The Midnight Passenger, Richard Henry Savage [best reads of all time txt] 📗

I wish to safely meet her, it must be over there."

His thought were wandering far away across the black, flowing tide of the East River, where the Brooklyn Bridge was now traced in line of living light against the darkness of night.

Over there, beyond the gloomy river warehouses, with their forests of masts, across the swiftly rushing tide seeking the unknown sea, the graceful Queen of his awakened heart was hidden from him. "I shall find her out; nothing shall part us; she shall hear me yet; she shall learn to look for my coming, and she shall open the gates of her home to me. Her heart shall beat against my own."

For, in all the sweep of a lover's imagination, he only saw her, at the end of the veiled pathway, with love lighting her softly shining eyes, and her beloved hand waving him on.

While he still wandered in a Fool's Paradise, the crafty office boy was hastening across the great span which hangs its curving arch from Manhattan to Long Island.

Einstein was driven on by his gnawing greed of money. "Fritz must know this at once," he muttered. These business detective fellows are dangerous, and could easily break up his little game.

"For if Clayton gets into any trouble, out he goes! There's no money in him then, and he's no good to Fritz Braun, no more to me. This news ought to fetch me a couple of twenties if well played."

It was ten o'clock when Emil Einstein sprang down the stairway of the eastern terminus of the Brooklyn Bridge. The lad was blithe at heart as he turned to the left and, passing through the seething press of the crowds congested under the electric lights of Sands and Fulton Streets, carefully reconnoitered a gorgeous saloon on the corner of Layte and Dale Streets.

Einstein peered in through the two swinging doors of the front, and then betook himself to the side entrance on Dale Street, where the "Family Entrance," the private corridor, and one or two halls admitted him to the restaurant, card rooms and private rooms of the ground floor of the five-story corner brick building. The youth recoiled, after a peep through a ground glass door left ajar, at the glories of the main hall of the famous "Valkyrie" saloon.

"What am I to do?" he mused, as he lit his cigarette in a dark doorway outside, parrying the coarse advances of two fleeting Cyprians with a retort which brought the blood to their cheeks, leaping up under the plastered rouge. "I've been forbidden to call him out of 192; he and my mother are both now fooling the Duchess; I am playing a double game with Clayton, and, by Hokey, old Wade's watchful men may drop on to me. I may lose the best job in New York if these people get all tangled up. What the devil is going on, anyway?"

He crossed the street and gazed up at the glaring red pressed-brick walls of the Valkyrie corner. All the two score of windows on Dale Street, and the score on Layte Street were closely guarded with solid shutters of a green hue.

"God knows what deviltry is going on here," muttered the lad, a coward at heart. There were fleeting figures of veiled women gliding past him through the dim entrances, the refluent stream of the Devil's daughters.

Down the gloomy side street the blue gleam of the pitiless river showed light against the somber night, the yellow blinking lights of the tugs flitting about like corpse candles.

In the dark shadows of the involved angular corners, thug and ghoul lurked until midnight should bring them their prey, the careless roysterer, or the belated prosperous citizen. Out on Layte Street the flashy throng was still pouring toward the Fulton Ferry.

"I wonder if I dare," mused the lad, as he walked around the corner and paused before No. 192 Layte Street. The sober splendor of the richly decorated old five-story brownstone told of the vanished glories of the ante-bellum days.

A stately mansion in whose halls there had been royal cheer in the departed days when Brooklyn had its proud burghers and New York its simple citizens of worth. But the pressure of commerce, the havoc of the bridge construction, the onrush of warehouse, shop, and the pressure of the street railway octopus had left the sedate mansion a relic of better days in an incongruous medley of little shops, doubtful lodging-houses, vile man-traps, and clustering saloons.

Here the Juggernaut car of King Alcohol was rolling on remorselessly, crushing out all life save the frenzied dream of the dipsomaniac.

But the lad paused and shook his head as he noted the windows of the old English basement tightly barred. The parlor floor, bearing the gilded sign, "Parisian Millinery Repository," was darkened, and, above, the three upper floors presented only an array of undraped windows solidly shut off by white-enamelled inside folding blinds. The decorous-looking main entrance bore but one card, in script, "Raffoni, Musical Director."

For years the neighborhood had forgotten its curiosity over the foreign-looking men and women who passed the vigilant Cerberus at the stately oaken door. No daring book-agent, no pedlar of indurated cheek, no outside barbarian had ever crossed that guarded portal, for a brass chain of impregnable strength prevented any intrusion, and only a glimpse of the old tesselated marble floor rewarded the frightened interloper.

It was "No Thoroughfare" to the multitude, and the quaint visitors were either personally conducted or used latch-keys.

The over-fed policeman sucking his club in front of 192 Layte only smiled in answer to vague inquiry, "Private house, belongs to old family estate, people in Europe," and then with a leer would drop into the "Valkyrie" for a fistful of good cigars and a flask of the very best.

The timid young scoundrel lingering before 192 on this fresh, starry night was the only "outsider" who knew what deadly master mind controlled the mysteries of the "Valkyrie" saloon and 192 Layte Street, its sedate neighbor.

The particular use of the "fake" millinery repository, the hidden life of the upper floors of the old mansion, were only known to the man whom Emil Einstein feared to meet in anger.

But in the Devil's auction of the corner building, man, woman and child were knocked down to the highest bidder, for the hell-minted price of human souls.

Gambler, crook and thief; wanton, decoy and badger; racing tout, fugitive, smuggler, and counterfeiter; lottery sharp and green-goods man, all welcomed the white, red and blue lights gleaming over the "Valkyrie" saloon as the harbor-lights of their safe port in any storm.

"I have it," muttered Einstein, as he boldly threw open the swinging half door of the "Valkyrie." Shading his eyes in the flood of garish light, he gazed around at the twenty round tables. Six alert barkeepers lurked in front of the superb mirrors behind the rich walnut counters gleaming with crystal and silver.

The music of the Orchestrion bore away on its flood of Strauss waltzes the shrill chatter of women's laughter in the inside hell of the private rooms.

Opening doors admitted fragments of poker gabble as the white-aproned waiters rushed around with their trays of drinks.

With artful geography of arrangement, gaudy women from the side street, at tables, were parading their too evident charms before the crowd of clerks, men about town, warrant officers, railroad employees, old roués, sporting men and belated "slummers" who leered at every arrival of "fresh fish."

Young Einstein, scribbling the single word "Emil" on a card, approached the parchment-faced German lad who sat in state, manipulating the bewildering keys of the "Cash Register."

"Send this to the boss at once," said Einstein in a low voice.

"You can't see him," contemptuously announced the insolent Jack-in-office, tossing back the card. He scented a possible successor in this vulpine-looking young stranger. But Einstein resolutely came back to the charge. "It's his business, and he'll jerk you out of your job if you throw me down. I will not stir a step till I see him. Send it up."

And Emil made a significant gesture with a defiant thumb.

Audacity carried the day! Young Einstein, coolly purchasing a Regalia and seating himself at a table, grinned a last defiance as a "Kellner" finally touched his arm and led him into a vacant card-room.

Down a stairway came the sounding tread of a heavy man, and Einstein was in the presence of Mr. Fritz Braun.

"It's about him, Clayton," faltered the boy, awed at his employer's lowering face.

"Come with me," harshly said Braun, as he led the lad up to the third floor. When they had entered a rear sleeping-room, Braun locked the door. "Tell me all," he anxiously cried. "Out with it. If you lie you'll never leave this house, remember!"

With chattering teeth, the lad delivered himself of his discovery. It was only after half an hour of cross questioning that Braun was satisfied with the details of Robert Wade's espionage of Randall Clayton. "You've done well, for yourself," said Braun, at last, handing the boy a roll of bills. "But never come here again. I'll give you an address to-morrow where you can call, telephone or telegraph, and a name. Post me on all. Keep this from your mother. I'll handle her myself. Now, by day you can slip over to the store, by night use the new address. Get home now. Go over the ferry." He filled the boy's hand with loose silver. "I'll stay here. Speak to no one. Get out quickly by the side door."

Emil Einstein was safely across the Fulton Ferry before he had realized the startling change in Fritz Braun's appearance. The flowing golden beard, the blue glasses, the padded clothes of middle-age cut were gone. Fritz Braun, lithe, sharp-faced, with piercing eyes, a dashing cavalry mustache, and dapper Wall Street tailoring, was twenty years younger, and another man.

His diamond jewels, rakish air and "loose fish" manner bespoke the flush book-maker or the flashy "boss."

"Here's for a night on the Bowery," gleefully cried Einstein, counting his Judas gains, while he tried to forget Fritz Braun's lightning change.

That dapper gentleman, stepping into a closet, passed swiftly through the door from the Valkyrie into 192 Layte Street. His hidden pool-room, gambling den and exchange for soul and body was temporarily forgotten by "Mr. August Meyer," owner of the peerless "Valkyrie Saloon."

"I'll get a carriage and drive over to Irma," he growled. "She must never cross the river again. We must lead him over here; but how? Perhaps the pretty devil can help me. I must throw Wade off the track. Irma can fool this young greenhorn. The job must be done over there. For a fortune, for his life or mine; and he must be teased along till the July holidays."

Then Mr. August Meyer of Brooklyn proceeded to leisurely array himself as a clubman of fashion.


CHAPTER V.

BREAKERS AHEAD! CHECKMATE! MR. ARTHUR FERRIS WORKS IN THE DARK.


Randall Clayton was an enigma in his altered personal bearing to his old confrères when he entered the manager's office at his summons on a balmy afternoon of the dying days of June.

The two months since Jack Witherspoon's departure had changed the frank young fellow into a taciturn man of feline secretiveness. The discovery of Worthington's treachery, the knowledge of the dogging spies at his heels, had been a suddenly transforming influence. He now ardently burned for the return of his one