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

not deny it! Madame Raffoni has told me all."

"My God!" whispered Irma. "She has told you" -

"Only that you have suffered, my darling," said Clayton, folding her to his breast.

"Ah! I must make an end of it!" the loyal lover cried, as Irma lay sobbing on his breast. "If I could only come to you; how shall I know? Can you trust no one? There is Madame Raffoni," said Clayton.

"She knows where my office is. I have bribed her, with flattery and a few little kindnesses, to come and tell me of you, several times, when we have been separated in these long weeks. We have not even gone to the 'Bavaria'; I have shown her my office. I care not to force myself upon your loyal secrecy. I respect the promise upon which your artistic future depends; but think of me. If you were ill, and we were separated by Fate, I should go mad! I could not live! Can you not trust her to bring me to you?" Fear and love were striving now in the singer's throbbing heart.

The Magyar witch clasped her arms around her gallant lover in a mad access of tenderness. "And you do love me so, Randall," she cried, in a storm of tears.

"More than my life," said the man who now felt her heart beating wildly against his own.

"Ah! God!" sobbed Irma. "If we had only met in other days, in another land, in my own dear country!"

"Listen, Irma," pleaded Clayton. "I will soon take you away, far over the seas."

"In a few weeks I shall be free, and you shall be my own, my very own! For I will then come to you, free to give you all that life and love can give.

"But promise me now that Madame Raffoni shall lead me to you if you need me. You can trust her. I will come to her home. I cannot bear this agony, and I am watched, also!"

Even as he spoke, the heavens blackened and a stormy drift of rain swept athwart the sky. There was a muttering roll of thunder. The white-crested waves dashed menacingly upon the shore!

Irma Gluyas clung to her lover as the affrighted Madame Raffoni came rushing toward them for shelter in the storm. The red lightning flashed, and the fury of the storm was upon them. It was a wild tempest which raged around them. The women were helpless with fear.

In despair, Randall Clayton gazed at the distant hotels; there was shelter and safety. But now a new fear beset him. His well-known identity, Irma's marked beauty, the strange attendant duenna, there would be certain discovery and scandal. And he would be Ferris' easy victim if discovered.

Irma Gluyas shrieked as she clung to her lover and bade him save her as the wild lightning bolts rent the darkness. It was a horrid elemental tumult!

A few hundred yards away a heavy closed carriage was slowly creeping along the drive between the hotels. "Run for your life!" shouted Clayton to the eager Madame Raffoni. "Stop that carriage. Offer him anything, everything! I will carry her. I must save her."

Bending himself to the task, Clayton raised the fainting form of Irma Gluyas. Her long hair lowered, swept around her in the storm; her sculptured arms clung to him, and her warm heart thrilled him as he sped on through the driving torrent. He was possessed with Love's last delirium.

In the violence of the storm, Clayton could only motion "forward" as he closed the door of the carriage and the frightened horses set off at a mad gallop. The inmates of the carriage never saw the bridge as the vehicle swayed from side to side in the blue-flamed lightning flashes.

They were nearing Brooklyn when, in the still driving storm, Clayton descended and procured some restoratives at a pharmacy.

He poured a draught of strong wine between the affrighted woman's pallid lips, and then whispered, "You must tell me where to take you. It is life or death now."

And then Irma Gluyas, her head resting on Madame Raffoni's bosom, feebly whispered, "To my home, 192 Layte Street."

There was not a word spoken as, in the midnight darkness of the storm, the horses struggled along until, under the shelter of the high houses, the carriage stopped before the desolate-looking old mansion.

There was a look of terror on Madame Raffoni's face which was not lost upon Clayton. "Get the door open," he hoarsely cried. "I will carry her in. Then, I swear to you, I will leave her at once."

The strong man sprang from his place, and in a few moments he stood within the veiled splendors of the old drawing-room.

Kneeling by the bed, wherein he had deposited the senseless woman, Clayton chafed her marble hands in an agony of despair.

But, even in his lover's exaltation, he listened to Madame Raffoni, who knelt before him in passionate adjuration. "Go, go!" she cried in broken pathos. "I will come to you to-morrow."

And she dragged him to the door. "I will all do; everything! I swear! Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!"

With one last despairing look, raining passionate kisses upon the marble lips of the woman he loved, Randall Clayton left the dusky magnificence of the superb apartment, and only halted at the door long enough to whisper to the Raffoni, "Bring me to her to-morrow, and I will make you rich!"

And the poor woman dumbly covered his hands with obedient kisses. "Go, go!" she cried. "I will come!"

And, touched with the woman's frantic fears, Randall Clayton sprang into the carriage. Through the blinding storm he had reached the New York side before he thought of his own movements, of the morrow, of his coming friend, and of his wary enemies.

Then he resolutely made up his mind to fight the warring Fates to a finish.

He drove to the Astor House, dismissed his driver with a ransom fee, and there hid himself in an upper room.

When he presented himself at the half-deserted office of the Western Trading Company, upon the next morning, he was clad in unfamiliar garb.

His blood-shot eyes told of a vigil of mental suffering, and he dared say nothing as he gruffly bowed when Mr. Somers told him of Robert Wade's continued illness.

"I am going down to the election," said the old accountant. And so you will be in charge, as Mr. Ferris has not been heard from. There is no one here but you to represent the management."

"Trapped," muttered Clayton, who listened every moment for some tidings of the woman whose silken hair had wound its delicate meshes around him in the storm. "Dying; dead, perhaps," he groaned, in an agony of excitement, and then and there he swore that, upon the arrival of Witherspoon he would leave the cave of his enemies, await his fate, and bear Irma Gluyas away to farther and fairer lands.

The long morning dragged on in a semi-stupor as he sat there listening to the hollow footfall of the casual passers-by.

And yet there was no word from Madame Raffoni, the only holder of the secret of Irma Gluyas' life. His foot was on the threshhold to leave at last, when Arthur Ferris calmly entered.

Randall Clayton mastered himself with a mighty effort, as Ferris glibly murmured, "I am only here for a few moments! Come into the private office."

The few minutes before they were at their ease in Robert Wade's impregnable sanctum enabled Clayton to steel himself against the secret bridegroom's duplicity. Clayton's quick eye noted Ferris' satchel, his top-coat and umbrella carelessly thrown down on Wade's reading-table.

"Have you been at the rooms?" carelessly remarked Clayton, tossing Ferris' private keys upon the table. "No," curtly replied Ferris. "I came here directly from the train. I wished to stop and see my mother and sister; but Wade's illness has upset all my plans.

"I have to go on to Philadelphia at once on some private business for the Chief. You know he is a very heavy stockholder in the Cramp Shipbuilding Company. I will not be back for several days."

"And what about the election?" deliberately replied Clayton, now anxious to draw his enemy out. "I have nothing to do with that," said Ferris, dropping his eyes to veil a slight agitation. "Wade has all that in charge, and he has given Somers his proxy."

"I thought that you held Worthington's private power of attorney," stoutly said Randall Clayton.

"Only for his outside matters, Clayton," coaxingly said Ferris. "The fact is, we may expect many changes. Hugh has several plans of great importance in his mind.

"Yes; I have lived in an atmosphere of change for some time, Ferris," said Clayton, bluntly. "I have only been waiting for your return to consult with you about giving up our joint apartment.

"I reserved that privilege on May 1st, and you can either keep the rooms or sublet them. I have paid the rental for the last three months in your absence."

"See here, Clayton," sharply said Ferris, throwing off the mask. "I am not a man for any mysteries. I don't know why I should be forced to tell you things that I do not know myself.

"Now, I will be several days busy with these outside matters at Philadelphia. You had the one opportunity of your life the other day.

"I expect that you will have reconsidered your refusal to Wade, to obey Hugh Worthington's orders by my return."

"So you know all about it, do you?" fiercely retorted Randall Clayton. "I fancied that Wade was dealing directly with Hugh, himself, by the tone of the Chief's letters and the telegrams which I have received."

"The matter has been referred to me," hotly answered Ferris, who dared not openly use his new power. "But I will not wait here to discuss this matter. I may miss my train."

Arthur Ferris sharply rang a bell, and then, with a nod of recognition, directed the young Einstein to take his traps down stairs and call him a carriage.

The door clanged and the two secret enemies were left facing each other.

"I had fancied," said Clayton, bitterly, "that a lifetime spent in Hugh Worthington's service would at least win me a dismissal at first hands.

"Wade has tried to force me to throw up a position for which I was previously named by Worthington. I imagined that the Chief was really going abroad. He seems to have changed his plans. I have no means of reaching him direct.

"And now, sir, you will find the keys of our rooms with the janitor on your return. All that I wish to know is whether I shall deal with you or Wade in giving my final answer to the suspended orders for me to go West."

"You stand ready to throw up a life position?" harshly cried Ferris, white with secret rage pausing with his hand on the door.

"I shall certainly wait until I hear from Mr. Worthington," gravely answered Clayton. "It matters little about me. Your own life position is secure!"

"What do you mean by that?" cried Ferris, springing forward in a sudden anger which made him forget all his plans of crafty concealment.

But the tall Westerner, with one wave of his arm, swept Ferris'