keys.

Let us drive up there, you and I; we will take a look and then seal

them up till the detectives examine them. We are getting at facts

here; we are awaiting now to hear from Hugh. As you knew Clayton

at college, I'd like to have you represent the fair thing at the

searching of the rooms, particularly as I lived with him. But he

has not been there since Saturday morning, and the money is gone.

That tells the whole story. It's impossible to keep it quiet now,

and I wash my hands of the whole thing. It occurred three days

before I took charge."

The two young men silently made their way to the street. As they

seated themselves in the first carriage they saw idle, Witherspoon

calmly remarked, "If I know Worthington's mind, he will make very

radical changes here now. Do you suspect any collusion?"

Ferris shook his head. "Poor old Somers has Clayton's tag receipts

for the currency and cheques as usual. I'm sorry for the old

man. We'll retire him, at any rate, pension or no pension. It was

Wade's silly system, to trace all our money down with two sets of

custodians, and then send it to bank by ONE man!"

"You don't think Clayton can have been made away with? Followed

by those who have accidentally dropped on his secrets, or some one

informed by some member of your office staff?"

"No; that's all far-fetched and speculative," gruffly said Ferris.

"But the whole damned lot, from old Wade down, are under secret

espionage now. I ordered that on at once. Besides, the Fidelity

Company have their own people at work."

"Ah! There was a bond?" questioned Witherspoon. "Fifty thousand,

only," growled Ferris, "and they probably will only pay a half.

They'll make us prove our loss in open court, and you know we don't

care to haul out our books. But the recovery goes really to old

Hugh; he paid all the dues on Clayton's bond."

They halted in a watchful silence at the fashionable apartment-house,

and Ferris, calling the janitor as a witness, using his own keys,

opened the vacant rooms. At the door he paused to give a few sharp

directions to the watchers, and so Jack Witherspoon stepped into

the room first. By a mere accident he felt a small object under

his foot, and then quickly secured it in his hand, having carelessly

dropped his hat. He felt a little card-case in the hand which

remained thrust idly in his pocket.

Together the two young men searched every corner of the double

apartment. The careful housewife's summer shroudings of Ferris'

rooms were still undisturbed.

As for Clayton's apartment, it was left in the careless disorder of

a young man about town. "I will touch nothing," said Ferris, awed

into a dismal silence. Jack Witherspoon keenly followed Ferris'

every movement. There was nothing to indicate any idea of departure.

Even Clayton's trunk-keys were in the scattered packages in the

ante-rooms. The closets, dressers, and wardrobes showed no gap, as

the young men explored.

"That's the only new thing I see--that picture," casually said

Ferris, pointing to the Danube view. "I never saw that before, and

he was not much of an art collector."

A sharp knock on the door drew Ferris to the door, where an office

clerk awaited him with a telegram. Witherspoon still stood eying

the picture, when Ferris said, "Look out for things here. I've got

to answer a telegram. Hugh is not at Cheyenne. I must call him at

Tacoma. Alice can forward the dispatch."

Left alone in the room, Jack Witherspoon redoubled his energies,

knowing that he might never see the interior again. Ferris' remark

about the picture had strangely attracted his attention. "That

means something," mused the excited Jack. His hand was on a closet

door, and by a strange impulse he opened it quickly. A picture-case

of heavy pasteboard stood there, upright in a corner, and a

half-detached label caught his eye. The Detroit lawyer tore it off

and hastily secreted it. He was seated at a table in the room when

Ferris reentered.

"Now," said he, bolting the doors between the two apartments,

"I wish to have you see these rooms sealed up! I must get back to

the office. You would do me a great favor if you would be here and

represent me as well as Clayton's interests when the detectives

search to-morrow. For nothing more can be done till I hook on to

Worthington, or the police may have a report from the outside.

"Twenty tramp steamers and fifty sea-going boats have left since

Saturday noon. I am afraid Clayton has shown us a clean pair of

heels. What do you think?"

But Jack Witherspoon only clutched the objects in his pocket, and

slowly shook his head. "I think nothing! It is a sad business, and

I will help you all I can! I will wait here until you hear from

Hugh, at any rate. You can drop me at the Hoffman."

At the hotel Ferris said, on parting, "Come over at ten o'clock

to-morrow. I'll give you a stenographer and one of our assistant

cashiers. Then you can verify the whole contents of Clayton's rooms

with the detectives. The lawyers and head police will look through

his safe and office papers under my eye."

At the parting, Ferris, worn out by the day's excitements, murmured,

as if seeking a confirmation of his theory, "Clayton has been acting

very strangely of late. Old Hugh wanted me to give him a talking

to!"

"There'll be a reward offered, of course," said Jack, anxious to

lead Ferris out.

"Certainly," was the rejoinder. "I think fifteen thousand for him,

and ten more for the money or cheques. But all depends on Hugh!"

"I'll meet you at ten," gravely answered the stranger lawyer. "This

will break up our dinner, I am sick at heart."

Once in his room, Witherspoon drew out the two articles which he had

concealed. The first was a little red morocco card-case, evidently

dropped as the supposed fugitive had left his room! Jack's fingers

trembled as he drew out the few visiting cards. With a wildly

beating heart he examined them.

He sprang excitedly to his feet as he read the faintly pencilled

lines traced on the back of one, "Irma Gluyas, No. 192 Layte Street,

Brooklyn."

It was the work of an instant only to glance at the label torn from

the picture-case. The printed words, "Newport Art Gallery," were

visible above the words, "Fräulein Irma Gluyas, 192 Layte Street,

Brooklyn," and the adjuration, "Handle with care," completed the

marks upon the tell-tale paper.

The anxious lawyer saw the magnificent castle in the air which

he had builded crumbled at his feet. "This is for me alone," he

swore in his heart, and it was only after an hour's cogitation that

he resolved upon his course. "I must hunt up Doctor Atwater; but,

first, wait for the wishes of Worthington. The package from Detroit

may tell me something. And I must examine that picture and see that

no tell-tale inscription is on the back. Here is the key of the

mystery."

Seated alone, with his nerves strained to the utmost, a sudden

inspiration came to the loyal friend of the missing man. "I am too

late. They have killed him!"

He cursed the evil hour when he left for Europe without placing

Randall Clayton in a place of safety. "I should have taken him

with me, or else gone West with him and braved old Hugh. Yes; they

have lured him away! Killed him, and hidden this money. It will

all come out of the stockholders. It goes back into old Hugh's own

pocket. He has made his title safe!

"In some way poor Clayton has babbled, and they have swept him

from the face of the earth. But for some fatal imprudence, he would

have come into his stolen fortune. And, after my settlement, Hugh

Worthington would have feared to attack Clayton."

In half an hour Mr. John Witherspoon was on his way to Brooklyn.

He had already deposited the two precious articles in the massive

safes of the Hoffman, and he began his weary quest with a glance

at the "Newport Art Gallery," whose Fourteenth Street address was

printed upon the label.

"This remains for a future examination," was Jack's rapid conclusion.

"The picture was procured here within three months, and the shop

looks like a permanent one." A glance at a Directory, in a drug-store,

proved that the Emporium had been there for a year, certainly.

It was four o'clock when the lawyer resolutely rang, the bell at

No. 192 Layte Street. He had consumed an hour in scanning the quiet

exterior of the stately old mansion. The ignoble use of the parlor

frontage as a modiste's shop, attracted him as he vainly waited

for a reply to his repeated ringing.

All that he could gain from a pert shop-girl was the news that the

house was shut up, and that no one lived there.

The judicious use of a two-dollar bill brought as a harvest the

news that it had been used as a private club for men and that it

had been recently closed. "Ask in the saloon--the "Valkyrie"--next

door. They are the landlords," said the girl as she returned to

her ribbons. The acute lawyer, whose years of active practice had

opened his eyes to many of the mysteries of the inside life of New

York, Detroit and Chicago, was not deceived by the decorous white

enamel shutters.

"I have done enough for one day," he mused. "I have kept my temper,

and Ferris suspects nothing. Poor Clayton never betrayed me; he

only betrayed himself. And he has been trapped; BUT BY WHOM? God

alone knows!"

Once safely back in the Hoffman, Jack Witherspoon leisurely dined.

His self-commune had taught him the need of a perfect control of

every faculty. "I will not linger here to embarrass Ferris; but

the Newport Art Gallery, the mysterious woman of 192 Layte Street,

and the picture's secret history shall be my property alone. I will

not betray myself. Arthur Ferris may, perhaps, unbosom himself!"

As the lonely night hours advanced, Witherspoon sat in his room,

vainly striving to reconcile the dozen theories of the flaring

editions of the evening papers. There was not a single suggestion

of foul play; not a word to point the direction of the supposed

fugitive's evasion; not a clue from the baffled police.

It was the old story of a double life, the wreckage of a promising

career. "Just a plain, ordinary thief was Mr. Randall Clayton,"

said one acute observer; "his case is only extraordinary from the

amount taken. And it seems that he robbed for the lucre itself, as

the most careful inquiry divulges no stain upon his private life.

Another case of the 'model young man' gone wrong."

Witherspoon had thrown the journals into his trunk as a precaution,

and was smothering his disgust at their heartlessness, when Arthur

Ferris, white-faced, dashed into his room.

"What has happened? Have you found his body?" cried the Detroit

man, springing up. "I may have to leave you here to represent me

privately," gasped Ferris, as with a shaking hand he extended a

telegram. "Read that!" Witherspoon gasped, in a sudden dismay, as

he read the crushing news. The dispatch was simply signed "Alice,"

and the young men were speechless as Witherspoon falteringly read

the words:

"Ellensburg, Washington, July 5, 1897. Father lying dying at Pasco.

Railroad accident. Join me there. I arrive six o'clock morning."

"I have ordered all the Tacoma dispatches repeated to her," muttered

Ferris.

"He did not get this news about Clayton." Ferris' eyes were averted.

In his craven heart there was but one burning question, "My God!

Did he remake his will after our marriage? I may be left a pauper

on Alice's bounty."

And Ferris, with a mighty effort, controlled his knowledge of the

secret wedding. "This is horrible!" he cried, as he sank into a

chair.

And while they were mute, a ghastly, gleaming corpse was whirled

hither and thither, under the blackened waters rushing inward from

the sea, under the arch of Brooklyn Bridge, a mute witness of the

curse of Cain, waiting God's awful mandate for the sea to give up

its dead.

CHAPTER X.

A CRUEL LEGACY.

Randall Clayton's name was being bandied scornfully by thousands

of sneering lips as Arthur Ferris evaded his New York friends in

the crowded lobby of the Hoffman. The crafty lawyer bridegroom was

happy at Witherspoon's promise to remain and aid him.

The secret antagonists had, however, lied to each other with all

possible show of candor. Ferris returned rapidly to Robert Wade's

private office, having engaged a temporary resting place at the

Fifth Avenue. "Let no cards be sent to my room--from the press or

any other people. You can easily understand why!" he ordered.

The suave head clerk convoluted in sympathy with the financial

disaster, now the theme of the wildest gossip. But his heart

was as cold as the gleam of his gigantic diamond stud (real), as

he smoothly greeted the next customer. What is human suffering or

disgrace in a New York crowd?

Ferris calmly refreshed himself at the Fifth Avenue's historic bar,

and then, hastening away to the Trading Company's office, sharply

dismissed the timorous Wade. That fat functionary was visibly

rattled when Ferris sent him home for the night. "I shall personally

direct all important matters now. You may as well notify Bell and

Edson that (for your own sake) I allow you and Somers, as well as

them, to remain on duty. But you four men can consider yourselves

practically suspended until Hugh Worthington arrives. You officials

can sign no single paper, from now on, without my counter endorsement.

There's my warrant for this action. I shall have this letter spread

on your confidential letter-book, so consider me as the real manager

until I put you on duty again."

Robert Wade turned ashen pale as he read Hugh Worthington's carte

blanche powers given under his own hand to the new vice-president.

"As I hold this, his power of attorney, and all his proxies, I

presume that you recognize my authority," coldly remarked Ferris.

"I will take charge of all here. I will be either here or at Parlor

C, Fifth Avenue."

"When do you expect Worthington?" stammered the deposed manager.

"I don't know," sharply said Ferris.

"For God's sake, consider my family, my business future, my

reputation," cried Wade, with tears in his eyes.

"Pooh!" angrily rejoined Ferris. "Make that by-play on old Hugh.

It's all lost on me!"

And, as the door closed, he sharply locked it, and, after examining

the rooms to prevent any Peeping Tom observing his actions, Ferris

sat down to study Clayton's telegraph book, and the messages which

he had rifled from the dead man's desk.

"I am safe so far," muttered Ferris. "No one knows of my big secret

deal. But from this fellow's dispatch to Hugh, he certainly intended

to go out and see Edson at Bay Ridge. Now, did he start in good

faith? I must set some good outside detectives at work on that.

"Then this dispatch to Alice, I wonder if she had still left a

sneaking fondness for him! Who can read a woman's heart? It's like

judging the depth of water by its smoothness: all mere conjecture.

Half the women are liars, and the other half hide more than half the

truth under their silken breastplates. They fight with double-edged

lies as their keenest weapons.

"Unless Clayton was a very deep rascal, he certainly intended to go

on West. Where the devil is he? Kidnapped, and held till the swag

is safe? Dead? No!"

A guilty spasm of conscience suggested that the missing cashier

might have secreted the funds and fled, to make private terms later

from his hiding place, with the wary Hugh.

"He knew nothing, he suspected nothing of the Detroit land deal,"

finally decided Ferris. "It's just a case of plain, ordinary thief!"

The ambitious scoundrel had decided to conceal the finding of

Clayton's dispatches and carbon-book from all the local officials

of the company.

"Now to the practical," he muttered, as he spread out his girl

wife's fateful telegram.

"She will have surely received the Tacoma dispatches to the old

man before I can reach her now. The Associated Press, to-morrow,

will have a full account of the accident. His condition will be

telegraphed all over the country. But I'll instantly send a carte

blanche order to the Western Union man at Pasco for hourly reports."

The Gazetteer had furnished him the meager information that Pasco

was a little railroad junction town in Franklin County, Washington,

on the Columbia River. "The old man must have been delayed on his

way to meet Clayton."

"Now, for Alice!" The schemer's brow was damp with a cold moisture

as he muttered: "Old Hugh hated even to hear of Death. He tabooed

the subject like a Chinese mandarin.

"His will! Did he think to change that document after the formal

marriage? I have not yet delivered Senator Durham! Hugh may have

left this girl the whole property! Fool! That I did not take that

matter up! Who ever thinks of Death, the grim shadow, stealing

along at our side? I must kill off her lingering regard for 'Brother

Randall Clayton!' Shall I start?"

After half an hour's cogitation, Ferris had made up his plan of

operations. "I must let him drop! I cannot reach him. I will then

act on a certainty. She will report to me. I will clear all up here

and start West to-morrow night. But I will await her report and a

second order to join her. I must let her know why I linger."

There were a dozen attendants waiting outside, for the accountants,

detectives and police were to be busied, coming and going, all the

night. Ferris had already called Einstein, waiting now on his own

special orders, when he changed his mind. "I'll trust no one now."

He decided to go to the telegraph office himself. He suddenly

remembered the influence of the robbery and Worthington's untimely

death upon the value of the Western Trading Company's stock.

"Damn it!" he growled. "I may be left a millionaire or a pauper!

I don't know which; and I have no ready money."

But the presence of Senator Durham at Newport gave him a gleam of

light in these dark skies. "I'll telegraph to Durham (in cipher) to

sell a big block of this stock short at the opening of the Board.

Hugh's death will carry it down twenty or thirty dollars a share,

and then it will be back to the normal in a week."

Suddenly he remembered the waiting Einstein. "Tell me," hoarsely

whispered Ferris as he dragged the lad back into the private office,

"What do you think of all this? You knew Mr. Clayton's ways!"

"What's my opinion worth?" bluntly said the watchful Emil. "This!"

said Ferris, handing him a roll of bills. "Then," fearfully whispered

the artful boy, "it ain't no case of skippin' out. I believe some

of the fools in the office got a braggin' over their lunches about

our heavy bank business, and some smart gang has 'done up' Mr.

Clayton. I don't think he's alive. He wasn't the man to 'give up'

easy. He was 'dead square.' There wasn't no woman in the case. I

could tell stories of some of the other gentlemen. No! Clayton's

been hit good an' hard!"

The boy trembled as he spoke. Ferris laughed contemptuously. "Here,

in New York!"

The stubborn boy answered: "Look a-here! I'm only a poor working

boy! There's twenty squares within a half mile where a man's life

isn't safe if he flashes a ten-dollar bill. Clayton was followed,

and done up for fair. An' the gang an' the swag are hundreds of

miles away! That's how!"

"But where would they hide him?" answered Ferris, shivering at the

boy's matter-of-fact coldness.

"RIVER!" emphatically said Emil. "Five to six hundred floaters

picked up every year. Nobody knows; nobody cares!

"Now," sagely concluded Emil, "if Clayton could have been led off,

then it's dead easy; but he started straight for the bank, and

never got there. The gang may have piped him off for months, and

they worked on him, right here in the heart of town."

"Keep your mouth shut. Post me, on the quiet," said Ferris, as he

remembered his telegrams. When Emil Einstein was left alone, he

calmly counted his bills.

"Pretty good throw-off," he murmured. "I must lie low, for the

mother's sake. And--give her a wide berth. It's getting pretty

warm. This fellow's a chump; but the detectives, there's another

breed of rats!" The boy shivered as he thought of the gleaming

handcuffs.

Arthur Ferris had now recovered from the first shock of the tidings

from the West enough to look ahead for the piloting of his own

interests. He smiled grimly. "Business before pleasure!" as he sent

off at the Twenty-third Street general office the tidings which

enabled Senator Durham to turn a cool hundred thousand. "He'll be

down here to-morrow to watch over his stocks! I must wait and see

him before I go West. Besides, I must see Witherspoon and give him

his cue. He knows nothing! He searched the Detroit title and never

even made a kick. His firm passed on the whole matter. I need him

to carry out my future plans."

It seemed to Ferris that his long dispatch to "Miss Alice Worthington"

betrayed too much connubial tenderness. He recast it, and, after

stating that he would leave for Pasco within twenty-four hours,

added:

"Open and read all dispatches sent on to your father from Tacoma.

The company's affairs are paralyzed here. I am in sole control.

Randall Clayton has absconded with a quarter of a million. Missing

since Saturday. Police at work. Telegraph your hotel address.

I will report by wire to-morrow several times. Will be guided by

your telegrams. Am acting under your father's letter of instructions.

Secure all his private papers in case of grave results of injury."

All the weary night Arthur Ferris tossed uneasily upon his bed,

tormented with returning fears as to Hugh Worthington's testamentary

dispositions. "Those old miser hunks are crafty! The girl will

be wax in my hands if I am left to control the money. If she has

the purse-strings I may find her ugly in harness. She has the old

man's blood in her, and blood will tell."

He had not dared to reveal the secret marriage in the decorous

language of his carefully worded dispatch. But one comfort was

left him. "I have the whip hand of them all," he murmured. "I am in

charge, and no one can displace me. Jack Witherspoon knows nothing,

and I can easily placate him by making him one of the estate's lawyers."

The golden crown of the millionaire seemed to have descended upon

his brows at last.

Yet, while he slept, the enemy was awake and sowed tares! At the

Hoffman House Doctor Atwater and Witherspoon sat in conference long

after the midnight chimes had sounded. When the young men separated,

Atwater heartily grasped his friend's hand. "Poor Randall," he

sighed. "Fool, perhaps, even as you or I; but thief and defaulter,

no; never. There is some sad solution to this mystery. You must

wait till Worthington arrives, and be the champion of our missing

friend. I only fear later a discovery of his murder, and, if so,

thank God! it will be a cypress wreath; not the stain of dishonor,

or the brand of the felon. I am yours, to the last."

As Witherspoon said "Good night" to the little picture of Francine

Delacroix, which was his household goddess, he swore an oath of

fidelity. "It may leave me poor, separate us for years; but Clayton,

dead or alive, shall be found. The Detroit package may unravel a

part of this mystery."

It was high noon the next day when Arthur Ferris had completed

his arrangements for the hasty trip West. Jack Witherspoon sat in

Ferris' private office, stunned with the news of Hugh Worthington's

death at Pasco.

For the operator there had loyally sent on to Ferris the first news

of the millionaire's demise in laconic words, "Died at ten o'clock,

fully conscious. Daughter with him since four A.M. Full Associated

Press reports later."

The morning journals only contained a rumor that "Mr. Hugh

Worthington's private car was attached to the telescoped train."

"This leaves me in charge of all until Hugh's will is opened,"

evasively said Ferris. "But it is my duty to go out there. You

must remain here, as my representative, until I return. I will

telegraph your firm at Detroit that I need you here. They can

charge a company fee. Your own honorarium will be paid 'out of the

estate.' Now join me here at four. I'll have your orders ready.

And you can go to the station with me. I'll wire you, twice a day,

and you can report to me, on the train."

"Any clue?" sadly demanded Witherspoon. "Oh! Clayton has got

clean away with his swag," said Ferris. "I've published fifteen

thousand dollars' reward for him, and ten more for the cheques or

any considerable part of the stolen money."

They parted in silence, and Ferris never saw the glare in Jack

Witherspoon's eyes. "If he proves innocent, my poor friend, I'll

make Ferris, on his knees, eat those cruel words!"

But when he left his new client, so strangely brought into his half

confidence, the Detroit lawyer hastened to Adams' Express office.

For two hours he sat alone in a private room and studied over the

contents of the mute message of the dead.

There were things in the package which astounded him; there

were written words which melted him to tears. The little hoard of

twenty-eight thousand dollars in certified cheques was there, with

an order for Randall Clayton's active stocks. A duly executed will,

in favor of my school-fellow and friend, Jack Witherspoon, lawyer,

of Detroit, was accompanied with a letter which gave the history

of the abortive attempt to decoy him to Cheyenne.

The last manly lines brought tears to Jack Witherspoon's eyes. "As

they cannot lure me to Cheyenne, they may strike at me, even here,

and so, before your return. I've left you the little I have. Should

aught befall me, you are my sole heir, and the old matter would

go to you. Punish Hugh, follow up and defeat Ferris, and win my

birthright for Francine Delacroix. Make her your happy wife. We

made a mistake, Jack. We should have gone West together at once,

and faced old Hugh."

The young lawyer's eyes were filled with tears as he read the rest

of Clayton's statement, evidently prepared to offset any attempt

on his life.

But he was ready to battle within the enemy's lines, with a calm

and unmoved face, when he met Arthur Ferris at four o'clock.

Witherspoon scarcely recognized the man whom he instinctively felt

to be Randall Clayton's murderer. There were great furrows in

Ferris' pale cheeks as he handed him a telegram. "I believe that

the whole world is going mad," desperately said the baffled Ferris.

"Just read those lines from a now helpless and orphaned girl."

The men who were to fight out a battle to the death eyed each other

in silence. Witherspoon scarcely could credit his eyes, as he read

again and again the few words of the imperative message.

"My father died this morning. Do not join me. Send no telegrams

or letters. I am coming, at once, to New York. Remain in charge

until I come with my lawyers from Detroit. I will have my father's

will and all his papers. I act under his last wishes. Find Randall

Clayton, dead or alive.

"ALICE WORTHINGTON."

"Now, tell me, Witherspoon, is not that girl mad?" hoarsely cried

Ferris. "I suppose that all the railroad people and our ranch men

have gathered around her, and she has dozens of volunteer advisers.

By God! I'll straighten her out when I meet her."

The young Detroit lawyer met Ferris' agonized glances squarely,

and his voice rang as coldly as the clang of steel when he quietly

said, handing back the papers: "I must tell you, Mr. Ferris," he

answered, with decision, "that I release you from any obligation to

me for my services so far. I shall decline to express any personal

or professional opinion in this matter until I get further orders."

Ferris sprang back like a tiger cat at bay.

"Orders! Orders from whom?" he almost yelled.

"From my seniors at Detroit," quietly answered Jack, "or from Miss

Alice Worthington. I am surprised at the tone in which you refer

to her! What are your claims upon her?

"Of course, as a brother professional, you know that your power

of attorney from poor old Hugh ended with his appallingly sudden

death. That demise also vacates the letter of instructions given

to you."

"But I am the vice-president of the company," growled Ferris, scenting

a possible enemy in the imperturbable young advocate. "True, but

you are not a judge on the bench. You have suspended all the officers

here, usurped their powers, and taken great responsibilities. Do

you control a majority of the stock of the Western Trading Company?"

Ferris winced.

"Of course, you know I don't; but the Worthington estate does!"

"What power have you to represent that estate?" pursued the unpitying

Witherspoon.

"It looks as if Miss Worthington would act herself, and, also, have

other advisers. I now, as a friend to all parties, warn you that

you will be held responsible for all your acts here. You must not

ask me for any further advice."

"I suppose you will volunteer your legal acumen to the young heiress,

now!" sneered Ferris. He regretted his brutal outbreak, for John

Witherspoon rose with calmness.

"I own five hundred shares of the stock myself, earned as a fee,

from the late Mr. Worthington.

"I shall claim my right to have access to the company's public

offices, and to watch your strange floundering around here. We

will drop our social and personal intercourse right here--forever.

Your last remark is so vile that it is beneath contempt."

Witherspoon was at the door when Ferris laid his pleading hands

upon his arm.

The Detroit man shook them off. "I warn you, Mr. Ferris," he said,

"that a very reputable minority of the community, if not a majority,

will believe that Randall Clayton was waylaid and murdered. Now,

until you can show him up as a thief, I recommend you to use charity

and forbearance. It is my belief that there has been some damnable

foul play here."

The dejected Ferris sat for an hour with his head buried in his hands,

before he dared to answer his girl wife's imperative telegram. "I

must wait here like a tongue-tied dog," he growled.

"Has the will made her a sole legatee? If so, I must work on her

feelings. I was a fool to quarrel with this fellow. He was another

of the school-time playmates!"

When Ferris sneaked out to send a submissive dispatch to his wife,

he was tormented by the stern words of the young orphan's telegram.

"I act under his last wishes. Find Randall Clayton, dead or alive."

"There is trouble ahead," mused Ferris, "and I have made enemies

of all the officials here. But Alice is mine. I hold her in the

hollow of my hand. My wife! That she cannot gainsay."

When he had sent off his message he felt strangely cheered by the

reflection that Worthington probably left ten to fifteen millions

behind him.

"There's enough for all," he cheerily reflected. "I'll let her play

'Miss Millions' a bit, but when the probate proceedings come up,

she'll find a husband is a hard thing to deal with."

He was wandering back to the office, determined to remove at once

all of his private data and personal effects to the Fifth Avenue,

when he stumbled over the policeman on the beat.

Sturdy Dennis McNerney flourished his club in a passing salute.

"Bad business, sir, this of Mr. Clayton," said the stalwart

Irish-American. "Is it true there's twenty-five thousand reward

out?"

With a sudden inspiration Arthur Ferris paused. "Mac," said he, "I

am deeply interested here. I'll give you personally five thousand

dollars more for the first clue; mind you, no publicity."

The policeman's eyes sparkled. "Word of honor?" he said. "Yes!

I'll write it in your presence, seal it, and give it to you--this

promise, if the clue leads to Clayton, dead or alive."

The two men walked along in the streaming crowd. Ferris felt

instinctively that the officer was holding something back.

"What do the reporters say?" hesitating remarked Ferris. "All in

the dark--a pack of fools--unless it's a crime that gives itself

away to any one. They know nothing, and the force has not picked

up a pointer. Strange, strange, that the job was so neatly done!"

"What do you mean?" quickly queried Ferris.

"Oh! Any gonoph can see that the man was murdered for the stuff!"

resolutely said McNerney. "He was no fellow to clear out! His life

was clean as a whistle! I know all about him!"

"How can you prove that?" hotly said the excited lawyer. "Because

all the men on the force, from here to his rooms, and around town,

knew him for a clean, civil, honest, steady fellow--one in ten

thousand. Thief, he? Never!" said McNerney. "Not on your life!"

Ferris stopped. "I will be at the Fifth Avenue, night and day,"

said the vice-president, "either there or at our office. You can

come to my rooms at your will. I'll leave word for your admittance.

You'll have your money in ten minutes if you turn up any sign of

him."

As the men separated McNerney strolled down to the corner where he

had seen Clayton and Leah Einstein enter the carriage. "Here the

poor fellow began his ride to death," mused Dennis. "I must have

that reward--all of it--and this fellow's five thousand. Had he

a hand in it? I'll spot him from to-night.

"But the Jew boy has the key of the secret! Of course, he's crafty

and cowardly. In a month he will throw off his fear. When I catch

him with that woman I've got the right scent of the whole thing.

Then, I'll hunt up the hack-driver. The boy is the key. And if the

force finds out nothing in two weeks the game is mine! If the boy

is arrested, I'll get in with the woman and carriage clue. I can

wait!"

While Jack Witherspoon and Doctor Atwater conferred at the Hoffman,

there was a private meeting at Robert Wade's mansion, which brought

together all the suspended officials.

Robert Wade, with indignation against Ferris' brutal treatment,

announced the policy of a united resistance, a joint appeal to

Hugh Worthington, and the demand of an Investigation Committee of

Directors. "We will wait for Mr. Worthington's vindication," said

Wade, in an unanswerable tone.

"Then you will wait until eternity," sadly said Walter Edson.

"Here is the ten o'clock edition of the Evening Telegram. Mr. Hugh

Worthington, the well-known capitalist, died at Pasco, Washington,

this morning, from injuries received in a railroad accident."

When the hubbub had subsided, the voice of Wade was heard. "Gentlemen,

we must act in a passive defence until the Worthington Estate

sends in a man to control the situation. I shall move that three

of us retain lawyers to defend us all and advise us as to our joint

course, for I apprehend Mr. Arthur Ferris will be a King Shark if

he rules over us."

While the endangered officials burned the midnight oil, the

hollow-eyed Arthur Ferris was hidden at the Waldorf-Astoria with

that sage statesman Senator Dunham. It was long after midnight

when Dunham dismissed his nephew. He had half pooh-poohed away the

fears of the young schemer.

"Of course, the girl is rattled. You see, no one but you and

I know of the marriage. It gives you an iron hold upon her. She

will undoubtedly be advised to let our Western friends escort Mr.

Worthington's body on to Detroit. There, of course, she will be

met by the family lawyers.

"After the necessary preliminaries there, one of them will escort

her on here--and--I will be within reach. She evidently wishes to

have the affair of the marriage made public, some time later. If

you made Worthington do the right thing about the will, and all

that, you will come out all right.

"But do not cross her wishes. You cannot spring this marriage on

the public without endangering all our interests. My lawyers here

will look out for the big deal. You can bring the estate's lawyer

to me, and, when you have reduced your wife to a passive mood,

we three can clue up all the private affairs. I will be near you.

I think you are borrowing trouble. As for young Witherspoon, let

him be a little huffy. I can soon whip in those railroad chiefs of

his. Have little to do with him, but be civil--that's all.

"Don't antagonize him. He might prove an ugly customer."

While the tide of intrigue ebbed and flowed around the great

company's headquarters, far away beyond the Rockies, on past the

dreary plains and the uplifted minarets of the Columbia, seated by

the coffin of her dead father, Alice Ferris gazed down in silence

upon the face of the stern old man.

Among the silent watchers, gazing in the fair face of the orphaned

girl, there was no one who knew her other than as Alice Worthington.

The calm majesty of Death had swept away from the dead capitalist's

face all the anxious look of money cares. The pale lips were silent

now, behind his broad brow the busy brain was settled forever.

To the frontier clergyman, to the company's Western superintendent,

to the few care-worn women who had offered their services, the strong

face and tearless eyes of the beautiful mourner were a mystery of

mysteries.

The morrow was to bear Alice Ferris away to her home by the lakes,

and some subtle influence seemed to have transformed the golden-haired

girl into a stern, stately Niobe.

All the journals from Cheyenne to the Pacific were now teeming

with fulsome praise of the man whose firm hand had guided so many

enterprises past all the financial shoals and quicksands of our

sweeping tide of speculation.

The whole of America now knew how the deceased millionaire had left

Tacoma in the ruddy glow of health, his luxurious car attached to

the eastward train.

There had been but a hurried parting between Hugh Worthington and

his idolized daughter. Alice well knew the light of Victory shining

out upon the old man's rugged face, as he received the brief telegrams

of Ferris from Philadelphia informing him of the sweeping triumph

in the election which had thrown the final destines of the Western

Trading Company unreservedly into his hands.

There was a cloud, however, chilling the hearts of father

and daughter, when Hugh briefly announced that he was going on to

Cheyenne to meet Randall Clayton. "You will forgive him; you will

bring him on to us; he will remain here when my real church wedding

and all our reunion of friends introduces me as a bride. For I am

only pledged by the law now."

Then the old man's face hardened. "I have to use diplomacy with

him," he briefly answered. "He has stubbornly refused to obey my

orders. He might ruin my newly modelled company as an open enemy.

And I have invited him West only to save trouble between Arthur and

him. You know what a future you will have as the wife of Senator

Dunham's only nephew. I have tried to gain wealth for you. Arthur

Ferris may Himself reach the Senate. I had to choose for you. I

chose well. Randall might have been the son of my old age, but"--

Then Alice Ferris, with flashing eyes, faced her father. The virginal

heart of the girl was roused with a nameless terror. "And so you

have made me Arthur Ferris' wife to chain the Senator to you for

life! You told me that Randall Clayton led a vile life. Who told

you?"

The Little Sister's heart was aflame. All her soul went out in

a flood of faith in the absent man's honor. "You have been at my

side, near me, father. Some one has worked upon you. I will make

Arthur tell me all."

It was only after a positive refusal to take Alice on to Cheyenne

that the old capitalist left the lonely heiress sobbing in a wild

grief.

And but twenty-four hours later the open switch left unguarded by

a drunken laborer had sent a thundering special crashing into Hugh

Worthington's special car.

Strangers had tenderly lifted his bruised and bleeding body; but

no one but the mourning girl had heard the awful confession of

those early morning hours at Pasco.

Alice Worthington shuddered as the dying man gasped out his fateful

words, driven on by a self-torment which was a living hell. The

millionaire faltered out the shameful discovery of Randall Clayton's

vast birthright.

"I was forced to take advantage of Everett Clayton in the panic

days when we separated. It was his ruin or mine. It was only after

I had nurtured and educated Randall that I found the forgotten land

had leaped into a priceless estate. The railway changes made it a

princely fortune.

"I was tempted! I feared to disclose my plans of handling Dunham.

I was forced to buy Dunham's influence with speculating for him. It

was only another form of bribery. And so, to seal Dunham's faith,

I married you to Arthur Ferris!"

The girl bride's, eyes settled into a stony stare as the wretched

man grasped her hands. "It is too late now. The company has been

my dream, the crown of my life. But you can make restitution. You

are now nineteen. I have left all to you, in my will. Boardman

and Warner are the executors. They are honest. There is young

Witherspoon, too, their junior; he is Clayton's friend. You can tell

him that you have discovered this property interest for Clayton.

"Spare my name. Spare yourself the public shame. You can make

restitution. Tell Arthur Ferris all. He has my confidence. He

knew the whole intrigue. And make him give Clayton his half of

the proceeds of the land sale. You will have all my millions! Your

husband is powerless to interfere. I intended to leave him a handsome

sum. But you can take Randall Clayton's deed to the railroad land

and give him one-half of what they pay me. Ferris has carried the

whole matter through. He knows."

When the dying man recovered from the weakness of his effort at

disclosure, he lay whispering, "Nemesis! Nemesis! I am punished!"

And Alice Worthington, at her dying father's side, felt herself now

chained to the galley, a slave of millions. She had become twenty

years older in half an hour. In low tones she asked questions to

which the repentant man replied only by a feeble motion of assent.

When the noonday sun stood high over Pasco, the whole shameful

story had been revealed to the orphan. The great sighing of the

mountain pines seemed to blazen the secret of a great man's cowardly

crime.

And yet Hugh Worthington died with his hand feebly clasping his

motherless child's, a smile upon his lips, for she had promised

never to betray the blackened past.

"Give him back his own," muttered old Hugh, whose lips had feebly

owned that he had allowed Randall Clayton's good name to be vilely

accused. "Give him his own!" imploringly faltered the dying Croesus.

And so, the legacy of a crime came as a crushing burden to the girl

wife whose clear eyes had looked into her father's darkened soul.

The papers and telegrams which the lonely heiress was forced to

examine told her clearly how Randall Clayton's pathway had been

beset with snares.

She shuddered as she read the telegrams which proved a catastrophe

which she could not avert. "And Arthur Ferris--my husband in

name--knew all! This is his work!"

She roused herself to action and gave over the dead clay to kindly

hands when, at midnight on the day of her father's death, she had

received all the dispatches which told her of Randall Clayton's

evasion. Kneeling by her father's body she vowed herself a priestess

of Justice. "They may have killed him. I may be too late; but I

will deal with my despoiled brother's memory as my only heritage.

For he was innocent, and has been robbed of birthright, good name,

and perhaps life itself."

BOOK III.

THE MESSAGE FROM AMOY.