While the tug's crew busied themselves with their duties and hastily cast off the lines, the two women were crouching in the dingy cabin.
Fritz Braun, his cigar gleaming out a red defiance, watched the light of the Battery glide by him. He had taken a deep draught of brandy as a final libation to Fortune. "What fools those brewery fellows are," chuckled Braun. "They imagined that I was only dodging a few unwelcome legal papers."
"By Heavens! I have turned over a gold mine to them, and they won't kick. If it had not been for my damned gambling craze I would have had a cool hundred thousand more.
"And they will surely keep the secret of 192 Layte Street, for they wish to run their own 'joint' there. All they want is silence, to change it a little, and no police interference. They are bound to play my game to save themselves from police interference."
The villain laughed aloud in his glee. "And Emil and Lilienthal, even Timmins, know nothing. It has been a great stroke of nigger luck. This fortune is safe. Now for the last touch."
He groped his way aft to where the cheap heavy-looking package lay with one side balanced upon the rail. It was a huge coarse packing trunk. The crew were busied in watching the light of the South Ferry and avoiding the floats and tugs groaning along in front of Governor's Island.
There was no one aft as the muscular scoundrel seized a handspike and tilted the rough-looking packing trunk overboard. It sank instantly, though Braun started as he fancied he heard a crash. "If the propeller struck it, no matter," he growled. "There's a hundred pounds of broken stairway irons lashed on him. And I will soon be thousands of miles away."
He shook the rain off like a burly water dog as he glanced in at the cabin window of the tug. There was Irma Gluyas, lying sleeping peacefully, with her head upon Leah Einstein's lap.
"Safe enough," he muttered, as he sheltered himself under the overhanging deck roof.
But as the murderer's eye fell on the black valise, he smiled with an infernal glee. "There it is landed—this prize—after months!