Mr.Fritz Braun always had a prime cigar and a drop of "medicinal cognac" at the disposal of the visiting policeman.

His perfunctory "loans" had gladdened the hands of several minor officials, whose argus eyes had noted the Sunday run of Dr.Adler's many friends.
All these dangerous wares were distributed in unlabelled vials, and no witnesses had ever verified the transfer of the felonious knock-out drops.

Each week brought to Braun customers from adjacent cities, many of whom, disguised or veiled, hurried away with the means of cowardly crime to work the devil's charms at a safe distance.
Taciturn, morose and keeping his own counsel, Fritz Braun was a cautious trader with the great supply houses.

His bills of purchase were made out to the welcome "Mr.Cash," and the old prescription books of Magdal were ostentatiously displayed with a few family orders dropping in now and then from some befogged physician.

The bond between Lilienthal and Braun had been strengthened by the aid of the "picture dealer" in smuggling from Hamburg and Bremen much of the dangerous ware of this mind-wrecking business.
And so, peddling the means of murder, filling his yawning pocketbook, Fritz Braun had thrived in solitude until Irma Gluyas sought the refuge of New York City.
For the discovery of her picture in the stiffened hands of a suicide, a young noble officer, ruined by her extravagance, had caused the Viennese siren to flee the vengeance of a powerful Austrian family.
And so the lives of these two, linked by folly, sin, crime and mad extravagance, had run together again far from the scenes where, led on by her dark eyes, Hugo Landor had stumbled along on the dark road from theft and forgery to callous murder.
On this particular April early afternoon, the eager plotter was willing to leave his afternoon customers to the sly Timmins.