The Midnight Passenger by Richard Henry Savage (historical books to read txt) 📕

delicate form away from the door and passed out of the presence of the budding capitalist.

Arthur Ferris cast stealthy glances to right and left as he sought the elevator. He breathed freer when he reached the sidewalk.

Fortunately, no one had overheard the unseemly quarrel.

His hand was on the carriage door when his glances fell upon the questioning face of Emil Einstein.

"Anything further, sir?" demanded the eager office boy. "Yes! Jump in with me and ride down to the Pennsylvania Ferry. I may need you."

Ferris' brain was in a whirl. He had intended to double around and reach Wade's house, where he was a secret guest, during the excitable ordeal of the election.

Too well he knew the dangers of setting his own foot in Wall Street. Keen brokers, great operators, lynx-eyed newspaper reporters would soon corner him.

His slightest word would be misconstrued, and there was still time for some unforeseen plot before the polls of the stockholders' election closed at three o'clock.

Clayton's defiant manner had aroused his jealousy to a keen rage. "Does the fool know anything of my marriage?" he mused. "How could he?" Ferris smiled, for his girl wife was still in Tacoma, by her father's side, and the marriage had been a secret one.

The crafty lawyer hated Clayton, at heart, for too well he knew that no word clouding Clayton's character could be uttered unchallenged in Alice Worthington's presence.

Once he had tried, to probe her opinions, with faint sneers, but his voice had died away under the indignant protest of the heiress.

"I do not know who has poisoned my father's mind," resolutely said the Little Sister, "but Randall Clayton has been the brother of my heart, and always will be. If he had never left us we would all be happier to-day."

The clear-browed woman did not know how truly this arrow had sped to its mark. It silenced forever Arthur Ferris, and lent a new caution to the scheming plans of the old money grabber.

"If I only had my cipher book," was the first thought of the excited Ferris, "I must telegraph to Hugh and put him on his guard. What the devil can Clayton have picked up?"

There was yet two weeks before the final arrangement of the "great deal," and the repayment of the two millions could be substantially arranged.

As the carriage dashed along to the Christopher Street Ferry, Ferris rapidly made up his plan of action. "I can go over to Taylor's Hotel at Jersey City. Old Somers will cast the majority vote at a quarter of three.

"I can call him up at the down-town office by telephone, and then telegraph direct to old Hugh at Tacoma.

"And Wade must come over to me at Philadelphia and spend a day or so, for appearance's sake. But a light rein is needed for this wild ass of the West, Clayton. Oh! to have him out there in Cheyenne for one month.

"Yes! By Jove, I have it! Hugh must invite him to meet him there. I will telegraph him, and the old man can smooth Clayton down."

A sudden desire to know of Randall Clayton's private life seized upon Ferris, who already contemplated a sweet revenge. "Damn him! I must keep him and Alice apart. She would side with him, on sentimental grounds. But, as soon as I get back, I can cipher Hugh that he must settle this fellow, in some way, on that Western visit. The old fox can find a way, and both Alice and I will be out of it."

Deliberately selecting two one hundred dollar bills from his wallet, Arthur Ferris held them up to the astonished gaze of Einstein. "Mr. Clayton has been a little strange in his behavior lately," he said. "In some tiff he has thrown up his old rooms, and is going to move. I will be away three or four days. When I come back, I want to know just where he is located, and - all about him; who his friends are, and so on. There is more where this came from."

"I understand," smoothly answered Emil, pocketing the bills with a grin.

In the meantime Ferris had scribbled a few words on a card. He stopped the carriage. "Jump out and take a coupe, and get instantly down to Wall and Broad. You'll find Mr. Somers waiting in the election-room. Tell him not to leave there till I get him on the 'phone from Jersey City. And my address you can give him as Lafayette House, Philadelphia. I'll be there three days." The lie was deliberate, and even the triple spy believed him.

The long hours crawled away while Randall Clayton resolutely paced his lonely office. Only the busy under-accountants came in now and then for a word of directions, and the ticking of the office clock sounded like the hollow tapping of hammers upon coffin-lids to the solitary man who was crazed with his loving anxiety to hear from the woman who now ruled his every thought.

He forgot the absence of Einstein in his eager waiting for some intelligence of the woman whom he had shielded from the storm. Poor Madame Raffoni had mumbled some obscure words about "die herz-kranke."

"Heartsick, my God! I am heartsick," cried Randall Clayton. "And, she may be alone; there may be no one to send."

Clayton tried to recall the last directions which he had given to the disguised Leah Einstein. All that he could recall was the murmured pledge, "I will come, I will come!"

The lover's heart told him that Ferris' spies would now follow in his every movment. He lingered, in a trance of agony, until long after the parchment-faced Somers had returned from Wall and Broad Street.

"It was a very quiet election," murmured Somers, who started at the appearance of the young man's haggard face. He was astonished to see Clayton lingering there to the confines of darkness.

The faithful old tool of Mammon had crawled back to turn all his combination knobs and cast a last glance over the rooms into which his life had grown as the silkworm into its cocoon.

"You must go away, my boy," kindly said old Somers, "you need a long rest."

"Yes, yes," mournfully replied Clayton, thinking of the five days of agony before Jack Witherspoon would arrive to run the gauntlet of the treacherous Ferris. "I must go away - go away - and, have a long, long rest!"

The old accountant watched his listless steps as he departed. "Head or heart - which?" he murmured. "That man is in a bad way."


CHAPTER VII.

"THIS MAY BE MY LAST BANK DEPOSIT."


There was an air of supreme content upon the usually impassive face of Arthur Ferris when he hung the receiver of the public telephone up upon its hook, at precisely fifteen minutes past three o'clock, in the office of Taylor's Hotel.

The astonished girl gazed admiringly after the young lawyer, when he dropped a two-dollar bill into her hand, saying, "Never mind the change."

"It's my lucky day," murmured Ferris, as he sought the telegraph office. The measured words of Accountant Somers were still ringing in his ears:

"A very quiet election; no opposition to our ticket. Directors' meeting pro forma. Vice-President Selden cast majority vote for new officers. Reports endorsed. Selden, president; yourself, vice-president; Hugh Worthington, managing director. New officers published to-morrow. Too late for afternoon press. Will go and report to Mr. Wade."

The first official act of Vice-President Arthur Ferris had been to order Accountant Somers to send a cheque for one month's extra salary to each of the office force, and then to add, "I shall be in Philadelphia for some days, remember; Lafayette House. Use telegraph business cipher only. I will be too busy to come to the telephone. Shall be at Cramp's yards taking a look with a view to further investments there."

No flush of triumph colored Arthur Ferris' pale face as he pondered over his dispatch to Hugh Worthington. He suddenly paused, with his pencil in the air.

"By God! I have it! We will soft-soap this fellow. Violence in quarrel is always a clumsy mistake. I need to keep in touch with Clayton; at least, until old Hugh gets his claws upon him. What if the fool resigns and throws all up in a huff? There is no way to lure him out West then. It would not do to have anything happen to him here. And I'll ring in the Auld Lang Syne a bit, also."

He smiled artfully as he read over his two telegrams before handing them to the waiting operator. The anaemic girl was sadly disappointed in their tenor. She had scented an intrigue in the presence of the dapper young lawyer with his distinctly clubman air.

"Pshaw! only business," she murmured, as she dashed her hand into the cash till for the change of a five-dollar bill.

But Arthur Ferris' resolute eyes recalled her to duty, as he impatiently said, "Repeat them both back to me, at Lafayette House, Philadelphia. Take out the extra charge, and please give me a press copy of each."

"I'll run over to Philadelphia, drop in at the clubs, have a good time, and then disappear via Pittsburgh 'for New York,'" he said. "It will give time for Randall Clayton to cool off. And, after all, the smooth way is the best way. I can hold him over till Hugh works him 'on the easy pulley.'"

He was proud of these two telegrams, as he sat at his carefully-chosen early dinner. He read them over with a secret glee.

"He is ours. No one can snatch him from our clutches. The old man can cajole him with Alice's wish that he should join the family party. That'll fetch him. Fool! that he did not make the running while she was at his side. The 'Sister' business is always a rank failure. But he has made me a millionaire for life."

Arthur Ferris had no pity for the man whose life secrets he had sapped in those four long years of treason to friendship. He recalled with a secret complacence the steps which had led him, bit by bit, into Hugh Worthington's confidence, through the frank disclosures of Clayton.

And so, fortified by the single-hearted man's intimate relations with the Detroit household, Arthur Ferris had taken up every thread as it slipped through Clayton's busy fingers.

The knowledge that he would enjoy Randall Clayton's real patrimony; that he had stolen a charming wife from the man who was bound by an unearned gratitude to Worthington, made this hour of triumph a most delicious one.

"Old Hugh needed me; he needed a man who would be a safe intermediary with Durham; one who was a Safe Deposit for both senator and millionaire.

"Now I hold every trump in life, and Clayton, the dolt, has thrown away his fortune and made mine."

Then the thin-lipped lawyer recalled Balzac's remark, "One, in order to succeed, must either cut one's way through life like a sword, or glide through the world quietly like a pestilence."

"I'll let Hugh use the sword," he laughed, as he enjoyed his well-warmed Chamberton. "I am beyond all the storms of Fate now.

"What more could I desire? On the road to a million, a charming girl wife, one whom I