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

"I must have that reward - all of it - and this fellow's five thousand. Had he a hand in it? I'll spot him from to-night.

"But the Jew boy has the key of the secret! Of course, he's crafty and cowardly. In a month he will throw off his fear. When I catch him with that woman I've got the right scent of the whole thing. Then, I'll hunt up the hack-driver. The boy is the key. And if the force finds out nothing in two weeks the game is mine! If the boy is arrested, I'll get in with the woman and carriage clue. I can wait!"

While Jack Witherspoon and Doctor Atwater conferred at the Hoffman, there was a private meeting at Robert Wade's mansion, which brought together all the suspended officials.

Robert Wade, with indignation against Ferris' brutal treatment, announced the policy of a united resistance, a joint appeal to Hugh Worthington, and the demand of an Investigation Committee of Directors. "We will wait for Mr. Worthington's vindication," said Wade, in an unanswerable tone.

"Then you will wait until eternity," sadly said Walter Edson. "Here is the ten o'clock edition of the Evening Telegram. Mr. Hugh Worthington, the well-known capitalist, died at Pasco, Washington, this morning, from injuries received in a railroad accident."

When the hubbub had subsided, the voice of Wade was heard. "Gentlemen, we must act in a passive defence until the Worthington Estate sends in a man to control the situation. I shall move that three of us retain lawyers to defend us all and advise us as to our joint course, for I apprehend Mr. Arthur Ferris will be a King Shark if he rules over us."

While the endangered officials burned the midnight oil, the hollow-eyed Arthur Ferris was hidden at the Waldorf-Astoria with that sage statesman Senator Dunham. It was long after midnight when Dunham dismissed his nephew. He had half pooh-poohed away the fears of the young schemer.

"Of course, the girl is rattled. You see, no one but you and I know of the marriage. It gives you an iron hold upon her. She will undoubtedly be advised to let our Western friends escort Mr. Worthington's body on to Detroit. There, of course, she will be met by the family lawyers.

"After the necessary preliminaries there, one of them will escort her on here - and - I will be within reach. She evidently wishes to have the affair of the marriage made public, some time later. If you made Worthington do the right thing about the will, and all that, you will come out all right.

"But do not cross her wishes. You cannot spring this marriage on the public without endangering all our interests. My lawyers here will look out for the big deal. You can bring the estate's lawyer to me, and, when you have reduced your wife to a passive mood, we three can clue up all the private affairs. I will be near you. I think you are borrowing trouble. As for young Witherspoon, let him be a little huffy. I can soon whip in those railroad chiefs of his. Have little to do with him, but be civil - that's all.

"Don't antagonize him. He might prove an ugly customer."

While the tide of intrigue ebbed and flowed around the great company's headquarters, far away beyond the Rockies, on past the dreary plains and the uplifted minarets of the Columbia, seated by the coffin of her dead father, Alice Ferris gazed down in silence upon the face of the stern old man.

Among the silent watchers, gazing in the fair face of the orphaned girl, there was no one who knew her other than as Alice Worthington.

The calm majesty of Death had swept away from the dead capitalist's face all the anxious look of money cares. The pale lips were silent now, behind his broad brow the busy brain was settled forever.

To the frontier clergyman, to the company's Western superintendent, to the few care-worn women who had offered their services, the strong face and tearless eyes of the beautiful mourner were a mystery of mysteries.

The morrow was to bear Alice Ferris away to her home by the lakes, and some subtle influence seemed to have transformed the golden-haired girl into a stern, stately Niobe.

All the journals from Cheyenne to the Pacific were now teeming with fulsome praise of the man whose firm hand had guided so many enterprises past all the financial shoals and quicksands of our sweeping tide of speculation.

The whole of America now knew how the deceased millionaire had left Tacoma in the ruddy glow of health, his luxurious car attached to the eastward train.

There had been but a hurried parting between Hugh Worthington and his idolized daughter. Alice well knew the light of Victory shining out upon the old man's rugged face, as he received the brief telegrams of Ferris from Philadelphia informing him of the sweeping triumph in the election which had thrown the final destines of the Western Trading Company unreservedly into his hands.

There was a cloud, however, chilling the hearts of father and daughter, when Hugh briefly announced that he was going on to Cheyenne to meet Randall Clayton. "You will forgive him; you will bring him on to us; he will remain here when my real church wedding and all our reunion of friends introduces me as a bride. For I am only pledged by the law now."

Then the old man's face hardened. "I have to use diplomacy with him," he briefly answered. "He has stubbornly refused to obey my orders. He might ruin my newly modelled company as an open enemy. And I have invited him West only to save trouble between Arthur and him. You know what a future you will have as the wife of Senator Dunham's only nephew. I have tried to gain wealth for you. Arthur Ferris may Himself reach the Senate. I had to choose for you. I chose well. Randall might have been the son of my old age, but" -

Then Alice Ferris, with flashing eyes, faced her father. The virginal heart of the girl was roused with a nameless terror. "And so you have made me Arthur Ferris' wife to chain the Senator to you for life! You told me that Randall Clayton led a vile life. Who told you?"

The Little Sister's heart was aflame. All her soul went out in a flood of faith in the absent man's honor. "You have been at my side, near me, father. Some one has worked upon you. I will make Arthur tell me all."

It was only after a positive refusal to take Alice on to Cheyenne that the old capitalist left the lonely heiress sobbing in a wild grief.

And but twenty-four hours later the open switch left unguarded by a drunken laborer had sent a thundering special crashing into Hugh Worthington's special car.

Strangers had tenderly lifted his bruised and bleeding body; but no one but the mourning girl had heard the awful confession of those early morning hours at Pasco.

Alice Worthington shuddered as the dying man gasped out his fateful words, driven on by a self-torment which was a living hell. The millionaire faltered out the shameful discovery of Randall Clayton's vast birthright.

"I was forced to take advantage of Everett Clayton in the panic days when we separated. It was his ruin or mine. It was only after I had nurtured and educated Randall that I found the forgotten land had leaped into a priceless estate. The railway changes made it a princely fortune.

"I was tempted! I feared to'disclose my plans of handling Dunham. I was forced to buy Dunham's influence with speculating for him. It was only another form of bribery. And so, to seal Dunham's faith, I married you to Arthur Ferris!"

The girl bride's, eyes settled into a stony stare as the wretched man grasped her hands. "It is too late now. The company has been my dream, the crown of my life. But you can make restitution. You are now nineteen. I have left all to you, in my will. Boardman and Warner are the executors. They are honest. There is young Witherspoon, too, their junior; he is Clayton's friend. You can tell him that you have discovered this property interest for Clayton.

"Spare my name. Spare yourself the public shame. You can make restitution. Tell Arthur Ferris all. He has my confidence. He knew the whole intrigue. And make him give Clayton his half of the proceeds of the land sale. You will have all my millions! Your husband is powerless to interfere. I intended to leave him a handsome sum. But you can take Randall Clayton's deed to the railroad land and give him one-half of what they pay me. Ferris has carried the whole matter through. He knows."

When the dying man recovered from the weakness of his effort at disclosure, he lay whispering, "Nemesis! Nemesis! I am punished!"

And Alice Worthington, at her dying father's side, felt herself now chained to the galley, a slave of millions. She had become twenty years older in half an hour. In low tones she asked questions to which the repentant man replied only by a feeble motion of assent.

When the noonday sun stood high over Pasco, the whole shameful story had been revealed to the orphan. The great sighing of the mountain pines seemed to blazen the secret of a great man's cowardly crime.

And yet Hugh Worthington died with his hand feebly clasping his motherless child's, a smile upon his lips, for she had promised never to betray the blackened past.

"Give him back his own," muttered old Hugh, whose lips had feebly owned that he had allowed Randall Clayton's good name to be vilely accused. "Give him his own!" imploringly faltered the dying Croesus.

And so, the legacy of a crime came as a crushing burden to the girl wife whose clear eyes had looked into her father's darkened soul. The papers and telegrams which the lonely heiress was forced to examine told her clearly how Randall Clayton's pathway had been beset with snares.

She shuddered as she read the telegrams which proved a catastrophe which she could not avert. "And Arthur Ferris - my husband in name - knew all! This is his work!"

She roused herself to action and gave over the dead clay to kindly hands when, at midnight on the day of her father's death, she had received all the dispatches which told her of Randall Clayton's evasion. Kneeling by her father's body she vowed herself a priestess of Justice. "They may have killed him. I may be too late; but I will deal with my despoiled brother's memory as my only heritage. For he was innocent, and has been robbed of birthright, good name, and perhaps life itself."


BOOK III.

THE MESSAGE FROM AMOY.


CHAPTER XI.

THE GIRL BRIDE'S REBELLION.


For a week after the receipt of the ominous telegram from Pasco, Arthur Ferris sat, a gloomy tyrant, in the offices of the Western Trading Company. There were dark circles around the young lawyer's eyes, and his restless mind gnawed upon itself in an intolerable agony.

Left alone by Senator Dunham's departure, the open aversion of the company's officials had astounded him.

Even Robert Wade, so cringing before the death of Worthington, had received his reinstatement in