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The Midnight Passenger

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And, by one of the fantastic turns of luck which haunt even
the safest "dealing" games, he had seen the tide of Fortune turn
viciously against his banking dealers several times. The "bank"
had been broken at several of his tables until he had hypothecated
all his reserve securities. Ruin stared him in the face, for it
had come at last.

Possessed of his regular passport, safe now in any voyage in Germany,
the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, in Russia, Fritz Braun
had long desired to break off his slavery to the "painted ladies"
of the cards.

He had always kept some jewels of great value with him as a final
reserve, and a nest-egg of a few thousands deposited in a Frankfort
banking-house, with whose New York agents he had effected many
clearings of considerable size.

Fate was now swiftly sweeping him along, he knew not whither, and
on this night of discontent he bitterly calculated the chances of
a stormy future.

"Ten thousand dollars only left, and whatever more my jewels will
bring," he growled. "I am safe enough, though. Timmins can run the
pharmacy, and the brewery will put an agent in here if I say that
I need a few months' rest abroad."

"But there's Irma to be got rid of! If she does not help me to
this one crowning stroke of luck, then I've either got to put her
out of the way or take her with me. She knows my one dangerous
secret."

A busy devil in his heart whispered an excellent suggestion. He
grinned in self-satisfied malignity. "Yes! That's the trick! If I
win we'll take a Hoboken steamer together. Any one of our smuggling
stewards and agents over there will take care of us on the way
over.

"If I lose, she must go with me; and there are a few lonely lakes
in Norway, a few deep fiords with leaping waterfalls. I might lose
her there, and only that coward Lilienthal would perhaps suspect.
He would have to keep his mouth shut, for he has his own tracks
to cover, and he would easily believe that the pretty jade has run
off and left me. And he fears publicity.

"As for Leah, she loves me blindly, with a dog's fidelity; her boy
will be true to his dam and drift on in silence--a sharp scoundrel!
The world is an easy oyster for him to open.

"If--if I lose Irma, I'll have Leah over there with me. My passport
as August Meyer makes me invincible."

And the scheming villain threw himself down to dream of a stroke of
luck which should make him safe in Northern Europe, in the assumed
character of "August Meyer," a second self which fitted him like a
Guardsman's uniform. "I can easily play off a long sickness, turn
over the leases, and the brewer will run the 'Valkyrie.' My one
hope and fear is Irma. If she pulls this off I'll fix her; yes,
I'll fix her!"

He drifted away into a land of dreams, a far-off land, where,
under the black shadows of the Norway firs, he could see the gleam
of white hands thrown up despairingly in the icy waters. It was a
fiend's prophecy of a nameless horror to come.

When Randall Clayton noticed the returning suavity of Manager Robert
Wade's demeanor on the days ensuing the abortive attempt to lure
the young cashier out West, he vowed to redouble his own crafty
policy of secret resistance. It all seemed so clear to him now.
"Wade and Ferris wish to conceal the marriage until the election
is over. I would be exposed, perhaps even here, to their deadly
resentment if I openly rebelled.

"But once that Jack Witherspoon is back, and Ferris anchored here,
Jack can go on and face old Worthington. I will affect ignorance,
and then a brief campaign of victory will put Irma in my arms."

Startled by Einstein's revelations, Randall Clayton had carefully
removed every scrap of his private papers from his apartments, and
his little fortune, his stocks and personal archives, were all safe
in a down-town Safe Deposit.

The address and all the details of the Trust were lying in a sealed
envelope in the safe of Jack Witherspoon's club, in Detroit, awaiting
that legal champion's return.

And so, his heart thrilled with the fear of losing the Hungarian
singer, Randall Clayton made friends with all in the office until
his friend and enemy should pass each other in New York City.

The business and social atmosphere had visibly cleared before the
day of the annual election came on.

Clayton's eyes were now fixed only on his friend Witherspoon,
whose steamer was now picking him up at Boulogne. The approach of
the Fourth of July, with a triple holiday--Saturday, Sunday and
Monday--caused Clayton to toil, early and late, in the vast annual
settlements of the end of the fiscal year. It was upon the basis
of the settlement of June 30th that the reports of July 1st, the
annual election, were to be made.

But one thought now filled Clayton's agitated heart.

It was Irma Gluyas' future. Her resolute policy of holding him off
had inflamed Clayton's lover ardor to an overmastering passion.

Gallant and loyal, he had taken her at her own word. The unconventional
artist life, her romantic early history, her foreign birth, her
carefully veiled coming début, all this conspired to cover the
singular reticence of the diva as to her home life.

He never had demanded her whole heart confidence, for he had been
forced to veil from her his hopes of winning a fortune by one fell
swoop upon the astounded Worthington.

"And then," murmured the passionate, heated lover, "I can tell her
all. I can give her a home, the power of wealth to set my jewel
off, and there shall be nothing hidden between us."

From first to last he had concealed nothing from her, save the
mechanism of the short, sharp struggle which was to make him almost
a millionaire, if Jack Witherspoon's bold plan succeeded.

It had been for her sake as well as his own that the veiled star,
Irma Gluyas, had laughingly searched the map of New York and vicinity
to find places of safe meeting.

To avoid Robert Wade's spies, to preserve Irma's incognito, they
had exhausted the "lions" of every Long Island, Staten Island,
and New Jersey village. They had canvassed every place of resort
within fifty miles of New York City.

With a dumb fidelity Madame Raffoni had accompanied her beautiful
charge. There was a wholesome innocence in these strangely arranged
stolen interviews.

Clayton often searched that lovely face to read what malign influence
kept her from opening her whole life to him.

But it all seemed so clear. Her wild artist nature yearned for the
honors of a world's applause; it was agreed between them that, be
it opera season or concert tour, that, once success was achieved,
the eclipse of Love should hide her from the eager moths who flutter
around the risen star.

"She trusts me; I have not told her all. When I can give her
my whole life and a fortune," thought Clayton, "then I shall say,
'Irma, open the sealed books. There must be nothing hidden between
us.'"

With a serene confidence in Madame Raffoni, Randall Clayton always
came home alone and by circuitous routes, artfully varied, from
these strange trysts.

This stolen time seemed all too short to speak of their future,
gilded by a love which thrived strangely in the difficulties
besetting the strangely-met couple.

Clayton's mind was unclouded by suspicion. He had given his whole
destiny over to the keeping of the small blue-veined hands, which
lingered so lovingly on his heated brow. His watchfulness was only
turned upon Robert Wade's disgruntled spies.

From the heavily subsidized Einstein, Clayton gleefully learned that
the weekly "report" of one or the other of the Fidelity Company's
men consisted of a morose shake of the head and the single word,
"Nothing!"

The cashier laughed at Emil's report of Wade's accidentally overheard
angry growl, "Where the devil does he keep himself, any way?"

For Love had taught Clayton a strange, new craft, and he easily
outwitted the two brutes who always came to "report" during his
bank absences, and had vainly rifled his deserted rooms during his
long Sunday and evening absences.

There was no tell-tale clue in the lonely apartment, where the dust
of many long weeks had gathered in Arthur Ferris' vacant rooms.

Unable to absent himself on the near approach of the great annual
settlement, driven at last to extremity, Randall Clayton arranged
his last meeting with Irma, before the return of Ferris and
Witherspoon, at Manhattan Beach.

For the summer boats were already running, and, on the broad piazzas
of the Oriental they could safely meet.

It was so easy for Madame Raffoni to pilot the incognito diva by
the railway to the Manhattan Hotel. A double veil and a judiciously
fringed sunshade would make Irma Gluyas impregnable to the flaneur.

"Alas! The days of Aranjuez are over," sighed Clayton, for this
tryst of Thursday was to be followed by the election on Friday.

As yet Arthur Ferris had given no sign of his impending arrival.
Some gloomy foreboding weighed down Randall Clayton's soul with a
fear of coming disaster. He felt how powerless he was in the hands
of the cruel conspirators who had robbed him of his fortune.

He never doubted that Senator Durham and the treacherous Ferris
both possessed Hugh Worthington's dastardly secret, and that they
all stood ready to crush him.

The innocent four-line advertisement of the annual election had
been duly inserted in the obscure corners of certain fourth-class
journals, "as required by law."

There was an oily grin upon Robert Wade's self-satisfied face,
and, with no single word from Worthington or Ferris, Clayton felt
the toils closing around him. He was left out of the game--a mere
poor pawn.

It was on the night before his five-o'clock tryst at the Manhattan,
when Clayton suddenly sprang from his chair. "By God! I have it!" he
cried. "Old Wade has failed to trap me. Ferris, the smug scoundrel,
will glide back here and try to steal into my intimacy. He can post
his slyly posted spies. I cannot then keep him off. And he will
reiterate Worthington's plans, cling to me, and run me to earth. He
will take up his Judas trade, and either trap me or else, baffled,
will telegraph Worthington and have me discharged. Why has
he concealed this secret marriage? And, damnation! I cannot ever
meet Jack Witherspoon in private without giving myself away. I must
have some one meet Witherspoon at the steamer and arrange for one
meeting out of town. He must go over to Philadelphia and await me.
I can take an evening train over, and be back here, even if Ferris
hangs on my track. I will go out alone, as if to the theater, and
then turn up belated. Ferris must not know. It is for my life, for
Irma, and for my fortune that I struggle now. My God! Whom can I
trust now, and they have poisoned Alice's mind against me. I see
their damned villainy. Poor Little Sister! Another man's wife now.
She will never know."

In his lover's second sight Randall Clayton had really stumbled
on the artful measure by which the old Croesus had deliberately
shifted Alice Worthington's love for her old-time playmate.

Over his gold-bowed spectacles, Hugh Worthington, the "surviving
partner," had sadly read aloud the details of Randall Clayton's
"New York career." "Forget him, Alice," the old man sternly said.
"He has fallen on evil ways." "And yet you still keep him in your
employ, father?" answered the clear-eyed girl, her wondering glances
gleaming out under a brow of truth.

"Yes, yes!" harshly said the startled old miser. "But it must soon
come to an end. I have delayed the inevitable. But he must go. You
are right; he must go."

And with this colloquy by the far Pacific, the old man dropped
Randall Clayton's soiled memory, while the despoiled heir had turned
at bay to fight for his own.

While Randall Clayton paced his lonely rooms in Manhattan, gazing
sadly on the glowing Danube scene, there was a woman seated in
a shaded corner of the old library of the lonely mansion on Layte
Street. The second drawing-room and library on the ground floor
were a dream of luxury. It had once pleased Mr. Fritz Braun to make
them worthy of a Sultana.

And he stood there now, regarding the graceful figure of one whose
head was hidden in her hands.

The diamonds on the adventurer's bosom flashed fitfully in the
yellow gaslight, as he slowly said, "And now you know all your
part. Will you play it?"

Irma Gluyas sprang to her feet and clutched his arms with a
despairing clasp. "Swear to me that no harm shall come to him!"

Fritz Braun growled an assent. "Not a hand shall be laid on him. I
swear it!" And then, through falling tears, the Magyar witch gave
her word to do her master's bidding. She had glided from the room
before the man started, as the street door clashed and the roll
of wheels was heard. He poured out a draught of brandy and threw
himself into a chair. "One week more and I would be too late. I
must hoodwink her!"






BOOK II.

AN INSIDE RING.






CHAPTER VI.

DREAMING BY THE SEA.





Five o'clock on Thursday afternoon found Mr. Randall Clayton
hovering around the grounds of the more democratic Hotel Manhattan,
while the early birds of fashion sought the more pretentious splendor
of the Oriental.

There was an anxious look upon the young man's face, and deep hollows
under his eyes told of unaccustomed vigils. A couple of wandering
peris gazed wishfully at the hand bundle carefully enveloped in
silvery tissue paper. It was true that dark blue Russian violets,
the starry forget-me-not, and the peerless lilies of the valley were
therein hidden, but a keener emotion than expectant love shone in
the young man's haggard eyes.

He was anxiously gazing around for the now well known form of Madame
Raffoni. Clayton dared not exhibit himself before the couple of
hundred staring eyes upon the pavilion and broad porticos.

An unknown fear of being entrapped drove him restlessly about.

"Would to God that Jack Witherspoon had arrived!" muttered the
lover. "I may have the trap sprung on me at any moment. Another
week; a long, long week! And God knows what may not happen in that
time." Some burning fever gnawed at his unquiet heart, some veiled
danger weighed him down.

Clayton was waiting for the approach of the wife of that mysterious
musical director whom he had never seen.

A fortunate sort of lingua Franca had been patched up between the
unsuspicious Clayton and the dark-eyed duenna. A few words of
German, a little scattered French, and a bit of gibberish English
enabled the two to hold occasional brief and amiable intercourse.

"What language does she really speak?" often cried the baffled
Clayton to the mocking Irma.

"Only pure Czech, my comrade," laughed the diva. "And I will teach
you the softest language of Love myself when we wander back into
the blue Bohemian mountains to proud old Georgsburg. My father was
a Magyar, my mother," she softly said, "a Czech princess."

While Clayton moved around, cautiously exhibiting himself as agreed
upon, his mind was agitated with a hundred unknown fears. He knew
not the designs of his panther-footed enemies.

To his astonishment, Robert Wade was absent the whole last business
day of the year from the Western Trading Company's offices, and
this, too, when every pen was busied up to five o'clock.

And, the momentous election was to occur in the morning!

He had lingered with his own annual summary until three o'clock,
when the dejected face of Somers, the head accountant, had appeared
at his office door. "I have a telegram that Mr. Wade is sick in
his bed. I am to take the consolidated accounts up to him to-night."

And so Randall Clayton handed over his papers without a word. "It
will probably be the last account I will ever render here," he
savagely mused, as he clashed his roll-top desk. "I wish that I had
broken it all off when Wade brought on the half quarrel. I should
have taken a friend with me, drawn out my little hoard, gone West
and faced Worthington before he successfully works this infamous
deal.

"Now I am powerless. He may tell us both to go to the devil."

And then Clayton sadly remembered that he depended only on Jack
Witherspoon's mere hearsay for any proofs of wrong-doing. "Yes!
I've only Jack's eagerness to marry that dainty Francine Delacroix
to thank for my fortune--if I ever get it. A woman whom I never
have seen decides my whole destiny, while I would give my life up,
my last drop of blood, for Irma!"

Ah! All unknown to him, a dozen busy minds were weaving snares for
his wandering feet. While Clayton, at last, saw Madame Raffoni
cautiously approaching, in his superb Fifth Avenue residence, the
sick man, Robert Wade, was closeted with the wolfish-eyed Arthur
Ferris, the parchment-faced Somers, and four of the seven directors
of the Trading Company.

On guard, lingering around Clayton's apartment, two mercantile
agent's spies were waiting to pipe him off and report his every
movement secretly to the returned Ferris, now breathless with
anxiety for the greatest financial coup of the season.

Mr. Fritz Braun was artfully busied at Magdal's Pharmacy with giving
Timmins a few last directions, and with the quiet destruction of
a few necessary professional memoranda which he did not care to
leave behind as dangerous weapons in the hands of the law or any
thieving clerk.

In the pocket of Mr. Fritz Braun's well-known brown overcoat
now reposed a bulky envelope, with a passport for Mr. and Mrs.
August Meyer, his Frankfort bank exchange, and several letters of
introduction to responsible merchants in Upper Germany. He was, at
least, armed for flight, and fortified beyond all attack.

Ben Timmins looked forward, with delight, to a six-months' suzerainty
of his master's drug business. "I have given Mr. Lilienthal my power
of attorney," said Braun soberly, and I figure that you should
turn him in at least two hundred dollars a week profit, and also
keep the stock up. He will look in once or twice a week. If you
need help, he will get you a man. If you don't do your duty, he
will promptly kick you out."

"Thank you, sir," submissively remarked Timmins, who felt sure of
declaring himself an equal cash dividend every week.

"Now remember," said Braun, "I am going over to see Lilienthal. If
any one asks for me, I have gone over the water, that's all.

"For how long, is nobody's business, and you can refer all inquiries
to Lilienthal direct. All that you have to do is to mind your
business and mine. Lilienthal will let you know when I am coming
back, and advise you."

The two lovers had met, far away at Manhattan Beach, after Madame
Raffoni had discreetly piloted Clayton over to a sandy hollow where
a half-burned spar gave a convenient resting-place, before Fritz
Braun and Lilienthal had finished an acrimonious settlement of
some private money matters.

"I'm not a wolf," growled Braun. "You square up as if you were
never going to see me again. You need me more than I need you."

They were in the safe seclusion of the "Private Room" of the Newport
Art Gallery, judiciously vacated for the occasion, when a strange
fear took possession of the sly pleasure pander, Mr. Adolph
Lilienthal.

"See here, Braun," he huskily said, a mean suspicion seizing upon
him, "You're not cutting stick for good! You're not going to 'blow
on me' and 'give me away!' By God! I believe it," he said in fright,
as he noted Braun's pale face.

"It's two months since I've seen Irma Gluyas. Damn you! You've sent
her over to the other side, and got all your papers safe! You've
turned revenue spy! I see your game!"

Before the words were out of his mouth, Braun had dragged the
venal scoundrel down in a strangler's grip. Planting his knee on
his chest, he hissed, "One more word and I'll throttle you here!
I can go out by the side entrance! You dare not scream! You fool!
Don't you know Irma, the pretty baggage, cleared out six weeks ago
with a New York millionaire whom she picked up?"

"Swear to me that you'll keep your mouth shut or I'll go out and
denounce you now. I have nothing to lose. You have. You have robbed
me in our past dealings. You are rich and I am poor. I am going to
follow that woman over the world till I find her, for I loved her.
That's all! Swear that you'll keep my secrets or I'll kill you now.
I've burned every paper I have in the world."

When Braun's desperate mood had passed, he allowed the pleading
man to rise, and then listened morosely as Lilienthal, the veriest
coward at heart, begged for a reconciliation. "I didn't know of
your trouble," gasped Lilienthal. "See here, if you'll go on to
Hamburg and Bremen and fix up that 'phenacetine' business for me,
I'll advance you five thousand dollars now. I didn't know you were
so hard up." He whispered an address in the victorious druggist's
ear.

The half-crazed gamester felt that he had gone too far, and in half
an hour he departed richer by a cheque for five thousand dollars.

But his mind was far away on Manhattan Beach, with the wandering
lovers, as he told Lilienthal that he should not call again. "I'll
jump on the first steamer I can catch! Timmins knows all. Just
watch him, and don't put yourself in his power, till I return. He
can run the shop to a good profit in 'dope' and drinks till I am
with you again. I'm damned near crazy at losing that woman." And
the cowardly Lilienthal believed his rugged master.

When he had stalked away through the snaplock-guarded private entrance,
there came over Lilienthal's face a spasm of deadly hatred. "The
dirty dog!" he growled, as he unlocked a cabinet and drank heavily.
"It must be true. This young fellow Clayton is here on duty every
day; he looks wolfish, too. I wonder if he really loved the girl.
Well, I shall soon have my day. If Braun ever presents that letter
in Hamburg the friends there will have received my secret message
by our No. II, who goes over this trip. A walk around the docks,
and a knife stab in the back will settle Braun. He knows too much
to be allowed to run loose in Europe. He would like to spoil our
game; he shall spoil his own." And the traitor hastened away to
entrap Braun, little dreaming that the acute druggist would never
trust himself to the hands of the "gang" at Hamburg.

Randall Clayton had been startled by Madame Raffoni's eager
disclosure as he approached the place of rendezvous. He had studied
the still handsome face of the disguised Leah Einstein when she told
him that the Fräulein was really ill and most unhappy. He managed
to pick out from her dialect that the diva had been plunged in some
secret sorrow.

Quietly restraining himself, he watched the voluptuous form of
the Jewess mingle with the crowd of guests on the hotel terrace.
"That poor woman, a worn-out theater beauty, is without guile. What
can this mean?"

He had rightly judged the good-hearted Leah's concern, and he never
knew of the long hours of the discarded mistress' ministrations
to the "reigning beauty."

Timorous at heart, Leah Einstein's evil career had been only one
of petty wheedling craft, and an easy self-surrender.

Violence she both feared and abhorred, and now, in the wane of her
beauty, she was easily content with such crumbs of money profit as
could be picked up by an easy code of a plastic surface morality
which covered only her petty intrigues.

Loyal to Irma Gulyas, Randall Clayton dared not question the poor
mock duenna; in fact, her jargon vocabulary would have failed her,
but there had been no deceit in the sympathetic tears which clung
to Madame Raffoni's eyelids.

Seated on a half-burned spar, there where the roar of the restless
waves reached their ears, with her face veiled, the Magyar witch
awaited her all unsuspicious lover. The golden sunset faded now
far in the west, the piled up purple clouds were turning blacker,
and around them


"The mists arose, the waters swelled,"
"Gulls screamed, their flight recalling."


The woman's heart was racked with the deceit which had entrapped
a man she now madly loved.

The freshening wind was driving the black smoke of the steamers,
far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake,
and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in anticipation of
the coming storm.

An infinite tenderness seized upon Randall Clayton as he motioned
to Madame Raffoni to leave them, and then took that beloved head
to its shelter upon his breast.

His heart panted for the day when they could be all in all to
each other. He felt the clouding spell of some mysterious enmity
descending upon them, and clouding their love as he kissed the
white and trembling hands which had so nervously clasped his own.
For Irma Gluyas feared for her own life. She dared not betray the
tiger-like Fritz Braun, whose veiled scheme of plunder or blackmail
she could not fathom.

Hitherto all had gone well with them, in their merry will-o'-the-wisp
game with Irma's jealous unknown guardians, with his concealed
enemies.

But Clayton well knew that no mere pretense would baffle Arthur
Ferris' thorough knowledge of all of his past social habits.

He dared not openly quarrel with Ferris until Jack Witherspoon's
return. He only lived now to see the Detroit lawyer speeding west,
far on ahead of the deceitful Ferris, who would be detained in
New York by the quiet consummation of the big deal.

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