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

carelessly nodded for the lad's dismissal and then bowed his tired head upon his hands, as the nimble youth eagerly sped away to the telegraph office and his half holiday.

The office staff were all filing out, wearied with the week's work, and Robert Wade, Esq., the chief manager, stared in surprise as Clayton passed him without a word, in answer to his stately greeting. He watched the young man, who slowly descended by the stairway, forgetting the ready elevator service. "What's up with Clayton?" murmured the pompous official. "He forgot his manners!"

All unconscious of his strange actions, Randall Clayton slowly sought the street level, waiting until his colaborers had all departed. He then moved along again toward the window where the Danube view still charmed the passerby.

Then, turning abruptly, he hurried away to a Broadway car, seeking the solitude of the cosy apartment in the still respectable "Thirties," which he had so long shared with Ferris.

He dared not, as yet, ask himself why Fate had shown him, a second time, at that very window, the graceful figure of the beautiful unknown.

But, there, with the slender music roll still clasped in her delicate hand, she stood, lingering a beautiful Peri in his path, on his return from the meeting with Ferris.

And he was not deceived this time. For the blush of semi-recognition, the womanly embarrassment as their eyes met in a sudden surprise, told him that she also had lingered for a moment at their involuntary trysting place.

It was in vain that he sought for any cogent reason for the reappearance of the unknown dark-eyed beauty.

There was no veiled suggestion in her wistful eyes, no lure of the fisher of men in the restrained mien of the lovely unknown. He paced his room for half an hour, until the arrival of Ferris brought about an active discussion of all their personal and business affairs which lasted until the coupé arrived to bear them to the station.

In the long examination of their mutual interests, Clayton had strangely forgotten to even mention the name of Miss Alice Worthington, for he was still keenly aware of the gradual fading away of the ties of friendly family intimacy which had once bound him to the Detroit household.

Moreover, loyal to his chum as he was, he could not forget how often, in the past two years, he had seen letters lying on Ferris' table, bearing the superscription of the woman who had been graduated by Fate from that dangerous rank of "Little Sister."

Before Ferris finally turned over his keys, the cool lawyer laid his hand gravely on Clayton's shoulder.

"Randall, my boy!" he said. "It's only fair to you to tell you that the Fidelity Company makes private reports to Hugh Worthington upon the inner life of all the bonded employees. Some of these documents have always been forwarded through me. Evidently there have been some new directions given on this matter.

"Worthington is a man who forgets nothing. You will be left alone. You know your dangerous trust. Be always on your guard!

"For, even though born in its whirl, there are dangers in New York which are sealed books to me, even now; and, you are a stranger here, after all.

"Take care of yourself! Be watchful! There will be many jealous eyes spying upon your every movement, and strange eyes at that."

They entered the carriage in a constrained silence, in the early nightfall, and were soon whirled away toward the Forty-second Street Depot. Some overhanging shadow seemed to dampen the ardor of that friendly farewell, when the gliding train bore the lawyer away from his friend's sight.

At that very instant the office boy, Einstein, darted out of the great depot's main entrance and mingled with the passers by. "Now for Fritz Braun," he chuckled. "She has caught on at last! He followed her to the 'Bavaria.' The lawyer is gone for good! The field is clear. There's a twenty now in sight, and many a twenty to follow."


CHAPTER II.

TIDINGS OF GREAT JOY.


While Randall Clayton was lingering moodily over a lonely dinner at the Grand Union, his office boy was dallying with a cigarette on the front platform of a Fourth Avenue car.

Emil Einstein had safely sized up the friendly adieu of the two room-mates, and was now hastening down to report his successful infamy.

"Too late for Sixth Avenue!" the hard-faced boy muttered. "Catch him at 'the Bavaria,' sure."

The round, gloating eyes of the young New York-nurtured Jew were ablaze with a fierce thirst for pleasure.

Round shouldered, strongly built, his Semitic countenance was all aglow with a superabundant vitality, and the pleasure-loving mouth alone belied the keen intelligence of the wide set Hebraic eyes.

An elève of the gutters of New York's East-Side ghetto, dangerously half educated at the free public schools, Einstein, now nearing seventeen, joined the dashing villainy of the Bowery tough to the crafty long-headed scheming of the low-grade Israelite.

He had drank in all the precocious wiles of the Manhattan urchins quickly after his sturdy Odalisque mother had dragged him, a squalling urchin, out of the steerage confines of a cheap Hamburg steamer.

A reckless, resolute, conscienceless sinner was the handsome Leah Einstein; already, when, on the voyage, she fell under the influence of a man who found his ready tool in this greasy but symmetrical Esther, clad in her Polish rags.

When the decamping Viennese pharmacist had wearied of his low-life Venus, their joint operations soon made the East Side too hot for the man who boldly dared all, and who now yearned for a share of the fleecing of the fatuous New Yorkers.

The Austrian criminal fugitive, after some years of varied adventure, had circled back to New York City at last, and rejoiced to find in Leah's son, now a burly youth, a fit companion and second for his own craftily laid villanies. It was a capital for him, the legacy of her nurture and his own training.

Mr. Fritz Braun's broad white brow was gathered in an impatient frown as he strode out of Magdal's Pharmacy on Sixth Avenue and paced with dignity past all the minor notables of the street.

Hulking policemen, loquacious barber, marketman and newsdealer, small shop-keeper, and the saloon magnates, all knew the stolid reticent German who presided over the veiled mysteries of Magdal's.

The whole region of Sixth Avenue, between Twenty-third and Thirtieth, had its floating contingent of "sporting" men and women who well knew the crafty wisdom lurking behind the blue spectacles which veiled the pharmacist's piercing glances. Fritz Braun's "contingent" were a brood of the Devil's own children.

Fritz Braun was strangely three hours late upon this especial evening, but his step was evenly sedate as he entered Zimmermann's for his before dinner Kümmel. A prosperous figure was he in his mouse-colored top-coat of fashionable cut, his immaculate silk hat, with the red dogskin gloves, and the heavy ivory-headed cane.

With his antique cameo scarf pin, his coat collar turned up around his flowing golden beard, he was the very type of the sedate burgher of Dresden or Leipzig. And yet many a dark secret lurked in that busy brain of his.

A dozen necks were craned after him, though, as he silently left the saloon and caught the down-town car.

For from Greely Square to Eighth Street, from the cork room of Koster & Bial's to the purlieus of old Clinton Place, all the "off color" men and women of New York's "fly" circles knew and feared the steady eyes gleaming through the cerulean lenses.

"He's a deep one, the Professor," grunted the Hanoverian barkeeper. "Vat a lot 'e knows!" The Teuton rinsed his beer glasses with a vicious twirl as he exclaimed: "Like as not, choost so like, he's up to some new devilment! Niemand know vere 'e hangs out! He's a wonder, he is, dat same Fritz!"

But the pharmacist lost all his sedateness as he sprang out of the crosstown car after his transfer at Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue.

He was the nimblest crosser of the busy corner, and then gazed anxiously up and down the street, in front of the Restaurant Bavaria.

Wasting but a moment he smartly entered the café and then, with an air of proprietorship, entered a curtain-shaded alcove.

The waiter silently placed the carte du jour before him, and merely shook his head when Braun sharply demanded, "Any one here for me?"

A luxurious dinner was ordered, and the silent man was busied scanning the convives when Emil Einstein, cautiously entering without haste, furtively regarded all the diners.

They were the better class of artists - musical virtuosos, and floating foreigners of the Teutonic business circles of lower New York.

Frank, pleasure-loving continental women mingled freely with these materialistic Romeos, who preferred the comforting cuisine to the fiery and seductive cocktails of "The Opera" on the corner.

The artful Einstein was warily assuring himself that he was quite unknown to the convives before making his report to his real master and evil genius. For, young as he was, Emil Einstein well knew that the tyrant master, who had been his mother's cruel lover, might some day lure him on to the electric chair.

A guilty pride thrilled the depraved boy's heart to feel that he, alone, in all the crowded ward, knew what manner of human devil lurked behind those innocent-looking blue spectacles.

He had seen the ferocious grin which relaxed Fritz Braun's bearded lips into a cruel grin, as the sly lad made a gesture which indicated tidings of great joy. Einstein's dress and bearing was fully worthy of his respectable business station. He might well be taken for the precious "only son" of some well-to-do Jewish-American merchant.

Quick to learn, he had aped the mien of his American fellow employees, and his "educational evenings" at the "Irving Place," the "Thalia," and the "Germania" had given to his bearing what he fondly deemed an "irresistible social swing."

Greedy of pleasures, gluttonous and covetous, the young Ishmael ardently looked forward to a comfortable ill-gotten revenue at the hands of the man, who - through a skilful manipulation of the German janitor of the Western Trading Company's office - had obtained the place of office boy, "with substantial references," for the son of his cast-off paramour.

Leah Einstein had long forgotten the face of the reckless Polish country noble who was the real father of this budding criminal, and the lad himself but dimly discerned the drift of his Mephistophelian patron's proposed villainy.

Timid and cowardly at heart, the young waif would have shuddered had he known of the callous-handed and desperate murders which had shocked Vienna just before Hugo Landor, a talented and handsome young chemist, disappeared forever in flight, lost under a cloud of scandal caused by drink and a maddening devotion to a baby-faced devil of the Ring Strasse Theater chorus, a woman at whose feet the hungry-eyed aristocrats had knelt to sue, a man-eater, a hard-hearted, velvet-eyed, reckless and defiant devil.

At an almost imperceptible nod Einstein drew near to his patron, taking the vacant place in the little alcove, à deux, with his back prudently screening him from any chance visitor who might know the Western Trading Company's personnel. Braun was eager for his spy's report now.

"All right, at last!" the youth huskily whispered. "I watched him meet her, at the picture window, you know. I had posted her! And then he slyly followed her over here and went three blocks