He was only one of the many comrades in evil of the Sixth Avenue chemist, for Mr. Lilienthal boasted a "private view" room, in rear of his pretentious "Art Gallery," where many conveniently arranged interviews habitually took place.
Not one in one hundred of his patrons knew the secret of that room with its cosy divans and a private entrance to the stairway of an adjoining fashionable photograph gallery.
But the dealers in the "queer," the handlers of lottery tickets, the pool-sellers, the oily green-goods man, and many a velvet-voiced, silken clad Delilah knew the pathway to that inner room.
Benevolent-looking old capitalists with gold-rimmed spectacles; soft-eyed sirens of the Four Hundred, and the splendid Aspasias of the apartment-house clique, brisk clubmen, and the reckless jeunesse doreé, were all in the secret of the "private view" rooms.
A meek, furtive cat-like connoisseur was Mr. Adolph Lilienthal, and the "diamond coterie" of smugglers often hastily exchanged in the safe retirement of the "art parlors" packages of glittering gems all innocent of Uncle Sam's imposts. The "Newport Art Gallery" was a gem, a very gem in itself and judiciously protected.
Mr. Fritz Braun enjoyed the crystalline spring air as he hastened along to catch his avenue car. There was a gleam of triumph behind the blue shields as he murmured, "If she only plays her part as I laid it down yesterday, he is a hooked fish, sure enough."
Randall Clayton sat for an hour in his office, dispatching his accumulated two-days' mail, all unobservant of the cat-like tread of Einstein, the office boy, moving in and out. He lingered in a gloomy reverie, after checking up his correspondence, and a half hour's sharp dictations, absorbed in the cautious letter of Hugh Worthington, Esq., the man who had robbed him of his birthright.
It was in vain that he tried to be cool. Every drop of blood in his heart now throbbed through his pulses in an eager unrest. He had suddenly lost faith in all men. "Wait, only wait," he murmured, and then started up as Einstein touched his arm.
"Mr. Somers has the deposits all ready, now, sir. It's a quarter of twelve," the boy remarked, with a veiled scrutiny of the restless-eyed cashier. Clayton sprang to his feet and then, with lightning rapidity, packed up the treasure which the old accountant had gathered out of the morning mail, and received from the prompt and timorous debtors fearful of having their "credit cut."
He was fifteen minutes late as he stepped out upon Fourteenth Street, valise in hand and the ready pistol once more in his pocket. The day's "haul" was rich in checks and light in cash, but the total was a considerable fortune.