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

for Ferris' words assured him of a coming triumph, a crown of life and love. It seemed that Irma's love had conquered after all.

"Await me in New York. I think that we can arrange all for your remaining as you are." The signature was that of the artful Ferris. "And I think that Jack and I can handle you, my false friend!" sneered Clayton.

While the young lover read the words which gave him a new hope, far across the Brooklyn Bridge, Mr. Fritz Braun, in his own private lair, was pondering over the words of Madame Raffoni, who had just left the man who was the iron tyrant of her soiled life.

"I must give him a little more line! And I must either land the fish now or lose him forever."

There was a steely gleam in the sleepless eyes of him who pondered upon his clouded pathway. "It must be done! And she must help in some way. She holds the winning cards now. Nothing else will draw him!"

The masquerading criminal was almost desperate. It had been his by-play for years to p|ay at hide and seek with humanity, using his duplex characters at first to throw off any pursuit of the Vienna police; and, later, to hide his nefarious operations on the New York side.

Greedy for money, before Irma Gluyas had been driven to his arms by adverse fortunes, Fritz Braun had at first made his refuge at the "Valkyrie," then owned by Ludwig Sohmer, whose passion for "playing the races" had at last dragged him down.

The Viennese fugitive diligently plied his erstwhile patron with drink and smilingly enmeshed the brutish peasant-bred Sohmer in a series of compounded loans.

It was not long until all the employees recognized in the alert "August Meyer" the mainstay of the decaying fortunes of the half bankrupt Sohmer.

Every evening, without fail, the sharp commands of Fritz Braun were now conveyed to the responsible underlings! Sohmer, staggering homeward with his greedy Aspasias from the Waterloo conflicts of the race-track, sullenly assented at last to the chattel mortgages and bills of sale which placed the "Valkyrie" and the whole building under August Meyer's name. Then, taking the downward road, Sohmer tried to drown himself in drink, and succeeded.

When Sohmer was found dead in his bed, the millionaire brewer who backed the "Valkyrie," and the owner of the ground on which the building erected by Sohmer stood, gladly took on the active August Meyer in loco the departed Sohmer.

The solidity of the new tenant's finances was vouched for by the agents of the old estate from whom Fritz Braun had already leased 192 Layte Street, in his Brooklyn name of "August Meyer."

Strange to say, the keen-eyed officials of the German Consulate-General had issued to the acute pharmacist a regular passport, upon the military and family papers of Braun's poor soldier drudge at the Magdal Pharmacy.

It had been an exchange acceptable to both parties: an ocean of drink, a weekly pittance of food and raiment, for the valuable attested documents which gave the disguised Viennese fugitive the right to boldly claim the Kaiser's official protection as "August Meyer." It was the very citadel of Braun's rising fortunes!

And so, with Sohmer soundly sleeping, whether well or illy, "after life's fitful fever," the foxy Viennese rejoiced in his assigned ground-lease, Sohmer's business, and the gold mine of the hidden pool-room, gambling den and disguised harem of No. 192 Layte Street.

Fritz Braun had allowed a few months to pass before he secretly opened the party walls between the two buildings to allow his choicest patrons to enter No. 192 Layte Street all unobserved; but, for reasons of his own, he had made one or two private alterations in the two buildings which enabled him to enter the different floors by his own judiciously veiled private entrances.

The cellar of No. 192 Layte Street had been piped for cold-storage of the wines and beer of the "Valkyrie" under Fritz Braun's own supervision when he gave up the basement of the "Valkyrie" to the kitchens of the restaurant, which drew the attractive women of the quarter into the safest possible association with their victims crowding the "Valkyrie" saloon.

A vigilant business man, August Meyer came each evening to settle the days' affairs and personally watch the money mill next door, which ran noiselessly on golden wheels from nine o'clock till midnight.

No one had Meyer's confidence; he left no tell-tale papers to connect him with the gruff pharmacist of Sixth Avenue, and at midnight he always vanished to his own private home, a diligently guarded terra incognita to all men.

A sphinx-like "Oberkellner" received the orders of the proprietor each evening; a steward of equal taciturnity "ran" the restaurant, and August Meyer himself, with autocratic power, directed the villainous operations of No. 192 Layte Street.

Popular with the police, exact in his monthly settlements with the ground landlords and the despotic brewery king, Fritz Braun avoided both the failings which had wrecked the golden fortunes of the dead Sohmer.

But, alas! no man is equally strong against all temptations. Deaf to woman's wail; brutal and heartless; too fearful of his past record to give himself up to the bowl, Fritz Braun, blasé and tired of every side of human life, had drifted easily into the desperate craze of the insatiate gambler.

It was months after he had found No. 192 Layte Street to be a never-failing mint, when Braun became fascinated with the whirr of the roulette ball, the varying chances of the faro box, and, at last, the fine peculiarities of "unlimited poker" swept away his once callous prudence.

Night after night, in the grim quartette of a ruinously high game, August Meyer "held his hand" recklessly, while a street railroad magnate, a millionaire importer, and a reigning politician swept away the revenues of the "Valkyrie." He was rolling the stone of Sysiphus up hill now. He had forged his own ruin.

Alone in the world, a desperate Ishmael, Fritz Braun needed the secret protection of these powerful plutocrats. Silently he had suffered his huge losses, waiting for the luck to turn, and now, on the eve of his great coup of criminal sagacity, he awoke at last to his own imperiled fortunes, and yet he feared to own that he dared not cease gambling, that he could not "throw up his hand."

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