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

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