Chapter I.

THE DANUBE PICTURE.

The re was no air of uncertainty upon the handsome countenance of

Mr. Randall Clayton as he stepped out of the elevator of a sedate

Fourteenth Street business building and approvingly sniffed the

April morning breeze.

On this particular Saturday of ninety-seven, the shopping multitude was already pouring from the Scylla of Simpson, Crawford & Simpson's on Sixth Avenue—and its Charybdis of the Big Store—past the jungles of Altman's, Ehrich's and O'Neill's—to dash feebly upon the buttressed corner of Macy's, and then die away in refluent, diverted waves, lost in the fastnesses of McCreery's and Wanamaker's, far down Broadway.

The pulses of the young man were vaguely thrilled with the coming of spring, and so he complacently took in the never-ceasing tide of eager women, on the street's shady side, with one comprehensive and kindly glance.

For six long years he had cautiously studied that same sea of always anxious faces! He well knew all the types from the disdainful woman of fashion, the crafty daughter of sin, the vacuous country visitor, down to the argus-eyed mere de famille, sternly resolute in her set purpose of making three dollars take the place of five, by some heaven-sent bargain.

Countless times he had threaded this restless multitude, with an Alert devotion to the interests of the We stern Trading Company. He was, to the ordinary lounger, but the type of the average well-groomed New York business man.

And yet, his watchful eyes swept keenly to right and left, as he breasted the singularly inharmonious waves of the weaker sex.

His left hand firmly gripped a Russian leather portmanteau of substantial construction, while his right lay loosely in the pocket of his modish spring overcoat.

To one having the gift of Asmodeus, that well-gloved right hand would have been revealed as resting upon the handle of a heavy revolver, and the contents of the tourist-looking portmanteau been known as some thirty-eight thousand dollars in well-thumbed currency and greasy checks of polyglot signatures.

It was the"short day"of the week's business, and the usual route for making his bank deposit lay before him. Down University Place to Eighth Street he was bent, thus avoiding the Broadway crush, and over to the shaded counting rooms of the Astor Place Bank.

Clayton's mind was concentrated, as usual, upon his important business. Few of the neighbors in the great office building knew of the vast interests represented by the modest sign"We stern Trading Company."

Certain gray-bearded bookkeepers, a couple of brisk correspondents, a stony-faced woman stenographer, with a couple of ferret-eyed office boys were the office force, besides the travelling manager and Mr. Randall Clayton, the cashier and personal representative of the absent"head,"who rarely left his Detroit home to interfere with the well-oiled movements of the"New York end."

But daily, rain or shine, Mr. Randall Clayton himself took his way to the bank to deposit the funds to meet their never-ceasing outflow of We stern exchange. The re was an Air of grave prosperity in the sober offices of the great cattle company which impressed even the casual wanderer.

Silence and decorum marked all the transactions of the weekly messengers, paying in the heavy accounts of the hundreds of New York butchers who drew their daily supplies from these great occidental cattle handlers. The various departments of the great business were always kept as sealed books to each other, and only Emil Einstein, Clayton's own office boy, knew how much treasure was daily packed away into that innocent looking portmanteau.

Mr. Somers, the head accountant, with a grave bow, always verified the sealed delivery slip of the funds, and compared it with the returned bank books, carefully filing away all these in his own private safe with Clayton's returned list of We stern and Southern exchange.

On the sunny April morning, Randall Clayton was weary of the confining life of the silence haunted office rooms, where he patiently bore the strain of his grave duties, with a cautious avoidance of useless communication, fencing him even from his fellow employees.

As he strode along the crowded street, his jaded soul yearned for the wild majesty of the far off Montana mountains, and the untrammeled life of the We stern frontier, given up perforce, when his father's death had left him, twelve years before, alone in the world.

"The same old daily grind,"he murmured."Oh! For one good long gallop on the lonely prairies—a day in the forest with the antlered elk, an Afternoon among the gray boulders of the McCloud River."

He sighed as he recalled his drudging rise in business, since his father's old partner had set his life work out before him, when the lonely boy had finished with honor his course at Ann Arbor.

Four years at college, two with"the chief,"under his own watchful eye, and then that six years of a dragging upward pull in the New York office had made a man of him; but, only a self-contained and prematurely jaded man.

"It's too much to lose,"he muttered, as he thought of his hardly earned promotion, his four thousand a year, and—the future prospects. He was the envy of his limited coterie, even though his few intimates looked with a certain awe upon a man who was obliged to file a bond of fifty thousand dollars for his vast pecuniary handlings.

For the great association of We stern cattle men were hard taskmasters and only the head lawyers in Detroit knew that Hugh Worthington had annually sent in his own personal check to the Fidelity Company to pay the dues of the bond of the son of a man to whom he had owed his own first rise.

"It's too hard,"mused his patron,"to spy on the lad and then make him pay for it. But it has to be,"he sighed."The re are the snares and pitfalls."

Many an eye approvingly followed the stalwart young man still in the flush of his unsapped vigor, at twenty-eight, as the tall form swept on through the crowds of polyglot women.

The re was a healthy tan on Clayton's face, his brown hair crisply curled upon a well-set head, his keen blue eye and soldierly mustache finely setting off a frank and engaging countenance.

The grave sense of gratitude, his place of trust, the stern admonitions of his sententious patron, Worthington, and the counsel of his only chum—a hard-headed young New York lawyer—had kept him so far from the prehensile clutches of the Jezebel-infested Tenderloin.

Clayton had fallen judiciously into the haven of a well-chosen apartment, sharing his intimacy only with Arthur Ferris, the brisk-eyed advocate whose curt office missive always enforced the lagging collections of the New York branch.

Simultaneously with his last promotion, however, there came to Clayton the knowledge that he was continuously and systematically watched by the unseen agents of the Fidelity Company.

And, yet strong in his own determination, he bore as a galling chain, growing heavier with the months, the knowledge that the eye of the secret agent would surely follow him, in all the"pleasures"incident to his time of life and rising financial station.

The sword hung over his defenceless head!—too busy for the gad-fly life of the clubs—a strong, lonely swimmer in the tide of New York life, he was as yet a comparative stranger to Folly and her motley crew of merry wantons in gay Gotham.

The theater, some good music, his athletics, and the hastily snatched pleasures of vacation, together with the limp reading of an overwearied man, afforded him such desultory pleasures as fell in his path.

On his way now to a luncheon engagement with his comrade Ferris, at Taylor's, his mind was busied only with the care of the daily treasure trust.

Serenely confident, he swung along, his two score thousand of dollars being a mere ordinary deposit, in a business which, in holiday seasons, and at times of monthly settlements, often stuffed the portmanteau with sums rising the hundred thousand.

His callous eye vainly rested on the peopled loneliness of the bustling crowd, intent only upon the possibility of a sudden dash of some sneak thief, or the chance malignity of some swell"mobsman."

Suddenly Randall Clayton paused in his swinging stride. For a face, rapt in its intense earnestness, broke in upon his gnawing loneliness. A lovely vision, a very Rose of Life's Garden!

"By Jove!"he murmured, as with a new-born craft he lingered for a moment before a window with an"art"display, only to watch the receding form of the unknown beauty, whose single glance had left him standing there spellbound.

The re was an exquisite artist proof of a romantic scene upon the Danube displayed in the place of honor, a view of one of the grandly witching defiles where the mighty stream immortalized by Strauss breaks out of the smiling Austrian plains, dashing along into the Iron Gates of gallant Hungary.

He could not, as yet, tell what manner of woman she might be, but his spirit burned within him as he felt the lingering spell of those dark, witching eyes, for they had rested upon his own, in an instant, unguarded glance of sympathy.

Mechanically following on, Clayton noted the refinement of the daintily cut dark dress, veiling a form of ravishing symmetry. The re was a single red rose in the Polish toque, and that one touch of color guided him as he followed the gracefully gliding unknown beauty.

Strangely stirred at heart, he marked the distinction of the lady's bearing, her well-gloved hand, clasping a music roll—and even the natty bottines had not escaped him. He saw all this before he was aware that he had passed on beyond University Place, with no other purpose than to gaze into those sweetly earnest eyes again."Twenty-three—no, twenty-five,"his keen perception told him, by right of the supple and imperially moulded form of womanly ripeness. And he wondered vaguely what daughter of the gods this might be—what heiress of the graces of the laughter-loving goddesses of old!

He quickened his pace in the narrow space between University Place and Broadway, fearful that he would lose that dark-eyed vision in the human breakers at the Broadway curve. But his grasp mechanically tightened upon his treasure, his right hand clutched the pistol butt more firmly, as his cheek reddened with an involuntary blush.

He had seen just such faces on the Prater in sparkling Vienna, and in the antique streets of Buda-Pesth on the one summer European run, snatched from the Moloch worship of the Almighty Dollar!

Such eyes, now soft and dreamy, then lit up with a merry challenge, had rested on the handsome young American tourist in the vaulted halls of the Wiener Cafe, where the Waltz King's witching melodies ruled the happy hour.

And supple forms like this he had often seen flitting among the copses of the Margarethe Insel, when the yellow sunset rays shone golden on the gleaming Danube, and the purple shadows began to steal over the old fortress high uplifted there above Hungary's capital. Here was a truant beauty escaped from a land of dreams.

Clayton had followed the unknown over Broadway's dangerously choked throat, before the music roll gave him his clue. He was now in the musical center of New York, and in proximity to the modest foreign theaters where a conscientious art flourishes, as yet unknown to the garish play-houses of upper Broadway.

Some visiting singer, some transplanted"Kuenstlerinn,"he conjectured

as, never ceasing that queenly stride, the unknown crossed Fourth

Avenue toward the vicinity of Steinway's and the Irving Place

The ater.

As yet he had not seen that bewitching face again, for he was a laggard in pursuit, his coward conscience smiting him for his first errant detour.

It seemed as if the money in that portmanteau rustled a portentous warning, but"a spirit in his feet"led him to execute a quick left-flank movement as he sped first across the triangle, passing under the shadow of the Washington statue (pride of the job brass founder), and, with a stolen side glance, he surveyed the lady once more, as she leisurely mounted the steps of the"Restaurant Bavaria."

His eyes dropped in a strange confusion as he once more met the sweetly serious glance of those wonderful eyes, now resting upon him with a gleam of vaguely timid inquiry. The delicately moulded arm and slender hand were revealed, as with a graceful sweep the lady lifted her rustling drapery and disappeared within the doors of the one foreign cafe lingering reluctant on Union Square.

With a sigh, Randall Clayton turned back toward the south, for a hasty glance at a clock face told him that there was left him but fifteen minutes wherein to reach the Bank, before the brazen bells would clang high noon. His heart was beating strangely as he retraced his steps, for the ichor of young blood was boiling in his veins at last.

He was lost in a clouding day dream, as he recrossed Fourth Avenue and only dimly saw the foxy face of his office boy flash out of the jostling crowd on the corner before he darted over.

As he resolutely stemmed the tide pouring eastward, he had turned down Broadway before he realized that there had been a half smile of recognition on those rich red Hungarian lips, a wordless message in the dark splendors of the gleaming eyes.

Could it be? They had lingered but a few moments together gazing on the pictured glories of the distant Danube. Clayton felt that some new influence had suddenly loosened all the pent-up longings of his ardent nature. He was above all the vulgar pretenses of the"boulevardier."He now realized in a single moment the hollow loneliness of a life made up only of so many monthly pay days and so many dull returns of the four unheeded seasons. For his life had only been a heavy pathway of toil up an inclined plane of manifold resistances.

He recalled, how on his one European voyage, the distant gleam of a single silver sail far out on the blue rim of the pathless ocean had suddenly broken in upon the eternal loneliness of that watery waste.

And now, in all the peopled loneliness of all New York—hitherto a human desert for him—the glance of these same alien eyes had suddenly awakened him to yearnings for another life.

He was half way down the bustling Broadway to the bank before he dared ask himself if the bright, shy glances of these unforgotten eyes were meant for him.

"Perhaps,"he muttered, and then his whole nature stifled the unworthy suggestion. No! On that fair face only truth and honor were mirrored. He was left alone absently checking up his deposit list before he recalled all the proud and womanly bearing of the beautiful unknown.

The re was in her every motion the distinction of an isolation from the contact of the meaner world! How hungrily he had watched her onward path he only knew now.

And, with a secret pride, he recalled how daintily, like the swift Camilla, she had sped onward through all those human billows heaving to and fro,"the world forgetting, by the world forgot."

He pocketed all his deposit slips, then glanced mechanically at the bank-book's entries, and wearily parried the badinage of the bright-faced young bank-teller.

Clayton slowly wandered over toward Taylor's, and he was still lost in his day-dream when he joined his chum, Arthur Ferris, finding the modest feast already on the table.

"By Jove, old man! You're'way behind time,"began the nervous lawyer."I've got to hustle. I leave for Detroit on the evening train."

"What's up, Arthur?"demanded the laggard.

"I've just had a wire from Worthington,"seriously replied his room-mate."He is going to take a trip around the world, via San Francisco. It seems that Miss Alice's health is precarious. And, the'Chief'is going to put me in special charge of all his personal interests during this stay of six or nine months. I am to go out for my instructions, travel on to the Pacific Coast with them, and then, returning, inspect all the cattle ranches on my way back to Detroit."