When the boy had departed, Randall Clayton sank back in his chair. "Whatever happens," he musingly decided, "I will never expose Irma to the dangers of this espionage. They may have other agents by day, who knows! And, if I wish to safely meet her, it must be over there."
His thought were wandering far away across the black, flowing tide of the East River, where the Brooklyn Bridge was now traced in line of living light against the darkness of night.
Over there, beyond the gloomy river warehouses, with their forests of masts, across the swiftly rushing tide seeking the unknown sea, the graceful Queen of his awakened heart was hidden from him. "I shall find her out; nothing shall part us; she shall hear me yet; she shall learn to look for my coming, and she shall open the gates of her home to me. Her heart shall beat against my own."
For, in all the sweep of a lover's imagination, he only saw her, at the end of the veiled pathway, with love lighting her softly shining eyes, and her beloved hand waving him on.
While he still wandered in a Fool's Paradise, the crafty office boy was hastening across the great span which hangs its curving arch from Manhattan to Long Island.
Einstein was driven on by his gnawing greed of money. "Fritz must know this at once," he muttered. These business detective fellows are dangerous, and could easily break up his little game.
"For if Clayton gets into any trouble, out he goes! There's no money in him then, and he's no good to Fritz Braun, no more to me. This news ought to fetch me a couple of twenties if well played."
It was ten o'clock when Emil Einstein sprang down the stairway of the eastern terminus of the Brooklyn Bridge. The lad was blithe at heart as he turned to the left and, passing through the seething press of the crowds congested under the electric lights of Sands and Fulton Streets, carefully reconnoitered a gorgeous saloon on the corner of Layte and Dale Streets.
Einstein peered in through the two swinging doors of the front, and then betook himself to the side entrance on Dale Street, where the "Family Entrance," the private corridor, and one or two halls admitted him to the restaurant, card rooms and private rooms of the ground floor of the five-story corner brick building. The youth recoiled, after a peep through a ground glass door left ajar, at the glories of the main hall of the famous "Valkyrie" saloon.
"What am I to do?" he mused, as he lit his cigarette in a dark doorway outside, parrying the coarse advances of two fleeting Cyprians with a retort which brought the blood to their cheeks, leaping up under the plastered rouge. "I've been forbidden to call him out of 192; he and my mother are both now fooling the Duchess; I am playing a double game with Clayton, and, by Hokey, old Wade's watchful men may drop on to me. I may lose the best job in New York if these people get all tangled up. What the devil is going on, anyway?"
He crossed the street and gazed up at the glaring red pressed-brick walls of the Valkyrie corner. All the two score of windows on Dale Street, and the score on Layte Street were closely guarded with solid shutters of a green hue.
"God knows what deviltry is going on here," muttered the lad, a coward at heart. There were fleeting figures of veiled women gliding past him through the dim entrances, the refluent stream of the Devil's daughters.
Down the gloomy side street the blue gleam of the pitiless river showed light against the somber night, the yellow blinking lights of the tugs flitting about like corpse candles.
In the dark shadows of the involved angular corners, thug and ghoul lurked until midnight should bring them their prey, the careless roysterer, or the belated prosperous citizen. Out on Layte Street the flashy throng was still pouring toward the Fulton Ferry.
"I wonder if I dare," mused the lad, as he walked around the corner and paused before No. 192 Layte Street. The sober splendor of the richly decorated old five-story brownstone told of the vanished glories of the ante-bellum days.
A stately mansion in whose halls there had been royal cheer in the departed days when Brooklyn had its proud burghers and New York its simple citizens of worth. But the pressure of commerce, the havoc of the bridge construction, the onrush of warehouse, shop, and the pressure of the street railway octopus had left the sedate mansion a relic of better days in an incongruous medley of little shops, doubtful lodging-houses, vile man-traps, and clustering saloons.
Here the Juggernaut car of King Alcohol was rolling on remorselessly, crushing out all life save the frenzied dream of the dipsomaniac.
But the lad paused and shook his head as he noted the windows of the old English basement tightly barred. The parlor floor, bearing the gilded sign, "Parisian Millinery Repository," was darkened, and, above, the three upper floors presented only an array of undraped windows solidly shut off by white-enamelled inside folding blinds. The decorous-looking main entrance bore but one card, in script, "Raffoni, Musical Director."
For years the neighborhood had forgotten its curiosity over the foreign-looking men and women who passed the vigilant Cerberus at the stately oaken door. No daring book-agent, no pedlar of indurated cheek, no outside barbarian had ever crossed that guarded portal, for a brass chain of impregnable strength prevented any intrusion, and only a glimpse of the old tesselated marble floor rewarded the frightened interloper.
It was "No Thoroughfare" to the multitude, and the quaint visitors were either personally conducted or used latch-keys.
The over-fed policeman sucking his club in front of 192 Layte only smiled in answer to vague inquiry, "Private house, belongs to old family estate, people in Europe," and then with a leer would drop into the "Valkyrie" for a fistful of good cigars and a flask of the very best.
The timid young scoundrel lingering before 192 on this fresh, starry night was the only "outsider" who knew what deadly master mind controlled the mysteries of the "Valkyrie" saloon and 192 Layte Street, its sedate neighbor.
The particular use of the "fake" millinery repository, the hidden life of the upper floors of the old mansion, were only known to the man whom Emil Einstein feared to meet in anger.
But in the Devil's auction of the corner building, man, woman and child were knocked down to the highest bidder, for the hell-minted price of human souls.
Gambler, crook and thief; wanton, decoy and badger; racing tout, fugitive, smuggler, and counterfeiter; lottery sharp and green-goods man, all welcomed the white, red and blue lights gleaming over the "Valkyrie" saloon as the harbor-lights of their safe port in any storm.
"I have it," muttered Einstein, as he boldly threw open the swinging half door of the "Valkyrie." Shading his eyes in the flood of garish light, he gazed around at the twenty round tables. Six alert barkeepers lurked in front of the superb mirrors behind the rich walnut counters gleaming with crystal and silver.
The music of the Orchestrion bore away on its flood of Strauss waltzes the shrill chatter of women's laughter in the inside hell of the private rooms.
Opening doors admitted fragments of poker gabble as the white-aproned waiters rushed around with their trays of drinks.
With artful geography of arrangement, gaudy women from the side street, at tables, were parading their too evident charms before the crowd of clerks, men about town, warrant officers, railroad employees, old roués, sporting men and belated "slummers" who leered at every arrival of "fresh fish."
Young Einstein, scribbling the single word "Emil" on a card, approached the parchment-faced German lad who sat in state, manipulating the bewildering keys of the "Cash Register."
"Send this to the boss at once," said Einstein in a low voice.
"You can't see him," contemptuously announced the insolent Jack-in-office, tossing back the card. He scented a possible successor in this vulpine-looking young stranger. But Einstein resolutely came back to the charge. "It's his business, and he'll jerk you out of your job if you throw me down. I will not stir a step till I see him. Send it up."
And Emil made a significant gesture with a defiant thumb.
Audacity carried the day! Young Einstein, coolly purchasing a Regalia and seating himself at a table, grinned a last defiance as a "Kellner" finally touched his arm and led him into a vacant card-room.
Down a stairway came the sounding tread of a heavy man, and Einstein was in the presence of Mr. Fritz Braun.
"It's about him, Clayton," faltered the boy, awed at his employer's lowering face.
"Come with me," harshly said Braun, as he led the lad up to the third floor. When they had entered a rear sleeping-room, Braun locked the door. "Tell me all," he anxiously cried. "Out with it. If you lie you'll never leave this house, remember!"
With chattering teeth, the lad delivered himself of his discovery. It was only after half an hour of cross questioning that Braun was satisfied with the details of Robert Wade's espionage of Randall Clayton. "You've done well, for yourself," said Braun, at last, handing the boy a roll of bills. "But never come here again. I'll give you an address to-morrow where you can call, telephone or telegraph, and a name. Post me on all. Keep this from your mother. I'll handle her myself. Now, by day you can slip over to the store, by night use the new address. Get home now. Go over the ferry." He filled the boy's hand with loose silver. "I'll stay here. Speak to no one. Get out quickly by the side door."
Emil Einstein was safely across the Fulton Ferry before he had realized the startling change in Fritz Braun's appearance. The flowing golden beard, the blue glasses, the padded clothes of middle-age cut were gone. Fritz Braun, lithe, sharp-faced, with piercing eyes, a dashing cavalry mustache, and dapper Wall Street tailoring, was twenty years younger, and another man.
His diamond jewels, rakish air and "loose fish" manner bespoke the flush book-maker or the flashy "boss."
"Here's for a night on the Bowery," gleefully cried Einstein, counting his Judas gains, while he tried to forget Fritz Braun's lightning change.
That dapper gentleman, stepping into a closet, passed swiftly through the door from the Valkyrie into 192 Layte Street. His hidden pool-room, gambling den and exchange for soul and body was temporarily forgotten by "Mr. August Meyer," owner of the peerless "Valkyrie Saloon."
"I'll get a carriage and drive over to Irma," he growled. "She must never cross the river again. We must lead him over here; but how? Perhaps the pretty devil can help me. I must throw Wade off the track. Irma can fool this young greenhorn. The job must be done over there. For a fortune, for his life or mine; and he must be teased along till the July holidays."
Then Mr. August Meyer of Brooklyn proceeded to leisurely array himself as a clubman of fashion.
Randall Clayton was an enigma in his altered personal bearing to his old confrères when he entered the manager's office at his summons on a balmy afternoon of the dying days of June.
The two months since Jack Witherspoon's departure had changed the frank young fellow into a taciturn man of feline secretiveness. The discovery of Worthington's treachery, the knowledge of the dogging spies at his heels, had been a suddenly transforming influence. He now ardently burned for the return of his one confidant, for the annual election was but a few days distant.
The ripening summer was coming on fast. On Fifth Avenue the delicate, haughty-faced young Princesses of Mammon now bore the June blush roses in their slender pitiless hands. The annual hegira pleasureward was beginning.
And as yet only Randall Clayton's burning eyes marked the conflict raging in his soul. But he longed to leap into the open, and boldly defy Worthington. For a new purpose had stolen upon him in these weeks—the sudden desire for wealth.
He craved money for but one object—to cast it at the feet of Irma Gluyas and then to bear her away from a world of lies to the storied Danube, where woman's rosy lip rests in clinging transports upon lips speaking the wild love of the gallant Magyar land. He now knew the power of wealth. Clayton had become as secretive as the young Pawnee on his first warpath. He was now watching the enemy's camp and awaiting the moves of both the guilty employer and false friend.
Through the still subsidized Einstein he knew that the bootless espionage upon his leisure hours had been given up at last. He had baffled his enemies.
It had not been done by fear of the clumsy artifices of Robert Wade, but a desire born of his overmastering love for Irma, to guard her every footstep. His heart melted in its memories of that crowning hour of the avowal of his love, when she had whispered, "I dare not take you to my home! Wait, Randall, wait, and trust all to me."
Two months past had seen him plunging deeper into the mad love, more blindly, every day, sinking into the hungry passion, waxing into a fond delirium, under the artful orders of a veiled Mokanna. "You must lead him on, far as you can; make him forget everything in the world but yourself; promise him all, and grant him nothing."
A thousand plans had been revolved by Clayton for the future, but the delicious thralldom of his love drew him to Irma Gluyas as the moon draws the sea.
It had been his own jealous lover heart which bade her meet him in all distant places, but to always shun the city with Wade's baffled spies still on the watch.
For once, the orders of the double traitor Einstein were identical, as neither the artful Braun nor the anxious lover cared to risk the dangers of Irma's face meeting the gaze of the watchful Wade.
In a guarded silence the young cashier awaited Mr. Robert Wade's official action on this June afternoon. He was only vaguely aware by rumor that Hugh Worthington and Miss Alice still lingered somewhere on the Pacific Coast.
There had been no further word from Arthur Ferris, and the all-important election was but a week distant now. Clayton keenly watched the solemn-faced manager as he drew out some papers from a bulky envelope. There was but one phase in his now double life of which Clayton naturally feared the exposure.
Warned by Witherspoon, Clayton had watched the steady rise of the Western Trading Company's stock, week by week, during the absence of the arbiter of its destinies. His veins were filled with the tide of a new-born passion.
Clayton had boldly risked all his savings in the margining of large blocks of the stock, dealing constantly through a Wall Street friend.
Three times he had fortunately turned over his capital since Witherspoon had unveiled the scheme to draw in a majority of the shares, and he was now sixteen thousand dollars to the good. Even after lavishing a goodly part of his gains upon the mysterious diva, in every fantastic way possible, in their stealthy meetings, Clayton still had pyramided his capital and now was sure of another harvest. And he only wondered at the reluctance with which the lovely Hungarian accepted the jewels thrust upon her.
"I will sell out the day before the election," mused Clayton, as he awaited the manager's slow mental processes. "Then I can even stand a discharge," he defiantly thought.
The young man's face paled suddenly as Wade handed him a telegram addressed in the care of the manager. "When you have carefully read this," said Wade, "I will give you Mr. Worthington's own ideas, from his confidential instructions to me."
Conscious that he was now environed in the house of his enemies, Randall Clayton sat for some time there, silently pondering the suddenness of a proposal which affected his whole future career.
"You are wanted as general superintendent of all of our Western ranches. Headquarters at Cheyenne. Please telegraph acceptance, and meet Ferris at Cheyenne in four days. He leaves to-day. Answer. Wade has my full instructions."
The blood surged back to Randall Clayton's heart in a defiant flood."They know nothing; but I'll hear him out."
It was twenty minutes before the manager had finished the explanation of the measure proposed and had dilated upon the advance of salary, the future prospects, and all the ultimate benefits of the parties to this autocratically suggested change. "He has been secretly coached up by Ferris," thought the suspicious Clayton. But he gave no sign of his secret distrust.
"Of course," purringly remarked Robert Wade, "it is a little sudden; but I am authorized to make you a half year's salary allowance for first expenses and outfit, and so you can easily get away to-morrow night. That will bring you out to Cheyenne in time to meet Ferris, and then get your instructions. He is coming on to look at the annual accounts and give Mr. Worthington's views as to your successor."
Wade pushed over a telegraph blank. "Just write out your telegram, and I will send it on at once. You will accept, of course."
Randall Clayton had schooled himself since Jack Witherspoon's departure in every defensive measure against the secret plotters. And so his voice was suave and measured as he simply said, "I think, Mr. Wade, that I shall have to regretfully decline this promotion. I am perfectly well satisfied as I am. I know nothing of the details of our great Western business. I have forgotten the frontier now."
The lines in Wade's face hardened. "Is that your only reason? You will soon pick up the technique!"
Clayton stood the fire of the vulpine gray eyes without a quiver. Jack Witherspoon's warning injunctions returned to his mind. "Look out, my boy, that they don't get you sidetracked in some lonely place. They would kill you like a rat if our design to uncover the past was ever discovered."
Clayton but too well knew how easily a man could be lost forever out in the Black Hills, or along the lonely Platte. "It is their grand final move before bringing out Ferris as the new-made capitalist. My life would not be worth a pin-head. And Witherspoon would be far away out of reach. Irma lost to me forever!"
The jealous lover could almost see the crowded opera-house and hear that now familiar witching voice. He knew that men would bow before her beauty; that flowers, jewels, flattery and fortune would be showered upon her. The hungry "upper ten" pine for new victims with unsatisfied maw. He had already dedicated his coming fortune to her; she should be his heart-queen, and together they would go back and buy the old family castle, whose legends had fallen from her lips in the stolen hours of the long love trysts of the last two months.
"I cannot accept this flattering offer, Mr. Wade," resolutely said the young man, who now saw a steely anger in the manager's eyes. "I have given the flower of my youth to Mr. Worthington's service; but this is a total change, a sudden break-up of all my private plans. I beg that you will at once telegraph him my respectful declination."
Clayton rose with a look on his face which completed Wade's thorough annoyance. "Stop, sir; stop! Think before you throw away all your chances in life! You can have a whole day to think this over. Would you forfeit Mr. Worthington's regard and so lose your place?"
There was a strident anger in the manager's harsh voice. But Clayton, realizing that he had even till now not been able to gain Irma's pictured face, looked forward to the heart-wreck of this enforced absence. "If I am to be cast out like a dog after my faithful service, then you must do it, sir," gravely said Clayton, Witherspoon's warnings returning to stiffen his resolution. "Why not await Mr. Ferris' arrival? I may be able to reach Mr. Worthington's second thoughts through him." The agent of the two far off conspirators lost his self-control at last.
"I'll await nothing," roared Robert Wade. "That will do, sir!" And as the defiant Clayton retired, the manager rang for a telegraph boy.
"I have given them checkmate," mused Clayton, as he snapped his door behind him. "Their plans probably included making away with me, out West, after Ferris has done his work and returns to openly claim Alice's hand. It is a fight for my life now. I must reach Irma at once. I must tell her all."
Suddenly he thought of the future. His heart sickened. "Wade will undoubtedly recommend my discharge. If Jack fails me, I am then to be cast out in the streets, and the influence of the Trust will surely keep me from holding any other position longer than they can find out where to reach me."
He absently broke the seals of a couple of letters dropped on his desk in his brief absence.
He sprang up, a new man, as he read Jack Witherspoon's few words. The missive was dated from Paris. It bore in its light-hearted chatter a few words which sealed his fate in life.
"Am coming home at once. Will be with you in ten days. Let nothingprevent our meeting in New York. Will act instantly in your matter.Have had private news. They were secretly married a month ago atTacoma. Be on your guard!"
Seizing his hat, Randall Clayton hurried away to the nearest telegraph office, where he felt safe from Robert Wade's spies.
"Thank God for Irma's wit," he said, in his heart, as he sent the veiled words which would bring her to that quiet hotel on Staten Island, where, among Richmond's leafy bowers, they now defied all possible detection. It had been her own plan. The long weeks of Clayton's complete self-surrender had brought about no forward step in Irma Gluyas' intimacy.
The still silent Madame Raffoni was the careful guardian of the veiled beauty, and Clayton, loyal to a frenzy of romantic faith, had never broken his promise.
For he lived only now in Irma's whispered promise, "Wait, and trust to me. You shall come to me as soon as I can break my bonds. It shall be then you and I, for the rest of our days, if Love still holds the helm."
It was long after midnight when the defiant lover returned to his apartment. The Magyar witch had finally learned the last secret of his honest heart, and with clinging arms had whispered through her kisses, "If you leave me, Randall, it is the death of our love." And, trusting blindly to his honest love, Clayton wagered his life upon a woman's faith.
Under the door of his room lay a yellow envelope, and as the now resolute man read it he smiled grimly. "Victory!" he cried, for Ferris' words assured him of a coming triumph, a crown of life and love. It seemed that Irma's love had conquered after all.
"Await me in New York. I think that we can arrange all for your remaining as you are." The signature was that of the artful Ferris. "And I think that Jack and I can handle you, my false friend!" sneered Clayton.
While the young lover read the words which gave him a new hope, far across the Brooklyn Bridge, Mr. Fritz Braun, in his own private lair, was pondering over the words of Madame Raffoni, who had just left the man who was the iron tyrant of her soiled life.
"I must give him a little more line! And I must either land the fish now or lose him forever."
There was a steely gleam in the sleepless eyes of him who pondered upon his clouded pathway. "It must be done! And she must help in some way. She holds the winning cards now. Nothing else will draw him!"
The masquerading criminal was almost desperate. It had been his by-play for years to play at hide and seek with humanity, using his duplex characters at first to throw off any pursuit of the Vienna police; and, later, to hide his nefarious operations on the New York side.
Greedy for money, before Irma Gluyas had been driven to his arms by adverse fortunes, Fritz Braun had at first made his refuge at the "Valkyrie," then owned by Ludwig Sohmer, whose passion for "playing the races" had at last dragged him down.
The Viennese fugitive diligently plied his erstwhile patron with drink and smilingly enmeshed the brutish peasant-bred Sohmer in a series of compounded loans.
It was not long until all the employees recognized in the alert "August Meyer" the mainstay of the decaying fortunes of the half bankrupt Sohmer.
Every evening, without fail, the sharp commands of Fritz Braun were now conveyed to the responsible underlings! Sohmer, staggering homeward with his greedy Aspasias from the Waterloo conflicts of the race-track, sullenly assented at last to the chattel mortgages and bills of sale which placed the "Valkyrie" and the whole building under August Meyer's name. Then, taking the downward road, Sohmer tried to drown himself in drink, and succeeded.
When Sohmer was found dead in his bed, the millionaire brewer who backed the "Valkyrie," and the owner of the ground on which the building erected by Sohmer stood, gladly took on the active August Meyer in loco the departed Sohmer.
The solidity of the new tenant's finances was vouched for by the agents of the old estate from whom Fritz Braun had already leased 192 Layte Street, in his Brooklyn name of "August Meyer."
Strange to say, the keen-eyed officials of the German Consulate-General had issued to the acute pharmacist a regular passport, upon the military and family papers of Braun's poor soldier drudge at the Magdal Pharmacy.
It had been an exchange acceptable to both parties: an ocean of drink, a weekly pittance of food and raiment, for the valuable attested documents which gave the disguised Viennese fugitive the right to boldly claim the Kaiser's official protection as "August Meyer." It was the very citadel of Braun's rising fortunes!
And so, with Sohmer soundly sleeping, whether well or illy, "after life's fitful fever," the foxy Viennese rejoiced in his assigned ground-lease, Sohmer's business, and the gold mine of the hidden pool-room, gambling den and disguised harem of No. 192 Layte Street.
Fritz Braun had allowed a few months to pass before he secretly opened the party walls between the two buildings to allow his choicest patrons to enter No. 192 Layte Street all unobserved; but, for reasons of his own, he had made one or two private alterations in the two buildings which enabled him to enter the different floors by his own judiciously veiled private entrances.
The cellar of No. 192 Layte Street had been piped for cold-storage of the wines and beer of the "Valkyrie" under Fritz Braun's own supervision when he gave up the basement of the "Valkyrie" to the kitchens of the restaurant, which drew the attractive women of the quarter into the safest possible association with their victims crowding the "Valkyrie" saloon.
A vigilant business man, August Meyer came each evening to settle the days' affairs and personally watch the money mill next door, which ran noiselessly on golden wheels from nine o'clock till midnight.
No one had Meyer's confidence; he left no tell-tale papers to connect him with the gruff pharmacist of Sixth Avenue, and at midnight he always vanished to his own private home, a diligently guarded terra incognita to all men.
A sphinx-like "Oberkellner" received the orders of the proprietor each evening; a steward of equal taciturnity "ran" the restaurant, and August Meyer himself, with autocratic power, directed the villainous operations of No. 192 Layte Street.
Popular with the police, exact in his monthly settlements with the ground landlords and the despotic brewery king, Fritz Braun avoided both the failings which had wrecked the golden fortunes of the dead Sohmer.
But, alas! no man is equally strong against all temptations. Deaf to woman's wail; brutal and heartless; too fearful of his past record to give himself up to the bowl, Fritz Braun, blasé and tired of every side of human life, had drifted easily into the desperate craze of the insatiate gambler.
It was months after he had found No. 192 Layte Street to be a never-failing mint, when Braun became fascinated with the whirr of the roulette ball, the varying chances of the faro box, and, at last, the fine peculiarities of "unlimited poker" swept away his once callous prudence.
Night after night, in the grim quartette of a ruinously high game, August Meyer "held his hand" recklessly, while a street railroad magnate, a millionaire importer, and a reigning politician swept away the revenues of the "Valkyrie." He was rolling the stone of Sysiphus up hill now. He had forged his own ruin.
Alone in the world, a desperate Ishmael, Fritz Braun needed the secret protection of these powerful plutocrats. Silently he had suffered his huge losses, waiting for the luck to turn, and now, on the eve of his great coup of criminal sagacity, he awoke at last to his own imperiled fortunes, and yet he feared to own that he dared not cease gambling, that he could not "throw up his hand."
And, by one of the fantastic turns of luck which haunt even the safest "dealing" games, he had seen the tide of Fortune turn viciously against his banking dealers several times. The "bank" had been broken at several of his tables until he had hypothecated all his reserve securities. Ruin stared him in the face, for it had come at last.
Possessed of his regular passport, safe now in any voyage in Germany, the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, in Russia, Fritz Braun had long desired to break off his slavery to the "painted ladies" of the cards.
He had always kept some jewels of great value with him as a final reserve, and a nest-egg of a few thousands deposited in a Frankfort banking-house, with whose New York agents he had effected many clearings of considerable size.
Fate was now swiftly sweeping him along, he knew not whither, and on this night of discontent he bitterly calculated the chances of a stormy future.
"Ten thousand dollars only left, and whatever more my jewels will bring," he growled. "I am safe enough, though. Timmins can run the pharmacy, and the brewery will put an agent in here if I say that I need a few months' rest abroad."
"But there's Irma to be got rid of! If she does not help me to this one crowning stroke of luck, then I've either got to put her out of the way or take her with me. She knows my one dangerous secret."
A busy devil in his heart whispered an excellent suggestion. He grinned in self-satisfied malignity. "Yes! That's the trick! If I win we'll take a Hoboken steamer together. Any one of our smuggling stewards and agents over there will take care of us on the way over.
"If I lose, she must go with me; and there are a few lonely lakes in Norway, a few deep fiords with leaping waterfalls. I might lose her there, and only that coward Lilienthal would perhaps suspect. He would have to keep his mouth shut, for he has his own tracks to cover, and he would easily believe that the pretty jade has run off and left me. And he fears publicity.
"As for Leah, she loves me blindly, with a dog's fidelity; her boy will be true to his dam and drift on in silence—a sharp scoundrel! The world is an easy oyster for him to open.
"If—if I lose Irma, I'll have Leah over there with me. My passport as August Meyer makes me invincible."
And the scheming villain threw himself down to dream of a stroke of luck which should make him safe in Northern Europe, in the assumed character of "August Meyer," a second self which fitted him like a Guardsman's uniform. "I can easily play off a long sickness, turn over the leases, and the brewer will run the 'Valkyrie.' My one hope and fear is Irma. If she pulls this off I'll fix her; yes, I'll fix her!"
He drifted away into a land of dreams, a far-off land, where, under the black shadows of the Norway firs, he could see the gleam of white hands thrown up despairingly in the icy waters. It was a fiend's prophecy of a nameless horror to come.
When Randall Clayton noticed the returning suavity of Manager Robert Wade's demeanor on the days ensuing the abortive attempt to lure the young cashier out West, he vowed to redouble his own crafty policy of secret resistance. It all seemed so clear to him now. "Wade and Ferris wish to conceal the marriage until the election is over. I would be exposed, perhaps even here, to their deadly resentment if I openly rebelled.
"But once that Jack Witherspoon is back, and Ferris anchored here, Jack can go on and face old Worthington. I will affect ignorance, and then a brief campaign of victory will put Irma in my arms."
Startled by Einstein's revelations, Randall Clayton had carefully removed every scrap of his private papers from his apartments, and his little fortune, his stocks and personal archives, were all safe in a down-town Safe Deposit.
The address and all the details of the Trust were lying in a sealed envelope in the safe of Jack Witherspoon's club, in Detroit, awaiting that legal champion's return.
And so, his heart thrilled with the fear of losing the Hungarian singer, Randall Clayton made friends with all in the office until his friend and enemy should pass each other in New York City.
The business and social atmosphere had visibly cleared before the day of the annual election came on.
Clayton's eyes were now fixed only on his friend Witherspoon, whose steamer was now picking him up at Boulogne. The approach of the Fourth of July, with a triple holiday—Saturday, Sunday and Monday—caused Clayton to toil, early and late, in the vast annual settlements of the end of the fiscal year. It was upon the basis of the settlement of June 30th that the reports of July 1st, the annual election, were to be made.
But one thought now filled Clayton's agitated heart.
It was Irma Gluyas' future. Her resolute policy of holding him off had inflamed Clayton's lover ardor to an overmastering passion.
Gallant and loyal, he had taken her at her own word. The unconventional artist life, her romantic early history, her foreign birth, her carefully veiled coming début, all this conspired to cover the singular reticence of the diva as to her home life.
He never had demanded her whole heart confidence, for he had been forced to veil from her his hopes of winning a fortune by one fell swoop upon the astounded Worthington.
"And then," murmured the passionate, heated lover, "I can tell her all. I can give her a home, the power of wealth to set my jewel off, and there shall be nothing hidden between us."
From first to last he had concealed nothing from her, save the mechanism of the short, sharp struggle which was to make him almost a millionaire, if Jack Witherspoon's bold plan succeeded.
It had been for her sake as well as his own that the veiled star, Irma Gluyas, had laughingly searched the map of New York and vicinity to find places of safe meeting.
To avoid Robert Wade's spies, to preserve Irma's incognito, they had exhausted the "lions" of every Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey village. They had canvassed every place of resort within fifty miles of New York City.
With a dumb fidelity Madame Raffoni had accompanied her beautiful charge. There was a wholesome innocence in these strangely arranged stolen interviews.
Clayton often searched that lovely face to read what malign influence kept her from opening her whole life to him.
But it all seemed so clear. Her wild artist nature yearned for the honors of a world's applause; it was agreed between them that, be it opera season or concert tour, that, once success was achieved, the eclipse of Love should hide her from the eager moths who flutter around the risen star.
"She trusts me; I have not told her all. When I can give her my whole life and a fortune," thought Clayton, "then I shall say, 'Irma, open the sealed books. There must be nothing hidden between us.'"
With a serene confidence in Madame Raffoni, Randall Clayton always came home alone and by circuitous routes, artfully varied, from these strange trysts.
This stolen time seemed all too short to speak of their future, gilded by a love which thrived strangely in the difficulties besetting the strangely-met couple.
Clayton's mind was unclouded by suspicion. He had given his whole destiny over to the keeping of the small blue-veined hands, which lingered so lovingly on his heated brow. His watchfulness was only turned upon Robert Wade's disgruntled spies.
From the heavily subsidized Einstein, Clayton gleefully learned that the weekly "report" of one or the other of the Fidelity Company's men consisted of a morose shake of the head and the single word, "Nothing!"
The cashier laughed at Emil's report of Wade's accidentally overheard angry growl, "Where the devil does he keep himself, any way?"
For Love had taught Clayton a strange, new craft, and he easily outwitted the two brutes who always came to "report" during his bank absences, and had vainly rifled his deserted rooms during his long Sunday and evening absences.
There was no tell-tale clue in the lonely apartment, where the dust of many long weeks had gathered in Arthur Ferris' vacant rooms.
Unable to absent himself on the near approach of the great annual settlement, driven at last to extremity, Randall Clayton arranged his last meeting with Irma, before the return of Ferris and Witherspoon, at Manhattan Beach.
For the summer boats were already running, and, on the broad piazzas of the Oriental they could safely meet.
It was so easy for Madame Raffoni to pilot the incognito diva by the railway to the Manhattan Hotel. A double veil and a judiciously fringed sunshade would make Irma Gluyas impregnable to the flaneur.
"Alas! The days of Aranjuez are over," sighed Clayton, for this tryst of Thursday was to be followed by the election on Friday.
As yet Arthur Ferris had given no sign of his impending arrival. Some gloomy foreboding weighed down Randall Clayton's soul with a fear of coming disaster. He felt how powerless he was in the hands of the cruel conspirators who had robbed him of his fortune.
He never doubted that Senator Durham and the treacherous Ferris both possessed Hugh Worthington's dastardly secret, and that they all stood ready to crush him.
The innocent four-line advertisement of the annual election had been duly inserted in the obscure corners of certain fourth-class journals, "as required by law."
There was an oily grin upon Robert Wade's self-satisfied face, and, with no single word from Worthington or Ferris, Clayton felt the toils closing around him. He was left out of the game—a mere poor pawn.
It was on the night before his five-o'clock tryst at the Manhattan, when Clayton suddenly sprang from his chair. "By God! I have it!" he cried. "Old Wade has failed to trap me. Ferris, the smug scoundrel, will glide back here and try to steal into my intimacy. He can post his slyly posted spies. I cannot then keep him off. And he will reiterate Worthington's plans, cling to me, and run me to earth. He will take up his Judas trade, and either trap me or else, baffled, will telegraph Worthington and have me discharged. Why has he concealed this secret marriage? And, damnation! I cannot ever meet Jack Witherspoon in private without giving myself away. I must have some one meet Witherspoon at the steamer and arrange for one meeting out of town. He must go over to Philadelphia and await me. I can take an evening train over, and be back here, even if Ferris hangs on my track. I will go out alone, as if to the theater, and then turn up belated. Ferris must not know. It is for my life, for Irma, and for my fortune that I struggle now. My God! Whom can I trust now, and they have poisoned Alice's mind against me. I see their damned villainy. Poor Little Sister! Another man's wife now. She will never know."
In his lover's second sight Randall Clayton had really stumbled on the artful measure by which the old Croesus had deliberately shifted Alice Worthington's love for her old-time playmate.
Over his gold-bowed spectacles, Hugh Worthington, the "surviving partner," had sadly read aloud the details of Randall Clayton's "New York career." "Forget him, Alice," the old man sternly said. "He has fallen on evil ways." "And yet you still keep him in your employ, father?" answered the clear-eyed girl, her wondering glances gleaming out under a brow of truth.
"Yes, yes!" harshly said the startled old miser. "But it must soon come to an end. I have delayed the inevitable. But he must go. You are right; he must go."
And with this colloquy by the far Pacific, the old man dropped Randall Clayton's soiled memory, while the despoiled heir had turned at bay to fight for his own.
While Randall Clayton paced his lonely rooms in Manhattan, gazing sadly on the glowing Danube scene, there was a woman seated in a shaded corner of the old library of the lonely mansion on Layte Street. The second drawing-room and library on the ground floor were a dream of luxury. It had once pleased Mr. Fritz Braun to make them worthy of a Sultana.
And he stood there now, regarding the graceful figure of one whose head was hidden in her hands.
The diamonds on the adventurer's bosom flashed fitfully in the yellow gaslight, as he slowly said, "And now you know all your part. Will you play it?"
Irma Gluyas sprang to her feet and clutched his arms with a despairing clasp. "Swear to me that no harm shall come to him!"
Fritz Braun growled an assent. "Not a hand shall be laid on him. I swear it!" And then, through falling tears, the Magyar witch gave her word to do her master's bidding. She had glided from the room before the man started, as the street door clashed and the roll of wheels was heard. He poured out a draught of brandy and threw himself into a chair. "One week more and I would be too late. I must hoodwink her!"
Five o'clock on Thursday afternoon found Mr. Randall Clayton hovering around the grounds of the more democratic Hotel Manhattan, while the early birds of fashion sought the more pretentious splendor of the Oriental.
There was an anxious look upon the young man's face, and deep hollows under his eyes told of unaccustomed vigils. A couple of wandering peris gazed wishfully at the hand bundle carefully enveloped in silvery tissue paper. It was true that dark blue Russian violets, the starry forget-me-not, and the peerless lilies of the valley were therein hidden, but a keener emotion than expectant love shone in the young man's haggard eyes.
He was anxiously gazing around for the now well known form of Madame Raffoni. Clayton dared not exhibit himself before the couple of hundred staring eyes upon the pavilion and broad porticos.
An unknown fear of being entrapped drove him restlessly about.
"Would to God that Jack Witherspoon had arrived!" muttered the lover. "I may have the trap sprung on me at any moment. Another week; a long, long week! And God knows what may not happen in that time." Some burning fever gnawed at his unquiet heart, some veiled danger weighed him down.
Clayton was waiting for the approach of the wife of that mysterious musical director whom he had never seen.
A fortunate sort of lingua Franca had been patched up between the unsuspicious Clayton and the dark-eyed duenna. A few words of German, a little scattered French, and a bit of gibberish English enabled the two to hold occasional brief and amiable intercourse.
"What language does she really speak?" often cried the baffledClayton to the mocking Irma.
"Only pure Czech, my comrade," laughed the diva. "And I will teach you the softest language of Love myself when we wander back into the blue Bohemian mountains to proud old Georgsburg. My father was a Magyar, my mother," she softly said, "a Czech princess."
While Clayton moved around, cautiously exhibiting himself as agreed upon, his mind was agitated with a hundred unknown fears. He knew not the designs of his panther-footed enemies.
To his astonishment, Robert Wade was absent the whole last business day of the year from the Western Trading Company's offices, and this, too, when every pen was busied up to five o'clock.
And, the momentous election was to occur in the morning!
He had lingered with his own annual summary until three o'clock, when the dejected face of Somers, the head accountant, had appeared at his office door. "I have a telegram that Mr. Wade is sick in his bed. I am to take the consolidated accounts up to him to-night."
And so Randall Clayton handed over his papers without a word. "It will probably be the last account I will ever render here," he savagely mused, as he clashed his roll-top desk. "I wish that I had broken it all off when Wade brought on the half quarrel. I should have taken a friend with me, drawn out my little hoard, gone West and faced Worthington before he successfully works this infamous deal.
"Now I am powerless. He may tell us both to go to the devil."
And then Clayton sadly remembered that he depended only on Jack Witherspoon's mere hearsay for any proofs of wrong-doing. "Yes! I've only Jack's eagerness to marry that dainty Francine Delacroix to thank for my fortune—if I ever get it. A woman whom I never have seen decides my whole destiny, while I would give my life up, my last drop of blood, for Irma!"
Ah! All unknown to him, a dozen busy minds were weaving snares for his wandering feet. While Clayton, at last, saw Madame Raffoni cautiously approaching, in his superb Fifth Avenue residence, the sick man, Robert Wade, was closeted with the wolfish-eyed Arthur Ferris, the parchment-faced Somers, and four of the seven directors of the Trading Company.
On guard, lingering around Clayton's apartment, two mercantile agent's spies were waiting to pipe him off and report his every movement secretly to the returned Ferris, now breathless with anxiety for the greatest financial coup of the season.
Mr. Fritz Braun was artfully busied at Magdal's Pharmacy with giving Timmins a few last directions, and with the quiet destruction of a few necessary professional memoranda which he did not care to leave behind as dangerous weapons in the hands of the law or any thieving clerk.
In the pocket of Mr. Fritz Braun's well-known brown overcoat now reposed a bulky envelope, with a passport for Mr. and Mrs. August Meyer, his Frankfort bank exchange, and several letters of introduction to responsible merchants in Upper Germany. He was, at least, armed for flight, and fortified beyond all attack.
Ben Timmins looked forward, with delight, to a six-months' suzerainty of his master's drug business. "I have given Mr. Lilienthal my power of attorney," said Braun soberly, "and I figure that you should turn him in at least two hundred dollars a week profit, and also keep the stock up. He will look in once or twice a week. If you need help, he will get you a man. If you don't do your duty, he will promptly kick you out."
"Thank you, sir," submissively remarked Timmins, who felt sure of declaring himself an equal cash dividend every week.
"Now remember," said Braun, "I am going over to see Lilienthal. If any one asks for me, I have gone over the water, that's all.
"For how long, is nobody's business, and you can refer all inquiries to Lilienthal direct. All that you have to do is to mind your business and mine. Lilienthal will let you know when I am coming back, and advise you."
The two lovers had met, far away at Manhattan Beach, after Madame Raffoni had discreetly piloted Clayton over to a sandy hollow where a half-burned spar gave a convenient resting-place, before Fritz Braun and Lilienthal had finished an acrimonious settlement of some private money matters.
"I'm not a wolf," growled Braun. "You square up as if you were never going to see me again. You need me more than I need you."
They were in the safe seclusion of the "Private Room" of the NewportArt Gallery, judiciously vacated for the occasion, when a strangefear took possession of the sly pleasure pander, Mr. AdolphLilienthal.
"See here, Braun," he huskily said, a mean suspicion seizing upon him, "You're not cutting stick for good! You're not going to 'blow on me' and 'give me away!' By God! I believe it," he said in fright, as he noted Braun's pale face.
"It's two months since I've seen Irma Gluyas. Damn you! You've sent her over to the other side, and got all your papers safe! You've turned revenue spy! I see your game!"
Before the words were out of his mouth, Braun had dragged the venal scoundrel down in a strangler's grip. Planting his knee on his chest, he hissed, "One more word and I'll throttle you here! I can go out by the side entrance! You dare not scream! You fool! Don't you know Irma, the pretty baggage, cleared out six weeks ago with a New York millionaire whom she picked up?"
"Swear to me that you'll keep your mouth shut or I'll go out and denounce you now. I have nothing to lose. You have. You have robbed me in our past dealings. You are rich and I am poor. I am going to follow that woman over the world till I find her, for I loved her. That's all! Swear that you'll keep my secrets or I'll kill you now. I've burned every paper I have in the world."
When Braun's desperate mood had passed, he allowed the pleading man to rise, and then listened morosely as Lilienthal, the veriest coward at heart, begged for a reconciliation. "I didn't know of your trouble," gasped Lilienthal. "See here, if you'll go on to Hamburg and Bremen and fix up that 'phenacetine' business for me, I'll advance you five thousand dollars now. I didn't know you were so hard up." He whispered an address in the victorious druggist's ear.
The half-crazed gamester felt that he had gone too far, and in half an hour he departed richer by a cheque for five thousand dollars.
But his mind was far away on Manhattan Beach, with the wandering lovers, as he told Lilienthal that he should not call again. "I'll jump on the first steamer I can catch! Timmins knows all. Just watch him, and don't put yourself in his power, till I return. He can run the shop to a good profit in 'dope' and drinks till I am with you again. I'm damned near crazy at losing that woman." And the cowardly Lilienthal believed his rugged master.
When he had stalked away through the snaplock-guarded private entrance, there came over Lilienthal's face a spasm of deadly hatred. "The dirty dog!" he growled, as he unlocked a cabinet and drank heavily. "It must be true. This young fellow Clayton is here on duty every day; he looks wolfish, too. I wonder if he really loved the girl. Well, I shall soon have my day. If Braun ever presents that letter in Hamburg the friends there will have received my secret message by our No. II, who goes over this trip. A walk around the docks, and a knife stab in the back will settle Braun. He knows too much to be allowed to run loose in Europe. He would like to spoil our game; he shall spoil his own." And the traitor hastened away to entrap Braun, little dreaming that the acute druggist would never trust himself to the hands of the "gang" at Hamburg.
Randall Clayton had been startled by Madame Raffoni's eager disclosure as he approached the place of rendezvous. He had studied the still handsome face of the disguised Leah Einstein when she told him that the Fräulein was really ill and most unhappy. He managed to pick out from her dialect that the diva had been plunged in some secret sorrow.
Quietly restraining himself, he watched the voluptuous form of the Jewess mingle with the crowd of guests on the hotel terrace. "That poor woman, a worn-out theater beauty, is without guile. What can this mean?"
He had rightly judged the good-hearted Leah's concern, and he never knew of the long hours of the discarded mistress' ministrations to the "reigning beauty."
Timorous at heart, Leah Einstein's evil career had been only one of petty wheedling craft, and an easy self-surrender.
Violence she both feared and abhorred, and now, in the wane of her beauty, she was easily content with such crumbs of money profit as could be picked up by an easy code of a plastic surface morality which covered only her petty intrigues.
Loyal to Irma Gulyas, Randall Clayton dared not question the poor mock duenna; in fact, her jargon vocabulary would have failed her, but there had been no deceit in the sympathetic tears which clung to Madame Raffoni's eyelids.
Seated on a half-burned spar, there where the roar of the restless waves reached their ears, with her face veiled, the Magyar witch awaited her all unsuspicious lover. The golden sunset faded now far in the west, the piled up purple clouds were turning blacker, and around them
"The mists arose, the waters swelled,""Gulls screamed, their flight recalling."
The woman's heart was racked with the deceit which had entrapped a man she now madly loved.
The freshening wind was driving the black smoke of the steamers, far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake, and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in anticipation of the coming storm.
An infinite tenderness seized upon Randall Clayton as he motioned to Madame Raffoni to leave them, and then took that beloved head to its shelter upon his breast.
His heart panted for the day when they could be all in all to each other. He felt the clouding spell of some mysterious enmity descending upon them, and clouding their love as he kissed the white and trembling hands which had so nervously clasped his own. For Irma Gluyas feared for her own life. She dared not betray the tiger-like Fritz Braun, whose veiled scheme of plunder or blackmail she could not fathom.
Hitherto all had gone well with them, in their merry will-o'-the-wisp game with Irma's jealous unknown guardians, with his concealed enemies.
But Clayton well knew that no mere pretense would baffle ArthurFerris' thorough knowledge of all of his past social habits.
He dared not openly quarrel with Ferris until Jack Witherspoon's return. He only lived now to see the Detroit lawyer speeding west, far on ahead of the deceitful Ferris, who would be detained in New York by the quiet consummation of the big deal.
Clayton was but too well aware that his only weapon was his knowledge of Ferris' secret marriage—an outrage upon Alice Worthington's unguarded girlhood.
And yet he dared not openly use that weapon; how easy for the old capitalist to frame a suave excuse for the "maimed rites" of that Western bridal.
One longing burned now in Clayton's heart, the honest wish to find some dignified and safe place of meeting with the woman upon whom he would shower the gold soon to be his own.
"If anything should happen," he thought.
Of course, his own face was too well known to adopt any mere hiding tactics. Irma was ever fearful of her jealous artist guardians, and in this lovely evening hour the lover's heart rose up in all its stormy tenderness to beg her to lift the veil from her incognito.
Even while they murmured again their vows and drifted away into dreams of the unclouded future, the heavens were blackening around them.
Irma seemed strangely frightened as she cowered in her lover's arms, while he begged her to lift the veil of her privacy.
"I must be with you—near you," he cried. "Listen! I have even now grave matters hanging over me which may summon me suddenly away from you. You know not my abode. You cannot write or telegraph safely to my office.
"There are veiled spies, jealous rivals, there, who would rob me of place, power, and the money which will yet be ours, in the dear far-off Danube land.
"You have been ill, distressed," he fondly said. "Nay, do not deny it! Madame Raffoni has told me all."
"My God!" whispered Irma. "She has told you"—
"Only that you have suffered, my darling," said Clayton, folding her to his breast.
"Ah! I must make an end of it!" the loyal lover cried, as Irma lay sobbing on his breast. "If I could only come to you; how shall I know? Can you trust no one? There is Madame Raffoni," said Clayton.
"She knows where my office is. I have bribed her, with flattery and a few little kindnesses, to come and tell me of you, several times, when we have been separated in these long weeks. We have not even gone to the 'Bavaria'; I have shown her my office. I care not to force myself upon your loyal secrecy. I respect the promise upon which your artistic future depends; but think of me. If you were ill, and we were separated by Fate, I should go mad! I could not live! Can you not trust her to bring me to you?" Fear and love were striving now in the singer's throbbing heart.
The Magyar witch clasped her arms around her gallant lover in a mad access of tenderness. "And you do love me so, Randall," she cried, in a storm of tears.
"More than my life," said the man who now felt her heart beating wildly against his own.
"Ah! God!" sobbed Irma. "If we had only met in other days, in another land, in my own dear country!"
"Listen, Irma," pleaded Clayton. "I will soon take you away, far over the seas."
"In a few weeks I shall be free, and you shall be my own, my very own! For I will then come to you, free to give you all that life and love can give.
"But promise me now that Madame Raffoni shall lead me to you if you need me. You can trust her. I will come to her home. I cannot bear this agony, and I am watched, also!"
Even as he spoke, the heavens blackened and a stormy drift of rain swept athwart the sky. There was a muttering roll of thunder. The white-crested waves dashed menacingly upon the shore!
Irma Gluyas clung to her lover as the affrighted Madame Raffoni came rushing toward them for shelter in the storm. The red lightning flashed, and the fury of the storm was upon them. It was a wild tempest which raged around them. The women were helpless with fear.
In despair, Randall Clayton gazed at the distant hotels; there was shelter and safety. But now a new fear beset him. His well-known identity, Irma's marked beauty, the strange attendant duenna, there would be certain discovery and scandal. And he would be Ferris' easy victim if discovered.
Irma Gluyas shrieked as she clung to her lover and bade him save her as the wild lightning bolts rent the darkness. It was a horrid elemental tumult!
A few hundred yards away a heavy closed carriage was slowly creeping along the drive between the hotels. "Run for your life!" shouted Clayton to the eager Madame Raffoni. "Stop that carriage. Offer him anything, everything! I will carry her. I must save her."
Bending himself to the task, Clayton raised the fainting form of Irma Gluyas. Her long hair lowered, swept around her in the storm; her sculptured arms clung to him, and her warm heart thrilled him as he sped on through the driving torrent. He was possessed with Love's last delirium.
In the violence of the storm, Clayton could only motion "forward" as he closed the door of the carriage and the frightened horses set off at a mad gallop. The inmates of the carriage never saw the bridge as the vehicle swayed from side to side in the blue-flamed lightning flashes.
They were nearing Brooklyn when, in the still driving storm,Clayton descended and procured some restoratives at a pharmacy.
He poured a draught of strong wine between the affrighted woman's pallid lips, and then whispered, "You must tell me where to take you. It is life or death now."
And then Irma Gluyas, her head resting on Madame Raffoni's bosom, feebly whispered, "To my home, 192 Layte Street."
There was not a word spoken as, in the midnight darkness of the storm, the horses struggled along until, under the shelter of the high houses, the carriage stopped before the desolate-looking old mansion.
There was a look of terror on Madame Raffoni's face which was not lost upon Clayton. "Get the door open," he hoarsely cried. "I will carry her in. Then, I swear to you, I will leave her at once."
The strong man sprang from his place, and in a few moments he stood within the veiled splendors of the old drawing-room.
Kneeling by the bed, wherein he had deposited the senseless woman,Clayton chafed her marble hands in an agony of despair.
But, even in his lover's exaltation, he listened to Madame Raffoni, who knelt before him in passionate adjuration. "Go, go!" she cried in broken pathos. "I will come to you to-morrow."
And she dragged him to the door. "I will all do; everything! I swear! Yes! Yes!! Yes!!!"
With one last despairing look, raining passionate kisses upon the marble lips of the woman he loved, Randall Clayton left the dusky magnificence of the superb apartment, and only halted at the door long enough to whisper to the Raffoni, "Bring me to her to-morrow, and I will make you rich!"
And the poor woman dumbly covered his hands with obedient kisses."Go, go!" she cried. "I will come!"
And, touched with the woman's frantic fears, Randall Clayton sprang into the carriage. Through the blinding storm he had reached the New York side before he thought of his own movements, of the morrow, of his coming friend, and of his wary enemies.
Then he resolutely made up his mind to fight the warring Fates to a finish.
He drove to the Astor House, dismissed his driver with a ransom fee, and there hid himself in an upper room.
When he presented himself at the half-deserted office of the Western Trading Company, upon the next morning, he was clad in unfamiliar garb.
His blood-shot eyes told of a vigil of mental suffering, and he dared say nothing as he gruffly bowed when Mr. Somers told him of Robert Wade's continued illness.
"I am going down to the election," said the old accountant. "And so you will be in charge, as Mr. Ferris has not been heard from. There is no one here but you to represent the management."
"Trapped," muttered Clayton, who listened every moment for some tidings of the woman whose silken hair had wound its delicate meshes around him in the storm. "Dying; dead, perhaps," he groaned, in an agony of excitement, and then and there he swore that, upon the arrival of Witherspoon he would leave the cave of his enemies, await his fate, and bear Irma Gluyas away to farther and fairer lands.
The long morning dragged on in a semi-stupor as he sat there listening to the hollow footfall of the casual passers-by.
And yet there was no word from Madame Raffoni, the only holder of the secret of Irma Gluyas' life. His foot was on the threshhold to leave at last, when Arthur Ferris calmly entered.
Randall Clayton mastered himself with a mighty effort, as Ferris glibly murmured, "I am only here for a few moments! Come into the private office."
The few minutes before they were at their ease in Robert Wade's impregnable sanctum enabled Clayton to steel himself against the secret bridegroom's duplicity. Clayton's quick eye noted Ferris' satchel, his top-coat and umbrella carelessly thrown down on Wade's reading-table.
"Have you been at the rooms?" carelessly remarked Clayton, tossingFerris' private keys upon the table. "No," curtly replied Ferris."I came here directly from the train. I wished to stop and see mymother and sister; but Wade's illness has upset all my plans.
"I have to go on to Philadelphia at once on some private business for the Chief. You know he is a very heavy stockholder in the Cramp Shipbuilding Company. I will not be back for several days."
"And what about the election?" deliberately replied Clayton, now anxious to draw his enemy out. "I have nothing to do with that," said Ferris, dropping his eyes to veil a slight agitation. "Wade has all that in charge, and he has given Somers his proxy."
"I thought that you held Worthington's private power of attorney," stoutly said Randall Clayton.
"Only for his outside matters, Clayton," coaxingly said Ferris. "The fact is, we may expect many changes. Hugh has several plans of great importance in his mind.
"Yes; I have lived in an atmosphere of change for some time, Ferris," said Clayton, bluntly. "I have only been waiting for your return to consult with you about giving up our joint apartment.
"I reserved that privilege on May 1st, and you can either keep the rooms or sublet them. I have paid the rental for the last three months in your absence."
"See here, Clayton," sharply said Ferris, throwing off the mask. "I am not a man for any mysteries. I don't know why I should be forced to tell you things that I do not know myself.
"Now, I will be several days busy with these outside matters at Philadelphia. You had the one opportunity of your life the other day.
"I expect that you will have reconsidered your refusal to Wade, to obey Hugh Worthington's orders by my return."
"So you know all about it, do you?" fiercely retorted Randall Clayton. "I fancied that Wade was dealing directly with Hugh, himself, by the tone of the Chief's letters and the telegrams which I have received."
"The matter has been referred to me," hotly answered Ferris, who dared not openly use his new power. "But I will not wait here to discuss this matter. I may miss my train."
Arthur Ferris sharply rang a bell, and then, with a nod of recognition, directed the young Einstein to take his traps down stairs and call him a carriage.
The door clanged and the two secret enemies were left facing each other.