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.”
“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?”
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.
“I have not thanked you enough for this!” She pointed coquettishly to a lovely pendant which she had admired in a window of the Rue de la Paix, and which Brainard had bought for her.
“That’s nothing—just to remember me by!”
“I do not need it for that!”
“Good night,” he said, “and good-by—it has been a great week!”
And that was all.
“‘Good night and good-by—it has been a great week!’” The Frenchwoman mimicked the young man’s words to herself. “Ciel, what manner of man can he be? Or have I grown so old?” And she answered herself with a sigh: “No, he’s only a poet, and he is in love with—an idea! Mélodie! Foolish poet!”
So that was the final judgment of Mme. Vernon.
But out in the gentle June night, under the dark Paris sky, the poet was sauntering beneath the dusky shadow of the Louvre, the music of the lines he had heard that evening floating through his brain. He drifted on past the empty courts of the old palace, toward the river, exalted by all that he had seen and felt during these last seven wonderful days. The spinning moments of his brief dream were too precious to waste in sleep. As he went, he talked aloud to himself.
“We ought to have something like it over there. It could be done, too! Melody should do it for us, with a portion of all this loot that I am bringing back to her. She should give something to America to justify her name!”
If Mme. Vernon had heard these muttered words, she would doubtless have qualified her judgment of the young American by adding:
“He is a crazy poet!”
Indeed there was something scarcely rational in the young American’s enthusiasm, the glowing intoxication of spirit in which he enveloped Paris. That too had been preparing for him through all the vicissitudes of the past weeks,—by the sudden resolves to commit himself to the sick man’s purpose, the growth of will as he met each fresh complication, the physical and moral regeneration of the long trail into Mexico, above all by the sense of triumph gained in his encounter with the Berlin banker. The crust of his starved nature had broken, and at the magic touch of Paris there appeared the better spirit of the man,—fearless, enthusiastic, worshiping,—the spirit of the artist, as Mme. Vernon had said. Even in his quixotic renunciation, his determination to turn away from the happiness he had found, there was a glowing conviction that this was not the end. The spirit would survive. ’Twas, indeed, but the start, the preparation for another adventure, larger, more thrilling, that loomed before him, across the ocean. Paris also was but revelation and preparation; more was to come! . . .
The graceful lines of the Palace of the Louvre rose mysteriously into the night, and recalled to Brainard the pages of old Dumas, from whom he had learned to know France. Home of the past, of a great race, home of beauty and art and romance, it called to him, young barbarian that he was, cast by chance upon its shores!
Beneath the stone parapet on which he was leaning, a laden barge passed stealthily over the black surface of the river. He followed it up the quays, crossing the Pont Neuf, over which loomed the shadowy figure of the king on horseback, on toward Notre Dame. All was still and silent about the old cathedral as he paced under the shadows of the springing buttresses. At last, while he lingered on the point of the island, out of the east came a rosy light that touched the great gray towers of the cathedral. It was the misty dawn.
“To think,” he murmured prayerfully, “that I might have died without knowing all this!”
The old stone buildings along the winding river gradually emerged from the gray mist of the dawn and hung as if suspended, floating before his eyes. The thin branches of a tall poplar waved lightly above his head, dropping to him a yellow leaf. A gendarme who was patrolling the quay looked interrogatively into the face of the young American, as if he were suspicious of his proximity to the river at that hour of the morning.
“Beau temps,” he observed amicably to the loiterer.
“What do you say?” Brainard asked, coming a long way down to earth.
The officer repeated his innocent remark about the weather.
“Yes, the temps is all right,” the young man agreed. “Fine!”
Evidently another of those foolish Americans, star-gazing in the early dawn! The officer lingered near, cocking his eye on the stranger; but Brainard had started for his hotel, talking to himself as he walked.
“There’s a whole lot, Melody, I can never pay you for, even with two millions and a bunch of five-per-cent bonds! Where are you, Melody, in all this wide world?”
Suddenly he stopped, and stood very still. Then, slapping his thigh, he shouted into the dawn:
“Why, Monument! Monument, Arizona! That’s it! That’s what the old boy was trying to say at the very end, when he was too far gone to make himself clearly understood. He was trying to give me the address, of course!”
The gendarme, thinking there must be something wrong with a young man who acted in this fashion, followed Brainard to his hotel, whither, now that he had solved his puzzle, he went at a brisk pace.
XX
To get to that pin-prick on the map called Monument, Arizona, you drop off the railroad at Defiance, which is somewhere east of the water tank named Phantom, and then follow an old post road across the lofty plateau in the direction of the mountains to the southwest. After something more than twenty miles, the trail strikes a deeply sunk river bed that winds like a gigantic serpent over the desert toward the declining sun. In one of the coils of this dead river serpent lies what is left of the mining camp of Monument.
From the dusty trail over the alkali plain Brainard emerged one blazing July afternoon, saddle-sore after his unaccustomed exercise, and red-faced from the pitiless glare of the Arizona sun. As he climbed the rocky path on the farther side of the river bed, the sun was sinking in a gorgeous sky behind the wooden shacks of Monument.
The place had the desolate air of a mining camp that had been smothered before its boom had really come. The stack of a large smelter rose from a group of corrugated iron buildings at the further end. Beyond, on the summit of a curious detached mound, set quite apart from all other features of the landscape, there was a considerable mansion with tall pillars along its southern front. This, Brainard surmised, must have been the residence of the owner or the manager of the mine, and his present goal.
Apparently Monument had not enough life left to bestir itself, even on the arrival of a stranger. Brainard slid from his horse unobserved in front of the Waldorf Hotel, which was apparently the most pretentious hostelry in the town. Inside the Waldorf, a Chinaman was serving a customer with a meal of fried steak and liver-colored pie. The only other person in the establishment was a fat Irishwoman dozing in one corner of the large bar-room, to which the Chinaman referred the stranger, with a silent nod. The landlady—for such he took her to be—looked at Brainard stupidly, and to his request for a room merely dropped her head on her ample breast and resumed her nap.
Brainard turned back to the street, and there the only human being in sight was an old man sitting in front of a tiny cottage, which seemed more decent in appearance than the other residences of Monument. Brainard hailed him, and inquired if there was another hotel in Monument in which he might take refuge.
“There’s hotels enough,” the old citizen replied with placid irony, “but they ain’t doing business these days. I reckon you’ll have to put up with the Waldorf, stranger—it ain’t so worse!”
In reply to Brainard’s complaint that the landlady of the Waldorf would not take notice of his arrival, the old man remarked:
“I expect Katie’s just getting over her yesterday’s booze. She’ll come around after sundown. Come over and sit awhile. There ain’t any use of worryin’ yourself in this here country!”
He waved an arm slowly over the empty landscape.
“That’s a fact—Monument doesn’t seem greatly rushed with business,” Brainard observed, taking the proffered seat beside the old man. “What’s the matter with the place?”
“The matter is that nothing has been doing in this here camp for ’most ten years,” the miner replied, pointing to the smokeless smelter.
“Mine gave out?”
“Mine’s all right—they never really got into it. The money gave out!”
The old man explained, in his placid drawl, how Monument once had great hopes. Then there had been a dozen Waldorfs in full swing. The smelter had been built, and shafts sunk in the red-brown hills behind the town.
“The Melody Mine?”
“That’s what they called it, and it’s as good a mine as there ever was in Arizony—better ore than the El Verde ever had—more money in it than three El Verdes rolled into one, I say!”
“Gold?”
The old man spat contemptuously at a venturesome lizard.
“Gold! Hell, no—copper! High-grade ore.”
“What was the matter?”
“Them panic times came along, and the fellow that owned the Melody went broke. He went back to Frisco. I always expected him to ride into camp some day, when the panic was over, hitch down there at the Waldorf, and sing out, ‘Howdy, Steve!’ and things would begin to hum once more. But he never come back. Guess it’s likely he ain’t made good out in California.”
“Perhaps he’s dead now,” Brainard suggested.
“P’r’aps—but some other feller will work the mine, one of these days. Copper’s booming all over the world, you understand. I’m waiting for that day!”
The old man spat meditatively.
“What is that large house on the hill?” Brainard asked, pointing to the lonely mansion beyond the town.
“That’s where the old man lived—Krutzmacht’s house,” he replied. “He used to live there with his folks.”
“He had a family, then?” Brainard inquired quickly.
“Some said she warn’t really his wife—couldn’t be, because she had a husband where she came from, back East. I don’t know. I never asked him. Folks always talk, you understand. Well, she’s dead now. The old man left her here when he went away. She stayed on with the girl—”
“With what girl?”
“Her darter, stranger—not his, I guess. She was a scraggly little black-haired thing, more like a boy.”
Brainard smiled as his young man’s dream of a beautiful heroine, with aristocratic manners and gracious character, crumbled at the miner’s touch.
“She used to ride all over the place on her pony—she was a wild sort. Sometime after her mother died, she disappeared.”
“Where did she go?”
The old man shook his head slowly.
“Nobody could tell. One night, a month or more ago, she just rode off on the trail. I seed her going down there at a run on her pony, and she never came back. P’r’aps she was going to look for Krutzmacht. They caught the pony over by Phantom, but nothing has been heard of her since.”
“Melody—”
“Yes, that was her name, stranger!” the old miner said with a look of surprise. “Melody White! How did you come to know it?”
“I must have guessed it,” Brainard replied with a smile.
“The mine was named after her, or she after the mine; I don’t know which.”
Brainard stared out into the grim Arizona landscape, before which rose the deserted mansion. There was a Melody! He had never really doubted her existence, but this assurance of his conviction pleased him, even though she might not be all that his ardent fancy had imagined.
“And now the house is empty, same as the mine, and I dunno what will become of it all. Sold for taxes, I expect, if they can git any one to buy it!”
They strolled up the road in the direction of the house upon the hill. The austere dusk of the desert was settling over the dreary habitations of Monument. Far away along the horizon purple mountains lifted their heads in grandeur.
The house was so placed that it gave a large view of the horizon from the mountains to the distant rim of the desert and again to mountains. Close beneath, in wide folds, the river bed wound its serpent course westward into the dusk. Before the broad southern veranda there were signs of old flower beds, which had once been cherished with precious water brought in iron pipes from the river below. The great white pillars had peeled their one coat of paint, and underfoot the sun-dried boards rattled.
The scene was large and grand, but inhumanly empty—as empty as the great house itself. No wonder that the young girl, her mother dead, had fled from this parched desert and these bony mountains in search of the world of men and women, in search of life!
“Kind of lonesome here?” the miner observed.
“It’s like death!”
“But you get used of it, same as death. . . . She and her mother stayed here by themselves after the old man went, and I guess the girl had enough of it.”
“How old was she, do you think?”
The old miner wrinkled his brows thoughtfully.
“She must have been nigh on sixteen,” he said. “She warn’t quite ten when Krutzmacht left.”
This girl of “nigh on sixteen” had gone forth alone in search of the stepfather, who for long years had left her and her mother neglected here.
“Don’t you want to see the house? Krutzmacht fixed it up real elegant—carpets and mahogany stuff. Nothing like it in this country.”
The old man pressed against the warped door, which yielded after a slight resistance. An odor of warm, musty air from the empty dwelling filled the lofty hall, which was quite bare. The miner opened a door leading to a western room.
“They lived mostly in here,” he said.
On the floor was a thick Oriental rug, and there were several pieces of handsome furniture, especially a massive, old-fashioned mahogany writing desk and a large divan. On the divan lay a quirt and a woman’s cloak, as if they had been thrown there carelessly the day before.
The dust of the desert had already settled on the rug, the desk, the table, and the chairs. Nevertheless, the room presented a singularly living look, such as only the life of people with certain habits and education can impress upon an abiding place. Brainard felt as if he had entered a drawing-room whose mistress had left it in the care of neglectful servants.
Beside the window a small piano stood open, with a piece of music on the rack. Some dead stalks of flowers drooped from a vase, and on the hearth lay a charred log. Among the spools and pieces of cloth on a worktable was a drawing board, to which was fastened a water-color sketch. A brush, carelessly dropped, had stained one corner of the sketch with a blotch of red. Brainard looked at the water color with some curiosity. It was a young girl’s attempt to seize the barbaric splendor of the arid plain outside of the window, fringed with ranges of savage mountains, lighted by the fire of the setting sun.
The two men went up the broad staircase with its white-painted handrail. Only one of the bedrooms had been recently occupied—the one in the southwestern corner, facing the winding river. There a dresser drawer was pulled out, as if it had been rifled by hasty hands.
“Seems as if they were really coming back agin!” the old miner remarked, feeling the personal touch of occupancy. “They allus kep’ to themselves. You see, they didn’t really belong,” he added, as if in explanation.
Brainard went back into the living room once more, and examined the water-color sketch. It seemed to him that this rough sketch was like a sign left for him. It breathed the passion and the longing of the girl hidden away in this lonely corner of the earth. He detached it gently from the board, and put it into his pocket. Then, with another glance around the deserted room, he followed his guide out upon the veranda.
While the old man busied himself carefully shutting up the place, Brainard leaned against one of the white pillars and stared into the gray evening that had stolen over the plain. She had gone—the mistress whom he had tried to serve so faithfully. She had disappeared into that vast, gray outer world, that the twilight was gradually covering.
All the way across the ocean and the land, and especially on the blazing trail over the alkali plain from Defiance, he had pictured to himself the woman he hoped to find at the end of his journey. He had imagined his interview with her, her emotions of surprise and delight, when he accounted for the fortune he was bringing her. At first she had been but a name, then an idea, and this idea had gradually assumed, in his imagination, the vivid sense of personality. But somehow, in all his speculation, he had never contemplated this! She lived, but she had just flitted forth—whither?
Suddenly it came over him that there was no clear next step. For the first time since he had obeyed Krutzmacht’s will and taken the train westward for San Francisco, his spirit was dampened, and in the gray evening a weight of depression fell upon him. For the moment he had no will, no plan. That which had held all his acts together and made them reasonable to himself had vanished.
Yet the girl had left behind her an impression—a sense of being some one, a person—which he had never had completely before. Somewhere in the universe there really was a young creature with the strange name of Melody White, to whom belonged sundry important properties now in his possession. It was clearly his business to find her if he could! . . .
The old miner came stamping over the loose boards of the veranda.
“The place will sure drop to pieces, like all the rest,” he observed, “if something ain’t done to it mighty quick.”
“Where do you suppose she went?” the young man asked abruptly.
“The girl? Goodness only knows. P’r’aps she went to her mother’s folks, or p’r’aps out to the coast after him—who can tell? ’Twould be like hunting for a young rabbit out there!” He nodded toward the gray plain.
By the time that Brainard reached the Waldorf, the landlady had roused herself, and she undertook to provide the traveler with food and room. After disposing of John Chinaman’s fried steak and liver-colored pie, he went forth again into Monument, seeking further information about the former occupants of the mansion beyond the town. But nothing was known of the two women except the vague rumor that the mother had come originally from “Louisiany way.” She had held herself apart from the little community, and most of the present inhabitants of the place, it seemed, were derelicts who had gathered there after the closing of the mine. All the vital population had taken the trail back to the railroad shortly after Krutzmacht’s disappearance from the scene.
“Faith, I knew the gurl,” admitted Kate, of the Waldorf. “A queer wan she was, too, ridin’ around by night and singin’ loud up there in the big, lonely house. When you heard her singin’ in the dark, it would frighten the heart in you!”
But more positive information the landlady did not possess. When Brainard went to his hot room for the night, he felt “lonesome,” as the miner had said—as if some one had missed an appointment with him here in the Arizona desert.
The more he thought about the description the old miner had given him, the date of her final departure, the more he became convinced that he had seen this elusive Melody that night at Phantom when he had dropped from the Santa Fé train and practically thrown himself upon the girl’s good nature to guide him into safety. He was so preoccupied with his own danger at the time, and the loss of his precious bag, that he had not given much thought to the girl, had not even remembered the talk about Krutzmacht’s mining venture in Arizona until later. So he had passed her in the dark almost at the start of his adventure—the one whom now he was seeking in a circle!
Even then, in all probability, she had planned her flight,—he remembered how evasive she had been in reply to his blunt questions,—and she had left not long afterwards, within a few days, as far as he could make out. Yes, that must be Melody White,—the girl “nigh on sixteen,” the shy little girl with the appealing Southern accent, who had seemed to him so lonely sitting her yellow pony among the cactus as the night fell on the desert. His imagination fastened strongly on this belief, for it gave him fresh courage and purpose. If she were a being of flesh and blood four weeks before, she must be somewhere now. It was his business to find her. Probably she had gone first to San Francisco in search of Krutzmacht; but when she had learned of his death, where had she gone? At any rate California was the place from which to start the long trail.
And a long trail, indeed, it might prove—the search for a wild young girl on her first journey into the wide world.
XXI
In the morning, when he descended to the bar-room of the Waldorf in search of nourishment, the old miner greeted him.
“I thought,” he said suggestively, “maybe you’d like to see the mine. The Limited don’t reach Defiance until evenin’. The mine ain’t but a little ways out from here. You might be interested in lookin’ it over.”
“All right!” Brainard exclaimed. “Let’s see the mine.” He had been so much preoccupied with Melody, the girl, that he had altogether forgotten about Krutzmacht’s interest in the Melody mine. “How far is it?” he asked.
“About three miles back in the hills. The old man was building a trolley from the mine to the smelter here beside the river.”
The miner pointed out the rusty rails and bleached sleepers of the trolley road as their horses picked the way over the rough ground up to the opening of the main shaft of the mine.
“Defiance lies off there,” the miner said, pointing to the blue horizon, “twenty-five miles in a straight line north. He meant to run a railroad right across the sagebrush. It’s down grade all the way, so the cars could go out by gravity. They reckoned on gettin’ power for the trolley from the river, by damming it above the smelter.”
“It was to be developed on a big scale!” Brainard exclaimed, impressed by the scope of Krutzmacht’s plans.
“You bet!” the miner agreed. “It ain’t no use to do things in a small way in this country. Krutzmacht knew that.”
Brainard scanned the steep, savage mountains above the shaft. They were devoid of all vegetation on the lower slopes, dull brown in color, with their flanks seamed by little gullies. Behind, the higher peaks lifted their heads in broken lines of serrated edges; and in the far distance, glittering in the cloudless sky, were snowy tips of dazzling white.
The miner picked up a piece of purplish ore from the pile heaped high about the mouth of the shaft.
“Look at that!” he said admiringly. “There’s enough ore of that sort right under our feet to pay almost to tote it out to Defiance. And they had just scratched the surface, here and there. The old man didn’t reckon to begin mining until he had things fixed right.”
They descended from the ore pile and proceeded to the entrance of the main shaft. It was cluttered with timber and abandoned machinery, some of which had never been installed. They spent a couple of hours examining the mine, stumbling about the dark tunnels by the light of a candle which the old miner had brought, looking at the ore bodies already exposed, ready to be worked.
When at last they emerged into the dazzling sunlight, and were resting, Brainard remarked wonderingly:
“It’s queer that a man like Krutzmacht should have abandoned a large property such as this, when he had gone so far with it.”
“He hain’t abandoned it, I tell you. He paid the taxes up to last year. It takes an awful sight of money, stranger, to develop a big mine so far from the railroad. Krutzmacht’s pile wasn’t big enough, and he wasn’t the kind who’d take anybody in with him. All or nothing for him—that was his way. So he went back to California to get his stake. If he’s alive still, he’ll be coming in here some day ready to work this bonanza!”
“I am afraid that will never be,” Brainard said slowly. “Krutzmacht died in New York two months ago.”
The miner stared in astonishment, exclaiming at last:
“Well, well! So the old man died before he made good!” Brainard nodded. “Maybe you are looking at the property for yourself?”
“Do I look like a miner? No, I came to Monument to find out if the old man left an heir.”
“I reckon the only folks he had was that girl and her mother, and one is dead and the other gone goodness knows where,” the old miner replied. “So the Melody mine don’t belong to nobody now!”
“It belongs to that girl, if we can find her.”
“It may be sold for taxes before that.”
“Then I’ll buy it in,” Brainard said promptly.
They ate the bread and bacon they had brought with them for lunch under a pine tree on a slope of the steep hill above the mine. The old miner shook his head from time to time, and muttered to himself over the strange dispensations of Providence that left a rich mine like the Melody abandoned. Brainard thought of the girl who had escaped him, and planned vaguely what his next steps should be.