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 Opera" on the corner.

The artful Einstein was warily assuring himself that he was quite
unknown to the convives before making his report to his real master
and evil genius. For, young as he was, Emil Einstein well knew that
the tyrant master, who had been his mother's cruel lover, might
some day lure him on to the electric chair.

A guilty pride thrilled the depraved boy's heart to feel that he,
alone, in all the crowded ward, knew what manner of human devil
lurked behind those innocent-looking blue spectacles.

He had seen the ferocious grin which relaxed Fritz Braun's bearded
lips into a cruel grin, as the sly lad made a gesture which
indicated tidings of great joy. Einstein's dress and bearing was
fully worthy of his respectable business station. He might well be
taken for the precious "only son" of some well-to-do Jewish-American
merchant.

Quick to learn, he had aped the mien of his American fellow
employees, and his "educational evenings" at the "Irving Place,"
the "Thalia," and the "Germania" had given to his bearing what he
fondly deemed an "irresistible social swing."

Greedy of pleasures, gluttonous and covetous, the young Ishmael