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Midnight Passenger

<h2 id="id01256" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER X.</h2> <h5 id="id01257">A CRUEL LEGACY.</h5> Randall Clayton's name was being bandied scornfully by thousands of sneering lips as Arthur Ferris evaded his New York friends in the crowded lobby of the Hoffman. The crafty lawyer bridegroom was happy at Witherspoon's promise to remain and aid him. The secret antagonists had, however, lied to each other with all possible show of candor. Ferris returned rapidly to Robert Wade's private office, having engaged a temporary resting place at the Fifth Avenue. "Let no cards be sent to my room—from the press or any other people. You can easily understand why!" he ordered. The suave head clerk convoluted in sympathy with the financial disaster, now the theme of the wildest gossip. But his heart was as cold as the gleam of his gigantic diamond stud (real), as he smoothly greeted the next customer. What is human suffering or disgrace in a New York crowd? Ferris calmly refreshed himself at the Fifth Avenue's historic bar, and then, hastening away to the Trading Company's office, sharply dismissed the timorous Wade. That fat functionary was visibly rattled when Ferris sent him home for the night. "I shall personally direct all important matters now. You may as well notify Bell and Edson that (for your own sake) I allow you and Somers, as well as them, to remain on duty. But you four men can consider yourselves practically suspended until Hugh Worthington arrives. You officials can sign no single paper, from now on, without my counter endorsement. There's my warrant for this action. I shall have this letter spread on your confidential letter-book, so consider me as the real manager until I put you on duty again." Robert Wade turned ashen pale as he read Hugh Worthington's carte blanche powers given under his own hand to the new vice-president. "As I hold this, his power of attorney, and all his proxies, I presume that you recognize my authority," coldly remarked Ferris. "I will take charge of all here. I will be either here or at Parlor C, Fifth Avenue." "When do you expect Worthington?" stammered the deposed manager. "I don't know," sharply said Ferris. "For God's sake, consider my family, my business future, my reputation," cried Wade, with tears in his eyes. "Pooh!" angrily rejoined Ferris. "Make that by-play on old Hugh. It's all lost on me!" And, as the door closed, he sharply locked it, and, after examining the rooms to prevent any Peeping Tom observing his actions, Ferris sat down to study Clayton's telegraph book, and the messages which he had rifled from the dead man's desk. "I am safe so far," muttered Ferris. "No one knows of my big secret deal. But from this fellow's dispatch to Hugh, he certainly intended to go out and see Edson at Bay Ridge. Now, did he start in good faith? I must set some good outside detectives at work on that. "Then this dispatch to Alice, I wonder if she had still left a sneaking fondness for him! Who can read a woman's heart? It's like judging the depth of water by its smoothness: all mere conjecture. Half the women are liars, and the other half hide more than half the truth under their silken breastplates. They fight with double-edged lies as their keenest weapons. "Unless Clayton was a very deep rascal, he certainly intended to go on West. Where the devil is he? Kidnapped, and held till the swag is safe? Dead? No!" A guilty spasm of conscience suggested that the missing cashier might have secreted the funds and fled, to make private terms later from his hiding place, with the wary Hugh. "He knew nothing, he suspected nothing of the Detroit land deal," finally decided Ferris. "It's just a case of plain, ordinary thief!" The ambitious scoundrel had decided to conceal the finding of Clayton's dispatches and carbon-book from all the local officials of the company. "Now to the practical," he muttered, as he spread out his girl wife's fateful telegram. "She will have surely received the Tacoma dispatches to the old man before I can reach her now. The Associated Press, to-morrow, will have a full account of the accident. His condition will be telegraphed all over the country. But I'll instantly send a carte blanche order to the Western Union man at Pasco for hourly reports." The Gazetteer had furnished him the meager information that Pasco was a little railroad junction town in Franklin County, Washington, on the Columbia River. "The old man must have been delayed on his way to meet Clayton." "Now, for Alice!" The schemer's brow was damp with a cold moisture as he muttered: "Old Hugh hated even to hear of Death. He tabooed the subject like a Chinese mandarin. "His will! Did he think to change that document after the formal marriage? I have not yet delivered Senator Durham! Hugh may have left this girl the whole property! Fool! That I did not take that matter up! Who ever thinks of Death, the grim shadow, stealing along at our side? I must kill off her lingering regard for 'Brother Randall Clayton!' Shall I start?" After half an hour's cogitation, Ferris had made up his plan of operations. "I must let him drop! I cannot reach him. I will then act on a certainty. She will report to me. I will clear all up here and start West to-morrow night. But I will await her report and a second order to join her. I must let her know why I linger." There were a dozen attendants waiting outside, for the accountants, detectives and police were to be busied, coming and going, all the night. Ferris had already called Einstein, waiting now on his own special orders, when he changed his mind. "I'll trust no one now." He decided to go to the telegraph office himself. He suddenly remembered the influence of the robbery and Worthington's untimely death upon the value of the Western Trading Company's stock. "Damn it!" he growled. "I may be left a millionaire or a pauper! I don't know which; and I have no ready money." But the presence of Senator Durham at Newport gave him a gleam of light in these dark skies. "I'll telegraph to Durham (in cipher) to sell a big block of this stock short at the opening of the Board. Hugh's death will carry it down twenty or thirty dollars a share, and then it will be back to the normal in a week." Suddenly he remembered the waiting Einstein. "Tell me," hoarsely whispered Ferris as he dragged the lad back into the private office, "What do you think of all this? You knew Mr. Clayton's ways!" "What's my opinion worth?" bluntly said the watchful Emil. "This!" said Ferris, handing him a roll of bills. "Then," fearfully whispered the artful boy, "it ain't no case of skippin' out. I believe some of the fools in the office got a braggin' over their lunches about our heavy bank business, and some smart gang has 'done up' Mr. Clayton. I don't think he's alive. He wasn't the man to 'give up' easy. He was 'dead square.' There wasn't no woman in the case. I could tell stories of some of the other gentlemen. No! Clayton's been hit good an' hard!" The boy trembled as he spoke. Ferris laughed contemptuously. "Here, in New York!" The stubborn boy answered: "Look a-here! I'm only a poor working boy! There's twenty squares within a half mile where a man's life isn't safe if he flashes a ten-dollar bill. Clayton was followed, and done up for fair. An' the gang an' the swag are hundreds of miles away! That's how!" "But where would they hide him?" answered Ferris, shivering at the boy's matter-of-fact coldness. "RIVER!" emphatically said Emil. "Five to six hundred floaters picked up every year. Nobody knows; nobody cares! "Now," sagely concluded Emil, "if Clayton could have been led off, then it's dead easy; but he started straight for the bank, and never got there. The gang may have piped him off for months, and they worked on him, right here in the heart of town." "Keep your mouth shut. Post me, on the quiet," said Ferris, as he remembered his telegrams. When Emil Einstein was left alone, he calmly counted his bills. "Pretty good throw-off," he murmured. "I must lie low, for the mother's sake. And—give her a wide berth. It's getting pretty warm. This fellow's a chump; but the detectives, there's another breed of rats!" The boy shivered as he thought of the gleaming handcuffs. Arthur Ferris had now recovered from the first shock of the tidings from the West enough to look ahead for the piloting of his own interests. He smiled grimly. "Business before pleasure!" as he sent off at the Twenty-third Street general office the tidings which enabled Senator Durham to turn a cool hundred thousand. "He'll be down here to-morrow to watch over his stocks! I must wait and see him before I go West. Besides, I must see Witherspoon and give him his cue. He knows nothing! He searched the Detroit title and never even made a kick. His firm passed on the whole matter. I need him to carry out my future plans." It seemed to Ferris that his long dispatch to "Miss Alice Worthington" betrayed too much connubial tenderness. He recast it, and, after stating that he would leave for Pasco within twenty-four hours, added: "Open and read all dispatches sent on to your father from Tacoma. The company's affairs are paralyzed here. I am in sole control. Randall Clayton has absconded with a quarter of a million. Missing since Saturday. Police at work. Telegraph your hotel address. I will report by wire to-morrow several times. Will be guided by your telegrams. Am acting under your father's letter of instructions. Secure all his private papers in case of grave results of injury." All the weary night Arthur Ferris tossed uneasily upon his bed, tormented with returning fears as to Hugh Worthington's testamentary dispositions. "Those old miser hunks are crafty! The girl will be wax in my hands if I am left to control the money. If she has the purse-strings I may find her ugly in harness. She has the old man's blood in her, and blood will tell." He had not dared to reveal the secret marriage in the decorous language of his carefully worded dispatch. But one comfort was left him. "I have the whip hand of them all," he murmured. "I am in charge, and no one can displace me. Jack Witherspoon knows nothing, and I can easily placate him by making him one of the estate's lawyers." The golden crown of the millionaire seemed to have descended upon his brows at last. Yet, while he slept, the enemy was awake and sowed tares! At the Hoffman House Doctor Atwater and Witherspoon sat in conference long after the midnight chimes had sounded. When the young men separated, Atwater heartily grasped his friend's hand. "Poor Randall," he sighed. "Fool, perhaps, even as you or I; but thief and defaulter, no; never. There is some sad solution to this mystery. You must wait till Worthington arrives, and be the champion of our missing friend. I only fear later a discovery of his murder, and, if so, thank God! it will be a cypress wreath; not the stain of dishonor, or the brand of the felon. I am yours, to the last." As Witherspoon said "Good night" to the little picture of Francine Delacroix, which was his household goddess, he swore an oath of fidelity. "It may leave me poor, separate us for years; but Clayton, dead or alive, shall be found. The Detroit package may unravel a part of this mystery." It was high noon the next day when Arthur Ferris had completed his arrangements for the hasty trip West. Jack Witherspoon sat in Ferris' private office, stunned with the news of Hugh Worthington's death at Pasco. For the operator there had loyally sent on to Ferris the first news of the millionaire's demise in laconic words, "Died at ten o'clock, fully conscious. Daughter with him since four A.M. Full Associated Press reports later." The morning journals only contained a rumor that "Mr. Hugh Worthington's private car was attached to the telescoped train." "This leaves me in charge of all until Hugh's will is opened," evasively said Ferris. "But it is my duty to go out there. You must remain here, as my representative, until I return. I will telegraph your firm at Detroit that I need you here. They can charge a company fee. Your own honorarium will be paid 'out of the estate.' Now join me here at four. I'll have your orders ready. And you can go to the station with me. I'll wire you, twice a day, and you can report to me, on the train." "Any clue?" sadly demanded Witherspoon. "Oh! Clayton has got clean away with his swag," said Ferris. "I've published fifteen thousand dollars' reward for him, and ten more for the cheques or any considerable part of the stolen money." They parted in silence, and Ferris never saw the glare in Jack Witherspoon's eyes. "If he proves innocent, my poor friend, I'll make Ferris, on his knees, eat those cruel words!" But when he left his new client, so strangely brought into his half confidence, the Detroit lawyer hastened to Adams' Express office. For two hours he sat alone in a private room and studied over the contents of the mute message of the dead. There were things in the package which astounded him; there were written words which melted him to tears. The little hoard of twenty-eight thousand dollars in certified cheques was there, with an order for Randall Clayton's active stocks. A duly executed will, in favor of my school-fellow and friend, Jack Witherspoon, lawyer, of Detroit, was accompanied with a letter which gave the history of the abortive attempt to decoy him to Cheyenne. The last manly lines brought tears to Jack Witherspoon's eyes. "As they cannot lure me to Cheyenne, they may strike at me, even here, and so, before your return. I've left you the little I have. Should aught befall me, you are my sole heir, and the old matter would go to you. Punish Hugh, follow up and defeat Ferris, and win my birthright for Francine Delacroix. Make her your happy wife. We made a mistake, Jack. We should have gone West together at once, and faced old Hugh." The young lawyer's eyes were filled with tears as he read the rest of Clayton's statement, evidently prepared to offset any attempt on his life. But he was ready to battle within the enemy's lines, with a calm and unmoved face, when he met Arthur Ferris at four o'clock. Witherspoon scarcely recognized the man whom he instinctively felt to be Randall Clayton's murderer. There were great furrows in Ferris' pale cheeks as he handed him a telegram. "I believe that the whole world is going mad," desperately said the baffled Ferris. "Just read those lines from a now helpless and orphaned girl." The men who were to fight out a battle to the death eyed each other in silence. Witherspoon scarcely could credit his eyes, as he read again and again the few words of the imperative message. "My father died this morning. Do not join me. Send no telegrams or letters. I am coming, at once, to New York. Remain in charge until I come with my lawyers from Detroit. I will have my father's will and all his papers. I act under his last wishes. Find Randall Clayton, dead or alive. <h5 id="id01315">"ALICE WORTHINGTON."</h5> "Now, tell me, Witherspoon, is not that girl mad?" hoarsely cried Ferris. "I suppose that all the railroad people and our ranch men have gathered around her, and she has dozens of volunteer advisers. By God! I'll straighten her out when I meet her." The young Detroit lawyer met Ferris' agonized glances squarely, and his voice rang as coldly as the clang of steel when he quietly said, handing back the papers: "I must tell you, Mr. Ferris," he answered, with decision, "that I release you from any obligation to me for my services so far. I shall decline to express any personal or professional opinion in this matter until I get further orders." Ferris sprang back like a tiger cat at bay. "Orders! Orders from whom?" he almost yelled. "From my seniors at Detroit," quietly answered Jack, "or from Miss Alice Worthington. I am surprised at the tone in which you refer to her! What are your claims upon her? "Of course, as a brother professional, you know that your power of attorney from poor old Hugh ended with his appallingly sudden death. That demise also vacates the letter of instructions given to you." "But I am the vice-president of the company," growled Ferris, scenting a possible enemy in the imperturbable young advocate. "True, but you are not a judge on the bench. You have suspended all the officers here, usurped their powers, and taken great responsibilities. Do you control a majority of the stock of the Western Trading Company?" Ferris winced. "Of course, you know I don't; but the Worthington estate does!" "What power have you to represent that estate?" pursued the unpitying Witherspoon. "It looks as if Miss Worthington would act herself, and, also, have other advisers. I now, as a friend to all parties, warn you that you will be held responsible for all your acts here. You must not ask me for any further advice." "I suppose you will volunteer your legal acumen to the young heiress, now!" sneered Ferris. He regretted his brutal outbreak, for John Witherspoon rose with calmness. "I own five hundred shares of the stock myself, earned as a fee, from the late Mr. Worthington. "I shall claim my right to have access to the company's public offices, and to watch your strange floundering around here. We will drop our social and personal intercourse right here—forever. Your last remark is so vile that it is beneath contempt." Witherspoon was at the door when Ferris laid his pleading hands upon his arm. The Detroit man shook them off. "I warn you, Mr. Ferris," he said, "that a very reputable minority of the community, if not a majority, will believe that Randall Clayton was waylaid and murdered. Now, until you can show him up as a thief, I recommend you to use charity and forbearance. It is my belief that there has been some damnable foul play here." The dejected Ferris sat for an hour with his head buried in his hands, before he dared to answer his girl wife's imperative telegram. "I must wait here like a tongue-tied dog," he growled. "Has the will made her a sole legatee? If so, I must work on her feelings. I was a fool to quarrel with this fellow. He was another of the school-time playmates!" When Ferris sneaked out to send a submissive dispatch to his wife, he was tormented by the stern words of the young orphan's telegram. "I act under his last wishes. Find Randall Clayton, dead or alive." "There is trouble ahead," mused Ferris, "and I have made enemies of all the officials here. But Alice is mine. I hold her in the hollow of my hand. My wife! That she cannot gainsay." When he had sent off his message he felt strangely cheered by the reflection that Worthington probably left ten to fifteen millions behind him. "There's enough for all," he cheerily reflected. "I'll let her play 'Miss Millions' a bit, but when the probate proceedings come up, she'll find a husband is a hard thing to deal with." He was wandering back to the office, determined to remove at once all of his private data and personal effects to the Fifth Avenue, when he stumbled over the policeman on the beat. Sturdy Dennis McNerney flourished his club in a passing salute. "Bad business, sir, this of Mr. Clayton," said the stalwart Irish-American. "Is it true there's twenty-five thousand reward out?" With a sudden inspiration Arthur Ferris paused. "Mac," said he, "I am deeply interested here. I'll give you personally five thousand dollars more for the first clue; mind you, no publicity." The policeman's eyes sparkled. "Word of honor?" he said. "Yes! I'll write it in your presence, seal it, and give it to you—this promise, if the clue leads to Clayton, dead or alive." The two men walked along in the streaming crowd. Ferris felt instinctively that the officer was holding something back. "What do the reporters say?" hesitating remarked Ferris. "All in the dark—a pack of fools—unless it's a crime that gives itself away to any one. They know nothing, and the force has not picked up a pointer. Strange, strange, that the job was so neatly done!" "What do you mean?" quickly queried Ferris. "Oh! Any gonoph can see that the man was murdered for the stuff!" resolutely said McNerney. "He was no fellow to clear out! His life was clean as a whistle! I know all about him!" "How can you prove that?" hotly said the excited lawyer. "Because all the men on the force, from here to his rooms, and around town, knew him for a clean, civil, honest, steady fellow—one in ten thousand. Thief, he? Never!" said McNerney. "Not on your life!" Ferris stopped. "I will be at the Fifth Avenue, night and day," said the vice-president, "either there or at our office. You can come to my rooms at your will. I'll leave word for your admittance. You'll have your money in ten minutes if you turn up any sign of him." As the men separated McNerney strolled down to the corner where he had seen Clayton and Leah Einstein enter the carriage. "Here the poor fellow began his ride to death," mused Dennis. "I must have that reward—all of it—and this fellow's five thousand. Had he a hand in it? I'll spot him from to-night. "But the Jew boy has the key of the secret! Of course, he's crafty and cowardly. In a month he will throw off his fear. When I catch him with that woman I've got the right scent of the whole thing. Then, I'll hunt up the hack-driver. The boy is the key. And if the force finds out nothing in two weeks the game is mine! If the boy is arrested, I'll get in with the woman and carriage clue. I can wait!" While Jack Witherspoon and Doctor Atwater conferred at the Hoffman, there was a private meeting at Robert Wade's mansion, which brought together all the suspended officials. Robert Wade, with indignation against Ferris' brutal treatment, announced the policy of a united resistance, a joint appeal to Hugh Worthington, and the demand of an Investigation Committee of Directors. "We will wait for Mr. Worthington's vindication," said Wade, in an unanswerable tone. "Then you will wait until eternity," sadly said Walter Edson. "Here is the ten o'clock edition of the Evening Telegram. Mr. Hugh Worthington, the well-known capitalist, died at Pasco, Washington, this morning, from injuries received in a railroad accident." When the hubbub had subsided, the voice of Wade was heard. "Gentlemen, we must act in a passive defence until the Worthington Estate sends in a man to control the situation. I shall move that three of us retain lawyers to defend us all and advise us as to our joint course, for I apprehend Mr. Arthur Ferris will be a King Shark if he rules over us." While the endangered officials burned the midnight oil, the hollow-eyed Arthur Ferris was hidden at the Waldorf-Astoria with that sage statesman Senator Dunham. It was long after midnight when Dunham dismissed his nephew. He had half pooh-poohed away the fears of the young schemer. "Of course, the girl is rattled. You see, no one but you and I know of the marriage. It gives you an iron hold upon her. She will undoubtedly be advised to let our Western friends escort Mr. Worthington's body on to Detroit. There, of course, she will be met by the family lawyers. "After the necessary preliminaries there, one of them will escort her on here—and—I will be within reach. She evidently wishes to have the affair of the marriage made public, some time later. If you made Worthington do the right thing about the will, and all that, you will come out all right. "But do not cross her wishes. You cannot spring this marriage on the public without endangering all our interests. My lawyers here will look out for the big deal. You can bring the estate's lawyer to me, and, when you have reduced your wife to a passive mood, we three can clue up all the private affairs. I will be near you. I think you are borrowing trouble. As for young Witherspoon, let him be a little huffy. I can soon whip in those railroad chiefs of his. Have little to do with him, but be civil—that's all. "Don't antagonize him. He might prove an ugly customer." While the tide of intrigue ebbed and flowed around the great company's headquarters, far away beyond the Rockies, on past the dreary plains and the uplifted minarets of the Columbia, seated by the coffin of her dead father, Alice Ferris gazed down in silence upon the face of the stern old man. Among the silent watchers, gazing in the fair face of the orphaned girl, there was no one who knew her other than as Alice Worthington. The calm majesty of Death had swept away from the dead capitalist's face all the anxious look of money cares. The pale lips were silent now, behind his broad brow the busy brain was settled forever. To the frontier clergyman, to the company's Western superintendent, to the few care-worn women who had offered their services, the strong face and tearless eyes of the beautiful mourner were a mystery of mysteries. The morrow was to bear Alice Ferris away to her home by the lakes, and some subtle influence seemed to have transformed the golden-haired girl into a stern, stately Niobe. All the journals from Cheyenne to the Pacific were now teeming with fulsome praise of the man whose firm hand had guided so many enterprises past all the financial shoals and quicksands of our sweeping tide of speculation. The whole of America now knew how the deceased millionaire had left Tacoma in the ruddy glow of health, his luxurious car attached to the eastward train. There had been but a hurried parting between Hugh Worthington and his idolized daughter. Alice well knew the light of Victory shining out upon the old man's rugged face, as he received the brief telegrams of Ferris from Philadelphia informing him of the sweeping triumph in the election which had thrown the final destines of the Western Trading Company unreservedly into his hands. There was a cloud, however, chilling the hearts of father and daughter, when Hugh briefly announced that he was going on to Cheyenne to meet Randall Clayton. "You will forgive him; you will bring him on to us; he will remain here when my real church wedding and all our reunion of friends introduces me as a bride. For I am only pledged by the law now." Then the old man's face hardened. "I have to use diplomacy with him," he briefly answered. "He has stubbornly refused to obey my orders. He might ruin my newly modelled company as an open enemy. And I have invited him West only to save trouble between Arthur and him. You know what a future you will have as the wife of Senator Dunham's only nephew. I have tried to gain wealth for you. Arthur Ferris may Himself reach the Senate. I had to choose for you. I chose well. Randall might have been the son of my old age, but"— Then Alice Ferris, with flashing eyes, faced her father. The virginal heart of the girl was roused with a nameless terror. "And so you have made me Arthur Ferris' wife to chain the Senator to you for life! You told me that Randall Clayton led a vile life. Who told you?" The Little Sister's heart was aflame. All her soul went out in a flood of faith in the absent man's honor. "You have been at my side, near me, father. Some one has worked upon you. I will make Arthur tell me all." It was only after a positive refusal to take Alice on to Cheyenne that the old capitalist left the lonely heiress sobbing in a wild grief. And but twenty-four hours later the open switch left unguarded by a drunken laborer had sent a thundering special crashing into Hugh Worthington's special car. Strangers had tenderly lifted his bruised and bleeding body; but no one but the mourning girl had heard the awful confession of those early morning hours at Pasco. Alice Worthington shuddered as the dying man gasped out his fateful words, driven on by a self-torment which was a living hell. The millionaire faltered out the shameful discovery of Randall Clayton's vast birthright. "I was forced to take advantage of Everett Clayton in the panic days when we separated. It was his ruin or mine. It was only after I had nurtured and educated Randall that I found the forgotten land had leaped into a priceless estate. The railway changes made it a princely fortune. "I was tempted! I feared to disclose my plans of handling Dunham. I was forced to buy Dunham's influence with speculating for him. It was only another form of bribery. And so, to seal Dunham's faith, I married you to Arthur Ferris!" The girl bride's, eyes settled into a stony stare as the wretched man grasped her hands. "It is too late now. The company has been my dream, the crown of my life. But you can make restitution. You are now nineteen. I have left all to you, in my will. Boardman and Warner are the executors. They are honest. There is young Witherspoon, too, their junior; he is Clayton's friend. You can tell him that you have discovered this property interest for Clayton. "Spare my name. Spare yourself the public shame. You can make restitution. Tell Arthur Ferris all. He has my confidence. He knew the whole intrigue. And make him give Clayton his half of the proceeds of the land sale. You will have all my millions! Your husband is powerless to interfere. I intended to leave him a handsome sum. But you can take Randall Clayton's deed to the railroad land and give him one-half of what they pay me. Ferris has carried the whole matter through. He knows." When the dying man recovered from the weakness of his effort at disclosure, he lay whispering, "Nemesis! Nemesis! I am punished!" And Alice Worthington, at her dying father's side, felt herself now chained to the galley, a slave of millions. She had become twenty years older in half an hour. In low tones she asked questions to which the repentant man replied only by a feeble motion of assent. When the noonday sun stood high over Pasco, the whole shameful story had been revealed to the orphan. The great sighing of the mountain pines seemed to blazen the secret of a great man's cowardly crime. And yet Hugh Worthington died with his hand feebly clasping his motherless child's, a smile upon his lips, for she had promised never to betray the blackened past. "Give him back his own," muttered old Hugh, whose lips had feebly owned that he had allowed Randall Clayton's good name to be vilely accused. "Give him his own!" imploringly faltered the dying Croesus. And so, the legacy of a crime came as a crushing burden to the girl wife whose clear eyes had looked into her father's darkened soul. The papers and telegrams which the lonely heiress was forced to examine told her clearly how Randall Clayton's pathway had been beset with snares. She shuddered as she read the telegrams which proved a catastrophe which she could not avert. "And Arthur Ferris—my husband in name—knew all! This is his work!" She roused herself to action and gave over the dead clay to kindly hands when, at midnight on the day of her father's death, she had received all the dispatches which told her of Randall Clayton's evasion. Kneeling by her father's body she vowed herself a priestess of Justice. "They may have killed him. I may be too late; but I will deal with my despoiled brother's memory as my only heritage. For he was innocent, and has been robbed of birthright, good name, and perhaps life itself." <h2 id="id01385" style="margin-top: 4em">BOOK III.</h2> <h5 id="id01386">THE MESSAGE FROM AMOY.</h5> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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