own craftily laid villanies. It was a capital for him, the legacy
of her nurture and his own training.

Mr. Fritz Braun's broad white brow was gathered in an impatient
frown as he strode out of Magdal's Pharmacy on Sixth Avenue and
paced with dignity past all the minor notables of the street.

Hulking policemen, loquacious barber, marketman and newsdealer,
small shop-keeper, and the saloon magnates, all knew the stolid
reticent German who presided over the veiled mysteries of Magdal's.

The whole region of Sixth Avenue, between Twenty-third and Thirtieth,
had its floating 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 Kummel. 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.