The soldiery had now all departed, save a corporal and three men, and peace reigned over the woods given up again to the elk and roebuck.
Atwater and McNerney were astonished at Fritz Braun's stolid indifference. The whole drama was now laid bare up to the fatal moment when the entrapped Clayton was left helpless under Braun's strangling fingers.
The news of the capture, cabled over to New York City, had sent Jack
Witherspoon whirling away to Detroit to give to Alice Worthington
the news of the successful capture, and a proximate vengeance for
Clayton's murder.
Braun's defiant mood still continued. The only request he had made of the two friends was that he might have the necessary clothing for his homeward voyage.
With keen eyes, McNerney and Atwater searched all the articles reserved for the use of the sullen wretch, whose inflamed wound now rendered him almost helpless.
The whole crime seemed to be now cleared up from the frank confessions of Leah Einstein and the unknown Magyar beauty.
"It has been a great campaign," said McNerney, as he saw Braun, guarded by four soldiers, start slowly toward the village under the convoy of Sergeant Breyman. "He spent but little of the plunder! Here we have recovered nearly two hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars in bills and good cheques! He evidently feared to attract attention by any undue luxury."
They had removed every scrap of the belongings of both the fugitives. "I can understand this wretched Leah, now," said Atwater. "She would have been Braun's willing tool in hiding his final murder of Irma Gluyas. Braun needed her aid, and would have given her the slave's dole of comfort. But this beautiful wanderer! She hails with delight her return to America! Is it her frantic desire for vengeance? She had learned to love poor Clayton! And her whole soul is fixed on Braun expiating the murder. Prison she fears not."
Neither man knew of the singer's fear lest an Austrian dungeon might open its iron cells to her, should Braun be discovered to be the fugitive Hugo Landor.
"No one can read a woman's heart!" mused McNerney. "Judges and juries, the journals and the public, fancy these poor wretches, hunted down for their beauty, are different from their more fortunate sisters. I've not found it so. There's some womanhood left in every one of them, and there are manifold temptations and weaknesses in the lives of many who walk serenely in honor. At the last, all men and women are much the same; only, once started on the downward path, not one in a thousand ever is checked!