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

a sullen silence. "Do I understand that you wish me to be responsible for the daily conduct of the company's affairs?" gravely said Wade. "Then you must restore all the officials or I will not act! Every one knows, sir, that your power of attorney from the late Mr. Worthington became valueless at his death."

Ferris, with fear and trembling, awaited the extraordinary meeting of the Board of Directors called to meet the exigencies of the demise of Worthington and the great robbery. With a heavy heart he resigned the following up of the missing Randall Clayton to the company's advisory attorneys.

Day by day he had breathlessly watched every telegram brought in, every delivery of the mails. Neither letter nor dispatch from the girl wife broke into the gloom of these days.

He dared not disobey her positive injunctions. He feared to leave New York City and go to Detroit to meet her, and only the meager results of private telegraphic inquiry, as well as the chattering journals, told him of the arrival of Miss Alice Worthington, now the greatest heiress of the Lake States, in her palatial Detroit home.

Senator Dunham's easy-going counsels had been of no comfort. To the millionaire politician, the natural ascendancy of Ferris over the girl's future and fortune seemed "to close the incident."

Secure in his "block of stock," he returned to the delights of Newport, where the Senatorial toga was duly flourished in the gayest circles.

But, a crafty scoundrel, warned by his own uneasy conscience, Arthur Ferris took alarm at the "Social items" of the Detroit Free Press.

When he learned that Miss Worthington intended to visit New York City, accompanied by Messrs. Boardman and Warner, the executors of her father's estate, on matters connected with the probate of the will, he realized that he was in imminent danger.

He used every means of rapid information, and only gleaned the meager news that the public funeral of the dead Croesus would be deferred for a month until the "various civic bodies" could "take appropriate action."

The Detroit papers were filled with the reverberated reports of Randall Clayton's mysterious crime, "by which astounding peculation, the millionaire's estate would possibly shrink several hundred thousand dollars." And yet - no trace of the fugitive!

Ferris already scented his deadly foe in Mr. John Witherspoon, who daily visited the offices of the Trading Company, passing him with a mere formal bow, when engaged upon the books and papers.

It was with a thrill of new alarm that Ferris learned from the company's advisory attorneys that Mr. Witherspoon had been commissioned by the executors of the estate "to make a thorough investigation into the alleged defalcation of the still missing Clayton."

Ferris was baffled when he sought to spy upon Witherspoon's movements. It was easy to find out that the Detroit lawyer had left the Hoffman House, but "with no address."

And he vainly sought counsel of Senator Dunham when he was informed by the company's lawyers that Mr. Witherspoon declined to transact any business with him save in writing, and through the company's officials.

"Go out and bring your wife to terms, you young fool," roughly said the angered statesman. "You've no rights, now, save through her."

To the consternation of the secret bridegroom, the Detroit papers announced that "nothing whatever would be as yet announced as to the disposition of the late Mr. Worthington's vast estate," until the return of the executors from New York City.

With all his nerves temporarily shattered, Arthur Ferris saw all his cardboard fortifications suddenly strewn around him by adverse gales. His barren title of vice-president of the company now availed him nothing. The president, manager, and directors all practically shunned him, waiting for the word as to who would manage the controlling interest of the dead Croesus.

There was a formal evening meeting of all concerned when the detective captain finally reported that the whole department were unable to find a clue of Randall Clayton's whereabouts. Arthur Ferris gazed askance at Mr. John Witherspoon's strong face when the company's leading New York lawyer took up the word, as the French neatly put it. "Gentlemen," said he, "we may as well adjourn this meeting. We have been in secret session here, till it now nears midnight. We are all groping in the dark. Here is a remarkable phase of a great crime. Even the 'argus-eyed press' has no theory to offer."

There was a frightened hush when Counsellor Stillwell solemnly said: "Are we sure that we are on the right road? It appears that we have lost all roads. Groping! Only feeling our way in the dark! Police and journals powerless, our rewards unanswered! It remains for us to drop the matter of theft, and - look for a murderer.

"I now move that we double the reward and seek for the murderer or murderers of Randall Clayton! Remember, not a bill or cheque, not an object, the bank book, nothing has been found to indicate either theft or flight.

"I always had implicit confidence in Clayton's honor; he was trusted by our heaviest stockholder, named by him, backed by him; and Mr. Worthington, even at his lamented death, proposed making him general manager in the West. There's not a shadow on the name of the missing man."

While the audience eyed each other, the three police officials present cried in accord: "Good; double the reward. NOW YOU'RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK."

"I second the motion," quietly said the pale-faced Witherspoon. "I do also," slowly said Ferris, "and I offer the amendment that this action takes effect when Mr. Worthington's executors arrive and authorize this important step."

In sheer impotency to quarrel, the puzzled meeting adjourned, and Arthur Ferris, now conspicuously alone, was left to chatter with Policeman Dennis McNerney on the lonely street corner below.

"Well!" said Ferris impatiently, as a fifty-dollar bill changed hands. "All I can tell you," whispered the policeman, "is that Lawyer Witherspoon is at the Buckingham. He received no visitors but his friend, a young doctor.

"Physician's name, William Atwater, M.D. Mail and telegrams he gets at down-town office, your company's lawyers. And he spends all his time running around at nights with Atwater or locked up with old Stillwell in his den down town.

"It's a poor harvest, Dennis," gruffly said Ferris.

"That's all there's in it," stolidly said the man. "Shall I keep up the watch?"

"Yes, as usual," sadly replied Ferris, as he sped up Broadway to the Fifth Avenue. The policeman snorted his contempt, when Ferris had turned the corner.

"A beggarly fifty! By God! I'll hold the boy down. Somewhere in that funny little joint of a drug-store the secret lies. In a couple of weeks I can begin work on Timmins; but the office boy, Einstein, waited personally on Clayton! When his fear wears off, I'll trap him. He is spending money too freely. Where does that come from?"

As McNerney wandered on, he was as ignorant of Einstein's continued milking of Ferris' purse, as Ferris was of Jack Witherspoon's treasured clues and as all the knowing ones were of Arthur Ferris' crafty course in robbing Randall Clayton's desk of the tell-tale dispatches.

Einstein's greedy fingers were now always in Ferris' purse, for well the Jewish boy knew that Ferris feared to disclose the theft of the private papers. And so he filled the schemer's ears with unmeaning babble about Randall Clayton's night life in New York.

"In the dark! In the dark!" muttered Ferris, as he threw himself down on his bed. "Did Clayton ever start for Bay Ridge? Did he hide the money and flee to Europe? Did he go West to meet Worthington?"

A wild idea came to him that the bank employees might have stolen the money, lured Clayton into some Bowery or Fourth Avenue dive, some room on Eighth Street, and then stolen the tell-tale bank-book. "What would not any man do for a quarter of a million?" groaned Ferris in despair.

And all these long days, while the New York community was daily forgetting the flight of Clayton, the theft, and the dead millionaire to whom all the worshippers of the Golden Calf had bowed, the "Mesopotamia" was slowly nearing Stettin, now breasting the North Sea surges.

Irma Gluyas, awakened from her narcotic stupor, felt in her wild, wayward heart that Mr. August Meyer had lied to her.

But there was an apparent peace on the liner. The passionate-hearted singer amused the captain and half deceived her watchful tyrant.

But, deep in her heart, she had evolved a plan. Once safely in Stettin, she would telegraph to Clayton.

True, she had no money; but her fingers were covered with flashing rings. Partner of some of Fritz Braun's smuggling secrets, she was free of all crime, but the desire to innocently lure Clayton away while the Cattle Trust's safes could be robbed in the holidays.

Step by step her old-time paramour had lured her on to betray Randall Clayton, and yet, at the last, the good angel struggled with the spirit of evil in that stormy heart. There was a smiling calm on Fritz Braun's face which did not deceive her. She knew that the great game had been pulled off. But how - with what golden harvest - she knew not.

And yet she marked Braun's trembling hands, the lines graven on his face, his deep potations, his fierce fever to reach the land. And so, deep in her heart, she swore, "If he has harmed him, it is his life or mine!"

Gazing out on the leaden surges of the ocean, she could see the face of her manly lover, the one man who had believed in her underlying womanhood. There was no stain on the red roses worn on her breast for him; only truth in her gleaming Magyar eyes. "He loved me, for what he saw in me - the innocent woman that I once was." And bitter tears mingled with the salt brine flashing by - the tears of a repentent magdalen.

Fritz Braun never knew that the woman who submitted to his caresses was a spirit of wrath. Fool in his own conceit, he was yet watchful. If she makes a single false move at Stettin, she seals her own fate, he darkly pledged his familiar demon. And so, stealthily eying each other, the fugitive and his fascinating dupe neared the sandy dunes of the German Baltic land.

And yet God's wrath followed them. There was the throb of guilt in both their bosoms, resting in one the betrayal of a soul, on the other the crushing weight of innocent blood crying for vengeance.

And still, as yet, they slept in peace, for the dark waters of the East River had not given up that ghastly mute witness whirling and diving in the black under eddies around the rock-hewn pyramids of the Brooklyn Bridge.

A thousand pairs of eager eyes now watched the money exchanges of America and Europe for any paltry bit of the plunder stored away in Fritz Braun's black valise. But the vengeance of God slept only while the sinners fled away from the place of the betrayal of a noble heart.

Vice-President Arthur Ferris of the Western Trading Company found in the proud and formal reserve of the reinstated officials an armor proof against all his legal acumen.

Some subtle spirit of unexpressed defiance seemed to have banded them all against him. He felt that the stately oak which had sheltered him was now fallen indeed. It