Brainard carefully put out all the lights on the lower floor and then
mounted the stairs to the room above. There he found Farson smoking a
cigarette before the open fire and staring straight before him, as if his
mind was occupied with a novel set of ideas. At sight of Brainard a
curious smile crossed his face, and he looked interrogatively at his
employer.
“Well?” he murmured.
“They are a pretty pair of—I was going to say crooks. But I don’t think
my friend Hollinger is exactly that—I hope not.”
“He used to have the reputation of being the squarest man in his
profession—the very soul of honor in the fight business. That was what
gave him his prestige with the politicians, until the district attorney
got after him.”
“I can’t make him out!”
“It’s not hard to make _her_ out,” Farson commented.
“Her methods are only too obvious!”
“Did I ever tell you just what happened that evening in San Francisco
after I saw you off on the ferry with your bag?”
“The last I saw of you,” Brainard replied, “you were on the run to the
telephone booth to get your beat about me and Krutzmacht to your paper!”
“Well, after I ’phoned the story I streaked it back to Krutzmacht’s
office. I fancied there might be something doing there after the woman
got loose from the safe. There was! She had the marshal’s office and
the police department—I don’t know but the fire brigade too—all up there
buzzing, and she was trying to raise Crane,—you know the big railroad gun
on the other side? She’d kept that telephone working ever since Peters
threw the combination. If you had seen the temper she was in, you might
have left her in that safe somewhat longer to cool off.... She seems to
have quieted down a good deal. But I could see signs of her old temper
this evening. I don’t believe adversity has improved it materially.”
“Probably not!” Brainard remarked, yawning and looking at his watch.
“Three o’clock! Our friends made the time pass quickly.”
Farson did not move from his position before the dying fire. The late
hour made no impression upon him, and Brainard did not seem anxious to
get to bed.
“What are you going to do?” the young man asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing!” Farson exclaimed in surprise. “You don’t mean to say—”
“I will let Lorilla make the next move—it’s up to her.”
“You won’t take Hollinger’s hint?”
“Buy her off? It would take too much, if we began that game. Besides,
why should I?”
The young man was evidently puzzled.
“The only thing she can do,” Brainard explained, “is to produce a wife or
heirs to Krutzmacht. I don’t believe she can do that successfully. If
she does, I am quite ready to resign without a fight. But,” he repeated
musingly, “I don’t believe she can prove that she was his wife.”
“There would be harder things to prove,” the secretary ventured,
“especially in a California court!”
Brainard smiled. He knew that Farson thought him a fool to run the risk
of a law suit and possibly failure in exposing fraudulent claims to the
property that he held on such slight legal authority.
“I believe I never told you the whole story,” he said. “You probably
think, if you think about it at all—just as Hollinger thinks—that I am a
lucky and none-too-scrupulous adventurer, who had a fortune dropped into
his hands by a peculiar accident and have enjoyed its possession
undisturbed by any claimants up to this moment. But it isn’t quite like
that. And there’s rather more drama in the true story of Krutzmacht’s
fortune than anything we have yet offered at the People’s Theater!”
He took another cigar, remade the fire, and told Farson all the details
of his hunt for the vague Melody ever since he had first found positive
indications of her existence in the deserted house above Monument.
“Latterly,” he concluded, “Melody has grown somewhat dim in my mind.
Perhaps the theater has taken her place as reality and as mistress; for I
have always thought of myself as doing it with her money! But to-night
when that woman turned up here with her vulgar, brazen air and tried to
hold me up in a blackmailing way, something made me feel that Melody is
still alive, in spite of all the chances that she isn’t, and that she
will turn up in time to get her own.”
“She will have to appear soon!” Farson exclaimed.
“I felt in talking to Lorilla that she was perfectly conscious she has no
legal right to the money—knew all along that Krutzmacht was married and
had an heir or had made a will—”
“Did you ever get hold of that trunk, the one I checked for you to
Chicago when you were telephoning Krutzmacht’s office to inquire about
Lorilla’s health?”
“It had disappeared before I was able to claim it. I suppose it went in
the unclaimed baggage sale.”
“Never—it was too soon. She’s got it!”
“I don’t believe there was anything in it except some ledgers and letter
files that might interest the railroad people.”
“A will?”
“Perhaps. But I doubt it. She would have used it before this!”
The secretary seemed more concerned over the situation than did Brainard.
The latter said musingly as he dropped his cigar into the ashes:
“Of course, if there is no Melody, or if I can’t find her, which amounts
to the same thing, that woman might as well have the money as anybody
else. At least, a reasonable amount. Krutzmacht probably owed her
liberal compensation.... But I shan’t give up my belief in Melody until
the courts compel me to!”
“You don’t mean that you would let that Walters woman have the money?”
the younger man demanded in astonishment.
“Farson, you don’t understand. I suppose it seems absurd to you—it does
to me at times. But I have never for one moment considered myself the
owner of Krutzmacht’s millions—never! I suppose that has given me my
freedom of action, my feeling that I could do things like this
theater,—not for myself. In my own mind I was always acting for some one
else. It may be all imagination, but if it is, Melody just as an idea
has helped me tremendously,—to keep my hands clear, not to be corrupted
by the large sums of money at my disposal,—to make a man of me! It’s a
mighty helpful thing to be in the position of trustee to some unknown
person. It might solve some of our hardest economic problems if more of
our wealth was held on the same terms. I can’t explain it all, but it
makes you free really not to have a cent of your own!”
Farson murmured something that sounded like the term which Hollinger had
twice used, by way of contempt, in describing Brainard.
“No, I can’t understand!” he sighed.
“Well, you’d better get to bed,” Brainard laughed. “There’s nothing to
worry about. That’s one happy result of my attitude. If it will make
you feel any more sure of my sanity, I will see my lawyers in the
morning. They are not likely to take sentimental views, I can tell you.
I have been too profitable a client!”
After Farson had taken the hint and removed his bewildered person from
the room, Brainard sat for another hour before the dead fire, in a
sleepless revery. The unexpected visit of the stenographer and the
fight-trust man had brought back vividly a long train of memories of what
had constituted his active life for the last four years. The situation
that had developed had again emphasized the dream quality of all living.
It is the conventionally expected in life that makes what men ordinarily
term reality. A slight turn from the ordinary course of events produces
a sense of unreality. For four years there had come to Brainard, turn
after turn, utterly unexpected and unforeseen, each one producing this
sense of the essential unreality of life. But behind it all had grown
the living reality of his own will and character that had been formed by
meeting and dealing with the exigencies of each situation fairly
according to the laws of his nature.
As he had said to his secretary, the result was that he found himself now
ready to abandon his adventurous position upon demand without a sense of
overwhelming loss and disaster. He had no more feeling of enmity or of
contempt for Lorilla Walters than Hollinger evinced. She was playing her
little part in the complex scheme of destiny, playing it vulgarly and
crudely, and he suspected improperly. But what occupied his thoughts at
this crisis, much more than the possible machinations the actress might
be able to set on foot against him or the instability of his own
fortunes, was the woman’s situation. What Hollinger had said for her in
plea of extenuation had touched him more deeply than he had let the
fight-trust man see. It was perfectly true that she should be provided
for out of Krutzmacht’s loot in life. He tried to think how this could
be brought about without compromising himself or his elusive mistress’s
rights. He resolved on the morrow to see not only his lawyers but
Hollinger also, and contrive some plan by which the ex-stenographer could
obtain justice without gratifying her spite.
“But she is not the old man’s heir—of that I am sure!” he said to himself
as at last he sought his bed. “And Melody lives—I stick to that! The
dream will hold to the end, not go to pieces in any vulgar fashion like
this!”