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 resolve, born of the fear of the disguised felon, floating uneasily in the maelstrom of a great city. "If she should betray me, and women are women, after all," he mused in his cowardly ferocity. "If she pulls this off for me, I'll"--he ceased, with an inward shudder, for he dared not give the awful thought its fitting frame. "Only at the last," he murmured, as he sped along in Brooklyn's dingy water streets to take on another mask to veil his wolfishly evil life. While snares and pitfalls were being laid for Randall Clayton's careless feet, that gentleman sat in a wrathful mood, pondering over Arthur Ferris' half-hearted disclosures. Clayton's face had frankly disclosed his displeasure at the false attitude of his chum, when Ferris reluctantly disclosed the fact of the secret financial espionage. The three years of their past intimacy now took on a different color, at once, to the jaundiced eyes of the young cashier. He had almost abruptly declined Ferris' invitation to spend Sunday at Seneca Lake, with the prosperous lawyer's mother and two sisters. A feeling of bitter envy gnawed at Clayton's heart as he counted up the rapid rise of his quondam friend. "So, he has been playing this double game for years; it must have been at Worthington's bidding. And why?" It began to dawn at last upon Clayton that his Detroit patron had certainly followed a singular course in his apparent beneficence.