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Midnight Passenger

<h2 id="id00567" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER V.</h2> <h5 id="id00568">BREAKERS AHEAD! CHECKMATE! MR. ARTHUR FERRIS WORKS IN THE DARK.</h5> 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 nothing prevent our meeting in New York. Will act instantly in your matter. Have had private news. They were secretly married a month ago at Tacoma. 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!" <h2 id="id00693" style="margin-top: 4em">BOOK II.</h2> <h5 id="id00694">AN INSIDE RING.</h5> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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