oating contingent of "sporting" men and women who well
knew the crafty wisdom lurking behind the blue spectacles which
veiled the pharmacist's piercing glances. Fritz Braun's "contingent"
were a brood of the Devil's own children.

Fritz Braun was strangely three hours late upon this especial
evening, but his step was evenly sedate as he entered Zimmermann's
for his before dinner Kuemmel. A prosperous figure was he in his
mouse-colored top-coat of fashionable cut, his immaculate silk hat,
with the red dogskin gloves, and the heavy ivory-headed cane.

With his antique cameo scarf pin, his coat collar turned up around
his flowing golden beard, he was the very type of the sedate burgher
of Dresden or Leipzig. And yet many a dark secret lurked in that
busy brain of his.

A dozen necks were craned after him, though, as he silently left
the saloon and caught the down-town car.

For from Greely Square to Eighth Street, from the cork room of
Koster & Bial's to the purlieus of old Clinton Place, all the "off
color" men and women of New York's "fly" circles knew and feared
the steady eyes gleaming through the cerulean lenses.

"He's a deep one, the Professor," grunted the Hanoverian barkeeper.
"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 cafe 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