With assumed indifference, McNerney mixed a glass of brandy and water for the woman, and walked the floor in deep thought. "Where is he now?" at last asked McNerney. "This Fritz Braun!"

There was a silence while the quick-witted Jewess caught at the protection of the far-off hiding place of her quandam lover. "He went away; I do not know where; and took the woman with him, this Hungarian woman, this Irma Gluyas! Lilienthal knows; you can make him tell."

"Look here!" sharply cried the officer, in a sudden rage. "You are lying to me! Your rooms are being searched even now! Your boy has been taken away, and he will go straight to the electric chair.

He gave that poor man over into your hands. You took him to the murderer's den! BOTH OF YOU WILL DIE! You were yourself getting ready to run away to Europe! Your baggage is all packed! We will force the truth out of your boy; you shall never see him. You can't help him lie now! I was the cobbler opposite your door, and I've watched you for a month!"

For five minutes the men labored to restore the stricken woman, whose tortured nerves gave way. "I shall now search you," roughly said McNerney, "but I'll have a police matron here to do it. I want that letter and telegram from August Meyer! I want the money--the stolen money--he sent you. I'll give you just five minutes to tell me the whole truth. It's life and death for you now. They are busy searching your rooms."

With a cry of entreaty, Leah Einstein tore open her dress. She threw a packet on the table. "It's all there, all there," she wailed.

"And I will tell you all. I will take you to him. You shall catch him. But spare my boy!" And, moaning and pleading, she now told the whole truth.

It was long after midnight when the woman scrawled her name in Polish-Hebrew script under the record of Fritz Braun's crime.

McNerney grasped Witherspoon's arm and led him away. "Do you see the light now?" he cried, in triumph. "The boy and woman were used by this damned fiend, Braun. You can see that she was Braun's slave in the old days. The other woman is innocent of the murder, and was only a handsome stool-pigeon! But, behind Braun, there may lurk Lilienthal and Ferris! Braun was to get the plunder for putting Clayton out of the way. Don't you see that Clayton stood between Ferris and the millionaire's only daughter!"

"What are we to do?" gasped Witherspoon.

"You are to take the morning train and get the alias extradition papers from the Secretary of State. Make it a strict confidence. I will take this woman, the papers, and Doctor Atwater, and we will grab 'Mr. August Meyer' at Schebitz.

"Jim Condon will hold the boy on the doctor's yacht, and you will take your notary and get the boy's full confession. Let him know that he alone can save his mother's life. The moment I have nabbed this Fritz Braun I'll cable; but I want to recover the money and get the whole reward. You must get me five thousand dollars from Miss Worthington, and the letter of credit for five thousand more.

I'll take an iron-handed woman along, a nurse, and police matron."

"What shall I do with Miss Worthington?" demanded Witherspoon.

"Nothing, as yet," said McNerney, with a significant smile. "Let the doctor handle her confidence! I'll get all this woman's belongings and put the matron in charge of her. The woman can work skilfully on her fears.

"To-morrow I'll take a peep at No. 192 Layte Street, then go down to Tompkinsville with the notary. We will put Emil Einstein 'through the thirty-third degree,' and in three days Atwater, the two women and I will be off for Breslau. Leave me a free hand, and I'll get your murderer and the money. But remember, one single imprudence loses both man and money; you, your vengeance; me, my reward. And I depend on this windfall to marry!"

"So do I, Dennis," sadly smiled Witherspoon. "Go in; I'll do your bidding. Count on the extradition papers and the money."

In ten minutes the armorer's room was dark. "Not a bad evening's work," said the notary, as he pocketed a hundred-dollar bill, "and another one of those 'exquisitely executed engravings' for to-morrow!"

Long before Alice Worthington had lifted her stately head from her pillow the next morning, the astonished Dennis McNerney was rubbing his eyes before the location of the Valkyrie Saloon. He had stolen over to Brooklyn with the "early birds."

The streets were as yet unpeopled when he drew the drowsy officer on the beat into the side room of the saloon where once Mr. August Meyer presided in the evening.

The two uniformed giants smacked their lips over the morning Manhattan cocktail.

"Now, that's what I call a cocktail," said Officer Hogan, as he ordered up (on a complimentary basis) the Havanas. "This saloon used to be a German sort of headquarters. But the new fellows are our own people, the right sort. They knew it's an Irish neighborhood.

So they pulled down the sign 'Valkyrie,' and put up 'The Shamrock,'

drove out their Dutch kellners and put in good Irish barkeepers."

"What's become of August Meyer, who used to have an interest here?"

carelessly said McNerney, affecting a familiarity with old history.

"Meyer ran a hidden dead-fall and gambling house next door, at No.

192 Layte Street," said Hogan, biting off his cigar. "That was before I came on the beat. He got to plunging on the races, betting against his own games, and the poker crowd here cleaned him up at last. So there's the Hibernia Social Club, the Democratic Ward Committee, and a lot of roomers in there. It's a new deal now, all around.

"The whole house has been ripped up and there's a China wash-house in the basement of that old mansion."

"Meyer?" interrogated McNerney, as he ordered the second round.

"Cleared out for Europe, so they say," carelessly said Hogan. "I saw him driving in a carriage a few days before he sold out, with a staving looking woman. He may have married a good thing, and skipped the town. He was a shifty sort of a devil; but he ran a square gambling den. And he had loads of money till he went crazy over cards."

It was afternoon when Miss Worthington was pondering over Witherspoon's telegram from Philadelphia, that Officer McNerney was swiftly rowed out to the yacht "Rambler," lying on the oily summer waters of the lower bay. Beside him, the notary calmly awaited the materialization of the second hundred-dollar bill.

But, busied as all her secret agents were, none of the men now chasing down the fugitive murderer were as anxious at heart as Miss Alice Worthington.

It was easy to arrange for the money Witherspoon had telegraphed for; she knew the secret object of his visit to Washington, but only that certain parties had been taken into custody, and that there was light ahead.

"My father!" she cried, as she fell on her knees and prayed that the mantle of shame should not fall upon his yet raw grave.

It was half an hour after Doctor Atwater and McNerney began to question Emil Einstein that the young scapegoat at last dropped his policy of lying braggadocio.

Confined in the cabin of the stout schooner yacht of a hundred tons, he had craftily fenced himself in with a network of lies during the night, in preparation for the ordeal which he well knew was at hand.

His coarse, defiant nature rebelled when Policeman McNerney confronted him, and he felt secure in recalling the narrow limitations of the policeman's possible knowledge of the past.

But at last the lad yielded under the hammering of the enraged officer. "I'll give you just five minutes to consider if you wish to sacrifice your mother's life, you young dog," McNerney exclaimed.

"We have her confession in full, and as you decoyed this murdered man into her clutches, you are only saving yourself by a full unbosoming."

"And if I don't talk?" growled Emil, beginning to sicken over the gloomy future.

"You will be sailed around on this yacht till you weaken, till we've caught the head devil, and then it only depends on him as to whether you go to the 'chair' with him or not!" It was a frightful alternative.

With a sudden revulsion, the startled young rascal exclaimed: "I'll give you the whole business, as far as I know; and if you'll save my mother, I'll turn State's evidence. I know nothing about the murder! I only know now that Fritz Braun wanted to get poor Mr.

Clayton into some out-of-the-way place to get the money away from him. I only thought that he wanted to bleed him, using that pretty woman, s'help me, God! I did."

"We will judge of your story when we hear it," grimly answered McNerney.

But it was Doctor Atwater's measured courtesy which disarmed this vulgar youth's pregnant fears.

"We can show your mother and yourself to have been used as innocent tools, if you give up the whole truth. But, remember, a little smart lying will surely cost you your life."

Atwater and McNerney listened, in astonishment, as Emil Einstein unveiled the double life of his former patron. The inner workings of Magdal's Pharmacy, the dual trades on different banks of the East River, the duplex Braun and Meyer, and the whole scenario of the Cafe Bavaria and the Newport Art Gallery--all these were faithfully pictured.

With moistened eyes, Atwater listened to the story of Randall Clayton's chivalric faith in the beautiful waif whom a romantic Fortune seemed to have thrown in his pathway, a creature of light and love.

When the long recital was done, both the inquisitors felt that Einstein spoke the truth, as he wildly declared that he only thought Braun was throwing a pretty woman in Clayton's way to get a secret hold upon him.

"I never dreamed of the company's robbing, nor of killing poor Mr. Clayton. I got not one dollar out of it. I never had Braun's confidence, and he followed me up, and used me, and threw me away like an old rug. And Ben Timmins knows nothing. He's only a poor drudge in Braun's Sixth Avenue opium-joint and whisky-store."

"But Lilienthal, he knows a lot! Catch him if you can! But he's an oily devil. He threw this woman against poor Mr. Clayton."

It was only when the boy was thoroughly subdued that Atwater quietly asked, "And Ferris? What had he to do with it?"

"Nothing," stubbornly cried the boy. "Only so far as this: he wanted to sneak in and get old Worthington's daughter, and all the money.

That's square! He hated Clayton. He used to write lying letters to the old chief about him. He sent private reports on his life to Mr. Worthington. I used to watch him. I often got a peep at his papers, and he bribed me to pipe off poor Clayton. But you can hang me if Ferris knew Fritz Braun. You see," coolly said the crafty boy, "Ferris wanted the girl, the money, and the old man's favor.

Braun only wanted the company's money, and used the Hungarian lady to draw Clayton on. I fancy, from all I could see, that Mr. Clayton really loved that lady; and Braun could only use her to fool him over there; then he took the chances to kill him to get the money.