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Midnight Passenger

<h2 id="id01530" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XII.</h2> <h5 id="id01531">THE LONELY PURSUER.</h5> Arthur Ferris was secluded from all callers in his rooms at the Fifth Avenue Hotel until late on the morning when a million people read the "featured" details of the mysterious murder of Randall Clayton. Exhausted by the mental struggle with his now defiant wife, he yet retained enough of his cunning to heed Policeman McNerney's roughly-given advice. Ferris' rooms were littered with the score of newspapers over which he had been busied since daybreak, and his breakfast stood still untasted at his side. He wavered between his desire for self-protection and his fear of the hard-featured Stillwell. In his own heart Ferris cared not a whit whether Clayton had been waylaid by accidental thugs, betrayed at the bank, duped by some insidious woman, or slain by an inner conspiracy of the employees. "The money is gone, the cheques will probably be replaced," he grumbled. "Damn the company's interests! I am glad of their loss. The Worthington Estate will probably make it good. "But I must go over and show up. I cannot afford to be suspected here. God knows what game is on, with Stillwell now as chief of scouts!" He had decided to make a brief visit at the office, and to then visit Stillwell, and resign his vice-presidency, on the ground of ill-health. "I'll lay off then, watch the game, keep silence, and frighten them." The long, weary hours of the night had brought him one consolation. As he reached for his hat and gloves, he laughed bitterly. "She may pay a round price to be rid of me, and then I'll keep all her secrets as well as mine! A kind of armed neutrality!" At the door, he was confronted by the grave-faced captain of detectives. "You are wanted, Mr. Ferris, at once, at the company's office," sharply said the official, with a comprehensive glance at the room. "Stillwell is there, and we wish to take your statement. We propose to avenge poor Clayton's murder. You were probably the last person who had a confidential interview with him." "I know it," frankly answered Ferris, "and was on my way over when you knocked." The two men soon joined a silent circle of the higher officials of the company, gathered about Counsellor Stillwell, in Manager Wade's office. Ferris felt the freezing taciturnity of the detective on the short walk, and even more the greeting of the gloomy circle. Bowing to Stillwell, the defeated schemer said, "Before we begin, I wish a word with you in private." "There is to be no privacy here, sir," coldly replied the lawyer, "save the actions of the police. We are all equally interested in discovering poor Clayton's murderer. "As you branded him as a thief, you can, at least, let us all hear your whole statement now. We have stenographers, a notary, and you can send for a lawyer if you wish counsel." "I'll not delay you a single moment," resentfully said Ferris, springing to a writing table. He handed a few lines to the astonished attorney, and said, in a ringing voice, "Read that aloud! Let the secretary give me a written acknowledgment. Then, swear me, and I will make a voluntary statement." There was a general murmur of surprise as Stillwell read the unconditional resignation of Arthur Ferris as vice-president, director, and special counsel of the Western Trading Company. In the awkward pause which followed, Ferris remarked boldly: "I intended to ask for an indefinite leave on account of breaking health. I shall now remain here, as an ordinary witness, subject to your orders, and with no other interest than to clear up the mystery." In half an hour Ferris had closed his artful disclosures. "Any matters occurring between the late Mr. Worthington and myself are confidential as between lawyer and client." In the circle, Messrs. Boardman and Warner watched with ferret eyes every movement of the man who only gazed into the faces of enemies. "That is all, for the present," significantly said Stillwell, when the chief of police, the head detective, and himself had hurled the last questions at Ferris. "I will then retire," defiantly remarked Ferris. "With this statement to all men, I shall now be mute to all questioners save the proper authorities. I have turned twenty reporters away this morning without a word, and the police authorities can reach me at my hotel, until they have closed their labors. Then my connection with this company and its affairs terminates forever." He gazed fiercely at the impassive face of John Witherspoon, and rising, with a bow of general adieu, stalked into the hall. But he turned as Boardman, Warner, and Witherspoon, following, drew him into the room where Clayton had fought out his life struggles. "You may now deliver us the papers taken from this desk, and so, escape a prosecution," firmly remarked Boardman. Ferris sat down at the table and wrote a few lines. Handing the paper to the senior executor, he said, with a cutting sneer: "There is my bill for one hundred thousand dollars for legal services in the last five years for Hugh Worthington. Upon its approval and payment, I will deliver over all the papers of our long intimacy, and sign clean receipts. "I will then stipulate not to approach Miss Worthington in any manner. Here are all the valueless papers you demand. Will you give me a receipt for them?" "You took them surreptitiously! You can well afford to trust our honor," snappishly said Warner. "Very good," added Boardman. "You will hear from us, as to your claim, in due time." When Arthur Ferris' footfall died out upon the stair, Boardman drily remarked, as he pocketed the bill, "The price of a scoundrel's silence! Well, we will see! But the fellow really knows nothing of the murder! Let us go to work, gentlemen." When they returned to the conference room, below them, on the street, the deposed favorite of fortune was chatting with a new officer on the beat. "McNerney? Oh, yes," grinned the strange policeman. "He has taken two-months' leave and goes over to see his ould mother, in Oireland. His home address, sure, I don't know. Mayhap the sergeant can tell ye." While the bluecoat sauntered away, Ferris mentally recorded another mistake. "I should have thrown the hat-box after the hat," he murmured. "A few hundred dollars would have been well spent. And yet he is probably in their ring now. His 'leave of absence' indicates a very sudden return of affection for the 'ould mother.'" Ferris now decided upon a policy of open frankness and calm indifference. "There is no one I could have made use of, but that Jew office boy," he mused, as he sauntered up Broadway, "and they have bought him out, over my head. I will let my little bill for "legal services" ripen. I can afford to let my 'legal field' lie fallow for the summer." And yet he cursed the memory of the innocent victim of the mysterious murder. "But for her sentimental hubbub, I could have easily managed Alice. This fellow's strange death gives him the halo of martyrdom. He is out of my reach now. The old man must have feared the 'Iron Gate' of Death! And, after all, his plans to 'efface' Clayton were only inchoate. I cannot terrify them with any hearsay projects. I must get what I can, cling to Dunham, and keep silence. "The marriage! That means just the one hundred thousand dollars! I will save it and my good name by submitting in silence." He signalled a passing carriage and ordered the man to drive him far "up the road," out of range of the shrill-voiced newsboys, hawking their "extras," with "Full accounts of the great murder mystery." For a brief day the name of Randall Clayton was on every one's lips. There were hundreds clustered around the morgue, where already the mute witness who had drifted back under the arch of the Brooklyn Bridge lay in the gloomy state of death. The hasty verdict of "death from murder committed by parties unknown," was all the record of the darkly-veiled happening. It was a blind trail, after all, which had ended this open and honorable career in the sight of all men. The electric lights were throwing fitful gleams upon the black waters whirling past the Brooklyn Bridge, when the executors, with Witherspoon, gathered around Miss Alice Worthington in the drawing-room of the Stillwell residence. There was also the tired counsellor, who had also vainly probed the officials of the company, the employees of the Astor Place Bank, and every reachable occupant of the huge business building. Poor old Somers, for the hundredth time, had rehearsed his story, and yet it all ended in a blind trail. While they talked of the dead, in hushed voices, Policeman Dennis McNerney was chatting with Emil Einstein over the counter of the Magdal Pharmacy. The keen-eyed policeman noted the efflorescent jewelry, and the resplendent garb of the too-prosperous-looking lad. Notwithstanding the Jewish boy's sudden prosperity, there were deeply-marked dark circles about his eyes. The Bowery's delights were telling upon the frightened lad, who had sealed his glib tongue now behind lying lips. Flattered by the "cop's" familiar manner, Emil greedily swallowed the ground bait artfully scattered by the cool Irish-American. He reeled off the story which he had told to the inquisitors of parting in the office with Clayton after Somers had given over the deposits. Before the two separated, Einstein had forgotten his Hebrew timidity. "Let me know if you pick up any items," said McNerney, giving the lad a ten-dollar bill, with a secret sorrow at throwing good money away. "My chum, Jim Condon, and I hope to help get this reward into our Precinct Squad. Come down to-morrow night to the station, and I'll introduce you. He'll look out for you, and he can write me and keep on the trail. I take the next Cunard steamer for Queenstown." Mr. Ben Timmins, as host, drew McNerney into the little back room, and the three smacked their lips over the "medicinal brandy," which had been Fritz Braun's pride. "Where's the boss?" casually demanded the officer. "He went over to Germany a couple of months ago," volubly explained Timmins. "I'm cock o' the walk for a few months now. Drop in and see me, on the d. q." Two hours later, from a dark angle opposite, Officer McNerney saw Emil Einstein, with swinging steps, cigar in mouth, speed along eastwardly. In plain clothes, his brow covered with a soft hat, the athletic policeman dashed along, keeping his prey in view. The lightning change of uniform gave him a clear protection, and in the thirty minutes of his necessary absence, the mustache which was McNerney's pride had disappeared. "Either he goes to his girl, or else to meet the woman of the carriage," mused the man, who had sworn to reach a portion of the now heavily increased award. "Once I locate his 'stamping ground,' I am on the road to success." It was twenty minutes before the excited McNerney saw Einstein slacken his determined pace down the Bowery. McNerney's heart beat, in wild hopes, as the lad, with furtive glances around, began to linger around the corner of the Dry Dock Bank. "Is it the ten dollars burning in his pocket?" murmured the excited man. "Some cheap woman foolery?" His practiced eye soon told him of the lad's determined purpose. For, in all the hovering movements, the office boy never left one or the other front of the bank building. And none of the loungers, no street waif, no bedaubed siren lingered in colloquy there in the shadows of the respected fiduciary institution. "It's a poor fishing ground for the fancy," growled McNerney, as he suddenly darted forward in pursuit. A woman, whose gliding walk and shapely voluptuousness of body indicated the Polish Jewess, paused, and bending her head, without a word of salutation, listened to the eager lad. The hands of the two met, in the darkness, and then Einstein sped back into the glaring Bowery, while the dark-robed woman pursued her way toward the East River. "No bad walker," was McNerney's forced conclusion, as he gathered himself. The unknown had swept around the corner from the south and turned eastwardly to meet the waiting lad, with the sure gait of one who knew she was waited for. On, onward, with undulating lissom swing, the veiled woman sped, McNerney judiciously regulating his gait. And all her settled purpose was evident in the measured flight, the head never once turned in curious gaze, and the singularity of her march. At last, halting before a respectable-looking tenement-house on First Avenue, the woman turned into the open hallway and paused at the door of the lefthand apartment. In an instant there was a flash of light within, and then the dimly outlined shadows of a woman moving from behind the linen curtains. "Fairly run to earth! It's a good night's work!" laughed McNerney. "Things are going my way at last!" He hastened off and, jumping on the nearest car, sought his own home by a round-about way. "Now, Dennis, my boy," he said, as he stuffed his pipe. "One bit of hurry, and ye are ruined! I have two birds to watch. And I know her perch, their meetingplace, and the boy's own den!" He now saw airy castles of Spain gaily rising in the smoke wreaths around him. "To-morrow," he said, "I will prospect, and I think I'll borrow Mrs. Haggerty's boy, Dan, to hunt for a tailor in that building. He is sharp and he can knock at the door by mistake, so I'll get her general description. "If the janitor is a fair man to jolly, Dan must then find out his pet saloon, and I'll make a new friend on the East Side. "But I must disappear, after I have met this boy Einstein at the station. I'll have to slip on a false mustache for ten minutes. Jim Condon can bring him out to me in the dark. He can tell him I don't care to run up against the sergeant." On Central Park West there was a circle of astonished listeners, when Doctor William Atwater had closed the conference by reporting his inability to trace a single enemy of the murdered man. Counsellor Stillwell, in a grave reverie, listened and abandoned all present hope of any clue to the cowardly murder. "All seems darkness around us, now," he sighed. "The journals, the police, the detectives, and our own private searches have failed to locate any suspicion, however fleeting. "It only remains for us, while awaiting some unravelling of the mystery, to unite in the fitting burial of the unfortunate gentleman, when the Coroner has finished his dreary labors. He had not a single enemy in the world! It was the fatal trust of the vast money handling which caused his murder. And only after long plotting and careful daily watch was he foully done to death." Alice Worthington's clear voice startled each listener as she said, "There is but one faint clue clinging to the past. A transaction which might have drawn upon him the vengeance of some one. I have kept this secret until all else failed. "Before my father's death, even in those last hours of lingering agony, he signed a deed as trustee for Everett Clayton, which transfers to Randall Clayton one-half of the Detroit Depot lands, or one-half of its purchase price. This money, nearly a million dollars, goes now into the estate of the dead man!" "My God!" whispered Witherspoon, as Doctor Atwater grasped both his hands. "If any one had an interest in concealing that vast property, we must look for them, for the plot which led to Clayton's murder. My poor father pledged me to secrecy until I had delivered the deed and the legal acknowledgment of his property interest to Clayton. It was for this that my father wished to meet Randall at Cheyenne—to tell him of the fortune which had come to him!" The girl's sobbing voice touched every heart as she faltered, "Judge Downs, at Pasco, drew all the papers and acknowledgments, and, after my father's death, he explained all the details to me. But father," she cried, with a gust of stormy tears, "told me himself of the discovery of the value of this property, and that he had feared to arouse poor Randall's hopes until the Railway Company had purchased the land." Her voice died away; its accent of truth had brought the astounded lawyers to their feet; but in a corner Doctor Atwater whispered to Jack Witherspoon, who was shaking as a leaf in a storm. "Silence, my friend," he murmured. "This makes you a millionaire. Say nothing to-night. Confide only in Alice. You and I must tell her, alone, and later, of Clayton's will. If Ferris knew of this, he is the murderer." The grave voice of Boardman alone broke the silence. "This is matter of the gravest moment, and only to be discussed in the future, my dear child," he said. "Gentlemen, we will suspend all our labors until we have had ample time for reflection. We may find the murderer hiding under the shadow of this useless fortune. For I believe poor Clayton left no heir. Even gold can be useless at the last." Witherspoon's temples were throbbing as Doctor Atwater hurried him away to his home. "There is a mystery of mysteries, my boy," sadly said Atwater, "in the strange turn of Fortune's wheel which throws the millions into Francine Delacroix's pretty white hands. "Rouse yourself! We must think, act, and avenge our friend! It looks as if the finger of fate plaits the noose for Ferris' neck. For he did know all; he hated and betrayed Clayton, and, I believe that he killed him." "Yes; or had him killed, to clear the way to Alice Worthington's side," exclaimed Witherspoon. "I see it all, now! Old Hugh intended to marry this noble girl to our dead friend!" But Jack Witherspoon only bowed his head and burst into bitter tears. "Too late; too late!" he sobbed. The golden fortune seemed stained with his dead friend's blood. When the morning brought once more the refluent crowds to the streets of New York, a thousand financial agencies over the world were now eagerly watching for some trace of the fortune stolen from the murdered cashier. Police and detectives, the officers of justice in far cities and foreign lands, were eagerly striving to gain the additional reward of twenty-five thousand dollars offered by the Fidelity Company, at Alice Worthington's order, for the detection of the secret murderers. But to Witherspoon and Atwater the night had been one long vigil of earnest conference. Wearied out at last, Atwater decided the future policy of the two friends. "Let Stillwell have his head, Jack," gravely advised the doctor. "Keep your secret as yet. You know how that noble girl has guarded her dying father's confidence. To save you, let me tell her all, but only after the whole circle has failed to find the murderers. I will not mention your name. But I will tell her that poor Clayton left a will. I wish to see this million secured to you. "Then, when she promises to keep my secret, I will tell her of the tell-tale Brooklyn address, and you and I can join her in hunting down the gang who lured Clayton to his ruin. She is the one arbiter of the situation; you and I must aid her. We will know all the developments of the police inquest. In this way, Ferris will not be alarmed. We may trace it home to him." "You are right," assented Witherspoon, "and I will watch Ferris through the office boy, Einstein, and there's a fine fellow, a policeman, McNerney, down there. I've promised him a private reward for any clue, and he told me he would lay off and go on a still hunt. "He knows how to communicate always with me," concluded Witherspoon, "and I will bring him into our circle, if you can gain Alice Worthington's confidence." The great metropolis had almost forgotten Randall Clayton's mysterious taking off, when, a week later, there was a sad gathering in Woodlawn Cemetery, where Doctor Atwater supported on his arm the black-robed figure of the great heiress, when the red earth rattled down upon the murdered man's coffin. There was a scanty two-score of mourners around the open grave; but Atwater felt the nervous thrill of the girl's arm as she turned away. "Justice to his memory, reparation for the past," murmured Alice Worthington. "I leave the punishment of his betrayers to the vengeance of the God above, the One who knows all." It was with a thrill of coming triumph that Atwater listened to the heiress when she drew him aside, in the great Stillwell drawing-rooms, on their return. "You were Randall's one true friend here," the noble girl cried. "These great lawyers are bound up in the affairs of millions. My friends, the executors, have given up all present hope; they must return to Detroit; even Mr. Stillwell and the police authorities are in despair. "Mr. Witherspoon will be tied to the routine of the great business; but you can aid me. Give me all your time, work with your friend, for I will follow up this mystery until my foster-brother's name is cleared of stain, and justice is done. Let us be a trinity of faithful friends." And thus it came to pass that Mr. Arthur Ferris lingered, shunned by all his old associates, and busied about his private affairs. Wandering about New York, he never knew of the ceaseless watch upon him, his restless heart awaiting some new blow of the hostile influence whose veiled stroke had ruined his brilliant prospects in life! To his astonishment, he learned from Senator Dunham that the entire secret programme of the company's vast interests had been successfully carried out. He veiled his defeat, in very shame, from the prosperous statesman, and, a new disgrace, he now carried the brand of cowardice upon him, for Witherspoon passed him daily with a contemptuous scorn. And still, he dared not abandon his uneasy flitting about the neighborhood of the company's office. His haggard face was now known, even to Mr. Adolph Lilienthal. The startled proprietor of the Newport Art Gallery had sealed up all his vague suspicions in his guilty breast. He never dared to confide even in Robert Wade, sneaking in furtively to the "private view" gallery. On one or two occasions, the anxious Ferris had buttonholed the reinstated Wade, when the careful manager visited the "Art Gallery." "Do they know anything?" muttered the frightened scoundrel. He dared not even breathe Fritz Braun's name. After nights of weary cogitation, Lilienthal had buried Irma Gluyas' baleful memory forever. "She cleared out a month before this strange murder," he was forced to admit, "and Fritz Braun was off for Europe before this deed. No; the poor fellow was either dogged from the office, or else trapped on his way to the bank." Lilienthal saw his own profitable schemes all endangered. "If I owned up to a single scrap of information, if I were hauled into any court proceedings, my secret patrons would take French leave forever!" And so, the prudent wretch merely adhered to his plain story that he had sold the late Mr. Clayton an artist proof of the famous Danube view. But, looking upon the unclaimed duplicate now in his window, Lilienthal softly chuckled and rubbed his hands. "I am a good two hundred and fifty ahead on that lucky picture." For he could not find Miss Irma Gluyas to deliver to her the property which was her own property. Far away, by the shores of the yeasty Baltic, when Hugh Worthington rendered up his repentant soul, two guilty ones stealthily regarded each other's faces in the little hotel in Lastadie, where "Mr. August Meyer" had taken refuge. The huge "Mesopotamia" lay icily at her docks, and the graceful woman had vanished from the cabins where her would-be betrayer had watched her every movement. Fritz Braun's active mind had sounded every danger now encircling his future pathway. There was a circle of fire around him, though, as he kept hidden in the little suburban hotel, where his smuggling confederates had found him a safe refuge as their chief. The grinning head steward had helped him smuggle his unsuspected booty on shore, and, while Fritz Braun gazed moodily out of the windows of the old hostelry, he planned his future hiding. Neither the dangerous dupe at his side nor his hoodwinked associates of the International Smuggling Association knew of the vast fortune which Braun had artfully hidden upon his arrival. Well he knew that his life would pay the penalty in a moment if the blood-stained treasure were suspected to be in his hands. And so, with careful craft, he labored to throw off all his dangerous associates and quietly disappear to a retreat, already decided upon, in the sleepy environs of Breslau. "First, to watch my lady!" he decided, for he was not deceived by Irma Gluyas' apparent quiet. His first care had been to obtain the New York journals' regularly arriving. "If there is any hubbub over there, I will be on guard, before they can reach me," he mused, as he glowered over his wine at the woman who now panted for liberty. Two weeks after his arrival passed with no detection of the murder. "Safe, safe!" he laughed. "The trunk is now buried a hundred feet deep in the ooze of the East River." And he smiled in triumph at the precaution which had led to Leah Einstein's hegira to her respectable First Avenue tenement, under the decent alias of Mrs. Rachel Meyer. He brooded, day by day, over the skill with which he had arranged for cablegrams to a safe address. The innocent cipher arranged for would warn him of all possible happenings. And yet, at ease in his trust in the dumb fidelity of the distant woman still his slave, he waited hungrily for the Magyar beauty to trap herself. He was a man of infinite patience. Indulging every seeming whim of his companion, he had never lost her from his sight a moment since their arrival. It was on the fourth day after their refuge in Stettin, when Fritz Braun stole out of his rooms at a secret signal from Lena, the "stube-madchen," whose frank face had won upon the secretly imprisoned Irma. "She gave me one of her diamond rings to pawn. I was to post this letter and to send this telegraph dispatch to America," whispered the girl. Fritz Braun smiled as he received the proofs of the Hungarian's treachery. And then, Lena sang over her drudgery for the next week, for the grateful Braun had filled her hand with gold. There was a strange gleam of contentment in Irma Gluyas' eyes when she followed Fritz Braun, two weeks later, into the train for Breslau. Her secret master had redoubled every tender care, and there was a brooding peace between them. But there were gloomy projects in his busy brain as Braun watched the Baltic sand dunes fade away behind him. "She is deceived by my manufactured telegram from Clayton. She will wait for his coming." He laughed over the cunning which had bade her write or cable no more. And, with a wildly loving heart now panting in her reassured bosom, Irma Gluyas fell into a belief in Braun's story of their flight from the revenue officials. "Thank Heaven, he is safe! He loves me beyond all," mused the dreaming woman. "He will get the letter left for him with the faithful girl, and follow me on. Once that I am out of this man's clutches, Braun will never dare to follow or claim me. For, he fears the Vienna police as much as I." Brave in her love, happy in her lover's safety, Irma Gluyas only lived to meet once more the man who had awakened her nobler nature. To be his slave, to drift down the years with him, was all she asked; only to see his face again! She was held in Love's bondage now! And, wrapped in her dreams of the future, she forgot the man at her side, who now compassed her death. "I must make my treasure safe first," he craftily planned, "and then lose this hawk-eyed devil. But only when my future is secure beyond all reach!" With all his bridges burned behind him, Fritz Braun easily threaded the network of railways of the Eastern German frontier. For years he had studied over the hiding place upon the triangular frontier of Poland, Germany, and Austria; and now, he only longed for a freedom from Irma Gluyas' haunting eyes. "Leah can join me later; but even she must not know of this fool's fate!" Safe in his own conceit, Fritz Braun drew happy breaths of relief when he was safely hidden in the little village of Schebitz, under the frowning crags of the Silesian Katzen Gebirge. "Here we can rest in safety till the storm blows over," he said, as Irma Gluyas followed him into the arched entrance of an old half-forgotten manor house. "You shall have your books and music; we can take a run whenever we like, and you shall have nothing to fear, for my American friends will take care of me." And then began the double duel of wits, in which, all innocent of suspicion of danger, the woman whose soul was struggling toward the light again, hid the darling secret of her heart—the coming of the man who was to free her from the tyranny of her past sins! "His love will find me out, even here," she murmured, as she listened to the wild breezes sweeping down from the pine-clad mountains. "And I shall live once more—a bond slave no longer!" It was two weeks after their arrival when Braun felt safe to leave his dangerous charge with the peasant spies whom he had gathered as servants. His money was safe, hidden in the old manor house; and he felt the skies were clear when he entered the money-changers at Breslau, where he cautiously sold some of his smaller bills. On the table in the bank lay a copy of the New York Herald. His stern face paled as he gazed upon the flaring head-lines. But the audacious criminal's hand never trembled as he read the four columns which blazoned the discovery of Clayton's body. Fast as the devil drives he hastened back to his secret lair. One friendly thrill warmed his agitated heart as he read Leah Einstein's simple cipher words, in the cable which warned him of a new danger. "I must soon be about my business," he gloomily decided. "This Hungarian witch has some jewels left. It's only a few hours by rail to the Russian frontier. She might, with her winning appearance, easily find her way over the frontier of Poland. If she learned of the discovery of Clayton's body, she might, in her love craze, denounce me, even here. That would mean death for me; at the worst only a short detention for her." The fear of the old Vienna crimes now hardened the heart of the man who was once the prosperous Hugo Landor. "SHE MUST DIE!" he cried as he sentenced her remorselessly. "But how? There must be no bungling!" His whole nature was thrilling with the alarm of Leah Einstein's warning. "She may have to clear out," mused the self-tortured criminal. "Her only safe refuge is with me, and I could count on her to help me clear away this wild-hearted Magyar devil." Fear now kept him from any further unnecessary visit to Breslau. He pondered a whole day, and then sent an unsigned cablegram, addressed to the woman he had rebaptized as Rachel Meyer. It was the simple phrase, "Schebitz-Breslau." "Leah will know that I am here, and in any storm can join me." With a sudden access of generosity, he sent the faithful ally of his darkest day a secretly-purchased draft for two thousand marks. And then the murderer forgot his danger, ignorant of one lonely pursuer who followed up the blind trail of the murderer, now watching Leah Einstein night and day. It was twenty days later when the poor cobbler Mulholland, whistling softly, went out and closed the door of his little shop opposite Mrs. Rachel Meyer's modest apartment. The frightened woman had only left her rooms at night after the publication of the finding of Randall Clayton's body. A horrible, haunting fear now possessed her. She knew the horror of the deed. Stronger than the terror which bade her avoid the light of day was the yearning to assure herself of the unruly boy's safety. "If he is caught, God of Jacob!" she murmured, "I will end my days in prison." Even the hammering of the strange Irish cobbler in the noisy hallway relieved her. She had never looked into that open door but a pair of gleaming eyes had followed her every movement from under the disguised policeman's bushy false beard. "I think that I have the key of the mystery now," gleefully soliloquized McNerney. "I am tired of playing cobbler Mulholland." In fact, he needed time for rest and study. A five-dollar bill had procured him the privilege of copying the cablegram, when a telegraph boy had stumbled in, two weeks before, to find Rachel Meyer. The words "Schebitz-Breslau" had given him no clue; but on this auspicious day the postman had begged him to aid him in finding the proper party to receive a valuable registered letter. The officer's quick eye caught the German stamp, "Value 2000 marks," and the words, "Absender, August Meyer." "This is the fellow at last," muttered McNerney. "The man, August Meyer, who sends this poor devil of a woman two thousand marks. She is preparing to skip out. Now, for Mr. Lawyer Witherspoon!" "The next time that this woman meets the boy, he must be arrested on one corner by Jim Condon. I will seize upon her! Keeping them separate and quiet, I may get the story. But I dare not tell the chief, or I would lose the reward. Witherspoon must trust to me. I must get that man over there." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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