No! Ferris is only a snake in the grass, a coward, and a cur! He fastened on Clayton as a friend, and got in between him and Mr.

Worthington; but, he never saw Fritz Braun!"

The boy's tone was convincing. "Then you let Braun know how easily he could steal a fortune by getting hold of Clayton on his way to the bank!" roughly accused McNerney.

"Not me; never, on your life," defiantly answered Emil. "It may have been Lilienthal, for Mr. Wade was often in that 'back room'

of his. Old Wade is a 'dead easy game,' soft on the ladies, and Lilienthal may have pumped him and so put the job up with Braun."

The recital of Lilienthal and Braun's illicit trading made Dennis McNerney's eyes gleam.

When the three men left the yacht at sunset, the policeman called Einstein into a corner. "See here," he said. "I've got your mother locked up in my charge. She is a decentish sort of woman, in her way, and she loves you, you young brute. See if you can remember anything more in your yacht cruise of a month.

"Officer Condon will treat you well. You may clear your mother and yourself; you may get Timmins' evidence for us to break up this smuggling gang. There'll be a big reward there! I will see that you don't suffer. Give the whole business up to Officer Condon. When it is safe, you'll be taken ashore."

Emil Einstein, watching the boat going ashore, felt a choking throb in his throat. "That fellow McNerney's a smart devil," he said.

"He is on the right trail, and there'll be a fight for life when he rounds up Fritz. He is going after his blood. And Fritz will never be taken alive!"

The stars were peacefully shining down on New York City, three days later, when Miss Alice Worthington bade adieu to Doctor Atwater.

The mystery of Randall Clayton's murder had passed into a worn-out sensation, and new crimes, new names, new faces, filled the flaring journals. The firm hand of Witherspoon was at the helm of the Trading Company, and even Adolph Lilienthal had forgotten his fears.

The Clayton affair had been all threshed out! It had been tacitly arranged between the friends that Witherspoon should watch over Miss Worthington's peace of mind, while Atwater went upon the quest led by the resolute McNerney.

Far away under the shadows of the Katzen Gebirge, on this summer evening, Mr. August Meyer, dogging Irma Gluyas' every footstep, secretly exulted. "Leah is now on her way to meet me! And then all the old scores will be soon settled!"

The Hungarian witch, patient in captivity, breathlessly waited for Randall Clayton's coming, still deceived by the false telegram.

But, as Alice Worthington whispered her last secret instructions to Atwater, sailing on the morrow, her heart was light, for she knew her father, though stained with greed, had been guiltless of Clayton's blood. "I will give anything on earth to the man who clears Randall Clayton's memory," said the heiress. "Don't promise too much, Miss Alice," cried Atwater, as he kissed her hand. "I will do my duty!"

As the carriage drove away, she watched him from the window. Their eyes met, and she turned away, with sudden blushes.

CHAPTER XIV.

IRMA GLUYAS.

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.