PART II: MELODY (continued 2)

“Good-by!”

She gave him a lean little hand that gripped his nervously. The last he saw of Louisiana Delacourt as he went over the ship’s side, she was chasing her dog into some stranger’s deck cabin. As he made his way from the dock towards the People’s Theater that morning, his world seemed less gay and amusing with Louisiana out of it.

IX

After the inglorious failure of Lear, they tried She Stoops to Conquer, with Cecilia Pyce, an English actress of advancing years and a large and bony physique, whom MacNaughton much vaunted. Brainard suspected that Cissie, as Mac called her, had been the Scotsman’s sweetheart in her palmier days, and thus he was now paying his sentimental debts by giving her a lucrative position at his patron’s expense. However, nothing better offered at present, and Miss Pyce at least knew how to act in the solid old English fashion. The people came sparingly, and sat in the first four rows of the big auditorium, which was a lonesome sort of place these days.

It was little better when the company essayed an “original American play”—as it was advertised—that Farson had culled from the mass of manuscripts he had examined. May Magic lasted a week, and then fell to pieces before an audience consisting of the author and about twenty of his friends. The management could not even give their tickets away. At May Magic the critics took final leave of the People’s Theater with such parting kicks as this:

What in the name of common sense is the amateurish aggregation at the so-called People’s Theater trying to do? In what sense is it a popular theater? The “people” are conspicuous by their absence. The worthy gentleman who is spending his money giving the public fifth-rate productions of English classics and such rejected modern masterpieces as May Magic had better go over to Broadway and learn his trade.

Brainard was thankful that Louisiana was safe on the high seas on her way to Munich, and would not see this article!

Somewhere Farson ran across a statuesque young woman of German extraction who spoke English as if she had a cracker in her mouth, and became persuaded that the mission of their organization was to introduce to the American public the new plays of the advanced European theater.

“We must become the theater of ideas,” he said to Brainard.

So, with the assistance of Miss Beatrice Klinker in leading roles, the People’s Theater became frankly “highbrow” and went after Brieux, Hauptmann, Strindberg, and the tribe of the peculiar. Brainard poured out money like water in buying rights at exorbitant prices, in preparing new scenery, and in expensive additions to the company. He foresaw that at this rate, instead of starting a chain of popular theaters across the continent, he would have all he could do to maintain one organization in New York, with possibly a couple of road companies. For the receipts were always negligible. To such comparatively modest limits had his great Idea already shrunken. If he had not thus far succeeded in enlightening any large section of the American Public in dramatic art, he himself had received a very thorough and costly lesson, not merely in the drama, but in human nature and life. That, however, had not been his purpose!

It was not until the People’s Theater produced an erotic piece by a new Danish writer, whose name was unknown to the critics, that the house began to fill.

“We’ve struck our pace!” Farson declared jubilantly. He exercised all his journalistic ingenuity in whetting the appetite of the New York public for the play with immediate results in the box office. Brainard, although he had no high opinion of the play, felt relieved not to encounter at each performance the same dreary waste of empty seats. He comforted himself with the thought that if the Public could be induced to come to a “sex play,” they might be captured for less hectic entertainments. MacNaughton and Farson, with the easy sophistry of the theater, maintained that what people cared to see must be good art and stoutly defended the Danish piece.

But their good luck did not hold. At the Saturday matinée of the first week the police visited the theater and the curtain was ordered down after the bedroom scene in the second act. There was a mild demonstration among the audience, whose curiosity was defeated, and the price of their tickets was repaid to all who demanded it. The press made considerable noise over the event.

“We’re made!” MacNaughton announced in great excitement. Farson was busy with the reporters, trying to get the most out of this unexpected bit of publicity. Brainard set forth in search of the virtuous police commissioner to protest in the name of outraged Art. But the commissioner was impervious to Art.

“That sort of show don’t go in New York,” he pronounced austerely, in reply to Brainard’s argument that the play had been given even more boldly in Vienna and Berlin and was held to be a “moral document” by the best European critics. The police commissioner seemed to think that New York had a different and better morality than that obtaining in Europe. He was obdurate. When Brainard reported his failure to his associates, Farson took it very lightly.

“All we’ll have to do,” he suggested, “is to make some slight changes—put a screen in front of the bed scene—and see the inspector. I’ll take care of him.”

But Brainard refused to pay the police to be allowed to produce his play, and so on Monday night the People’s Theater remained dark.

“And just look at all that money!” MacNaughton wailed, as something of a crowd began to form in front of the theater for the first time. “The governor is a miserable puritan,” he said to Farson, wringing his hands. “To think of turning his back on his luck just because of the morality of the New York police! He ought to run a Sunday school.”

Brainard was not to be moved, although the theater would have to remain closed for a week until the company could prepare another play. He was deeply disgusted with the whole affair, with the notoriety as well as the cheap pretense of morality by the police commissioner. For the first time in four years his faith in the great Idea began to waver, and he longed to escape from New York to the more vital air of Arizona. There had been some difficulty recently with the pumps at the Melody mine, and he might well take this opportunity of running down to Monument. Once there it would be a temptation to abandon the great Idea altogether and to remain in the mountains developing the copper mine. Or he could buy a coffee plantation in Jalapa, as he had once fleetingly thought of doing, and settle himself in Mexico like a medieval prince. Possibly the little señorita Marie had not yet found another Prince and had waited all these years for his expected return. The vision of that beautiful semitropical valley dominated by the snowy crown of the old volcano returned to his memory with alluring colors. Life in such a far-off Eden with a gentle creature as mistress of a rose-covered haçienda was an inviting contrast to the glare and vulgarity of New York. . . .

Brainard and the secretary left the theater in glum silence, each possessed by an unhappy train of thought. On their way uptown they passed a billboard on which some flaming posters displayed certain tempting scenes from a soul-and-body-stirring play called The Stolen Bonds, now being given for the first time in New York. Brainard paused before the gaudy billboard.

“What the public really likes!” Farson commented with a grin.

Brainard remembered Louisiana’s angry taunt,—“Go and see a good melodrama—see what folks are willing to pay real money for!”

“Let’s take it in!” he exclaimed, seizing his companion’s arm. “We haven’t anything else to do this evening.”

“We’ll get all the goods before we reach the show,” the secretary observed, pointing to another series of immense posters that represented a gloomy bank vault in which a masked gentleman was holding a lantern above the prostrate form of a woman. “They’re not afraid of giving away their story!”

“Perhaps we shall find the great American play we have been hunting for all this year,” Brainard replied, as they came into the garish foyer of the theater. At one side was the entrance to a brilliant saloon, which seemed part of the establishment. “Democratic and convivial this,” he joked, thinking of the dainty “tea room” at the People’s.

There were only box seats left. When the two pushed aside the plush curtains that concealed these luxurious retreats, the curtain was up and the first act had started before a house packed with prosperous-looking citizens and their women.

“Not a dead seat in the house, I’ll bet!” whispered the secretary.

The scene represented the inside of an office, with a large safe at one side. The short, black-haired heroine was striving ineffectually to bar the way of a brawny villain, who had her covered with a revolver in one hand, and with the other whipped an ether cone from an inner pocket. She was rapidly crowded into the vault, where she succumbed in due time, after a muscular struggle and curdling shrieks, to the ether cone. Thereupon the burglar set busily to work to fill an enormous sample case with piles of yellow currency and bundles conveniently labeled Bonds, in large letters, so that a child might read. The villain then departed, carefully locking the door of the safe upon the etherized heroine.

But the villain had reckoned without the telephone. In the next scene the stenographer-heroine slowly grabbed the ether cone from her face, gaspingly crawled to the corner, where the telephone hung conspicuously, and called Central. Presently the bolts began to grumble, and were shot back by a young man who rushed in and dragged the tottering woman from the safe, while she murmured in a dying whisper audible for two blocks:

“The ferry, Jasper! The ferry! The thief!” Then the noble girl fell swooning and apparently lifeless.

“There’s something doing!” Farson remarked with an appreciative grin, and added with a peculiar expression, “They’ve taken more than a hint from my one play.”

“And several more from life,” Brainard muttered.

“I believe it is life through the medium of my play—but altered somehow,” Farson observed.

“Oh! much altered!”

The next scene was labeled, “At the Ferry Slip—San Francisco.” As the curtain rose, the villain—no longer masked, but with a long ulster concealing all but his sinister eyes—was deftly transferring himself and his sample case, stuffed with money and bonds, on board the ferry-boat. The bell rang—business in the wings. Then on rushed the hero-lover, clutching vainly at the disappearing sample case. There was a desperate tussle between the hero and the villain, while the dummy passengers on the deck above obligingly turned their backs. The villain cut loose from his pursuer with a wicked knife, threw the case upon the moving boat, and leaped two yards after it, leaving the prostrate figure of the hero-lover half dropping over the slip. The stenographer-heroine appeared—in a neat traveling suit—and pulled her lover safely ashore. Curtain.

“Bravo!” Farson shouted enthusiastically. “If it isn’t exactly life, it’s the way we’d all like to have it happen, anyway.”

“It may be nearer life than you think,” Brainard assented with a queer smile. In this scene he had been able to get a good view of the heroine of the piece. Beneath the coarse make-up he thought he recognized familiar features, and felt sure that he had heard in real life that pert, nasal voice which had just uttered the last speech—“Escaped! We’ll track him into the darkest wilds of Africa!”

“Recognize a friend?” Farson inquired. Brainard nodded. They turned over the leaves of their program to find the name of the heroine. It was Lorilla Walters, in large black type.

“Lorilla,” Farson murmured. “Good stage name.”

“It sounds like her!” Brainard agreed.

Just then the curtain went up for the third act. Here was a rapid succession of scenes representing the pursuit and escape of the villain in the Arizona desert, with one very lurid background of flaming mountains and sagebrush plain. Pistol shots and a chase through an adobe haçienda outside a Mexican village concluded the act.

“Whew, these people have wire nerves!” Farson commented, wiping his brow.

“They have treated the story rather freely,” Brainard remarked grimly. Farson talked nervously.

“Louisiana would like that!” he said. “There’s something doing all the time. I bet that’s Lorilla. What do you say to trying her at the People’s? She’s a trifle broad in her methods, but sound—and lets herself go all the time. It’s just a bit loud in tone.”

“Not louder than life sometimes.”

“It carries home—look at the audience!”

In the fourth act the villain was at last cornered by the stenographer-heroine and the hero-lover, aided by a United States cruiser, which intercepted the villain and his sample case as they were about to sail away from the port of Vera Cruz on a Spanish steamer. The captain of the steamer on which the villain had taken refuge with his sample case blasphemously defied the flag of the United States with loud curses. But a booming shot from the wings knocked his smokestack out of service, and brought him to his senses. The captain thereafter gracefully received the smart American lieutenant who came aboard in holiday uniform and collared the villain, denounced by the heroine, as he cowered behind the fallen smokestack—still wearing the long ulster.

They applauded vigorously and were about to drift out with the crowd of candy-eating females and their escorts, when the curtains of the box were parted by a gentleman in evening clothes, who stood smiling, holding his spotless silk hat in one hand and extending the other to Brainard.

“Hello!” the stranger said easily, as if he were greeting a casual acquaintance whom he had not seen for several days. He came forward into the box, and sat on the edge of a chair, dangling his glossy silk hat. “Saw you from behind,” he added, smiling slightly upon Brainard, whose surprise was evident.

“You, Hollinger!” the latter exclaimed, recovering himself. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, in the show business,—same as you,” he added with a little laugh.

“The last time I saw you—”

“Was in that Jalapa hotel where I had the pleasure of delivering a little lecture on life for your benefit,” the fight-trust man supplied. “You profited by it at once—that very night, if I remember rightly. Rarely does a teacher of morals get such a rapid reaction!”

“Yes!” Brainard laughed. “Necessity pointed the moral to your talk with a kick. I left on a mule car, and got away just in time.”

“So Calloway told me the next morning. We tried to keep your friends interested in Jalapa until the boat sailed. I take it that we succeeded.”

“Yes, I owe you a great deal for that good turn.”

“Don’t mention it,” Hollinger murmured, slipping into the chair, “always ready to serve a friend.”

Brainard introduced Farson, who knew the “king of the prize ring trust” by sight, for Hollinger had been a celebrated figure on the Coast in the days before the graft trials. The three chatted for a time while the auditorium emptied.

“How did you like our play?” he inquired casually.

“Your play! It’s suspiciously like mine.”

“Perhaps we drew from the same sources.”

“How did you get into the theatrical business?” Brainard inquired.

“I got into it in a rather roundabout way,” the fight-trust magnate explained. “You remember the event at Jalapa? The American papers were full of it at the time. I was interested in the moving picture concession for the States. We expected to make big money out of it. But they had another spasm of virtue in this country about that time, and we were shut out of the best circuits. So from the movies I got into vaudeville and then into the regular show business. Have a couple of circuits on the Coast and interests in the East also. This is one of my companies. They’ve done a tremendous business out West in this thing—did it appeal to you?”

He smiled genially at Brainard, and added: “We couldn’t work in the haçienda scene,—roses, moonlight, Orizaba, pretty Mexican girl, and the rest,—it took too much scenery.”

“We thought it was a trifle overdrawn,” Brainard observed.

“Oh, the theater demands that, you know,—exaggeration. Art is never quite like nature. Even Milton threw it on thick at times, if I recollect. . . . But it stirs the blood—that’s what you want in these dull times. People come to the theater to feel, their lives are so dull. That’s the first thing I learned in the show business. Give the public something to tease the nerves, keep ’em on the jump. And the second thing I learned was that you must always hold up a high moral standard. It never pays in the long run to cater to the small class that can afford to think about morals as freely as they act.” He looked at Brainard meaningly. “I saw your show last week,” he explained. “It’s not really tough, but it don’t pay to do that sort of thing. Most people, of course, are not half as good as they like to think they are. But even the worst want their art and literature better than they know they are and better than they think their neighbors are. That’s the way they square themselves with life,” he concluded sententiously.

This was the second time, Brainard reflected, that he had received a valuable lesson in ethics from the fight-trust magnate. He understood now why Hollinger had been reading Milton when he first made his acquaintance on the Overland Limited. He was a business philosopher.

“If you are going to deal with people,” he added gently, “you must know how they act and feel about things.”

“I suppose that is why you let the heroine capture the thief in this piece?” Brainard remarked.

“Precisely! The clever young dramatist who knocked the thing together for me was all for another ending, a more convincing one, perhaps, where the heroine was bought off for a good share of the bonds and currency. But although admitting the truth of his reasoning, I could not permit him to ruin the success of our play. We were compelled to violate nature again, and in deference to the public’s unquenchable thirst for Virtue we allowed the slow-moving heroine to accomplish the dire purpose of her vengeful passions with the assistance of the government. In its present form our play is terribly satisfying to our public. It gratifies especially that common human desire to get somebody. Half our criminal justice is built upon the same unpleasant trait of human nature. . . . By the way,” he remarked, interrupting the flow of his philosophical analysis, “I almost forgot! There’s a friend of yours in behind who wants to see you. I promised to bring you back. You’ve no objections?”

“None at all!” Brainard laughed. “You see our encounter didn’t turn out quite like the play, fortunately for me!”

“So I understand,” Hollinger replied demurely, holding the curtain aside to let the others precede him.

X

They found the leading lady waiting for them on the darkened stage. She was dressed quite handsomely in her street costume, with the inevitable fur coat that seems the most characteristic mark of her profession. Without her makeup and stage costume she looked much older than Brainard remembered her to be and also stouter. But her dark face and flashing eyes still preserved an air of confident assurance in her good looks that had characterized Krutzmacht’s stenographer.

“Good evening, Mr. Wilkins!” she said promptly as the men approached her. At that unfortunate nom de guerre Farson laughed outright. Hollinger came to the rescue.

“Mr. Edgar Brainard, of the new People’s Theater; Miss Lorilla Walters of The Stolen Bonds company,” the fight-trust man said with a little cough.

“We seem both to have changed names,” Brainard observed, shaking hands with the leading lady.

“Walters is my stage name,” the former stenographer snapped.

“Wilkins was mine—for a few hours!” Brainard laughed.

There followed an awkward pause. In spite of the amiable greeting, Brainard could see fire in the woman’s dark eyes and realized that it was not simply for the pleasure of meeting her former antagonist again that she had got Hollinger to bring him behind the scenes. He realized also from the determined bearing and solid form of the woman he had once unceremoniously locked up in Krutzmacht’s safe for an hour, that she possessed a kind of vindictive energy which might easily become troublesome to any man she disliked. For a brief moment he wished that a wayward fate had not led his steps on this evening into the Boulevard Theater. But it was so patently absurd that the woman could in any way touch him now after all these years that he easily put aside the thought. He had led his new life so long, tested himself with men and affairs so thoroughly that his early adventures in Krutzmacht’s service seemed to him more like a youthful escapade than reality.

During this mute encounter Farson and Hollinger watched the two with interest. Hollinger leaned against one of the properties of the last act in The Stolen Bonds, a slightly satirical smile on his lips as if he found much intellectual amusement in the situation.

“That’s a pretty lively show you have made out of our little affair,” Brainard remarked at last to the leading lady. “You’ve touched up the story all along and the dénouement isn’t according to the facts as I remember them.”

Miss Walters gave a little twitch to her short veil as she snapped meaningly:

“Perhaps it isn’t finished yet!”

“As our friend Hollinger has been proving to me,” Brainard continued in his scoffing tone, “Art and Nature don’t always jibe. The artist has always found fault with dull fact, and he gets his revenge upon the real world as you took yours to-night in the play.”

“One gets it somehow,” Miss Walters replied enigmatically.

“If you are going to discuss Art and Nature,” Hollinger put in genially, “let’s go to some place where we can have supper.”

“A good idea,” Brainard agreed. “Come home with me. My man usually has something ready for me at this time.”

He felt that something more vital than a discussion of Art and Nature was impending and thought that his own house would be a better place for an animated interview than a public café. So the four picked their way in the gloom among the bulky properties of The Stolen Bonds to the stage exit and there found a cab, which carried them quickly to the little house in Gramercy Park. Miss Walters did not open her mouth during the ride; Hollinger and Farson maintained a factitious conversation on politics, and the contrasts between San Francisco and New York. The fight-trust man ridiculed “progressivism,” which was just then coming into vogue, shrewdly pointing out that it merely cloaked the aspirations of “the little fellows” to “get big Capital,” and praised California as the only place for an American to live in. From time to time Brainard eyed the actress from his corner of the cab, wondering what her relations with his versatile acquaintance might be. She did not seem interested in the conversation and stared steadily into the street.

There were bottles and cold meats on the table in the dining room as Brainard had promised. Farson discovered in the pantry the ingredients for a hot dish, and Hollinger showed himself to be an expert in this sort of an impromptu feast. The three men were soon busy with chafing dish and corkscrew in a comradely way, but Miss Walters, refusing to lay aside her long fur coat and hat, sauntered about the cheerful room, examining carefully the pictures and prints upon the walls, the furniture and appointments, which though not especially luxurious were thoroughly comfortable.

“Is this your house?” she asked her host point blank, and when he nodded she remarked:

“A pretty cozy sort of place.”

“It is comfortable,” Brainard agreed, “and very convenient. I can’t stand hotels,” he added by way of excuse.

“Some of us have to stand ’em and be mighty thankful when they’re fit to live in.”

Not having any appropriate reply to this remark, Brainard urged the actress to lay aside her wraps and sit down before the fire, which he had stirred into a blaze. She grudgingly unbuttoned her coat and sat on the edge of the large chair he pushed to the hearth, stretching forth her worn shoes to the warmth, and hitching up her skirt in a slightly vulgar manner.

When Hollinger announced that his dish was ready, the four drew up at the table and had supper, which, thanks to Farson and the fight-trust man, was lively enough. They discussed theatrical matters, especially the Danish play on which the People’s had come to grief. Hollinger maintained that the trouble with the play was that it was neither moral nor immoral enough. It was simply too much like life. “If you are going in for vice, you must paint it red,” he pronounced. The leading lady listened and taciturnly ate her supper. Afterwards she accepted a cigarette and turned again to the fire. Brainard searched his brain for a topic that might interest her and finally asked:

“How long have you been on the stage, Miss Walters?”

“It was a good many years ago, the first show I was in,” she replied, and added with intention,—“before I met Krutzmacht.”

“Where was that?” he asked lightly.

“In Los Angeles in ninety-two.”

“You gave up the stage for a time?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “He wanted me to.”

“Oh!”

Supper being finished, Brainard led the way to the large living room on the floor above. Here there were books, pictures, and old theatrical bills that seemed to interest Hollinger. He and Farson remained at one end of the room and thus gave Brainard a further opportunity for conversation with Miss Walters. Somewhat softened by the good supper and the friendly reception, she began to talk more freely of herself, her early experiences on the stage in a small stock company that played in the little towns of central and southern California, until she met Herbert Krutzmacht, who happened to be in Los Angeles one night when she was playing. Brainard, who was curious to find out all he could about Krutzmacht, observed carelessly:

“You were working in his office when I—when we last met?”

“Yes—I was working for him,” she said shortly.

“Then why,” he asked suddenly, “did you try to sell him out to his enemies?”

“I had good reasons,” she replied, looking him defiantly in the face, “a woman’s reasons. He hadn’t played fair with me!”

“That is, hadn’t married you as you hoped he would?” Brainard suggested.

“I didn’t say that!” she flashed quickly, realizing that she was in danger of committing herself.

“Well, I hope the railroad people paid you well for your services.”

“They quit paying me, naturally, after you got over to Europe with the stuff they wanted and sold it to the Germans.”

“They dealt with the Germans instead,” Brainard laughed. “It might have paid better to stick by the old man to the end? . . . So, after we parted at Vera Cruz, you went back to the stage—into the legitimate?”

“Mr. Hollinger suggested it when I met him at Jalapa. He got me a place in one of the San Francisco theaters a friend of his was running, and then later on when he went into the show business himself, he took me for one of his companies.”

“Do you like the work?”

“It’s as good as anything else,” the leading lady replied, “so long as you’ve got to work for your living.”

“Most of us have to do that.”

“Unless we are clever enough to get somebody else to do the work for us,” she sneered.

“Then I think we lose most of the fun.”

Miss Walters stared at him skeptically.

“What’s the use of your taking that lofty tone with me?”

Brainard laughed good-naturedly. He found in this case, as he had in so many others, that a little personal contact with an enemy modifies and humanizes any antagonism. “Eat with an enemy and lose your hate,” is an old proverb, the truth of which he was proving. In spite of the hardness and vulgarity of Miss Lorilla Walters, actress and stenographer, there was something pathetic in her commonplace struggle with life, which he felt through her brief admissions. She had been fighting all her life for herself with somewhat coarse weapons, the only ones she knew how to use, and her appearance, now that she had lost the advantage of youth and was declining towards middle age, her cheap clothes, her defiant manner,—all told of the losing game. He was already beginning to wonder what he could do for Krutzmacht’s old stenographer, wondering whether by any chance she could be fitted into the People’s company, when his amiable meditations were disagreeably interrupted by the actress.

“It’s no use your playing the great philanthropist with me,” she said truculently. “I know what you are.”

“What?”

“A crook.”

“You think so?”

“I happen to know it.”

“The trouble always has been from the moment I entered Krutzmacht’s office that afternoon that you have persisted in this wrong idea. You took me for a common thief then, and you think me a successful swindler now. Well, it happens that I am neither. So you can’t understand!”

She looked over the comfortable room, which for the moment they had to themselves, as Farson had taken Hollinger into the library.

“You seem to have done very well by yourself,” she observed.

“I was Krutzmacht’s legitimate agent then, when I entered his office, and I have been his executor so to speak every since,”—and as she shrugged her shoulders skeptically, he added, “I haven’t a cent of my own—really not a cent; I am poorer than you!”

“You want me to believe that song? . . . How about the theater and the mine in Arizona? You see I have been following you up.”

“They belong to somebody else.”

“Indeed—to whom?”

“I shan’t tell you that!”

“Because you can’t. . . . They belong to me.”

“Prove your claim then!”

“And you will hand them over on a platter with a fine bow? . . . You are smooth!”

She looked into Brainard’s smiling face with an expression of perplexity.

“But until you can prove your claim, beyond doubt, I shall continue in possession both of the mine and of the theater as guardian of the property. And I shall fight you with all the resources I have until I am convinced that your claim is sound.”

The actress slowly walked to the fire and threw away the cigarette she had been smoking.

“Well, I guess we understand each other,” she said in a less truculent voice.

“I think we do!”

“You are a curious sort of idiot,” she remarked musingly. “I don’t see why we should fight. There’s enough money for two from what the papers say about that mine.”

“There’s a great deal more than enough for two,” Brainard laughed, “in one sense, but only enough for one in another—the right one,” he added meaningly.

The actress watched him closely as he crossed the room to straighten a picture that hung awry on the wall. She swayed gently to and fro in the vulgar pose of the heroine of The Stolen Bonds, looking into the fire. When she glanced up she saw that Brainard was observing her, a slight smile on his lips. He was thinking that she had the temperament that might have made a good actress, but had been hopelessly spoiled by her bringing up and environment.

“Well?” he said. “Are you ready with the proof?”

“You are a queer sort of Willy,” she replied. “I don’t believe you and me can ever rightly understand each other.”

“I think I understand you,” Brainard laughed; “you want Krutzmacht’s money—that is quite intelligible! And you may not think so, but I am sorry for you—I would really like to help you out—get a better position for you!”

“But you won’t divide!”

“Never—all or nothing.”

“Do you know where I’m going to-night when I leave your swell little house? Over on Second Avenue into a third-class hotel where my mother and I get along with one bedroom between us. Hollinger don’t pay any big salaries!”

“I am sorry.”

“Krutzmacht treated me like most men treat women they’ve got cheap. I had no reason to be loyal to him, as I told you.”

“Unless,” Brainard suggested lightly, “you happened to be his wife!”

Miss Walters ignored the implication and continued explanatorily:

“When we lost you at Vera Cruz, and the railroad men I was working for had no more use for me, I was down and out. There didn’t seem to be anything for anybody from Krutzmacht’s money except what the Germans got and you! So I went into the show that I told you of. But it seems there was a good deal more property I didn’t know about—he was always close mouthed. You were clever enough to find that mine and keep it for yourself. . . . It wasn’t until you struck New York that anybody heard about it. Then the papers and the magazines were full of it and of you and of all the money you were throwing away on a theater.”

“Publicity is one of the penalties of success,” Brainard observed.

“It helped me to find you!”

Brainard bowed in acknowledgment.

“You don’t want any more trouble?” she suggested in a gentler tone than she had previously used.

“Don’t mind trouble,” Brainard retorted quickly.

“If I was content with a half million—”

“Why not make it two?”

XI

At this point Hollinger and Farson returned to the room. Hollinger looked quickly at the position of the two, smiled placidly, and helped himself to another cigar from the box on the table.

“Exchanging confidences?” he inquired.

“Miss Walters persists in acting all the time,” Brainard replied. “She thinks this is a sequel to the play and wants me to hand over to her a lot of money.”

“Sometimes,” Hollinger observed sententiously, “that’s the easiest way to square things, isn’t it?”

Brainard looked at the fight-trust man in astonishment. Was he an accomplice in a vulgar blackmail game?

“It’s not my way,” he said sharply.

“Half a loaf when no part of the loaf is really yours is always more enjoyable than a legal scrimmage over the whole loaf, it seems to me.”

“What do you mean?”

Hollinger threw himself into an easy-chair, lighted his cigar carefully, and beamed at Brainard.

“Did it ever occur to you, my young friend,” he began, “that we four are, so to speak, all in the same boat? We are all adventurers—of that noble company of gentlemen and lady adventurers in life—to paraphrase the quaint motto of the Hudson Bay Company. Now in the course of the complicated tissue of adventure that happens to have brought us three together from very unlike walks in life, you”—he thrust the glowing point of his cigar towards Brainard,—“have proved to be the Star. You’re It! You hold the bag, so to speak. You seem to have shared some of its golden contents with our young friend here who wants to write plays, as he tells me. I do not happen to want anything for myself. I am perfectly disinterested in this case,—fortunately can afford to be. For I have other and sufficiently fat fish frying in my own little pan. So I can play the gracious rôle of Wisdom. . . . Why not be generous to the lady who lost in this matter of the old Dutchman’s millions—you can afford it—and nothing becomes a young unmarried Idealist more than princely generosity with other people’s dollars.”

“But—” Brainard began.

“Pardon me—one moment—to finish clearing the ground. I don’t know the precise manner in which you came into possession of Herbert Krutzmacht’s money any more than I know exactly how he got it away from those who wanted it. I presume the methods were not essentially unlike. It never interests me, these details of acquisition,—to know just how our plutocratic masters have raked together their pelf. But the method of distribution does interest me tremendously. The rich usually show such little capacity for imagination or daring in the disposal of their wealth! However, that is another theme. . . . Now this lady, whose slender talent as an actress I have had the honor of supporting, thinks she has some cogent claim to the unearned increment of the deceased Dutchman. Her idea is probably fantastic—most of our ideas about ‘rights’ are—but it is a fixed idea with her!” He leaned forward and waved his cigar rhythmically to drive home his words. “Unless her idea is adequately gratified, I am afraid she will be unhappy and make you considerable trouble in the course of her effort to satisfy her quite unreasonable desire. Voilà tout, as the French say. Or if you prefer English, Better pay and forget, rather than save a few dollars and regret, my friend.”

“You are a good anarchist,” Farson observed.

“Thank you for the explanation. I know that I am a practical man. If our rich, our very rich citizens, would only recognize more frankly the truth I have been stating, they would be happier and so would we others. But they are very timid and conservative; they rarely get beyond libraries, museums, and hospitals. All dull and comparatively useless affairs!”

The fight-trust man sank back into his chair and smoked with half-closed eyes.

“Your talk is interesting, Hollinger, as always,” Brainard remarked, “but unfortunately this time I can’t follow your advice.”

“And why not?”

“Because it happens not to be my own money that Miss Walters desires.”

Hollinger waved one hand deprecatingly and murmured:

“A mere matter of words that.”

“No, I mean it! As I have been explaining to Miss Walters, I am really a poor man—”

“Poverty is a relative matter—science has demonstrated that.”

“Everything of Krutzmacht’s I hold as trustee.”

“Sounds like Carnegie, or was it the Emperor William? . . . Pardon me, that is another formula. We are all trustees, of course.”

Brainard paused and then resumed in a different tone:

“I have been over this matter with Miss Walters and explained my position. I think she understands it quite well. If she can produce proof that she was legally married to the late Herbert Krutzmacht—”

“You would not be as crude as that!” Hollinger exclaimed, opening his eyes. “You know as well as the next man how purely accidental marriage is—the ceremony I mean. The law fastens on that of course—it has to have some nail to cling to—”

“As I told Miss Walters, the trouble with her, and I am afraid with you, too, Hollinger, is that you can’t comprehend an honest man. I happen to be a mere honest man.”

“Pray, don’t believe I doubted it.”

“Just plain, old-fashioned, vulgar honest,” Brainard continued irascibly. “Neither of you seem to understand that simple fact. You proceed on two false assumptions,—first that I am a crook and second that I am a coward—I might add a third, that I am a fool. So long as these false assumptions remain embedded in your mind, we simply can’t do business together.”

He walked suggestively towards the door. Hollinger also rose, a little wearily, a bored look on his face, and chucked his cigar into the fireplace.

“I am sorry,” he said gently, “that we have succeeded in straining your sense of humor. . . . The trouble with you virtuous people is that you bristle so easily at the least touch. I should think that Virtue would be more self-satisfying to its practitioners. Now I don’t bristle because you assume that I am a petty blackmailer and am trying to get money for Miss Walters in order to share with her. That’s what you think—confess it!”

“It looks that way,” Brainard said.

“If it does, it doesn’t worry me in the least. I don’t waste our time trying to prove to you that I am Honest and Disinterested, that I came here to-night really out of friendly interest in you—to try with the aid of my equable temperament and clear intelligence to avoid the mistakes that are likely to occur when excessive desire meets excessive virtue. But I have failed. You two will have to make up your accounts alone—or with the vulgar assistance of the courts. Good luck to you. And good night!”

He extended one hand to Brainard and the other to Farson.

“I will give myself the pleasure of setting you down at your hotel,” he said to the actress, who was slowly and somewhat regretfully buttoning her fur coat.

When Farson and the actress had left the room, Brainard detained Hollinger and said contritely:

“I’m afraid I did suspect you of collusion with Miss Walters—I’m sorry, for I have always liked you.”

“It’s very natural. You yourself must know how hard it is in this world to be really disinterested without incurring unjust suspicions. However, that’s nothing!”

“The trouble is I can’t understand you—never did!”

“I’m afraid I can’t return the compliment. I flatter myself that I understand you thoroughly.”

“Do you remember that first time I met you—on the train, the Overland Limited, going to California? You were in your compartment reading Paradise Lost with the help of a dictionary.”

The fight-trust man blushed slightly, probably at the mention of the dictionary.

“You mean the occasion when that active young seeker for notoriety, the special district attorney of San Francisco, was trying to put me in state’s prison?”

“You were under bonds then, seventy-five thousand dollars of bonds. I remember how awed I was at the size of your bonds!”

“Yes, I recall the occasion now,” the prize ring magnate said with a pleasant smile. “I didn’t remember that was our first meeting—I meet so many people everywhere—nor that I happened to be making the acquaintance also of the famous puritan poet. . . . The trouble with you, my friend, if you will permit me to indulge in a last bit of advice, is that you are so terribly conventional in your judgments of character, in your expectations of what people are to be. That is a very common limitation. You expected to find in me a bloody and brutal bounder, smelling of whisky and dazzling with diamonds. Instead you found an intelligent gentleman, interested in literature and life. The prize ring, Mr. Brainard, is as much an arena of Art in its way as the popular theater to which you are devoting so much effort and such large sums of money. And I was engaged in it as a business, as I am now engaged in the theatrical business. A financier, even of the prize ring, is not obliged to dirty himself with vulgar contacts. That explains the lofty idealism of some of our most prominent citizens. You plan and dream from above—the degrading associations are left to others, as doubtless you have already learned in the management of your own properties. . . . Well, I must not keep Miss Walters waiting below. Good night, my foolish Idealist! Good luck and more wisdom to you before our next meeting.”

They descended to the hall which they found empty. Farson was getting the actress a last cigarette. As they waited, Hollinger observed musingly:

“You doubtless know about the marriage laws in California?”

“No, I don’t.”

“They are extremely,—what shall I say? Lax—liberal. You see our people out there are so unconventional and accidental in their habit of life, that the courts are forced to take the most liberal view of these personal matters. And we are as a people chivalrous towards women—much more so than you are here. So the courts are inclined to decide the question of marriage largely on whether the woman ought to have been married, rather than on the mere fact of the ceremony. That accounts for the large number of posthumous wives and their claims that turn up after the death of a rich man on the Coast.”

“Am I to regard this as a threat?” Brainard inquired.

“Bless you, my dear boy, don’t be so sensitive! Advice, just impertinent, uncalled-for advice, which I am so fond of giving. I should have left all that to Miss Lorilla’s lawyers—they are the proper persons to expound the California statutes.”

“You don’t believe for one instant that Miss Walters was really married to old Krutzmacht?” Hollinger shrugged his shoulders.

“Quien sabe? as the Mexicans say. I have no doubt she ought to have been.”

“That is a very different matter.”

Hollinger again shrugged his shoulders. In the pause that followed, Hollinger began to muse aloud softly, as if he were presenting a case to himself:

“Her life has been typical. Born on a dreary little ranch, educated for a few years in one of our national institutions for the stultifying of youth, then deserted by her worthless father and forced to do something for herself and her useless mother,—what is the answer to that? Chorus girl. Twelve dollars a week and mother to support as well as herself and no special talent or exceptional looks,—what is the answer to that? Man.”

“Whom the girl in her gratitude tried to sell out when he was in a tight place. No, I am afraid you can’t make out a very good case for charity!”

“Just what had Krutzmacht done for her? . . . Changed her job from a dubiously respectable one to an undoubtedly disreputable one—and made her work in his office besides. No, the balance is on her side of the ledger. . . . Now she has matured,—oh, very much matured; has no protector, and mother still to support as well as herself,—what is the answer to that?”

“If you put your claim on the ground of social service, pure and simple,” Brainard replied, “it might be considered, I suppose. But I don’t think Miss Walters would accept charity.”

“Charity—justice—prudence? What’s the use of finding the right name? In the last analysis they are all meaningless.”

“You forget they mean something to me.”

“She hungers for some of life’s goodies.” Hollinger resumed his musing, ignoring Brainard’s reply. “But comparatively little would satisfy her—a secure home somewhere in southern California for herself and that tough relic of a parent, a little income, enough to assure permanent idleness. Consider what a boon that would be to the stage in itself! Possibly matrimony later on, why not? . . . As Krutzmacht’s residuary—er, trustee,—that’s what you called it, I believe, you ought to provide decently for his emotional lapses. . . . I put it to you now as a Sentimentalist, Idealist, Lover of Great Ideas.”

“You would talk me into giving her everything I have,” Brainard laughed, “if I could only once bring myself to accept your point of view.”

“And that is?”

“That life is merely a juggle of words.”

“Ah, you are too young. One cannot fight successfully against youth, even with ideas!”

Miss Walters appeared, followed by Farson, and the conversation was at an end. The actress looked at Brainard from beneath her flaring hat, and her eyes had an unpleasant luster in them. No, mere charity would not satisfy that “thirst for vengeance upon life!”

“Well, Mr. Wilkins,” she began with a heavy effort at irony, “it is always sad for old friends to part. But in this case we may hope to meet again before long.”

“I hope so!” Brainard replied politely. “Let me put you into the cab.”

Hollinger followed them slowly down the steps. At the very door of the cab he lingered.

“In that brief visit which you made to the Coast did you ever come across a rattler in operation? No! It makes a slight, but perfectly clear noise first by way of warning—and then it strikes! Some women resemble the rattler. Look out for the sting!”

“Thanks! I shall.”

“Oh!” the prize ring magnate sighed in farewell, “my poor Idealist, what a lot of useless trouble you make for yourself and others!”

XII

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!”

XIII

The perfectly correct New York lawyers to whom Brainard told his tale later that morning evinced no surprise. There was nothing in the heart or brain of man, they seemed to say, that could flutter a New York lawyer. “It would be advisable to find Miss Melody straightway,” they felt, and inquired what sort of title Brainard held to the Arizona mine. When he confessed that it was only a tax title, they remarked that under the Arizona laws any heirs of the dead German had a year more in which to redeem the property. That did not trouble Brainard. The lawyers very strongly urged their client not to make advances to Miss Walters or to her friend and manager on her behalf. That would be suicidal, they averred, opening the way at once to endless blackmail and even criminal prosecution. “Let the matter rest until the interested parties make some move,” they advised, in a perfectly cautious and obvious way.

“I’ve done my best to find the heirs, as you people very well know. I’m convinced there’s only one, and I’m not sure that she has any legal claim. But hers was the only name the old man mentioned the one time I saw him.”

“You certainly made a mistake in not getting hold of that trunk!”

“After my settlement in Paris with the bankers,” Brainard explained, “I felt that it was of the first importance to go to Monument as soon as possible; and by the time I turned up at the Chicago railroad station, the trunk had disappeared.”

“If no heir can be found, there is not much danger of trouble; but if they should happen to get hold of this girl you call Melody, it might be awkward.”

“I should be only too glad if she could be found, by them or any one else!” Brainard exclaimed with sincerity. “I could then wash my hands of the whole matter.”

The lawyer looked at him uncomprehendingly, then resumed:

“Assuming that no heir of the old man is forthcoming, the only harm that these persons could do you would be to stir up the attorney-general to take action to recover the lands for the Territory. They would have to move quickly to get their action before the courts, and the proper representations at Washington would discourage any such litigation.”

“That doesn’t worry me. But that woman! She’s perfectly capable of becoming Krutzmacht’s widow and providing a whole brood of children.”

“You mean fraudulent?”

“Or left-handed,” Brainard suggested. “I believe she’s training them now!”

“We shall have to wait until she produces them in court, then,” his counsel remarked with a grin.

As the weeks and then the months slipped by without any sign from Krutzmacht’s former stenographer Brainard almost forgot the midnight visit that she and the fight-trust magnate had made and the disturbing conversation which had taken place. During this summer the People’s Company played a short season in Chicago, and were so cordially received in that city, which seemed to be more open-minded in theatrical matters than New York, that Brainard felt he had made a mistake in not starting his dramatic enterprise in this thoroughly American community. An opportunity offering of securing the lease of a new theater in Chicago, Brainard decided to take it and support a second company in the West to interchange with the parent company. He placed MacNaughton in charge of the new company, having found a younger and more adaptable man to work with him in New York. All these arrangements took much time and thought and involved many trips between the two cities to complete the negotiations. Brainard had the satisfaction of knowing that if they had failed in their first season to make the impression he had hoped, at least they had shown courage and determination. The Idea was far from dead,—was growing slowly and adapting itself, as all large Ideas must, to the environment and the conditions. . . .

One morning, the day after his return from one of these hurried journeys to Chicago, Brainard found Farson immersed as usual in the folds of a newspaper over his coffee. Instead of the customary greeting, the secretary handed over the paper with the simple remark:

“She’s struck!”

A front page story of the usual type, emanating from the Pacific Coast, related that a woman claiming to be Krutzmacht’s lawful widow, married to him several years before in a small southern California town, was about to institute legal proceedings to recover the remnants of the dead promoter’s scattered fortune. At the time of Krutzmacht’s death, so the story ran, it was supposed that his large fortune had been completely swallowed up in his unsuccessful enterprises, but recently through a series of extraordinary events a very considerable amount of unsuspected assets had been discovered, to which the widow now laid claim. Eminent counsel had been retained in the case, and sensational developments were promised, involving a capitalist well known in New York and Arizona.

As Brainard having finished the story laid the newspaper down with a slight smile, Farson observed:

“So it’s on!”

“Apparently. . . . It took her some time to get into action. I suppose she was collecting her properties.”

“She’ll produce a son in court lisping ‘Pap Krutz,’” the secretary growled. He could not forgive Brainard for what he called his “weak” manner of handling the affair.

“Now we shall have an opportunity of seeing what sort of story she can put up,” Brainard remarked, proceeding unconcernedly with his breakfast. “Perhaps this action, through the notoriety it will give to Krutzmacht’s affairs, will serve to produce the real heir,” he added hopefully.

But after a visit to his lawyers Brainard was less optimistic. They pointed out to him that undoubtedly the first legal move would be to tie up the great Melody mine by an injunction. Whether the so-called widow could prove her marriage to the satisfaction of the court or not, the mine must remain idle. And the case might drag on for a couple of years or more, depending upon the resources the widow could command. During all this time there would be no income from the property; instead it would greatly deteriorate. The lawyers’ prediction was quickly fulfilled. Brainard found himself without the large monthly income from the flow of the sulfur wells, with an expensive law suit on his hands, and two greedy theatrical companies to be provided for.

“As Hollinger warned me, Lorilla is a Rattler,” Brainard said to the secretary when the two went over the situation. “It looks very much, my boy, as if this law suit would be the final curtain for the great Idea. I’m tied up short. The Chicago theater has taken a lump of money. I don’t believe I could lay my hands on fifty thousand dollars cash, all told.”

“I wonder where she is getting her money to fight the case,” Farson said.

“Perhaps Hollinger is putting it up—as a promising speculation!”

“You don’t think he would do that?”

“Why not? It goes with his philosophy. He gave me my chance to compromise—”

“If you’d only taken it!”

“And when he saw that I wouldn’t compromise, he might decide to play on the other side. It makes little difference, anyway. If Miss Walters has any sort of claim, she can easily get all the money she needs. There are always ‘eminent counsel’ ready to take that kind of case on a good contingent fee.”

“Well, what will you do now?” Farson asked in a depressed tone.

“First I must get rid of the lease of the Chicago theater.”

“It’s too bad—the Chicago theater opened well. Mac thinks it will almost make expenses.”

“What Mac thinks and what the public thinks we have found to be two different propositions,” Brainard replied. “I don’t believe Chicago will miss us much. But I hate to close the New York theater.”

“Will you have to do that?”

“You know the figures—they don’t improve!”

“I suppose that dishes my play.”

Farson had been hard at work during the summer on a play of American life, based largely on material that Louisiana Delacourt had contributed in a series of amusing confidences about her own experiences, before her departure to complete her education in Europe. It was to be called Her Great Adventure, and had been coming on very fast latterly. The plan between the two friends had been to try it out toward the close of the present season, and, if the play proved successful, to open with it in the fall.

“I hadn’t thought about your play,” Brainard exclaimed sympathetically. “We must keep the house open until we can produce Her Great Adventure. There’s money enough in the bank for that.” He patted his secretary affectionately on the back. “But finish it, my boy, as soon as you can. That place eats money, and when the news leaks we shan’t be able to keep our company together long. Can you be ready by the first of March?”

“It will have to be ready! It’s awfully good of you, Brainard; and the play might possibly make money, you know.”

“If that happens, it will break all records for the People’s. We will give it every chance, anyway. How shall we cast it? Will Clara Dudley do for the girl?”

Forgetting all about Krutzmacht’s new widow and their financial predicament they began to discuss the cast for Her Great Adventure. The leading character was a young woman who had come fearlessly and pennilessly out of the great West, to find a career in New York. Brainard remarked suddenly:

“The woman to play that part is Louisiana herself.” Farson, for some reason, did not welcome the suggestion strongly. He preferred to take his chances with a more experienced actress. “Where is Louisiana, by the way? You haven’t given me any news of her for some time,” Brainard asked.

Farson blushed slightly as he replied:

“She’s in London just now—having a great time, I judge from the number of dashes and exclamations scattered over her letters. Characteristic style, you know. She hasn’t taken down much of the original bunting she carried.”

“She wouldn’t!” Brainard exclaimed with a laugh. “Louisiana is a genius. Don’t tell her what’s going to happen over here. Let her have her little dance out as long as it is possible. Her hard times, poor child, will begin soon enough!”

“She writes that Cissie Pyce is over there. Remember Cissie—our first experiment as emotional lady?”

“She wept all over this carpet when I fired her—do I remember?”

“Louisiana says that Cissie has been taken up by Bantam, and is coming back to the States to play in The Star of the Seven Seas.”

“We’ll make somebody’s fortune yet,” Brainard commented, “by discharging ’em, if in no other way. But Louisiana was really our first and only find—the one personality that we might have developed and produced.”

“And she found us!” the secretary corrected.

“Let’s see what it has cost all told.” He ran over on his fingers the different large items of expense that the great Idea had involved: “The theater building eight hundred, the first year in New York two hundred, Chicago . . . one million six hundred thousand odd for Louisiana!” Brainard concluded whimsically. “And she’s not yet launched. Our kind of art comes high, Ned!”

“You’re a tip-top loser,” the young man said admiringly. “Don’t you ever think what it will mean to you, if Lorilla should win her suit?”

Brainard stretched himself leisurely.

“Except for being licked in this theater business—and I don’t like being beaten any better than the next man—I should howl for joy when they produce the fictitious widow and the orphan son in court. It would set me free for another great adventure. That’s what Herbert Krutzmacht and Melody have done for one Edgar Brainard!”

In his eyes was the azure glitter of the sky above the stern Arizona mountains. For it was, indeed, a glorious world of venture for him whose soul was keyed to the right pitch.

XIV

Nevertheless, Brainard felt depressed as the time drew near when the doors of his theater would have to close, the windows be boarded up. Even should he win the case against the fraudulent claimants of the Melody, the great Idea could never be wholly perfected in all the splendid details that he had dreamed. No one man, were he Croesus incarnate, could create a national art. He had learned that. . . .

On the afternoon of the first rehearsal of Her Great Adventure, Brainard came early to the theater and waited in the library. It was a pleasant place, he reflected, as his eyes wandered over the empty room, with its polished marquetry floor richly covered with rugs, and the charming empire furniture, clocks, and ornaments that he had taken the pains to place there. He had tried to make these public rooms as clublike as possible, with ample lounging places, so that the theater might be something of a home for the players, as well as a workshop. Above the library was a glorified green room, where simple meals were to be had for a moderate price. All these details were part of the Idea, as he had seen it.

The People’s had a much better company this year, he reflected,—no great talent, but all fairly competent, and they worked together well. His enthusiasm and Farson’s had finally penetrated the ignorant and selfish surface of theatrical nature. Mac had been tactfully relegated to Chicago, and the promising young actor Leaventritt was fast making a place for himself as manager.

The company was really getting into shape. Ignored as they were by the critics and the “intelligent” public, or ridiculed for their efforts, the People’s Theater had won the allegiance of its players. They were developing a fine loyalty to the Idea, and a respect for themselves as members of an institution that had not been founded for profit. The week before, when Brainard had felt obliged to tell the company of his financial difficulties, and of the fate probably in store for the theater, there had been genuine, unselfish concern.

“Your salaries will be paid until the close of the season,” he told them; “and, in addition, each one will receive the percentage of his pension earned by his length of service. Unfortunately, there are no profits to share; but of course I have assumed all losses. And now I want you to do your utmost for our last play—this piece by Mr. Farson. Give it the very best you have in you. It is a strong play, an American play, the sort of play for us to produce. Let us end well!”

Then they had proceeded to the reading of the piece. Afterward, many of the company had come to him to express personally their honest disappointment at the enforced closing of the People’s Theater. They seemed to realize that their loss was more than that of salary.

“And we’ll make Her Great Adventure go!” they all said.

The spirit of the players had been comforting to the embarrassed patron.

“The People’s might have won out in time, with such a company—who knows?” he mused to the secretary.

“We may win out yet!” the young playwright answered, with a certain touch of vanity.

“I hope so, for your sake, I’m sure; but one play, no matter how successful, could not keep the Idea afloat.”

On the eve of failure, a new light had dawned in the enthusiastic mind of the founder. He realized that whatever one man tries to carry through alone, by brute force of will, without regard for the sympathy and the help of others, is destined to fail, especially where it is a matter of art that should appeal to the many. Not Mrs. Donnie Pearmain and her “upper classes” were needed, to be sure, but the People; and the People’s Theater had failed to touch the People. Very likely, Brainard mused, Lorilla was the hand of fate needed to prove this deeper truth to him. He had failed to find his vanished mistress, Melody, and with her inheritance he had tried to achieve the impossible. Now that inheritance might be taken altogether out of his control, and the great Idea vanish into the air from which his will had conjured it. . . .

A page brought Brainard a letter with a foreign postmark just as he was leaving the library for the theater. It was a hasty little scribble from Miss Delacourt—one of the few with which the young lady had favored him. In a hand that galloped unevenly over the paper, she informed him:

“I’m coming home—sail Saturday, on the Amerika, with Cissie Pyce. Best wishes!

“L. D.”

Brainard wondered what freak had possessed the youngster thus to cut short her lark, as he went to the telephone to inquire when the Amerika was due in New York. He determined to say nothing to Farson of the girl’s homecoming and to meet the young woman at the dock himself.

There might, after all, be some method in her insanity—and there might be some good fortune in it for Farson and his play. For the little neurasthenic Miss Dudley, who, to the most casual eye, had evidently never been farther West than Hoboken, was hardly the ideal of adventurous American womanhood that the dramatist had drawn in his Gertrude. He would see Louisiana first, and make up his mind whether she was safe to try before speaking to Farson, whom he suspected of a more than friendly liking for the young woman.

When Brainard returned to the auditorium he found a stranger leaning over a rear seat, an unlighted cigar between his teeth, apparently interested in the lines of the new play that Leaventritt was going over with the company. As Brainard approached, the man turned his head; it was Hollinger.

“Hello!” he said, and nodding his head toward the stage asked, “New piece?”

For a few moments the two men listened to the halting lines from the stage, then Brainard asked coldly:

“Did you want to see me?”

Hollinger looked at him coolly, the merest smile on his curving lips.

“Yes,” he replied, “that is if you aren’t busy? I was in New York and thought I’d look you up.”

Brainard led the way to his private office, which was in the front of the theater behind the library.

“What is it?” he asked shortly, closing the door and standing above his visitor, who had seated himself and crossed his knees comfortably. Hollinger’s smile deepened to a grin.

“I suppose you have something to say to me,” Brainard added impatiently.

“Nothing in particular,” Hollinger replied. “I wanted to see you!”

“What for?”

“Well, to see how you take it for one thing.”

Brainard sat down in his chair more calmly and waited.

“Don’t you think you made a mistake?” Hollinger inquired.

“No!”

“You don’t mind the—er—row?”

“Not in the least.”

“You don’t want to stop it all before it’s too late?”

Brainard shook his head slowly.

“Not your way,” he said emphatically.

“I didn’t suppose you would,” the old fight-trust magnate sighed.

“You knew I wouldn’t!”

“Sometimes your kind come to their senses—too late. I just thought I would sound you again before the case came to trial.”

“And save your money for counsel fees?” Brainard inquired suavely.

“Oh, that doesn’t trouble me,” Hollinger replied lightly. “You guessed that I was putting up the money? How clever of you!”

“But I can’t yet bring myself to believe that you mean to share with that woman in the profits of her perjury, if she succeeds.”

Hollinger smoked a few moments before replying.

“I don’t mind telling you that I have no intention of taking a cent from Miss Walters, or Mrs. Krutzmacht, as I suppose we ought to call the lady.”

“Then why do you go to all this trouble?”

“For various reasons, my dear young man. For the amusement I find in it for one thing. Can you understand that?”

“With some difficulty.”

“A sort of sporting interest in seeing whether she can win and carry off the bag, with the mine, from your hands, just as the other time I was immensely interested in seeing you escape from her hands at Jalapa. . . . She has a very pretty case, a very pretty case,” he mused. “The best legal talent have passed on it and found it quite flawless. It ought to go through without a hitch.”

“Unless the real heir should turn up meanwhile.”

“You still stick to that romantic fiction—that young man’s fancy?”

“You said that you had other reasons for helping Miss Walters?”

“One other reason: I felt that you had treated her—unsympathetically—oh, quite correctly from your puritan point of view; morally you are always above reproach, my young friend. But you are slightly inhuman. Your attitude that night when we discussed this matter at your house was both narrow and inhuman. It disgusted me, if you care to know frankly what I thought.”

“And in order to punish me for not following your advice you are conniving with this woman in the perpetration of fraud,” Brainard sneered.

“You use words rather crudely,” Hollinger replied in a mild tone. “I don’t understand ‘punish’ and ‘fraud’ in the way you do. You are determined to complicate a simple enough situation, and I am determined to give your virtue an all-round test. . . . Well, your mind is made up?”

“Absolutely!” Brainard exclaimed, rising to terminate the interview.

“Perhaps you have your own widow and child?” Hollinger suggested with a laugh.

“Possibly!”

Then they went into the library, which the fight-trust man looked at with much interest.

“Would you like to see the house?” Brainard asked good-naturedly, always proud to show off his beloved theater.

“Above everything! I’ve read so much about it.”

Brainard conducted Hollinger over the building, explaining to him his purposes in making it more than a mere auditorium with a stage. Hollinger admired generously and intelligently all that he saw. As they came out at last in the darkened auditorium where the new play was still being read, he remarked to his host:

“I am very much obliged. It is all extremely interesting, a kind of kindergarten for the drama. Is this one of your products?” he nodded towards the stage.

“It’s Farson’s new play. We have high hopes for it!” Brainard said.

“Well, hurry up with it. I suppose you won’t be running theaters for amusement after—er—the event?”

“That remains to be seen!”

“If you find that you want to get rid of this place, let me know, will you?”

“Thanks!”

“I might find a use for it. . . . I believe Miss Walters has ambitions to be a real star with her own theater. That is more chic these days than owning a copper mine, and she will need occupation.”

“So that was another of your reasons for this call?” Brainard suggested with a laugh.

Hollinger smiled.

“She might take you on as manager—how would that do?”

“I’ll discuss it with her personally, when the time comes!”

“I shall advise her to let you manage the mine instead!” Hollinger retorted, after listening to another of Farson’s rather flamboyant periods. “I think she and I have better notions of what the ‘People’ like.”

With a last smile he slowly sauntered towards the exit, where he paused long enough to catch a few more of the speeches in Her Great Adventure, which seemed to cause him unhappiness.

“Oh, Lord!” he murmured, and rushed for the door.

XV

As the big, pot-bellied steamship was being slowly pushed into her berth, Brainard, standing at the end of the pier, fancied that he could recognize two little figures on the upper deck. These feminine figures, rather eccentrically dressed, were evidently the knot of a laughing, joking circle of American men, all exhilarated by their approaching return to their beloved city. When the great black hull threw its shadow over the dock, one of the little figures waved both arms.

“That’s Louisiana, sure enough!” Brainard exclaimed, much relieved to know that the impulsive young woman had not abandoned her home-coming at the last moment from some fresh whim.

Ever since he had received her little note on the previous Monday, he had been astonished at himself. The prospect of seeing Louisiana again had often come into his mind with an agreeable sensation, hopping in without reason, as if sure of a welcome. This morning he had displayed a greater nervousness at breakfast than he had shown over the possible loss of the Melody mine, and had reached the dock an hour too early.

All this anxiety he explained to himself on the score of his desire to help on his secretary’s play. From the beginning Miss Dudley had shown such an inability to understand her part, and to cope with the character of Gertrude, that the young playwright was in despair. And yet Brainard’s interest in the maiden effort of his young secretary had not led him to confide the news of Louisiana’s unexpected return. He had been gratified indeed to learn that the young man did not suspect it.

Brainard wormed his way into the crowd at the foot of the gangway and waited impatiently while the thin stream of passengers filed down to the dock. The two actresses came together. Louisiana reached out a thin little arm to grasp Brainard’s hand with a ringing “Howdy!” before she gained the dock.

The European trip had made little surface change in the young woman. She was hugging to her a variety of flowers, several parcels, and a toy dog—a substitute for that shambling pup with which she used to appear at the People’s Theater.

“Thanks!” she bubbled, as Brainard relieved her of these impedimenta. “A lot of trucky rubbish I couldn’t jam into my trunk nohow, though I got a tub of a German steward to do the dead-weight act on the lid. You see, I started from London on the run for the steamer—didn’t have time to pack.”

She glanced furtively at Brainard, then down the long pier.

“This town looks good to me, even after Vienna and Paris. Yes, I’d like some real breakfast, thank you! You must have camped out here all night to turn up at such an hour. And how’s everything? How’s the—”

Her voluble stream suddenly ceased, and her gray eyes rested full on Brainard’s face, as if even in her heedless mood she hesitated to ask certain painful questions. Louisiana was very pretty and quite smartly dressed, as Brainard noticed, with a sense of satisfaction in the size of the letter of credit that he had replenished generously from time to time during the last year. Yes, in spite of her careless chatter, any one could see that Miss Delacourt was something of a person now.

Her companion joined them.

“You know Miss Pyce, of course,” Louisiana said. “Spell it with a y, please! We ran bump into each other in Piccadill last week. Cissie had engaged a deck stateroom all to herself, little swell, and that’s how I could get back on this boat.”

“But why did you come in such a hurry?” Brainard asked, when Miss Pyce was diverted to the inspection of her trunks. “I thought you were to stay over until the fall.”

Louisiana looked softly up out of her gray eyes. “But you see Cissie told me all about it!”

“Told you what?”

“That your mine had gone dry, or something, and the theater had to close, and you were in a hole generally.”

“But that wouldn’t have made any difference about you—at least at present. I told Farson not to write you of our troubles.”

“He didn’t. If it hadn’t been for Cissie, I shouldn’t have known a thing, though she said it was all in the papers. But I never read the papers over there.”

“I wish Cissie had kept her mouth shut!”

“She couldn’t, you know, if she had something nasty about the People’s to tell. But ain’t you the least bit glad to see me, after all my hustle to get here as quick as I could?”

“You know I am awfully glad!”

“Naturally I couldn’t stay over there, batting around, and you folks in trouble—just couldn’t have swallowed a mouthful of food!”

Brainard held out his hand.

“Thank you! That’s the nicest thing I have heard for many a day.”

“Perhaps I could do something to help?”

“What?” Brainard asked jokingly. “Discover the real heir to the property?”

Miss Delacourt looked puzzled by this reference to his predicament. Evidently Miss Pyce’s information had been only of the most general character. The details of the threatened suit had not been considered of sufficient importance by the news agencies to cable to Europe.

“I can do something,” the girl said, drawing herself up haughtily. “I’m no stage-struck kid now. I’m going to act.”

“There is something you can do for me—for us,” Brainard hastened to say, remembering his chief excuse for meeting her at the dock. “I want you to come up to my house for breakfast right away, and hear what it is. Bring Miss Pyce, too, if she will come.”

“Oh, she’ll come! Cissie carries around a trunkful of floppy airs, but she’s a right good sort. I’m going to stay with her until I strike a job. She’s half promised to get me something in The Star of the Seven Seas—kitchen wench, I fancy. Cissie isn’t giving much away.”

“There’s something better than that ready for you. We want you to do the Gertrude in Ned’s play.”

“Is the People’s still open?” she cried in astonishment. “Cissie said it had gone dead broke, and was shut for good.”

“This is our last effort; and we want to go down waving the flag. It’s Farson’s play—”

“Yes, I know—he tried to put me in, but I bet he didn’t succeed.”

“It’s a good play, though! And Ned has slaved for the theater these last two years. We must do our best for him. Has he written you about the play?”

“Oh, yes; I should say he had—lots.”

The calm, impersonal way in which she admitted her correspondence with the young secretary pleased Brainard unreasonably.

“He’ll be there for luncheon; so speak to your friend, and let’s be off.”

Miss Pyce condescended to accept the invitation to breakfast from the proprietor of the People’s Theater, as she had nothing better to do with her time. Her own manager had wounded her vanity by not appearing at the dock with an automobile. So the three were soon tucked into Brainard’s motor and crossing the ferry. Miss Pyce inquired after the fate of the People’s company in a tone of lofty kindness, until Louisiana kicked her about the ankles, causing her to relapse into a sulky gloom.

“The salubrious air of Broadway will do you good, I hope, Cissie,” Louisiana remarked severely. “I’ve stood your nonsense for six days because I had to. Now come to, please! Just because you’ve got a fool play, and a fool manager to waste his money on you, you needn’t try the Duse-Bernhardt-Ellen Terry pose on old friends!”

Miss Pyce promptly descended several steps and began to converse about the New York weather, which she said was trying to English nerves.

When they arrived at Brainard’s house, they found that Farson had not yet come in from rehearsal. The two women were shown into the little den behind the library, while Brainard glanced over his mail.

Five minutes had scarcely elapsed when a shriek came from the inner room, and the door was thrown violently open. Louisiana stood on the threshold, clasping against her breast a little picture framed in a thin gold molding.

“Where did you get this?” she demanded breathlessly.

Brainard looked at her admiringly. As she stood there against the dark shadows of the inner room, the sun from the window falling in a great gold bar across her auburn hair and violet-colored traveling dress—thin, erect, full of the passionate eagerness of youth—he saw Farson’s character created.

“Bravo, Gertrude!” he cried.

“Tell me, where did you find this?” she insisted impatiently.

“What have you got there?” he asked, taking the picture from her hands.

Her face followed his with curiosity and expectation, her eyes searching him.

“Where did you get it?” she repeated.

“This water color? I picked it up in Arizona—out there where my mine is located. It’s a long story—my story. I’ll tell it to you some of these days.”

“Now! Tell it to me now!” she insisted, with something more than childish impetuosity.

But just then Cissie Pyce, patting the marvelous folds of her hair, came from the inner room.

“Not now,” Brainard replied, looking meaningly at Miss Pyce.

Taking the water color from Louisiana’s reluctant hands, he replaced it above the desk in his private study, where it had always hung since he had moved into this house.

Farson came in presently, and in the flurry of his surprise and greetings the subject of the water color was apparently forgotten. Now and again, however, during their lively breakfast, Brainard found Louisiana’s gray eyes resting on him with a peculiar intentness. She did not seem so much excited over the prospect of playing Gertrude in Her Great Adventure as he had expected.

After the meal Cissie tore herself away reluctantly, and the three others went over the new play, the author explaining some of his ideas, and seeking to get the young actress interested in her part. Louisiana listened, but evidently her thoughts were far away. Farson was visibly disappointed.

“I think Miss Delacourt must be tired after her journey and the early landing,” Brainard interposed in kindly fashion.

“Of course—pardon me!” the young dramatist said, throwing down his manuscript. “Let me set you down at your hotel on the way to the theater.”

“No, you are already late for the rehearsal. I will take Miss Delacourt home when the motor comes back. I have something to say to her.”

Farson left with reluctance, after making an engagement for the morrow with the young actress.

“And I’ll know my lines by that time,” she promised him.

No sooner had the door closed upon the secretary than she leaped to her feet.

“Now for the story! And may I see the picture again?”

Brainard fetched the little water color and placed it in her hands.

“As I told you,” he said, “it’s by way of being the story of my own life—at least, of the only part that counts as life!”

“Yes?” she said expectantly.

Looking over her shoulders, he pointed to a spot in the distant mountain background of the sketch.

“In there is the site of the great Melody mine—”

“Melody—what? Why, what do you mean?” the girl stammered in renewed excitement.

“The Melody mine—that’s the name of the mine about which there is the litigation, you know. That’s where all the money for the theater came from. It’s the famous pot of gold—my Aladdin’s lamp—only it’s likely to change owners.”

“But why did you call it Melody?” Louisiana demanded, with glistening eyes.

“That’s all in the story, too,” laughed Brainard.

“Then tell it to me—all!”

She dropped the picture into her lap, and, holding her little hands tightly clasped, fastened her eyes on Brainard’s face, as if what he had to say was of momentous interest to her. But that, he reflected, somewhat flattered, was just Louisiana’s way.

“Here goes, then, Miss Delacourt, for the story of my life, which explains that water-color sketch being in my possession!”

And Brainard retold the tale of his great adventure since he played the part of good Samaritan to the dying stranger. It took some time to tell the story, and he did not hurry. The motor came back and waited below, while he went into all the details of the story with which we are familiar.

At certain places Louisiana opened her lips, as if she could not control an exclamation; but when Brainard paused, she merely motioned him impatiently to continue. As he told of his dropping from the train at the lonely water tank, and of the strange little girl who had guided him to Gunnison’s shack, Louisiana’s mobile lips parted in a curious smile. She was not so much interested in his Mexican adventures, nor in the European chapters, but when he described his first visit to the deserted house on the hill above Monument, the girl’s face sobered to a wistful expression, and she caught her breath as if she might sob.

“And there I missed her by a few weeks!” Brainard said.

Louisiana laughed aloud, as if it were all a joke.

“It sounds,” Brainard remarked, having rapidly concluded the account of his experiences as a miner, “like a dime-novel yarn, but it happens to be all true. And throughout my adventures, all through these six years, I’ve clung to the idea of just being the trustee for this unknown lady—this Miss Melody Krutzmacht, or whatever her real name may be. I think that is what has saved me from becoming a plain gambler, and the whole business no better than the melodrama Farson and I saw, The Stolen Bonds, where we met my old friend Hollinger. I’ve got Melody to thank for saving my moral character, as well as doing a lot else for me. But I haven’t much hope now of finding the lady, to thank her for anything!”