Then Mr. August Meyer of Brooklyn proceeded to leisurely array himself as a clubman of fashion.
CHAPTER V.
BREAKERS AHEAD! CHECKMATE! MR. ARTHUR FERRIS WORKS IN THE DARK.
Randall Clayton was an enigma in his altered personal bearing to his old confrères when he entered the manager's office at his summons on a balmy afternoon of the dying days of June.
The two months since Jack Witherspoon's departure had changed the frank young fellow into a taciturn man of feline secretiveness. The discovery of Worthington's treachery, the knowledge of the dogging spies at his heels, had been a suddenly transforming influence. He now ardently burned for the return of his one confidant, for the annual election was but a few days distant.
The ripening summer was coming on fast. On Fifth Avenue the delicate, haughty-faced young Princesses of Mammon now bore the June blush roses in their slender pitiless hands. The annual hegira pleasureward was beginning.
And as yet only Randall Clayton's burning eyes marked the conflict raging in his soul. But he longed to leap into the open, and boldly defy Worthington. For a new purpose had stolen upon him in these weeks—the sudden desire for wealth.
He craved money for but one object—to cast it at the feet of Irma Gluyas and then to bear her away from a world of lies to the storied Danube, where woman's rosy lip rests in clinging transports upon lips speaking the wild love of the gallant Magyar land. He now knew the power of wealth. Clayton had become as secretive as the young Pawnee on his first warpath. He was now watching the enemy's camp and awaiting the moves of both the guilty employer and false friend.
Through the still subsidized Einstein he knew that the bootless espionage upon his leisure hours had been given up at last. He had baffled his enemies.
It had not been done by fear of the clumsy artifices of Robert Wade, but a desire born of his overmastering love for Irma, to guard her every footstep. His heart melted in its memories of that crowning hour of the avowal of his love, when she had whispered, "I dare not take you to my home! Wait, Randall, wait, and trust all to me."