Opening a door, Arthur Ferris called in the treasurer. Frank Bell, jolly and debonnair, had just returned from "no end of a good time."
"Look out for Somers, here," he ordered. "There's been a great disaster. Let no one speak to him." And then the young vice-president went out to meet the arriving police.
Mr. Robert Wade, slowly pacing along Fourteenth Street, had stopped to whisper a few words in Lilienthal's attentive ear. There was a delectable "private view" which was arranged for two o'clock on this happy afternoon.
As the smug "dealer" bowed, his mind reverted to Mr. Wade's handsome employee, Randall Clayton, and then the picture episode, and the entrancing Magyar witch.
"I wonder, now," mused Lilienthal, "if young Clayton stole that pretty devil away from Fritz Braun! Braun was really crazy over her, it seems, and he, the black-hearted wretch, has gone over to Europe to hunt for her. The pretty minx may be in hiding somewhere up on the West Side, with Clayton. And yet I never saw or heard of them together again. It may be he only wanted the picture, not the woman!"
Mr. Lilienthal's laughter at his own joke was cut short by the racing past of four policemen and two detectives. He was still standing gaping in wonder when Robert Wade forced his way into his own office and found all in an uproar.
Only Arthur Ferris was cool and collected, as he stationed the police and called two stenographers into the room where old Somers and Emil Einstein awaited the opening of an inquisition.
"There's been a robbery of a quarter of a million of our company's funds, Wade," sharply cried Ferris. "We want to find out where Clayton is. Take hold now and get these men's statements. I'll bring in the bank messenger, and then try and hold Hugh Worthington on the telegraph. The Chief should be even now nearing Cheyenne."
Ferris grasped Einstein's arm and drew him out of the room, as Wade pompously began his Jupiter-like procedure. "I'll send for the detective captain, and the Fidelity Company's people," said Ferris; but he dragged Einstein into a vacant room. "You can open his office, you young devil?" he whispered.
"Yes; side door key," said Einstein, conscious now of a protecting friend.