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

out of his way to pipe her off here! So, after his lunch at Taylor's, I put her again onto his homeward way! And he's caught on! No matter! She will tell you the rest herself!"

When the eager lad had finished, Fritz Braun growled under his breath, "You are sure you made no bungle?"

"Dead sure," gaily answered the boy, draining his bock of Muenchner, "I followed him to the bank and to Taylor's, and he is unsuspecting of any plant, I know."

Braun's face relaxed as he pushed over a twenty-dollar bill to the young Judas. "Come in Monday, about ten," he said, carelessly. "You can go, now! I must hurry over to the river. I am late!"

There was a shifty light in Einstein's eyes as he mumbled, "I can tell you something else, if you'll do the right thing." Braun searched the young villain's face. "Go ahead! I'll pay you."

Emboldened by his success, Einstein loudly rapped to replenish his glass. He was now panting to escape for certain tender engagements of his own.

"The firm's lawyer, Ferris, the man who lived with Mr. Clayton, has gone West for six months, so he will be left alone! I followed them and saw Ferris off on the train. I took a telegram to the office for Ferris and Clayton, so Clayton will be alone in the rooms. He's going to keep them, and I'm to go around there Monday and pack up all Mr. Ferris' little things."

"Good, capital!" said Fritz Braun, his eyes gleaming. "You must manage to get me a duplicate key of Clayton's rooms!"

"Easy enough," proudly answered the young rascal. "Mr. Clayton trusts me in all things, and often gives me his latch-key and the room keys when he wants anything from the apartment. Anything else?"

"Yes," stammered the lad, surprised at the stern glare of Braun's expectant eyes. "The Fidelity fellows have been piping off all Mr. Clayton's movements. They watch him on account of the big money that he handles every day. I know the man who shadows Clayton, twice a week, regular, on all his evening trips. They've got their spotters, too, in all the big bar-rooms, and all around the gambling houses, the race courses, Wall Street and the Tenderloin.

"Now, after Clayton left, to-day, Ferris the lawyer came in and told Mr. Robert Wade, that's our chief manager, that the Fidelity Company would make their, written reports twice a month to him, while the lawyer's gone."

"I must have these reports!" cried Braun, forgetting the raised pitch of his voice, but the Venus and Tannhauser coterie around were all now fondly busied with each other.

"I can get them! I have a key to Wade's own desk," glibly mouthed the young spy.

"How did you get it?" eagerly demanded the astonished Braun.

"I had it made to get at his cigars," proudly boasted the unabashed lad. "Wade keeps a couple of boxes of the best Havanas on Company account, for the 'big customers.' Yes, and a drop of good old cognac, too.

"There's often a bit of fun behind the ground glass partitions. I've scraped a little eye hole."

"You are your sly mother's own darling imp," growled Braun, bringing out his pocketbook. "She was the devil's own, too, before she got old and lost her good looks," he sighed.

"Tell me," said he, selecting a note with grave deliberation, "how much did Clayton deposit to-day?"

"Only thirty-eight thousand," contemptuously answered the boy, as he clutched the note now held out to him. "Sometimes it's a round hundred thousand," continued Emil, eager to show off his knowledge, "and on the annual settlements, July 1 to 4th, last year we put in two hundred thousand into the Astor Place. That's our biggest monthly settlement. I always help Mr. Clayton pack it up, in his own room, after he verifies the accountant's tabs."

Fritz Braun suddenly awoke from a reverie. "Get out of here now, and see that you post me on all that this Clayton is up to at night, on his Sundays and vacations. I'll give you a third twenty for the two keys. I may want to take a look at his rooms some Sunday when you are sporting out of town.

"And watch the spotters, too! You might do a good turn in pocket money by posting him, but only as I tell you, mind that! Now, don't go to the devil too fast. Do you ever give your mother any money?"

Einstein's vicious leer was a silent answer. "Tell her she shall have a new silk dress from me, if you keep your wits about you. Remember, Monday!"

The lad sped away at a curt nod of dismissal, and was soon lost in the devil's whirlpool of the Bowery.

But, as Mr. Fritz Braun sedately finished his cosy dinner, he saw strange golden gleams in the blue, wreathing smoke mists of his Perfectos.

"Two hundred thousand; that would be a stake. And July, too; this lawyer fellow gone. What a chance! There must be no mistake now! He must lead himself on, now. One prick of the hidden hook and this fat trout would be off forever I must see Irma and coach her. Donnerwetter! It's too good to be true. After all this waiting. And now I've got to keep my eyes on both the spider and the fly. Irma is such a tempestuous devil. If Leah only had her years and looks and dash, she would twist any man in the world around her finger. But I can never teach this Hungarian madcap, Leah's velvet softness and never-tiring patience."

The prosperous pharmacist gleefully paid for his dinner and nimbly chased an East-side ferry-bound car. He laughed in spite of himself at Emil's unflagging deviltry. "He is a credit to Leah's Polish blood and my Austrian nurture," mused Braun. "The young wretch might be dangerous, too. He must know nothing of my deep game."

"If this Clayton will only break into the flirtation in the right way, the victory is assured. But, if he were to show her off around town, or try and dodge these spotter fellows in New York, then I should lose a year's time, my expenses, and this heavy money stake. It's the one chance of a life time."

In half an hour, Fitz Braun, crossing on the Tenth Street Ferry to Greenpoint, was soon lost, as was his wont, in the human hive of Brooklyn toilers. Men had seen him go over for years invariably on this ferry, his burly figure was always seen on the Fulton Ferry daily at half-past eight each morning, but not a soul among the thousand clients of Magdal's Pharmacy knew where the human fox, Fritz Braun, laid his head to rest at night.

From nine till four he lurked behind the high dispensing screen of Magdal's Pharmacy, his inner life and antecedents a sealed book to all the sleuth-eyed votaries of vice on Sixth Avenue.

And yet, for all his craft, on this balmy night of spring, the man who had buried Hugo Landor's stormy past forever under staid Fritz Braun's impenetrable mask, shivered while plotting his new iniquities lest the panther-footed pursuer might even now demand at his hand a life in return for those victims who had lain, staring eyed, cold in death, mute witness against him in far away Vienna. The terrible record of his past evil days haunted his every footstep now. He saw these avenging eyes even in his dreams.

There was but one who could lift the veil of the awful past. On this eventful night Fritz Braun hid, within his heart, an awful resolve, born of the fear of the disguised felon, floating uneasily in the maelstrom of a great city. "If she should betray me, and women are women, after all," he mused in his cowardly ferocity. "If she pulls this off for me, I'll" - he ceased, with an inward shudder, for he dared not give the awful thought its fitting frame.

"Only at the last," he murmured, as he sped along in Brooklyn's dingy water streets to take on another mask to veil his wolfishly evil life.

While snares and pitfalls were being laid for Randall Clayton's careless feet, that gentleman sat in a wrathful mood, pondering over Arthur Ferris' half-hearted disclosures. Clayton's face had frankly disclosed his displeasure at the false attitude of his chum, when Ferris reluctantly disclosed the fact of the secret financial espionage.

The three years of their past intimacy now took on a different color, at once, to the jaundiced eyes of the young cashier.

He had almost abruptly declined Ferris' invitation to spend Sunday at Seneca Lake, with the prosperous lawyer's mother and two sisters.

A feeling of bitter envy gnawed at Clayton's heart as he counted up the rapid rise of his quondam friend.

"So, he has been playing this double game for years; it must have been at Worthington's bidding. And why?"

It began to dawn at last upon Clayton that his Detroit patron had certainly followed a singular course in his apparent beneficence.

All unused to social intrigue, Clayton ignored the possible effect of his further presence in Worthington's household as an attractive young man when little Alice, at a bound, passed through the gates of girlhood and became the beautiful Miss Worthington. He had never seen the angel at his side, and yet Ferris, clearer eyed, had conquered in silent craft a golden future.

Clayton lingered at his table in the Grand Union café long after the waiter had removed his half-tasted dinner. He ordered an unaccustomed "highball" as he pondered over some means of circumventing the social treason of his dethroned "friend."

Clayton easily found a valid reason, for the semi-treason of Ferris.

"He is, after all, a stranger to me. His ambition leads him onward and upward. He would tread on my body gladly in mounting to the great monopolist's confidence. It is easy enough to see why Ferris has played both the spy and lickspittle. It has paid him well. Here's a jump to handling Worthington's power of attorney. Of course, Ferris seeks the position of the one Eastern lawyer of the great Trust.

"But," and a wave of anger swept away all the grateful memoirs of his youth, "why did this cool old badger, Worthington, take me to his home, later back me through college, and then, and there railroad me off here to be fenced around with his spies? He could have easily dropped me at any time. If he really cared to advance me, why not have made me a lawyer and breed me up to share his secrets?" There came no answer to his troubled mind as he sat there, alone, despising Ferris and doubting even Worthington's candor.

He had revolved several future plans of action in his mind before reaching the vitreous substratum of the generous high-ball. His first indignant impulse was to give up the joint apartment in a fortnight.

May the first was rapidly coming on by Nature's calendar of leaf and bird, of deepening green in the park and light-hearted woman's smartening attire.

"No," he resentfully cried, as he threw his cigar away and paid his bill, "that would only show them my hand. I'll make no open enemy of Ferris."

"But I will dodge Worthington's spies and then lock up my heart. I will keep on good terms with Worthington's lickspittle and try and later