She paused for a moment to take a newspaper from her reticule and then continued:
"After my husband died and left the debts and this precious child (the "child" gazed abstractedly at the ceiling while he blew rings of smoke from his mouth) we made a grand discovery. Our foreman, working in the mine, strikes rich quartz, covers it up again, and tells no one but me. All the shareholders have gone—what you call ‘busted,’ I believe? We get hold of many shares cheap, and now I come here to get the rest. An Englishman owns enough shares to give him control—I mean that out of two hundred thousand shares I have got ninety-five thousand, and the rest this Englishman holds. We have traced him through Oregon to this place, and we lose all sign of him here." (Up to this moment I had not been particularly interested in the narration.) She paused, and laying a neatly-gloved hand on my arm proceeded:
"You are a man of affairs."
I modestly intimated that I was nothing of the kind, only a reporter.
"Ah! yes. You cannot deceive me. I see it in your eye, your face, your movements. You are a man of large experience and keen judgment. Your conversation is charming."
As she had spoken for ten minutes without giving me an opportunity to say a word, I could not quite understand how she arrived at an estimate of my conversational powers. However, I felt flattered, but said nothing.
Pressing my arm with her hand, which gave me a warm feeling in the neighborhood of my heart, she went on:
"I come to you as a man of the world. (I made a gesture of dissent, but it was very feeble, for I was already caught in the web.) I rely upon you. I ask you to help me. Bertrand—poor, dear Bertie—has no head for business—he is too young, too confiding—too—too—what you English people call simple—no, too good—too noble—he takes after my family—to know anything about such affairs—so I come to you."
Was it possible that because I was considered unredeemably bad I was selected for this woman’s purpose? As I mused, half disposed to get angry, I raised my head and my eyes encountered the burning orbs of the Madame, gazing full into mine. They seemed to bore like gimlets into my very soul. A thrill ran through me like the shock from an electric battery, and in an instant I seemed bound hand and foot to the fortunes of this strange woman. I felt myself being dragged along as the Roman Emperors were wont to draw their captives through the streets of their capital. I fluttered for a few seconds like a bird in the fowler’s net and then I gave up. The contest was too unequal. God help me! The eyes had conquered and I lay panting at the feet, as it were, of the conqueror. I have only a hazy recollection of what passed between us after that; but I call to mind that she asked me to insert as an advertisement a paragraph from a Grass Valley newspaper to the effect that the mine (the name of which I forget) was a failure and that shares could be bought for two cents. When she took her leave I promised to call upon her at the hotel. When the "child" extended a cold, clammy hand in farewell I felt like giving him a kick—he looked so grim and ugly and patronizing. I gazed into his eyes sternly and read there deceit, hypocrisy and moral degeneration. How I hated him!