Brainard lay awake in his berth long afterwards, listening to the laboring locomotives as they pulled the heavy train over the mountains, rushed through the snowsheds, and emerged occasionally to give glimpses of steep, snowy hillsides. The rarefied air of the lofty altitude had set his pulses humming. So much it seemed had happened to him already since he stepped aboard the train in Jersey City that he could hardly realize himself. The “boss of the fight trust” and the cheerful miner who had “lost the old woman six months back” and still had faith after a lifetime of disappointments that he would dig a fortune from that “hole up in them hills,” were real experiences to the young man. The simple, natural, human quality of these strangers appealed to him. “It must be the west,” he generalized easily. “I suppose Krutzmacht is the same sort,—large-hearted, simple, a good gambler.” But the man who had signed his name between convulsions,—H. Krutzmacht,—didn’t seem to fit the same genial frame. He was of sterner stuff. “Anyway he’s given me one fine time and I’ll do what I can for him out there!” It was useless to speculate further as to what awaited him in San Francisco. It might be that court proceedings having already begun, the affair would be taken out of his hands completely. He might find a telegram from Krutzmacht countermanding his orders.
At last he dropped to sleep, buoyant and eager for that unknown future that lay before him, while the train having surmounted the last mountain barrier wound slowly down into the green, fruit-covered valleys of California.
VII
The Overland was several hours late; it was nearly four o’clock of a foggy April afternoon before Brainard emerged from the ferry station with his big valise in his hand. His first intention had been to go to a hotel and there deposit his bag and make inquiries. The miner had urged him to accompany him to the old “Palace.” “They say it’s finer than ever since the quake.” But Brainard, reflecting that it was Saturday afternoon and considering that a few hours’ delay might mean the loss of two days, shook hands with his fellow travelers and turned to the telephone booths to discover Krutzmacht’s city address. When he had memorized the street and number he started up Market Street, still carrying his bag. He was astonished to see how thoroughly the city had recovered from its disaster in little more than a year. There were large gaps in the business blocks, to be sure, but it was a lively, substantial city with a great deal of building going forward, especially in the noisy erection of tall steel buildings. The very sight of these ambitious structures inspired courage!
After a short walk Brainard found himself at the entrance of a large, new building on Sutter Street that corresponded with the number he had memorized. He stood on the curb for a few moments staring up at the windows. Now that he had reached his goal, a trace of his former habit of despondency came over him, making him hesitate before the final effort, but shaking himself free from the old morbidness he walked briskly into the building. When he emerged from the elevator on the top floor, the boy pointed down the corridor. “The last one on the right,” he said.
Brainard passed a number of offices whose doors bore in small black letters the names of different companies,—“Pacific Northern Railroad,” “Great Western Land and Improvement Company,” “The Shasta Corporation.” At the extreme end of the corridor was a door with the simple lettering, “Herbert Krutzmacht.” The plain black letters of the name had something of the same potency that the signature at the bottom of the power of attorney had. Like that, like the sick man himself who had painfully gasped out his last orders, they were a part of the substantial realm of fact. So far, at least, the dream held! There was a real man named Krutzmacht, engaged in important business enterprises, and from what Brainard had learned on the train he knew that there was a crisis in his affairs.
With his hand on the door-handle he paused. His heart beat fast, and he looked around him nervously as if expecting to see an officer of the court lurking somewhere in the corridor. There was no one on this floor, however. The quiet of a late Saturday afternoon had settled down on the busy building, but within the private office Brainard could hear the slow click of a typewriter. He pushed open the door and entered.
It was a large, rather barely furnished room, evidently used as an ante-room to other offices. Near the window a young woman was seated at a desk, lazily examining a mass of papers and occasionally tapping the keys of a machine, with the desultory air of an employee killing time at the end of the day. She was a distinctly good looking woman, Brainard observed, although no longer young, with abundant coarse black hair, fresh complexion, and decidedly plump.
The stenographer looked up from her work at Brainard with a start as if she had been expecting some one, but quickly composed herself.
“Well, what is it?” she asked with a peculiar intonation that indicated hostility.
Brainard was at a loss for a reply and stood gaping at the stenographer foolishly. He had not thought of meeting a woman. He had known few women, and he lacked confidence in dealing with them.
“Is—is Mr. Krutzmacht in?” he stammered awkwardly, and cursed himself for the silly question.
The woman gave him a suspicious look and answered shortly:
“No, he ain’t.”
“Oh,” the young man remarked, looking about the office. Near the stenographer’s desk was a door partly open, which led into an inner room. In the farther corner of this room could be seen the projecting corner of a steel safe. This Brainard felt must be his goal, and he unconsciously stepped toward the door of the inner office. The woman rose as if to bar his further progress and snapped irritably:
“What do you want here?”
“Why, I just want to talk to you,” he replied as amiably as he could.
“Cut it short then, young man. I haven’t any time to waste in conversazione.”
“You don’t seem very busy!” Brainard observed smiling.
“I’m always busy to strangers, little one—I do my day-dreaming outside of office hours.” She thrust the metal cover on her machine with a clatter. “See?”
“Oh, yes, I see,” Brainard replied and again tried to approach the inner office. The stenographer confronted him alertly and folding her arms demanded:
“What’s your game, anyway, young man? If you’re one of those lawyers—”
“No, I’m no lawyer,” Brainard said laughing. “Guess again!”
“Haven’t the time. It’s Saturday afternoon, and this office is supposed to be closed at one o’clock.”
“So it is Saturday—I’d almost forgotten the fact.”
The stenographer eyed him very sourly and observed coldly:
“Where do you keep yourself that you don’t know the day of the week? Go home, young man, and think it over.”
Brainard saw that in this national game of “josh” he could make no progress against such an adept and came bluntly to the point:
“Are you in charge of Mr. Krutzmacht’s office?”
“What’s that to you?”
“Because I’ve been sent here by Mr. Krutzmacht to—”
“Sent here by Mr. Krutzmacht—the one you were asking for just now? . . . Try something else, sonny.”
Brainard felt foolish and completely baffled. He wanted to strangle the woman and throw her out of the window. But aside from the fact that she appeared to be vigorous and of a fighting disposition he realized that the less disturbance he made the greater chance he would have of carrying through his mission successfully. It is not clear what the outcome between the two would have been, if at that moment there had not appeared from the inner office an elderly man whose mild face had a worried look. Brainard noted the man’s near-sighted, timid air and regained his calm.
“Here’s a young feller, Mr. Peters, who says he’s looking for Mr. Krutzmacht,” the girl said.
“Mr. Krutzmacht is not in the city,” the man said nervously.
“Yes, I know that!” Brainard replied easily. “You see I was sent here by Mr. Krutzmacht himself.”
“You come from Krutzmacht!” the man gasped in excitement, while the woman’s face expressed incredulity. “Where is he? We’ve been telegraphing all over the country the last week trying to locate him. Mr. Snell has just gone east—left this office only an hour ago—to see if he can find him.”
Brainard reflected that the Overland Limited had probably served him a good turn by being late; for he judged that the fewer persons he had to deal with in the present emergency the easier it would be for him to accomplish his purposes. This mild-mannered, flustered clerk did not look formidable. His tones gained confidence.
“Mr. Krutzmacht,” Brainard explained glibly, “has met with an accident—not a serious one, I hope. He is in good hands. He has sent me out here to get some papers that he wants from his safe.”
“But, but,” the bewildered clerk stammered, “don’t you know that the court—”
“They’ve fixed up a receivership, I know,” Brainard interrupted, “that’s the reason perhaps—”
“I’ve been expecting ’em in here all the afternoon,” the clerk said nervously, looking at the door. “Then there’ll be the devil to pay generally.”
“All the better!” Brainard exclaimed. “Let’s get busy before they arrive.”
“But who are you, anyway?” the old man demanded with a sudden access of caution.
Brainard merely smiled at the worried old man. He was more and more at his ease, now that he knew the caliber of the timid old clerk, and though he felt the necessity of haste in his operations, if an officer of the court was momentarily expected to make a descent upon Krutzmacht’s private office, yet he spoke and acted with calm.
“Suppose we lock these outer doors—if you think any one is likely to interrupt us—and then we can proceed undisturbed.”
He shot the brass bolt in the door through which he had entered and glanced into the inner office, but apparently this one had no exit upon the corridor. Meanwhile the stenographer was whispering vehemently to the old clerk, who looked at the intruder doubtfully and seemed irresolute. Brainard leisurely pulled down the shade over the glass window in the door.
“There!” he said. “Now we are ready.”
He took the sheet that bore Krutzmacht’s signature from his pocket and held it out to Peters. “Want my credentials? That’s a power of attorney Mr. Krutzmacht dictated and signed just before I left him.”
He waited for the clerk to adjust his glasses and read the hastily penned sheet, thinking what he should do if by chance the old man refused to recognize it. He did not feel disturbed. The ride across the continent had rested him bodily and mentally. The good meals and the unwonted luxury of eating and sleeping without care, which had been his daily companion for all the years he could remember, had given him a fresh spirit. He could think quickly and with precision; he felt himself amply capable, full of power to meet any emergency that might rise—for the first time in his life.
“What do you want to do?” Peters asked, handing back the power of attorney. He seemed somewhat reassured by the sight of his master’s signature at the bottom of the scrawl.
“Mr. Krutzmacht wanted me to get the stuff out of his safe—I suppose it’s the one in there?”
“But—but,” the clerk protested. “If the court has granted this injunction, I don’t suppose I ought to—”
“That’s just why you ought!” Brainard interrupted impatiently. “Don’t you see this is Krutzmacht’s one chance of getting his property out of their reach? Once the court puts hands on it, there won’t be much left for the owner!”
Without further delay he strode into the inner office, saying lightly:
“Krutzmacht is keeping out of sight for the present—until trouble blows over, you see.”
“The safe’s locked,” the clerk objected weakly, “and no one here has the combination. Mr. Snell didn’t leave it.”
Without taking the trouble to reply, Brainard walked over to the heavy steel door and began twirling the knob as if he had opened office safes all his life. The clerk and the stenographer stared while the little nickel wheel revolved in Brainard’s fingers. When finally the bolts shot back and the door swung open, Peters gasped:
“But how will you get all that stuff out of here?”
“Just bring me that bag from the other room, will you please?” Brainard asked the stenographer. As she turned unwillingly to fetch the bag, there came a loud, resolute knock at the door of the outer office.
“There!” the old clerk exclaimed.
The stenographer started for the door, but Brainard with one leap overtook her, pushed her back into the inner room, and closed the door. Again the knocking on the outside door came, even more insistently, and the knob was rattled as if the visitor was determined to gain entrance. The three in the inner office stood still listening, not speaking. Brainard noticed an angry red flush spread over the woman’s features. As no further knocking came after a few moments, Brainard turned to the stenographer sternly.
“You can sit at that desk, miss. I’ll answer the door. Come on, Mr. Peters, and show me the most important things in here—the papers Krutzmacht’s enemies would hate to lose. You know them, don’t you?”
“Some of them,” the clerk admitted, rather doubtfully, his eyes running over the close-packed shelves of the vault. “They’re ’most all valuable in here, I suppose. The general papers are kept in the other vault downstairs. But the most important are in these drawers.”
He pulled out several receptacles that seemed crammed with engraved certificates and legal papers.
“Mr. Krutzmacht kept all his personal papers up here where he could get at them day or night,” he explained. “I guess it’s all valuable to some one!” he concluded hopelessly.
“I can’t put it all in that bag,” Brainard observed, his eye running over the contents of the well-filled vault. “Well, let’s try the drawers first—the cream is likely to be there.”
He began to pass out the contents of the drawers to the clerk, who shoved them hastily into the large valise. But before Brainard had quite finished the second tier of drawers, the bag was almost filled with crisp, tightly packed bundles of securities and legal papers. There remained books and other rows of documents. Brainard looked at some of them impatiently, trying to decide what could best be left behind. At last he exclaimed:
“It’s no use my trying to pick it over. I might leave the best of the lot. I must have a small trunk. Can you get me one, Peters? While you are gone I will fetch it all out here and sort it over. . . . No, don’t go out that way!” he exclaimed, as the clerk started for the outer door. “Where does that go?” He pointed to a small door behind the corner of the safe.
“It’s the fire escape,” Peters explained timidly.
“Just the thing!”
He opened the door and peered out into the dark, inclosed well down which ran one of the modern circular fire escapes.
Brainard handed Peters a bill, and shoved him toward the door. After the clerk had gone, Brainard turned to his task, and emptied the safe in a few minutes. Then he began to sort the books and papers and securities into piles for convenient packing, stuffing the bonds and stocks, which he judged to be the most valuable part of the loot, into his valise.
There had been no movement by the stenographer for some time, and Brainard had almost forgotten her presence. Suddenly, while he was in the safe, he heard a slight sound outside, like the movement of a woman’s dress. He jumped to his feet. The stenographer, with one hand on the desk telephone, was about to take off the receiver.
“Put that down!” Brainard ordered, and added more gently, “What are you telephoning for?”
“Just going to call up a friend,” the woman replied pertly, and started to take the receiver off the hook again.
Brainard cleared the intervening space in a bound, and snatched the instrument from the woman’s hand.
“You’ll have to wait a while to talk to your friend!”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked angrily.
“You can see—packing up some papers. You might give me a hand.”
“Say,” she replied without moving, “I don’t believe that yarn you told old Peters.”
“Oh, you don’t?”
“Not for one minute!”
“Well, what will you do about it?”
The girl tapped sullenly with her foot, without replying.
“Want to let that friend of yours know about me?” Brainard continued meaningly. As the stenographer tossed her head and moved again toward the telephone, he added, “Come over here where I can watch you! Quick now, pack those bundles into the bag.” As she still hesitated, defying him, he said sharply, “Get down on your knees and go to work!”
She whimpered, but fell to her knees. They worked silently for several minutes. The vault was stripped bare. The smaller papers were packed into the bag, and the bulkier stuff was stacked on the floor, ready to be thrust into another receptacle.
Brainard glanced at his watch. Peters had been gone more than a quarter of an hour. Had he been detained, or had he become suspicious and decided to get advice before going any farther? Brainard considered departing with what he had already packed in his bag, which he judged was the more important part of the safe’s contents.
“I guess it’s about time for me to be going home now,” the stenographer remarked, plucking up her courage. “I’ll leave you and Mr. Peters to lock up.”
“You want to see that friend badly, don’t you?” Brainard asked. “Not quite yet; the day’s work is not over yet. Be patient!”
He did not dare to trust her beyond his sight, nor did he think it wise to leave her behind him. The girl walked idly to the window, then edged along the wall. Beside the safe there was a recess, from which the rear door opened. When the stenographer reached this, she, darted for the door.
“Good-by!” she called. “I guess the police will take care of you!”
The little door fortunately stuck. Before she could open it, Brainard had dragged her back into the room.
“You’re just a common second-story man!” she cried angrily.
“Exactly! How clever of you to penetrate my disguise! I’m a car-barn bandit—Texas Joe—anything you please! But before you skip, I want you to look through those drawers in the vault, to see if I have missed anything.”
He shoved the surprised woman into the empty vault, and swung the door. As the bolts shot back into place, a muffled cry escaped from within. Brainard called back:
“Save your breath! There’s enough air in there to keep you alive for some hours; and I’ll see that you get out in plenty of time to join that friend for dinner. Just keep quiet and save your breath!”
A sob answered him from the vault.
VIII
At that moment a low, confidential knock came on the door of the outer office, followed by a discreet rattling of the knob.
“There he is at last!” thought Brainard, with a sense of relief.
He hurried to unbolt the door; but instead of Peters’s mild face, a chubby, spectacled young fellow, wearing his derby hat pushed far back on a round, bald head, confronted him.
“Who are you?” Brainard demanded, trying to close the door.
The man grinned back:
“And who are you?”
He had shoved his right leg into the opening, and with his question he gave a powerful push that almost knocked Brainard from his feet.
“Well?” he said, once within the office, grinning more broadly. “I’m Farson—Edward, Jr.—from the Despatch. We just had a wire from New York that Krutzmacht’s been found, dead!”
“Dead!” Brainard exclaimed.
“Had a stroke or something, and died this morning in a hospital. One of our old men down East got on to it, and tipped us the wire.”
The intruder settled himself comfortably on the top of the stenographer’s little desk, and drew out a cigarette. Dangling his fat legs, he eyed Brainard with an amused stare.
The latter stood for the moment dumfounded. Although he had at first looked for this outcome, as the days had gone by he had come to believe that the old man was recovering. Now he realized swiftly that with Krutzmacht dead his power of attorney was no better than a piece of blank paper. His position was doubly tenuous.
“Say!” The reporter interrupted his meditation in a burst of cynical confidence. “The old man was a good pirate—fought to the last ditch, and then got out.”
“What makes you think he got out?” Brainard inquired.
The reporter shrugged his shoulders.
“They had him, and he must have known it. That railroad crowd would have taken the hide off him, and put what was left in the penitentiary.”
“Perhaps they made away with him,” Brainard suggested meaningly.
“You think so? My, that would be a fat scoop! What makes you think so?”
Brainard raised his eyebrows mysteriously, and the reporter nimbly filled in a reasonable outline of the story.
“You mean he got the money down East that he needed to stop this receivership, and they knew it, and put him out of the way, so that he shouldn’t interrupt the game?”
“Possibly,” Brainard admitted.
The reporter jumped from his seat briskly. “Well, I must get busy—they’re holding the paper for me. Who’s in charge here?”
“I am,” Brainard replied promptly.
“And what’s your name?”
He pulled a dirty note book from his hip-pocket.
“Wilkins,” Brainard answered quickly, “of Wilkins & Starbird, Mr. Krutzmacht’s New York attorneys.”
The reporter looked at Brainard and whistled, but he wrote down the name.
“You folks didn’t lose any time in getting busy! I s’pose there’ll be litigation and all that. Do you expect to save much from the wreck?”
“That’s what I am here for—to keep those pirates from making off with the stuff!” His eye fell upon his valise, and a sudden resolution came to him. “See here, Farson,” he said confidentially, laying a hand on the reporter’s pudgy thigh, “do you see that bag? The Pacific Northern that they’re after and the Shasta Company are right inside that bag, together with a lot of other valuable property. I’m going to take it where those pirates can’t lay a finger on it, in spite of all the courts in California!”
The reporter’s eyes grew round.
“You’ve got your nerve!” he said admiringly.
“You see, time’s money—big money. So I can’t stay here all night gassing with you. There is a train on the Santa Fé at ten, isn’t there?”
“Ten ten,” the reporter corrected.
“I must make that train, or—”
“Lose the trick?” the reporter suggested affably.
“I’m going to make it!”
“You’ll need some help in the get-away, I suppose?”
“Just so! If I make that train all right with this stuff, there’ll be a couple of hundred dollars for you, my boy; and what’s more, you can have the story all to yourself. It will be better than the old man’s death.”
A pleasant smile circled around the reporter’s chubby face.
“All right, Mr. Wilkins! What do you want now?”
“I’ve sent out for another bag,” Brainard explained. “I’ll just pass the rest of these papers out to you, and you can stack them ready to pack when the bag comes.”
Brainard opened the inner door and listened. There were faint sounds like sobbing within the safe.
“If she can cry, she’ll last,” he said to himself. “Now for it! Where in thunder can that fellow Peters be? I hope he hasn’t heard that the old man is dead!”
He began to shove the books and papers through the door, which he kept nearly closed, for fear that the reporter might detect the sounds that came from the safe, and ask questions. It was dark now, but he did not dare to turn on the electric lights, for the windows faced the street, and he feared men might already be watching the office.
He had transferred all the packages not packed, and was struggling at his heavy valise, when he heard a voice behind him, and started.
“I guess you thought I was never coming back,” Peters stammered breathlessly. He was dragging a small trunk through the little back door behind the safe. “It nearly broke my back getting this thing up those five flights of stairs.”
“Bring it this way, Peters!” Brainard shouted nervously, pushing the old man through the door into the outer office.
He banged the door shut just as a muffled scream issued from the safe.
“What’s that?” Peters asked, dropping the trunk to the floor.
“Somebody in the hall, I suppose,” Brainard replied coolly.
Fortunately the old man’s attention was distracted from the scream by the sight of the reporter. Farson had lighted another cigarette, and was swinging his legs and smiling amiably.
“Didn’t expect to see me, did you?”
“Who—”
“That’s all right. Your friend here seems to be in a hurry. He asked me to stay and help in the spring moving.”
“Come, get to work!” Brainard called out, on his knees before the trunk. “Cigars and explanations afterward!”
They slung the books and the packages of papers, which the reporter had neatly arranged, into the little trunk. Then they closed and locked it. Brainard unbolted the outer door.
“I wouldn’t make my exit by the front door,” the reporter advised. “I reckon you’d be spotted before you got to the street. There’s a back way, ain’t there?”
Brainard, thinking of the woman in the safe, hesitated.
“That’s how I brought up the trunk,” Peters said. “There’s nobody out there.”
Brainard opened the door to the inner office, and listened. It was quite still. Probably the woman had fainted.
“Come on!” he called, grasping one end of the trunk.
The reporter caught hold of the other, and Peters followed, tugging at the heavy bag. As they crossed the inner office, there was not a sound.
Brainard hesitated at the door, thinking that he must release the girl before he left; but as he stood before the safe, there was a squeal from within which indicated sufficient liveliness on the part of the stenographer. There would be time enough to attend to her after he had got his loot to the street. If she were released now, her temper might prove to be troublesome; so he joined the others on the landing, closing the little door behind him.
“The old man used to get out this way sometimes,” Peters observed.
“I reckon he never will again,” the reporter laughed.
The hall opened on a narrow, circular iron staircase, without a single light. Down this pit Brainard and the reporter plunged, tugging at the trunk, which threatened to stick at every turn. The old man got on more easily with the bag, which he merely allowed to slide after him. Brainard was soaked in perspiration; the reporter puffed and swore, but he stuck manfully at his job.
At last they tumbled out into the dark alley at the rear of the building. After he had caught his breath, Brainard inquired where he could find a cab.
“If I were you, young man,” the reporter replied, “I wouldn’t try being a swell. I’d take the first rig I could charter. There’s one over there now.”
He pointed down the alley, and waded off into the dark. Presently he returned with a plumber’s wagon.
“He says he’ll land your baggage at the ferry for four bits. You can ride or walk behind, just as you like.”
They loaded the trunk and the bag into the wagon, and the reporter, perching himself beside the driver, announced genially:
“I’ll see you aboard!”
“How much time is there left?” Brainard asked.
“Thirty-two minutes—you can do it easily in twenty-five.”
Brainard took Peters to one side, and said to him in a low voice:
“You remember that noise you heard up there in the office? It came from the girl—the stenographer. She got fresh while you were out, and I had to lock her up in the safe to keep her quiet. I think there is enough air to last her some time yet; but her last squeal was rather faint. Suppose you run up and let her out!”
Peters, with a scared look on his face, made one bound for the stairs.
“Hold on, man!” Brainard shouted after him. “You don’t know the combination. Here it is!”
He searched in his pockets for the slip of paper on which he had copied the figures, but in the dark he could not find it.
“This ain’t any automobile,” the reporter suggested. “You’d better put off your good-bys until the next time!”
“Try to remember what I say,” Brainard said to the frightened Peters, and began repeating the combination from memory. “I’m pretty sure that’s right. Say it over! There, again!”
The shaking man repeated the figures three or four times.
“Good! Keep saying it over to yourself as you go upstairs, and I’ll telephone the office from the ferry and see if you’ve got her out.”
But Peters had already disappeared into the darkness within the building. Brainard climbed into the plumber’s wagon, the man whipped up his horse, and they jolted out of the alley. As they came in sight of the ferry building, the reporter compared his watch with the clock, and remarked:
“Eight minutes to the good—fast traveling for a plumber!”
“Just look out for my stuff while I telephone!” Brainard exclaimed.
All the way to the ferry he had been anxious about the girl in the safe. He had already resolved that if he found Peters had failed to open the safe, he would go back and run the risk of capture.
When the operator rang up the number of Krutzmacht’s private office, there was an agonizing wait before any one answered. Finally a woman’s voice, very faint, called:
“Who is it?”
Prudence counseled Brainard to assume that the voice was that of the stenographer, and to hang up the receiver. But he wished to make sure that it was the woman herself, and so he asked:
“Are you feeling all right, miss?”
“You thief!” came hissing over the wire to his ear. “You won’t get—” And there was no more.
She had dropped the receiver, probably for action. When Brainard stepped from the telephone booth, he looked uneasily in the direction of Market Street, as if he expected to see the stenographer flying through the hurrying crowd. The reporter beckoned to him.
“Your trunk has gone aboard the ferry. Here’s the check—to Chicago. I thought you’d rather tote this bag yourself, though it’s pretty heavy.”
“Much obliged for all your trouble,” Brainard replied warmly. “And now for you!”
He pulled his roll of currency from his pocket, and handed five hundred-dollar bills to the reporter.
“You earned it! I never should have got away in time without you.”
“I guess that’s so. Much obliged for the dough; but the scoop alone is worth it. What a story! A light-fingered attorney from New York blowing in here under the court’s nose and lifting the whole Pacific Northern, and goodness knows what else besides, clean out of the State! Some folks who think they know how to do things will be sick to-morrow morning when they get the Despatch!”
He shoved the bills into his trousers pocket and pulled out another cigarette.
“There’s the gong!” he remarked.
“Thanks!” Brainard said warmly, shaking the reporter’s fat hand. “I’ll want to see your story. Send it to me!”
“And say, I’d make up a better yarn than that lawyer story, when you have time.”
“So you didn’t believe me?”
“I guess I’m no cub reporter!” the Despatch man laughed complacently, as the ferry-boat began to move out of the slip.
Then he started on a run for the nearest telephone booth.
“If that girl means business, as I think she does, I shan’t get as far as Chicago!” Brainard muttered to himself, turning into the cabin of the ferry-boat.
IX
When Brainard awoke the next morning the train was moving through the Mojave desert. He lay for some time in his berth trying to collect himself and realize all that had brought him thither. It was intensely hot in the narrow compartment that he had taken, and when he raised the window curtains the sunlight reflected from the desert was blinding. As he drew down the curtain, his eyes fell upon the large bag beside him, and with a start the adventure of the previous day came over him. He laughed aloud as he recalled the different scenes in Krutzmacht’s office,—the stenographer’s suspicious reception, the endless bumping down the circular iron stairs with the bag and the valise, old Peters’s horrified face when he learned that the woman had been shut in the safe. Indeed, the entire week since he ran across the dying stranger at the door of his lodging seemed like a dream, peopled with faces and scenes that were extraordinarily vivid and of a kind he had never known in his narrow, sordid life. With a luxurious sense of new possession he went over all the little details of his journey across the continent. The week, he recognized, had been a liberal education to his mentally starved self. But what was he going to do now?
Hitherto he had been carried along easily on a wave of events that demanded instant action, and he had not worried about the future. Even when the reporter had given him the news of Krutzmacht’s death in the hospital he was already too deep in the affair to stop, although he realized that the crude power of attorney, which had been his sole legal protection in looting the safe, had lost all its force the instant its maker ceased to breathe. After that, he was, as the stenographer had said,—merely a burglar. Yet he had not hesitated to obey the dead man’s will rather than the law. But now?
Thus far he had been executing Krutzmacht’s direct orders, with an unconscious sense of a living personality guiding him, taking the real responsibility for his deeds. The stranger who had been stricken near his door had seized upon him as the nearest available tool, had imposed on him his will, and had sent him hurrying across the continent on an errand the full nature of which was even yet a mystery to Brainard. And he had obeyed the dying stranger with a curious faith in his reasonableness,—had responded to him pliantly as to the command of a natural master. But now that this master was dead, the situation was altogether different. Should he still attempt to execute his scarcely intelligible wishes?
He had learned enough about Krutzmacht these last few days to understand that the old man had been engaged in a life-and-death struggle for the control of large properties,—one of those peculiarly modern duels fought with bankers’ credits and court decrees. Apparently his enemies, more powerful than he—at least with larger resources at their command—had been closing in on him for the final grapple, which threatened utterly to ruin him. He had gone to New York to raise the funds with which to evade impending bankruptcy and loss of control of the properties which he had created. Brainard now fully believed that Krutzmacht had succeeded in this, and that he had been stricken at last by the hand of a hired thug and thrown on the street to die. But even in the torture of his final convulsions the old man had exerted his powerful will to defeat these cowardly foes, and had lingered on in life just long enough to enable his agent to snatch the prey from their jaws.
What now was he to do with this bag of documents and securities that lay there, its fat sides bulging in proof of his deed? The obvious thing would be to seek the nearest federal authority, deposit his plunder, and allow an impartial court to settle the dispute between the dead man and his enemies. A week before, such a timid and safe course of conduct would have seemed to Brainard the only possible action to take. Now he found it not in the least to his taste, and dismissed it without further consideration. He had become an altogether different person, even in this week, from that beaten man who had stumbled homeward from a petty defeat through the New York streets in the gloom of an April day. For this one brief week in all the years he could remember he had been alive—fully alive—and with his hand now in the thick of this vital web he was not willing to withdraw. The one who had used him as a tool was dead, but his strong will lived on in him, not yet fulfilled, and to that strong will whose only hope of fulfillment lay in him—the chance stranger—a new sense of loyalty responded. He would not desert the old man in the present crisis, no matter what the merely legal aspects of his situation were. Already the stranger’s will like fertile seed was germinating within this fresh soil.
“Take everything,” Krutzmacht said. “Take it all to Berlin.” That he would do if he could.
There was a strange name—Mell or Melody—that the dying man had been at such pains to enunciate. What had Melody to do with the matter? Was it the name of a person? Or an institution? He exercised all his ingenuity in trying to invent a reasonable explanation of this one word. Possibly Krutzmacht had tried to pronounce Mendel or Mendelssohn. Brainard thought there was a firm of German bankers with some such name. Light on the puzzle might be found in the contents of his bag, but at present he did not like to open it. At any rate Berlin must be his next destination.
He pondered all these things at his late breakfast, where in the close-shaded car electric fans buzzed to make a semblance of moving air. The fellow travelers on this train—returning tourists from Southern California resorts—did not interest him as had the varied company on the Overland, and he shut himself up in his compartment with his secret, not even leaving it for luncheon. It seemed that already the cares of property—even of another, unknown person’s property—were beginning to separate him from his fellows, rendering him less eager to make acquaintances, more suspicious than he was by nature. In the present circumstances he preferred to keep to himself. So all that long day, alone in his hot room, he thought, while the train slowly traversed the mighty Arizona plains, arid, limitless, austere, broken here and there by solitary rocky peaks that rose majestically out of the desert into the still, clear atmosphere. It was a stranger land than he had ever dreamed, outside all the world that he knew, remote, mysterious, calm.
He did not open the bag for fear of possible interruption. He thought, and as the hot day wore on into the afternoon he began to lose that sense of security he had had when he caught the train in San Francisco. The burden of the bag became heavier. If he were any judge of newspaper men, that reporter Farson had by this time spread the story of his deeds broadcast over the civilized world. Messages might be speeding past him even now on the wires, directions to intercept his flight at some convenient point farther to the east. He first planned to make for New Orleans as a port of departure for Europe, having altogether abandoned the idea of returning to New York, which probably was the one most dangerous spot for him on the globe. Even New Orleans seemed a desperately long way off. The sooner, he reasoned, he could put an international boundary between himself and Krutzmacht’s enemies, the better would be his chance of reaching Berlin with his plunder.
He examined the crude map in the railroad folder and made out that by the next noon, if the train were on time, he could make connections at Albuquerque in New Mexico with a train for El Paso. To-morrow noon seemed far off, but he concluded that it was the best he could do. Until then he should have to run his chances, and possess himself with patience. The day drew slowly to its conclusion. The sun streamed more horizontally across the arid plain, touching the distant mountains with blood-red tints. A desolate, man-forsaken country! For miles and miles there was not a living being, not a habitation in sight from the railroad. Somewhere far off beyond those purpling mountains lay the romantic land of Mexico, which seemed the proper haven for any kind of lawlessness. Fortunately he was abundantly supplied with ready money. In addition to the large sum he had found in the old wallet he had come across in one of the inner drawers of the safe a canvas bag of gold coin, placed there no doubt by the thrifty German for some emergency such as this when it might not be convenient to get money from a bank. So he had on his person very nearly ten thousand dollars in gold and bills, which ought to suffice for an extended journey. Ready money gave the young man a comfortable sense of security that he had never hitherto experienced for any length of time. . . .
At a division headquarters where the train was changing engines, Brainard with his head out of the window was gazing interestedly at the motley crowd of plainsmen, greasers, and blanketed Indians. The door of his compartment was brusquely thrown open and one of the trainmen demanded:
“What’s your name?”
Brainard jumped back from the window, replying mechanically, “Edgar Brainard—why?”
“Don’t be scared, stranger!” the official replied with a chuckle at Brainard’s startled look. He glanced through his spectacles at a yellow envelope. “I’m lookin’ for a party named Wilky or Wilkins. You ain’t the feller.”
Brainard stepped forward to take the telegram, but the man had already turned away. It flashed over Brainard at once that probably Farson was trying to communicate with him, using the foolish name he had given the reporter half in jest. The friendly newspaper man, grateful for the liberal gift he had received, was perhaps trying to warn him of some possible danger. It was too late now to get possession of the telegram. The conductor was passing through the car, asking the passengers their names and exhibiting the yellow envelope.
For the next hour Brainard sat with his nerves on edge, his mind keenly alert to some impending danger. Suddenly the train drew up with a forcible application of the emergency brakes that brought the passengers to their feet. All the men in the car streamed out to the vestibules, and Brainard among them, to see what had happened.
X
“Only a bridge gone,” was the word disgustedly handed back from mouth to mouth. There had been an unusual fall of rain in the arid country to the north, and for a few hours one of the arroyos had become a boiling flood, which had swept away a substantial new bridge. The passengers straggled forward to the scene of trouble.
In the curious half light of the sun sinking into the desert behind and illuminating all the vast high plain with a brilliant reddish light, the huddle of passengers along the right of way and the stalled cars seemed singularly out of place, accentuating the desolate loneliness of the country, where for miles and miles as far as the eye could reach nothing was to be seen rising above the sagebrush and cactus except a range of misty, purple mountains a few miles to the south and a huge water tank a mile or two in the rear. On either side of the petty stream that had already subsided to its normal shallow condition several trains had been caught and held by the loss of the bridge, the Eastern Limited being the last to join the confusion. The passengers on these various trains had mingled along the right of way and were watching the efforts of a large gang of laborers to build a temporary track across the gully, which was almost completed. Some of the passengers had been there since early morning, and these greeted the newcomers from the Limited with joking inquiries about the state of the larder on their train. It was a good hundred miles in either direction to any station possessing a lunch counter, and the question of supper was becoming of serious importance to the less fortunate travelers. As Brainard talked with some of these passengers from the East, he was given a newspaper brought on the last train. It was the Sunday morning Albuquerque Star. Brainard drew to one side and scanned its pages by the fading light. It did not take long for him to find what he was seeking. On the front page of the first section, in the place of honor, there was an associated press dispatch from San Francisco, describing the sensational robbery in the office of a prominent business man. It told without material exaggeration the events of the afternoon before; there was no hint that the affair was more than a daring, but common burglary by a reckless and experienced hand. Brainard rather resented this aspect of the story. In conclusion it said that the authorities had strong clews and expected to lay their hands on the robber before he would have any chance to dispose of the more valuable part of his haul. Brainard handed the paper back to its owner, chatted for a few moments longer about their common predicament, then strolled thoughtfully back the way he had come.
His was almost the last car of the three trains on the westerly side of the arroyo, and as he picked his way beside the track he could hear the few elderly ladies that had not left their seats talking about the delay. It amused him to think what they would say, if they knew that their quiet, well-dressed fellow traveler was the hero of the tale he had just read in the Albuquerque Star. There was a peaceful calm here in the rear, for even the porters and the train hands had gone forward to watch the operations of the laborers. The engines puffed slumberously; there was an intense stillness in the air; the sun had just disappeared, leaving a dull red glow in its place.
It was perfectly evident to Brainard that he could not hope to reach Albuquerque without arrest; he must leave the train at the next station of any size, but even that was extremely risky. With searching eyes he examined the country, which was now sinking imperceptibly into the vagueness of dusk. There was nothing for miles in any direction for the eye to rest upon but cactus and forlorn sagebrush, except that lonely water tank in the rear. There were the mountains, to be sure, but they were many miles away, and he knew that he could never reach them alone with his bag, even if he were sure that he could find a refuge in them. No, it would be suicidal to attempt an escape in this desert! Whatever came, he must run the risk of waiting until the train stopped at some more favorable place. He had come to this conclusion, standing beside the rear platform of the last car, where he could get an uninterrupted view of the vast landscape and was about to seek the seclusion of his own little room, when his eye caught sight of an object in the cactus not far from the track. He soon made out the moving figure of a small horse and a rider, and waited with curiosity to see what sort of person would appear in this desolate country.
The horse dropped to a walk, then halted altogether, as if timid, but soon approached at a slow walk. As far as Brainard could see, the figure was that of a young girl, riding astride a rough yellow pony. The pony crawled within a few yards of the cars, then refused to go farther in spite of its rider’s efforts with a quirt to overcome his fear. Brainard walked down the track nearer them.
“Good evenin’, stranger,” the girl called out. “What’s all the trouble he-ar?”
“Bridge gone,” Brainard replied succinctly. “Live around here?”
“A ways back, up yonder!” The girl hitched a shoulder in the direction of the south.
“Live in the water tank?” he queried.
“I reckon I don’t, stranger,” came back in the severe tones of a child whose dignity has been ruffled.
“Then where can you live on this desert—is there a town concealed anywhere abouts?”
The answer from the figure on the pony was a pleasant girlish laugh, and then in the soft, southern tones:
“I reckon, stranger, you won’t find much of a to-own this side of Phoenix—and that’s a mighty long ways from he-ar!”
By this time Brainard and the pony had come sufficiently near together so that he could make out the small straight figure. The girl could not be over fourteen, he judged; she was thin and slight, with dark skin and small features concealed beneath the flap of an old felt hat. She wore a faded khaki skirt and leather leggings. In her small bony hand dangled a heavy man’s quirt with which she swished the ground, and at times she looked up shyly at the “stranger.”
“Where you from?” she inquired.
“New York,” Brainard replied.
“New York!” she repeated with an accent of wonder and surprise. “That must be a mighty big ta-own.”
“Rather more populous than this—what do you call it?”
“They call the siding back there by the tank Phantom.”
“Phantom—is that because it’s only a mirage?”
“I can’t say. . . . Where be you going?”
“Mexico!” Brainard hazarded at a venture.
“Mexico!” the girl drawled. “That must be a sight farther off than Phoenix.”
“I guess it is.”
“What are you going to Mexico for, stranger?” the girl persisted.
“Mining business,” Brainard fabricated glibly.
“Copper or gold?”
“All kinds, my child,” Brainard replied flippantly.
The girl drew herself up with considerable dignity, and remarking,—“I’m agoin’ to see what they all be doin’ down yonder,” stirred up the yellow pony and rode off in the direction of the arroyo. She drew up a few rods from the center of activity and stood there in the twilight. Brainard was sorry for his foolish answer that had apparently frightened her away. He went back to his compartment, and after a few moments’ thought grasped his valise and got off the car.
“If she can live in this country, I guess I can,” he muttered to himself.
He flung his bag down in the sagebrush and sat on it, waiting until the girl came back. Presently there was a series of jubilant toots from the engine of the first train as a signal of the successful reopening of traffic; then the east-bound trains began slowly to move one by one down into the gully over the temporary track. When the last train had crept by him Brainard rose and sauntered in the direction of the girl. She was still sitting motionless on her pony, absorbed in the spectacle of all these moving trains,—a peculiarly lonely little figure, there in the gathering dusk of the desert, watching as it were the procession of civilization pass by her. . . . After the eastbound trains had got away and were steaming off towards the horizon, the west-bound trains began to file across the break, having picked up the wrecking crew and their equipment. The girl did not move. Evidently in her life this was a rare treat, and she did not mean to lose any part of it. So Brainard waited until the red rear lamps of the last train shone out by the water tank, and then as the girl slowly turned her pony back he rose from the ground and hailed her. “Hello!”
The pony shied at Brainard, but the girl easily reined it in. She did not seem much discomposed by the sight of him.
“Lost your train, stranger?” she observed with admirable equanimity. “There won’t be no more along ’fore to-morrow morning, I reckon,” she added.
“I don’t believe I want a train,” he replied.
“Goin’ to Mexico on foot with that trunk?” she asked. He detected a mirthful note in her voice. Evidently she took neither him nor his pretended mining business with great seriousness.
“That’s just what I’m going to try to do!”
“Well, you won’t get there to-night, I reckon.”
“I suppose not. Can you tell me some place where I could spend the night?”
“There’s the water tank,” she suggested, with a little laugh.
“Isn’t there somebody where you come from?”
The girl shook her head quite positively.
“There must be some one in this God-forsaken country who would take a stranger in! I don’t care about spending the night out here.”
The girl laughed as if it were all a great joke. “There won’t be nobody to hurt you, stranger.”
“Thanks!”
She started on her road. Brainard thought he was in for a night in the open and cursed his folly in jumping off into the desert. But the girl pulled up after a few steps, and he could hear her gay chuckle as she called out:
“You sure did want to stay in Arizona bad—you lost six trains!”
“I meant to!”
“That mining business must be very important.”
“Something else is,” he said boldly.
“Was it very bad, what made you want to get to Mexico—a killing?”
“Not as bad as that.”
“What was it?”
“You wouldn’t understand, I am afraid.”
“You might try tellin’ of me, all the same.”
“It isn’t anything bad.”
“They all say that,” she suggested mockingly.
“I’m merely trying to carry out some one’s orders.”
The girl looked mystified, and after a moment’s further thought remarked:
“There’s old man Gunnison. He might take you in for the night.”
“Where does he live?”
“Back a ways up the trail.”
“Won’t you show me the way?”
“I might,” she admitted. “Better give me that trunk,” she said, pointing to the bag. “You would sure be tired if you toted that all the way to Gunnison’s.”
The girl slipped from the pony and expertly made the bag fast to the saddle with the thongs. Then taking the reins, which she drew over the animal’s head, she strode out into the darkness. Brainard stumbled on after his guide as best he could. Presently when he became more accustomed to the dark and to progress over the uneven ground he joined the girl and tried to make her talk. She developed shyness, however, and replied only briefly to his questions. She lived somewhere up in the mountains towards which they were traveling and which could be dimly perceived ahead, a soft, dark barrier rising in the night. But what she did there, who her people were, she would not say. In spite of her youth and her inexperience she had a shrewd child’s wit that could turn off inconvenient curiosity. Although she drawled and spoke the slovenly language of uneducated people, there was something about her, perhaps her instinctive reserve, that bespoke a better breeding than her clothes and her speech indicated. She did not make further inquiries about Brainard’s business; he surmised that she refrained because she thought him to be some kind of a wrongdoer. He wanted to explain to her his erratic conduct, but he realized that it would be not only foolish but almost impossible to make clear to her limited mind just what the situation with him was. So for minutes there was silence between them while they plodded on.
Brainard liked the girl, felt a strange sort of pity for her, an unreasoned pity for a forlorn and lonely child, who he instinctively divined was sensitive and perhaps unhappy in spite of her flippant speech.
“What were you doing down there at the railroad?” he asked in another attempt to start conversation.
“Oh,” she replied vaguely, “nothin’.”
“Nothing! It must be a long way from your home to the railroad?”
“It takes three hours to ride it,” she replied.
“And do you ride down there often just to look at the trains go by?”
“’Most every week, stranger,” she said softly.
Brainard whistled.
“What makes you do that?”
He could feel her toss her head. Her answer was vague.
“They’re goin’ somewheres.”
“And you want to go on them?”
“Perhaps. . . . I expect I shall some day.”
“Where?”
“Oh,” she sighed, “anywheres—California, maybe,—New York—somewheres I can live!”
The energy with which she uttered these last words had something pathetic in it. As if to avoid further confession, she urged the tired pony to a shambling trot and Brainard again found difficulty in keeping the pace. After another half hour of this blind progress behind his taciturn guide, the girl stopped before what seemed to be a mound of dirt and remarked:
“Here’s Gunnison’s. Maybe the old man is abed—I’ll raise him for you.”
She proceeded to pound vigorously with the butt of her quirt on the door of the dugout. Presently there was a sound within, and a human head appeared at the door.
“Here’s a gentleman who wants to go to some place in Mexico,” the girl said in her gentle Southern voice. “I told him it was pretty fur from these parts, but I reckon you know how to git there, if any one does.”
“Will you put me up for the night, anyway?” Brainard asked. “That’s the first thing.”
“I can do that,” the sleepy Mr. Gunnison replied after a time, coming out of the door. “But if you be in a hurry to reach Mexico, stranger, you’d better go back to the railroad you come from, and take the next train.”
“We’ll see about that in the morning,” Brainard replied.
The girl had already unfastened the bag and mounted her pony.
“Much obliged to you, miss, for all your help!”
“That’s all right, stranger,” she said cheerily, starting the pony.
“Going home now?” Brainard asked.
“Yes!”
This childish figure, astride the tired pony, riding back into the lonely mountains, seemed to him extremely pathetic.
“Good-by!” he called after her. “Hope we shall meet again some day!”
“Reckon we might, stranger!” came back to him in the soft voice.
“Perhaps in New York?”
“Ye-as—or in Mexico.”
Then the pony’s feet padded rapidly off into the darkness, and the girl was gone.
“Who is she—do you know?” he asked the man.
“Belongs over in Moniment, in one of them mining camps, I expect,” the old man replied indifferently. “I seen her riding past this afternoon.”
“Where is she going alone at night?”
“I dunno—guess she knows her own business.”
“Such a small girl!”
“They know how to look after themselves, in these parts, as soon as they can creep,” the old man remarked calmly. “They have to!”
“Monument!” Brainard repeated to himself, wondering where he had heard that name before.
“That’s what they call it. It ain’t much of a place now. There used to be a big mine near there, but it ain’t been worked in years. . . . You can come right in and bunk alongside of me, stranger.”