Chapter IV: Part I: Fortune (4)

“You might,” he admitted. “But that wouldn’t put you out of your trouble and might put other folks into danger. You want to lose these urgent friends of yours for good.”

“That’s so.”

“Got some nerve?”

“Enough to capture this stuff from a court and tote it ’cross country from Frisco!” He patted his valise.

“Come on, then!”

The Southerner drew on his trousers and boots. As Brainard turned impatiently toward the door, he said:

“Not that way!”

He pulled back a hanging at the foot of his bed, revealing a little wooden door, which he opened, and, candle in hand, led the way through a close, dusty passage. After making several turns, they descended a flight of narrow stairs, and Brainard’s guide pushed open a door at the bottom. The musty odor of old incense told him that they had entered a church, and the wavering candle-light partially revealed the statues of the saints and the altars of the chapels.

“The cathedral,” the Southerner remarked, and added, “Convenient sometimes!”

Brainard followed him closely across the nave of the church to a door, which Calloway unbolted after some fumbling. They emerged upon a narrow lane with blank walls on either side.

“That hotel used to be the bishop’s palace,” the Southerner explained. “It’s a pretty handy place to get out of on the quiet, if you know the way!”

It was only a short distance to the railroad terminal. Calloway walked rapidly and noiselessly on the toes of his boots, and kept to the dark side of the lane. They entered the yards beyond the station building, and went to the farther end, where several tracks were occupied by antiquated coaches that looked like a cross between open street cars and English third-class railway carriages.

“We used these rattletraps before they changed the line to steam. It took six mules to haul one of ’em up from the junction of the Mexico and Vera Cruz road; but they can go down flying! It’s down grade all the way for nearly forty miles. They are rather wabbly now, but if you get one with a good brake, it will last the trip.”

He tried several of the old cars, and finally selected one with a brake that worked to his satisfaction. Together they could just start it, and they pushed it out to the main track. Brainard threw his valise aboard, and took his post, as the railroad man directed him, at the handbrake.

“I’ll open the gate for you, and set the switch; then it’s clear sailing. Go slow until you learn the trick, then let her sail. There’s a bad curve about seven miles out, and a couple of miles farther on you’ll find a considerable hill and some up grade. You must let her slide down the hill for all she can do, and take the grade on her own momentum. If you don’t, you may get stuck. I can’t think of anything else. You’ll roll down to the junction in a couple of hours, as pretty as coasting, if that confounded _peon_ hasn’t left the switch open at Cavallo. If he has, you’ll just have to jump for it, and foot it down through the chaparral, if you haven’t broken your neck. Needn’t bother to return the car,” he chuckled. “Is there anything else I can do for you, young man?”

“You’ve got me out of a tight hole,” Brainard replied warmly, “and I can’t begin to thank you for it. I hope I shall see you up North some day, and be able to do something for you!”

“It isn’t likely we’ll meet in the States. They don’t want me up there!” the Southerner answered slowly. “But perhaps, sometime, you’ll be able to help a poor fellow out of _his_ hole in the same way.”

“That woman may strike the scent, and come hot-foot to Vera Cruz by the first train. Well, I’ll have to take my chances there before the boat sails.”

“Leave her to me and Hollinger. We’ll give her a tip that you have gone North.” Calloway laughed. “If she won’t take it, there are other ways of stopping her activity. There’s a good deal of smallpox hereabouts, you know, and if the mayor suspected these _gringos_ had the disease, he’d chuck ’em into the pesthouse. Don Salvador does pretty much what I tell him—and the hotel-keeper, too. I think we can keep your friends quiet.”

“Get me twelve hours, if you can! And tell Hollinger I’m on the job again.”

The two men shook hands; Calloway pushed back the great gate; and the car slid down the track out into the warm, black night, groaning to itself asthmatically as it gathered impetus.

XVI

The Transatlantique line steamer _Toulouse_ lay off the breakwater of Vera Cruz, smoking fiercely, anchor up, passengers all aboard, ready to sail for Havre. Her departure had been delayed nearly eighteen hours by a fierce “norther,” which had not yet exhausted its fury. They had been anxious hours for Brainard, who had gone aboard the night before, in the expectation of sailing immediately. Now the black smoke pouring from the funnel indicated that the captain had decided to proceed, and Brainard’s spirits rose.

Nothing had been seen or heard of the stenographer and her companion. Either they had lost the trail, or his friends at Jalapa had succeeded in holding them there for almost two days, and had kept them away from the telegraph, too.

Brainard was about to leave the deck, where he had been anxiously watching the land, when his attention was caught by a small launch that was rounding the end of the pier and heading for the steamer. His hands tightened on the rail; he suspected what that launch might contain. He noted that the steamer was moving slowly. Would the captain wait?

The _Toulouse_ had swung around; her nose pointed out into the Gulf of Mexico, and her screw revolved at quarter speed. The launch approached rapidly, and signaled the steamer to wait. Brainard could see the smart French captain, on the bridge above, examining the small boat through glasses. He himself could detect two figures in the bow, waving a flag, and he smiled grimly at the comedy about to take place at his expense.

The screw ceased to revolve. As the launch came within hailing distance, there was an animated colloquy in French between the officers on the bridge of the _Toulouse_ and the man in charge of the launch.

“Some late passengers,” remarked the third officer, who was standing beside Brainard. “A woman, too!”

Apparently neither the stenographer—for now he could recognize the young woman—nor her companion, a stout, middle-aged, red-cheeked American, understood the French language. They kept gesticulating and pointing to Brainard, whom they had discovered on the deck. The captain of the launch translated their remarks, and threw in some explanations of his own. The officers from the bridge of the _Toulouse_ fired back vigorous volleys of questions. It was an uproar!

Brainard, in spite of his predicament, burst into laughter over the frantic endeavors of the two Americans to make themselves understood. The captain tried his English, but with poor results. Finally, with a gesture of disgust, he yanked the bell rope. Brainard could hear the gong sound in the engine room beneath for full speed. The _Toulouse_ would not wait.

The steamer began to gather speed, the launch to fall behind, while the woman at the bow shrieked and pointed to Brainard. The captain of the _Toulouse_ merely shrugged his shoulders and walked to the other side of his vessel.

“Some friends of yours?” the third officer said to Brainard, with a grin, as the little launch fell into their wake and finally turned back toward the inner harbor. “The lady seemed anxious to join you—might be a wife, _non_?”

Apparently he knew enough English to enable him to conjecture what the two Americans wanted. If, thought Brainard, the captain had known as much English as his third officer, it might not have gone so happily for him!

“The lady isn’t exactly my wife,” Brainard replied, with a laugh; “not yet!”

“Ah!” the Frenchman said, with a meaning smile. “What you in the States call a breach of the promise?”

“Exactly!” Brainard replied hastily, glad to accept such a credible fiction.

“She seems sorry to let you make the journey alone, eh?”

“Rather!”

The story circulated on the ship that evening, and gave Brainard a jocular notoriety in the smoking room among the German and French business men, who composed most of the _Toulouse’s_ first-cabin list. It was forgotten, however, before he emerged from his cabin, to which the remains of the “norther” had quickly driven him. By this time—it was the fourth day out—the _Toulouse_ was in the grasp of the Gulf Stream, lazily plowing her twelve knots an hour into the North Atlantic, and the passengers were betting their francs on the probable day of arrival at Havre.

That evening, at dinner, Brainard ordered a bottle of champagne, and murmured, as he raised the glass to his lips:

“Here’s to Melody—whoever and whatever and wherever she may be!”

His youthful fancy, warmed by the wine, played again with the idea of an unknown mistress for whom he was bound across the seas with her fortune in his grip. With the insistence of youth, he had made up his mind that Melody must be a woman—what else could she be? He always saw her as a young woman, charming, beautiful, of course, and free!

And yet she might well be some aged relative of Krutzmacht, or a fair friend of his youth, to whom, in the moment of decision allowed him, he had desired to leave his fortune; or some unrecognized wife, to whom, at the threshold of death, he thought to do tardy justice.

“An old hag, perhaps!” the young man murmured with a grimace. “We’ll see—over there!”

But his buoyant fancy refused to vision this elusive Melody as other than young and beautiful. And he gave her the attractive shape and personality of Señorita Marie. He began to think of her as living in some obscure corner of the great world, waiting to be dowered with the fortune that he had bravely rescued for her.

When Brainard felt that his stomach and his sea legs were both impeccable, he descended to his cabin, bolted the door, pulled the shade carefully over the porthole, pinned newspapers above the wooden partitions, and proceeded to make a leisurely examination of the valise. It was the first safe moment that he had had to go through the contents of the bag thoroughly; and when the key sank into the lock, his curiosity was whetted to a fine edge.

He had already made a careful count of the notes and gold left after his devious journey to Vera Cruz. The sum was eight thousand dollars and some hundreds. This he had entered on a blank leaf in a little diary, under the heading “Melody, Cr.” On the opposite page he had put down all the sums that he remembered to have spent since leaving New York, even to his cigarettes and the bottle of champagne which he had drunk in honor of his unknown mistress.

“Here goes!” he said at last. “Let’s see what Melody’s pile is, anyway.”

It took the best part of the night to examine thoroughly what the bag held. Even after he had gone over every piece, Brainard, untrained in business matters, could but guess at the full importance of his haul. There were contracts and deeds and leases relating to a network of corporations, of which the most important, apparently, was the Pacific Northern Railway.

Despairing of understanding the full value of these documents without some clew, Brainard contented himself with making a careful inventory of them. The meat of the lot, he judged, lay in certain bundles of neatly engraved five-per-cent bonds of the Pacific Northern, together with a number of certificates of stock in the Shasta Company. In all, as he calculated, there were eight millions of bonds and fifteen millions, par value, of stock.

“Melody doesn’t look to me to be a poor lady,” Brainard muttered, bundling up the bonds and stock, and packing them carefully away at the bottom of the valise. “They are welcome to the rest, if they’ll let me off with these pretty things!”

What was more, he had come across the name of Schneider Brothers, bankers, Berlin, on the letterhead of several communications, indicating that they had been the dead man’s foreign fiscal agents. That would be of use to him, he noted, as he wrote the name in his little diary. Then he went on deck, lighted a long Mexican cigar, and began to think. The value of his haul made him very serious. Latterly his adventure had more or less the irresponsibility of a boy’s lark about it, but now it assumed larger importance. What he had done was a serious matter in the eyes of the law, and he must justify his proceedings, not only to himself, but to others. . . .

The days of the lazy, sunny voyage slipped away. As the vessel drew nearer Europe, Brainard speculated more and more anxiously on what might be waiting for him on the dock at Havre. Now that he knew how valuable his loot was, he felt certain that old Krutzmacht’s San Francisco enemies, who had tracked him to the dock at Vera Cruz, would hardly be idle during the sixteen days that the _Toulouse_ had taken to cross the seas. There had been ample time for them to hear from the stenographer and their other agents in Mexico, to communicate with the French authorities, to have detectives cross from New York by one of the express boats and meet him at Havre. There would be a fine reception committee prepared for him on the dock!

Cudgel his brains as he might, hour after hour, he could see no way out of the predicament that was daily drawing nearer. After the incident at Vera Cruz, he could not approach any of the officers of the vessel and seek to enlist their help. He thought of bribing the sociable third officer to secrete the contents of his valise, but he mistrusted his volatile temperament. There was a Frenchwoman who sat next him at the table, a dark-haired little person, clever and businesslike, who had been very agreeable to Brainard, and had undertaken to teach him French. He could tell his story to Mme Vernon, and ask her to assume charge of the troublesome valise. But an instinctive caution restrained him from taking any one into his confidence. He preferred to run his chance of arrest, and to fight against extradition. Whenever he resigned himself to this prospect, his sporting blood rebelled, and there rose, also, a new sentiment of loyalty to the interests of his unknown mistress, Melody. He had come too far in his venture to be beaten now!

“Whether the old man was straight or not, whether he really owned the bunch of bonds and stock or not, it would be a pity not to get something out of it for Melody. She’s not in the scrap,” he said to himself. “No, I don’t chuck the game yet!”

His anxieties were quieted by another fit of seasickness on the day before they were due to arrive at Havre. As she approached the coast of Brittany, the _Toulouse_ lost the balmy weather which had prevailed since they entered the Gulf Stream, and ran straight into a gale that was sweeping over the boisterous Bay of Biscay. Brainard went to bed, to spend altogether the most wretched twenty-four hours he had ever experienced.

In his more conscious moments he gathered that the old _Toulouse_ was having as hard a time with the weather as he was. Her feeble engines at last lay down on the job, and the captain was forced to turn about and run before the storm. It mattered little to Brainard, just then, whether the ship was blown to the Azores, or went to the bottom, or carried him into Havre, there to be arrested and finally deported to the United States for grand larceny. He turned in his berth, thought of the _Bourgogne_, and closed his weary eyes.

Toward evening the gale blew itself out, and the battered old _Toulouse_ was headed north once more across the Bay of Biscay. Sometime in the night the engines ceased to thump, and Brainard awoke with a start. When he had hurried into his clothes, and groped his way to the deck, he was astonished to see ahead, through the gray fog of early morning, faint lights and, farther away, the stronger illumination that came from some city.

“Is it Havre?” he demanded of the third officer, whom he met.

“No, monsieur—St. Nazaire!” the Frenchman answered. “Monsieur will be disappointed?”

“I don’t think so!” exclaimed Brainard.

It was, indeed, the port of Nantes. The captain had not chosen to risk the voyage around the stormy coast of Brittany with his depleted coal supply, and had taken the old _Toulouse_ to the nearest port.

“Here’s where Melody scores!” Brainard muttered, when he realized the significance of the news. “Now for a quick exit to Paris, before the telegraph gets in its deadly work and notifies the civilized world where we are!”

XVII

Three hours later the passengers of the _Toulouse_ were aboard a special train for Paris, and in a first-class compartment Brainard was seated, facing his valise, and looking out upon the pleasant landscape of the Loire valley, a contented expression on his brown young face.

He had already formulated to himself the exact plot of his movements from the moment he reached Paris. From the pleasant Frenchwoman who had been his neighbor at the ship’s table he had learned the address of a little hotel in the Bourse quarter, where she assured him that Americans rarely appeared. It was not far from the large bank in which he intended to deposit Melody’s burdensome fortune until he could make arrangements for disposing of it.

It did not take him long, therefore, to install himself at the little Hôtel des Voyageurs et Brésil, and to rid himself of his troublesome loot. Then he wrote a letter to Schneider Brothers, of Berlin, who, he had learned at the Crédit Lyonnais, were a well-known firm of bankers with an agency in New York. He wrote the Messrs. Schneider that in obedience to the instructions of the late Mr. Herbert Krutzmacht, of San Francisco, he wished to consult with them in regard to the disposal of some securities that he had in his possession. He would remain for the present in Paris, and he begged to suggest that the bankers should send a responsible agent to meet him at some place—preferably The Hague, whither he was going the following week.

He had selected The Hague as a safe middle ground, after consulting the map of Europe in his guidebook.

“That will draw their fire,” he thought complacently. “We shall see on which side of the game they are!”

Having mailed the letter, he strolled out to the boulevards to enjoy his first whiff of Paris. This was the city that he had walked in his dreams! He had never hoped to see it; but now he was strolling along the Boulevard des Italiens, and there before his eyes lay the great Place de l’Opéra, with its maze of automobiles, ’buses, and pedestrians. And there—Brainard stopped in the middle of the crowded _place_, wrapped in wonder, staring at the gilded figures on the façade of the Opéra, until an excitable official with a white baton poured a stream of voluble expostulation into his ear, and he dodged from under an omnibus just in time to fall into the path of a motor, causing general execration.

The official with the white stick finally landed him on the curb before he became an obstruction to traffic. He sank into an inviting iron chair and ordered a drink, as he saw that that was what the Parisians used their sidewalks for. In answer to his labored French, there came back in the purest Irish:

“Whisky, sor? Black and White, sor? Very good, sor!”

“Well, I never!” he murmured, radiant with happiness.

When the waiter reappeared with the drink, he was gazing down the broad avenue, entranced.

“Where does that go?” he whispered to the waiter, thrusting a bill into the curving palm and pointing vaguely before him.

“The Luver, sure, sor. You’ll be wanting a nurse before the day is done!” the Irishman muttered.

And indeed the self-contained young American began to act like a lunatic let loose. Gulping down his whisky, he set off at random, plunging again into the sea of traffic, finally escaping to the shelter of a cab. The driver, after vain attempts to extract an intelligible order from his fare, just drove on and on through the boulevards, across great squares, up the noble avenue to the lofty arch, and then came back to the center of the city and stopped suggestively before a restaurant.

Somehow Brainard managed to get fed, and then the fatherly cabby received him and bore him on through the gas-lighted streets, soft and lambent and vocal, and at the end of another hour deposited him in front of what Brainard took to be a theater—a modest-looking building enough. From the poster he saw that it was the Français.

The great Théâtre Français! He beamed back at cabby, who gesticulated with his whip and urged him on. Cabby had begun sympathetically to comprehend his lunatic.

They played _Cyrano_ that night, it happened. Though the fluent lines rolled too swiftly over Brainard’s head for his feeble comprehension of the language, he understood the wonderful actors. For the first time in the twenty-eight years of his existence, he realized what is art—what it is to conceive and represent life with living creatures, to clothe dull lines of print with human passions. This was what he had dreamed might be when he descended from his gallery seat in a Broadway theater—but what never was.

Cabby was asleep on the box outside when Brainard emerged from his dream. At the young American’s touch, he awoke, and, chirping to his decrepit horse, bore the stranger to his hotel. At the door they exchanged vivid protestations of regard, and a couple of pieces of gold rolled into cabby’s paw.

“He understood!” Brainard murmured gratefully. “_Demain_—_demain_!” he cried; and the _cocher_ cracked his whip.

The next two days were the most wonderful that Brainard had ever spent. He slept but a few hours each night—was there not all the rest of life to sleep in? Under the fat cabby’s guidance he roamed day and night. He would murmur from time to time some famous name which seemed to act on cabby like a cabalistic charm,—Louvre, Panthéon, Arc de Triomphe, Invalides, Bastille, Luxembourg, Nôtre Dame. At noon and at night they drew up before some marvelous restaurant where the most alluring viands were to be had. Each evening there was a theater, carefully chosen by cabby; and there Brainard spent enchanted hours, drinking in at every sense the meaning of the play, savoring the charm of intonation, of line, of gesture—the art which seemed innate in these people.

For was he not, as he had said to Krutzmacht, by profession a dramatist?

The third day he bethought him of the French lady of the _Toulouse_, and gave her address to his guardian. With her he made an expedition to Versailles. On their return from the château, they dined at a little restaurant at Ville d’Avray, the Frenchwoman carefully ordering the food and the wine.

As the twilight fell across the old ponds and over the woods where Corot had once wandered, Brainard murmured softly:

“Melody, my dear, I owe you a whole lot for this—more than I can ever pay you, no matter how much I can squeeze out of those Dutchmen for your bonds and stock!” And then, aloud, “Here’s to Melody—God bless her!”

“Mel-odie!” said the French lady daintily. “It is a pretty name. Is that the name of your _fiancée_?”

“No, madam! I have never seen the lady—but I hope to, some day!”

The Frenchwoman smiled and made no comment, puzzled by this latest manifestation of the lunatic American.

After dinner they strolled through the ancient park of St. Cloud to the river, and took a _bateau mouche_ for Paris. Mme. Vernon seemed to understand all the pleasant little ways of enjoying life. It was a warm, starry night. The French lady sat close to Brainard, and looked up tenderly into his eyes, but though his lips were wreathed in smiles, and his eyes were bright, he did not seem to comprehend what such opportunities were made for.

“Not even took my hand once!” she murmured to herself with a sigh, as she mounted the stairs to her apartment alone. “What are these Americans made of? To drink to the name of an unknown, and spend their dollars like sous. And always business!”

For when she had suggested an excursion for the morrow, the young man had excused himself on the plea of “my business.”

“Always business!” she murmured.

But the lady did Brainard an injustice. He was thinking little of business. If she had but known it, he was in love, and dreaming—in love with life, and dreaming of the wonderful mystery of Krutzmacht and of the still more mysterious Melody!

* * * * *

At his hotel there was a dispatch from the Schneider Brothers, appointing a meeting at a hotel in The Hague for the following evening.

XVIII

When a servant had ushered Brainard into a private _salon_ of the old Bible Hotel, and discreetly closed the door, an alert, middle-aged German with grizzled hair and close-trimmed beard rose from a table and advanced with outstretched hand.

“Mr. Brainard, I presume?” he said in fluent English. “I am Adolf Schneider.”

“So it’s important enough for the old boy to come himself!” Brainard thought as they shook hands.

Herr Schneider cast a quick look at the small bag which the servant had taken from Brainard’s hand and placed beside his coat and hat.

“You haven’t brought the papers with you!” the banker exclaimed with unconscious disappointment.

“They are in a safe place,” Brainard replied; “but I have a pretty complete inventory of them.”

He drew from his pocket a copy of the list that he had made on board the _Toulouse_, and also a copy of the power of attorney that Krutzmacht had signed. The former he handed to the banker, who seized it with a poorly assumed air of indifference, and ran his eye down the list.

Herr Schneider’s face expanded, it seemed to Brainard, as he neared the bottom; but without making any comment he took a list from his pocket and compared it with Brainard’s. When he had finished, he looked at the young man with fresh interest.

“There’s some more stuff—books and files of papers, which I packed in a trunk,” Brainard explained. “But I had to leave the trunk behind me. It should be safe in Chicago by this time, and I can get it, if it’s still there, when I return to America.”

“You were thorough!” the banker exclaimed with a smile. “You did not leave much behind you.”

Apparently Herr Schneider already knew something about the raid upon Krutzmacht’s safe.

“I took everything in sight,” Brainard said simply.

“And I am to understand that you have these”—the banker pointed to the inventory—“with you in Europe?”

“They are where I can get at them easily,” Brainard replied guardedly.

For several moments the two men looked at each other across the table.

“What do you mean to do with it?” the banker asked casually at last.

“I don’t know yet,” Brainard replied lightly. “I want to find out what it’s worth, if I can.”

“Your _coup_ has created much excitement in certain quarters. I suppose you are aware of that,” Herr Adolf observed in a warning tone. “You will find it difficult to negotiate any securities you may have—if you escape worse complications!”

Brainard realized that the German was speaking diplomatically—bluffing, to use a plainer word.

“I have merely obeyed the orders I received,” he observed innocently, handing the banker a copy of Krutzmacht’s power of attorney. “Unfortunately, as you know, Mr. Krutzmacht died suddenly, and I am left with only the most general instructions to direct my future movements.”

The banker glanced at the power of attorney, and, shrugging his shoulders, handed it back to Brainard. Apparently he preferred to regard the young stranger as merely a clever adventurer.

“That can’t be of much use to you,” he said coldly.

Brainard tipped back in his chair and eyed the banker. Finally he brought the chair down on the floor with a bang, and, leaning forward, tapped the banker pleasantly on the knee.

“I’m no crook, Herr Schneider—not really, you know! You can think so, if you want to, but it won’t make the price of the goods any cheaper in the end. You might like to hear how I happened to get mixed up in this affair?”

He proceeded to tell the story of his movements since that April evening when he had found Krutzmacht in a fit on a New York street. He omitted all references to the vague Melody, who seemed irrelevant for the moment.

“An extraordinary story!” the banker commented, with more warmth, but still dubiously.

“And it’s all true!” Brainard cried. “Now I want to know a lot of things from you. First, who was Krutzmacht? And why was the old man so dead set on getting his property over here?”

The banker’s manner relaxed into its habitual suavity. This extraordinary young American, who looted safes for a chance acquaintance, amused as well as puzzled him. Evidently Brainard was not easily intimidated. The banker resolved upon another method of attack.

“Really, young man,” he said, “you know nothing more than you have told me about your—employer?”

“Hardly a thing—except that he was mixed up in some big business deals. Naturally, these past weeks, I have wondered a good deal about who he was.”

“I should think you might!” the banker agreed, with a laugh. “I can tell you in a few words what I know about him. Mr. Herbert Krutzmacht was a countryman of mine, as you might infer from his name—a native of Mannheim. He went to the States when he was a young man, back in the fifties. Like so many of my countrymen, he carried nothing to your land but his brains and his will. He had many adventures out there. After your Civil War, he moved to the Pacific coast, engaged in mining operations, made a great deal of money, and lost it. He put it all into one property, from which he expected to take a vast fortune, but—”

“At Monument, Arizona?” Brainard interrupted.

“In Arizona, I think. I don’t remember the name of the place. The mine was called—let me see—yes, the Melody mine.”

“The Melody!” Brainard exclaimed, startled. “So that was it, was it?”

“What was?”

“Nothing—merely a guess of mine. Please proceed!”

“After the failure of his mine he had a hard time, and everything seemed against him. Then, a few years ago, he got control of a company to develop water power in northern California—the Shasta Company, it was called. From this he went into land and timber business, and finally began to build a railroad, the Pacific Northern. From time to time, as he needed money for his various enterprises, he applied to us, and we found the capital for him when he could not get it in the States. It was our capital, mostly, that went into the railroad, which was to go northward into a region controlled by other roads. That started the opposition in California to him and his schemes, and trouble quickly developed. Your countrymen, Mr. Brainard, are not always scrupulous in the weapons they use. These hostile parties had bought up one of the judges in California, and they struck their blow while Mr. Krutzmacht was in New York a month or more ago conferring with our representative. It had been arranged to raise the necessary funds to pay the interest due on the outstanding bonds, and to complete the railroad. Then Mr. Krutzmacht disappeared, the California court granted the other side their receivership, and he was found dead in a New York hospital!”

“It must have been foul play!”

“What do you mean?”

“As I figure it out, those crooks must have been watching him all the time in New York, and when they learned that he had succeeded in raising this money he needed to keep his property out of their hands, they did not wait. They—”

“What?” the banker demanded.

“Made away with him—drugged him, probably, then chucked him out of a cab into the street.”

“Quite possibly that was it. Your people do such peculiar things! Well, the crooks, as you call them, got their receivership for the Shasta Company—the parent company—the very day he died. Krutzmacht was a fighter, a hard man to conquer, and if he had lived, I have very little doubt that he would have succeeded in worsting his enemies.”

“And now?” Brainard asked with a smile. The banker made a comical gesture.

“The receiver found very little to receive, naturally, after your visit. Of course, you can understand what they were after was not the Shasta Company, but its rich subsidiaries. You had left the shell, of which the Court has taken physical possession.”

Brainard laughed.

“The old boy knew what he was about,” he said. “There was no time to lose! Tell me,” he asked abruptly, “do you know whether Krutzmacht had any relatives—any heirs?”

“He must have some connections at Mannheim. Krutzmacht is a common enough name there. But I do not think that any of them were closely related to Mr. Herbert Krutzmacht.”

“I don’t mean thirty-third cousins. Had he a wife or children?”

The banker hesitated, and then said:

“Several years ago, when I was in New York, I remember meeting some woman with Mr. Krutzmacht at a hotel—a very handsome woman, from one of your Southern States, I judged by her accent. But,” he added hastily, “I have no reason to believe that she was his wife. It is probable that one might find out in San Francisco, where he lived the latter part of his life. I could not say.”

“So far as you know, there is no one interested in this deal?” Brainard persisted.

“The heirs will announce themselves soon enough, if there are any. Until then,” Herr Schneider remarked slyly, “we need not go into the question.”

The young American stared at the banker with honest, uncomprehending eyes.

“But that’s just what it is my business to do!” he exclaimed. “There was some one, I am sure, whom the old man tried to tell me about.”

“Oh!”

“He was too far gone to say the whole name, but I think he had in mind some one whom he wanted to have his money. You see how it is, Herr Schneider. I am acting as this old fellow’s representative—his executor, so to speak—to take care of his property and hand it over to some one named Melody, or—”

“Melody?” inquired the banker, puzzled.

“Yes—that was what I made it out to be,” Brainard said, blushing.

“But that was the name of the Arizona mine.”

“It might perhaps be the name of—of a person, too.”

The banker shrugged his shoulders. He turned to the inventory. Putting on his glasses, he re-read the paper carefully. When he had finished, he glanced up, saying:

“Well, Mr. Brainard, now for business, as your people say. What do you want me to give you in exchange for these securities and papers?”

“What they are worth.”

“Ah, that would be very hard to say!”

“What would they be worth to Mr. Krutzmacht, if he were here?”

“If Mr. Krutzmacht were alive, they might be worth a great deal,” the banker said cautiously, “and yet they might have no value, now that he is dead.”

“He seemed to think they had some value,” Brainard said flatly.

The banker fidgeted.

“Oh, of course, naturally!”

“And they can’t have lost all their value within a few weeks.”

“One company is bankrupt already. This suit, the irregular manner in which possession of these papers was obtained—” began the banker, fencing.

“What will you give, cash down?” demanded Brainard.

The banker rose from his chair and walked to the window. He pulled out a fresh cigar, lighted it, laid it down, and turned to Brainard.

“It is a great risk. We do not know what we can do with the properties. We shall doubtless have lawsuits. We may lose all. Let us say fifty thousand dollars for everything—everything!” he repeated.

The banker looked keenly at Brainard, as if he thought he had been impressive.

“There are over eight millions of Pacific Northern bonds, and about fifteen millions in stock—besides all the rest,” Brainard observed reflectively. “It won’t do, Mr. Schneider—guess again!”

“Stocks and bonds are worth what you can get for them.”

“Then I’ll wait, and see if I can get more for these,” Brainard suggested smilingly. “There’s no hurry about the matter. I came to you first,” he said, “because I supposed you would have the old man’s account checked up, and know just what was coming to him.”

The banker smiled at the young man’s simplicity.

“Business is not done that way. It is a question to whom the property belongs,” he added meaningly.

“I see! Well, it belongs to me at present—”

“Let us say a hundred thousand—in cash, paid to you personally,” the banker interrupted hastily.

“You think you are bidding for stolen goods, eh, and can get them cheap?” Brainard suggested.

“Four hundred thousand marks is much money!”

“A whole lot of money—no question about that!” the young American remarked with a quizzical smile, thinking that ten dollars was more ready money than he had had, of his own, for many months. “But it isn’t enough!”

“Are you not ready for dinner?” the banker suggested genially. “We can have our dinner here and talk matters over quietly. I will explain.”

They dined at great leisure, while the banker gave Brainard his first lessons in corporation finance, with apt illustrations from the history of Krutzmacht’s enterprises. He explained how an individual or a corporation might be put into bankruptcy and yet be intrinsically very rich,—the spoil always going to the stronger in the struggle. He had ordered a magnum of champagne, and pressed the wine upon the young man with hospitable persistence; but Brainard felt that if he ever wanted to keep his head clear, this was the time, and he drank little. He suspected the banker’s geniality.

From finance the banker drifted to the topic of Krutzmacht himself. He told many stories of the old man, which showed his daring and his ability to take what he could get wherever he found it.

“He was always talking about that mine—the one in Arizona. He expected to make a very big fortune from it some day. It was to get money with which to develop his mine, I believe, that he went into all the other things,” Herr Schneider explained.

“The Melody mine!” the young man murmured to himself.

“That was it! He sank one fortune in it, but he would never let go—that was his way.”

When they had reached their coffee, the banker turned suddenly upon Brainard.

“Have you made up your mind to take my offer?”

“Your people here have a good deal of money tied up in this business?”

“A good deal more than I wish we had,” the banker replied frankly. “So we must send more down the well to bring back what’s there already. We shall have a fight on our hands, too.”

“I don’t understand business,” the young man said. “The chances are that Mel—Krutzmacht’s heirs don’t, either. That’s why he told me to come over here to dispose of his stuff. The best I can do is to take cash and quit.”

“Exactly!” the banker beamed.

“Of course,” Brainard drawled, “we don’t sell Krutzmacht’s private things—the mine, I mean—the Melody mine.” The banker waved his hand indifferently. “And for the rest you can give us”—the banker held his cigar poised in the air—“two millions.”

The banker leaped to his feet.

“You swindler!” he shouted angrily. “You have the impudence—”

“Careful! That’s not a pretty name, Herr Schneider,” Brainard replied coldly. “Perhaps I am not the only crook in this business. Don’t get excited. You don’t have to take my offer.”

The banker slowly subsided into his chair.

“We shall appeal to the courts!” he snarled.

“What courts? I thought you might try to bluff, and so I suggested having our talk in some neutral place.”

“You are pretty shrewd, my young man. You take all these precautions for the sake of Mr. Krutzmacht’s heirs, I suppose,” he sneered unpleasantly.

“Careful now! I don’t mind one bit going to a Dutch jail for slugging you; but what good would that do either of us? The stuff isn’t here, you know.”

With this Brainard rose to his feet and took his coat and bag.

“Where are you going?” the banker asked in some alarm.

“Oh, I’ll take a look about the place, I guess, and then go back to Paris. I don’t believe you and I can do business to advantage in your present mood.”

“Your plunder won’t do _you_ any good,” the banker observed. “You can’t raise a penny on it.”

“We’ll see about that. There are others who might be willing to pay me something for the paper. I have a pretty good idea that their agents are hunting for my address at the present moment. Suppose I let them find me?”

“Call it a million marks!” the banker snapped.

“I said two million dollars, and I’ll keep the bonds, too. You said they were no good, as I understand. They might as well stay with me, in that case. They look pretty!”

The banker gave him an evil look. Brainard, unconcerned, rang for a waiter, and when the man appeared he ordered his bill and a cab.

“When can you deliver the papers—those that you have with you in Europe?” the banker asked briskly, when the servant had departed.

“Whenever you are ready with the cash—two million dollars, not marks—Herr Schneider!”

“One doesn’t carry two million dollars in one’s trousers pockets, over here,” the banker sneered.

“I will give you one week to deliver the cash in Paris,” Brainard replied carelessly. “Just seven days.”

“Your cab is waiting, sir,” the waiter announced.

“All right! You will have to excuse me, Herr Schneider. I want to take a look about the town.”

And thus they parted without shaking hands.

“Tell the driver,” Brainard said to the waiter, “to show me everything worth seeing in your town.”

As he settled himself into the cab for his sightseeing, he mused:

“I wonder if I got enough! There’s no telling what the stuff is really worth. I’d have given it to him for a million, all of it, if he hadn’t taken me for a common sneak thief. Well, I guess I touched his limit. If he lays down on my proposition, I’ll have to look up the other crowd, and I suspect there isn’t much to choose between them so far as their methods are concerned. But I bet old Schnei will turn up in Paris before the week is out with a bag of dollars. And there are the bonds—they may be worth something, after all, to Melody!”

He interrupted his meditation to squint an eye at a palace toward which the _cocher_ was furiously waving his whip.

“All right, _cocher_,—you can drive on,” he replied, having taken in the monument sufficiently. “Well”—he concluded his meditation aloud—“two millions, cash, is a pretty good bunch of money for any girl. I don’t believe she could have done any better herself. And there are the eight millions of bonds. Now where in thunder _is_ Melody?”

“_Was_?” the coachman demanded.

Brainard waved him on, and continued his thoughts without speaking.

“There is the mine, too—the Melody mine. Queer name for a mine, and a queer name for a woman, too, now you think of it! Is there any Melody girl—woman, anyway, anywhere?”

The mere doubt of the existence of such a personage dampened his good spirits. If Melody was a fiction of his youthful imagination, he was loath to part with her; for she had become the possible reality that held his dream together.

“No!” he concluded aloud. “No man would have made all that effort, when he was dying, to speak the name of a mine!”

With this sage reflection he dismissed from his thoughts the teasing puzzle of Krutzmacht and his heirs, and devoted his entire attention to the monuments of The Hague.

XIX

Five days later Brainard stood chatting with Herr Adolf Schneider and Herr Nathan Schneider on the broad granite steps of the Crédit Lyonnais in Paris. The transfer of all Krutzmacht’s papers, except the packages of bonds, had just been completed within the bank, and receipts for them had been given to the young American, together with drafts on New York for two millions of dollars.

“May I inquire what you intend to do now?” Herr Nathan asked, simple curiosity on his broad face.

“I’m going to put in one week more here, then pull out for San Francisco, and try to hunt up my principal,” Brainard replied.

“You are not afraid to return to the States?” Herr Adolf inquired.

“Why should I be? Our people know when they are licked. Those crooks won’t worry me any longer. More likely they’ll be after you now!”

Brainard laughed pleasantly.

“I think,” Herr Nathan observed complacently, “we can take care of them.”

“I hope so! I want to see those bonds make good some day.”

“Don’t be in a hurry to sell your bonds, young man. That is my best advice,” the banker said gravely.

“I’ll tell Mel—my principal what you say,” Brainard laughed back. “Now good day to you, gentlemen, and good hunting!”

Herr Adolf shook the young man’s hand cordially.

“If you ever want a business—after you have discovered this mysterious heir to Mr. Krutzmacht—why, come over here to me, and I will make a financier of you!”

“Thanks!”

* * * * *

Brainard sauntered slowly down the crowded boulevard. He had before him seven more days of Paris—seven beautiful June days. For he had resolved to give himself one week of pure vacation in Paris as payment for services performed for his unknown principal. Thus seriously did he hold himself to his mission.

At the end of the week he would take the first fast steamer for New York, and begin the hunt for an heir for the money he had obtained from old Krutzmacht’s property—for that shadowy Melody whose name so persistently haunted his imagination. But now how best could he spend these last precious hours of freedom and delight which he had well earned?

The young American with two million dollars in his pockets paused beside the curb and watched the brilliant stream of Paris life flow past him for many minutes. Then he beckoned to a cab, and drove to a steamship office, where he engaged passage for that day week from Cherbourg. Next he went to a tailor, and ordered clothes to replace his Chicago ready-made suit, which no longer satisfied his aspirations in the way of personal appearance. He did not mean to go shabby any longer, no matter what fate might be in store for him at the close of his present adventure.

These necessary duties performed, he betook himself to a famous restaurant near the Madeleine, where he ordered an excellent breakfast. While he ate, he laid his plans.

Brainard had made most of his journey through life without congenial companions, but now he felt a desire for companionship. It was another of those hitherto unsuspected capacities that had been stimulated by his recent experiences. He bethought himself of the only human being he knew in all Paris—the amiable Mme. Vernon, his friend of the _Toulouse_; so after his breakfast he proceeded to the Frenchwoman’s hotel. Mme. Vernon welcomed him cordially.

“I thought you had returned to America.”

“I have another week,” he explained, “and I want you to show me how to spend it. Think of everything that a man twenty-eight years old, who has never had a day’s real vacation in his life, would like to see and do in Paris, and we’ll do it all together. That is, if you can give me the time!”

The good-natured Frenchwoman, who had returned to her native country after a long absence in “barbarian lands,” did not seem greatly occupied, and was not averse to spending a few days with this _naïf_ American. She smiled upon Brainard.

“It is a serious matter,” she said after meditation, wrinkling her placid brow. “And you must see all?”

“Everything!”

“In one week!” she cried. “_Allons_—let us start!”

There began seven days of wonder and delight—enough to pay with good measure for all the sordid years of struggle that the young man had endured; enough to last him, if need be, for a lifetime of dull toil. The amiable Frenchwoman entered into the spirit of her task with enthusiasm and a high intelligence, and Brainard paid the way with unquestioning liberality.

“It’s my commission on two millions,” he said to himself, entering the items scrupulously in his little account book.

From gallery and church and restaurant to theater and opera and café they trailed through the sunny days and the soft nights. They haunted the theaters especially, for the young American—would-be dramatist—felt with sure instinct that here he had discovered the pure gold of his art after the sounding brass of Broadway. They went to the little theaters hidden away in obscure corners, to the theaters of the people, as well as to the stately stages of the Français and the Odéon and to the popular boulevard playhouses.

Brainard was like a dry sponge that soaks and soaks but never satisfies its thirst, so Mme. Vernon declared. With her help, the rapid dialogue of the theater became easily comprehensible. For the young man’s ears seemed attuned, his whole intelligence quickened. He was like one arriving, after a long journey, at the promised land.

“You are an artist,” the Frenchwoman flattered, “and should stay here with us in the land of artists!”

Brainard merely smiled, murmuring:

“We, too, are artists over there, in our way—artists of life!”

The last day came. At midnight the two companions emerged upon the busy Place du Théâtre Français, beside the plashing fountain. It had been “Phèdre,” and the Frenchwoman had yawned through the stately lines of sublime passion. She would have preferred the farce at the Palais Royal, or to prolong their last intimate dinner at Lavenue’s, which she loved so well. But the young American had sat enthralled, and now he walked as in a dream, with head erect.

In a few hours more this dream in which he had lived, this inspired world of beauty and art, would have vanished from his sight, never again, perhaps, to dazzle his eyes. Some careless god had taken him from his dingy corner and had shown him what a wonderful place this world can be. Now, after a week spent in the city of his desires, he must return to his own little hole, and let the clouds of reality fall between him and his vision.

“But why, oh, why,” he murmured aloud, “can’t we have something like that? Why isn’t there a place in all America where poor devils like myself could drop in for a few hours of paradise?”

“My poor poet!” the Frenchwoman exclaimed, guiding his footsteps gently toward a lighted café. “If you like it so much, why dost thou leave thy paradise?”

“Because it is so ordered,” he replied simply.

“By whom?”

And as he did not answer, she suggested with a slight smile:

“By that one of whom you spoke—that Mélodie?”

“By Melody!” he affirmed gravely.

For to-night, on the eve of his departure for America, that elusive mistress seemed especially real and compelling, no mere figment of his heated brain.

“Then, indeed,” said the Frenchwoman, with a touch of pique, “you must be in love with your Mélodie!”

The young American laughed.

“Hardly. I don’t know her!”

“I do not understand.”

“Nor I!”

With two millions of ready money lying close to his heart in the drafts of the Schneider Brothers, it never entered the young man’s mind that he might prolong his vacation indefinitely.

“Stay with us another eight days,” urged his companion, laying a caressing hand upon his arm. “Your Mélodie will wait for you!”

Brainard laughed, and for reply paid the waiter and rose from the table where they sat. They walked out into the soft night, and passed through the Tuileries Gardens, across the great square beyond, with its silent monuments and gleaming lights. When they reached Mme. Vernon’s apartment, the Frenchwoman urged him to enter.

“It is the last time,” she said sentimentally.

Brainard held out a friendly hand; but she would not let him go.