He laughed over the cunning which had bade her write or cable no more. And, with a wildly loving heart now panting in her reassured bosom, Irma Gluyas fell into a belief in Braun's story of their flight from the revenue officials. "Thank Heaven, he is safe! He loves me beyond all," mused the dreaming woman.

"He will get the letter left for him with the faithful girl, and follow me on. Once that I am out of this man's clutches, Braun will never dare to follow or claim me. For, he fears the Vienna police as much as I."

Brave in her love, happy in her lover's safety, Irma Gluyas only lived to meet once more the man who had awakened her nobler nature. To be his slave, to drift down the years with him, was all she asked; only to see his face again! She was held in Love's bondage now!

And, wrapped in her dreams of the future, she forgot the man at her side, who now compassed her death. "I must make my treasure safe first," he craftily planned, "and then lose this hawk-eyed devil. But only when my future is secure beyond all reach!"

With all his bridges burned behind him, Fritz Braun easily threaded the network of railways of the Eastern German frontier.

For years he had studied over the hiding place upon the triangular frontier of Poland, Germany, and Austria; and now, he only longed for a freedom from Irma Gluyas' haunting eyes.

"Leah can join me later; but even she must not know of this fool's fate!"

Safe in his own conceit, Fritz Braun drew happy breaths of relief when he was safely hidden in the little village of Schebitz, under the frowning crags of the Silesian Katzen Gebirge.

"Here we can rest in safety till the storm blows over," he said, as Irma Gluyas followed him into the arched entrance of an old half-forgotten manor house. "You shall have your books and music; we can take a run whenever we like, and you shall have nothing to fear, for my American friends will take care of me."

And then began the double duel of wits, in which, all innocent of suspicion of danger, the woman whose soul was struggling toward the light again, hid the darling secret of her heart—the coming of the man who was to free her from the tyranny of her past sins! "His love will find me out, even here," she murmured, as she listened to the wild breezes sweeping down from the pine-clad mountains. "And I shall live once more—a bond slave no longer!"

It was two weeks after their arrival when Braun felt safe to leave his dangerous charge with the peasant spies whom he had gathered as servants.

His money was safe, hidden in the old manor house; and he felt the skies were clear when he entered the money-changers at Breslau, where he cautiously sold some of his smaller bills.

On the table in the bank lay a copy of the New York Herald. His stern face paled as he gazed upon the flaring head-lines. But the audacious criminal's hand never trembled as he read the four columns which blazoned the discovery of Clayton's body.

Fast as the devil drives he hastened back to his secret lair. One friendly thrill warmed his agitated heart as he read Leah Einstein's simple cipher words, in the cable which warned him of a new danger.

"I must soon be about my business," he gloomily decided. "This Hungarian witch has some jewels left. It's only a few hours by rail to the Russian frontier. She might, with her winning appearance, easily find her way over the frontier of Poland. If she learned of the discovery of Clayton's body, she might, in her love craze, denounce me, even here. That would mean death for me; at the worst only a short detention for her."

The fear of the old Vienna crimes now hardened the heart of the man who was once the prosperous Hugo Landor. "SHE MUST DIE!" he cried as he sentenced her remorselessly. "But how? There must be no bungling!"

His whole nature was thrilling with the alarm of Leah Einstein's warning. "She may have to clear out," mused the self-tortured criminal. "Her only safe refuge is with me, and I could count on her to help me clear away this wild-hearted Magyar devil."

Fear now kept him from any further unnecessary visit to Breslau. He pondered a whole day, and then sent an unsigned cablegram, addressed to the woman he had rebaptized as Rachel Meyer.

It was the simple phrase, "Schebitz-Breslau."

"Leah will know that I am here, and in any storm can join me." With a sudden access of generosity, he sent the faithful ally of his darkest day a secretly-purchased draft for two thousand marks.

And then the murderer forgot his danger, ignorant of one lonely pursuer who followed up the blind trail of the murderer, now watching Leah Einstein night and day.

It was twenty days later when the poor cobbler Mulholland, whistling softly, went out and closed the door of his little shop opposite Mrs. Rachel Meyer's modest apartment. The frightened woman had only left her rooms at night after the publication of the finding of Randall Clayton's body.

A horrible, haunting fear now possessed her. She knew the horror of the deed. Stronger than the terror which bade her avoid the light of day was the yearning to assure herself of the unruly boy's safety. "If he is caught, God of Jacob!" she murmured, "I will end my days in prison."

Even the hammering of the strange Irish cobbler in the noisy hallway relieved her. She had never looked into that open door but a pair of gleaming eyes had followed her every movement from under the disguised policeman's bushy false beard.

"I think that I have the key of the mystery now," gleefully soliloquized McNerney. "I am tired of playing cobbler Mulholland."

In fact, he needed time for rest and study.

A five-dollar bill had procured him the privilege of copying the cablegram, when a telegraph boy had stumbled in, two weeks before, to find Rachel Meyer.

The words "Schebitz-Breslau" had given him no clue; but on this auspicious day the postman had begged him to aid him in finding the proper party to receive a valuable registered letter.

The officer's quick eye caught the German stamp, "Value 2000 marks," and the words, "Absender, August Meyer." "This is the fellow at last," muttered McNerney. "The man, August Meyer, who sends this poor devil of a woman two thousand marks. She is preparing to skip out. Now, for Mr. Lawyer Witherspoon!"

"The next time that this woman meets the boy, he must be arrested on one corner by Jim Condon. I will seize upon her! Keeping them separate and quiet, I may get the story. But I dare not tell the chief, or I would lose the reward. Witherspoon must trust to me. I must get that man over there."



CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE YACHT "RAMBLER."

Four days after cobbler Mulholland had sold out his little outfit to a stranger, James Lennon, whose dingy scrawl, "Shoes Fixed While You Wait," now stared Mrs. Rachel Meyer in the face, there was a circle of three earnest conspirators plotting in the interests of justice in the library of Counsellor Stillwell.

The great house was silent on the golden afternoon, of the famille Stillwell were busied in their varied occupations. The old lawyer in his William Street legal cave, the ladies driving or chasing the bubble pleasure.

Around the library table were gathered a trinity of souls all eager to avenge the unrequited death of Randall Clayton. The tired-out executors were now on their way to Detroit, sharing with the puzzled journals and the baffled police the hope that "something would finally turn up in the Clayton mystery."

Down in the Western Trading Company's office, the urbane Robert Wade, now shining out again in full plumage, explained to the occasional disgruntled stockholder that the Fidelity Company had paid in their fifty thousand dollars; that many of the largest cheques had been stopped, and that the Worthington Estate had nobly offered to recoup the company for the final deficiency from the extra fall dividend on their own stock, which was to gladden all hearts.

"Poor Hugh Worthington!" sighed Wade. "If he had only lived to see his cherished plan for freight control in operation. Our stock has risen fifty-five points on the new deal. Mr. Ferris? Ah! His retirement was solely due to ill-health. He has resumed his private consulting practice. But, Clayton! there was an irreparable loss! Poor boy! Some momentary imprudence must have exposed him. Thugs! Thugs! Here in New York, in broad day light! It is monstrous!"

And so the ruffled financial waters closed smoothly over the forgotten grave of the murdered cashier. It was dimly supposed that the "sleuth hounds" of the law were still peering about with their fabled "argus eyes."

But the two men gazing upon Alice Worthington's serene and steadfast face on this August afternoon wondered at the fervor of her high-souled thirst for vengeance.

The broad, Greek forehead, the clearly-shining blue eyes, the firm, resolute lips, her voice throbbing with earnestness, all spoke of a Venus armed with Minerva's panoply.

William Atwater's dark, impassioned face was lit with a fiery enthusiasm, as he said, "Miss Alice, we have met here to open the first of the seven seals.

"Witherspoon and I have recognized that you have not unfolded to Stillwell, or even the executors, all the last, sacred wishes of your father. We feel that you have knowledge, suspicions, and inferences, all your own. Now, to us, the last, the nearest friends of Clayton, your carte blanche to follow this up means everything. But we must have your directing mind with us; we need absolute secrecy, the use of money, and your aid. We do not ask you to tell us all, now. We only do ask that you will, at the right time, aid us with everything you can impart. We will give you the most important disclosures. I will give you my whole time.

"And if you sustain Witherspoon here, I will hound down the murderer, and, perhaps, fix a further responsibility on the only man to whose interest it was to blot out Randall Clayton's blameless life."

There was a joint exclamation as the three gazed inquiringly at each other.

"Arthur Ferris!"

"Yes," solemnly said the dark-eyed doctor. "He was luring Clayton to his grave! He may have tried other plans, and, perhaps foiled by Clayton's suspicions or by mere accident, have used the real murderer here as his tool."

Alice Worthington's golden hair gleamed out, as her head fell upon her hands. Her face was ashen-pale, as she faltered out, "Have you found any papers?"

The girl bride's heart beat wildly. There was the imperilled honor of her father, guilty in intent in her mind now, as she whispered, "Is any one implicated?"

"Listen!" said the young physician, rising and pacing the room. "We have a trap set for a humble tool of the real murderer, whom we believe to be hiding in Europe. We must act somewhat outside of the law. Witherspoon must go to the Secretary of State at Washington and get an alias extradition, so that we can later hold the real criminal. We must use force, fear, even innocent fraud. We need your money aid, your authority, and your secrecy." Miss Worthington's face lit up grandly.

"There's my hand," firmly said Alice Worthington, springing up. "I have made arrangements with the executors for money. Spare nothing! Let us all act together. You shall be my brothers if you bring the cruel wretch to bay!" The young doctor bent over the girl's trembling hand and kissed it in reverence. Turning to Witherspoon, he simply said, "Call in McNerney."

A flickering rosy red dyed the young heiress' cheeks as she gazed upon Atwater's nervous, elegant figure pacing to and fro in the dusky library. "Miss Alice," said the physician, "When I dismiss Witherspoon and the officer, it will be only to send them to take two persons into custody. From them we shall be able to find our secrets which will lead us to the murderer.

"And to-morrow I will come alone, here, and tell you that Randall Clayton feared treachery; that he made a will, and left his little savings to one whom you will respect and honor.

"Of all this, not a single word, even to Witherspoon, until the two suspected ones are secretly arrested. Not a human being must know of the arrest, as we will use either one of the arrested to guide me to the hiding place of the murderer.

"I hope by to-morrow night that you will know all but the fact of the chief criminal's arrest! To effect his arrest, I myself must risk life and even my reputation. Witherspoon and I have toiled in secret since the disappearance of Clayton.

"With you, we will win; without you, the murderer may escape. One hint of danger, and he would take flight and be lost in Europe's uncounted millions, perhaps in Asia."

Alice Worthington's beaming eyes told of her new pledge of secrecy, as she stood, a beautiful Peri, finger on lip, while Witherspoon brought the stalwart McNerney into the library.

The young officer, in plain, dark clothes, with severely shaven lip, was the ideal of a resolute young Irish priest, saving his Roman collar.

But his steady eye kindled as Witherspoon tersely recounted to the astonished heiress the discovery of the pocketbook, the picture label, the secret visits to the deserted mansion, No. 192 Layte Street, and the results of all his private researches.

The policeman sprang to his feet as the lawyer logically recounted his casual visits to the Newport Art Gallery, on finding a similar Danube picture in the window.

"In my opinion," sharply concluded Jack, "this Adolph Lilienthal knows something. His glib lie that there was no duplicate of the artist proof in America fell flat when I reminded him that I had recently seen one in New York. After looking over his memorandums, he admitted that he had sold one to Mr. Randall Clayton some weeks before his unfortunate death.

"Now," the lawyer cried, with positive deduction, "that picture had been addressed to Fraeulein Irma Gluyas, No. 192 Layte Street, Brooklyn. I have the very label. Her name was found pencilled on the card in poor Randall's pocketbook. Who can find the missing thread to follow on this darkened path?"

"I can," stoutly said McNerney. "Somebody who was anxious to get Clayton out of the way used some pretty face as a lure! She was thrown across his path, God knows how! The vilest crimes here are concocted often in gilded luxury. He was undoubtedly killed in Brooklyn. This woman helped to get him there! Two people must be let alone, absolutely undisturbed. One is Lilienthal, and the other, Ferris! And you must all use a thousand precautions when we act. I'll have half the truth by to-morrow night. My chum, Jim Condon, is hammering shoes as cobbler James Lennon opposite the room where one of the suspects lives. And if Lilienthal or Ferris should miss either of the parties who will be arrested, they may warn the real criminal." The plainly-spoken words carried conviction to each listener.

The three friends were breathlessly hanging on the officer's frank words as he now described the departure of the fated Clayton from the street corner in the carriage with a woman, and decoyed there by the boy.

"Why did you hide all this?" was Alice Worthington's astounded query.

"Because the time was not ripe; because it meant the escape of the real criminal; and because I want the honor of the arrests, and the double reward. It means a life of ease and promotion, as well as the glory of bringing the brute who killed Clayton to bay! Now, Jim Condon is on watch. The woman is packing to slip away to Europe; she must meet the boy again! I will shadow him; Condon will watch the woman. Within three days they will meet, probably to-night, as the German steamers sail in two days. We will soon have them both!

"I've arranged for their safe handling."

"And what do you propose to do?" anxiously cried the heiress.

"Why," simply said McNerney, "the doctor and I will take the woman, go over to Europe, and catch 'Mr. August Meyer,' who forgot that the name of the sender of a valuable package is put on the envelope by the German government. That has betrayed him."

"And Mr. Witherspoon?" the excited woman said. "Stays here and secretly holds the boy hidden, even against the law, until we have the other. Then we can trap Ferris or Lilienthal, or both."

"Is this plan your joint work?" asked Alice. The three men bowed.

"And it's the only one, Miss," stoutly said the policeman. "One word dropped to any one, and we lose the game forever! I go out of my duty. I risk my place! But I've got three-months' leave of absence. Condon has two."

"I will guarantee your future," said the heiress to McNerney. "Go ahead, and God speed you. These gentlemen will furnish all the money you need."

"Then it's a go!" bluntly answered the officer. "I feel it in my bones we'll get them to-night."

After a whispered colloquy with the two friends, McNerney offered his hand to the agitated woman. "I'll risk my life for you, Miss," he said. "There's a desperate man behind this deed. And it was no ordinary woman who drew him into danger. Don't blame poor Clayton. He may have met her as a mere fashion-plat on the Avenue. Who knows?"

An hour after the officer had departed, Alice Worthington saw the two friends disappear, walking away unconcernedly, arm in arm. She turned away from the drawing-room window, in a stormy burst of sorrow.

"My father!" she gasped. And then, seeking the refuge of her own room, she hid her tell-tale face. "Even if it leads up to the guilty past, I can defend his memory. He was guiltless of this crime; and Randall Clayton's name shall be cleared of all stain!"

Over her virgin heart came the memory of the cold bargain which had linked her name to the crafty Ferris.

"Never, never, so help me, God! shall he lay his hand again in mine!"

For the first time in her life she felt the delicious power of wealth. Only the silver-haired Lemuel Boardman knew of the armed neutrality now secretly arranged, which was to buy a legal separation after six months from her nominal husband in that obscure Western State.

"Thank God!" she cried. "The sale of his honor, his manhood, for one hundred thousand dollars will seal his lips. He will keep his bargain; but, if he should be found guilty?"

All that night the heiress tossed upon uneasy pillows, waiting for the tidings which might in time parade her name as the innocent wife of a desperate felon.

The motley crowd pouring along the Bowery at ten o'clock swept past the Cooper Union on either side in search of the garish delights of the oblong oasis of pleasure. Down Fourth Avenue from the Square, down along Third Avenue, they swarmed.

Eager, hard-faced men; painted, hopeless-eyed women, the vacuous visitor from "Wayback," drunken soldiers, stray sailors, lost marines, all were kaleidoscopically mingled.

The strident voices of street peddlers mingled with the hoarse seductions of pullers-in.

Hebraic venders beamed alluringly from their open doors, gin palaces, shooting galleries, mock auctions, second-hand stores and brilliantly-lit "dives" awaited the unwary. "Coffee parlors," museums, cheap theaters, and music halls, as well as the "side rooms," were thronged with those pitiless-eyed Devil's children, the women of the night side of New York!

Roar of elevated train, clang of street cars, hurrying dash of the ambulance, wild onward career of the fire engine, punctuated this human maelstrom sweeping toward its duplex outlets of the morgue or Sing Sing's gloomy prison cells.

No one noted Witherspoon and Doctor Atwater seated in two different carriages drawn up under the shades of lonely buildings on the side street near the Dry Dock Bank.

The window-curtains were down in each of these waiting vehicles, and the drivers nodded upon their boxes.

In all the guilty bosoms on the bedlam-like street no hearts beat as wildly as those in the breasts of McNerney and Condon.

"It's the one chance of our lives, Jim," said McNerney, as he crouched in a dark doorway before posting his comrade. Both were now in uniform, ready for a dash, and McNerney's upper lip wore a movable prototype of his cherished mustache. "The boy comes down Fourteenth Street always and by Fourth Avenue," whispered Dennis.

"You watch the corner from this side. I'll nab the woman from the other. Remember, not till they have met and finished their talk. Then you can take the boy along with Atwater. I'll rush the woman away with Mr. Witherspoon."

It was twenty minutes past ten when McNerney saw the dark-clad form of Leah Einstein swiftly gliding along in the shade from Third Avenue. Onward she sped, never turning her veiled face to the right or left, until she slackened her pace under the gloomy cornices of the Dry Dock Bank.

The policeman sprang into a dark hallway as she passed, holding his breath lest the shy bird should take alarm.

In a few moments Emil Einstein sauntered across the Bowery and circling around the deserted bank corner, then settled down into a slow, searching pace, threading the lonely south side of the darkened cross street.

From his hidden post, McNerney could see the woman clinging to the boy's arm and pleading, while she murmured her prayers in a low tone.

"Not yet, not yet," mused McNerney. "He must get her whole message. She must have time to get his last report."

At last, as the tiger springs upon its prey, McNerney leaped out of his hiding place, for the sobbing woman had turned alone toward the East River.

With a frightened half scream, the timorous woman staggered back speechless as the uniform of the tall officer flashed before her eyes.

In a moment she was in the carriage, and both her wrists grasped by Witherspoon's sinewy hands.

But, before the carriage started, McNerney, tearing away the rear curtain, saw Policeman Condon hustling the struggling Emil into the other carriage. When it rapidly dashed away, McNerney grimly said, "All right! Go ahead!"

The officer's quick ear caught the woman's despairing murmur, "Emil! My boy, my poor son! They will kill him!"

"Not if you are sensible, Mrs. Leah Einstein," growled the policeman. "But your boy's life depends now only on you."

"Where are you taking me to?" pleaded the woman, her storm of tears choking her voice. "That you will soon find out," menacingly said McNerney. "Where you ought to have been long ago!"

In the long ride across the great city, McNerney grew complacent over his bold stroke in borrowing an unused store-room from the armorer of the Twenty-ninth Regiment.

It was after eleven o'clock when the three entered the gloomy basement under the granite buttresses of the armory.

In the lonely arched room only a table and a few chairs relieved the prison-like emptiness. A man with papers spread out before him scarcely raised his head as the three entered.

While McNerney drew the terrified woman into a corner, Witherspoon anxiously paced the floor. Fifteen minutes after their arrival, a messenger lad dashed into the room with a telegram.

"All right, now, McNerney!" said the lawyer, as he read the dispatch telling him: "Party on board the 'Rambler.' Set sail at once. Will telegraph from Tompkinsville."

And then, with a smile of triumph, Dennis McNerney locked the door. He placed the half-fainting woman in a chair before the notary and began his inquisition.

The look of utter despair in Leah Einstein's face softened under the velvety, wooing voice of the man who had boldly abducted her. In the whispered conference in the corner, he had skilfully played upon that inexhaustible mother's love which is the one undiminished treasure of a worn-out world.

The poor wretch at bay little dreamed that cobbler Mulholland was standing before her, and her tortured heart had forgotten all the dangers of the cablegram and the tell-tale registered letter. "If you answer all my questions," kindly said McNerney, "and make a clean breast of it, you may save your boy. Do you want to do that young man's life? He stands next to the electric chair now, for the murder of Mr. Randall Clayton!"

The heart-stricken mother was on her knees in a moment.

"Kill me! Do anything you wish. But spare him! He is innocent! He knows nothing!"

"Let us see what you know, then!" grimly answered McNerney. "The notary will swear you, and, if you tell us the whole truth, we will help your boy. If you lie to us, God will punish you both, and we will show no mercy."

Witherspoon opened his eyes in wonder as McNerney rapidly drew out the whole story of Clayton's departure from the corner of University Place in the carriage.

"You were the woman in the carriage on the day that Clayton left! I SAW YOU MYSELF!" thundered McNerney. "Your own boy brought Clayton the message. Now, where did you take him?"

Witherspoon held his breath as Leah Einstein, between her sobs, told of the fatal visit to No. 192 Layte Street.

It was half an hour when the sobbing woman had finished her recital. "By the God of Jacob! I never saw him after he went into the back room. Fritz was with him there, Fritz alone!"

The three men were as unmoved as sphinxes while McNerney led her along. "I only thought Fritz wanted him to meet the pretty woman, the one they called Irma, and then, while he was there, take his things from him. He had only a leather valise; no diamonds. I saw no money, and I was with the sick woman. Mr. Clayton loved her, and used to come and see her."

"Where does this Fritz live?" sternly said the policeman. "Everybody knows Fritz Braun, the druggist of Magdal's Pharmacy. Ask Mr. Lilienthal of the Newport Art Gallery. He is his friend."

With assumed indifference, McNerney mixed a glass of brandy and water for the woman, and walked the floor in deep thought. "Where is he now?" at last asked McNerney. "This Fritz Braun!"

There was a silence while the quick-witted Jewess caught at the protection of the far-off hiding place of her quandam lover. "He went away; I do not know where; and took the woman with him, this Hungarian woman, this Irma Gluyas! Lilienthal knows; you can make him tell."

"Look here!" sharply cried the officer, in a sudden rage. "You are lying to me! Your rooms are being searched even now! Your boy has been taken away, and he will go straight to the electric chair. He gave that poor man over into your hands. You took him to the murderer's den! BOTH OF YOU WILL DIE! You were yourself getting ready to run away to Europe! Your baggage is all packed! We will force the truth out of your boy; you shall never see him. You can't help him lie now! I was the cobbler opposite your door, and I've watched you for a month!"

For five minutes the men labored to restore the stricken woman, whose tortured nerves gave way. "I shall now search you," roughly said McNerney, "but I'll have a police matron here to do it. I want that letter and telegram from August Meyer! I want the money—the stolen money—he sent you. I'll give you just five minutes to tell me the whole truth. It's life and death for you now. They are busy searching your rooms."

With a cry of entreaty, Leah Einstein tore open her dress. She threw a packet on the table. "It's all there, all there," she wailed. "And I will tell you all. I will take you to him. You shall catch him. But spare my boy!" And, moaning and pleading, she now told the whole truth.

It was long after midnight when the woman scrawled her name in Polish-Hebrew script under the record of Fritz Braun's crime.

McNerney grasped Witherspoon's arm and led him away. "Do you see the light now?" he cried, in triumph. "The boy and woman were used by this damned fiend, Braun. You can see that she was Braun's slave in the old days. The other woman is innocent of the murder, and was only a handsome stool-pigeon! But, behind Braun, there may lurk Lilienthal and Ferris! Braun was to get the plunder for putting Clayton out of the way. Don't you see that Clayton stood between Ferris and the millionaire's only daughter!"

"What are we to do?" gasped Witherspoon.

"You are to take the morning train and get the alias extradition papers from the Secretary of State. Make it a strict confidence. I will take this woman, the papers, and Doctor Atwater, and we will grab 'Mr. August Meyer' at Schebitz.

"Jim Condon will hold the boy on the doctor's yacht, and you will take your notary and get the boy's full confession. Let him know that he alone can save his mother's life. The moment I have nabbed this Fritz Braun I'll cable; but I want to recover the money and get the whole reward. You must get me five thousand dollars from Miss Worthington, and the letter of credit for five thousand more. I'll take an iron-handed woman along, a nurse, and police matron."

"What shall I do with Miss Worthington?" demanded Witherspoon.

"Nothing, as yet," said McNerney, with a significant smile. "Let the doctor handle her confidence! I'll get all this woman's belongings and put the matron in charge of her. The woman can work skilfully on her fears.

"To-morrow I'll take a peep at No. 192 Layte Street, then go down to Tompkinsville with the notary. We will put Emil Einstein 'through the thirty-third degree,' and in three days Atwater, the two women and I will be off for Breslau. Leave me a free hand, and I'll get your murderer and the money. But remember, one single imprudence loses both man and money; you, your vengeance; me, my reward. And I depend on this windfall to marry!"

"So do I, Dennis," sadly smiled Witherspoon. "Go in; I'll do your bidding. Count on the extradition papers and the money."

In ten minutes the armorer's room was dark. "Not a bad evening's work," said the notary, as he pocketed a hundred-dollar bill, "and another one of those 'exquisitely executed engravings' for to-morrow!"

Long before Alice Worthington had lifted her stately head from her pillow the next morning, the astonished Dennis McNerney was rubbing his eyes before the location of the Valkyrie Saloon. He had stolen over to Brooklyn with the "early birds."

The streets were as yet unpeopled when he drew the drowsy officer on the beat into the side room of the saloon where once Mr. August Meyer presided in the evening.

The two uniformed giants smacked their lips over the morning Manhattan cocktail.

"Now, that's what I call a cocktail," said Officer Hogan, as he ordered up (on a complimentary basis) the Havanas. "This saloon used to be a German sort of headquarters. But the new fellows are our own people, the right sort. They knew it's an Irish neighborhood. So they pulled down the sign 'Valkyrie,' and put up 'The Shamrock,' drove out their Dutch kellners and put in good Irish barkeepers."

"What's become of August Meyer, who used to have an interest here?" carelessly said McNerney, affecting a familiarity with old history.

"Meyer ran a hidden dead-fall and gambling house next door, at No. 192 Layte Street," said Hogan, biting off his cigar. "That was before I came on the beat. He got to plunging on the races, betting against his own games, and the poker crowd here cleaned him up at last. So there's the Hibernia Social Club, the Democratic Ward Committee, and a lot of roomers in there. It's a new deal now, all around.

"The whole house has been ripped up and there's a China wash-house in the basement of that old mansion."

"Meyer?" interrogated McNerney, as he ordered the second round.

"Cleared out for Europe, so they say," carelessly said Hogan. "I saw him driving in a carriage a few days before he sold out, with a staving looking woman. He may have married a good thing, and skipped the town. He was a shifty sort of a devil; but he ran a square gambling den. And he had loads of money till he went crazy over cards."

It was afternoon when Miss Worthington was pondering over Witherspoon's telegram from Philadelphia, that Officer McNerney was swiftly rowed out to the yacht "Rambler," lying on the oily summer waters of the lower bay. Beside him, the notary calmly awaited the materialization of the second hundred-dollar bill.

But, busied as all her secret agents were, none of the men now chasing down the fugitive murderer were as anxious at heart as Miss Alice Worthington.

It was easy to arrange for the money Witherspoon had telegraphed for; she knew the secret object of his visit to Washington, but only that certain parties had been taken into custody, and that there was light ahead.

"My father!" she cried, as she fell on her knees and prayed that the mantle of shame should not fall upon his yet raw grave.

It was half an hour after Doctor Atwater and McNerney began to question Emil Einstein that the young scapegoat at last dropped his policy of lying braggadocio.

Confined in the cabin of the stout schooner yacht of a hundred tons, he had craftily fenced himself in with a network of lies during the night, in preparation for the ordeal which he well knew was at hand.

His coarse, defiant nature rebelled when Policeman McNerney confronted him, and he felt secure in recalling the narrow limitations of the policeman's possible knowledge of the past.

But at last the lad yielded under the hammering of the enraged officer. "I'll give you just five minutes to consider if you wish to sacrifice your mother's life, you young dog," McNerney exclaimed. "We have her confession in full, and as you decoyed this murdered man into her clutches, you are only saving yourself by a full unbosoming."

"And if I don't talk?" growled Emil, beginning to sicken over the gloomy future.

"You will be sailed around on this yacht till you weaken, till we've caught the head devil, and then it only depends on him as to whether you go to the 'chair' with him or not!" It was a frightful alternative.

With a sudden revulsion, the startled young rascal exclaimed: "I'll give you the whole business, as far as I know; and if you'll save my mother, I'll turn State's evidence. I know nothing about the murder! I only know now that Fritz Braun wanted to get poor Mr. Clayton into some out-of-the-way place to get the money away from him. I only thought that he wanted to bleed him, using that pretty woman, s'help me, God! I did."

"We will judge of your story when we hear it," grimly answered McNerney.

But it was Doctor Atwater's measured courtesy which disarmed this vulgar youth's pregnant fears.

"We can show your mother and yourself to have been used as innocent tools, if you give up the whole truth. But, remember, a little smart lying will surely cost you your life."

Atwater and McNerney listened, in astonishment, as Emil Einstein unveiled the double life of his former patron. The inner workings of Magdal's Pharmacy, the dual trades on different banks of the East River, the duplex Braun and Meyer, and the whole scenario of the Cafe Bavaria and the Newport Art Gallery—all these were faithfully pictured.

With moistened eyes, Atwater listened to the story of Randall Clayton's chivalric faith in the beautiful waif whom a romantic Fortune seemed to have thrown in his pathway, a creature of light and love.

When the long recital was done, both the inquisitors felt that Einstein spoke the truth, as he wildly declared that he only thought Braun was throwing a pretty woman in Clayton's way to get a secret hold upon him.

"I never dreamed of the company's robbing, nor of killing poor Mr. Clayton. I got not one dollar out of it. I never had Braun's confidence, and he followed me up, and used me, and threw me away like an old rug. And Ben Timmins knows nothing. He's only a poor drudge in Braun's Sixth Avenue opium-joint and whisky-store."

"But Lilienthal, he knows a lot! Catch him if you can! But he's an oily devil. He threw this woman against poor Mr. Clayton."

It was only when the boy was thoroughly subdued that Atwater quietly asked, "And Ferris? What had he to do with it?"

"Nothing," stubbornly cried the boy. "Only so far as this: he wanted to sneak in and get old Worthington's daughter, and all the money. That's square! He hated Clayton. He used to write lying letters to the old chief about him. He sent private reports on his life to Mr. Worthington. I used to watch him. I often got a peep at his papers, and he bribed me to pipe off poor Clayton. But you can hang me if Ferris knew Fritz Braun. You see," coolly said the crafty boy, "Ferris wanted the girl, the money, and the old man's favor. Braun only wanted the company's money, and used the Hungarian lady to draw Clayton on. I fancy, from all I could see, that Mr. Clayton really loved that lady; and Braun could only use her to fool him over there; then he took the chances to kill him to get the money. No! Ferris is only a snake in the grass, a coward, and a cur! He fastened on Clayton as a friend, and got in between him and Mr. Worthington; but, he never saw Fritz Braun!"

The boy's tone was convincing. "Then you let Braun know how easily he could steal a fortune by getting hold of Clayton on his way to the bank!" roughly accused McNerney.

"Not me; never, on your life," defiantly answered Emil. "It may have been Lilienthal, for Mr. Wade was often in that 'back room' of his. Old Wade is a 'dead easy game,' soft on the ladies, and Lilienthal may have pumped him and so put the job up with Braun."

The recital of Lilienthal and Braun's illicit trading made Dennis McNerney's eyes gleam.

When the three men left the yacht at sunset, the policeman called Einstein into a corner. "See here," he said. "I've got your mother locked up in my charge. She is a decentish sort of woman, in her way, and she loves you, you young brute. See if you can remember anything more in your yacht cruise of a month.

"Officer Condon will treat you well. You may clear your mother and yourself; you may get Timmins' evidence for us to break up this smuggling gang. There'll be a big reward there! I will see that you don't suffer. Give the whole business up to Officer Condon. When it is safe, you'll be taken ashore."

Emil Einstein, watching the boat going ashore, felt a choking throb in his throat. "That fellow McNerney's a smart devil," he said. "He is on the right trail, and there'll be a fight for life when he rounds up Fritz. He is going after his blood. And Fritz will never be taken alive!"

The stars were peacefully shining down on New York City, three days later, when Miss Alice Worthington bade adieu to Doctor Atwater. The mystery of Randall Clayton's murder had passed into a worn-out sensation, and new crimes, new names, new faces, filled the flaring journals. The firm hand of Witherspoon was at the helm of the Trading Company, and even Adolph Lilienthal had forgotten his fears.

The Clayton affair had been all threshed out! It had been tacitly arranged between the friends that Witherspoon should watch over Miss Worthington's peace of mind, while Atwater went upon the quest led by the resolute McNerney.

Far away under the shadows of the Katzen Gebirge, on this summer evening, Mr. August Meyer, dogging Irma Gluyas' every footstep, secretly exulted. "Leah is now on her way to meet me! And then all the old scores will be soon settled!"

The Hungarian witch, patient in captivity, breathlessly waited for Randall Clayton's coming, still deceived by the false telegram.

But, as Alice Worthington whispered her last secret instructions to Atwater, sailing on the morrow, her heart was light, for she knew her father, though stained with greed, had been guiltless of Clayton's blood. "I will give anything on earth to the man who clears Randall Clayton's memory," said the heiress. "Don't promise too much, Miss Alice," cried Atwater, as he kissed her hand. "I will do my duty!"

As the carriage drove away, she watched him from the window. Their eyes met, and she turned away, with sudden blushes.



CHAPTER XIV.

IRMA GLUYAS.

It was four days after the sailing of the secret mission of justice when Witherspoon said adieu to Miss Alice Worthington at the Forty-second Street station. With a wise forethought, the young lawyer had succeeded in his innocent ruse to distract attention.

Mr. Lemuel Boardman not only called the young heiress back to Detroit, for the probate of her father's will, but sent on his wife as a courteous convoy to make sure of the girl wife's acquiescence.

It was none too soon. For a haggard anxiety now drew lines upon the heiress' fair brow. News from the pursuers could only be expected in a fortnight, and Witherspoon feared the strain of a momentous secret upon the young beauty's nerves. Her soul longed for Randall Clayton's complete vindication. "One hint, and Ferris would take flight," mused Jack. "And if there were accomplices, they are surely watching her every movement."

And yet it was an ordeal, this parting. For the hundredth time, Witherspoon promised to come by the first train to Detroit with the tidings of the secret quest, and a score of times he was forced to deny Alice Worthington's tearful pleading. "Let me know to whom I can make restitution," she cried. "This will—who has it? The beneficiary may sorely need poor Randall's strangely withheld fortune!"

"Only when justice is done will that claimant appear," firmly answered Witherspoon. "You trust me now with the handling of your fortune! Trust me yet a little longer with that secret. I will telegraph you of the success or failure of our expedition.

"And then all will be made plain to you when Atwater returns. There must be no failure of justice. We will repay the villains to the uttermost farthing."

And, in his turn, Witherspoon was sorely baffled, for the sudden appointment of Mr. Arthur Ferris of New York as Consul of the United States at Amoy, China, had been duly gazetted. Only to Stillwell did the eager Witherspoon confide his fears that one of the unpunished criminals was escaping in honorable guise.

"You are in error, my boy," confidently answered the legal Solon. "We have had Ferris shadowed on behalf of the executors ever since the death of Hugh Worthington. The fact is," he said, lowering his voice confidentially, "Senator Dunham is at the helm in this thing. You well know that old Hugh and the Senator were closely allied. Now, Hugh blindly trusted Ferris, as the statesman's nephew, and, in fact, Ferris is, to a certain extent, a very dangerous customer for all of us. He had papers and secrets which might ruin his uncle, and a discovery of the hidden relations with Hugh would gravely affect our company's commanding position. Old Boardman has had a week of private conference with Senator Dunham.

"Boardman knew every secret of poor old Hugh's heart. Dunham and Boardman have gone over all the documents and matters surrendered by Ferris, and the Senator vouches for Ferris' future silence.

"He has himself set off a hundred thousand dollars of our stock, in Ferris' name (in escrow) as a guarantee of the young man's silence. This is a present to Ferris, who let Dunham have the first privately telegraphed news of Hugh's death.

"Why, sir. Dunham turned the market for a half million on that! It appears the daughter telegraphed the first news of the accident to Ferris, at the old man's dying request. And Ferris cunningly held it back, so that the Associated Press did not get it for a day. Then came the panicky drop in our stock. Dunham sold huge blocks short and filled later at the lowest notch, forty points below!"

"I thought," slowly remarked Witherspoon, "that Ferris would perhaps try to blackmail the estate!"

"So he did," drily answered Stillwell. "He gets one hundred thousand dollars in clear settlement of all his claims for legal services for the past five years, as rendered to the Worthington Estate."

"Oh! I see," bitterly remarked Witherspoon. "Each side puts up a hundred thousand dollars as the price of his silence!"

"And," curtly said Stillwell, "we now hold Dunham responsible that Ferris does not return to America for four years. By that time Dunham's senatorial term will be out. He will retire from politics, and so, his record and our interests are secure! I always feared that Ferris would turn up darkly in this sad murder business," gloomily added the old lawyer. "But the whole secret inquest so far proves to me the correctness of Boardman and Warner's judgment. Ferris feared Clayton's natural influence over the old man, and his own final game was the daughter's hand, and then the control of the old man's fortune. He spied on Clayton, lied about him, and at last brought about the estrangement of the old man and his only loyal servant in the whole circle.

"Poor Clayton! After his death he fell into a useless fortune! Miss Worthington has already made arrangements for a magnificent monument to him in the family plot at Detroit, and Randall Clayton will be there beside his stern old master. But for Ferris' wiles Clayton would surely have married that noble girl, and been alive to-day, a happy man, in Detroit.

"Ferris played a bold game and lost at last. It was the sale of the Senator's influence for the hand of the heiress. And she now hates him with an undying bitterness. But you can drop Ferris out as a suspected murderer. No; Clayton was evidently killed for the vast funds he carried. And we see, too late, that no less than three men should ever be trusted to make regular trips with such great amounts of money. But it's the old story of life. We are all wise, a day after the fair!"

Ten days after the stout "Rambler" shook out her snowy sails and flitted away to Bermuda, there was nothing left to ruffle the still waters of oblivion which had closed over Randall Clayton. Only upon the face of Robert Wade, Esq., lingered now an anxious expression of vague unrest.

For the Newport Art Gallery knew the oily beauty of Mr. Adolph Lilienthal no longer. There was a new face behind the proprietor's desk, and the "private view" gallery was permanently closed.

The furtive visitors came trooping in and went disconsolately away, for the private hall entrance was sternly shut and the electric bell removed. Night after night police, customs, and post-office officials sat in secret conference over the mysterious threads of the Baltic smuggling conspiracy now being gathered up while Mr. Adolph Lilienthal languished in a private cell in Ludlow Street jail.

He divided his ignorance of what he was "in for" with the frightened "Ben Timmins," who was safely locked up in a lower tier of the same human safe deposit bureau, charged with "complicity in smuggling."

The affairs of Magdal's Pharmacy were being conducted by a new clerk, nominated by the police, all unknown to the Tenderloin habitues, and a service-paid detective occupied the private office where the secret connection between Lilienthal and the absent Mr. Fritz Braun was being daily traced out.

The summer flowers were nodding over poor Randall Clayton's lonely grave, in the lonely cemetery of Woodlawn, on the September day when a queerly-assorted party of tourists descended from the train in the little Silesian village of Schebitz. Doctor William Atwater was tenderly cautious of the comfort of a veiled invalid woman, at whose side a sturdy nurse aided the watchful medical attendant. And none of the gaping yokels of the town obtained even a glimpse of the sick woman's pale face, as she was conducted to the covered carriage in waiting for the train.

With some show of state, a resplendent courier and a hard-featured military-looking stranger drove in advance of the carriage, half hidden in a hooded country droschky. The slanting summer showers glittered in the half-veiled sunbeams as the party hastily drove away toward the summer resort, two leagues away, where jaded fashionables rejoiced in the healing waters of the Louisen Quelle.

But no one of the gaping throng following the "fremden" guessed at the errand of this motley throng. In silence the cortege proceeded until a little by-lane covered with overhanging branches was reached, leading down into a dell where a natural vista showed an old gray mansion upon a rocky knoll.

An untrimmed forest around still gave its shelter to bird and hare, starting out from their coverts as the carriages rolled over the grass-grown, deserted road. "It is a 'Bleak House,'" murmured Atwater, gazing out of his carriage at the dreary crags of the Katzen Gebirge towering up, overhanging the neglected demesne. The young doctor leaned over and then whispered a few words in the ear of the apparently invalid woman, who was now trembling like a leaf.

"Remember, Leah," he sternly said, "your boy's life hangs on your faith now." Atwater moved a heavy pistol holster around under his loose top-coat, as the droschky in front of them halted. He sprang lightly out and walked to where the two other men were busied in an earnest colloquy.

McNerney, pistol in hand, was gloomily gazing at the turrets of the gray house. "He may escape us," fiercely said the man who had traveled from New York, eager to clasp the cold steel on "Mr. August Meyer's" blood-stained hands.

"Not so," calmly answered the disguised Breslau police sergeant, a sturdy war veteran. "I have hunted here all over the Adler's Horst. I know every crag and open spot. My soldiers are now hidden in a circle all around the old house. The moment that our carriage drives out into the open, they will close in and arrest every living soul. Do you see that little white flag flying on a pole on that pile of rocks? That is my signal that all is ready. Come on, now. We may not be in at the death."

Atwater had marvelled at the rapid work of the officials in their three-hours' stay at Breslau, and now he admired the skirmishing tactics of the veteran as the three men dodged from side to side while the empty carriage slowly drove down into the open.

The German sergeant threw up his hand and darted forward on the run as lithe forms in rifle green were seen quickly swarming out of the woods encircling the old mansion. There was no sign of life in the low, irregular hunting-lodge, save a pillar of smoke lazily ascending from the offices in rear.

McNerney was racing along at the German officer's side, his pistol drawn, and Atwater hardly turned his head as a squad of soldiers darted out of the encircling thickets.

"He is in there!" shouted a corporal to the Breslau policeman, now eager to make the capture and share McNerney's promised reward.

The screams of the frightened servants could be heard as the assailants neared the house. Was it fancy, or did McNerney see a grim, human face glaring out of the window of a round tower at the angle of the facade?

"Here; this way!" cried McNerney, as he stumbled into a little garden where trellised grapevines in olden days made a shaded walk for the Lady of Adler's Horst.

The group of men stopped aghast as a woman dashed wildly out of a door opening into a long conservatory. Her voice rang out in a last, appealing cry for help. She was sorely pressed!

Not three paces behind her trailing white robes, his face convulsed with passion, Fritz Braun leaped along, in a murderous rage, like a tiger in pursuit. In his right hand gleamed a flashing knife, and as the frantic woman tripped and fell, the brute's arm was raised.

But, throwing himself back into the "gallery position," McNerney tossed his revolver at the point blank. The heavy crack of the pistol was followed by a yell of rage as the American sprang forward, planting his foot firmly on Fritz Braun's chest.

Atwater had kicked the knife a score of yards away, when Sergeant Breyman thrust his burly form in front of the fallen woman.

But, McNerney was sternly covering the fallen form of Braun with his cocked pistol. "Move, you dog, and I'll blow your brains out!" he shouted. "Here, Atwater, get the handcuffs out of my left coat pocket and clap them on this wretch!" There were a half-dozen men now holding down the defiant murderer, whose right arm lay limply at his side.

The second carriage had boldly driven across the lawn, and Leah Einstein leaped lightly to the ground. She was all unveiled now, and Irma Gluyas uttered a faint cry as the handsome Jewess stood spellbound before the astounded prisoner.

Sergeant Breyman had already knotted a handkerchief around the prisoner's bleeding arm, when Dennis McNerney, in a ringing voice, cried, "August Meyer, alias Fritz Braun, I arrest you for the murder of Randall Clayton!"

With one shuddering sigh, Irma Gluyas fell prostrate upon the grassy sward. "Take her into the house, men," cried the sergeant, as a score of hardy soldiers now closed around the excited group. "Go with them, Leah," said Atwater. "I'll just glance at this scoundrel's arm, and then come in to you."

When the riflemen bore the now fainting prisoner into the dreary granite-walled lodge, McNerney whispered to Atwater, "Look out for him! I must take the nurse and Leah, and try to locate Braun's plunder. These Germans must never know of that."

With all the formality of a martinet, Sergeant Breyman now posted his guard, leaving a corporal and two men with the young surgeon, for Atwater only lived now to see Braun dragged back to his punishment. There was no mistake, for McNerney had whispered, "It's the Sixth Avenue druggist, sure enough! I am a made man for life!"

The few household servants were being paraded and questioned by the German official, while Dennis McNerney, followed by Leah, glided through the rooms of the second story. A glance told the practical officer where Braun had made his own headquarters.

"The southwest bedroom and second-story turret gave a view of all of the approaches to the Adler's Horst."

Guns and sharpened hunting implements easily showed Braun's preparations for defense, and his presumed relaxation.

When McNerney had glanced at Irma Gluyas' own retreat, he hastily locked the door of Braun's separate retreat. The policeman's quick eye had caught sight of the inner bolts and chains! "The stuff is surely hidden near here! I must make my play upon his pretty companion." When McNerney rejoined Doctor Atwater, the physician had already left Braun to the formal questioning of the methodical sergeant.

Irma Gluyas was now sobbing wildly, her head resting on the bosom of the woman who had been Braun's dupe as well as slave; the woman who had feebly enacted the role of Madame Raffoni.

And now the whole frightful truth had dawned upon the beautiful Magyar. She gazed despairingly at McNerney when he quickly said: "You can purchase your own safety; you can aid us now. Tell me, where did he hide the quarter of a million he stole? For this scoundrel only did murder to reach the fortune carried by poor Clayton!"

"Kill me! Do what you will; I care not," sobbed the singer. "I knew nothing of these crimes, of either one. Hasten, though. Search well the second floor of the turret. This fiend spent all his evenings there alone. He always locked his rooms, and the door into the tower. Even the servants were not allowed to enter his den! What you seek must be there! May the curse of God reach him! And now is my hour of vengeance. He betrayed this poor victim, the man who died through a noble love for me!"

Only Leah Einstein and the resolute Atwater remained at Irma's side as McNerney ran upstairs alone. The police matron who had been Leah Einstein's secret jailer on the voyage was now listening to Braun's stubborn negations of all Sergeant Breyman's formal questions.

Atwater, with a touched heart, listened to Irma Gluyas in her passionate ravings. "The lying fiend! I will tell all! I will go on my knees to pray God to strike him dead!"

For, at last, the duped woman knew that Randall Clayton was already cold in death when Braun had forged the lying telegram which bade her hope for deliverance.

"He watched me, night and day, lest I should try to escape! He plotted to kill me, but he feared the servants. I always kept a little peasant child here in my rooms, night and day.

"Our old forester, Hermann, who guards the estate for the young Count von Kinsky, who is travelling over the world for four years, is good and true. He is Frida's uncle. And I told him all my fears. I had only a few jewels, my own. Braun feared to give me money. But Hermann was arranging to help me away to Poland, when you came. Once there I would have been safe from Braun. He would not have dared to claim me. And Hermann, the forester, is known to all the officials. He has charge of the estate.

"Braun feared him. He dared not take me away, for I would not go. It has been the slavery of hell itself. But I baffled him! Four times a day Hermann came for my orders, and I always left a little light burning in one window of my rooms. Every night one of the men watched. My food was prepared by little Frida alone, and she never left my side. Braun dared not poison me! I waited, and he waited. What did he wait for?"

"HE WAITED FOR ME," cried Leah Einstein, in a fit of remorseful tears, now anxious to save her boy.

She seized Atwater's arm with trembling hands. "Your police detective did not get Braun's first letter to me. He begged me to come to him. He was to get rid of this poor girl, and I was to live like a lady."

The two guilty women were weeping together when McNerney stole into the room. He drew the young doctor aside.

"Our main work is done here," he whispered. "Now get these two women in trim so they will not tell anything to our German friends. You and I can handle this quest alone. I've found out his hiding place!"

While the matron delayed Sergeant Breyman below, Atwater and McNerney ascended to the murderer's lair.

"I at once saw that the flagstones of the fireplace in the turret had been lifted," hoarsely whispered the overjoyed Dennis. "With this old boar spear I pried up the slabs. It's all down in there. A valise full of notes! Here! Help me drag this couch over the stones, and move the furniture. The German police must not see this. To-night you and I will gather up the harvest!"

The athletic young men worked with a will. In five minutes the panting McNerney said, "Safe enough now from the ox-eyed German detective! Let us go down. How badly is he hurt?"

"His right arm is merely disabled! It's a very severe flesh wound," complacently answered the doctor. "Just enough loss of blood and following inflammation to leave him as helpless as a lamb in our hands."

"I want to take the wolf home," growled McNerney, "and to see him sit in the chair of death. I'll give him no chance to play tricks!"

There was little sleep in the old schloss of Adler's Horst on this eventful night. The regular pacing of sentinels reechoed upon the porticos, and a squad of hearty German soldiers made merry in the servants' hall with the released domestics.

Stout Ober-forster Hermann listened, with mouth agape, to Sergeant Breyman's loud denunciation of the wounded prisoner as the two men exchanged confidences, in the dining hall, where antlers and wolves' heads, grinning bears' skulls, and eagles' wings told the tale of many a wild jagd.

In the library, where Braun lay under guard, the two Americans were as powerless as Sergeant Breyman to break down Fritz Braun's dogged reserve. The only growl which escaped his bearded lips was a muttered curse. "Damn you both! In five minutes I would have silenced that lying jade's tongue forever."

It was four days after the surprise of Adler's Horst when the strangers left the estate to the care of rugged old Forster Hermann. Far and near, the simple country folk came to gaze upon the "Amerikanische" desperado, as the cortege of three carriages and two wagons drew slowly away from the schloss.

The soldiery had now all departed, save a corporal and three men, and peace reigned over the woods given up again to the elk and roebuck.

Atwater and McNerney were astonished at Fritz Braun's stolid indifference. The whole drama was now laid bare up to the fatal moment when the entrapped Clayton was left helpless under Braun's strangling fingers.

The news of the capture, cabled over to New York City, had sent Jack Witherspoon whirling away to Detroit to give to Alice Worthington the news of the successful capture, and a proximate vengeance for Clayton's murder.

Braun's defiant mood still continued. The only request he had made of the two friends was that he might have the necessary clothing for his homeward voyage.

With keen eyes, McNerney and Atwater searched all the articles reserved for the use of the sullen wretch, whose inflamed wound now rendered him almost helpless.

The whole crime seemed to be now cleared up from the frank confessions of Leah Einstein and the unknown Magyar beauty.

"It has been a great campaign," said McNerney, as he saw Braun, guarded by four soldiers, start slowly toward the village under the convoy of Sergeant Breyman. "He spent but little of the plunder! Here we have recovered nearly two hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars in bills and good cheques! He evidently feared to attract attention by any undue luxury."

They had removed every scrap of the belongings of both the fugitives. "I can understand this wretched Leah, now," said Atwater. "She would have been Braun's willing tool in hiding his final murder of Irma Gluyas. Braun needed her aid, and would have given her the slave's dole of comfort. But this beautiful wanderer! She hails with delight her return to America! Is it her frantic desire for vengeance? She had learned to love poor Clayton! And her whole soul is fixed on Braun expiating the murder. Prison she fears not."

Neither man knew of the singer's fear lest an Austrian dungeon might open its iron cells to her, should Braun be discovered to be the fugitive Hugo Landor.

"No one can read a woman's heart!" mused McNerney. "Judges and juries, the journals and the public, fancy these poor wretches, hunted down for their beauty, are different from their more fortunate sisters. I've not found it so. There's some womanhood left in every one of them, and there are manifold temptations and weaknesses in the lives of many who walk serenely in honor. At the last, all men and women are much the same; only, once started on the downward path, not one in a thousand ever is checked!

"This Irma is not such a bad woman; with a better chance she might have been some one's heart darling for all time. The only thing I cannot see is how Braun killed this man so quietly."

Both of the friends had discerned no more than the final trap. The fatal lure of Irma Gluyas' beauty!

Braun, at last becoming distrustful of the woman whose heart was rebaptized in love, had acted on the moment, and his crafty advantage was taken of Clayton's headlong passion.

"It is clear poor Leah was only used as a stool-pigeon; she is far too cowardly to harm the meanest creature," said Atwater. "In some way, Braun must have given Clayton a stupefying poison, and then strangled him.

"In that lonely place, he undoubtedly hid the body and had it thrown overboard later. Of course, it was probably hidden in some case or box, perhaps a great trunk, and then cast into the bay by others. One thing is sure, we will never know from this brute's confession. He will die mute."

"You are right," said McNerney; "for he will go grimly silent to the chair, a thug and a murderer, in heart and soul.

"This fellow could have prospered in any decent line of life! He is only one more to make the bitter discovery THAT CRIME DOES NOT PAY! It is both stupid and useless. But the criminal only finds this hard truth out too late. He will never get away from me, alive or dead; back he goes to New York." And yet McNerney forgot his keenest daily precautions, deceived by the apparent helplessness of the wounded murderer.

The strangely-assorted party were hurried through Breslau by the authorities, and Sergeant Breyman proudly wore Doctor Atwater's gold repeater as a parting present, when the train rushed away, bearing the secretly raging criminal back to a shameful death.

"I shall not sleep till I get that fellow safely in an iron tank stateroom on the Hamburg steamer," said the stern-eyed McNerney, preparing to lock Braun's wrist to his own. "After we sail, we can have him watched, night and day; then, you and I can rest!"

The secret of the vast money recovery had been faithfully kept, and even when the "Fuerst Bismarck" turned the Lizard and sped out on the Atlantic, few of the passengers suspected that a daring criminal was imprisoned below.

While Doctor Atwater keenly watched the bewitching Irma Gluyas and the now happy Leah, the returning tourists supposed them to be only a lady of rank and her waiting women.

McNerney, sure of his princely reward, now never left his prisoner, and the recovered funds were duly locked in the liner's great steel steamer safe.

So it was left to William Atwater to draw out, bit by bit, the whole story of Irma Gluyas' wasted life.

A pale-faced, stately beauty, steadfast and silent, was the wretched woman who had innocently lured Clayton to the murder chamber.

It was easy for Atwater, in his professional experience, to discover from the final unbosoming of both the women, that Braun had artfully drugged and stupefied his beautiful decoy, so that she was incapable of warning Clayton, or interrupting the leisurely disposition of the murdered man's body.

"He must have changed his first plans," mused Atwater, "only guided by his desire to have the money so imprudently trusted to one man."

There was life in Leah Einstein's heart once more, for she now knew that her graceless son was probably safe from prison.

Sly, secretive, and slavishly devoted to the young reprobate, the sin-soiled woman had successfully hidden all which could in any way implicate the dishonest office boy.

When the great ship neared Sandy Hook, William Atwater frankly answered Irma Gluyas' wailing cry, "Why do I not throw myself over there, in search of peace?"

For the gnawing of conscience had made the Magyar girl's life a torment. "It is not for me to judge you; it is only for me to help you!" sadly said the young physician.

"You have aided to bring many sorrows and sufferings on others! Work out your own salvation! You were born a Catholic.

"Your religion has orders where repentant women can toil among the suffering in schools or in the hospitals. It has its great work among the helpless. Hide your dangerous beauty there, among those who give their lives up to good works.

"And you will find peace and hope stealing to your side. God gave you a life; you have no right to throw it away." The poor, repentant, soiled one seized his hand and kissed it, while bitter tears rained from her eyes. "I will work; I will go where I cannot be hunted into a deeper hell than my accusing conscience brings up!"

There was a grim vigilance in every movement of Dennis McNerney as he watched the now haggard-eyed Braun in the tank cell far below the decks, where Fashion's children gaily chattered.

Only a few gruff sentences had ever escaped the murderer on the long voyage, and only a horrible curse had answered the proposition of Atwater and McNerney that a full confession might, in some way, soften the brute's impending doom.

The room where Braun was confined was bare of all lethal implements with which he might effect a suicide, and two stalwart men were his room-mates.

When the quartermasters, at midnight, peered out for the first glimpse of Fire Island light, Dennis McNerney, pacing the deserted deck, almost alone, revolved his plan of inspecting the sullen prisoner at intervals of every three hours during the night. "It is a desperate human brute, that one," muttered the sturdy policeman; "but, I've brought him safely home."

While a wild coast storm raged, and the screaming gulls circled around the plunging ship; while shrill winds moaned in the steel rigging, McNerney crept down for the last time before sighting land, at four o'clock, to peer through the grated door and see Fritz Braun lying prone—a confused heap—his coat rolled up as a pillow under his head.

The wounded arm alone was free; the other, shackled to a broad belt, was locked around the prisoner's waist.

"He is sleeping like a child," mused the officer. "In a few hours he will be safely in the Tombs, and my long watch will be over!"

The great liner was grandly sweeping up to Quarantine, when Dennis McNerney leaped from his berth and followed the startled cabin-boy, who shook him roughly.

"Come down, sir! THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG!" the boy babbled. "Get Doctor Atwater, instantly!" cried McNerney, as he rushed down into the ship's hold.

One glance at the guarded door was sufficient.

One of the careless keepers was clamoring for admittance, while the other bent over a rigid form lying there, prone and ghastly, in the gray morning light stealing in at the little porthole.

"It happened while I was out at breakfast," pleaded the unfaithful watcher, whom McNerney roughly cast aside.

Atwater was at McNerney's elbow when the frightened inmate had unlocked the door of the strong room. One shake of the recumbent form told the story. "He has cheated the executioner," solemnly said Atwater, letting the lifeless hand fall heavily from his grasp.

"He lay that way all the while since your last visit," said the sullen derelict keeper.

A hasty search of the cell showed an empty vial. "Chloral! Here is the key to the mystery!" cried Atwater, examining the coat, flung aside when the body was lifted. "See this torn sleeve! The murderer had hidden the bottle of poison here in the thick breast-wadding of the coat under the coat-sleeve. He waited coolly for the deed till the last night before our landing."

Atwater again inhaled the odor of the narcotic. "Chloral, sure enough!" he slowly said. "A two-ounce vial, and probably mingled with some more deadly poison! Probably the 'knock-out drops' the wretch used formerly to peddle to convicts!"

An hour later a circle of astonished police officials stood around the corpse of the crafty criminal who had passed beyond man's jurisdiction. "A desperate wretch," said the chief of detectives. "Fritz Braun, the mysterious druggist. He was prepared for the worst!"

With a quick sagacity, Doctor Atwater had concealed the press news of the desperate wretch's suicide, having in mind the final punishment of Lilienthal and Timmins. It was decided by the police officials to keep the news of the recovery of the fortune an official secret until all the crafty Baltic smuggling gang should all be apprehended.

In Irma Gluyas' cabin, Leah Einstein had divulged the whole details of the cowardly crime, as she had worked them out. It was to Doctor Atwater alone that Leah freely unbosomed herself.

In return for the Doctor's pledge, now given, to save the precocious Emil, the timorous Leah gave out the vital keynotes of the Baltic smugglers' syndicate.

For, at last, the ban of fear was lifted, and the frightened woman made haste to avail herself of the official clemency offered by the authorities.

A half-dozen policemen sped away to concert with the United States deputy marshals for the arrest of a clan of steamship clerks, stewards, Hoboken hotel-keepers, wharf officials, and others who had been the tools of the robust-minded Fritz Braun.

There was a happy meeting with Miss Alice Worthington, who was now seated in Atwater's stateroom, under the care of the triumphant Jack Witherspoon. The cable had called her from her princely Detroit home to be the first to hear the whole story of the capture of Braun from the lips of Atwater and the jubilant Dennis McNerney.

McNerney's triumph had been sadly dashed by the successful suicide of the great criminal.

"Never mind," kindly said the chief of police. "It was not your fault! This makes you a Sergeant, Dennis." The happy officer's eyes glistened as he saluted.

And ten minutes later he knew from the rosy lips of the great heiress that the full reward of twenty-five thousand dollars given by the company, and the same by Miss Worthington was now payable to him on the deposit of the recovered funds and cheques with the Western Trading Company.

"Five thousand of this is yours, Jim," cordially cried Dennis to Officer Condon, who had reported on board to announce the well-being of the office boy prisoner on the yacht "Rambler."

"I'll take another job of cobbler work like that, any time," joyously answered Condon, "and, mind you, I'm to be your best man at the wedding!"

For Dennis McNerney's new rank and fortune were to be the immediate cause of his precipitating a hitherto delayed matrimony.

The craft with which Fritz Braun had hidden away the poison in the padded coat-lining suggested to all the insiders the manner which he intended to use to rid himself of the repentant and defiant Irma.

While the chief of police arranged for the secret removal of Fritz Braun's body at night, there was an earnest conference in Atwater's stateroom.

"I leave it to you, my brothers," she said, with a pretty blush, "to arrange for the complete rehabilitation of Randall Clayton's memory.

"The whole business world must know that he was led to his grave by an honorable affection, and that the momentary imprudence which caused him to fall into Braun's trap was the only indiscretion of his whole career.

"And now, I have a right to demand of you both the name of my dead foster-brother's heir. The million dollars paid for the poor boy's half of the Detroit lands is on deposit in the Railway Company's safes, awaiting the probate of his will."

"HE STANDS BEFORE YOU," gravely said Doctor Atwater, taking her hand.

"Poor Randall! Some premonition of his doom haunted him. He had saved some money, and by investments accumulated a little purse of twenty thousand dollars or so. And this, and all his estate, he willed to Mr. Witherspoon, as a wedding present for Francine Delacroix!"

"Why did you not tell me sooner?" reproachfully demanded the heiress, turning her lovely eyes upon Witherspoon.

"Because I wished to freely aid in running down his murderers; to clear his memory, and because the great world would have misinterpreted my zeal. I know the nobility of heart with which your father set aside this property for Clayton, as soon as he found out the old title! Had they met at Cheyenne, all would have been well!"

And then Alice Worthington thanked God in her anxious heart that her dangerous secret was safe. She smiled through her happy tears as she placed her hand in Witherspoon's. "We will both cherish his memory, for life! And I now only exact one condition: that is, that Francine's wedding shall be from my home. We were schoolmates, and sisters of the heart, though our home was a very quiet one. My father was averse to all family intimacies. The executors are ready to make the transfer of the money whenever you prove up poor Randall's will."

"And I," said Witherspoon, "exact one thing in return. I demand the right, in honor, to refund to the Trading Company all the money used by the murderer, the whole search expenses, and the double rewards. There will be a princely fortune left for me after all, and this money so used will vindicate poor Clayton's memory from all blame for his chivalric folly." Alice Worthington bowed her head in assent, as the spirited young man proceeded.

"When you see Irma Gluyas, you will know what a strange fate overtook him. For she has been made another woman by the manly love of the poor fellow who believed in her." The Detroit lawyer was deceived by the heiress' calmness. "She knew nothing," he mused. "It is well."

While Atwater busied himself in the removal of the two women who had been Fritz Braun's dupes, and arranged for young Einstein's meeting with his mother, and recording the joint confessions of the two, a surprise awaited Officer Dennis McNerney.

The cabin boy who had been allowed to bring meals to the wounded prisoner, in fear and trembling, confessed to the baffled policeman that Braun had given him a hundred-dollar bill which he had managed to secrete in his trousers waistband, for the promised duty of writing to Mrs. August Landor, No. 195 Ringstrasse, Vienna, that her fugitive son, Hugo Landor, had died of fever in a Catholic hospital at San Francisco, under an assumed name.

The men on watch were all ignorant of German, and so did not detect the last wishes of the intending suicide.

"But I knew nothing," protested the boy. "I was always freely allowed to serve him, and so I brought him a scissors and needle and thread to repair his clothing, which had been cut to accommodate his arm.

"I thought that his little bottle was only medicine; for he hid it in his hand, after opening the breast of his coat."

"And so there was one last touch of feeling left in the murderer's heart," mused the stout policeman. "He wished his poor old mother to believe that he died decently. Let it be so! She shall not carry this last shame to her grave.

"And now, to polish off all the underlings of the smuggling conspiracy. There is both honor and profit in bringing them to book.

"Timmins and Lilienthal may be useful as State's evidence, for this last fellow saves his neck, perhaps, by Fritz Braun's death. It can never be known if he was only Braun's tool or the real inspirer of the crime. He must have found out about the money!" And so the careful lying of mother and son hid forever the reason of Braun's plot. The boy was saved.

When the stars of night shone down upon the great ship at her dock, all signs of the gloomy happening had been carefully hidden. Doctor Atwater had removed the two women, under guard of the well-rewarded matron and a skilled detective, to his own apartments, where the crafty Emil Einstein was brought to meet his poor, doting mother.

The detective captain took charge of the unravelling of the whole story of Mr. "August Meyer's" Brooklyn career, as well as the secrets of the crafty druggist, Fritz Braun.

There was a great symposium at Counselor Stillwell's residence by the leafy borders of the park. The great advocate rejoiced at the removal of every stain from Clayton's memory, and marvelled greatly at the deeply-laid snares of the man whose body now lay unhonored at the morgue.

"You will have to run the company's affairs alone for a month," cheerfully said Jack Witherspoon; "for Atwater and I are to accompany Miss Worthington out to Detroit. Only I bid you all now to my wedding, which will occur in six months, and Miss Worthington honors my Francine with throwing her home open for that quiet ceremony. Atwater is to be the best man!"

"Where is your reward?" softly said Miss Worthington to the faithful young physician, as they looked out on the evening stars together.

"I can wait!" simply said the young man, and their eyes dropped in a strange confusion.

But Alice Worthington was in her mind already wondering when the weary weeks would pass away and free her from the tie binding her to the man secretly banished to Amoy.



CHAPTER XV.

MISS WORTHINGTON SHARES HER SECRET.

The time of roses had come and gone once more. The woodland was turning to gold again around the beautiful country home of that successful capitalist, Mr. John Witherspoon, at Fordham.

All the world knew of the stately glories of that recent wedding festivity at Detroit, whereat, under the wedding bell of white blossoms, Miss Francine Delacroix had given her hand to the man whom all envied as he stood before them, the active intellectual champion of Miss Alice Worthington.

The serene countenance of the young millionairess was placid, bearing a dignity far beyond her years, when she marshalled the friends of her youth to witness the marriage of the man whose skilful hand now guided the vast eastern interests of the Worthington Estate.

It was only after the bewildering honeymoon days had passed that Witherspoon, under the advice of Counselor Stillwell and the astute executors, began to gather up all the loose ends of the Clayton affair.

The permanent residence of Witherspoon in New York City was exacted by the growing cares of the vast company's interests.

And so the young bridegroom had selected a temporary country house until his vivacious helpmeet could be pleased in a choice of their permanent city residence. Unchanged by the possession of his dead friend's fortune, so romantically passed down to him, Witherspoon ceased to try to unravel the dark complications of Hugh Worthington's past.

There seemed to be some peculiar restraining influence which sealed the lips of Messrs. Boardman and Warner, and even the great Stillwell but briefly referred to the strange compact with Ferris which had seemed to buy the crafty schemer's silence for one hundred thousand dollars.

To the astonishment of proud old Detroit, Miss Worthington seemed to show no desire to open her superb palace home to society, and the great world slowly crystallized to the conclusion that she had found a new field in the affairs of the vast estate now absolutely under her own control.

The beautiful girl seemed to have passed, with a bound, into a mature womanhood, as if some malign influence had swept away all the flowers from her path. And, in her daily walks, she avoided the scores of gallants who now sought that richly dowered hand.

"This is not as it should be," finally decided Witherspoon, whose firm hand had cleared up all the aftermath of complications arising from Clayton's murder.

Busied with his own affairs, Witherspoon left the fate of Irma Gluyas, the friendless Leah, and the corrupted boy to Doctor William Atwater, whose frequent visits to Detroit were explained by some vague plan of philanthropic deeds now occupying the mind of Miss Worthington.

The meaner subordinates of Fritz Braun's crime were all easily disposed of, for both Lilienthal and Timmins were now serving long sentences for defrauding the United States customs laws.

And the Newport Art Gallery and the Magdal's Pharmacy were now both matters of "ancient history."

A mock auction allured the crowd, where the drugstore had long gathered the degenerates, and a gaudy "Bargain Bazar" flourished where once Lilienthal's inviting smile had wooed the unwary.

And, as the pernicious smuggling gang had been routed, "smitten hip and thigh," Witherspoon ceased to pry into the still partly veiled past. It was only after Sergeant Dennis McNerney had dropped the very last clue, that Witherspoon finally abandoned his settled purpose of tracing down Arthur Ferris' supposed connection with the crime which swept Randall Clayton out of the world. "It's no use, sir!" muttered the sergeant, "He was capable of anything, but he stands clear of the whole thing!"

The prosperous sergeant had sifted to the very dregs the fullest confessions of the passionate-hearted Hungarian beauty, and the defenceless Leah.

The complete history of "August Meyer" in Brooklyn had been traced out, and McNerney triumphantly demonstrated the uselessness of further search in No. 192 Layte Street.

The old mansion had been in every way changed, and the basement was now the abode of swarming Celestials, who had tinkered its space up to suit themselves. There were no traces of the crime left!

And so, reluctantly, Manager Witherspoon ceased to pry into the private life of Arthur Ferris. McNerney stoutly maintained the thesis to the last, that Ferris and Fritz Braun were strangers.

"The women both prove it," urged the officer.

"And yet some still unfathomed game of Ferris made him Clayton's secret enemy. Ferris wanted that beautiful heiress; he wanted to completely estrange and supplant Clayton, and so to reach old Worthington's millions. For that, he clung to the unsuspecting comrade of his bachelor life. Look to the West for light in this! Believe me, if any one knows, it is Miss Worthington! She is one woman in a million, a woman who does not talk!"

"What do you mean, Dennis?" sharply said the young lawyer.

The simple policeman stoutly answered, "I observed that Miss Alice seemed to have gained a great mastery over Counselor Stillwell and her Detroit lawyers.

"She was with her father for hours before he died, and I'm of the opinion that he told her many things that none of the lawyers even dream of, secrets that perhaps even you do not suspect! I'm only a plain policeman, yet strange schemes are in these millionaires' heads often.

"The great man had his own private uses for Ferris, and for the Senator uncle, who knows what great designs ended with his death.

"Believe me, she is following out her father's last advice; and if she lets Ferris off easy, you must do the same!

"As for Fritz Braun, he at first only intended, evidently, to lure poor Clayton into the Art Gallery or his own drug-store, through this pretty Hungarian, and, from a study of Clayton's habits, change the valises and so rob him by the old trick! The bunco game!

"But fortune willed otherwise, and Braun took the chance of Clayton's faith in the girl. He did not know that Clayton was so fondly devoted to the woman.

"The murder was a sudden inspiration, arising from Clayton's headlong imprudence.

"And Braun knew nothing of old Worthington's designs, nor Clayton's past history. What more Miss Worthington may know, you will never know, much as she esteems you, unless she wills. For she is a very resolute character, and I believe that she is quietly managing Stillwell and the other lawyers in her own way.

"It's clear to me that both Ferris and Braun used this poor office boy as a spy on Clayton; only, for different purposes.

"As for the two women, they were both mere puppets! Fritz Braun was tempted by the unprotected situation of that vast sum of money going daily to the bank. He easily learned that from the boy's braggadocio talk, and then used the whole circle as a means to entrap Clayton. As for the women, they are both merely what temptation, misery, and surroundings have made them. I'm glad to hear Doctor Atwater say Miss Worthington has some plans for their future.

"As for the boy, your own design is a wise one. Transport him out West, give him a fair start in some Pacific State in a decent business, and then if he goes wrong, after his severe lesson, let him run up against a smart punishment."

Reluctantly convinced, John Witherspoon dropped all his final investigations as to Arthur Ferris' secret career in New York City. As the months rolled along he saw the justice of the blunt police officer's judgment, for Miss Alice Worthington seemed to be an administering talent of the highest order.

"She would make a Secretary of the Treasury, sir," said the admiring Stillwell. "She is old beyond her years—a rare woman!"

By some vague influence, the personal future designs of Miss Worthington seemed to be a subject tabooed between Witherspoon, his wife, and Doctor Atwater, at the regular weekly dinner at Beechwood, where the young physician was always a stated guest.

Miss Worthington, already a Lady Bountiful, in Detroit, conducted a separate correspondence with the young wife, the husband, and the physician, the last her only confidant in the still unmatured plans of a practical philanthropy.

It was in the early autumn of the year following Randall Clayton's death that Witherspoon sprang up in astonishment, when he unfolded the New York Herald over his morning coffee at Beechwood.

The cabled announcement of the death of the Honorable Arthur Ferris, United States Consul at Amoy, China, was only supplemented by the statement that he had fallen a victim of the coast fever.

"This is the end of all," sadly mused the lawyer, as he saw his immediate duty of repeating the news by telegraph to Detroit.

"Whatever connection Ferris had with the secret designs of Worthington is now a sealed mystery forever; the hand of Death has turned the last page down."

Witherspoon rightly conjectured that to Senator Dunham the death of his once trusted negotiator would be a welcome release from the tyranny of a dangerous past.