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

for Atwater, in his professional experience, to discover from the final unbosoming of both the women, that Braun had artfully drugged and stupefied his beautiful decoy, so that she was incapable of warning Clayton, or interrupting the leisurely disposition of the murdered man's body.

"He must have changed his first plans," mused Atwater, "only guided by his desire to have the money so imprudently trusted to one man."

There was life in Leah Einstein's heart once more, for she now knew that her graceless son was probably safe from prison.

Sly, secretive, and slavishly devoted to the young reprobate, the sin-soiled woman had successfully hidden all which could in any way implicate the dishonest office boy.

When the great ship neared Sandy Hook, William Atwater frankly answered Irma Gluyas' wailing cry, "Why do I not throw myself over there, in search of peace?"

For the gnawing of conscience had made the Magyar girl's life a torment. "It is not for me to judge you; it is only for me to help you!" sadly said the young physician.

"You have aided to bring many sorrows and sufferings on others! Work out your own salvation! You were born a Catholic.

"Your religion has orders where repentant women can toil among the suffering in schools or in the hospitals. It has its great work among the helpless. Hide your dangerous beauty there, among those who give their lives up to good works.

"And you will find peace and hope stealing to your side. God gave you a life; you have no right to throw it away." The poor, repentant, soiled one seized his hand and kissed it, while bitter tears rained from her eyes. "I will work; I will go where I cannot be hunted into a deeper hell than my accusing conscience brings up!"

There was a grim vigilance in every movement of Dennis McNerney as he watched the now haggard-eyed Braun in the tank cell far below the decks, where Fashion's children gaily chattered.

Only a few gruff sentences had ever escaped the murderer on the long voyage, and only a horrible curse had answered the proposition of Atwater and McNerney that a full confession might, in some way, soften the brute's impending doom.

The room where Braun was confined was bare of all lethal implements with which he might effect a suicide, and two stalwart men were his room-mates.

When the quartermasters, at midnight, peered out for the first glimpse of Fire Island light, Dennis McNerney, pacing the deserted deck, almost alone, revolved his plan of inspecting the sullen prisoner at intervals of every three hours during the night. "It is a desperate human brute, that one," muttered the sturdy policeman; "but, I've brought him safely home."

While a wild coast storm raged, and the screaming gulls circled around the plunging ship; while shrill winds moaned in the steel rigging, McNerney crept down for the last time before sighting land, at four o'clock, to peer through the grated door and see Fritz Braun lying prone - a confused heap - his coat rolled up as a pillow under his head.

The wounded arm alone was free; the other, shackled to a broad belt, was locked around the prisoner's waist.

"He is sleeping like a child," mused the officer. "In a few hours he will be safely in the Tombs, and my long watch will be over!"

The great liner was grandly sweeping up to Quarantine, when Dennis McNerney leaped from his berth and followed the startled cabin-boy, who shook him roughly.

"Come down, sir! THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG!" the boy babbled. "Get Doctor Atwater, instantly!" cried McNerney, as he rushed down into the ship's hold.

One glance at the guarded door was sufficient.

One of the careless keepers was clamoring for admittance, while the other bent over a rigid form lying there, prone and ghastly, in the gray morning light stealing in at the little porthole.

"It happened while I was out at breakfast," pleaded the unfaithful watcher, whom McNerney roughly cast aside.

Atwater was at McNerney's elbow when the frightened inmate had unlocked the door of the strong room. One shake of the recumbent form told the story. "He has cheated the executioner," solemnly said Atwater, letting the lifeless hand fall heavily from his grasp.

"He lay that way all the while since your last visit," said the sullen derelict keeper.

A hasty search of the cell showed an empty vial. "Chloral! Here is the key to the mystery!" cried Atwater, examining the coat, flung aside when the body was lifted. "See this torn sleeve! The murderer had hidden the bottle of poison here in the thick breast-wadding of the coat under the coat-sleeve. He waited coolly for the deed till the last night before our landing."

Atwater again inhaled the odor of the narcotic. "Chloral, sure enough!" he slowly said. "A two-ounce vial, and probably mingled with some more deadly poison! Probably the 'knock-out drops' the wretch used formerly to peddle to convicts!"

An hour later a circle of astonished police officials stood around the corpse of the crafty criminal who had passed beyond man's jurisdiction. "A desperate wretch," said the chief of detectives. "Fritz Braun, the mysterious druggist. He was prepared for the worst!"

With a quick sagacity, Doctor Atwater had concealed the press news of the desperate wretch's suicide, having in mind the final punishment of Lilienthal and Timmins. It was decided by the police officials to keep the news of the recovery of the fortune an official secret until all the crafty Baltic smuggling gang should all be apprehended.

In Irma Gluyas' cabin, Leah Einstein had divulged the whole details of the cowardly crime, as she had worked them out. It was to Doctor Atwater alone that Leah freely unbosomed herself.

In return for the Doctor's pledge, now given, to save the precocious Emil, the timorous Leah gave out the vital keynotes of the Baltic smugglers' syndicate.

For, at last, the ban of fear was lifted, and the frightened woman made haste to avail herself of the official clemency offered by the authorities.

A half-dozen policemen sped away to concert with the United States deputy marshals for the arrest of a clan of steamship clerks, stewards, Hoboken hotel-keepers, wharf officials, and others who had been the tools of the robust-minded Fritz Braun.

There was a happy meeting with Miss Alice Worthington, who was now seated in Atwater's stateroom, under the care of the triumphant Jack Witherspoon. The cable had called her from her princely Detroit home to be the first to hear the whole story of the capture of Braun from the lips of Atwater and the jubilant Dennis McNerney.

McNerney's triumph had been sadly dashed by the successful suicide of the great criminal.

"Never mind," kindly said the chief of police. "It was not your fault! This makes you a Sergeant, Dennis." The happy officer's eyes glistened as he saluted.

And ten minutes later he knew from the rosy lips of the great heiress that the full reward of twenty-five thousand dollars given by the company, and the same by Miss Worthington was now payable to him on the deposit of the recovered funds and cheques with the Western Trading Company.

"Five thousand of this is yours, Jim," cordially cried Dennis to Officer Condon, who had reported on board to announce the well-being of the office boy prisoner on the yacht "Rambler."

"I'll take another job of cobbler work like that, any time," joyously answered Condon, "and, mind you, I'm to be your best man at the wedding!"

For Dennis McNerney's new rank and fortune were to be the immediate cause of his precipitating a hitherto delayed matrimony.

The craft with which Fritz Braun had hidden away the poison in the padded coat-lining suggested to all the insiders the manner which he intended to use to rid himself of the repentant and defiant Irma.

While the chief of police arranged for the secret removal of Fritz Braun's body at night, there was an earnest conference in Atwater's stateroom.

"I leave it to you, my brothers," she said, with a pretty blush, "to arrange for the complete rehabilitation of Randall Clayton's memory.

"The whole business world must know that he was led to his grave by an honorable affection, and that the momentary imprudence which caused him to fall into Braun's trap was the only indiscretion of his whole career.

"And now, I have a right to demand of you both the name of my dead foster-brother's heir. The million dollars paid for the poor boy's half of the Detroit lands is on deposit in the Railway Company's safes, awaiting the probate of his will."

"HE STANDS BEFORE YOU," gravely said Doctor Atwater, taking her hand.

"Poor Randall! Some premonition of his doom haunted him. He had saved some money, and by investments accumulated a little purse of twenty thousand dollars or so. And this, and all his estate, he willed to Mr. Witherspoon, as a wedding present for Francine Delacroix!"

"Why did you not tell me sooner?" reproachfully demanded the heiress, turning her lovely eyes upon Witherspoon.

"Because I wished to freely aid in running down his murderers; to clear his memory, and because the great world would have misinterpreted my zeal. I know the nobility of heart with which your father set aside this property for Clayton, as soon as he found out the old title! Had they met at Cheyenne, all would have been well!"

And then Alice Worthington thanked God in her anxious heart that her dangerous secret was safe. She smiled through her happy tears as she placed her hand in Witherspoon's. "We will both cherish his memory, for life! And I now only exact one condition: that is, that Francine's wedding shall be from my home. We were schoolmates, and sisters of the heart, though our home was a very quiet one. My father was averse to all family intimacies. The executors are ready to make the transfer of the money whenever you prove up poor Randall's will."

"And I," said Witherspoon, "exact one thing in return. I demand the right, in honor, to refund to the Trading Company all the money used by the murderer, the whole search expenses, and the double rewards. There will be a princely fortune left for me after all, and this money so used will vindicate poor Clayton's memory from all blame for his chivalric folly." Alice Worthington bowed her head in assent, as the spirited young man proceeded.

"When you see Irma Gluyas, you will know what a strange fate overtook him. For she has been made another woman by the manly love of the poor fellow who believed in her." The Detroit lawyer was deceived by the heiress' calmness. "She knew nothing," he mused. "It is well."

While Atwater busied himself in the removal of the two women who had been Fritz Braun's dupes, and arranged for young Einstein's meeting with his mother, and recording the joint confessions of the two, a surprise awaited Officer Dennis McNerney.

The cabin boy who had been allowed to bring meals to the wounded prisoner, in fear and trembling, confessed to the baffled policeman that Braun had given him a hundred-dollar bill which he had managed to secrete in his trousers waistband, for the promised duty of writing to Mrs. August Landor, No. 195 Ringstrasse, Vienna, that her fugitive son, Hugo Landor, had died of fever in a Catholic hospital at