"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 coupe, 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, "Fraeulein 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.