took to get her away," he said impatiently as a pair of drunken
Cornishmen reeled out of Haley's Place and usurped the sidewalk. "Where
was it you saw them, Castner?"
"They were in front of 'Pegleg John's', in the next block. Miss
Massingale was waiting for Smith, who was just coming out of Pegleg's
den shaking his head. I put two and two together and guessed they were
looking for Stephen."
"If they went there Miss Amy had her reasons. Let's try it," said
Brouillard, and he was half-way across the street when Castner overtook
him.
There was a dance-hall next door to Pegleg John's barrel-house and
gambling rooms, and, though the daylight was still strong enough to make
the electrics garishly unnecessary, the orgy was in full swing, the
raucous clanging of a piano and the shuffle and stamp of many feet
drowning the monotonous cries of the sidewalk "barker," who was inviting
all and sundry to enter and join the dancers.
Castner would have stopped to question the "barker"--was, in fact,
trying to make himself heard--when the sharp crash of a pistol-shot
dominated the clamor of the piano and the stamping feet. Brouillard made
a quick dash for the open door of the neighboring barrel-house, and
Castner was so good a second that they burst in as one man.
The dingy interior of Pegleg John's, which was merely a barrel-lined
vestibule leading to the gambling rooms beyond, staged a tragedy. A
handsome young giant, out of whose face sudden agony had driven the
brooding passion of intoxication, lay, loose-flung, on the
sawdust-covered floor, with Amy Massingale kneeling in stricken,
tearless misery beside him. Almost within arm's-reach Van Bruce
Cortwright, the slayer, was wrestling stubbornly with Tig Smith and the
fat-armed barkeeper, who were trying to disarm him, his heavy face a
mask of irresponsible rage and his lips bubbling imprecations.
"Turn me loose," he gritted. "I'll fix him so he won't give the
governor's snap away! He'll pipe the story of the Coronida Grant off to
the papers?--not if I kill him till he's too dead to bury, I guess."
Castner ignored the wrestling three and dropped quickly on his knees
beside Stephen Massingale, bracing the misery-stricken girl with the
needed word of hope and directing her in low tones how to help him
search for the wound.
But Brouillard hurled himself with an oath upon young Cortwright, and it
was he, and neither the cattleman nor the fat-armed barkeeper, who
wrenched the weapon out of Cortwright's grasp and with it menaced the
babbling murderer into silence.
XII
Quicksands
A short week after the Reclamation Service headquarters had been moved
from the log-built offices on the government reservation to the
commodious and airy suite on the sixth floor of the Niquoia Building
Brouillard received the summons which he had been expecting ever since
the night of rioting and lawlessness which had marked the close of the
railroad celebration.
"Mr. Cortwright would like to see you in his rooms at the Metropole,"
was the message the office boy brought, and Brouillard closed his desk
with a snap and followed the boy to Bongras's.
The shrewd-eyed tyrant of Mirapolis was in his shirt-sleeves, busily
dictating to two stenographers alternately, when the engineer entered
the third room of the series; but the work was suspended and the
stenographers were sent away as soon as Brouillard was announced.
"Well," was the millionaire's greeting, "you waited to be sent for,
didn't you?"
"Why not?" said Brouillard shortly. "I have my work to do and you have
yours."
"And the two jobs are at opposite ends of the string, you'd say. Never
mind; we can't afford to throw each other down, and just now you can
tell me a few things that I want to know. How is young Massingale
getting along?"
"As well as could be expected. Carruthers--the doctor--says he is out of
danger."
"H'm. It has been handed in to me two or three times lately that the old
man is out gunning for Van Bruce or for me. Any truth in that?"
"I think not. Massingale is a Kentuckian, and I fancy he is quite
capable of potting either one or both of you for the attack on his son.
But so far he has done nothing--has hardly left Steve's bedside."
Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright flung himself back in his luxurious swing chair
and clasped his pudgy hands over the top of his head where the
reddish-gray hair was thinning reluctantly.
"I've been putting it off to see which way the cat was going to jump,"
he admitted. "If young Massingale is out of danger, it is time to get
action. What was the quarrel about, between him and Van Bruce?"
"Why do you ask me?" queried Brouillard.
"Because you are pretty thick with the Massingales, and you probably
know," was the blunt accounting for the question.
"It occurs to me that your son would be a better source of information,"
said Brouillard, still evading.
"Van Bruce has told me all he remembers--which isn't much, owing to his
own beastly condition at the time. He says young Massingale was
threatening something--something in connection with the Coronida
Grant--and that he got the insane idea into his head that the only way
to stop the threat was by killing Massingale."
The sandy-gray eyes of the millionaire promoter were shifting while he
spoke, but Brouillard fixed and held them before he said: "Why should
Massingale threaten your son, Mr. Cortwright?"
"I don't know," denied the promoter, and he said it without flinching a
hair's-breadth.
"Then I can tell you," was the equally steady rejoinder. "Some time ago
you lent David Massingale, through the bank, a pretty large sum of money
for development expenses on the 'Little Susan,' taking a mortgage on
everything in sight to cover the loan."
"I did."
"Massingale's obligation was in short-time, bankable paper, which he
expected to take up when the railroad should come in and give him a
market for the ore which he has already taken out of the mine."
"Yes."
"But when the railroad was an assured fact he learned that the Red Butte
smelters wouldn't take his ore, giving some technical reason which he
knew to be a mere excuse."
Mr. Cortwright nodded. "So far you might be reading it out of a book."
"In consequence of these successive happenings, David Massingale finds
himself in a fair way to become a broken man by the simplest of
commercial processes. The bank holds his notes, which will presently
have to be paid. If he can't pay, the bank comes back on you as his
indorser, and you fall back on your mortgage and take the mine. Isn't
that about the size of it?"
"It is exactly the size of it."
Brouillard laughed quietly. "And yet you said a moment ago that you
didn't know why young Massingale should threaten your son."
"And I don't know yet," blustered the magnate. "Is it my fault that
Massingale can't pay his debts?"
The engineer had stopped laughing when he said definitely and decidedly:
"It is."
It was the promoter's turn to laugh.
"What sort of a bug have you got in your cosmos this morning,
Brouillard? Why, man, you're crazy!"
Brouillard rose and relighted his cigar.
"If that is your last word, Mr. Cortwright, I may as well go back to my
office. You don't need me."
"Oh, hold on; don't go off in a huff. You're too thin-skinned for any
common kind of use. I was only trying you to see how far you'd carry it.
Let it stand. Assume, for the sake of argument, that I _do_ want the
'Little Susan' and that I've got a good friend or two in the Red Butte
smelters who will help me get it. Now, then, does that stand the
band-wagon upon its wheels again?"
Brouillard's black eyes were snapping, but his voice was quite steady
when he said: "Thank you; now we shall go on better. You want the
'Little Susan,' and Massingale naturally thinks you're taking an unfair
advantage of him to get it. Quite as naturally he is going to make
reprisals if he can. That brings us down to the mention of the Coronida
Grant and Stephen Massingale's threat--which your son can't remember."
"Right-o," said Mr. Cortwright, still with predetermined geniality.
"What was the threat?"
"I don't know, but the guessing list is open to everybody. There was
once a grant of many square miles of mountain and desert somewhere in
this region made to one Don Estacio de Montarriba Coronida. Like those
of most of the great Spanish land grants, the boundaries of this one
were loosely described and----"
Mr. Cortwright held up a fat hand.
"I know what you're going to say. But we went into all that at
Washington before we ever invested a single dollar in this valley. As
you may or may not know, the Reclamation Service bureau tried to choke
us off. But when it came down to brass tacks, they lacked a witness. We
may be in the bed of your proposed lake, but we're safely on Coronida
land."
"So you say," said Brouillard quietly, "and on the strength of that you
have been guaranteeing titles."
"Oh, no," protested the millionaire. "We have merely referred purchasers
to the record. There is a clause in every deed."
"But you have caused it to be believed that your title was good, that
the government's claim to the land will not hold."
"It won't hold if we're on Coronida land."
"Ah! Just there is where Massingale comes in, I imagine. He has spent
twenty years or more in this region, and he knows every landmark in it.
What if he should be able to put a lighted match to your pile of
kindling, Mr. Cortwright?"
The promoter pulled himself erect with a grip on either arm of the
chair.
"Brouillard, do you know what you are talking about?" he demanded.
"No; it is only a guess. But as matters stand--with your son indictable
for an attempted murder ... if I were you, Mr. Cortwright, I believe I'd
give David Massingale a chance to pay those notes at the bank."
"And let him blackmail me? Not in a month of Sundays, Brouillard! Let
him sell his ore and pay the notes if he can. If he can't, I'll take the
mine."
"All right," said the visitor placably. "You asked, and I've answered.
Now let's come to something more vital to both of us. There is a pretty
persistent rumor on the street that you and your associates succeeded in
getting a resolution through both houses of Congress at the last
session, appointing a committee to investigate this Coronida claim
right here on the ground. Nobody seems to have any definite details, and
it possibly hasn't occurred to any one that Congress hasn't been in
session since Mirapolis was born. But that doesn't matter. The committee
is coming: you have engaged rooms for it here in Bongras's. You are
expecting the private-car special next week."
"Well?" said the magnate. "You're a pretty good kindergartner. But what
of it?"
"Oh, nothing. Only I think you might have taken me in on the little side
play. What if I had gone about town contradicting the rumor?"
"Why should you? It's true. The Congressional party will be here next
week, and nobody has made any secret of it."
"Still, I might have been taken in," persisted Brouillard suavely.
"You'll surely want to give me my instructions a little beforehand,
won't you? Just think how easily things might get tangled. Suppose I
should say to somebody--to Garner, for example--that the town was hugely
mistaken; that no Congressional committee had ever been appointed; that
these gentlemen who are about to visit us are mere complaisant friends
of yours, coming as your guests, on a junketing trip at your expense.
Wouldn't that be rather awkward?"
The mayor of Mirapolis brought his hands together, fist in palm, and for
a flitting instant the young engineer saw in the face of the father the
same expression that he had seen in the face of the son when Van Bruce
Cortwright was struggling for a second chance to kill a man.
"Damn you!" said the magnate savagely; "you always know too much! You're
bargaining with me!"
"Well, you have bargained with me, first, last, and all the time," was
the cool retort. "On each occasion I have had my price, and you have
paid it. Now you are going to pay it again. Shall I go over to the
_Spot-Light_ office and tell Harlan what I know?"
"You can't bluff me that way, Brouillard, and you ought to sense it by
this time. Do you suppose I don't know how you are fixed?--that you've
got money--money that you used to say you owed somebody else--tied up in
Mirapolis investments?"
Brouillard rose and buttoned his coat.
"There is one weak link in your chain, Mr. Cortwright," he said evenly;
"you don't know men. Put on your coat and come over to Harlan's office
with me. It will take just about two minutes to satisfy you that I'm not
bluffing."
For a moment it appeared that the offer was to be accepted. But when he
had one arm in a coat sleeve, Brouillard's antagonist in the game of
hardihood changed his tactics.
"Forget it," he growled morosely. "What do you want this time?"
"I want you to send a wire to Red Butte telling the smelter people that
you will be glad to have them handle the 'Little Susan' ore."
"And if I do?"
"If you do, two things otherwise due to happen adversely will go over to
your side of the market. I'll agree to keep out of the way of the sham
Washington delegation, and I think I can promise that Harlan won't make
a scare-head of the facts concerning the Coronida land titles."
Mr. Cortwright thrust the other arm into the remaining coat sleeve and
scowled. But the rebound to the norm of brusque good-nature came almost
immediately.
"You are improving wonderfully, Brouillard, and that's no joke. I have a
large respect for a man who can outbid me in my own corner. You ought to
be in business--and you will be, some time. I'll send the wire, but I
warn you in advance that I can't make the smelter people take
Massingale's ore if they don't want to. All I can do is to give the old
man a free field."
"That is all he will ask--all I'll ask, except one small personal favor:
don't rub your masquerading Washington delegation into me too hard. A
fine quality of non-interference is about all you are buying from me,
and----"
The interruption came in the form of a tap at the door opening into the
hotel corridor, and Brouillard, at a sign from the master of the
precincts, turned the knob. It was Miss Genevieve who entered, bringing
the sweet breeziness and audacity of youth and beauty and health with
her.
"How fortunate!" she exclaimed, with the charming smile that accorded so
perfectly with her fresh, early-morning radiance. And while the hand of
greeting still lay in Brouillard's: "I have just been up to your office,
and they told me they hadn't the smallest idea where you could be found.
Are you going to be _very_ busy this afternoon?"
Brouillard gave the required denial, and she explained her quest of him.
There was to be an auto party to the newly opened casino at the upper
power dam. Would he go, if he might have the post of honor behind the
pilot-wheel of the new sixty-horse, seven-passenger flyer? _Please!_
Mr. Cortwright leaned heavily upon his desk while the asking and
answering went on, and the shrewd, gray eyes were busy. When his
daughter went out and Brouillard was about to follow her, the genial web
spinner stopped him.
"Tell me one thing, Brouillard: what is your stake in the Massingale
game? Are you a silent partner in the 'Little Susan'?"
"No."
"Then why are you so anxious to make old David a rich man at my expense?
Are you going to marry the girl?"
The engineer did not resent the question as he would have resented it a
few weeks earlier. Instead he smiled and said: "A little while ago, Mr.
Cortwright, I told you that you didn't know men; now I'll add that you
don't know women."
"I know Gene," said the web spinner cryptically, and this was the word
that Brouillard took with him when he went back to his offices in the
Niquoia Building.
XIII
Flood Tide
Public opinion, skilfully formed upon models fashioned in Mayor
Cortwright's municipal laboratory, dealt handsomely with the
little group of widely heralded visitors--the "Congressional
committee"--penetrating to the Wonder City, not by special train, to be
sure, but still with creditable circumstance in President Ford's private
car "Nadia," attached to the regular express from Brewster.
For example, when it was whispered about, some days before the
auspicious arrival, that the visiting lawmakers wished for no public
demonstration of welcome, it was resolved, both in the city council and
in the Commercial Club, that the wish should be rigidly respected.
Later, when there filtered out from the same secret source of
information a hint to the effect that the committee of investigation,
for the better forming of an unbiassed opinion, desired to be regarded
merely as a body of representative citizens and the guests of Mayor
Cortwright, and not as national legislators, this desire, too, was
respected; and even Harlan, itching to his finger-tips for something
definite to print in the _Spot-Light_, denied himself the bare,
journalistic, bread-and-butter necessity of interviewing the lawmakers.
Safeguarded, then, by the loyal incuriosity of an entire city, the
visitors went about freely, were feted, dined, banqueted, and
entertained as distinguished citizens of the Greater America; were
personally conducted over the government work, and were autoed to the
Quadjenai placers, to the upper valley, and to the canal diggers' camps
in the Buckskin, all without prejudice to the official incognito which
it was understood they wished to preserve.
Hence, after the farewell banquet at the Commercial Club, at which even
the toasts had ignored the official mission of Mayor Cortwright's
guests, when the "Nadia," reprovisioned and tastefully draped with the
national colors, was coupled to the outgoing train in the Chigringo
yards, tingling curiosity still restrained itself, said nothing and did
nothing until the train had stormed out on the beginning of its steep
climb to War Arrow Pass. Then the barriers went down. In less than half
an hour after the departure of the visitors, the _Spot-Light_ office
was besieged by eager tip hunters, and the Metropole cafe and lobby were
thronged and buzzing like the compartments of an anxious beehive.
Harlan stood the pressure at the newspaper office as long as he could.
Then he slipped out the back way and prevailed upon Bongras to smuggle
him up to Mr. Cortwright's rooms. Here there was another anxious
deputation in waiting, but Harlan's card was honored at once.
"News!" gasped the editor, when he had broken into the privacies.
"They're about to mob us over at the office, and the town will go crazy
if it can't be given at least a hint of what the committee's report is
likely to be. I tell you, Mr. Cortwright, it's panic, or the biggest
boom we ever dreamed of!"
"Sit down, Harlan," said the great man calmly, pushing the open box of
cigars across the desk to the editor; "sit down and get a fresh grip on
your nerves. There will be no panic; of that you can be absolutely
certain. But, on the other hand, we mustn't kick the fat into the fire
when everything is going our way. Naturally, I am under bonds to keep my
mouth shut until after the committee has made its report. I can't even
give you the hint you want. But I will say this--and you can put it in
an interview if you like: I'm not refusing anything in the shape of
Mirapolis realty at ruling prices. That's all I can say at present."
Harlan was hustled out, as he had been hustled in, half dazed and wholly
in despair. There was a light in Brouillard's office on the sixth floor
of the Niquoia Building, and thither he went, hoping against hope, for
latterly the chief of the Reclamation Service had been more than usually
reticent.
"What do you know, Brouillard?" was the form his demand took when,
finding that the elevator had stopped, he had dragged himself up the
five flights of stairs. "I'm up against it good and hard if I can't
print something in to-morrow's paper."
"Go to Cortwright," suggested the engineer. "He's your man."
"Just come from him, and I couldn't get a thing there except his
admission that he is buying instead of selling."
"Well, what more do you want? Haven't you any imagination?"
"Plenty of it, and, by Gad, I'm going to use it unless you put it to
sleep! Tell me a few correlative things, Brouillard, and I'll make a
noise like going away. Is it true that you've had orders from
Washington within the past few days to cut your force on the dam one
half?"
The engineer was playing with the paper-knife, absently marking little
circles and ellipses on his desk blotter, and the ash on his cigar grew
a full quarter of an inch before he replied:
"Not for publication, Harlan, I'm sorry to say."
"But you have the order?"
"Yes."
"Do you know the reason why it was given?"
"I do."
"Is it a good reason?"
"It is a very excellent reason, indeed."
"Does the order cover more than the work on the dam?"
"Yes; it extends to the canal diggers in the Buckskin."
"Good. Then I'll ask only one more question, and if you answer it at all
I know you'll tell me the truth: are you, individually, buying or
selling on the Real Estate Exchange? Take your time, Brouillard, but,
for God's sake, don't turn me down."
Brouillard did take time, plenty of it. Over and over the point of the
paper-knife traced the creased circles and ellipses, and the ash on the
slowly burning cigar grew longer. Harlan was a student of men, but his
present excitement was against him. Otherwise he could not have stared
so long and so intently at Brouillard's face without reading therein the
record of the soul struggle his final question had evoked. And if he had
read, he would have interpreted differently the quick flinging down of
the paper-cutter, and the sudden hardening of the jaw muscles when
Brouillard spoke.
"I'm buying, Harlan; when I sell it is only to buy again."
The newspaper man rose and held out his hand.
"You're a man and a brother, Brouillard, and I'm your friend for life.
With only a fraction of your chance at inside information, I've stayed
on the up-hill side, straight through, myself. And I'll tell you why.
I've banked on you. I've said to myself that it was safe for me to wade
around in the edges if you could plunge out in the sure-enough
swimming-hole. I'm going to stay until you give me the high sign to
crawl out on the bank. Is that asking too much?"
"No. If the time ever comes when I have anything to say, I'll say it to
you. But don't lose sight of the 'if,' and don't lean too hard on me.
I'm a mighty uncertain quantity these days, Harlan, and that's the
truest thing I've told you since you butted in. Good-night."
Mirapolis awoke to a full sense of its opportunities on the morning
following the departure of its distinguished guests. Though the
_Spot-Light_ was unable to say anything conclusively definite, Harlan
had made the most of what he had; and, trickling in from a dozen
independent sources, as it seemed, came jubilant confirmation of the
_Spot-Light's_ optimistic editorials.
In such a crisis all men are liars. Now that the visiting delegation was
gone, there were scores of witnesses willing to testify that the
Honorable Tom, Dick, or Harry had dropped the life-giving word; and
though each fictionist knew that his own story was a fabrication, it was
only human to believe that of the man with whom he exchanged the
whispered confidence.
To the lies and the exaggerations was presently added a most convincing
truth. By ten o'clock it was the talk of the lobbies, the club, and the
exchanges that the Reclamation Service was already abandoning the work
on the great dam. One half of the workmen were to be discharged at once,
and doubtless the other half would follow as soon as the orders could
come from Washington.
Appealed to by a mob of anxious inquirers, Brouillard did not deny the
fact of the discharges, and thereupon the city went mad in a furor of
speculative excitement in comparison with which the orgy of the gold
discoverers paled into insignificance. "Curb" exchanges sprang into
being in the Metropole lobby, in the court of the Niquoia Building, and
at a dozen street corners on the Avenue. Word went to the placers, and
by noon the miners had left their sluice-boxes and were pouring into
town to buy options at prices that would have staggered the wildest
plunger otherwhere, or at any other time.