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All unknown to him, a dozen busy minds were weaving snares for his wandering feet. While Clayton, at last, saw Madame Raffoni cautiously approaching, in his superb Fifth Avenue residence, the sick man, Robert Wade, was closeted with the wolfish-eyed Arthur Ferris, the parchment-faced Somers, and four of the seven directors of the Trading Company.
There was but one occupant, however, for Madame Raffoni had silently disappeared before the diva, heavily veiled, entered the vehicle. Clayton wondered at the protracted absence of his office boy, ignorant that the young double spy was standing before the Restaurant Bavaria watching Leah Einstein's furtive disappearance.
Fritz Braun, in his own private lair, was pondering over the words of Madame Raffoni, who had just left the man who was the iron tyrant of her soiled life. "I must give him a little more line! And I must either land the fish now or lose him forever." There was a steely gleam in the sleepless eyes of him who pondered upon his clouded pathway. "It must be done! And she must help in some way.
Never waiting for the elevator, Clayton grasped his hat, hastily donning his top-coat, and snatching the bag, cried, "Lock up my desk and keep my keys till I come back. Don't leave; remember!" Everything but Irma Gluyas faded from the excited lover's mind as he saw the portly form of Madam Raffoni lingering in the darkened hallway of the ground-floor entrance.
The white-crested waves dashed menacingly upon the shore! Irma Gluyas clung to her lover as the affrighted Madame Raffoni came rushing toward them for shelter in the storm. The red lightning flashed, and the fury of the storm was upon them. It was a wild tempest which raged around them. The women were helpless with fear.
The freshening wind was driving the black smoke of the steamers, far out at sea, in long funereal wreaths, athwart the foaming wake, and the silver-sailed schooners began to reef, in anticipation of the coming storm. An infinite tenderness seized upon Randall Clayton as he motioned to Madame Raffoni to leave them, and then took that beloved head to its shelter upon his breast.
The parlor floor, bearing the gilded sign, "Parisian Millinery Repository," was darkened, and, above, the three upper floors presented only an array of undraped windows solidly shut off by white-enamelled inside folding blinds. The decorous-looking main entrance bore but one card, in script, "Raffoni, Musical Director."
Irma Gluyas shrieked as she clung to her lover and bade him save her as the wild lightning bolts rent the darkness. It was a horrid elemental tumult! A few hundred yards away a heavy closed carriage was slowly creeping along the drive between the hotels. "Run for your life!" shouted Clayton to the eager Madame Raffoni. "Stop that carriage. Offer him anything, everything! I will carry her.
Randall Clayton drew a new courage from Fräulein Irma's murmured remark, "Madame Raffoni, unfortunately, speaks no English," and the young enthusiast only noted that the ex-professional still possessed splendid eyes, and showed the remains of a considerable personal beauty. His whole cares fell away from him as Clayton joined in the merry mood of his beautiful enchantress.
The dark eyes of Madame Raffoni gleamed pityingly as she drew the young man, almost by force, away. With an agony of sudden terror she pointed to the hallway, and laid her finger upon her lip. And then, in a hoarse whisper, the woman told, in her patois, broken with sobs, of the alternate spells of fainting and exhaustion which had brought Irma Gluyas nigh to Death's door.
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