up her mad love for this fellow,
I'll finish her."

Already he looked forward with longing to the time when he could
safely call Leah Einstein to his side. "She will be true as a dog
to me, poor wretch! And I must get Irma out of the way. Perhaps
in some Polish marsh; they would not find her bones. There's the
wolves, too.

"But, my lady, you are only sleeping with one eye shut. Your first
false movement means"--He gloomily ceased, and then feasted his eyes
on the green bundles in the common-looking valise. "I am a prince
for life," he murmured, "if I can realize on these cheques." He
opened a bundle; they were all flat endorsements.

"About half of these are good anywhere," he mused. "Our gang can
handle them; and for the others, we may get a reward to return them
later," he grimly smiled.

But as he busied himself, the inscrutable face of Irma Gluyas
returned to madden him.

"She does suspect!" he growled. "She only plays policy because she
is in my power. Never mind, my lady; you are knitting up your own
shroud."

Seven hundred and fifty miles away, the streets of New York City
were filled with the refluent crowd of holiday absentees. The
great Babel had again taken up its round of toil and pleasure, its
burden of care and crime, its chase for the bubble "reputation,"
its hunting away of the urban wolf from the door.

In inverse order of importance, the shutters had come down, the
toiler had been out, dinner-pail in hand, for hours, when Milady
yawned over her morning coffee and the magnates of finance appeared
in their triumphal procession down Broadway to Wall Street.

There was a careworn look on Arthur Ferris' brow as he sprang out
of a coupe at Randall Clayton's deserted apartments at nine-thirty.
He had sullenly enjoyed Mr. Robert Wade's Fourth of July cheer,
his mind haunted with Randall Clayton's strange breach of social
faith. In vain he reassured himself. "He could not know where
to reach me with a 'phone or a wire," and his agitation increased
when the house janitor gravely said, "Mr. Clayton has not been here
since Saturday morning, sir. It's very strange. He took no travel
bag with him. I just took a peep at the room. The bed's not been
slept in, and here's a lot of mail. He's most regular.

"May be sick somewhere, sir. He looked very strange when he went
out Saturday. He'd been up in the night. I heard him moving around
very late."

"Let no one open the room till I return," sharply o