"Vat a lot 'e knows!" The Teuton rinsed his beer glasses with a vicious twirl as he exclaimed: "Like as not, choost so like, he's up to some new devilment! Niemand know vere 'e hangs out! He's a wonder, he is, dat same Fritz!"
But the pharmacist lost all his sedateness as he sprang out of the crosstown car after his transfer at Fourteenth Street and Fourth Avenue.
He was the nimblest crosser of the busy corner, and then gazed anxiously up and down the street, in front of the Restaurant Bavaria.
Wasting but a moment he smartly entered the café and then, with an air of proprietorship, entered a curtain-shaded alcove.
The waiter silently placed the carte du jour before him, and merely shook his head when Braun sharply demanded, "Any one here for me?"
A luxurious dinner was ordered, and the silent man was busied scanning the convives when Emil Einstein, cautiously entering without haste, furtively regarded all the diners.
They were the better class of artists—musical virtuosos, and floating foreigners of the Teutonic business circles of lower New York.
Frank, pleasure-loving continental women mingled freely with these materialistic Romeos, who preferred the comforting cuisine to the fiery and seductive cocktails of "The Opera" on the corner.
The artful Einstein was warily assuring himself that he was quite unknown to the convives before making his report to his real master and evil genius. For, young as he was, Emil Einstein well knew that the tyrant master, who had been his mother's cruel lover, might some day lure him on to the electric chair.
A guilty pride thrilled the depraved boy's heart to feel that he, alone, in all the crowded ward, knew what manner of human devil lurked behind those innocent-looking blue spectacles.
He had seen the ferocious grin which relaxed Fritz Braun's bearded lips into a cruel grin, as the sly lad made a gesture which indicated tidings of great joy. Einstein's dress and bearing was fully worthy of his respectable business station. He might well be taken for the precious "only son" of some well-to-do Jewish-American merchant.
Quick to learn, he had aped the mien of his American fellow employees, and his "educational evenings" at the "Irving Place," the "Thalia," and the "Germania" had given to his bearing what he fondly deemed an "irresistible social swing."
Greedy of pleasures, gluttonous and covetous, the young Ishmael ardently looked forward to a comfortable ill-gotten revenue at the hands of the man, who—through a skilful manipulation of the German janitor of the Western Trading Company's office—had obtained the place of office boy, "with substantial references," for the son of his cast-off paramour.
Leah Einstein had long forgotten the face of the reckless Polish country noble who was the real father of this budding criminal, and the lad himself but dimly discerned the drift of his Mephistophelian patron's proposed villainy.
Timid and cowardly at heart, the young waif would have shuddered had he known of the callous-handed and desperate murders which had shocked Vienna just before Hugo Landor, a talented and handsome young chemist, disappeared forever in flight, lost under a cloud of scandal caused by drink and a maddening devotion to a baby-faced devil of the Ring Strasse Theater chorus, a woman at whose feet the hungry-eyed aristocrats had knelt to sue, a man-eater, a hard-hearted, velvet-eyed, reckless and defiant devil.
At an almost imperceptible nod Einstein drew near to his patron, taking the vacant place in the little alcove, à deux, with his back prudently screening him from any chance visitor who might know the Western Trading Company's personnel. Braun was eager for his spy's report now.
"All right, at last!" the youth huskily whispered. "I watched him meet her, at the picture window, you know. I had posted her! And then he slyly followed her over here and went three blocks out of his way to pipe her off here! So, after his lunch at Taylor's, I put her again onto his homeward way! And he's caught on! No matter! She will tell you the rest herself!"
When the eager lad had finished, Fritz Braun growled under his breath, "You are sure you made no bungle?"
"Dead sure," gaily answered the boy, draining his bock of Muenchner, "I followed him to the bank and to Taylor's, and he is unsuspecting of any plant, I know."
Braun's face relaxed as he pushed over a twenty-dollar bill to the young Judas. "Come in Monday, about ten," he said, carelessly. "You can go, now! I must hurry over to the river. I am late!"
There was a shifty light in Einstein's eyes as he mumbled, "I can tell you something else, if you'll do the right thing." Braun searched the young villain's face. "Go ahead! I'll pay you."
Emboldened by his success, Einstein loudly rapped to replenish his glass. He was now panting to escape for certain tender engagements of his own.
"The firm's lawyer, Ferris, the man who lived with Mr. Clayton, has gone West for six months, so he will be left alone! I followed them and saw Ferris off on the train. I took a telegram to the office for Ferris and Clayton, so Clayton will be alone in the rooms. He's going to keep them, and I'm to go around there Monday and pack up all Mr. Ferris' little things."
"Good, capital!" said Fritz Braun, his eyes gleaming. "You must manage to get me a duplicate key of Clayton's rooms!"
"Easy enough," proudly answered the young rascal. "Mr. Clayton trusts me in all things, and often gives me his latch-key and the room keys when he wants anything from the apartment. Anything else?"
"Yes," stammered the lad, surprised at the stern glare of Braun's expectant eyes. "The Fidelity fellows have been piping off all Mr. Clayton's movements. They watch him on account of the big money that he handles every day. I know the man who shadows Clayton, twice a week, regular, on all his evening trips. They've got their spotters, too, in all the big bar-rooms, and all around the gambling houses, the race courses, Wall Street and the Tenderloin.
"Now, after Clayton left, to-day, Ferris the lawyer came in and told Mr. Robert Wade, that's our chief manager, that the Fidelity Company would make their written reports twice a month to him, while the lawyer's gone."
"I must have these reports!" cried Braun, forgetting the raised pitch of his voice, but the Venus and Tannhauser coterie around were all now fondly busied with each other.
"I can get them! I have a key to Wade's own desk," glibly mouthed the young spy.
"How did you get it?" eagerly demanded the astonished Braun.
"I had it made to get at his cigars," proudly boasted the unabashed lad. "Wade keeps a couple of boxes of the best Havanas on Company account, for the 'big customers.' Yes, and a drop of good old cognac, too.
"There's often a bit of fun behind the ground glass partitions.
I've scraped a little eye hole."
"You are your sly mother's own darling imp," growled Braun, bringing out his pocketbook. "She was the devil's own, too, before she got old and lost her good looks," he sighed.
"Tell me," said he, selecting a note with grave deliberation, "how much did Clayton deposit to-day?"
"Only thirty-eight thousand," contemptuously answered the boy, as he clutched the note now held out to him. "Sometimes it's a round hundred thousand," continued Emil, eager to show off his knowledge, "and on the annual settlements, July 1 to 4th, last year we put in two hundred thousand into the Astor Place. That's our biggest monthly settlement. I always help Mr. Clayton pack it up, in his own room, after he verifies the accountant's tabs."
Fritz Braun suddenly awoke from a reverie. "Get out of here now, and see that you post me on all that this Clayton is up to at night, on his Sundays and vacations. I'll give you a third twenty for the two keys. I may want to take a look at his rooms some Sunday when you are sporting out of town.
"And watch the spotters, too! You might do a good turn in pocket money by posting him, but only as I tell you, mind that! Now, don't go to the devil too fast. Do you ever give your mother any money?"
Einstein's vicious leer was a silent answer. "Tell her she shall have a