d the memory of the innocent victim of the
mysterious murder. "But for her sentimental hubbub, I could have
easily managed Alice. This fellow's strange death gives him the
halo of martyrdom. He is out of my reach now. The old man must
have feared the 'Iron Gate' of Death! And, after all, his plans
to 'efface' Clayton were only inchoate. I cannot terrify them with
any hearsay projects. I must get what I can, cling to Dunham, and
keep silence.

"The marriage! That means just the one hundred thousand dollars!
I will save it and my good name by submitting in silence."

He signalled a passing carriage and ordered the man to drive him
far "up the road," out of range of the shrill-voiced newsboys,
hawking their "extras," with "Full accounts of the great murder
mystery."

For a brief day the name of Randall Clayton was on every one's lips.
There were hundreds clustered around the morgue, where already the
mute witness who had drifted back under the arch of the Brooklyn
Bridge lay in the gloomy state of death. The hasty verdict of "death
from murder committed by parties unknown," was all the record of
the darkly-veiled happening.

It was a blind trail, after all, which had ended this open and
honorable career in the sight of all men. The electric lights were
throwing fitful gleams upon the black waters whirling past the
Brooklyn Bridge, when the executors, with Witherspoon, gathered
around Miss Alice Worthington in the drawing-room of the Stillwell
residence.

There was also the tired counsellor, who had also vainly probed the
officials of the company, the employees of the Astor Place Bank,
and every reachable occupant of the huge business building.

Poor old Somers, for the hundredth time, had rehearsed his story,
and yet it all ended in a blind trail.

While they talked of the dead, in hushed voices, Policeman Dennis
McNerney was chatting with Emil Einstein over the counter of the
Magdal Pharmacy. The keen-eyed policeman noted the efflorescent
jewelry, and the resplendent garb of the too-prosperous-looking
lad.

Notwithstanding the Jewish boy's sudden prosperity, there were
deeply-marked dark circles about his eyes. The Bowery's delights
were telling upon the frightened lad, who had sealed his glib tongue
now behind lying lips. Flattered by the "cop's" familiar manner,
Emil greedily swallowed the ground bait artfully scattered by the
cool Irish-American.

He reeled off the story which he had told to the inq