gone. What a chance! There must be no mistake now! He
must lead himself on, now. One prick of the hidden hook and this
fat trout would be off forever I must see Irma and coach her.
Donnerwetter! It's too good to be true. After all this waiting.
And now I've got to keep my eyes on both the spider and the fly.
Irma is such a tempestuous devil. If Leah only had her years and
looks and dash, she would twist any man in the world around her
finger. But I can never teach this Hungarian madcap, Leah's velvet
softness and never-tiring patience."

The prosperous pharmacist gleefully paid for his dinner and nimbly
chased an East-side ferry-bound car. He laughed in spite of himself
at Emil's unflagging deviltry. "He is a credit to Leah's Polish
blood and my Austrian nurture," mused Braun. "The young wretch
might be dangerous, too. He must know nothing of my deep game."

"If this Clayton will only break into the flirtation in the right
way, the victory is assured. But, if he were to show her off around
town, or try and dodge these spotter fellows in New York, then I
should lose a year's time, my expenses, and this heavy money stake.
It's the one chance of a life time."

In half an hour, Fitz Braun, crossing on the Tenth Street Ferry to
Greenpoint, was soon lost, as was his wont, in the human hive of
Brooklyn toilers. Men had seen him go over for years invariably on
this ferry, his burly figure was always seen on the Fulton Ferry
daily at half-past eight each morning, but not a soul among the
thousand clients of Magdal's Pharmacy knew where the human fox,
Fritz Braun, laid his head to rest at night.

From nine till four he lurked behind the high dispensing screen
of Magdal's Pharmacy, his inner life and antecedents a sealed book
to all the sleuth-eyed votaries of vice on Sixth Avenue.

And yet, for all his craft, on this balmy night of spring, the
man who had buried Hugo Landor's stormy past forever under staid
Fritz Braun's impenetrable mask, shivered while plotting his new
iniquities lest the panther-footed pursuer might even now demand at
his hand a life in return for those victims who had lain, staring
eyed, cold in death, mute witness against him in far away Vienna.
The terrible record of his past evil days haunted his every footstep
now. He saw these avenging eyes even in his dreams.

There was but one who could lift the veil of the awful past. On
this eventful night Fritz Braun hid, within his heart, an awful
reso