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

at the Broadway curve. But his grasp mechanically tightened upon his treasure, his right hand clutched the pistol butt more firmly, as his cheek reddened with an involuntary blush.

He had seen just such faces on the Prater in sparkling Vienna, and in the antique streets of Buda-Pesth on the one summer European run, snatched from the Moloch worship of the Almighty Dollar!

Such eyes, now soft and dreamy, then lit up with a merry challenge, had rested on the handsome young American tourist in the vaulted halls of the Wiener Café, where the Waltz King's witching melodies ruled the happy hour.

And supple forms like this he had often seen flitting among the copses of the Margarethe Insel, when the yellow sunset rays shone golden on the gleaming Danube, and the purple shadows began to steal over the old fortress high uplifted there above Hungary's capital. Here was a truant beauty escaped from a land of dreams.

Clayton had followed the unknown over Broadway's dangerously choked throat, before the music roll gave him his clue. He was now in the musical center of New York, and in proximity to the modest foreign theaters where a conscientious art flourishes, as yet unknown to the garish play-houses of upper Broadway.

Some visiting singer, some transplanted "Künstlerinn," he conjectured as, never ceasing that queenly stride, the unknown crossed Fourth Avenue toward the vicinity of Steinway's and the Irving Place Theater.

As yet he had not seen that bewitching face again, for he was a laggard in pursuit, his coward conscience smiting him for his first errant detour.

It seemed as if the money in that portmanteau rustled a portentous warning, but "a spirit in his feet" led him to execute a quick left-flank movement as he sped first across the triangle, passing under the shadow of the Washington statue (pride of the job brass founder), and, with a stolen side glance, he surveyed the lady once more, as she leisurely mounted the steps of the "Restaurant Bavaria."

His eyes dropped in a strange confusion as he once more met the sweetly serious glance of those wonderful eyes, now resting upon him with a gleam of vaguely timid inquiry. The delicately moulded arm and slender hand were revealed, as with a graceful sweep the lady lifted her rustling drapery and disappeared within the doors of the one foreign café lingering reluctant on Union Square.

With a sigh, Randall Clayton turned back toward the south, for a hasty glance at a clock face told him that there was left him but fifteen minutes wherein to reach the Bank, before the brazen bells would clang high noon. His heart was beating strangely as he retraced his steps, for the ichor of young blood was boiling in his veins at last.

He was lost in a clouding day dream, as he recrossed Fourth Avenue and only dimly saw the foxy face of his office boy flash out of the jostling crowd on the corner before he darted over.

As he resolutely stemmed the tide pouring eastward, he had turned down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile of recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message in the dark splendors of the gleaming eyes.

Could it be? They had lingered but a few moments together gazing on the pictured glories of the distant Danube. Clayton felt that some new influence had suddenly loosened all the pent-up longings of his ardent nature. He was above all the vulgar pretenses of the "boulevardier." He now realized in a single moment the hollow loneliness of a life made up only of so many monthly pay days and so many dull returns of the four unheeded seasons. For his life had only been a heavy pathway of toil up an inclined plane of manifold resistances.

He recalled, how on his one European voyage, the distant gleam of a single silver sail far out on the blue rim of the pathless ocean had suddenly broken in upon the eternal loneliness of that watery waste.

And now, in all the peopled loneliness of all New York - hitherto a human desert for him - the glance of these same alien eyes had suddenly awakened him to yearnings for another life.

He was half way down the bustling Broadway to the bank before he dared ask himself if the bright, shy glances of these unforgotten eyes were meant for him.

"Perhaps," he muttered, and then his whole nature stifled the unworthy suggestion. No! On that fair face only truth and honor were mirrored. He was left alone absently checking up his deposit list before he recalled all the proud and womanly bearing of the beautiful unknown.

There was in her every motion the distinction of an isolation from the contact of the meaner world! How hungrily he had watched her onward path he only knew now.

And, with a secret pride, he recalled how daintily, like the swift Camilla, she had sped onward through all those human billows heaving to and fro, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot."

He pocketed all his deposit slips, then glanced mechanically at the bank-book's entries, and wearily parried the badinage of the bright-faced young bank-teller.

Clayton slowly wandered over toward Taylor's, and he was still lost in his day-dream when he joined his chum, Arthur Ferris, finding the modest feast already on the table.

"By Jove, old man! You're 'way behind time," began the nervous lawyer. "I've got to hustle. I leave for Detroit on the evening train."

"What's up, Arthur?" demanded the laggard.

"I've just had a wire from Worthington," seriously replied his room-mate. "He is going to take a trip around the world, via San Francisco. It seems that Miss Alice's health is precarious. And, the 'Chief' is going to put me in special charge of all his personal interests during this stay of six or nine months. I am to go out for my instructions, travel on to the Pacific Coast with them, and then, returning, inspect all the cattle ranches on my way back to Detroit."

"I'm right glad to hear it, Arthur," said Clayton, warmly grasping his friend's hand. "I know Hugh Worthington's mental processes well! He wants some one to watch over all his home business machinery while he makes the grand tour. And he has selected one not in the local ring. It means a substantial promotion for you."

"I fondly hope so," replied Ferris. "He must have some such ideas, for I'm to turn over all my New York matters here to the senior in our firm, and I'm also to have a special power of attorney from the Chief. The annual election comes off before his return."

The two young men had finished their luncheon before Clayton thought of the loneliness which his chum's absence would entail upon him. There were many matters of detail to talk over, and Clayton hastened his return to the office to deposit his bank-book in order to be free to give the afternoon to his departing friend.

"I've only my office desk to clear up; it's a short horse and soon curried," laughed Ferris. "I'll run over to my place and then meet you at our rooms, so you can see the last of me. We can talk things over while I pack up."

Ferris was busied with the cashier as young Einstein darted into Taylor's. The lad's face brightened as he saw Clayton.

"I brought you down this telegram marked 'Rush,'" he said, all out of breath. "I feared that you might go away for the afternoon." He was off like a shot, before Clayton tore open the yellow envelope.

It was a private despatch from Hugh Worthington announcing his own impending departure, and then directing all his mail to be forwarded to the Palace Hotel, San Francisco.

The last words were: "Kindly send me a private letter by Ferris, and give me any personal suggestions for handling the firm's business in my absence. Will write you fully on private affairs from San Francisco."

When Clayton parted with Ferris at the door of Taylor's, the two young men wended their separate ways, each busied with the vision of a fair woman.

Arthur Ferris, the dark "Pride of Columbia," as his college-mates fondly called him, now dreamed of nothing but Alice Worthington's golden hair and sapphire blue eyes, as the cable-car bore him swiftly downward to the office of Hatch & Ferris, at 105 Broad Street.

Seven years older than Clayton, the already successful lawyer recalled on his way the first confidences of the great capitalist, when Clayton was sent into Manhattan Island business whirlpool.

The silver-haired Detroit widower had forgotten that even New York City lawyers have hearts, when he had frankly admitted to Ferris the reasons for detaching Randall Clayton from his own household.

"You see, Ferris," reminiscently said the money magnate, "I owed my own rise to Clayton's ambitious father. When he retired from the old firm of Clayton & Worthington, Everett Clayton had a cool million. It was 'big money' in the days of seventy. But, plunging into a new railway with an end left hanging out on the wild prairies, the panic of '72 soon carried Clayton down.

"When he died, out West, I helped the orphan lad along. There was no trouble until Randall became an inmate of my household, after his graduation.

"I woke up, however, one day to find that my little Alice had leaped into womanhood at a bound. And so I have decided to push Clayton's fortunes from a safe distance. For, the social freedom of the college lad and the schoolgirl in short frocks cannot be allowed to the man of twenty-four and the blossoming girl of sixteen."

Hugh Worthington, giving over his protégé to the watchful care of Arthur Ferris, old beyond his years, never realized the boundless ambitions of the aspiring New York lawyer.

Ferris, with an eye ambitiously fixed upon the Senate of the United States, had quickly become a living spirit of boundless energy in the Western Trading Company's service, and Miss Alice Worthington, on her New York visits, a girlish tyro, saw only the man, and not the lawyer, in her accomplished metropolitan cavalier.

And so the coming young advocate's heart bounded with delight at the six-weeks' future companionship of the woman whose unguarded heart had silently drifted toward him "along the line of least resistance."

Arthur Ferris burned now to make his calling and election sure, before this "round the world" trip should present an endless succession of fortune hunters to the gaze of the Detroit heiress.

Clayton, hastening back toward the office, was only intent upon the answer to his chief's despatch and he never noticed, across the street, the progress of Emil Einstein, threading the crowds swiftly, and yet furtively watching his master's progress. He reached Fourteenth Street two blocks in advance of his unsuspecting employer, and then paused for a moment in the shaded corridor of a photographer's atelier.

With a whispered word, the young spy slipped, eel-like, into the crowd and had regained his desk long before Randall Clayton reentered the office. The lad's face glowed with a secret triumph.

Clayton's countenance was flushed by some strong emotion as he absently entered the private office of the head accountant. The sharp clang of his bell brought the office boy at once to his side, when, ten minutes later, the young cashier handed to Einstein a telegram.

The doors of the various rooms were now clanging with the snap of the locks as the boy respectfully said, "Anything else for this afternoon, sir?" Clayton