A handful of small change was tossed to her as a last offering.

"Remember, Leah," whispered Braun. "The driver is paid, drink money and all. Let him set you down on Fourth Avenue. Get home, dream of me and of our happy meeting next spring. You have the address.

Never forget it. Don't even give it to the boy. And never trust it to paper."

"I'll not forget," cried the frightened woman, as she clung to him in her frenzied "Good bye. You'll take care of me!" "For your whole life," answered Braun. "You need me, and I need you. I'll soon get rid of this baby-faced fool! She actually loved that fellow, damn him! But she will remember nothing. She was too well doped. The knock-out drops muddled her; but he went down like a log. And he is disposed of! All you have to do is to keep your mouth shut forever. I will make you rich."

As Leah clung to her partner in crime, Fritz Braun gave her a handful of gold--his last peace offering. "Never go back again to Brooklyn," he hoarsely whispered. "Remember, and keep ready to come to me."

Braun stood alone on the deck of the "Mesopotamia" as the huge bulk slowly swung around and gathered headway. The yellow lights of Hoboken gleamed out faintly to the right, and to the left New York's irregular skyline was lit up with a lurid reflected glow.

But he shuddered as he saw the airy line of the arch of Brooklyn Bridge and the gleaming beacons below, where vice and virtue, craft and candor, stupid drudge and lazy child of luxury had all forgotten the cares of the weary day.

He started in alarm as the hoarse siren of the "Mesopotamia"

screamed out its bellowing note of departure.

A spasm of rage shook his trembling frame. He challenged some dark spectre seemingly floating on the midnight winds. "Down, down," he growled. "You are gone forever, under the black waters. Never to rise, and there's not a weak joint in my armor. I defy the very devil himself! With Heinrich's help I can evade all customs' search at Stettin; a few thalers will fix that. The whole New York lot are powerless; and as for Leah, poor devil, love will keep her faithful, fear will lock her tongue, even if she wished to speak."

Stealing down the stairs, he went into Irma Gluyas' superb room. A jaded stewardess sat watching faithfully over the sleeping woman.

He touched her arm. "I will fill your purse for you," he kindly said. "See that my wife wants nothing. You must watch her like a child.

"She is sadly broken in health. Don't mind her babblings!" He touched his forehead significantly.

He had already carefully bestowed his valise of treasure under the cosy lounge berth by the great portholes, and his rugs and wraps covered it.

Leaving the ox-eyed woman there on watch, Fritz Braun hastened to join the steward, an old friend of the days of the pharmacy and its secret international smuggling trade. He had tossed his false beard overboard and tied a sea-cap with ear-flaps upon his head.

"Just as well to drop 'Fritz Braun' forever now," he laughed. "'Mr.

August Meyer' has his passports in his pockets! So, here's for a new life. I am born to a new name and safe, even in Germany."

It was only when Sandy Hook light was far astern that August Meyer gave up the wild potations which even astounded Heinrichs. "One doesn't go away on a vacation every day," joyfully cried August Meyer. "One more bottle of the Frenchman's sparkling wine, and then to turn in and wake far out on blue water!" The fool, safe in his own conceit, forgot the curse of Cain branded upon him now. But the vengeance of God was following him out on the dark waters!

The lonely gulls, screaming and soaring at daybreak, skimming the waters of New York Bay, dipping and struggling over each bit of flotsam, rested upon the fragments of a broken trunk floating idly along upon the sunlit waters.

There was nothing to indicate the previous contents of the package which had been shattered by the screw of a passing vessel; there was neither mark nor token of its past history.

And so it floated idly up and down, borne hither and thither by the veering tides, while far below, on the ooze, the heavy irons still weighted down the corpse of the man who had been lured to his death by the noblest impulses of the human heart.

And the sun came gaily up, upon the day of repose, God's own appointed day of rest, the glittering beams played upon the closed windows of the stately old mansion, where nothing remained to tell of a "deed without a name" save a heap of dead ashes in the blackened grate of the laundry furnace. The pathway of the criminal seemed covered to all mortal eyes.

The cautious patrons of the "Valkyrie," stealing in by the side entrances, talked in whispers of the re-opening of the pool-room, and the sleeping "blind tiger."

"Come around any evening next week, after the Fourth," was the message given to the "safe" patrons, "and we will be happy to accommodate you."

There was no human being in the offices of the Western Trading Company save the janitor, busy at his semi-annual clean-up, and the Monday holiday approached with no suspicion of Randall Clayton's disappearance.

"All New York" had hied "out of town" with its usual unpatriotic snobbishness, and only the attendants of Mr. Randall Clayton's rooms noted his absence.

"Singular young fellow," said the janitor to his sturdy wife.

"Comes and goes like a ghost; no friends, and has no life of his own. Good-looking young fellow, too. Ought to have a wife and family around him.

"It's the old story: hotel and flat life are crowding out the American family. Men and women live on the single, and prey on each other.

One half are sharks, and the other half are their victims!"

But there were two persons in New York City who now feared to approach each other. Emil Einstein, after a whispered conference with his pale-faced mother in her shabby den on the East Side, hastily called a wagon and transported all his slender effects to the little room in rear of Magdal's Pharmacy, where the bogus doctor had had his Sunday conferences with his bibulous patrons--the regular "sick people"--sick of a thirst, beginning officially with Saturday midnight and ending, providentially, on Monday morning.

Bob Timmins and Emil Einstein were already secret allies and the Don Juans of a coterie of haphazard Sixth Avenue beauties. There was a usefulness to both in the new alliance, and Einstein was already the destined secret patron of the degraded Timmins.

"It's a good shelter for me," mused the adroit Hebrew, "but I'll never tell him a word of the old man."

The parting between Leah and her hopeful son had been a wild access of maternal tenderness. "You see, I've got to," growled the boy.

"You don't want to go to the chair, or get into Sing Sing, if this fellow Clayton turns up a stiff. I don't know what the 'old man'

was up to.

"You do! And I don't ever want to! The only way we can meet is once a week in the crowd around the Germania Theater on Astor Place.

"I'll come there afternoon or evening each Saturday, and hang around till I see you. You can take a seat in the theater. I'll go up in the gallery, and nobody will drop on us. If any one asks for me, say I've gone away by myself to room. That I'm going to be married."

"And at the business?" timidly sobbed Leah. "Oh! I've got to stay on there," the boy stoutly answered. "I know nothing; just keep a shut mouth. There'll be hell to pay now. Remember, don't you ever dare to look me up. If you should be sick, send word to Ben Timmins at the Magdal Pharmacy. He will give me the message, and then I'll find a safe way to see you. It's a life and death matter, remember."

The boy was eager to get away, for he feared his mother's plaint for money. He knew nothing of the three five-hundred-dollar bills now sewed up in the buxom Leah's corset.

"If they've buncoed him or done him up, there'll be a great run!

Holy Moses! The papers!" Emil Einstein fled away from the wrath to come, and, even in his high-rolling evening hours with Timmins that night he trembled.

For he had slyly gone to Mr. Randall Clayton's apartments. The old janitor of the apartment-house met him with an anxious face.

"Here's Mr. Ferris, back from the West, hunting Mr. Clayton all over town. They were to dine together. Where is he?"

The startled boy lied glibly, after the fashion of New York office boys. "I don't know. Gone off on some trip, I suppose. He sent me away on an errand yesterday, and I didn't get my week's salary.

I suppose that he has it. The pay clerk always gives it to him.

That's what I came for."

And then, whistling a rakish air, but with a nameless terror in his heart, Emil Einstein hied himself off to Magdal's as a safe haven.

There was not a human being in all Manhattan who had seen Mr. Randall Clayton on his hasty departure, save the smart-faced policeman, Dennis McNerney, who had noted Clayton put the hesitating Leah Einstein into the carriage on University Place.

"Something new for him," smilingly thought the policeman. "But he's not beauty hunting; that's no charmer. Looks more like somebody's housekeeper."

And yet, shake it off as he would, the guardian of the peace recalled that night that he had seen the woman lingering in conversation with one of the Western Trading Company's office boys, as he made his circuit of the block. "It is a little singular, this new departure."

With a smile he dismissed the suspense, murmuring "Young men all have their little 'side issues.' Half New York would go crazy if it knew what the other half does, and how they dodge each other, God alone knows."

It was merry enough in Magdal's Pharmacy that Fourth of July night, while Arthur Ferris, rage in his heart, at last descended at Robert Wade's mansion and spent the evening with that sly old financier.

He dared not bring up Clayton's name, for Mr. Robert Wade was now his inferior, and all ignorant of the dark bond between Worthington and his unacknowledged son-in-law.

But in the pharmacy Einstein hazarded a test question. "Where's the old man, Ben?"

"Took one of the cheap Saturday afternoon boats from Hoboken for the other side," said Ben, handing Miss Daisy Vivian a "slight refreshment."

"Go alone?" said the curious Emil.

"Certainly," smartly said Timmins. "He is too mean to pay a woman's passage over the ferry, much less to the Old Country!"