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

Indulging every seeming whim of his companion, he had never lost her from his sight a moment since their arrival.

It was on the fourth day after their refuge in Stettin, when Fritz Braun stole out of his rooms at a secret signal from Lena, the "stube-madchen," whose frank face had won upon the secretly imprisoned Irma.

"She gave me one of her diamond rings to pawn. I was to post this letter and to send this telegraph dispatch to America," whispered the girl. Fritz Braun smiled as he received the proofs of the Hungarian's treachery.

And then, Lena sang over her drudgery for the next week, for the grateful Braun had filled her hand with gold.

There was a strange gleam of contentment in Irma Gluyas' eyes when she followed Fritz Braun, two weeks later, into the train for Breslau. Her secret master had redoubled every tender care, and there was a brooding peace between them.

But there were gloomy projects in his busy brain as Braun watched the Baltic sand dunes fade away behind him. "She is deceived by my manufactured telegram from Clayton. She will wait for his coming."

He laughed over the cunning which had bade her write or cable no more. And, with a wildly loving heart now panting in her reassured bosom, Irma Gluyas fell into a belief in Braun's story of their flight from the revenue officials. "Thank Heaven, he is safe! He loves me beyond all," mused the dreaming woman.

"He will get the letter left for him with the faithful girl, and follow me on. Once that I am out of this man's clutches, Braun will never dare to follow or claim me. For, he fears the Vienna police as much as I."

Brave in her love, happy in her lover's safety, Irma Gluyas only lived to meet once more the man who had awakened her nobler nature. To be his slave, to drift down the years with him, was all she asked; only to see his face again! She was held in Love's bondage now!

And, wrapped in her dreams of the future, she forgot the man at her side, who now compassed her death. "I must make my treasure safe first," he craftily planned, "and then lose this hawk-eyed devil. But only when my future is secure beyond all reach!"

With all his bridges burned behind him, Fritz Braun easily threaded the network of railways of the Eastern German frontier.

For years he had studied over the hiding place upon the triangular frontier of Poland, Germany, and Austria; and now, he only longed for a freedom from Irma Gluyas' haunting eyes.

"Leah can join me later; but even she must not know of this fool's fate!"

Safe in his own conceit, Fritz Braun drew happy breaths of relief when he was safely hidden in the little village of Schebitz, under the frowning crags of the Silesian Katzen Gebirge.

"Here we can rest in safety till the storm blows over," he said, as Irma Gluyas followed him into the arched entrance of an old half-forgotten manor house. "You shall have your books and music; we can take a run whenever we like, and you shall have nothing to fear, for my American friends will take care of me."

And then began the double duel of wits, in which, all innocent of suspicion of danger, the woman whose soul was struggling toward the light again, hid the darling secret of her heart - the coming of the man who was to free her from the tyranny of her past sins! "His love will find me out, even here," she murmured, as she listened to the wild breezes sweeping down from the pine-clad mountains. "And I shall live once more - a bond slave no longer!"

It was two weeks after their arrival when Braun felt safe to leave his dangerous charge with the peasant spies whom he had gathered as servants.

His money was safe, hidden in the old manor house; and he felt the skies were clear when he entered the money-changers at Breslau, where he cautiously sold some of his smaller bills.

On the table in the bank lay a copy of the New York Herald. His stern face paled as he gazed upon the flaring head-lines. But the audacious criminal's hand never trembled as he read the four columns which blazoned the discovery of Clayton's body.

Fast as the devil drives he hastened back to his secret lair. One friendly thrill warmed his agitated heart as he read Leah Einstein's simple cipher words, in the cable which warned him of a new danger.

"I must soon be about my business," he gloomily decided. "This Hungarian witch has some jewels left. It's only a few hours by rail to the Russian frontier. She might, with her winning appearance, easily find her way over the frontier of Poland. If she learned of the discovery of Clayton's body, she might, in her love craze, denounce me, even here. That would mean death for me; at the worst only a short detention for her."

The fear of the old Vienna crimes now hardened the heart of the man who was once the prosperous Hugo Landor. "SHE MUST DIE!" he cried as he sentenced her remorselessly. "But how? There must be no bungling!"

His whole nature was thrilling with the alarm of Leah Einstein's warning. "She may have to clear out," mused the self-tortured criminal. "Her only safe refuge is with me, and I could count on her to help me clear away this wild-hearted Magyar devil."

Fear now kept him from any further unnecessary visit to Breslau. He pondered a whole day, and then sent an unsigned cablegram, addressed to the woman he had rebaptized as Rachel Meyer.

It was the simple phrase, "Schebitz-Breslau."

"Leah will know that I am here, and in any storm can join me." With a sudden access of generosity, he sent the faithful ally of his darkest day a secretly-purchased draft for two thousand marks.

And then the murderer forgot his danger, ignorant of one lonely pursuer who followed up the blind trail of the murderer, now watching Leah Einstein night and day.

It was twenty days later when the poor cobbler Mulholland, whistling softly, went out and closed the door of his little shop opposite Mrs. Rachel Meyer's modest apartment. The frightened woman had only left her rooms at night after the publication of the finding of Randall Clayton's body.

A horrible, haunting fear now possessed her. She knew the horror of the deed. Stronger than the terror which bade her avoid the light of day was the yearning to assure herself of the unruly boy's safety. "If he is caught, God of Jacob!" she murmured, "I will end my days in prison."

Even the hammering of the strange Irish cobbler in the noisy hallway relieved her. She had never looked into that open door but a pair of gleaming eyes had followed her every movement from under the disguised policeman's bushy false beard.

"I think that I have the key of the mystery now," gleefully soliloquized McNerney. "I am tired of playing cobbler Mulholland."

In fact, he needed time for rest and study.

A five-dollar bill had procured him the privilege of copying the cablegram, when a telegraph boy had stumbled in, two weeks before, to find Rachel Meyer.

The words "Schebitz-Breslau" had given him no clue; but on this auspicious day the postman had begged him to aid him in finding the proper party to receive a valuable registered letter.

The officer's quick eye caught the German stamp, "Value 2000 marks," and the words, "Absender, August Meyer." "This is the fellow at last," muttered McNerney. "The man, August Meyer, who sends this poor devil of a woman two thousand marks. She is preparing to skip out. Now, for Mr. Lawyer Witherspoon!"

"The next time that this woman meets the boy, he must be arrested on one corner by Jim Condon. I will seize upon her! Keeping them separate and quiet, I may get the story. But I dare not tell the chief, or I would lose the reward. Witherspoon must trust to me. I must get that man over there."


CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE YACHT "RAMBLER."


Four days after cobbler Mulholland had sold out his little outfit to a stranger, James Lennon, whose dingy scrawl, "Shoes Fixed While You Wait," now stared Mrs. Rachel Meyer in the face, there was a circle of three earnest conspirators plotting in the interests of justice in the library of Counsellor Stillwell.

The great house was silent on the golden afternoon, of the famille Stillwell were busied in their varied occupations. The old lawyer in his William Street legal cave, the ladies driving or chasing the bubble pleasure.

Around the library table were gathered a trinity of souls all eager to avenge the unrequited death of Randall Clayton. The tired-out executors were now on their way to Detroit, sharing with the puzzled journals and the baffled police the hope that "something would finally turn up in the Clayton mystery."

Down in the Western Trading Company's office, the urbane Robert Wade, now shining out again in full plumage, explained to the occasional disgruntled stockholder that the Fidelity Company had paid in their fifty thousand dollars; that many of the largest cheques had been stopped, and that the Worthington Estate had nobly offered to recoup the company for the final deficiency from the extra fall dividend on their own stock, which was to gladden all hearts.

"Poor Hugh Worthington!" sighed Wade. "If he had only lived to see his cherished plan for freight control in operation. Our stock has risen fifty-five points on the new deal. Mr. Ferris? Ah! His retirement was solely due to ill-health. He has resumed his private consulting practice. But, Clayton! there was an irreparable loss! Poor boy! Some momentary imprudence must have exposed him. Thugs! Thugs! Here in New York, in broad day light! It is monstrous!"

And so the ruffled financial waters closed smoothly over the forgotten grave of the murdered cashier. It was dimly supposed that the "sleuth hounds" of the law were still peering about with their fabled "argus eyes."

But the two men gazing upon Alice Worthington's serene and steadfast face on this August afternoon wondered at the fervor of her high-souled thirst for vengeance.

The broad, Greek forehead, the clearly-shining blue eyes, the firm, resolute lips, her voice throbbing with earnestness, all spoke of a Venus armed with Minerva's panoply.

William Atwater's dark, impassioned face was lit with a fiery enthusiasm, as he said, "Miss Alice, we have met here to open the first of the seven seals.

"Witherspoon and I have recognized that you have not unfolded to Stillwell, or even the executors, all the last, sacred wishes of your father. We feel that you have knowledge, suspicions, and inferences, all your own. Now, to us, the last, the nearest friends of Clayton, your carte blanche to follow this up means everything. But we must have your directing mind with us; we need absolute secrecy, the use of money, and your aid. We do not ask you to tell us all, now. We only do ask that you will, at the right time, aid us with everything you can impart. We will give you the most important disclosures. I will give you my whole time.

"And if you sustain Witherspoon here, I will hound down the murderer, and, perhaps, fix