Brainard was hungry. Snatching up his old cap, he went out to the neighboring avenue, and, without hesitation, entered the most expensive restaurant in sight—a resort he frequented only on rare days of opulence. Instead of the oyster-stew and doughnuts which had latterly been his luxurious limit, he ordered a good dinner, as if he had earned it, and devoured the food without the usual qualms of prudence.
His spirits had undergone a marvelous change from the timid, fearful state in which he had been that afternoon. He wondered at his own confidence. Complacently selecting a good cigar at the cashier’s desk, he strolled back to his room, his body peacefully engaged in the unaccustomed task of digesting a full meal.
When he entered his dreary little room, his eye fell upon the wallet, which lay under the table where he had dropped it. What was he going to do with that—with this whole Krutzmacht business? Why, simply nothing at all. In the morning, he would go around to St. Joseph’s and see how the sick man was. If Krutzmacht recovered, there was nothing to do but to return his pocketbook. But if he got worse, or was dead already? Well, Brainard could turn the wallet over to the hospital people or the coroner, and that would end the affair for him.
With this prudent resolution he took his play from the drawer, and looked it over. His interest in the thing had quite gone, and the sting of its rejection no longer smarted. Very likely it was as bad as the managers to whom he had submitted it seemed to think. He tied the manuscript together with a piece of twine, and shoved it back into the drawer.
One sheet—that last one on which he had taken down Krutzmacht’s dictation—was missing from this roll. That sheet contained his final curtain. He looked at the lines, and smiled as he read. The Lady Violet was parting from her lover, with the following dialogue:
Violet.—Oh, Alexander!
Alexander.—Violet!
Violet.—What will you do, dearest?
Alexander.—I go on my great adventure!
Violet.—Your great adventure?
Alexander.—Life!
He turned the sheet over. On the other side were the few shorthand notes he had hastily jotted down—the figures of the safe combination and the power of attorney with its legal phrases, the latter written out again below in long hand. At the bottom of the sheet, just beneath Alexander’s heroic announcement to Violet, were the three signatures. The old man’s blunt name dominated the others—a firm, black scrawl with a couple of vicious dashes.
The powerful will of the sick man, working in what might be the agony of death, spoke in that signature. Brainard felt that there was something mysterious in it. The name spoke to him as the eyes had spoken to him, personally. Criminal? Possibly. Dramatic? Oh, surely! He felt instinctively that there was more drama on this side of the sheet than on the other.
He folded the paper carefully and put it in his inner pocket. It would be an interesting souvenir.
As the young man sat and smoked in his little room, the comfort of his abundant meal penetrating his person, he felt more and more the drama of actual life touching him, calling to him to take a hand in it. He reached unconsciously for the fat wallet, and opened it. There were some legal papers—contracts and leases and agreements, at which Brainard merely glanced.