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Midnight Passenger

<h2 id="id01823" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XIV.</h2> <h5 id="id01824">IRMA GLUYAS.</h5> It was four days after the sailing of the secret mission of justice when Witherspoon said adieu to Miss Alice Worthington at the Forty-second Street station. With a wise forethought, the young lawyer had succeeded in his innocent ruse to distract attention. Mr. Lemuel Boardman not only called the young heiress back to Detroit, for the probate of her father's will, but sent on his wife as a courteous convoy to make sure of the girl wife's acquiescence. It was none too soon. For a haggard anxiety now drew lines upon the heiress' fair brow. News from the pursuers could only be expected in a fortnight, and Witherspoon feared the strain of a momentous secret upon the young beauty's nerves. Her soul longed for Randall Clayton's complete vindication. "One hint, and Ferris would take flight," mused Jack. "And if there were accomplices, they are surely watching her every movement." And yet it was an ordeal, this parting. For the hundredth time, Witherspoon promised to come by the first train to Detroit with the tidings of the secret quest, and a score of times he was forced to deny Alice Worthington's tearful pleading. "Let me know to whom I can make restitution," she cried. "This will—who has it? The beneficiary may sorely need poor Randall's strangely withheld fortune!" "Only when justice is done will that claimant appear," firmly answered Witherspoon. "You trust me now with the handling of your fortune! Trust me yet a little longer with that secret. I will telegraph you of the success or failure of our expedition. "And then all will be made plain to you when Atwater returns. There must be no failure of justice. We will repay the villains to the uttermost farthing." And, in his turn, Witherspoon was sorely baffled, for the sudden appointment of Mr. Arthur Ferris of New York as Consul of the United States at Amoy, China, had been duly gazetted. Only to Stillwell did the eager Witherspoon confide his fears that one of the unpunished criminals was escaping in honorable guise. "You are in error, my boy," confidently answered the legal Solon. "We have had Ferris shadowed on behalf of the executors ever since the death of Hugh Worthington. The fact is," he said, lowering his voice confidentially, "Senator Dunham is at the helm in this thing. You well know that old Hugh and the Senator were closely allied. Now, Hugh blindly trusted Ferris, as the statesman's nephew, and, in fact, Ferris is, to a certain extent, a very dangerous customer for all of us. He had papers and secrets which might ruin his uncle, and a discovery of the hidden relations with Hugh would gravely affect our company's commanding position. Old Boardman has had a week of private conference with Senator Dunham. "Boardman knew every secret of poor old Hugh's heart. Dunham and Boardman have gone over all the documents and matters surrendered by Ferris, and the Senator vouches for Ferris' future silence. "He has himself set off a hundred thousand dollars of our stock, in Ferris' name (in escrow) as a guarantee of the young man's silence. This is a present to Ferris, who let Dunham have the first privately telegraphed news of Hugh's death. "Why, sir. Dunham turned the market for a half million on that! It appears the daughter telegraphed the first news of the accident to Ferris, at the old man's dying request. And Ferris cunningly held it back, so that the Associated Press did not get it for a day. Then came the panicky drop in our stock. Dunham sold huge blocks short and filled later at the lowest notch, forty points below!" "I thought," slowly remarked Witherspoon, "that Ferris would perhaps try to blackmail the estate!" "So he did," drily answered Stillwell. "He gets one hundred thousand dollars in clear settlement of all his claims for legal services for the past five years, as rendered to the Worthington Estate." "Oh! I see," bitterly remarked Witherspoon. "Each side puts up a hundred thousand dollars as the price of his silence!" "And," curtly said Stillwell, "we now hold Dunham responsible that Ferris does not return to America for four years. By that time Dunham's senatorial term will be out. He will retire from politics, and so, his record and our interests are secure! I always feared that Ferris would turn up darkly in this sad murder business," gloomily added the old lawyer. "But the whole secret inquest so far proves to me the correctness of Boardman and Warner's judgment. Ferris feared Clayton's natural influence over the old man, and his own final game was the daughter's hand, and then the control of the old man's fortune. He spied on Clayton, lied about him, and at last brought about the estrangement of the old man and his only loyal servant in the whole circle. "Poor Clayton! After his death he fell into a useless fortune! Miss Worthington has already made arrangements for a magnificent monument to him in the family plot at Detroit, and Randall Clayton will be there beside his stern old master. But for Ferris' wiles Clayton would surely have married that noble girl, and been alive to-day, a happy man, in Detroit. "Ferris played a bold game and lost at last. It was the sale of the Senator's influence for the hand of the heiress. And she now hates him with an undying bitterness. But you can drop Ferris out as a suspected murderer. No; Clayton was evidently killed for the vast funds he carried. And we see, too late, that no less than three men should ever be trusted to make regular trips with such great amounts of money. But it's the old story of life. We are all wise, a day after the fair!" Ten days after the stout "Rambler" shook out her snowy sails and flitted away to Bermuda, there was nothing left to ruffle the still waters of oblivion which had closed over Randall Clayton. Only upon the face of Robert Wade, Esq., lingered now an anxious expression of vague unrest. For the Newport Art Gallery knew the oily beauty of Mr. Adolph Lilienthal no longer. There was a new face behind the proprietor's desk, and the "private view" gallery was permanently closed. The furtive visitors came trooping in and went disconsolately away, for the private hall entrance was sternly shut and the electric bell removed. Night after night police, customs, and post-office officials sat in secret conference over the mysterious threads of the Baltic smuggling conspiracy now being gathered up while Mr. Adolph Lilienthal languished in a private cell in Ludlow Street jail. He divided his ignorance of what he was "in for" with the frightened "Ben Timmins," who was safely locked up in a lower tier of the same human safe deposit bureau, charged with "complicity in smuggling." The affairs of Magdal's Pharmacy were being conducted by a new clerk, nominated by the police, all unknown to the Tenderloin habitues, and a service-paid detective occupied the private office where the secret connection between Lilienthal and the absent Mr. Fritz Braun was being daily traced out. The summer flowers were nodding over poor Randall Clayton's lonely grave, in the lonely cemetery of Woodlawn, on the September day when a queerly-assorted party of tourists descended from the train in the little Silesian village of Schebitz. Doctor William Atwater was tenderly cautious of the comfort of a veiled invalid woman, at whose side a sturdy nurse aided the watchful medical attendant. And none of the gaping yokels of the town obtained even a glimpse of the sick woman's pale face, as she was conducted to the covered carriage in waiting for the train. With some show of state, a resplendent courier and a hard-featured military-looking stranger drove in advance of the carriage, half hidden in a hooded country droschky. The slanting summer showers glittered in the half-veiled sunbeams as the party hastily drove away toward the summer resort, two leagues away, where jaded fashionables rejoiced in the healing waters of the Louisen Quelle. But no one of the gaping throng following the "fremden" guessed at the errand of this motley throng. In silence the cortege proceeded until a little by-lane covered with overhanging branches was reached, leading down into a dell where a natural vista showed an old gray mansion upon a rocky knoll. An untrimmed forest around still gave its shelter to bird and hare, starting out from their coverts as the carriages rolled over the grass-grown, deserted road. "It is a 'Bleak House,'" murmured Atwater, gazing out of his carriage at the dreary crags of the Katzen Gebirge towering up, overhanging the neglected demesne. The young doctor leaned over and then whispered a few words in the ear of the apparently invalid woman, who was now trembling like a leaf. "Remember, Leah," he sternly said, "your boy's life hangs on your faith now." Atwater moved a heavy pistol holster around under his loose top-coat, as the droschky in front of them halted. He sprang lightly out and walked to where the two other men were busied in an earnest colloquy. McNerney, pistol in hand, was gloomily gazing at the turrets of the gray house. "He may escape us," fiercely said the man who had traveled from New York, eager to clasp the cold steel on "Mr. August Meyer's" blood-stained hands. "Not so," calmly answered the disguised Breslau police sergeant, a sturdy war veteran. "I have hunted here all over the Adler's Horst. I know every crag and open spot. My soldiers are now hidden in a circle all around the old house. The moment that our carriage drives out into the open, they will close in and arrest every living soul. Do you see that little white flag flying on a pole on that pile of rocks? That is my signal that all is ready. Come on, now. We may not be in at the death." Atwater had marvelled at the rapid work of the officials in their three-hours' stay at Breslau, and now he admired the skirmishing tactics of the veteran as the three men dodged from side to side while the empty carriage slowly drove down into the open. The German sergeant threw up his hand and darted forward on the run as lithe forms in rifle green were seen quickly swarming out of the woods encircling the old mansion. There was no sign of life in the low, irregular hunting-lodge, save a pillar of smoke lazily ascending from the offices in rear. McNerney was racing along at the German officer's side, his pistol drawn, and Atwater hardly turned his head as a squad of soldiers darted out of the encircling thickets. "He is in there!" shouted a corporal to the Breslau policeman, now eager to make the capture and share McNerney's promised reward. The screams of the frightened servants could be heard as the assailants neared the house. Was it fancy, or did McNerney see a grim, human face glaring out of the window of a round tower at the angle of the facade? "Here; this way!" cried McNerney, as he stumbled into a little garden where trellised grapevines in olden days made a shaded walk for the Lady of Adler's Horst. The group of men stopped aghast as a woman dashed wildly out of a door opening into a long conservatory. Her voice rang out in a last, appealing cry for help. She was sorely pressed! Not three paces behind her trailing white robes, his face convulsed with passion, Fritz Braun leaped along, in a murderous rage, like a tiger in pursuit. In his right hand gleamed a flashing knife, and as the frantic woman tripped and fell, the brute's arm was raised. But, throwing himself back into the "gallery position," McNerney tossed his revolver at the point blank. The heavy crack of the pistol was followed by a yell of rage as the American sprang forward, planting his foot firmly on Fritz Braun's chest. Atwater had kicked the knife a score of yards away, when Sergeant Breyman thrust his burly form in front of the fallen woman. But, McNerney was sternly covering the fallen form of Braun with his cocked pistol. "Move, you dog, and I'll blow your brains out!" he shouted. "Here, Atwater, get the handcuffs out of my left coat pocket and clap them on this wretch!" There were a half-dozen men now holding down the defiant murderer, whose right arm lay limply at his side. The second carriage had boldly driven across the lawn, and Leah Einstein leaped lightly to the ground. She was all unveiled now, and Irma Gluyas uttered a faint cry as the handsome Jewess stood spellbound before the astounded prisoner. Sergeant Breyman had already knotted a handkerchief around the prisoner's bleeding arm, when Dennis McNerney, in a ringing voice, cried, "August Meyer, alias Fritz Braun, I arrest you for the murder of Randall Clayton!" With one shuddering sigh, Irma Gluyas fell prostrate upon the grassy sward. "Take her into the house, men," cried the sergeant, as a score of hardy soldiers now closed around the excited group. "Go with them, Leah," said Atwater. "I'll just glance at this scoundrel's arm, and then come in to you." When the riflemen bore the now fainting prisoner into the dreary granite-walled lodge, McNerney whispered to Atwater, "Look out for him! I must take the nurse and Leah, and try to locate Braun's plunder. These Germans must never know of that." With all the formality of a martinet, Sergeant Breyman now posted his guard, leaving a corporal and two men with the young surgeon, for Atwater only lived now to see Braun dragged back to his punishment. There was no mistake, for McNerney had whispered, "It's the Sixth Avenue druggist, sure enough! I am a made man for life!" The few household servants were being paraded and questioned by the German official, while Dennis McNerney, followed by Leah, glided through the rooms of the second story. A glance told the practical officer where Braun had made his own headquarters. "The southwest bedroom and second-story turret gave a view of all of the approaches to the Adler's Horst." Guns and sharpened hunting implements easily showed Braun's preparations for defense, and his presumed relaxation. When McNerney had glanced at Irma Gluyas' own retreat, he hastily locked the door of Braun's separate retreat. The policeman's quick eye had caught sight of the inner bolts and chains! "The stuff is surely hidden near here! I must make my play upon his pretty companion." When McNerney rejoined Doctor Atwater, the physician had already left Braun to the formal questioning of the methodical sergeant. Irma Gluyas was now sobbing wildly, her head resting on the bosom of the woman who had been Braun's dupe as well as slave; the woman who had feebly enacted the role of Madame Raffoni. And now the whole frightful truth had dawned upon the beautiful Magyar. She gazed despairingly at McNerney when he quickly said: "You can purchase your own safety; you can aid us now. Tell me, where did he hide the quarter of a million he stole? For this scoundrel only did murder to reach the fortune carried by poor Clayton!" "Kill me! Do what you will; I care not," sobbed the singer. "I knew nothing of these crimes, of either one. Hasten, though. Search well the second floor of the turret. This fiend spent all his evenings there alone. He always locked his rooms, and the door into the tower. Even the servants were not allowed to enter his den! What you seek must be there! May the curse of God reach him! And now is my hour of vengeance. He betrayed this poor victim, the man who died through a noble love for me!" Only Leah Einstein and the resolute Atwater remained at Irma's side as McNerney ran upstairs alone. The police matron who had been Leah Einstein's secret jailer on the voyage was now listening to Braun's stubborn negations of all Sergeant Breyman's formal questions. Atwater, with a touched heart, listened to Irma Gluyas in her passionate ravings. "The lying fiend! I will tell all! I will go on my knees to pray God to strike him dead!" For, at last, the duped woman knew that Randall Clayton was already cold in death when Braun had forged the lying telegram which bade her hope for deliverance. "He watched me, night and day, lest I should try to escape! He plotted to kill me, but he feared the servants. I always kept a little peasant child here in my rooms, night and day. "Our old forester, Hermann, who guards the estate for the young Count von Kinsky, who is travelling over the world for four years, is good and true. He is Frida's uncle. And I told him all my fears. I had only a few jewels, my own. Braun feared to give me money. But Hermann was arranging to help me away to Poland, when you came. Once there I would have been safe from Braun. He would not have dared to claim me. And Hermann, the forester, is known to all the officials. He has charge of the estate. "Braun feared him. He dared not take me away, for I would not go. It has been the slavery of hell itself. But I baffled him! Four times a day Hermann came for my orders, and I always left a little light burning in one window of my rooms. Every night one of the men watched. My food was prepared by little Frida alone, and she never left my side. Braun dared not poison me! I waited, and he waited. What did he wait for?" "HE WAITED FOR ME," cried Leah Einstein, in a fit of remorseful tears, now anxious to save her boy. She seized Atwater's arm with trembling hands. "Your police detective did not get Braun's first letter to me. He begged me to come to him. He was to get rid of this poor girl, and I was to live like a lady." The two guilty women were weeping together when McNerney stole into the room. He drew the young doctor aside. "Our main work is done here," he whispered. "Now get these two women in trim so they will not tell anything to our German friends. You and I can handle this quest alone. I've found out his hiding place!" While the matron delayed Sergeant Breyman below, Atwater and McNerney ascended to the murderer's lair. "I at once saw that the flagstones of the fireplace in the turret had been lifted," hoarsely whispered the overjoyed Dennis. "With this old boar spear I pried up the slabs. It's all down in there. A valise full of notes! Here! Help me drag this couch over the stones, and move the furniture. The German police must not see this. To-night you and I will gather up the harvest!" The athletic young men worked with a will. In five minutes the panting McNerney said, "Safe enough now from the ox-eyed German detective! Let us go down. How badly is he hurt?" "His right arm is merely disabled! It's a very severe flesh wound," complacently answered the doctor. "Just enough loss of blood and following inflammation to leave him as helpless as a lamb in our hands." "I want to take the wolf home," growled McNerney, "and to see him sit in the chair of death. I'll give him no chance to play tricks!" There was little sleep in the old schloss of Adler's Horst on this eventful night. The regular pacing of sentinels reechoed upon the porticos, and a squad of hearty German soldiers made merry in the servants' hall with the released domestics. Stout Ober-forster Hermann listened, with mouth agape, to Sergeant Breyman's loud denunciation of the wounded prisoner as the two men exchanged confidences, in the dining hall, where antlers and wolves' heads, grinning bears' skulls, and eagles' wings told the tale of many a wild jagd. In the library, where Braun lay under guard, the two Americans were as powerless as Sergeant Breyman to break down Fritz Braun's dogged reserve. The only growl which escaped his bearded lips was a muttered curse. "Damn you both! In five minutes I would have silenced that lying jade's tongue forever." It was four days after the surprise of Adler's Horst when the strangers left the estate to the care of rugged old Forster Hermann. Far and near, the simple country folk came to gaze upon the "Amerikanische" desperado, as the cortege of three carriages and two wagons drew slowly away from the schloss. The soldiery had now all departed, save a corporal and three men, and peace reigned over the woods given up again to the elk and roebuck. Atwater and McNerney were astonished at Fritz Braun's stolid indifference. The whole drama was now laid bare up to the fatal moment when the entrapped Clayton was left helpless under Braun's strangling fingers. The news of the capture, cabled over to New York City, had sent Jack Witherspoon whirling away to Detroit to give to Alice Worthington the news of the successful capture, and a proximate vengeance for Clayton's murder. Braun's defiant mood still continued. The only request he had made of the two friends was that he might have the necessary clothing for his homeward voyage. With keen eyes, McNerney and Atwater searched all the articles reserved for the use of the sullen wretch, whose inflamed wound now rendered him almost helpless. The whole crime seemed to be now cleared up from the frank confessions of Leah Einstein and the unknown Magyar beauty. "It has been a great campaign," said McNerney, as he saw Braun, guarded by four soldiers, start slowly toward the village under the convoy of Sergeant Breyman. "He spent but little of the plunder! Here we have recovered nearly two hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars in bills and good cheques! He evidently feared to attract attention by any undue luxury." They had removed every scrap of the belongings of both the fugitives. "I can understand this wretched Leah, now," said Atwater. "She would have been Braun's willing tool in hiding his final murder of Irma Gluyas. Braun needed her aid, and would have given her the slave's dole of comfort. But this beautiful wanderer! She hails with delight her return to America! Is it her frantic desire for vengeance? She had learned to love poor Clayton! And her whole soul is fixed on Braun expiating the murder. Prison she fears not." Neither man knew of the singer's fear lest an Austrian dungeon might open its iron cells to her, should Braun be discovered to be the fugitive Hugo Landor. "No one can read a woman's heart!" mused McNerney. "Judges and juries, the journals and the public, fancy these poor wretches, hunted down for their beauty, are different from their more fortunate sisters. I've not found it so. There's some womanhood left in every one of them, and there are manifold temptations and weaknesses in the lives of many who walk serenely in honor. At the last, all men and women are much the same; only, once started on the downward path, not one in a thousand ever is checked! "This Irma is not such a bad woman; with a better chance she might have been some one's heart darling for all time. The only thing I cannot see is how Braun killed this man so quietly." Both of the friends had discerned no more than the final trap. The fatal lure of Irma Gluyas' beauty! Braun, at last becoming distrustful of the woman whose heart was rebaptized in love, had acted on the moment, and his crafty advantage was taken of Clayton's headlong passion. "It is clear poor Leah was only used as a stool-pigeon; she is far too cowardly to harm the meanest creature," said Atwater. "In some way, Braun must have given Clayton a stupefying poison, and then strangled him. "In that lonely place, he undoubtedly hid the body and had it thrown overboard later. Of course, it was probably hidden in some case or box, perhaps a great trunk, and then cast into the bay by others. One thing is sure, we will never know from this brute's confession. He will die mute." "You are right," said McNerney; "for he will go grimly silent to the chair, a thug and a murderer, in heart and soul. "This fellow could have prospered in any decent line of life! He is only one more to make the bitter discovery THAT CRIME DOES NOT PAY! It is both stupid and useless. But the criminal only finds this hard truth out too late. He will never get away from me, alive or dead; back he goes to New York." And yet McNerney forgot his keenest daily precautions, deceived by the apparent helplessness of the wounded murderer. The strangely-assorted party were hurried through Breslau by the authorities, and Sergeant Breyman proudly wore Doctor Atwater's gold repeater as a parting present, when the train rushed away, bearing the secretly raging criminal back to a shameful death. "I shall not sleep till I get that fellow safely in an iron tank stateroom on the Hamburg steamer," said the stern-eyed McNerney, preparing to lock Braun's wrist to his own. "After we sail, we can have him watched, night and day; then, you and I can rest!" The secret of the vast money recovery had been faithfully kept, and even when the "Fuerst Bismarck" turned the Lizard and sped out on the Atlantic, few of the passengers suspected that a daring criminal was imprisoned below. While Doctor Atwater keenly watched the bewitching Irma Gluyas and the now happy Leah, the returning tourists supposed them to be only a lady of rank and her waiting women. McNerney, sure of his princely reward, now never left his prisoner, and the recovered funds were duly locked in the liner's great steel steamer safe. So it was left to William Atwater to draw out, bit by bit, the whole story of Irma Gluyas' wasted life. A pale-faced, stately beauty, steadfast and silent, was the wretched woman who had innocently lured Clayton to the murder chamber. It was easy for Atwater, in his professional experience, to discover from the final unbosoming of both the women, that Braun had artfully drugged and stupefied his beautiful decoy, so that she was incapable of warning Clayton, or interrupting the leisurely disposition of the murdered man's body. "He must have changed his first plans," mused Atwater, "only guided by his desire to have the money so imprudently trusted to one man." There was life in Leah Einstein's heart once more, for she now knew that her graceless son was probably safe from prison. Sly, secretive, and slavishly devoted to the young reprobate, the sin-soiled woman had successfully hidden all which could in any way implicate the dishonest office boy. When the great ship neared Sandy Hook, William Atwater frankly answered Irma Gluyas' wailing cry, "Why do I not throw myself over there, in search of peace?" For the gnawing of conscience had made the Magyar girl's life a torment. "It is not for me to judge you; it is only for me to help you!" sadly said the young physician. "You have aided to bring many sorrows and sufferings on others! Work out your own salvation! You were born a Catholic. "Your religion has orders where repentant women can toil among the suffering in schools or in the hospitals. It has its great work among the helpless. Hide your dangerous beauty there, among those who give their lives up to good works. "And you will find peace and hope stealing to your side. God gave you a life; you have no right to throw it away." The poor, repentant, soiled one seized his hand and kissed it, while bitter tears rained from her eyes. "I will work; I will go where I cannot be hunted into a deeper hell than my accusing conscience brings up!" There was a grim vigilance in every movement of Dennis McNerney as he watched the now haggard-eyed Braun in the tank cell far below the decks, where Fashion's children gaily chattered. Only a few gruff sentences had ever escaped the murderer on the long voyage, and only a horrible curse had answered the proposition of Atwater and McNerney that a full confession might, in some way, soften the brute's impending doom. The room where Braun was confined was bare of all lethal implements with which he might effect a suicide, and two stalwart men were his room-mates. When the quartermasters, at midnight, peered out for the first glimpse of Fire Island light, Dennis McNerney, pacing the deserted deck, almost alone, revolved his plan of inspecting the sullen prisoner at intervals of every three hours during the night. "It is a desperate human brute, that one," muttered the sturdy policeman; "but, I've brought him safely home." While a wild coast storm raged, and the screaming gulls circled around the plunging ship; while shrill winds moaned in the steel rigging, McNerney crept down for the last time before sighting land, at four o'clock, to peer through the grated door and see Fritz Braun lying prone—a confused heap—his coat rolled up as a pillow under his head. The wounded arm alone was free; the other, shackled to a broad belt, was locked around the prisoner's waist. "He is sleeping like a child," mused the officer. "In a few hours he will be safely in the Tombs, and my long watch will be over!" The great liner was grandly sweeping up to Quarantine, when Dennis McNerney leaped from his berth and followed the startled cabin-boy, who shook him roughly. "Come down, sir! THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG!" the boy babbled. "Get Doctor Atwater, instantly!" cried McNerney, as he rushed down into the ship's hold. One glance at the guarded door was sufficient. One of the careless keepers was clamoring for admittance, while the other bent over a rigid form lying there, prone and ghastly, in the gray morning light stealing in at the little porthole. "It happened while I was out at breakfast," pleaded the unfaithful watcher, whom McNerney roughly cast aside. Atwater was at McNerney's elbow when the frightened inmate had unlocked the door of the strong room. One shake of the recumbent form told the story. "He has cheated the executioner," solemnly said Atwater, letting the lifeless hand fall heavily from his grasp. "He lay that way all the while since your last visit," said the sullen derelict keeper. A hasty search of the cell showed an empty vial. "Chloral! Here is the key to the mystery!" cried Atwater, examining the coat, flung aside when the body was lifted. "See this torn sleeve! The murderer had hidden the bottle of poison here in the thick breast-wadding of the coat under the coat-sleeve. He waited coolly for the deed till the last night before our landing." Atwater again inhaled the odor of the narcotic. "Chloral, sure enough!" he slowly said. "A two-ounce vial, and probably mingled with some more deadly poison! Probably the 'knock-out drops' the wretch used formerly to peddle to convicts!" An hour later a circle of astonished police officials stood around the corpse of the crafty criminal who had passed beyond man's jurisdiction. "A desperate wretch," said the chief of detectives. "Fritz Braun, the mysterious druggist. He was prepared for the worst!" With a quick sagacity, Doctor Atwater had concealed the press news of the desperate wretch's suicide, having in mind the final punishment of Lilienthal and Timmins. It was decided by the police officials to keep the news of the recovery of the fortune an official secret until all the crafty Baltic smuggling gang should all be apprehended. In Irma Gluyas' cabin, Leah Einstein had divulged the whole details of the cowardly crime, as she had worked them out. It was to Doctor Atwater alone that Leah freely unbosomed herself. In return for the Doctor's pledge, now given, to save the precocious Emil, the timorous Leah gave out the vital keynotes of the Baltic smugglers' syndicate. For, at last, the ban of fear was lifted, and the frightened woman made haste to avail herself of the official clemency offered by the authorities. A half-dozen policemen sped away to concert with the United States deputy marshals for the arrest of a clan of steamship clerks, stewards, Hoboken hotel-keepers, wharf officials, and others who had been the tools of the robust-minded Fritz Braun. There was a happy meeting with Miss Alice Worthington, who was now seated in Atwater's stateroom, under the care of the triumphant Jack Witherspoon. The cable had called her from her princely Detroit home to be the first to hear the whole story of the capture of Braun from the lips of Atwater and the jubilant Dennis McNerney. McNerney's triumph had been sadly dashed by the successful suicide of the great criminal. "Never mind," kindly said the chief of police. "It was not your fault! This makes you a Sergeant, Dennis." The happy officer's eyes glistened as he saluted. And ten minutes later he knew from the rosy lips of the great heiress that the full reward of twenty-five thousand dollars given by the company, and the same by Miss Worthington was now payable to him on the deposit of the recovered funds and cheques with the Western Trading Company. "Five thousand of this is yours, Jim," cordially cried Dennis to Officer Condon, who had reported on board to announce the well-being of the office boy prisoner on the yacht "Rambler." "I'll take another job of cobbler work like that, any time," joyously answered Condon, "and, mind you, I'm to be your best man at the wedding!" For Dennis McNerney's new rank and fortune were to be the immediate cause of his precipitating a hitherto delayed matrimony. The craft with which Fritz Braun had hidden away the poison in the padded coat-lining suggested to all the insiders the manner which he intended to use to rid himself of the repentant and defiant Irma. While the chief of police arranged for the secret removal of Fritz Braun's body at night, there was an earnest conference in Atwater's stateroom. "I leave it to you, my brothers," she said, with a pretty blush, "to arrange for the complete rehabilitation of Randall Clayton's memory. "The whole business world must know that he was led to his grave by an honorable affection, and that the momentary imprudence which caused him to fall into Braun's trap was the only indiscretion of his whole career. "And now, I have a right to demand of you both the name of my dead foster-brother's heir. The million dollars paid for the poor boy's half of the Detroit lands is on deposit in the Railway Company's safes, awaiting the probate of his will." "HE STANDS BEFORE YOU," gravely said Doctor Atwater, taking her hand. "Poor Randall! Some premonition of his doom haunted him. He had saved some money, and by investments accumulated a little purse of twenty thousand dollars or so. And this, and all his estate, he willed to Mr. Witherspoon, as a wedding present for Francine Delacroix!" "Why did you not tell me sooner?" reproachfully demanded the heiress, turning her lovely eyes upon Witherspoon. "Because I wished to freely aid in running down his murderers; to clear his memory, and because the great world would have misinterpreted my zeal. I know the nobility of heart with which your father set aside this property for Clayton, as soon as he found out the old title! Had they met at Cheyenne, all would have been well!" And then Alice Worthington thanked God in her anxious heart that her dangerous secret was safe. She smiled through her happy tears as she placed her hand in Witherspoon's. "We will both cherish his memory, for life! And I now only exact one condition: that is, that Francine's wedding shall be from my home. We were schoolmates, and sisters of the heart, though our home was a very quiet one. My father was averse to all family intimacies. The executors are ready to make the transfer of the money whenever you prove up poor Randall's will." "And I," said Witherspoon, "exact one thing in return. I demand the right, in honor, to refund to the Trading Company all the money used by the murderer, the whole search expenses, and the double rewards. There will be a princely fortune left for me after all, and this money so used will vindicate poor Clayton's memory from all blame for his chivalric folly." Alice Worthington bowed her head in assent, as the spirited young man proceeded. "When you see Irma Gluyas, you will know what a strange fate overtook him. For she has been made another woman by the manly love of the poor fellow who believed in her." The Detroit lawyer was deceived by the heiress' calmness. "She knew nothing," he mused. "It is well." While Atwater busied himself in the removal of the two women who had been Fritz Braun's dupes, and arranged for young Einstein's meeting with his mother, and recording the joint confessions of the two, a surprise awaited Officer Dennis McNerney. The cabin boy who had been allowed to bring meals to the wounded prisoner, in fear and trembling, confessed to the baffled policeman that Braun had given him a hundred-dollar bill which he had managed to secrete in his trousers waistband, for the promised duty of writing to Mrs. August Landor, No. 195 Ringstrasse, Vienna, that her fugitive son, Hugo Landor, had died of fever in a Catholic hospital at San Francisco, under an assumed name. The men on watch were all ignorant of German, and so did not detect the last wishes of the intending suicide. "But I knew nothing," protested the boy. "I was always freely allowed to serve him, and so I brought him a scissors and needle and thread to repair his clothing, which had been cut to accommodate his arm. "I thought that his little bottle was only medicine; for he hid it in his hand, after opening the breast of his coat." "And so there was one last touch of feeling left in the murderer's heart," mused the stout policeman. "He wished his poor old mother to believe that he died decently. Let it be so! She shall not carry this last shame to her grave. "And now, to polish off all the underlings of the smuggling conspiracy. There is both honor and profit in bringing them to book. "Timmins and Lilienthal may be useful as State's evidence, for this last fellow saves his neck, perhaps, by Fritz Braun's death. It can never be known if he was only Braun's tool or the real inspirer of the crime. He must have found out about the money!" And so the careful lying of mother and son hid forever the reason of Braun's plot. The boy was saved. When the stars of night shone down upon the great ship at her dock, all signs of the gloomy happening had been carefully hidden. Doctor Atwater had removed the two women, under guard of the well-rewarded matron and a skilled detective, to his own apartments, where the crafty Emil Einstein was brought to meet his poor, doting mother. The detective captain took charge of the unravelling of the whole story of Mr. "August Meyer's" Brooklyn career, as well as the secrets of the crafty druggist, Fritz Braun. There was a great symposium at Counselor Stillwell's residence by the leafy borders of the park. The great advocate rejoiced at the removal of every stain from Clayton's memory, and marvelled greatly at the deeply-laid snares of the man whose body now lay unhonored at the morgue. "You will have to run the company's affairs alone for a month," cheerfully said Jack Witherspoon; "for Atwater and I are to accompany Miss Worthington out to Detroit. Only I bid you all now to my wedding, which will occur in six months, and Miss Worthington honors my Francine with throwing her home open for that quiet ceremony. Atwater is to be the best man!" "Where is your reward?" softly said Miss Worthington to the faithful young physician, as they looked out on the evening stars together. "I can wait!" simply said the young man, and their eyes dropped in a strange confusion. But Alice Worthington was in her mind already wondering when the weary weeks would pass away and free her from the tie binding her to the man secretly banished to Amoy. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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