For he always kept in hand one day's stealings so that, if suddenly "called down," he could glibly explain, "Slipped it in my pocket in my hurry! The shop was full!"

While Timmins, returning from his breakfast on this busy Monday, wondered at Mr. Fritz Braun delaying his comfortable luncheon, Mr. Adolph Lilienthal was anxiously awaiting his secret partner in villainy at the "Newport Art Gallery."

Perhaps the crowning secret of Braun's remarkable success was his clear-headed avoidance of mixing up the details of his various schemes.

Lilienthal knew nothing of Braun's whereabouts as to a real residence, and the colloquies and settlements of the two always took place in Lilienthal's little private office, proof against all eavesdroppers.

The Art Emporium, thronged with the curious, was the safest place in New York City for casual meetings, and, with a keen suspicion of his man, Lilienthal never visited Magdal's Pharmacy. He realized that there might be danger and deception in his fellow villain's hospitality.

A doubt of Braun's ultimate end as a citizen had caused the smug dealer to always avoid Braun at the jolly Restaurant Bavaria, where the good-natured foreign convives often joined each other over a stein.

The "private interests" of the Newport Art Gallery were as jealously guarded as the inner secrets of Magdal's Pharmacy; furthermore, the hidden post-office, telegraph exchange, and "private room" busied the dealer from morn till eve.

Lilienthal was in a particularly good humor when he at last dispatched the Danube "artist proof" by an especial messenger to Mr. Randall Clayton's own rooms. It had all fallen about in a spirit of graceful courtesy. And three hearts bounded with a hidden delight when the happy incident occurred.

When Randall Clayton returned from the Astor Place Bank he had discovered Mr. Adolph Lilienthal in a particularly cheerful frame of mind. The young cashier had hastened to his office and delivered over his bundle of exchange and checked-up bank-book. "I shall be out for an hour," he sharply called to Einstein. "Wait here in my office and let any callers return at two o'clock!"

There was a glow of expectancy on the handsome face of the customer as Lilienthal rubbed his hands. "I have been fortunate enough to carry out your wishes, Mr. Clayton," he obsequiously said. "Fraulein Gluyas has called and paid for her picture. I have told her of your longing for a replica, and, by telephoning down to my importer, I have learned that I can get a duplicate in six weeks.

"She is not altogether satisfied with the framing of this one, and I have begged her to allow me to sell you this one, so that I can import one for her framed in our own Viennese manner.

"The lady awaits your wishes, through me. It certainly is very courteous on her part. I have done her certain little business favors and she is kindly willing to oblige."

"If I could only meet her," murmured Randall Clayton, with lips dry with all the eagerness of a newly born passion. He was in a defiant mood now, his whole being stirred with the treason of the friend of years and the unmasked villainy of his pseudo-benefactor.

This fair mystery allured him strangely.

"Nothing easier," smiled the dealer, reaching out for his silk hat. "The Fraulein is taking her usual luncheon at the Restaurant Bavaria, and I agreed to notify her of your wishes, as she may travel, and would be willing to wait for the arrival of my Vienna importation. I will be very glad to present you to her."

The world took on a new brightness as Randall Clayton passed out of the shop with the dealer. He scarcely dared to trust himself to bring up the subject now nearest his heart.

But the careful directions of Mr. Fritz Braun had given Lilienthal his cue. The dealer babbled on of pleasant trivial things as they stemmed the tide of the crowded streets. "I hope that Fraulein Gluyas will soon appear in opera and achieve the success which she deserves. She is really here incognito, and spends all her time in private musical practice at Chickering Hall and the study of languages."

"Why this secrecy?" asked Clayton.

"Ah! My dear sir! These are the ways of impresarios. If Grau does not secure a certain great operatic star with whom he has quarrelled, then Fraulein Gluyas will be brought out with a great flourish of trumpets under a stage name to be selected later. She will then be heralded as a 'wonder of the world.' It will pay Grau, and he will also have his revenge!"

"And if the great star relents?" smilingly asked Clayton, as they neared the Restaurant Bavaria.

"Then," cheerfully answered the dealer, "the lady will make a grand concert tour, adequately supported. It is for that contingency she is studying English ballads and the language."

Clayton suddenly remembered the unromantic address of 192 Layte Street, Brooklyn. "Fraulein Gluyas resides in Brooklyn?" he said, with a fine air of carelessness.

Lilienthal's eyes swept obliquely the young man's distrustful face.

"Fraulein Gluyas ordered the picture sent to the rooms of her music master, 192 Layte Street, Brooklyn. Poor old Raffoni was once a world-wide star, a velvet tenor. Now he is literally a voice maker, a master of technique for Maurice Grau. The Hungarian nightingale studies there, and only takes her hall practice here in the off season, in Chickering's empty salon. There is a jealous professional mystery in this secrecy. The summer is the opera's off season, just as the winter is the same for the great circus and travelling shows. The hardest work is thus veiled from the public. The impresario is always a wily individual."

"And the lady's real residence?" impatiently queried the budding lover. "That is an absolute secret, for Grau carefully hides away his coming stars. Somewhere on Long Island an old Hungarian noble family have had a retreat since the days of Kossuth.

"The Fraulein is their guest, and, for other reasons than complete faith with Grau, she receives no one. She is as proud and haughty as she is beautiful, and rumor has it that the pursuit of an Austrian Archduke drove her to the safety of our shores. All this I have gathered from my old friend, Signore Raffoni."

Clayton mutely followed Lilienthal to the door of a private room in the "Bavaria" and, with a wildly beating heart, was bowing low before the woman whose shining eyes had brought to his bosom such strange unrest.

"It is like a page from a novel," the flute-like voice murmured, "that this lucky picture should have brought us together again, as it strangely did once face to face."

Randall Clayton's ears drank in that soft, wooing accent, and all the ardor of his eyes betrayed the instant recognition which lay behind the diva's merry words.

When he had murmured his thanks, the presence of Lilienthal seemed to be a bar to any rapprochement. Clayton was fain to accept Fraulein Gluyas' courtesy in allowing him a choice as to the handling of the picture or its replica.

"If Mademoiselle will allow me," said Clayton, "I will give Mr.

Lilienthal my cheque for the coming proof, and retain in my possession the one framed in our American manner."

This was soon settled, and then, with a glance at his watch, the dealer, bowing low, hurried away.

"We artists have to be unconventional," frankly said the Magyar beauty.

"I await Madame Raffoni here for a little tour of the wonderful New York shops."

It was a natural passage from the picture to the memories of the Danube, and then, under the kindling glances of the diva, Randall Clayton talked, with spirit, of his happy summer ramblings through Austria and Hungary.

Irma Gluyas' magnetic eyes burned into his soul as she followed the young stranger in his itinerary. It was only when the maitre d'hotel entered, announcing Madame Raffoni as in waiting in her carriage, that Randall Clayton's castle in Spain came crashing down around him.

The Magyar witch dropped her eyes when Clayton took her hands in adieu. "You have made me forget time, and my workaday world," he said. "I have now something to live for--to hear you sing! It seems so hard to meet only to part. I may never see your coming picture; you may never see mine again. But I cannot lose you from my life.

It seemed, Fraulein Irma," he said, earnestly, "when I first met the glance of your dreaming eyes, that I had known you in some other world."

"I receive no one; I am a recluse," murmured Irma, with eyes smiling through down dropped lashes; "but, if you care, you may come, a week from to-day, and breakfast with me here! Dear old Raffoni will play propriety. As for the singing, I am pledged to be mute, parole d'honneur. But you must be in my first audience.

I must keep an artist's faith with my manager."

"I shall have the loge d'honneur at your debut," enthusiastically cried Clayton, as he lingered over her frankly extended hand after murmuring his acceptance.

The woman who sat, with her head bowed upon her hands, listened to his receding footsteps. "Il Regalantuomo," she murmured. "It is a pity, too! What does Fritz want of him?"

Then gliding serpent-like from the darkened corridor, she joined the waiting woman in the carriage below, a woman whose form was but dimly defined beyond the half-lowered silken curtain of the carriage as Randall Clayton sped along to his money mill.

Some indefinable impulse kept Clayton from speaking of his breakfast engagement as he strode into the Newport Art Gallery. His cheque for one hundred and twenty-five dollars was soon transferred to Lilienthal in return for the coveted picture, which was dispatched to the young man's lonely apartment.

"Not a bad turn," mused Adolf Lilienthal. "I raised him seventy-five dollars! He paid like a prince, and, if I mistake not, this is his first and last transaction here. The picture that he wanted is burned into his heart now."

It was but one of a hundred similar intrigues to which Lilienthal had been the successful Leporello, and he calmly betook himself to the continued villainy of his daily life. He feared also to follow on the footsteps of the crafty Fritz Braun, for in the years of their illicit dealings the weaker nature had been molded by the daring master villain into a habitual subjection. "He has some little game of his own," chuckled Lilienthal. "Friend Fritz is a sly one."

But the man, now burning with a new purpose in life, the puppet of strange destinies, dreamed only of a golden future as he lingered late that night at the Astor House with Jack Witherspoon.

It was two o'clock before he returned to his lonely rooms to gloat over the picture and its promise of the future meeting.

"I shall be rich," he mused, "and I will follow her to the end of the earth until I read the secret of those wonderful eyes."

He little dreamed that even before he had paid Lilienthal the cheque, a carriage had stopped for a moment before Magdal's Pharmacy, and Mr. Fritz Braun had heard, with a wild delight, the whispered words, "The game is won; he will come!" The busy devil prisoned in Braun's heart laughed for very joy.