The City of Numbered Days

"Mr. Cortwright would like to see you in his rooms at the Metropole," was the message the office boy brought, and Brouillard closed his desk with a snap and followed the boy to Bongras's.

The shrewd-eyed tyrant of Mirapolis was in his shirt-sleeves, busily dictating to two stenographers alternately, when the engineer entered the third room of the series; but the work was suspended and the stenographers were sent away as soon as Brouillard was announced.

"Well," was the millionaire's greeting, "you waited to be sent for, didn't you?"

"Why not?" said Brouillard shortly. "I have my work to do and you have yours."

"And the two jobs are at opposite ends of the string, you'd say. Never mind; we can't afford to throw each other down, and just now you can tell me a few things that I want to know. How is young Massingale getting along?"

"As well as could be expected. Carruthers – the doctor – says he is out of danger."

"H'm. It has been handed in to me two or three times lately that the old man is out gunning for Van Bruce or for me. Any truth in that?"

"I think not. Massingale is a Kentuckian, and I fancy he is quite capable of potting either one or both of you for the attack on his son. But so far he has done nothing – has hardly left Steve's bedside."

Mr. J. Wesley Cortwright flung himself back in his luxurious swing chair and clasped his pudgy hands over the top of his head where the reddish-gray hair was thinning reluctantly.

"I've been putting it off to see which way the cat was going to jump," he admitted. "If young Massingale is out of danger, it is time to get action. What was the quarrel about, between him and Van Bruce?"

"Why do you ask me?" queried Brouillard.

"Because you are pretty thick with the Massingales, and you probably know," was the blunt accounting for the question.

"It occurs to me that your son would be a better source of information," said Brouillard, still evading.

"Van Bruce has told me all he remembers – which isn't much, owing to his own beastly condition at the time. He says young Massingale was threatening something – something in connection with the Coronida Grant – and that he got the insane idea into his head that the only way to stop the threat was by killing Massingale."

The sandy-gray eyes of the millionaire promoter were shifting while he spoke, but Brouillard fixed and held them before he said: "Why should Massingale threaten your son, Mr. Cortwright?"

"I don't know," denied the promoter, and he said it without flinching a hair's-breadth.

"Then I can tell you," was the equally steady rejoinder. "Some time ago you lent David Massingale, through the bank, a pretty large sum of money for development expenses on the 'Little Susan,' taking a mortgage on everything in sight to cover the loan."

"I did."

"Massingale's obligation was in short-time, bankable paper, which he expected to take up when the railroad should come in and give him a market for the ore which he has already taken out of the mine."

"Yes."

"But when the railroad was an assured fact he learned that the Red Butte smelters wouldn't take his ore, giving some technical reason which he knew to be a mere excuse."

Mr. Cortwright nodded. "So far you might be reading it out of a book."

"In consequence of these successive happenings, David Massingale finds himself in a fair way to become a broken man by the simplest of commercial processes. The bank holds his notes, which will presently have to be paid. If he can't pay, the bank comes back on you as his indorser, and you fall back on your mortgage and take the mine. Isn't that about the size of it?"

"It is exactly the size of it."

Brouillard laughed quietly. "And yet you said a moment ago that you didn't know why young Massingale should threaten your son."

"And I don't know yet," blustered the magnate. "Is it my fault that Massingale can't pay his debts?"

The engineer had stopped laughing when he said definitely and decidedly: "It is."

It was the promoter's turn to laugh.

"What sort of a bug have you got in your cosmos this morning, Brouillard? Why, man, you're crazy!"

Brouillard rose and relighted his cigar.

"If that is your last word, Mr. Cortwright, I may as well go back to my office. You don't need me."

"Oh, hold on; don't go off in a huff. You're too thin-skinned for any common kind of use. I was only trying you to see how far you'd carry it. Let it stand. Assume, for the sake of argument, that I do want the 'Little Susan' and that I've got a good friend or two in the Red Butte smelters who will help me get it. Now, then, does that stand the band-wagon upon its wheels again?"

Brouillard's black eyes were snapping, but his voice was quite steady when he said: "Thank you; now we shall go on better. You want the 'Little Susan,' and Massingale naturally thinks you're taking an unfair advantage of him to get it. Quite as naturally he is going to make reprisals if he can. That brings us down to the mention of the Coronida Grant and Stephen Massingale's threat – which your son can't remember."

"Right-o," said Mr. Cortwright, still with predetermined geniality. "What was the threat?"

"I don't know, but the guessing list is open to everybody. There was once a grant of many square miles of mountain and desert somewhere in this region made to one Don Estacio de Montarriba Coronida. Like those of most of the great Spanish land grants, the boundaries of this one were loosely described and – "

Mr. Cortwright held up a fat hand.

"I know what you're going to say. But we went into all that at Washington before we ever invested a single dollar in this valley. As you may or may not know, the Reclamation Service bureau tried to choke us off. But when it came down to brass tacks, they lacked a witness. We may be in the bed of your proposed lake, but we're safely on Coronida land."

"So you say," said Brouillard quietly, "and on the strength of that you have been guaranteeing titles."

"Oh, no," protested the millionaire. "We have merely referred purchasers to the record. There is a clause in every deed."

"But you have caused it to be believed that your title was good, that the government's claim to the land will not hold."

"It won't hold if we're on Coronida land."

"Ah! Just there is where Massingale comes in, I imagine. He has spent twenty years or more in this region, and he knows every landmark in it. What if he should be able to put a lighted match to your pile of kindling, Mr. Cortwright?"

The promoter pulled himself erect with a grip on either arm of the chair.

"Brouillard, do you know what you are talking about?" he demanded.

"No; it is only a guess. But as matters stand – with your son indictable for an attempted murder … if I were you, Mr. Cortwright, I believe I'd give David Massingale a chance to pay those notes at the bank."

"And let him blackmail me? Not in a month of Sundays, Brouillard! Let him sell his ore and pay the notes if he can. If he can't, I'll take the mine."

"All right," said the visitor placably. "You asked, and I've answered. Now let's come to something more vital to both of us. There is a pretty persistent rumor on the street that you and your associates succeeded in getting a resolution through both houses of Congress at the last session, appointing a committee to investigate this Coronida claim right here on the ground. Nobody seems to have any definite details, and it possibly hasn't occurred to any one that Congress hasn't been in session since Mirapolis was born. But that doesn't matter. The committee is coming: you have engaged rooms for it here in Bongras's. You are expecting the private-car special next week."

"Well?" said the magnate. "You're a pretty good kindergartner. But what of it?"

"Oh, nothing. Only I think you might have taken me in on the little side play. What if I had gone about town contradicting the rumor?"

"Why should you? It's true. The Congressional party will be here next week, and nobody has made any secret of it."

"Still, I might have been taken in," persisted Brouillard suavely. "You'll surely want to give me my instructions a little beforehand, won't you? Just think how easily things might get tangled. Suppose I should say to somebody – to Garner, for example – that the town was hugely mistaken; that no Congressional committee had ever been appointed; that these gentlemen who are about to visit us are mere complaisant friends of yours, coming as your guests, on a junketing trip at your expense. Wouldn't that be rather awkward?"

The mayor of Mirapolis brought his hands together, fist in palm, and for a flitting instant the young engineer saw in the face of the father the same expression that he had seen in the face of the son when Van Bruce Cortwright was struggling for a second chance to kill a man.

"Damn you!" said the magnate savagely; "you always know too much! You're bargaining with me!"

"Well, you have bargained with me, first, last, and all the time," was the cool retort. "On each occasion I have had my price, and you have paid it. Now you are going to pay it again. Shall I go over to the Spot-Light office and tell Harlan what I know?"

"You can't bluff me that way, Brouillard, and you ought to sense it by this time. Do you suppose I don't know how you are fixed? – that you've got money – money that you used to say you owed somebody else – tied up in Mirapolis investments?"

Brouillard rose and buttoned his coat.

"There is one weak link in your chain, Mr. Cortwright," he said evenly; "you don't know men. Put on your coat and come over to Harlan's office with me. It will take just about two minutes to satisfy you that I'm not bluffing."

For a moment it appeared that the offer was to be accepted. But when he had one arm in a coat sleeve, Brouillard's antagonist in the game of hardihood changed his tactics.

"Forget it," he growled morosely. "What do you want this time?"

"I want you to send a wire to Red Butte telling the smelter people that you will be glad to have them handle the 'Little Susan' ore."

"And if I do?"

"If you do, two things otherwise due to happen adversely will go over to your side of the market. I'll agree to keep out of the way of the sham Washington delegation, and I think I can promise that Harlan won't make a scare-head of the facts concerning the Coronida land titles."

Mr. Cortwright thrust the other arm into the remaining coat sleeve and scowled. But the rebound to the norm of brusque good-nature came almost immediately.

"You are improving wonderfully, Brouillard, and that's no joke. I have a large respect for a man who can outbid me in my own corner. You ought to be in business – and you will be, some time. I'll send the wire, but I warn you in advance that I can't make the smelter people take Massingale's ore if they don't want to. All I can do is to give the old man a free field."

"That is all he will ask – all I'll ask, except one small personal favor: don't rub your masquerading Washington delegation into me too hard. A fine quality of non-interference is about all you are buying from me, and – "

The interruption came in the form of a tap at the door opening into the hotel corridor, and Brouillard, at a sign from the master of the precincts, turned the knob. It was Miss Genevieve who entered, bringing the sweet breeziness and audacity of youth and beauty and health with her.

"How fortunate!" she exclaimed, with the charming smile that accorded so perfectly with her fresh, early-morning radiance. And while the hand of greeting still lay in Brouillard's: "I have just been up to your office, and they told me they hadn't the smallest idea where you could be found. Are you going to be very busy this afternoon?"

Brouillard gave the required denial, and she explained her quest of him. There was to be an auto party to the newly opened casino at the upper power dam. Would he go, if he might have the post of honor behind the pilot-wheel of the new sixty-horse, seven-passenger flyer? Please!

Mr. Cortwright leaned heavily upon his desk while the asking and answering went on, and the shrewd, gray eyes were busy. When his daughter went out and Brouillard was about to follow her, the genial web spinner stopped him.

"Tell me one thing, Brouillard: what is your stake in the Massingale game? Are you a silent partner in the 'Little Susan'?"

"No."

"Then why are you so anxious to make old David a rich man at my expense? Are you going to marry the girl?"

The engineer did not resent the question as he would have resented it a few weeks earlier. Instead he smiled and said: "A little while ago, Mr. Cortwright, I told you that you didn't know men; now I'll add that you don't know women."

"I know Gene," said the web spinner cryptically, and this was the word that Brouillard took with him when he went back to his offices in the Niquoia Building.

XIII

Flood Tide

Public opinion, skilfully formed upon models fashioned in Mayor Cortwright's municipal laboratory, dealt handsomely with the little group of widely heralded visitors – the "Congressional committee" – penetrating to the Wonder City, not by special train, to be sure, but still with creditable circumstance in President Ford's private car "Nadia," attached to the regular express from Brewster.

For example, when it was whispered about, some days before the auspicious arrival, that the visiting lawmakers wished for no public demonstration of welcome, it was resolved, both in the city council and in the Commercial Club, that the wish should be rigidly respected.

Later, when there filtered out from the same secret source of information a hint to the effect that the committee of investigation, for the better forming of an unbiassed opinion, desired to be regarded merely as a body of representative citizens and the guests of Mayor Cortwright, and not as national legislators, this desire, too, was respected; and even Harlan, itching to his finger-tips for something definite to print in the Spot-Light, denied himself the bare, journalistic, bread-and-butter necessity of interviewing the lawmakers.

Safeguarded, then, by the loyal incuriosity of an entire city, the visitors went about freely, were fêted, dined, banqueted, and entertained as distinguished citizens of the Greater America; were personally conducted over the government work, and were autoed to the Quadjenàï placers, to the upper valley, and to the canal diggers' camps in the Buckskin, all without prejudice to the official incognito which it was understood they wished to preserve.

Hence, after the farewell banquet at the Commercial Club, at which even the toasts had ignored the official mission of Mayor Cortwright's guests, when the "Nadia," reprovisioned and tastefully draped with the national colors, was coupled to the outgoing train in the Chigringo yards, tingling curiosity still restrained itself, said nothing and did nothing until the train had stormed out on the beginning of its steep climb to War Arrow Pass. Then the barriers went down. In less than half an hour after the departure of the visitors, the Spot-Light office was besieged by eager tip hunters, and the Metropole café and lobby were thronged and buzzing like the compartments of an anxious beehive.

Harlan stood the pressure at the newspaper office as long as he could. Then he slipped out the back way and prevailed upon Bongras to smuggle him up to Mr. Cortwright's rooms. Here there was another anxious deputation in waiting, but Harlan's card was honored at once.

"News!" gasped the editor, when he had broken into the privacies. "They're about to mob us over at the office, and the town will go crazy if it can't be given at least a hint of what the committee's report is likely to be. I tell you, Mr. Cortwright, it's panic, or the biggest boom we ever dreamed of!"

"Sit down, Harlan," said the great man calmly, pushing the open box of cigars across the desk to the editor; "sit down and get a fresh grip on your nerves. There will be no panic; of that you can be absolutely certain. But, on the other hand, we mustn't kick the fat into the fire when everything is going our way. Naturally, I am under bonds to keep my mouth shut until after the committee has made its report. I can't even give you the hint you want. But I will say this – and you can put it in an interview if you like: I'm not refusing anything in the shape of Mirapolis realty at ruling prices. That's all I can say at present."

Harlan was hustled out, as he had been hustled in, half dazed and wholly in despair. There was a light in Brouillard's office on the sixth floor of the Niquoia Building, and thither he went, hoping against hope, for latterly the chief of the Reclamation Service had been more than usually reticent.

"What do you know, Brouillard?" was the form his demand took when, finding that the elevator had stopped, he had dragged himself up the five flights of stairs. "I'm up against it good and hard if I can't print something in to-morrow's paper."

"Go to Cortwright," suggested the engineer. "He's your man."

"Just come from him, and I couldn't get a thing there except his admission that he is buying instead of selling."

"Well, what more do you want? Haven't you any imagination?"

"Plenty of it, and, by Gad, I'm going to use it unless you put it to sleep! Tell me a few correlative things, Brouillard, and I'll make a noise like going away. Is it true that you've had orders from Washington within the past few days to cut your force on the dam one half?"

The engineer was playing with the paper-knife, absently marking little circles and ellipses on his desk blotter, and the ash on his cigar grew a full quarter of an inch before he replied:

"Not for publication, Harlan, I'm sorry to say."

"But you have the order?"

"Yes."

"Do you know the reason why it was given?"

"I do."

"Is it a good reason?"

"It is a very excellent reason, indeed."

"Does the order cover more than the work on the dam?"

"Yes; it extends to the canal diggers in the Buckskin."

"Good. Then I'll ask only one more question, and if you answer it at all I know you'll tell me the truth: are you, individually, buying or selling on the Real Estate Exchange? Take your time, Brouillard, but, for God's sake, don't turn me down."

Brouillard did take time, plenty of it. Over and over the point of the paper-knife traced the creased circles and ellipses, and the ash on the slowly burning cigar grew longer. Harlan was a student of men, but his present excitement was against him. Otherwise he could not have stared so long and so intently at Brouillard's face without reading therein the record of the soul struggle his final question had evoked. And if he had read, he would have interpreted differently the quick flinging down of the paper-cutter, and the sudden hardening of the jaw muscles when Brouillard spoke.

"I'm buying, Harlan; when I sell it is only to buy again."

The newspaper man rose and held out his hand.

"You're a man and a brother, Brouillard, and I'm your friend for life. With only a fraction of your chance at inside information, I've stayed on the up-hill side, straight through, myself. And I'll tell you why. I've banked on you. I've said to myself that it was safe for me to wade around in the edges if you could plunge out in the sure-enough swimming-hole. I'm going to stay until you give me the high sign to crawl out on the bank. Is that asking too much?"

"No. If the time ever comes when I have anything to say, I'll say it to you. But don't lose sight of the 'if,' and don't lean too hard on me. I'm a mighty uncertain quantity these days, Harlan, and that's the truest thing I've told you since you butted in. Good-night."

Mirapolis awoke to a full sense of its opportunities on the morning following the departure of its distinguished guests. Though the Spot-Light was unable to say anything conclusively definite, Harlan had made the most of what he had; and, trickling in from a dozen independent sources, as it seemed, came jubilant confirmation of the Spot-Light's optimistic editorials.

In such a crisis all men are liars. Now that the visiting delegation was gone, there were scores of witnesses willing to testify that the Honorable Tom, Dick, or Harry had dropped the life-giving word; and though each fictionist knew that his own story was a fabrication, it was only human to believe that of the man with whom he exchanged the whispered confidence.

To the lies and the exaggerations was presently added a most convincing truth. By ten o'clock it was the talk of the lobbies, the club, and the exchanges that the Reclamation Service was already abandoning the work on the great dam. One half of the workmen were to be discharged at once, and doubtless the other half would follow as soon as the orders could come from Washington.

Appealed to by a mob of anxious inquirers, Brouillard did not deny the fact of the discharges, and thereupon the city went mad in a furor of speculative excitement in comparison with which the orgy of the gold discoverers paled into insignificance. "Curb" exchanges sprang into being in the Metropole lobby, in the court of the Niquoia Building, and at a dozen street corners on the Avenue. Word went to the placers, and by noon the miners had left their sluice-boxes and were pouring into town to buy options at prices that would have staggered the wildest plunger otherwhere, or at any other time.

Brouillard closed his desk at one o'clock and went to fight his way through the street pandemonium to Bongras's. At a table in the rear room he found David Massingale, his long, white beard tucked into the closely buttoned miner's coat to be out of the way of the flying knife and fork, while he gave a lifelike imitation of a man begrudging every second of time wasted in stopping the hunger gap.

Brouillard took the opposite chair and was grimly amused at the length of time that elapsed before Massingale realized his presence.

"Pity a man has to stop to eat on a day like this, isn't it, Mr. Massingale?" he laughed; and then: "I wouldn't hurry. There's another day coming; or if there isn't, we'll all be in the same boat. How is Steve?"

Massingale nodded. "The boy's comin' along all right now; he allows to be out in another week 'r two." Then the inevitable question: "They're sayin' on the street that you're lettin' out half o' your men – that so?"

Brouillard laughed again.

"I've heard it so often that I've come to believe it myself," he admitted, adding: "Yes, it's true." After which he asked a question of his own: "Have you been doing something in real estate this morning, Mr. Massingale?"

"All I could," mumbled the old man between mouthfuls. "But I cayn't do much. If it ain't one thing, it's another. 'Bout as soon as I got that tangle with the Red Butte smelter straightened out, the railroad hit me."

"How was that?" queried Brouillard, with quickening interest coming alive at a bound.

"Same old song, no cars; try and get 'em to-morruh, and to-morruh it'll be next day, and next day it'll be the day after. Looks like they don't want to haul any freight out o' here."

"I see," said Brouillard, and truly he saw much more than David Massingale did. Then: "No shipments means no money for you, and more delay; and delay happens to be the one thing you can't stand. When do those notes of yours fall due?"

"Huh?" said Massingale. He was a close-mouthed man, by breeding and by habit, and he was quite sure he had never mentioned the "Little Susan" entanglement to the young engineer.

Brouillard became more explicit. "The notes covering your indebtedness to the bank for the money you've been putting into development work and improvements – I asked when they would become due."

The old man's heavy white eyebrows bent themselves in a perplexed frown.

"Amy hadn't ort to talk so much," he objected. "Business is business."

Brouillard's smile was a tacit denial of the implication.

"You forget that there were several other parties to the transaction and that any man's business is every man's in this crazy town," he suggested. "But you haven't answered my question about the due date. I didn't ask it out of idle curiosity, I assure you."

Massingale was troubled, and his fine old face showed it plainly.

"I ain't much of a man to holler when I've set the woods afire myself," he answered slowly. "But I don't know why I shouldn't yip a little to you if I feel like it. To-day is the last day on them notes, and I'd about made up my mind that I was goin' up the spout on a sure thing for the fourth time since I hit the mount'ins, when this here new excitement broke out."