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

not a single enemy in the world! It was the fatal trust of the vast money handling which caused his murder. And only after long plotting and careful daily watch was he foully done to death."

Alice Worthington's clear voice startled each listener as she said, "There is but one faint clue clinging to the past. A transaction which might have drawn upon him the vengeance of some one. I have kept this secret until all else failed.

"Before my father's death, even in those last hours of lingering agony, he signed a deed as trustee for Everett Clayton, which transfers to Randall Clayton one-half of the Detroit Depot lands, or one-half of its purchase price. This money, nearly a million dollars, goes now into the estate of the dead man!"

"My God!" whispered Witherspoon, as Doctor Atwater grasped both his hands. "If any one had an interest in concealing that vast property, we must look for them, for the plot which led to Clayton's murder. My poor father pledged me to secrecy until I had delivered the deed and the legal acknowledgment of his property interest to Clayton. It was for this that my father wished to meet Randall at Cheyenne - to tell him of the fortune which had come to him!"

The girl's sobbing voice touched every heart as she faltered, "Judge Downs, at Pasco, drew all the papers and acknowledgments, and, after my father's death, he explained all the details to me. But father," she cried, with a gust of stormy tears, "told me himself of the discovery of the value of this property, and that he had feared to arouse poor Randall's hopes until the Railway Company had purchased the land."

Her voice died away; its accent of truth had brought the astounded lawyers to their feet; but in a corner Doctor Atwater whispered to Jack Witherspoon, who was shaking as a leaf in a storm.

"Silence, my friend," he murmured. "This makes you a millionaire. Say nothing to-night. Confide only in Alice. You and I must tell her, alone, and later, of Clayton's will. If Ferris knew of this, he is the murderer."

The grave voice of Boardman alone broke the silence. "This is matter of the gravest moment, and only to be discussed in the future, my dear child," he said. "Gentlemen, we will suspend all our labors until we have had ample time for reflection. We may find the murderer hiding under the shadow of this useless fortune. For I believe poor Clayton left no heir. Even gold can be useless at the last."

Witherspoon's temples were throbbing as Doctor Atwater hurried him away to his home. "There is a mystery of mysteries, my boy," sadly said Atwater, "in the strange turn of Fortune's wheel which throws the millions into Francine Delacroix's pretty white hands.

"Rouse yourself! We must think, act, and avenge our friend! It looks as if the finger of fate plaits the noose for Ferris' neck. For he did know all; he hated and betrayed Clayton, and, I believe that he killed him."

"Yes; or had him killed, to clear the way to Alice Worthington's side," exclaimed Witherspoon. "I see it all, now! Old Hugh intended to marry this noble girl to our dead friend!"

But Jack Witherspoon only bowed his head and burst into bitter tears. "Too late; too late!" he sobbed. The golden fortune seemed stained with his dead friend's blood.

When the morning brought once more the refluent crowds to the streets of New York, a thousand financial agencies over the world were now eagerly watching for some trace of the fortune stolen from the murdered cashier.

Police and detectives, the officers of justice in far cities and foreign lands, were eagerly striving to gain the additional reward of twenty-five thousand dollars offered by the Fidelity Company, at Alice Worthington's order, for the detection of the secret murderers.

But to Witherspoon and Atwater the night had been one long vigil of earnest conference.

Wearied out at last, Atwater decided the future policy of the two friends. "Let Stillwell have his head, Jack," gravely advised the doctor. "Keep your secret as yet. You know how that noble girl has guarded her dying father's confidence. To save you, let me tell her all, but only after the whole circle has failed to find the murderers. I will not mention your name. But I will tell her that poor Clayton left a will. I wish to see this million secured to you.

"Then, when she promises to keep my secret, I will tell her of the tell-tale Brooklyn address, and you and I can join her in hunting down the gang who lured Clayton to his ruin. She is the one arbiter of the situation; you and I must aid her. We will know all the developments of the police inquest. In this way, Ferris will not be alarmed. We may trace it home to him."

"You are right," assented Witherspoon, "and I will watch Ferris through the office boy, Einstein, and there's a fine fellow, a policeman, McNerney, down there. I've promised him a private reward for any clue, and he told me he would lay off and go on a still hunt.

"He knows how to communicate always with me," concluded Witherspoon, "and I will bring him into our circle, if you can gain Alice Worthington's confidence."

The great metropolis had almost forgotten Randall Clayton's mysterious taking off, when, a week later, there was a sad gathering in Woodlawn Cemetery, where Doctor Atwater supported on his arm the black-robed figure of the great heiress, when the red earth rattled down upon the murdered man's coffin.

There was a scanty two-score of mourners around the open grave; but Atwater felt the nervous thrill of the girl's arm as she turned away. "Justice to his memory, reparation for the past," murmured Alice Worthington. "I leave the punishment of his betrayers to the vengeance of the God above, the One who knows all."

It was with a thrill of coming triumph that Atwater listened to the heiress when she drew him aside, in the great Stillwell drawing-rooms, on their return.

"You were Randall's one true friend here," the noble girl cried. "These great lawyers are bound up in the affairs of millions. My friends, the executors, have given up all present hope; they must return to Detroit; even Mr. Stillwell and the police authorities are in despair.

"Mr. Witherspoon will be tied to the routine of the great business; but you can aid me. Give me all your time, work with your friend, for I will follow up this mystery until my foster-brother's name is cleared of stain, and justice is done. Let us be a trinity of faithful friends."

And thus it came to pass that Mr. Arthur Ferris lingered, shunned by all his old associates, and busied about his private affairs.

Wandering about New York, he never knew of the ceaseless watch upon him, his restless heart awaiting some new blow of the hostile influence whose veiled stroke had ruined his brilliant prospects in life! To his astonishment, he learned from Senator Dunham that the entire secret programme of the company's vast interests had been successfully carried out.

He veiled his defeat, in very shame, from the prosperous statesman, and, a new disgrace, he now carried the brand of cowardice upon him, for Witherspoon passed him daily with a contemptuous scorn.

And still, he dared not abandon his uneasy flitting about the neighborhood of the company's office. His haggard face was now known, even to Mr. Adolph Lilienthal.

The startled proprietor of the Newport Art Gallery had sealed up all his vague suspicions in his guilty breast. He never dared to confide even in Robert Wade, sneaking in furtively to the "private view" gallery.

On one or two occasions, the anxious Ferris had buttonholed the reinstated Wade, when the careful manager visited the "Art Gallery."

"Do they know anything?" muttered the frightened scoundrel. He dared not even breathe Fritz Braun's name. After nights of weary cogitation, Lilienthal had buried Irma Gluyas' baleful memory forever.

"She cleared out a month before this strange murder," he was forced to admit, "and Fritz Braun was off for Europe before this deed. No; the poor fellow was either dogged from the office, or else trapped on his way to the bank."

Lilienthal saw his own profitable schemes all endangered. "If I owned up to a single scrap of information, if I were hauled into any court proceedings, my secret patrons would take French leave forever!"

And so, the prudent wretch merely adhered to his plain story that he had sold the late Mr. Clayton an artist proof of the famous Danube view. But, looking upon the unclaimed duplicate now in his window, Lilienthal softly chuckled and rubbed his hands. "I am a good two hundred and fifty ahead on that lucky picture." For he could not find Miss Irma Gluyas to deliver to her the property which was her own property.

Far away, by the shores of the yeasty Baltic, when Hugh Worthington rendered up his repentant soul, two guilty ones stealthily regarded each other's faces in the little hotel in Lastadie, where "Mr. August Meyer" had taken refuge.

The huge "Mesopotamia" lay icily at her docks, and the graceful woman had vanished from the cabins where her would-be betrayer had watched her every movement. Fritz Braun's active mind had sounded every danger now encircling his future pathway.

There was a circle of fire around him, though, as he kept hidden in the little suburban hotel, where his smuggling confederates had found him a safe refuge as their chief. The grinning head steward had helped him smuggle his unsuspected booty on shore, and, while Fritz Braun gazed moodily out of the windows of the old hostelry, he planned his future hiding.

Neither the dangerous dupe at his side nor his hoodwinked associates of the International Smuggling Association knew of the vast fortune which Braun had artfully hidden upon his arrival.

Well he knew that his life would pay the penalty in a moment if the blood-stained treasure were suspected to be in his hands.

And so, with careful craft, he labored to throw off all his dangerous associates and quietly disappear to a retreat, already decided upon, in the sleepy environs of Breslau.

"First, to watch my lady!" he decided, for he was not deceived by Irma Gluyas' apparent quiet. His first care had been to obtain the New York journals' regularly arriving. "If there is any hubbub over there, I will be on guard, before they can reach me," he mused, as he glowered over his wine at the woman who now panted for liberty.

Two weeks after his arrival passed with no detection of the murder.

"Safe, safe!" he laughed. "The trunk is now buried a hundred feet deep in the ooze of the East River."

And he smiled in triumph at the precaution which had led to Leah Einstein's hegira to her respectable First Avenue tenement, under the decent alias of Mrs. Rachel Meyer.

He brooded, day by day, over the skill with which he had arranged for cablegrams to a safe address. The innocent cipher arranged for would warn him of all possible happenings.

And yet, at ease in his trust in the dumb fidelity of the distant woman still his slave, he waited hungrily for the Magyar beauty to trap herself. He was a man of infinite patience.