"I thought," slowly remarked Witherspoon, "that Ferris would perhaps try to blackmail the estate!"
"So he did," drily answered Stillwell. "He gets one hundred thousand dollars in clear settlement of all his claims for legal services for the past five years, as rendered to the Worthington Estate."
"Oh! I see," bitterly remarked Witherspoon. "Each side puts up a hundred thousand dollars as the price of his silence!"
"And," curtly said Stillwell, "we now hold Dunham responsible that Ferris does not return to America for four years. By that time Dunham's senatorial term will be out. He will retire from politics, and so, his record and our interests are secure! I always feared that Ferris would turn up darkly in this sad murder business," gloomily added the old lawyer. "But the whole secret inquest so far proves to me the correctness of Boardman and Warner's judgment. Ferris feared Clayton's natural influence over the old man, and his own final game was the daughter's hand, and then the control of the old man's fortune. He spied on Clayton, lied about him, and at last brought about the estrangement of the old man and his only loyal servant in the whole circle.
"Poor Clayton! After his death he fell into a useless fortune! Miss Worthington has already made arrangements for a magnificent monument to him in the family plot at Detroit, and Randall Clayton will be there beside his stern old master. But for Ferris' wiles Clayton would surely have married that noble girl, and been alive to-day, a happy man, in Detroit.
"Ferris played a bold game and lost at last. It was the sale of the Senator's influence for the hand of the heiress. And she now hates him with an undying bitterness. But you can drop Ferris out as a suspected murderer. No; Clayton was evidently killed for the vast funds he carried. And we see, too late, that no less than three men should ever be trusted to make regular trips with such great amounts of money. But it's the old story of life. We are all wise, a day after the fair!"
Ten days after the stout "Rambler" shook out her snowy sails and flitted away to Bermuda, there was nothing left to ruffle the still waters of oblivion which had closed over Randall Clayton. Only upon the face of Robert Wade, Esq., lingered now an anxious expression of vague unrest.
For the Newport Art Gallery knew the oily beauty of Mr. Adolph Lilienthal no longer. There was a new face behind the proprietor's desk, and the "private view" gallery was permanently closed.
The furtive visitors came trooping in and went disconsolately away, for the private hall entrance was sternly shut and the electric bell removed. Night after night police, customs, and post-office officials sat in secret conference over the mysterious threads of the Baltic smuggling conspiracy now being gathered up while Mr. Adolph Lilienthal languished in a private cell in Ludlow Street jail.
He divided his ignorance of what he was "in for" with the frightened "Ben Timmins," who was safely locked up in a lower tier of the same human safe deposit bureau, charged with "complicity in smuggling."