Some indefinable impulse kept Clayton from speaking of his breakfast engagement as he strode into the Newport Art Gallery. His cheque for one hundred and twenty-five dollars was soon transferred to Lilienthal in return for the coveted picture, which was dispatched to the young man's lonely apartment. "Not a bad turn," mused Adolf Lilienthal. "I raised him seventy-five dollars! He paid like a prince, and, if I mistake not, this is his first and last transaction here. The picture that he wanted is burned into his heart now." It was but one of a hundred similar intrigues to which Lilienthal had been the successful Leporello, and he calmly betook himself to the continued villainy of his daily life. He feared also to follow on the footsteps of the crafty Fritz Braun, for in the years of their illicit dealings the weaker nature had been molded by the daring master villain into a habitual subjection. "He has some little game of his own," chuckled Lilienthal. "Friend Fritz is a sly one." But the man, now burning with a new purpose in life, the puppet of strange destinies, dreamed only of a golden future as he lingered late that night at the Astor House with Jack Witherspoon. It was two o'clock before he returned to his lonely rooms to gloat over the picture and its promise of the future meeting. "I shall be rich," he mused, "and I will follow her to the end of the earth until I read the secret of those wonderful eyes." He little dreamed that even before he had paid Lilienthal the cheque, a carriage had stopped for a moment before Magdal's Pharmacy, and Mr. Fritz Braun had heard, with a wild delight, the whispered words, "The game is won; he will come!" The busy devil prisoned in Braun's heart laughed for very joy. CHAPTER IV. UNDER THE SHADOWS OF THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE. When the "Fuerst Bismarck" moved grandly away from her wharf and glided down the stream, Jack Witherspoon paced the deck with clouded brows. The acute Detroit lawyer had rightly estimated the crushing effect of his disclosure of Hugh Worthington's treachery. The two college mates were now banded together, however, by a secret compact, and both of them realized the craft of the foe whom they were fighting. "Not a letter, not a cable, not a single scrap of paper," said the wary Jack. "And you must keep away from me and be sure to dissemble all your wrath." Clayton appreciated the prudence which had separated them in the last three days of his friend's stay, and minutely followed Witherspoon's final descriptions of the hidden plans of the great syndicate. "You must be ever on your guard," said the new champion, "and remember the annual election and this strange wedding must be allowed to take place without suspicion.