The crafty Braun, once a co-laborer with Magdal, had jumped eagerly at the opportunity of burying the identity of Hugo Landor, the criminal fugitive, under the banner of the hopelessly wrecked Magdal. Fritz Braun had been a good enough name to use until the crafty employee had robbed drunken old Magdal's till of money enough to purchase the now valueless fixtures. Magdal, the victim of an expensive liason with a dashing neighboring French modiste, had tried to keep up a "regular" business. All this was foreign to the ideas of the quick-witted Braun, safe now under his humble alias, and his flowing false beard and the never absent blue glass eye screens. Braun duly closed the doors for a "reopening." A few dollars spent in paint and gilding, a "gorgeous" soda fountain "on lease," had soon transformed the dingy interior. A couple of dozen cheap red plush stools wooed the tawdy Phrynes of Sixth Avenue, and the light-headed shop girls to a repose from the crash and roar of the shopping street. From a dealer in "fake" goods, Braun cheaply obtained the empty packages, the jars of colored water, and the stacks of imitation "put up" goods, which gave to the pharmacy its air of rosy prosperity. To cater to his natural patrons, cheap perfumes, confectionery, gaudy nostrums, theatrical make-up, and a round of disguised narcotics and "headache" medicines were always at hand. Braun picked up a waif of the street, an ex-Prussian soldier, who for a pittance and his daily "rum," slaved in the "Pharmacy" like a dog, polishing and cleaning until it was the smartest show place of the neighboring blocks. But the citadel of the real business was the huge marble soda fountain, with its bewildering array of gaudy silver-plated faucets. Above the rows of bottled "bitters," the fiery drink of the temperance frauds, high over the three score jars of "nervines" and pick-me-up preparations, towered a life-size marble statue of Hygeia, glowing in a voluptuous Parian nakedness. Behind the fountain counter, with its serried rows of crystal glasses in artistic silver holders, there lurked on watch, now, the factotum, the thieving London-bred drug-clerk who had escaped "transportation," at Her Gracious Majesty's behest, by slipping over to New York City disguised as a stoker. To him alone was entrusted the traffic in slops and the flimsy produce of the soda fountain, to him the drudgery of the illicit Sunday liquor trade, when the "regulars" entered by the side door from the hall, bearing the portentous sign, "Hugo Adler, M.D., Physician and Surgeon." No mortal had ever gazed upon the legendary Adler, but Timmins the cockney, and Braunschweiger the ex-Prussian grenadier, gaily dispensed from jugs and bottles the "spiritual comforts" stacked up in the "dark room" every Saturday against the Sunday of legally enforced thirst and resultant sadness.