Fritz Braun, gliding out behind the high sample cases, swept the morning's receipts out of the large bill compartment of the cash drawer. "Seventy-five dollars. Not so bad," he grinned, as he clutched the only thing on earth which he loved.

The crumpled, greasy green bills! Passed from hand to hand, as the hard wage of toil, the prize of infamy, the badge of shame! Tossed from the fingers of the spendthrift, dragged from the reluctant miser, filched from yokel and rounder, slyly stolen by thieving domestic or dishonest clerk, still the "long green" was as sacred to Fritz Braun as Mahomet's emerald banner hanging over the pulpit of magnificent Saint Sophia to the Moslem heart.

Magdal's Pharmacy was an innocent enough looking place of business.

Few of the neighboring shopkeepers dated back to the time, long years ago, when the real Magdal ran upon the breakers of bankruptcy and disappeared in the "eternal smash" of a final pecuniary ruin.

The crafty Braun, once a co-laborer with Magdal, had jumped eagerly at the opportunity of burying the identity of Hugo Landor, the criminal fugitive, under the banner of the hopelessly wrecked Magdal.

Fritz Braun had been a good enough name to use until the crafty employee had robbed drunken old Magdal's till of money enough to purchase the now valueless fixtures.

Magdal, the victim of an expensive liason with a dashing neighboring French modiste, had tried to keep up a "regular" business.

All this was foreign to the ideas of the quick-witted Braun, safe now under his humble alias, and his flowing false beard and the never absent blue glass eye screens. Braun duly closed the doors for a "reopening."

A few dollars spent in paint and gilding, a "gorgeous" soda fountain "on lease," had soon transformed the dingy interior. A couple of dozen cheap red plush stools wooed the tawdy Phrynes of Sixth Avenue, and the light-headed shop girls to a repose from the crash and roar of the shopping street.

From a dealer in "fake" goods, Braun cheaply obtained the empty packages, the jars of colored water, and the stacks of imitation "put up" goods, which gave to the pharmacy its air of rosy prosperity.

To cater to his natural patrons, cheap perfumes, confectionery, gaudy nostrums, theatrical make-up, and a round of disguised narcotics and "headache" medicines were always at hand.

Braun picked up a waif of the street, an ex-Prussian soldier, who for a pittance and his daily "rum," slaved in the "Pharmacy" like a dog, polishing and cleaning until it was the smartest show place of the neighboring blocks.

But the citadel of the real business was the huge marble soda fountain, with its bewildering array of gaudy silver-plated faucets. Above the rows of bottled "bitters," the fiery drink of the temperance frauds, high over the three score jars of "nervines" and pick-me-up preparations, towered a life-size marble statue of Hygeia, glowing in a voluptuous Parian nakedness.

Behind the fountain counter, with its serried rows of crystal glasses in artistic silver holders, there lurked on watch, now, the factotum, the thieving London-bred drug-clerk who had escaped "transportation," at Her Gracious Majesty's behest, by slipping over to New York City disguised as a stoker.

To him alone was entrusted the traffic in slops and the flimsy produce of the soda fountain, to him the drudgery of the illicit Sunday liquor trade, when the "regulars" entered by the side door from the hall, bearing the portentous sign, "Hugo Adler, M.D., Physician and Surgeon."

No mortal had ever gazed upon the legendary Adler, but Timmins the cockney, and Braunschweiger the ex-Prussian grenadier, gaily dispensed from jugs and bottles the "spiritual comforts" stacked up in the "dark room" every Saturday against the Sunday of legally enforced thirst and resultant sadness.

But while these minor villains slaved for the master who greedily snatched every bill from the till, and held them up to a keen return for every measured drink in the stock of the Sunday "bar" of the mock drug-store, it was the taciturn Fritz Braun himself who murmured in confidence to the important patrons of the den.

The morning run beginning at nine, embraced the haggard-eyed devotees of pleasure--Wall Street men, clerk and financiers, habitues of the Tenderloin--actors and men about town.

In subdued murmurs the skilful Fritz Braun trafficked with these "shaky" mortals, while Timmins covered their "prescriptions" with an innocent layer of Vichy.

Sometimes the favored few entered behind Braun's screen, until the chemist solved their varying problems by manipulating his vials in the closely locked cabinet, the key of which never left his person.

There were little packages by the gross ready in that capacious lock box. Opium, hasheesh, chorodyne, sulphonal, cocaine, "dope,"

all the life-stealing narcotics in every form.

There were medicines the traffic in which leads even the innocent behind the bars.

And it was from the sale of these "nervines," forbidden medicines, and poisonous agents that the runaway Vienna criminal drew his increasing revenue. There was an aristocracy among the motley customers.

From the "hypodermic" regulars, men and women, laying down their syringes to be filled with the soul-stealing morphia solution--faded men and trembling women, down to the shattered wretch, with his pitiful twenty-five cents for a bit of "dope," no one with money was turned away.

Yet all of these passed under Fritz Braun's watchful scrutiny.

The disguised criminal trembled lest some ugly-minded detective or crank journalist might entrap him into the meshes of the law.

Alas! Nearly all the customers bore the seal of safety in their imploring eyes. By the freemasonry of the degenerates, Magdal's was a known haven of refuge to all the weaklings of Manhattan.

The frequent ringing of "Doctor Adler's" bell admitted to the little dimly-lighted rear room the sullen-eyed visitors who bore away the colorless vials of "knock-out drops," for which five- and ten-dollar bills were eagerly thrust into Braun's itching palm.

This important traffic was confided to no one but the real proprietor.

And stealthily-treading, matronly-looking women often found their way into the den, where nameless "remedies" were sold, often for their weight in diamonds, the weapons of that hidden guild which paves New York's streets with the bones of ignorant and martyred women. For all the thirty-third degree trade of the "consulting-room,"

an "introduction" was stiffly demanded.

Thanks to his craft, to his fear of the awful doom hanging over him from the unpunished Viennese murders, Hugo Landor had so far defied detection and avoided all awkward inquiry. Mr. Fritz Braun always had a prime cigar and a drop of "medicinal cognac" at the disposal of the visiting policeman. His perfunctory "loans" had gladdened the hands of several minor officials, whose argus eyes had noted the Sunday run of Dr. Adler's many friends.

All these dangerous wares were distributed in unlabelled vials, and no witnesses had ever verified the transfer of the felonious knock-out drops. Each week brought to Braun customers from adjacent cities, many of whom, disguised or veiled, hurried away with the means of cowardly crime to work the devil's charms at a safe distance.

Taciturn, morose and keeping his own counsel, Fritz Braun was a cautious trader with the great supply houses. His bills of purchase were made out to the welcome "Mr. Cash," and the old prescription books of Magdal were ostentatiously displayed with a few family orders dropping in now and then from some befogged physician. The bond between Lilienthal and Braun had been strengthened by the aid of the "picture dealer" in smuggling from Hamburg and Bremen much of the dangerous ware of this mind-wrecking business.

And so, peddling the means of murder, filling his yawning pocketbook, Fritz Braun had thrived in solitude until Irma Gluyas sought the refuge of New York City.

For the discovery of her picture in the stiffened hands of a suicide, a young noble officer, ruined by her extravagance, had caused the Viennese siren to flee the vengeance of a powerful Austrian family.

And so the lives of these two, linked by folly, sin, crime and mad extravagance, had run together again far from the scenes where, led on by her dark eyes, Hugo Landor had stumbled along on the dark road from theft and forgery to callous murder.

On this particular April early afternoon, the eager plotter was willing to leave his afternoon customers to the sly Timmins. The actresses and lazy demi-monde queens fluttered in always before sunset, together with a bevy of quacks, whose doubtful prescriptions were always put up by Timmins, easily capable of brazenly swearing to "a mistake," or denying upon oath the sale of any clumsy weapon of medical butchery.

It was also the time when the floating "shopping women" drifted in to reinforce their luncheons with Timmins' artfully veiled alcoholic preparations.

His row of bottles labelled "Vin Mariani," "Moxie," and "Nervura"

were never empty, and the oldest toper would have found them veritable "well springs of joy in the desert."

All the simple machinery of the mock pharmacy was so well oiled that even an expert could detect no commerce more dangerous than Lubin's Powders, crimson lip salve, or a powder puff.

"Fritz Braun, Manager," came and went with regularity, no man knowing of his home or family ties; the old golden sign of "Magdal's Pharmacy" covering whatever mystery was not hidden behind those gleaming blue glasses.

Save for his regular luncheon at the Cafe Bavaria, no Sixth Avenue habitue had ever seen Mr. Fritz Braun at concert, theater, or any of the places of local or suburban amusement.

As to woman, he seemed to be sternly indifferent, Save to the semi-professionals who were as anxious to escape Sing Sing's gloomy embrace as the man who supplied them with the drugs for their various "Ladies' Homes." These were welcome "Greeks bearing gifts" of the coveted "long green" which was Fritz Braun's god.

Braun was never in the pharmacy after six o'clock, and from that evening hour when all well-conducted men and women turn to dinner as the day's culmination, no one had ever set their eyes upon the bustling manager.

Friendless he seemed, yet ever cheerful, a man distantly respected for the open frankness of his business dealings, the order and quiet of his shop, and his rare capacity for minding his own business.

It was only in the evening that Mr. Ben Timmins' reign was uncontested.

The flashy young fellows of his caught-up friendships then lurked around Magdal's Pharmacy where Timmins dispensed complimentary drinks and lorded over his fluctuating harem of unemployed "soubrettes"

and light-headed shop girls freed from their daily toil.

In a rough average at a half-way honesty, Timmins "turned in"

habitually about half of the evening's receipts of the "joint,"

which, to use his own language, he "ran for all it was worth."

He had soon lost all fear of his stern employer visiting him at random, and the clever London rascal now laughed detection to scorn.