The Midnight Passenger | Page 3

afforded him such desultory pleasures as fell in his path.
On his way now to a luncheon engagement with his comrade Ferris, at
Taylor's, his mind was busied only with the care of the daily treasure
trust.
Serenely confident, he swung along, his two score thousand of dollars
being a mere ordinary deposit, in a business which, in holiday seasons,
and at times of monthly settlements, often stuffed the portmanteau with
sums rising the hundred thousand.
His callous eye vainly rested on the peopled loneliness of the bustling
crowd, intent only upon the possibility of a sudden dash of some sneak
thief, or the chance malignity of some swell "mobsman."
Suddenly Randall Clayton paused in his swinging stride. For a face,
rapt in its intense earnestness, broke in upon his gnawing loneliness. A
lovely vision, a very Rose of Life's Garden!
"By Jove!" he murmured, as with a new-born craft he lingered for a
moment before a window with an "art" display, only to watch the
receding form of the unknown beauty, whose single glance had left him
standing there spellbound.

There was an exquisite artist proof of a romantic scene upon the
Danube displayed in the place of honor, a view of one of the grandly
witching defiles where the mighty stream immortalized by Strauss
breaks out of the smiling Austrian plains, dashing along into the Iron
Gates of gallant Hungary.
He could not, as yet, tell what manner of woman she might be, but his
spirit burned within him as he felt the lingering spell of those dark,
witching eyes, for they had rested upon his own, in an instant,
unguarded glance of sympathy.
Mechanically following on, Clayton noted the refinement of the
daintily cut dark dress, veiling a form of ravishing symmetry. There
was a single red rose in the Polish toque, and that one touch of color
guided him as he followed the gracefully gliding unknown beauty.
Strangely stirred at heart, he marked the distinction of the lady's
bearing, her well-gloved hand, clasping a music roll--and even the natty
bottines had not escaped him. He saw all this before he was aware that
he had passed on beyond University Place, with no other purpose than
to gaze into those sweetly earnest eyes again. "Twenty-three--no,
twenty-five," his keen perception told him, by right of the supple and
imperially moulded form of womanly ripeness. And he wondered
vaguely what daughter of the gods this might be--what heiress of the
graces of the laughter-loving goddesses of old!
He quickened his pace in the narrow space between University Place
and Broadway, fearful that he would lose that dark-eyed vision in the
human breakers at the Broadway curve. But his grasp mechanically
tightened upon his treasure, his right hand clutched the pistol butt more
firmly, as his cheek reddened with an involuntary blush.
He had seen just such faces on the Prater in sparkling Vienna, and in
the antique streets of Buda-Pesth on the one summer European run,
snatched from the Moloch worship of the Almighty Dollar!
Such eyes, now soft and dreamy, then lit up with a merry challenge,
had rested on the handsome young American tourist in the vaulted halls
of the Wiener Café, where the Waltz King's witching melodies ruled
the happy hour.
And supple forms like this he had often seen flitting among the copses
of the Margarethe Insel, when the yellow sunset rays shone golden on
the gleaming Danube, and the purple shadows began to steal over the

old fortress high uplifted there above Hungary's capital. Here was a
truant beauty escaped from a land of dreams.
Clayton had followed the unknown over Broadway's dangerously
choked throat, before the music roll gave him his clue. He was now in
the musical center of New York, and in proximity to the modest foreign
theaters where a conscientious art flourishes, as yet unknown to the
garish play-houses of upper Broadway.
Some visiting singer, some transplanted "Künstlerinn," he conjectured
as, never ceasing that queenly stride, the unknown crossed Fourth
Avenue toward the vicinity of Steinway's and the Irving Place Theater.
As yet he had not seen that bewitching face again, for he was a laggard
in pursuit, his coward conscience smiting him for his first errant detour.
It seemed as if the money in that portmanteau rustled a portentous
warning, but "a spirit in his feet" led him to execute a quick left-flank
movement as he sped first across the triangle, passing under the shadow
of the Washington statue (pride of the job brass founder), and, with a
stolen side glance, he surveyed the lady once more, as she leisurely
mounted the steps of the "Restaurant Bavaria."
His eyes dropped in a strange confusion as he once more met the
sweetly serious glance of those wonderful eyes, now resting upon him