Fortune turn
viciously against his banking dealers several times. The "bank"
had been broken at several of his tables until he had hypothecated
all his reserve securities. Ruin stared him in the face, for it
had come at last.

Possessed of his regular passport, safe now in any voyage in Germany,
the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, in Russia, Fritz Braun
had long desired to break off his slavery to the "painted ladies"
of the cards.

He had always kept some jewels of great value with him as a final
reserve, and a nest-egg of a few thousands deposited in a Frankfort
banking-house, with whose New York agents he had effected many
clearings of considerable size.

Fate was now swiftly sweeping him along, he knew not whither, and
on this night of discontent he bitterly calculated the chances of
a stormy future.

"Ten thousand dollars only left, and whatever more my jewels will
bring," he growled. "I am safe enough, though. Timmins can run the
pharmacy, and the brewery will put an agent in here if I say that
I need a few months' rest abroad."

"But there's Irma to be got rid of! If she does not help me to
this one crowning stroke of luck, then I've either got to put her
out of the way or take her with me. She knows my one dangerous
secret."

A busy devil in his heart whispered an excellent suggestion. He
grinned in self-satisfied malignity. "Yes! That's the trick! If I
win we'll take a Hoboken steamer together. Any one of our smuggling
stewards and agents over there will take care of us on the way
over.

"If I lose, she must go with me; and there are a few lonely lakes
in Norway, a few deep fiords with leaping waterfalls. I might lose
her there, and only that coward Lilienthal would perhaps suspect.
He would have to keep his mouth shut, for he has his own tracks
to cover, and he would easily believe that the pretty jade has run
off and left me. And he fears publicity.

"As for Leah, she loves me blindly, with a dog's fidelity; her boy
will be true to his dam and drift on in silence--a sharp scoundrel!
The world is an easy oyster for him to open.

"If--if I lose Irma, I'll have Leah over there with me. My passport
as August Meyer makes me invincible."

And the scheming villain threw himself down to dream of a stroke of
luck which should make him safe in Northern Europe, in the assumed
character of "August Meyer," a second self which fitted him like a
Guardsman's uniform. "I can easily play off a long si