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

can mould like clay, and Durham and Worthington can easily send me to Congress." He saw the Senate chamber opening to him, through the rosy light of the wooing Burgundy.

And again his eye sought the telegrams. "Not a word to alter," and he smiled as he read.

"Hugh Worthington,

"Palace Hotel, Tacoma: -

"A quiet election. All arranged. New officers published to-morrow. Telegraph Clayton to meet you at Cheyenne for conference. Have Alice join. Suggest month's vacation. He is irritable and suspicious. Full code telegrams to you at Cheyenne. Will wait here until you have met him and disposed of his case."

Ferris had added a key-word, which no one would suspect meant "Imminent danger," and signed an alias known to Hugh Worthington alone.

But to Randall Clayton his Judas words of brotherly cordiality were as frank and open as the unsuspecting nature of the defrauded man demanded.

The unhappy Clayton was troubled at heart as he opened this yellow paper, livid with its living lie, as he waited aimlessly at his rooms for some tidings from Emil Einstein, whose long absence had astonished him.

In the lonely rooms, with his eyes fixed on Irma Gluyas' superb artist proof, Clayton gave himself easily up to Ferris' crafty subterfuge.

He had already repented the violent quarrel. "This marriage may be a mere rumor," he mused. "Jack Witherspoon must make his words good when he comes."

He had already half determined to frankly meet Hugh Worthington with a demand for a clearing up of the whole mystery of his youthful dependence.

The telegram from Jersey City disarmed all his resentment. It was addressed:

"Dear Old Boy: Forget hasty words. Am tired with travel; worn out. Remember the old friendship. Stay in our rooms. Will return in three days. You shall choose your way to arrange with Worthington. If you wish to stay on here, I'll telegraph jointly with you. Meet me at dinner Monday night, Century Club."

When he had read the last words, "Answer, Lafayette House, Philadelphia," Randall Clayton went out into the early evening and listlessly dispatched the words, "All right. Will stay on as requested," and then he slowly returned to his rooms. On his return he found Emil Einstein awaiting him before his door.

Clayton's beating heart told him that the unusual had happened. "Speak! What is it?" cried the half-crazed lover. And the boy then hurriedly told him of his late return to the office, after executing many errands for the absent Ferris.

"There was a woman - a lady," hesitated Einstein, "trying to find your office. The elevator man told her that you had gone. She only spoke a little English, and, as I speak German, I tried to keep her" -

"She dared not stay!" almost shouted Clayton.

"She left word your friend is very ill, and that she cannot leave her. You cannot go there to-night, but the lady may come back to-morrow morning for you if anything happens. She was very much frightened."

"And you?" - demanded Clayton, grasping the boy's arm. "Why did you not bring her here?"

"She could not stay. She had waited a long time before I came back. And I told her it was a half-holiday to-morrow, the three-days' holiday coming on" -

"Would you know her again?" anxiously demanded Clayton.

"Certainly," murmured the sordid liar, speaking the truth for once.

"Describe her," hastily ordered the excited man. And Master Emil Einstein gave a not too glowing description of the charms of his own mother.

"Listen," said the half-demented Clayton. "You must watch all to-morrow morning, down below, upon the sidewalk, and around the entrance.

"If that lady comes, just detain her down there, and I will join her at once. Not a word to a living soul. Swear that you'll keep this secret, and I'll make your fortune yet."

"I swear on my life," said the startled boy, frightened at the ghastly pallor of Clayton's face.

He hastened away, leaving the cashier disturbed at his last disclosure. "I forgot to say that she fears they may move your friend to-night, some place, God knows where: perhaps to some hospital, and then, of course, she couldn't come."

Randall Clayton sank into a chair with a smothered groan. For the one haunting fear of his last three months was proving true. Here was the separation from Irma Gluyas, and on the verge of his fortune. "My God! It is terrible," he cried. He waited until the boy had scuttled away.

"He must not know. One false step now would ruin all," thought Clayton. "My love for Irma once suspected, and she would be spirited off to Europe or lose her artistic future. If she were cast out, I have nothing to offer yet, nothing but castles in Spain."

But the lad, hidden in a dark doorway, was greedily counting the loose bills which Clayton had hastily thrust into his hand. "Paid for not giving away my own mother's secrets," the boy laughed viciously. "The old girl is safe, but what the devil is she up to?" He decided that he would cautiously watch over Clayton, but he feared to report this last entanglement to Fritz Braun, whose gripsack and office luggage he was to remove from the pharmacy.

Before Einstein had reached the pharmacy, driven on by a mad unrest, Randall Clayton threw on a loose top coat, slipped a loaded pistol in his pocket, and then, hailing the first empty carriage, dashed down to the Brooklyn Bridge. It was only by taking up his course on the evening of the storm, on foot, that the restless lover could make his way over to the corner where the pretentious newness of the "Valkyrie" building shamed the rich old mansion sheltered under its lee.

At the Magdal Pharmacy, Mr. Fritz Braun suspended his last looking over his private desk, just long enough to whisper a few final directions to Emil Einstein. The boy had nothing special to report. But the crafty pharmacist well knew how to reach the softest spot of the young Hebrew's indurated heart.

"See here," he said, as he drew the boy into a dark corner. "After all said and done, your mother is the only human being in the world that I trust. For Leah has always been true to me. I'm getting a bit old. I'm going to settle down after I've made this trip. If you watch my interests while I'm away, your mother may have a home for life with me, in charge of my home; and you, you young rascal, I'll push your fortune. So, a shut mouth; look out and don't babble to Lilienthal. He is a chatterer. Timmins, here, is a drunken loafer, and will burn the block up some night, but I need him a little while yet.

"I may even give you this place, and set you up with a good pharmacist, if I can find a man over there. Timmins can show him the secret side of the business; then, we can throw this London cockney out, and you'll find Magdal's to be a gold mill. I shall have something else to do, my boy. Now, be off with my traps."

"Take them to 192 Layte Street. Ring the front bell three times; you'll find your mother there. Give her the traps, but do not enter the house. She will tell you anything I wish to-morrow; and, so, remember I can make your fortune. Obey your mother; there's one thing about her, she has got some head and heart." The boy hastened away on his quest.

Fritz Braun, left alone, stooped and picked up a little piece of paper which had fluttered down on the floor at his feet. He was careful to "leave no black plume as a token."

And now there was not a vestige left of his past nefarious traffic. "Timmins can do no harm now," sneeringly laughed Fritz Braun. "For I carry these things in my head, and he must trust to some member of the craft. What blockheads these fat-witted English practitioners are."

Braun's hollow laugh echoed from behind the flowing false beard, as he read over the faded prescriptions he had idly picked up. It was a powerful agent of evil - a tool of the deadly thug.

"By God! I may need this old friend. How did I come to forget it? It may purchase my safety, or else give some poor devil peace and rest."

"My last appearance on any stage," he muttered, as his hands were soon busied with the familiar phials around him. "I'll have a few doses of this 'Sinner's Friend' with me," he muttered. "Who knows where I may not need it. It is the only paralyzer."

Seizing a three-ounce flask, he cast aside his blue goggles for a moment as he measured his ingredients. One by one he carefully added them, until the small bottle was filled with a colorless mixture.

He read the innocent-looking scrawl a last time, and then burned it at a fluttering gas jet. The words seemed burned in upon his brain. His practiced glance ran over the bottles on the shelves ranged there like soldiers in their silent ranks. His eye gleamed vindictively as he murmured: "First, my old friend chloral hydrate - there you are. Now, your reliable brother, chloroform" - He shook up the growing mixture with a secret pride. "Just the right amount of muriate codine" - There was a pause, as the codine dissolved with the other ingredients. "And now," he gaily murmured, "distilled water," the last element needed to bind these together as a water of death. It is a royal secret of the rogue's pharmacy - the best garment for a flitting soul, tasteless and painless.

"Warranted to fit the largest man or the smallest boy," laughed the scoundrel, replacing his goggles, as he fitted a ground-glass stopper tightly to the flask. "I am not particularly anxious to be caught with this on me. It would mean two to five years of 'voluntary assistance' to the State at Sing Sing. But one little well-regulated dose of this soothing charm, and the strongest man drops helpless at my feet."

Braun slipped it in an inner pocket, and passed out, with a careless nod to the overjoyed Timmins. "Remember, Lilienthal is your only adviser. Six months from now, I'll put a new life into things here."

When Braun had disappeared, Ben Timmins drained a brandy and soda to his eternal discomfiture. "'Ere's 'oping the bloomin' ship founders with the old beggar," growled the Londoner, who had noted Braun sweep away the last thirty dollars in the till. "'E might have left me a few pennies."

It was ten o'clock when Randall Clayton, pacing up and down the street, nervously eying the darkened front door of 192 Layte Street, saw a lad nimbly dart up the front steps, touch a bell-push, and then vanish in a few moments, as the door closed. Ciayton could only distinguish vaguely the bundles with which the boy had been loaded down. He lingered there in agony, afraid to approach that portal.

But, a half-hour later, a portly man, in a light-colored coat, with easy leisure, strolling up the steps, inserted a latch-key, and the baffled lover could only see that the hallway was dark, with one half-turned-up gas jet.

Clayton cautiously explored the rear of the house, finding an alleyway suitable for unloading the bulky wares of the "Valkyrie" saloon.

A broad flight of steps led down to