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

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.

Clayton was but too well aware that his only weapon was his knowledge of Ferris' secret marriage - an outrage upon Alice Worthington's unguarded girlhood.

And yet he dared not openly use that weapon; how easy for the old capitalist to frame a suave excuse for the "maimed rites" of that Western bridal.

One longing burned now in Clayton's heart, the honest wish to find some dignified and safe place of meeting with the woman upon whom he would shower the gold soon to be his own.

"If anything should happen," he thought.

Of course, his own face was too well known to adopt any mere hiding tactics. Irma was ever fearful of her jealous artist guardians, and in this lovely evening hour the lover's heart rose up in all its stormy tendeness to beg her to lift the veil from her incognito.

Even while they murmured again their vows and drifted away into dreams of the unclouded future, the heavens were blackening around them.

Irma seemed strangely frightened as she cowered in her lover's arms, while he begged her to lift the veil of her privacy.

"I must be with you - near you," he cried. "Listen! I have even now grave matters hanging over me which may summon me suddenly away from you. You know not my abode. You cannot write or telegraph safely to my office.

"There are veiled spies, jealous rivals, there, who would rob me of place, power, and the money which will yet be ours, in the dear far-off Danube land.

"You have been ill, distressed," he fondly said. "Nay, do