p. vHIS GREAT ADVENTURE

BY

ROBERT HERRICK

AUTHOR OF “TOGETHER,” “ONE WOMAN’S LIFE” “THE COMMON LOT,” ETC.

WITH FRONTISPIECE

New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1913

All rights reserved

p. viCopyright, 1912, By THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY.

Copyright, 1913, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1913.

FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY NEW YORK. N. Y., U.S.A.

p. 1PART I: FORTUNE

p. 3I

It was dusk of an April day, and Fifth Avenue was crowded. A young man, who had emerged from a large hotel, stood in the stream of traffic and gazed irresolutely up and down the thoroughfare. He wore a long, cheap rain-coat, and his head was covered by a steamer-cap of an old design, with two flaps tied in a knot across the top, behind which an overabundant crop of dull black hair pushed forth.

His thin, sallow face was unshaven, and his eyes were rimmed by round steel spectacles that gave him an almost owlish expression. An air of dejection hung about him, as he loitered by the curb—not the imaginative depression of youth, soon to float off like a cloud before the sun of life, but rather the settled gloom of repeated failure, as if the conviction of final doom had already begun to penetrate deeply into his manhood.

He looked first up the avenue, then down, vacant of purpose, seeing nothing in the moving pageant. Finally, as if aroused by certain curious p. 4glances that the less hurried passers-by cast on him, he bestirred himself and moved on down the avenue, his shoulders stooped, his legs trailing wearily.

Thus he proceeded for several blocks, never raising his head, stopping mechanically at the street crossings, resuming his discouraged pace as the crowd moved on. Once he plunged his hand into his coat pocket, to assure himself of some possession, and then withdrew it with a bitter smile for his unconscious anxiety.

When in this vacant promenade he had reached the lower part of the avenue, where the crowd was less dense, and less gay and rich in appearance, he lifted his head and looked musingly into the misty space before him.

“Well,” he muttered, with tightening lips, “it’s only one more throw-down. I ought to be used to ’em by now!”

Nevertheless, his face relapsed into its melancholy expression as he turned into one of the side streets with the unconscious precision of the animal following a beaten path to its hole.

He crossed several of the shabbier commercial avenues, which were crowded with traffic and blocked by men and women returning from the day’s work. Compared with these tired laborers, he seemed to have a large leisure—the freedom p. 5of absolute poverty. His thoughts had turned to supper. Should he buy a roll and a piece of pie at the bakery on the next corner, or—mad venture!—dissipate his last resources at the saloon opposite, where the Italian wife of the Irish proprietor offered appetizing nourishment for a quarter?

Meditating upon this important decision, the young man entered his own block. At one end the elevated trains rattled; at the other, heavy drays lumbered past in an unbroken file on their way to the ferries; but between the two there was a strip of quiet, where the dingy old houses were withdrawn from the street, and in front of them a few dusty shrubs struggled for life in the bare plots of earth.

In the middle of this block there was an unusually animated scene. A group of children had huddled together about some object of interest. A horse must have fallen on the pavement, the young man thought dully, or there was a fight, or a policeman had made a capture.

He hurried his lagging steps, moved by a boyish curiosity. As he drew nearer, he perceived that the circle was too small to contain a horse or a good scrap. The center of interest must be some unfortunate human being. He shouldered his way through the crowd.

p. 6“What’s up?” he asked of a small boy.

“A drunk,” was the laconic reply.

Looking over the heads of the boys, the young man could see the figure of a stoutish, well-dressed man lying prone on the pavement. His black coat was spattered with mud, his gray hair rumpled. His eyes were closed, and through the open lips his tongue protruded.

“Say, he’s bad!” the boy observed knowingly. “Just look at him!”

A convulsion shook the prostrate figure. The face began to twitch, and one arm waved violently, beating the air. One or two more mature passers-by who had been attracted by the disturbance drew off, with the selfish city excuse that the proper authorities would come in time and attend to the nuisance. Not so the idle young man.

“He isn’t drunk!” he exclaimed, pushing his way into the circle and stooping over the figure. He had seen too many plain “drunks” in his newspaper days to be deceived in the symptoms.

“There he goes again!” the boys shouted.

“He has some sort of fit. Here, one of you give me a hand, and we’ll get him off the street!”

The boys readily helped the young man to drag the prostrate figure to the nearest steps, and one of them ran to the corner after a policeman. p. 7When the officer arrived, the young man, who had steadied the stranger through another convulsion, said:

“You’ll have to call an ambulance. We’d better carry him somewhere—can’t let him lie here in the street like a dog. We can take him to my room.”

He motioned toward the next house, and with the officer’s assistance carried the sick man into the rear room on the first floor, which he unlocked. Then the policeman drove the curious boys out of the house and went off to summon the ambulance. Left alone, the young man dipped a towel in his water-pitcher, wet the sick man’s brow, then wiped his face and cleaned the foam and dirt from his beard and lips.

The stranger, lying with half-closed eyes, looked to be rather more than sixty years of age. Judging from the quality of his clothes, and from his smooth hands, he was a well-to-do business man. Presently his eyelids began to twitch, then the whole face; the right leg shot out and beat the air; then the right arm began to wave, and foam oozed from his lips.

“I wish they’d hurry that ambulance!” the young man thought, as he wiped the sick man’s face again with the damp towel. “He won’t last long, at this rate!”

p. 8This convulsion gradually passed off as the others had, and the stranger lay once more as if dead, his eyes almost wholly closed. The young man went to the door and listened nervously, then returned to the prostrate form, unbuttoned the coat, and felt for the heart. Immediately the sick man opened his eyes, and, looking directly into the eyes of the man bending over him, tried to raise his hand, as if he would protect himself from a blow.

“It’s all right!” the young man said reassuringly. “I was just feeling for your heart, friend.”

The sick man’s lips twitched desperately; and finally, in the faintest whisper, he managed to stammer:

“Wh-who are you?”

“One Edgar Brainard,” the young man replied promptly. “Let me unfasten this vest and make you more comfortable.”

“N-n-no!” the sick man gasped suspiciously.

He managed to clutch Brainard’s wrist with his wavering right hand; his left lay quite powerless by his side. His eyes closed again, but the lips moved silently, as if he were trying to frame sounds.

“He’s going this time, sure!”

The young man slipped his wrist from the feeble grasp, inserted a pillow under the sick man’s head, and sat back to wait.

p. 9II

It was very still in that back room. No step sounded in the hall, and the noise from the street came muffled. In the stillness, the sick man’s desperate efforts to breathe filled the little room with painful sounds. Brainard felt the stifling approach of death, and opened the window wide to get what air would come in from the small court outside.

He studied the figure on the lounge more closely. The thick, red under lip curled over the roots of the gray beard. A short, thick nose gave the face a look of strong will, even of obstinacy. There was a foreign expression to the features that might indicate German descent.

On the third finger of his right hand, the sick man wore an old, plain gold ring, which had sunk deep into the flesh. From the inside pocket of his short coat bulged a thick wallet, over which his right hand rested, as if to guard precious possessions.

“He thought I was going to rob him!” Brainard observed. “Expect he’s been up against it already—and that’s what’s the trouble.”

p. 10It was quite dark. The young man lighted a gas-jet, then went again to the door. As he stood there, listening, he felt the old man’s eyes on him, and turned to look at him. The eyes, now wide open, held him, asking what the lips refused to utter.

Brainard went back to his patient and leaned over to catch the flutter from the moving lips. At last, as if with great exertion, the murmur came:

“Wh-wh-what are you go-going to do—to do—with me?”

In spite of the faintness of the whisper, it was the voice of one accustomed to being answered.

“I’ve sent an officer for an ambulance,” Brainard replied. “It ought to be here before now, I should think. They’ll take you to some hospital and fix you up,” he added encouragingly.

The lips twitched into a semblance of a smile, then mumbled:

“No—not—th-this time.”

“What’s the matter—accident?” Brainard asked.

The sick man did not attempt to reply, as if he considered the question of trifling importance. Instead, his eyes studied the young man’s face intently. Evidently his brain was clearing from the shock, whatever had caused it, and he was revolving some purpose. Soon the lips began to p. 11move once more, and Brainard bent close to catch the faint sounds.

“Wh-wh-what’s your bus-bus-i-ness?”

“Oh, I’ve had lots of businesses,” the young man replied carelessly. “Been on a newspaper, in the ad business, real estate, and so on.” He added after a moment, with a little ironical laugh, “Just now I’m in the literary business—a dramatist.”

The sick man looked puzzled, and frowned, as if disappointed. Perhaps his cloudy brain could not assort this information with his purpose. Presently his brow contracted, his face twitched violently, the right leg shot out.

“I say! It’s too bad,” the young man exclaimed sympathetically. “I wish I knew what to do for you. Where can that ambulance be?” He laid one hand on the sick man’s hot brow, and held his arm with the other. “Easy now!” he exclaimed, as the right arm began whirling. “There! Steady! It’s going off.”

Instead of closing his eyes, as he had done after the previous attacks, and relapsing into coma, the sick man made an immediate effort to speak.

“Co-come here,” he articulated faintly. “Important, very important.”

He groped feebly for his inner pocket.

“You want me to take out this bundle?” p. 12Brainard asked, laying his hand on the bulky wallet.

The man made an affirmative sign, and kept his eyes steadily on Brainard while the latter gently extracted the pocketbook.

“You—you will do something for me?” the stranger said more distinctly than he had hitherto spoken, as if urgency were clearing his mind. “You can—you can start to-night?”

“I’m not very busy,” the young man said, with a laugh. “I guess I could start for Hong-Kong on a few minutes’ notice.”

“Not Hong-Kong,” the old man labored forth literally. “You’re honest?”

It was said in a tone of self-conviction rather than of question.

“Oh, I guess so,” the young man answered lightly. “At least, what’s called honest—never had a chance to steal anything worth taking!” He added more seriously, to quiet the sick man, who seemed to be laboring under excitement, “Tell me what you want done, and I’ll do my best to put it through for you.”

The sick man’s eyes expressed relief, and then his brow contracted, as if he were summoning all his powers in a final effort to make a clogged brain do his urgent will.

“Lis-lis-listen,” he murmured. “No—no, p. 13write—write it down,” he went on, as Brainard leaned forward.

Brainard looked about his bare room for paper, but in vain. He felt in his pockets for a stray envelope, then drew from his overcoat a roll of manuscript. He glanced at it dubiously for a moment, then tore off the last sheet, which had on one side a few lines of typewriting. With a gesture of indifference, he turned to the sick man and prepared to take his message.

“All ready,” he remarked. “I can take it in shorthand, if you want.”

“Sev-en, thir-ty-one, and four. Sev-en, thir-tyone, and four. Sev-en, thir-ty-one, and four,” he repeated almost briskly.

Brainard looked at him inquiringly, and the stranger whispered the explanation: “Combi-na-tion pri-vate safe—understand?” Brainard nodded.

“Where?”

“Office—San Francisco.”

The young man whistled.

“That’s a good ways off! What do you want me to do there?”

“Take everything.”

“What shall I do with the stuff? Bring it here to New York?” the young man inquired, with growing curiosity.

p. 14The sick man’s blue eyes stared at him steadily, with a look of full intelligence.

“I shall be dead then,” he mumbled.

“Oh, I hope not!” Brainard remarked.

But with unflinching eyes, the sick man continued:

“You must have—pow-er—pow-er of attorney.”

He brought the words out with difficulty, not wasting his strength by discussing his chances of recovery. He was evidently growing weaker, and Brainard had to bend close to his lips in order to catch the faint whisper, “Take it down!”

And with his face beginning to twitch, and the convulsive tremors running over his body, the sick man summoned all his will and managed to dictate a power of attorney in legal terms, as if he were familiar with the formula. When he had finished, his eyes closed, and his lips remained open. Brainard dropped his paper and felt for the sick man’s heart. It was still beating faintly.

After a few moments, the eyes opened mistily, and again the man made an effort to collect himself for another effort.

“What shall I do with the stuff?” Brainard inquired.

“Ge-get it out of the country. Take it to—to Ber-Ber-Ber—”

p. 15“Bermuda?” Brainard suggested.

“Berlin!” the sick man corrected with a frown. As if to impress his messenger with the seriousness of his work, he added, “If you don’t get away, they’ll—kill you.”

“Oh!” Brainard exclaimed, impressed.

The blue eyes examined the young man steadily, as if they would test his metal. Then, satisfied, the man murmured:

“Quick—must—sign—quick! Now!” he concluded, as his face began to twitch.

Brainard handed him a pen, and held his right arm to steady him while he scrawled his name—“H. Krutzmacht.” The sick man traced the letters slowly, patiently, persisting until he had dashed a heavy line across the t’s and another beneath the name; then he dropped the pen and closed his eyes.

When another moment of control came to him, he whispered uneasily:

“Witness? Must have witness.”

“We’ll find some one—don’t worry,” the young man replied lightly. “The ambulance man, when he comes, if he ever does come!”

Brainard did not yet take very seriously the idea of starting that night for San Francisco to rifle a safe.

“Mo-mo-money,” the voice began, and the p. 16eyes wandered to the fat wallet which Brainard had deposited on the table.

Brainard lifted the wallet.

“Plen-plen-plenty of mon-money!”

“I understand,” the young man replied. “There’s enough cash for the journey in here.”

As he laid the wallet down, there was the welcome sound of feet in the passage outside, and with an exclamation of relief the young man flung open the door. The ambulance surgeon was there with an assistant and a stretcher. With a muttered explanation for his delay, the doctor went at once to the sick man and examined him, while Brainard told what he knew of his strange guest.

“Tries to talk all the time—must be something on his mind!” he said, as another convulsion seized the sick man. “Been doped, I should say.”

“Looks like brain trouble, sure,” the ambulance surgeon remarked, watching the stranger closely. “He can’t last long that way. Well, we’d better hustle him to the hospital as soon as we can.”

They had the sick man on the stretcher before he had opened his eyes from his last attack. As they lifted him, he mumbled excitedly, and Brainard, listening close to his lips, thought he understood what was troubling him.

p. 17“He wants that paper witnessed,” he explained. “I forgot—it’s something he dictated to me.”

“Well, hurry up about it,” the surgeon replied carelessly, willing to humor the sick man. “Here!”

Brainard dipped his pen in the ink-bottle and handed it to the surgeon, who lightly dashed down his signature at the bottom of the sheet, without reading it.

“Now are we ready?” the doctor demanded impatiently.

But the blue eyes arrested Brainard, and the young man, stooping over the stretcher, caught a faint whisper:

“You’ll g-g-go?”

“Sure!”

“Gi-gi-give it all to—”

Krutzmacht struggled hard to pronounce a name, but he could not utter the word.

“It’s no use!” the doctor exclaimed. “Tell him to wait until he’s better.”

But Brainard, moved by the sick man’s intense look of mental distress, raised his hand to the doctor and listened. At last the whispered syllable reached his ear:

“M-M-Mel—”

“I tell you it’s no use!” the ambulance doctor p. 18repeated irritably. “They’ll find out at the hospital what he wants done. Come on!”

As they bore the stretcher through the narrow door, the agonized expression gave way, and the sick man articulated more distinctly:

“Mel-Melo—”

“Melo-melodrama!” Brainard said. “It’s all right, my friend. Don’t worry—I’ll fix it up for you!”

With astonishing distinctness came back the one word:

“Melody!”

“All right—Melody!”

The sick man would have said more, but the ambulance men bore him swiftly to the waiting vehicle and shoved him in.

“Will you come along?” the doctor asked.

“No. I’ll look in some time to-morrow, probably—St. Joseph’s, isn’t it?”

The sick man’s eyes still rested on Brainard, when the latter poked his head into the dark ambulance. They seemed to glow with a full intelligence, and also with a command, as if they said:

“Do just what I’ve told you to do!”

“He knows what he wants, even if he can’t say it,” Brainard muttered to himself as the ambulance moved off. “Poor old boy!”

p. 19III

When Brainard opened the door of his room, he heard the rustle of papers on the floor, blown about by the draft from the window. He lighted his lamp and picked up the loose sheets, which were the typewritten leaves of his last play—the one that he had finally got back that very afternoon from a famous actor-manager, without even the usual note of polite regret from the secretary. The absence of that familiar note had dejected him especially.

He shoved the rejected play into his table drawer indifferently, thinking of the sick man’s last urgent look, and of the terrible effort he had made to articulate his final words. What did he mean by “Melody”? Perhaps the old fellow was really out of his head, and all the rest about his valuable papers in some private safe at the other end of the continent was mythical—the fancy of an unhinged mind.

But the memory of the old man’s face—of those keen blue eyes—made Brainard reject such a commonplace solution of the puzzle. The p. 20sick man had been in this room with him for a full half-hour, and the place still seemed filled with his positive, commanding personality.