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The Midnight Passenger

R >> Richard Henry Savage >> The Midnight Passenger




Fritz Braun, gliding out behind the high sample cases, swept the
morning's receipts out of the large bill compartment of the cash
drawer. "Seventy-five dollars. Not so bad," he grinned, as he
clutched the only thing on earth which he loved.

The crumpled, greasy green bills! Passed from hand to hand, as the
hard wage of toil, the prize of infamy, the badge of shame! Tossed
from the fingers of the spendthrift, dragged from the reluctant
miser, filched from yokel and rounder, slyly stolen by thieving
domestic or dishonest clerk, still the "long green" was as sacred
to Fritz Braun as Mahomet's emerald banner hanging over the pulpit
of magnificent Saint Sophia to the Moslem heart.

Magdal's Pharmacy was an innocent enough looking place of business.
Few of the neighboring shopkeepers dated back to the time, long
years ago, when the real Magdal ran upon the breakers of bankruptcy
and disappeared in the "eternal smash" of a final pecuniary ruin.

The crafty Braun, once a co-laborer with Magdal, had jumped
eagerly at the opportunity of burying the identity of Hugo Landor,
the criminal fugitive, under the banner of the hopelessly wrecked
Magdal.

Fritz Braun had been a good enough name to use until the crafty
employee had robbed drunken old Magdal's till of money enough to
purchase the now valueless fixtures.

Magdal, the victim of an expensive liason with a dashing neighboring
French modiste, had tried to keep up a "regular" business.

All this was foreign to the ideas of the quick-witted Braun, safe
now under his humble alias, and his flowing false beard and the
never absent blue glass eye screens. Braun duly closed the doors
for a "reopening."

A few dollars spent in paint and gilding, a "gorgeous" soda
fountain "on lease," had soon transformed the dingy interior. A
couple of dozen cheap red plush stools wooed the tawdy Phrynes of
Sixth Avenue, and the light-headed shop girls to a repose from the
crash and roar of the shopping street.

From a dealer in "fake" goods, Braun cheaply obtained the empty
packages, the jars of colored water, and the stacks of imitation "put
up" goods, which gave to the pharmacy its air of rosy prosperity.
To cater to his natural patrons, cheap perfumes, confectionery,
gaudy nostrums, theatrical make-up, and a round of disguised
narcotics and "headache" medicines were always at hand.

Braun picked up a waif of the street, an ex-Prussian soldier, who
for a pittance and his daily "rum," slaved in the "Pharmacy" like
a dog, polishing and cleaning until it was the smartest show place
of the neighboring blocks.

But the citadel of the real business was the huge marble soda fountain,
with its bewildering array of gaudy silver-plated faucets. Above
the rows of bottled "bitters," the fiery drink of the temperance
frauds, high over the three score jars of "nervines" and pick-me-up
preparations, towered a life-size marble statue of Hygeia, glowing
in a voluptuous Parian nakedness.

Behind the fountain counter, with its serried rows of crystal
glasses in artistic silver holders, there lurked on watch, now,
the factotum, the thieving London-bred drug-clerk who had escaped
"transportation," at Her Gracious Majesty's behest, by slipping
over to New York City disguised as a stoker.

To him alone was entrusted the traffic in slops and the flimsy
produce of the soda fountain, to him the drudgery of the illicit
Sunday liquor trade, when the "regulars" entered by the side door
from the hall, bearing the portentous sign, "Hugo Adler, M.D.,
Physician and Surgeon."

No mortal had ever gazed upon the legendary Adler, but Timmins
the cockney, and Braunschweiger the ex-Prussian grenadier, gaily
dispensed from jugs and bottles the "spiritual comforts" stacked
up in the "dark room" every Saturday against the Sunday of legally
enforced thirst and resultant sadness.

But while these minor villains slaved for the master who greedily
snatched every bill from the till, and held them up to a keen return
for every measured drink in the stock of the Sunday "bar" of the
mock drug-store, it was the taciturn Fritz Braun himself who murmured
in confidence to the important patrons of the den.

The morning run beginning at nine, embraced the haggard-eyed devotees
of pleasure--Wall Street men, clerk and financiers, habitues of
the Tenderloin--actors and men about town.

In subdued murmurs the skilful Fritz Braun trafficked with these
"shaky" mortals, while Timmins covered their "prescriptions" with
an innocent layer of Vichy.

Sometimes the favored few entered behind Braun's screen, until the
chemist solved their varying problems by manipulating his vials in
the closely locked cabinet, the key of which never left his person.

There were little packages by the gross ready in that capacious
lock box. Opium, hasheesh, chorodyne, sulphonal, cocaine, "dope,"
all the life-stealing narcotics in every form.

There were medicines the traffic in which leads even the innocent
behind the bars.

And it was from the sale of these "nervines," forbidden medicines,
and poisonous agents that the runaway Vienna criminal drew his
increasing revenue. There was an aristocracy among the motley
customers.

From the "hypodermic" regulars, men and women, laying down their
syringes to be filled with the soul-stealing morphia solution--faded
men and trembling women, down to the shattered wretch, with his
pitiful twenty-five cents for a bit of "dope," no one with money
was turned away.

Yet all of these passed under Fritz Braun's watchful scrutiny.
The disguised criminal trembled lest some ugly-minded detective or
crank journalist might entrap him into the meshes of the law.

Alas! Nearly all the customers bore the seal of safety in their
imploring eyes. By the freemasonry of the degenerates, Magdal's
was a known haven of refuge to all the weaklings of Manhattan.

The frequent ringing of "Doctor Adler's" bell admitted to the
little dimly-lighted rear room the sullen-eyed visitors who bore
away the colorless vials of "knock-out drops," for which five- and
ten-dollar bills were eagerly thrust into Braun's itching palm.

This important traffic was confided to no one but the real proprietor.
And stealthily-treading, matronly-looking women often found their
way into the den, where nameless "remedies" were sold, often for
their weight in diamonds, the weapons of that hidden guild which
paves New York's streets with the bones of ignorant and martyred
women. For all the thirty-third degree trade of the "consulting-room,"
an "introduction" was stiffly demanded.

Thanks to his craft, to his fear of the awful doom hanging over
him from the unpunished Viennese murders, Hugo Landor had so far
defied detection and avoided all awkward inquiry. Mr. Fritz Braun
always had a prime cigar and a drop of "medicinal cognac" at the
disposal of the visiting policeman. His perfunctory "loans" had
gladdened the hands of several minor officials, whose argus eyes
had noted the Sunday run of Dr. Adler's many friends.

All these dangerous wares were distributed in unlabelled vials,
and no witnesses had ever verified the transfer of the felonious
knock-out drops. Each week brought to Braun customers from adjacent
cities, many of whom, disguised or veiled, hurried away with the means
of cowardly crime to work the devil's charms at a safe distance.

Taciturn, morose and keeping his own counsel, Fritz Braun was a
cautious trader with the great supply houses. His bills of purchase
were made out to the welcome "Mr. Cash," and the old prescription
books of Magdal were ostentatiously displayed with a few family
orders dropping in now and then from some befogged physician. The
bond between Lilienthal and Braun had been strengthened by the aid
of the "picture dealer" in smuggling from Hamburg and Bremen much
of the dangerous ware of this mind-wrecking business.

And so, peddling the means of murder, filling his yawning pocketbook,
Fritz Braun had thrived in solitude until Irma Gluyas sought the
refuge of New York City.

For the discovery of her picture in the stiffened hands of a suicide,
a young noble officer, ruined by her extravagance, had caused the
Viennese siren to flee the vengeance of a powerful Austrian family.

And so the lives of these two, linked by folly, sin, crime and mad
extravagance, had run together again far from the scenes where,
led on by her dark eyes, Hugo Landor had stumbled along on the dark
road from theft and forgery to callous murder.

On this particular April early afternoon, the eager plotter was
willing to leave his afternoon customers to the sly Timmins. The
actresses and lazy demi-monde queens fluttered in always before
sunset, together with a bevy of quacks, whose doubtful prescriptions
were always put up by Timmins, easily capable of brazenly swearing
to "a mistake," or denying upon oath the sale of any clumsy weapon
of medical butchery.

It was also the time when the floating "shopping women" drifted in
to reinforce their luncheons with Timmins' artfully veiled alcoholic
preparations.

His row of bottles labelled "Vin Mariani," "Moxie," and "Nervura"
were never empty, and the oldest toper would have found them
veritable "well springs of joy in the desert."

All the simple machinery of the mock pharmacy was so well oiled
that even an expert could detect no commerce more dangerous than
Lubin's Powders, crimson lip salve, or a powder puff.

"Fritz Braun, Manager," came and went with regularity, no man
knowing of his home or family ties; the old golden sign of "Magdal's
Pharmacy" covering whatever mystery was not hidden behind those
gleaming blue glasses.

Save for his regular luncheon at the Café Bavaria, no Sixth Avenue
habitué had ever seen Mr. Fritz Braun at concert, theater, or any
of the places of local or suburban amusement.

As to woman, he seemed to be sternly indifferent, Save to the
semi-professionals who were as anxious to escape Sing Sing's gloomy
embrace as the man who supplied them with the drugs for their various
"Ladies' Homes." These were welcome "Greeks bearing gifts" of the
coveted "long green" which was Fritz Braun's god.

Braun was never in the pharmacy after six o'clock, and from that
evening hour when all well-conducted men and women turn to dinner
as the day's culmination, no one had ever set their eyes upon the
bustling manager.

Friendless he seemed, yet ever cheerful, a man distantly respected
for the open frankness of his business dealings, the order and quiet
of his shop, and his rare capacity for minding his own business.

It was only in the evening that Mr. Ben Timmins' reign was uncontested.
The flashy young fellows of his caught-up friendships then lurked
around Magdal's Pharmacy where Timmins dispensed complimentary drinks
and lorded over his fluctuating harem of unemployed "soubrettes"
and light-headed shop girls freed from their daily toil.

In a rough average at a half-way honesty, Timmins "turned in"
habitually about half of the evening's receipts of the "joint,"
which, to use his own language, he "ran for all it was worth."

He had soon lost all fear of his stern employer visiting him at
random, and the clever London rascal now laughed detection to scorn.

For he always kept in hand one day's stealings so that, if suddenly
"called down," he could glibly explain, "Slipped it in my pocket
in my hurry! The shop was full!"

While Timmins, returning from his breakfast on this busy Monday,
wondered at Mr. Fritz Braun delaying his comfortable luncheon,
Mr. Adolph Lilienthal was anxiously awaiting his secret partner in
villainy at the "Newport Art Gallery."

Perhaps the crowning secret of Braun's remarkable success was his
clear-headed avoidance of mixing up the details of his various
schemes.

Lilienthal knew nothing of Braun's whereabouts as to a real residence,
and the colloquies and settlements of the two always took place in
Lilienthal's little private office, proof against all eavesdroppers.

The Art Emporium, thronged with the curious, was the safest place
in New York City for casual meetings, and, with a keen suspicion
of his man, Lilienthal never visited Magdal's Pharmacy. He realized
that there might be danger and deception in his fellow villain's
hospitality.

A doubt of Braun's ultimate end as a citizen had caused the smug
dealer to always avoid Braun at the jolly Restaurant Bavaria, where
the good-natured foreign convives often joined each other over a
stein.

The "private interests" of the Newport Art Gallery were as jealously
guarded as the inner secrets of Magdal's Pharmacy; furthermore, the
hidden post-office, telegraph exchange, and "private room" busied
the dealer from morn till eve.

Lilienthal was in a particularly good humor when he at last dispatched
the Danube "artist proof" by an especial messenger to Mr. Randall
Clayton's own rooms. It had all fallen about in a spirit of graceful
courtesy. And three hearts bounded with a hidden delight when the
happy incident occurred.

When Randall Clayton returned from the Astor Place Bank he had
discovered Mr. Adolph Lilienthal in a particularly cheerful frame
of mind. The young cashier had hastened to his office and delivered
over his bundle of exchange and checked-up bank-book. "I shall be
out for an hour," he sharply called to Einstein. "Wait here in my
office and let any callers return at two o'clock!"

There was a glow of expectancy on the handsome face of the customer
as Lilienthal rubbed his hands. "I have been fortunate enough to
carry out your wishes, Mr. Clayton," he obsequiously said. "Fräulein
Gluyas has called and paid for her picture. I have told her of your
longing for a replica, and, by telephoning down to my importer,
I have learned that I can get a duplicate in six weeks.

"She is not altogether satisfied with the framing of this one, and
I have begged her to allow me to sell you this one, so that I can
import one for her framed in our own Viennese manner.

"The lady awaits your wishes, through me. It certainly is very
courteous on her part. I have done her certain little business
favors and she is kindly willing to oblige."

"If I could only meet her," murmured Randall Clayton, with lips
dry with all the eagerness of a newly born passion. He was in a
defiant mood now, his whole being stirred with the treason of the
friend of years and the unmasked villainy of his pseudo-benefactor.
This fair mystery allured him strangely.

"Nothing easier," smiled the dealer, reaching out for his silk
hat. "The Fräulein is taking her usual luncheon at the Restaurant
Bavaria, and I agreed to notify her of your wishes, as she may
travel, and would be willing to wait for the arrival of my Vienna
importation. I will be very glad to present you to her."

The world took on a new brightness as Randall Clayton passed out
of the shop with the dealer. He scarcely dared to trust himself to
bring up the subject now nearest his heart.

But the careful directions of Mr. Fritz Braun had given Lilienthal
his cue. The dealer babbled on of pleasant trivial things as they
stemmed the tide of the crowded streets. "I hope that Fräulein
Gluyas will soon appear in opera and achieve the success which she
deserves. She is really here incognito, and spends all her time
in private musical practice at Chickering Hall and the study of
languages."

"Why this secrecy?" asked Clayton.

"Ah! My dear sir! These are the ways of impresarios. If Grau does
not secure a certain great operatic star with whom he has quarrelled,
then Fräulein Gluyas will be brought out with a great flourish of
trumpets under a stage name to be selected later. She will then
be heralded as a 'wonder of the world.' It will pay Grau, and he
will also have his revenge!"

"And if the great star relents?" smilingly asked Clayton, as they
neared the Restaurant Bavaria.

"Then," cheerfully answered the dealer, "the lady will make a grand
concert tour, adequately supported. It is for that contingency
she is studying English ballads and the language."

Clayton suddenly remembered the unromantic address of 192 Layte
Street, Brooklyn. "Fräulein Gluyas resides in Brooklyn?" he said,
with a fine air of carelessness.

Lilienthal's eyes swept obliquely the young man's distrustful face.
"Fräulein Gluyas ordered the picture sent to the rooms of her
music master, 192 Layte Street, Brooklyn. Poor old Raffoni was once
a world-wide star, a velvet tenor. Now he is literally a voice maker,
a master of technique for Maurice Grau. The Hungarian nightingale
studies there, and only takes her hall practice here in the off
season, in Chickering's empty salon. There is a jealous professional
mystery in this secrecy. The summer is the opera's off season,
just as the winter is the same for the great circus and travelling
shows. The hardest work is thus veiled from the public. The impresario
is always a wily individual."

"And the lady's real residence?" impatiently queried the budding
lover. "That is an absolute secret, for Grau carefully hides away
his coming stars. Somewhere on Long Island an old Hungarian noble
family have had a retreat since the days of Kossuth.

"The Fräulein is their guest, and, for other reasons than complete
faith with Grau, she receives no one. She is as proud and haughty as
she is beautiful, and rumor has it that the pursuit of an Austrian
Archduke drove her to the safety of our shores. All this I have
gathered from my old friend, Signore Raffoni."

Clayton mutely followed Lilienthal to the door of a private room
in the "Bavaria" and, with a wildly beating heart, was bowing low
before the woman whose shining eyes had brought to his bosom such
strange unrest.

"It is like a page from a novel," the flute-like voice murmured,
"that this lucky picture should have brought us together again, as
it strangely did once face to face."

Randall Clayton's ears drank in that soft, wooing accent, and all
the ardor of his eyes betrayed the instant recognition which lay
behind the diva's merry words.

When he had murmured his thanks, the presence of Lilienthal seemed
to be a bar to any rapprochement. Clayton was fain to accept Fräulein
Gluyas' courtesy in allowing him a choice as to the handling of
the picture or its replica.

"If Mademoiselle will allow me," said Clayton, "I will give Mr.
Lilienthal my cheque for the coming proof, and retain in my possession
the one framed in our American manner."

This was soon settled, and then, with a glance at his watch, the
dealer, bowing low, hurried away.

"We artists have to be unconventional," frankly said the Magyar
beauty.

"I await Madame Raffoni here for a little tour of the wonderful
New York shops."

It was a natural passage from the picture to the memories of the
Danube, and then, under the kindling glances of the diva, Randall
Clayton talked, with spirit, of his happy summer ramblings through
Austria and Hungary.

Irma Gluyas' magnetic eyes burned into his soul as she followed
the young stranger in his itinerary. It was only when the maître
d'hôtel entered, announcing Madame Raffoni as in waiting in her
carriage, that Randall Clayton's castle in Spain came crashing down
around him.

The Magyar witch dropped her eyes when Clayton took her hands in
adieu. "You have made me forget time, and my workaday world," he
said. "I have now something to live for--to hear you sing! It seems
so hard to meet only to part. I may never see your coming picture;
you may never see mine again. But I cannot lose you from my life.
It seemed, Fräulein Irma," he said, earnestly, "when I first met
the glance of your dreaming eyes, that I had known you in some
other world."

"I receive no one; I am a recluse," murmured Irma, with eyes
smiling through down dropped lashes; "but, if you care, you may
come, a week from to-day, and breakfast with me here! Dear old
Raffoni will play propriety. As for the singing, I am pledged to
be mute, parôle d'honneur. But you must be in my first audience.
I must keep an artist's faith with my manager."

"I shall have the loge d'honneur at your début," enthusiastically
cried Clayton, as he lingered over her frankly extended hand after
murmuring his acceptance.

The woman who sat, with her head bowed upon her hands, listened to
his receding footsteps. "Il Regalantuomo," she murmured. "It is a
pity, too! What does Fritz want of him?"

Then gliding serpent-like from the darkened corridor, she joined
the waiting woman in the carriage below, a woman whose form was
but dimly defined beyond the half-lowered silken curtain of the
carriage as Randall Clayton sped along to his money mill.

Some indefinable impulse kept Clayton from speaking of his breakfast
engagement as he strode into the Newport Art Gallery. His cheque
for one hundred and twenty-five dollars was soon transferred to
Lilienthal in return for the coveted picture, which was dispatched
to the young man's lonely apartment.

"Not a bad turn," mused Adolf Lilienthal. "I raised him seventy-five
dollars! He paid like a prince, and, if I mistake not, this is his
first and last transaction here. The picture that he wanted is
burned into his heart now."

It was but one of a hundred similar intrigues to which Lilienthal
had been the successful Leporello, and he calmly betook himself to
the continued villainy of his daily life. He feared also to follow
on the footsteps of the crafty Fritz Braun, for in the years of
their illicit dealings the weaker nature had been molded by the
daring master villain into a habitual subjection. "He has some
little game of his own," chuckled Lilienthal. "Friend Fritz is a
sly one."

But the man, now burning with a new purpose in life, the puppet of
strange destinies, dreamed only of a golden future as he lingered
late that night at the Astor House with Jack Witherspoon.

It was two o'clock before he returned to his lonely rooms to gloat
over the picture and its promise of the future meeting.

"I shall be rich," he mused, "and I will follow her to the end of
the earth until I read the secret of those wonderful eyes."

He little dreamed that even before he had paid Lilienthal the
cheque, a carriage had stopped for a moment before Magdal's Pharmacy,
and Mr. Fritz Braun had heard, with a wild delight, the whispered
words, "The game is won; he will come!" The busy devil prisoned in
Braun's heart laughed for very joy.






CHAPTER IV.

UNDER THE SHADOWS OF THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE.





When the "Fuerst Bismarck" moved grandly away from her wharf and
glided down the stream, Jack Witherspoon paced the deck with clouded
brows. The acute Detroit lawyer had rightly estimated the crushing
effect of his disclosure of Hugh Worthington's treachery.

The two college mates were now banded together, however, by a secret
compact, and both of them realized the craft of the foe whom they
were fighting. "Not a letter, not a cable, not a single scrap of
paper," said the wary Jack. "And you must keep away from me and be
sure to dissemble all your wrath."

Clayton appreciated the prudence which had separated them in
the last three days of his friend's stay, and minutely followed
Witherspoon's final descriptions of the hidden plans of the great
syndicate. "You must be ever on your guard," said the new champion,
"and remember the annual election and this strange wedding must be
allowed to take place without suspicion.

"On my return I shall frankly mingle with the 'upper ten' of the
Trust. You are never to be seen alone in my company. But you can
meet me over in Jersey City; there we can arrange a simple cipher
for future use, and, when the blow falls, you are then to demand
a month's leave of absence. So no word to any one of your destination.

"If Hugh Worthington lurks on the Pacific Coast until he has made
the coup, I will find him out there. You can be in hiding near,
ready to appear, and then boldly claim your rights. Arthur Ferris
will probably be back in New York City in charge, and Worthington
will yield rather than have the world, his beloved daughter, and
all society know of his inward baseness. I shall delve further
into the old records, under pretense of following up the title to
our purchase. Perhaps we may even now unearth other unconveyed
property."

Randall Clayton, brave as he was, shuddered when Witherspoon solemnly
said: "Remember! Your life is in your own hands. For God's sake,
be prudent! One little self-betrayal in sudden anger, and then
either Worthington or Ferris would surely compass your death for
this tempting million. You will fight for your birthright, and I
for the future happiness of darling Francine Delacroix."

When they wrung each other's hands in the last good-bye, "each
heart recalled a different name."

For, burning on the altars of that lonely heart of Clayton's
was the fierce fire which bound him now as the worshipper of the
velvet-voiced Magyar witch. He, too, had some one to fight for
now, and his ardent fancy painted her in every glowing color of
the passion of young manhood.

Left alone to his daily affairs, Randall Clayton now lived behind
an impenetrable mask. He knew not which of the higher employees
was charged with that secret espionage so necessary to the final
success of the Worthington, Durham and Ferris conspiracy.

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