I
There were seventeen policies in all and they aggregated an even million
dollars. It thrilled Butler Murray to note his own name neatly typed
upon the outside of each. Those papers possessed a remarkable
fascination for him, not only because they meant the settlement of his
debt to Muriel, but because his life, instead of being the wholly
useless thing he had come to regard it, was really, by virtue of those
documents, a valuable asset upon which he could realize at once.
One million dollars was a great deal of money, even to Butler Murray,
and yet it was so easy! Why, it was even easier to make that amount than
it had been to spend it! Although the former process might not prove so
amusing, it at least offered a degree of interest wholly lacking in the
latter.
When DeVoe entered, Murray greeted him warmly. "I'm glad I caught you,
Henry. They told me you've been out West somewhere."
"Yes, I'm promoting, you know--mines!" DeVoe flung off his fur coat and
settled into an easy-chair.
"Getting along all right?"
"No. My friends either know too little about mines or too much about me.
I've a good proposition, though, and if I could ever get started, I'd
clean up a million."
"It's not so hard to make a million dollars."
"How the deuce do you know? You've never had to try. By the way, why are
you living here at the club? Where is Mrs. Murray?"
"She is at the farm with the children. We have--separated."
"_No!_ Jove! I'm sorry. What does it mean--the road to Reno?"
"I hardly think she will divorce me, on account of the publicity;
although she ought to."
"Woman scrape, I suppose."
"No, nothing like that. I've spent all her money."
DeVoe opened his eyes in amazement. "Oh, see here now, you couldn't
spend it _all_! Why, she had even more than you!"
"It's all gone--hers and mine."
"Good _Lord_!"
"Yes. I was always extravagant, but I've been speculating lately. I
thought I'd get a sensation either way the market went, but I was
disappointed. I dare say I have exhausted my capabilities for
excitement. It's a long story, and I won't bore you with it, but, to be
exact, all I have left is the town house and the farm and the place in
Virginia. There isn't enough income, however, to keep any one of them
going."
"Well, well! You _have_ been stepping along. Why, it's inconceivable!"
DeVoe stirred uneasily in his chair. The calm indifference of this
broad-shouldered, immaculate fellow amazed him. He could not tell
whether it was genuine or assumed, and in either event he was sorry he
had come, for he did not like to hear tales of misfortune. Butler
Murray, the millionaire, was a good man to know, but--
"I sent for you because I need--"
"See here, Butler," the younger man broke in, abruptly, "you know I
can't lend. I'm borrowing myself. In fact, I was going to make a touch
on you."
"Oh, I don't want your money; I want your help. I think, perhaps, I'm
entitled to it, eh?"
Henry flushed a trifle. "You're welcome to that at all times, of course,
and if I had a bank-roll, I'd split it with you, but I just can't seem
to get started."
"Suppose you had twenty-five thousand dollars, cash; would that help?"
"Help! Great Heavens! I could swing this deal; it would put me on my
feet."
"I'm ready to pay you that amount for a few weeks of your time."
"Take a year of it, two years. Take my life's blood. Twenty-five
thousand! You needn't tell me any more; just name the job and I'll take
my chances of being caught. But--I say, you just told me you were
broke."
"I received about fifty thousand dollars from the sale of the yacht, and
I invested the money. I want you to help me realize on that investment."
Murray tossed the packet of papers he had been examining into DeVoe's
lap.
After scrutinizing them an instant, the latter looked up with a crooked,
startled stare.
"Are you joking? Why, these are your insurance policies!"
"Exactly! There are seventeen of them, and they foot up one million
dollars--the limit in every company. They begin to expire in March, and
I don't intend to renew them. In fact, I couldn't if I wanted to."
The two men regarded each other silently for a moment, then the younger
paled.
"Are you--crazy?" he gasped.
"The doctors didn't think so, and that is the heaviest life insurance
carried by any man in America, with a few exceptions. Do you think they
would have passed me if I'd been wrong up here?" He tapped his forehead.
"I intend that you shall receive twenty-five thousand dollars of that
money; the rest will go to Muriel."
DeVoe continued to stare alternately at the policies and his friend;
then cleared his throat nervously.
"Let's talk plainly."
"By all means. You will need to know the truth, but you are the only one
outside of myself who will. For some time I have felt the certainty that
I am going to die."
"Nonsense! You are an ox."
"The more I've thought about it the more certain I've become, until now
there isn't the slightest doubt in my mind. I took my last dollar and
bought that insurance. Do you understand? I'm considered rich, therefore
they allowed me to take out a million dollars."
"Sui--God Almighty, man!" DeVoe's sagging jaw snapped shut with a click.
"Let me finish; then you can decide whether I'm sane or crazy, and
whether you want that twenty-five thousand dollars enough to help me. To
begin with, I'll grant you that I'm young--only forty--healthy and
strong. But I'm broke, Henry. I don't believe you realize what that
means to a chap who has had two fortunes handed to him and has
squandered both. I'm really twice forty years of age, perhaps three
times, for I have lived faster than most men. I have been everywhere, I
have seen everything, I have done everything--except manual labor, and
of course I don't know how to do that--I have had every sensation. I'm
sated and old, and sometimes I'm a bit tired. I have no enthusiasm left,
and I'm bankrupt. To make matters worse I have a wife who knows the
truth and two lovely children who do not. Those kids believe I'm a hero
and the greatest man in all the universe; in their eyes I'm a sort of
demigod, but in a few years they'll learn that I have been a waster and
thrown away not only my own fortune, but the million that belonged to
them. That will be tough for all of us. Muriel knows how deeply I've
wronged her, but she is too much a thoroughbred to make it public.
Nevertheless, she detests me, and I detest myself; she may decide to
divorce me. At any rate, I have wrecked whatever home life I used to
have, for I'll never be able to support her, even if I sell the three
places. I'll be known as a failure; I'll be ridiculed by the world. On
the other hand, if I should die before next March she would be rich
again." Murray's eyes rested upon the package of policies. "Perhaps time
would soften her memory of me. The youngsters would have what they're
entitled to, and they would always think of me as a grand, good,
handsome parent who was taken off in his prime." He smiled whimsically
at this. "That is worth something to a fellow, isn't it? I don't want
them to be disillusioned, Henry; I don't want to endure their pity and
toleration. I don't want to be in their way and hear them say, 'Hush!
Here comes poor old father!' Do you understand?"
"To a certain extent. Then you really intend--to kill yourself?" DeVoe
glanced about the cozy room as if to assure himself that he was not
dreaming.
"Decidedly not. That insurance wouldn't be payable if--it was suicide. I
intend to die from natural causes--before the first of March."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Very little; keep me company, answer questions about my illness,
perhaps; attend to a few things after I'm gone. You might even have to
prove that I didn't take my own life. Do you agree?"
"Whew! That's a cold-blooded proposition. Are you really in earnest?"
"It took nearly my last dollar to buy that insurance. I will execute a
promissory note to you for twenty-five thousand dollars, payable one
year from date. Borrowed money, understand? The executors will see that
it is paid. Is that satisfactory?"
"But you say you can't kill yourself and yet--Good Lord! How calmly
we're discussing this thing! What makes you think you'll die of natural
causes within the next three months?"
"I shall see that I do. Oh, I've thought it all out. I've studied
poisons, but there is the danger of discovery when one uses them.
They'll do to fall back upon if necessary, but there is a better way
which is quite as certain, reasonably quick, and utterly above
suspicion."
"What is it?" questioned DeVoe, interestedly.
"Pneumonia! I had a touch of it once, and I know. They nearly lost me.
It takes us big, robust fellows off with particular ease and expedition.
You and I will take a hunting trip; it is winter; I will suffer some
unexpected exposure; you'll do what you can to save me, but medical
attention will come too late. It won't take two weeks altogether."
"If you're looking for pneumonia I know the place. When I left, ten days
ago, men were dying like flies. You won't need to go hunting it; it will
come hunting you."
"Out West somewhere, eh?".
"The Nevada desert. That's where I'm mining."
"Deserts are usually hot."
DeVoe shivered. "Not this one, at this season. It's a hell of a country,
Butler; five thousand feet elevation, biting winds, blizzards, and all
that. You just can't keep warm. But the danger is in the Poganip."
"The what?"
"The Poganip; what they call 'the Breath of Death' out there. It's a
sort of frozen fog peculiar to that locality."
"Then you accept my offer?"
Again DeVoe hesitated. "Are you really going to do it? Well then, yes.
If I don't take your money, I suppose you'll employ somebody else."
"Good! We'll leave to-morrow."
"Can you get your affairs in shape by then?"
"I don't want them in shape. Don't you understand?"
"I see." After a moment the younger man continued, "It's all very well
for us to plan this way--but I'm not sure we'll succeed in our
enterprise."
"Why not, pray?"
"Well, I dare say I'm a good deal of a rotter--I must be to go into a
thing like this--but I have a superstitious streak in me. Possibly it's
reverence; at any rate I believe there is a Power outside of ourselves
which appoints the hour of our coming and the hour of our going. I'm not
so sure you can pull this off until that Power says so."
Murray laughed. "Nonsense! What is to prevent my shooting myself at this
moment, if I want to?"
"Nothing, if you want to--but you don't want to. Why don't you want to?
Because that Power hasn't named this as your time. I don't make myself
very clear."
"I think I see what you're driving at, but you're wrong. We are masters
of our own destinies; we make our lives as full or as empty as we
choose. I have emptied mine of all it contained, and I don't consider
that I am doing any one an injury in disposing of what belongs alone to
me. Now we'll complete the details."
The speaker drew a blank note from his desk and filled it in.
It was with a very natural feeling of interest that Butler Murray
watched the desert unfold before his car window a few days later as his
train made its way southward from the main line and into the Bad Lands
of the Nevada gold-fields. There was snow everywhere; not enough for
warmth, but enough to chill the landscape with a gray, forbidding
aspect. It lay, loose-piled and shifting, behind naked rocks, or
streamed over the knife-edge ridges, swirling and settling in the
gullies like filmy winding-sheets. All the world up here was barren,
burned out, and cold, like his own life; it was a fitting place in which
to end an existence which had proven such a mockery and failure.
Goldfield was a conglomerate city in the hectic stage of its growth.
Rough, uncouth, primitive, it lay cradled in the lap of inhospitable
hills upon the denuded slopes of which derricks towered like gallows.
The whole naked country spoke of death and desolation.
A bitter wind laden with driving particles of sleet met the travelers as
they stepped off the train.
DeVoe's headquarters consisted of a typical mining-camp shack in the
heart of the town, containing a bare little office and two
sleeping-rooms, the hindermost of which gave egress to a yard banked in
snow and flanked by other frame buildings.
Murray selected the coldest apartment and unpacked his belongings, the
most precious of which was a folding morocco case containing three
photographs--one of Muriel and one each of the boy and the girl.
Then followed a week of careful preparation. Together the two men made
frequent excursions to various mining properties. Murray mingled with
the heterogeneous crowd of brokers, promoters, gamblers, and
mine-owners; he took options on claims and made elaborate plans to
develop them; he was interviewed by reporters from the local papers;
articles were printed telling of his proposed activities. When he had
laid a secure foundation, he announced to DeVoe that the time had come.
It appeared that the latter had by no means exaggerated the dangers of
this climate, for men were really dying in such numbers as to create
almost a panic, the hospitals were overcrowded, and Murray had been
repeatedly warned to take the strictest care of himself if he wished to
preserve his health. The altitude combined with the cold and wet and the
lack of accommodations was to blame, it seemed, and accounted for the
high mortality rate. Doctors assured him that once a man was stricken
with pneumonia in this climate there was little chance of saving him.
* * * * *
That evening he let the fire die out of the stove in his room, then went
next door to a little Turkish-bath establishment, and proceeded to sweat
for an hour. Instead of drying himself off he flung a greatcoat over his
streaming shoulders, slipped into boots and trousers, then stepped
across the snow-packed yard to his own quarters, where he found DeVoe
bundled up to the chin and waiting. His brief passage across the open
snow had chilled him, for the wind was cruel, but he blew out the light
in his chamber, flung off his overcoat, then, standing in the open door,
drank the frost-burdened air into his overheated lungs.
"God! You're half naked!" chattered the onlooker. "You'll freeze."
The moisture upon Murray's body dried slowly. He began to shake in every
muscle, but he continued his long, deep breaths--breaths that congealed
his lungs. He became cramped and stiff. He suffered terribly. He felt
constricting bands about his chest; darting, numbing pains ran through
him. He could not tell how long he continued thus, but eventually the
sheer agony of it drove him back. He closed the door and crept into bed,
the clammy cotton sheets of which were warm against his flesh. Through
rattling teeth he bade good night to his friend, saying:
"D-don't mind--anything I do or--say during the night."
DeVoe lost no time in seeking his own warm room, where Murray heard him
stamping and threshing his arms to revive his circulation.
There could be but one outcome to such a suicidal action, the frozen man
reflected. Stronger fellows than he were dying daily from half such
exposure. Why, already he could feel his lungs congesting. Although the
agony was almost unendurable, he forced himself to lie still, then
traced the course of his blood as it gradually crept through his veins.
Eventually he fell asleep, tortured, but satisfied.
Henry found him slumbering peacefully late the next morning, and when he
arose he felt better and stronger than he had for years.
"Jove! I'm hungry," he said as he dressed himself.
"I expected to find you mighty sick," his friend exclaimed, wonderingly.
"I slept cold all night."
"It seems I didn't catch it that time. I must be stronger than I
thought."
He ate a hearty breakfast, and, although he tramped the hills all day in
the snow and cold, watching himself carefully for signs of approaching
illness, he was disappointed to discover none whatever. At bedtime he
repeated his performance of the night before, but with the same result.
When he awoke on the second morning, however, he found the desert town
wrapped in the dark folds of a fog that chilled his marrow and clung to
his clothing in little beads. It was a strange phenomenon, for the air
was bitterly cold and yet saturated with moisture; mountain and valley
were hidden in an impalpable dust that was neither fog nor snow, but a
freezing, uncomfortable combination of both.
DeVoe hugged the fire all day, saying to his guest: "You'll have to do
the trick alone, Butler; it's too deucedly unpleasant sitting there in
the cold every night. I'll get sick."
"It's not very agreeable for me, either, and the least you can do is to
keep me company. That's the agreement, you know."
After some argument DeVoe acceded, saying, "Oh, if you want me to hold
your hand while you freeze I suppose I'll have to do it, although I
can't see the use of it."
That night when Murray had regained his cheerless room after taking his
Turkish bath he drank a goblet of raw whisky, then flung wide the door,
and, standing upon the sill, half nude and gleaming with perspiration,
inhaled the deadly Poganip. When the fiery liquor had driven the last
drop of his hot blood to the surface he seized a bottle of alcohol and,
upending it, drenched his body. If he had suffered previously, he now
endured supreme agony. As the alcohol evaporated upon his naked skin it
fairly froze the blood he had forced up from his heart's cavities. He
groaned with the pain of it. Again he felt as if his body were coating
with ice; his lungs contracted with that agonizing grip.
"This is too c-cold for me," DeVoe chattered, finally. "I'm going to
beat it."
As Butler Murray cowered and shook in his bed an hour later he decided
that his third and final effort had succeeded, for not only did he
plainly feel the effects of that terrible ordeal, but by every law of
nature and hygiene he was doomed. He had drunk the whisky to increase
the peripheral circulation of his body to the highest point, then by the
use of the alcohol had reduced his temperature to a frightful extent and
driven his blood back, frozen and sluggish. That was inevitably
suicidal, as the least knowledge of medicine would show; it could not be
otherwise. He was very glad, too, for this suffering was more than he
had bargained for.
He awoke in the morning feeling none the worse for his action. He did
not even have a cold.
DeVoe's amazement at this miracle was mingled with annoyance which he
showed by complaining: "See here, Butler, are you kidding? You might at
least have a little consideration for my feelings; this suspense is
awful."
"My dear fellow, I'm doing all I can." Murray filled his chest, then
pressed it gingerly with his palm. There was not a trace of soreness;
his muscles lacked even a twinge of rheumatism.
* * * * *
That day he had another window cut in the wall of his room, immediately
over his bed, and, after exposing himself as usual upon retiring, left
it open and slept in the draught. Finding that this had no effect, he
undertook to sleep without covers, but the bitter weather would not
permit, so he purchased drugs and, after returning from his Turkish
bath, swallowed a sleeping-potion. When he could no longer keep his eyes
open he lay down nude and dripping where the frigid wind sucked over
him. Some time, somehow, before morning he must have covered himself,
for he awoke between the sheets as usual. With the exception of a thick
feeling in his head, however, which quickly wore off, he possessed no
ill effects.
Day after day, night after night, he exposed himself with a deliberate
methodical recklessness that seemed fatal; time after time his good
constitution threw off the assault. DeVoe declared querulously that his
friend looked even better than when they had arrived, and the scales
showed he had put on five pounds of weight. The affair assumed an
ironical, grisly sort of humor which amused Murray. But it was maddening
to DeVoe.
One howling, stormy afternoon the former bundled his accessory into warm
clothes and took him for a long walk. Leaving the town behind them, they
plowed up through the snow to the summit of a near-by mountain where the
gale raged past in all its violence. Henry was cursing the cold and
grumbling at his idiocy in coming along, and, when he had regained his
breath, growled:
"Understand, Butler, this ends it for me. I never agreed to kill
_myself_. Hereafter you can make your Alpine trips alone. I've had a
cold now for a week."