I
“That man Mason,” said Samuel Walcott, “is the mysterious member of
this club. He is more than that; he is the mysterious man of New
York.”
“I was much surprised to see him,” answered his companion, Marshall
St. Clair, of the great law firm of Seward, St. Clair & De Muth.
“I had lost track of him since he went to Paris as counsel for the
American stockholders of the Canal Company. When did he come back
to the States?”
“He turned up suddenly in his ancient haunts about four months
ago,” said Walcott, “as grand, gloomy, and peculiar as Napoleon
ever was in his palmiest days. The younger members of the club
call him ‘Zanona Redivivus.’ He wanders through the house usually
late at night, apparently without noticing anything or anybody.
His mind seems to be deeply and busily at work, leaving his bodily
self to wander as it may happen. Naturally, strange stories are
told of him; indeed, his individuality and his habit of doing some
unexpected thing, and doing it in such a marvelously original
manner that men who are experts at it look on in wonder, cannot
fail to make him an object of interest.
“He has never been known to play at any game whatever, and yet one
night he sat down to the chess table with old Admiral Du Brey. You
know the Admiral is the great champion since he beat the French and
English officers in the tournament last winter. Well, you also
know that the conventional openings at chess are scientifically and
accurately determined. To the utter disgust of Du Brey, Mason
opened the game with an unheard-of attack from the extremes of the
board. The old Admiral stopped and, in a kindly patronizing way,
pointed out the weak and absurd folly of his move and asked him to
begin again with some one of the safe openings. Mason smiled and
answered that if one had a head that he could trust he should use
it; if not, then it was the part of wisdom to follow blindly the
dead forms of some man who had a head. Du Brey was naturally angry
and set himself to demolish Mason as quickly as possible. The game
was rapid for a few moments. Mason lost piece after piece. His
opening was broken and destroyed and its utter folly apparent to
the lookers-on. The Admiral smiled and the game seemed all one-
sided, when, suddenly, to his utter horror, Du Brey found that his
king was in a trap. The foolish opening had been only a piece of
shrewd strategy. The old Admiral fought and cursed and sacrificed
his pieces, but it was of no use. He was gone. Mason checkmated
him in two moves and arose wearily.
“‘Where in Heaven’s name, man,’ said the old Admiral,
thunderstruck, ‘did you learn that masterpiece?’
“‘Just here,’ replied Mason. ‘To play chess, one should know his
opponent. How could the dead masters lay down rules by which you
could be beaten, sir? They had never seen you’; and thereupon he
turned and left the room. Of course, St. Clair, such a strange man
would soon become an object of all kinds of mysterious rumors.
Some are true and some are not. At any rate, I know that Mason is
an unusual man with a gigantic intellect. Of late he seems to have
taken a strange fancy to me. In fact, I seem to be the only member
of the club that he will talk with, and I confess that he startles
and fascinates me. He is an original genius, St. Clair, of an
unusual order.”
“I recall vividly,” said the younger man, “that before Mason went
to Paris he was considered one of the greatest lawyers of this city
and he was feared and hated by the bar at large. He came here, I
believe, from Virginia and began with the high-grade criminal
practice. He soon became famous for his powerful and ingenious
defenses. He found holes in the law through which his clients
escaped, holes that by the profession at large were not suspected
to exist, and that frequently astonished the judges. His ability
caught the attention of the great corporations. They tested him
and found in him learning and unlimited resources. He pointed out
methods by which they could evade obnoxious statutes, by which they
could comply with the apparent letter of the law and yet violate
its spirit, and advised them well in that most important of all
things, just how far they could bend the law without breaking it.
At the time he left for Paris he had a vast clientage and was in
the midst of a brilliant career. The day he took passage from New
York, the bar lost sight of him. No matter how great a man may be,
the wave soon closes over him in a city like this. In a few years
Mason was forgotten. Now only the older practitioners would recall
him, and they would do so with hatred and bitterness. He was a
tireless, savage, uncompromising fighter, always a recluse.”
“Well,” said Walcott, “he reminds me of a great world-weary cynic,
transplanted from some ancient mysterious empire. When I come into
the man’s presence I feel instinctively the grip of his intellect.
I tell you, St. Clair, Randolph Mason is the mysterious man of New
York.”
At this moment a messenger boy came into the room and handed Mr.
Walcott a telegram. “St. Clair,” said that gentleman, rising, “the
directors of the Elevated are in session, and we must hurry.” The
two men put on their coats and left the house.
Samuel Walcott was not a club man after the manner of the Smart
Set, and yet he was in fact a club man. He was a bachelor in the
latter thirties, and resided in a great silent house on the avenue.
On the street he was a man of substance, shrewd and progressive,
backed by great wealth. He had various corporate interests in the
larger syndicates, but the basis and foundation of his fortune was
real estate. His houses on the avenue were the best possible
property, and his elevator row in the importers’ quarter was indeed
a literal gold mine. It was known that, many years before, his
grandfather had died and left him the property, which, at that
time, was of no great value. Young Walcott had gone out into the
gold-fields and had been lost sight of and forgotten. Ten years
afterwards he had turned up suddenly in New York and taken
possession of his property, then vastly increased in value. His
speculations were almost phenomenally successful, and, backed by
the now enormous value of his real property, he was soon on a level
with the merchant princes. His judgment was considered sound, and
he had the full confidence of his business associates for safety
and caution. Fortune heaped up riches around him with a lavish
hand. He was unmarried and the halo of his wealth caught the keen
eye of the matron with marriageable daughters. He was invited out,
caught by the whirl of society, and tossed into its maelstrom. In
a measure he reciprocated. He kept horses and a yacht. His
dinners at Delmonico’s and the club were above reproach. But with
all he was a silent man with a shadow deep in his eyes, and seemed
to court the society of his fellows, not because he loved them, but
because he either hated or feared solitude. For years the strategy
of the match-maker had gone gracefully afield, but Fate is
relentless. If she shields the victim from the traps of men, it is
not because she wishes him to escape, but because she is pleased to
reserve him for her own trap. So it happened that, when Virginia
St. Clair assisted Mrs. Miriam Steuvisant at her midwinter
reception, this same Samuel Walcott fell deeply and hopelessly and
utterly in love, and it was so apparent to the beaten generals
present, that Mrs. Miriam Steuvisant applauded herself, so to
speak, with encore after encore. It was good to see this
courteous, silent man literally at the feet of the young debutante.
He was there of right. Even the mothers of marriageable daughters
admitted that. The young girl was brown-haired, brown-eyed, and
tall enough, said the experts, and of the blue blood royal, with
all the grace, courtesy, and inbred genius of such princely
heritage.
Perhaps it was objected by the censors of the Smart Set that Miss
St. Clair’s frankness and honesty were a trifle old-fashioned, and
that she was a shadowy bit of a Puritan; and perhaps it was of
these same qualities that Samuel Walcott received his hurt. At any
rate the hurt was there and deep, and the new actor stepped up into
the old time-worn, semi-tragic drama, and began his role with a
tireless, utter sincerity that was deadly dangerous if he lost.