he now carried the brand of cowardice upon
him, for Witherspoon passed him daily with a contemptuous scorn.

And still, he dared not abandon his uneasy flitting about the
neighborhood of the company's office. His haggard face was now
known, even to Mr. Adolph Lilienthal.

The startled proprietor of the Newport Art Gallery had sealed up
all his vague suspicions in his guilty breast. He never dared to
confide even in Robert Wade, sneaking in furtively to the "private
view" gallery.

On one or two occasions, the anxious Ferris had buttonholed the
reinstated Wade, when the careful manager visited the "Art Gallery."

"Do they know anything?" muttered the frightened scoundrel. He
dared not even breathe Fritz Braun's name. After nights of weary
cogitation, Lilienthal had buried Irma Gluyas' baleful memory
forever.

"She cleared out a month before this strange murder," he was
forced to admit, "and Fritz Braun was off for Europe before this
deed. No; the poor fellow was either dogged from the office, or
else trapped on his way to the bank."

Lilienthal saw his own profitable schemes all endangered. "If I
owned up to a single scrap of information, if I were hauled into
any court proceedings, my secret patrons would take French leave
forever!"

And so, the prudent wretch merely adhered to his plain story that
he had sold the late Mr. Clayton an artist proof of the famous
Danube view. But, looking upon the unclaimed duplicate now in his
window, Lilienthal softly chuckled and rubbed his hands. "I am
a good two hundred and fifty ahead on that lucky picture." For
he could not find Miss Irma Gluyas to deliver to her the property
which was her own property.

Far away, by the shores of the yeasty Baltic, when Hugh Worthington
rendered up his repentant soul, two guilty ones stealthily regarded
each other's faces in the little hotel in Lastadie, where "Mr.
August Meyer" had taken refuge.

The huge "Mesopotamia" lay icily at her docks, and the graceful
woman had vanished from the cabins where her would-be betrayer had
watched her every movement. Fritz Braun's active mind had sounded
every danger now encircling his future pathway.

There was a circle of fire around him, though, as he kept hidden
in the little suburban hotel, where his smuggling confederates had
found him a safe refuge as their chief. The grinning head steward
had helped him smuggle his unsuspected booty on shore, and, while
Fritz Braun gazed moodily out