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The Viennese fugitive diligently plied his erstwhile patron with drink and smilingly enmeshed the brutish peasant-bred Sohmer in a series of compounded loans. It was not long until all the employees recognized in the alert "August Meyer" the mainstay of the decaying fortunes of the half bankrupt Sohmer.

So they came, one after another, and filled up the town Abe Cohen, the Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr. Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy, school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist.

Greedy for money, before Irma Gluyas had been driven to his arms by adverse fortunes, Fritz Braun had at first made his refuge at the "Valkyrie," then owned by Ludwig Sohmer, whose passion for "playing the races" had at last dragged him down.

And so, with Sohmer soundly sleeping, whether well or illy, "after life's fitful fever," the foxy Viennese rejoiced in his assigned ground-lease, Sohmer's business, and the gold mine of the hidden pool-room, gambling den and disguised harem of No. 192 Layte Street.

Every evening, without fail, the sharp commands of Fritz Braun were now conveyed to the responsible underlings! Sohmer, staggering homeward with his greedy Aspasias from the Waterloo conflicts of the race-track, sullenly assented at last to the chattel mortgages and bills of sale which placed the "Valkyrie" and the whole building under August Meyer's name.

Popular with the police, exact in his monthly settlements with the ground landlords and the despotic brewery king, Fritz Braun avoided both the failings which had wrecked the golden fortunes of the dead Sohmer. But, alas! no man is equally strong against all temptations.

Then, taking the downward road, Sohmer tried to drown himself in drink, and succeeded. When Sohmer was found dead in his bed, the millionaire brewer who backed the "Valkyrie," and the owner of the ground on which the building erected by Sohmer stood, gladly took on the active August Meyer in loco the departed Sohmer.