Toward evening the gale blew itself out, and the battered old Toulouse was headed north once more across the Bay of Biscay. Sometime in the night the engines ceased to thump, and Brainard awoke with a start. When he had hurried into his clothes, and groped his way to the deck, he was astonished to see ahead, through the gray fog of early morning, faint lights and, farther away, the stronger illumination that came from some city.
“Is it Havre?” he demanded of the third officer, whom he met.
“No, monsieur—St. Nazaire!” the Frenchman answered. “Monsieur will be disappointed?”
“I don’t think so!” exclaimed Brainard.
It was, indeed, the port of Nantes. The captain had not chosen to risk the voyage around the stormy coast of Brittany with his depleted coal supply, and had taken the old Toulouse to the nearest port.
“Here’s where Melody scores!” Brainard muttered, when he realized the significance of the news. “Now for a quick exit to Paris, before the telegraph gets in its deadly work and notifies the civilized world where we are!”
XVII
Three hours later the passengers of the Toulouse were aboard a special train for Paris, and in a first-class compartment Brainard was seated, facing his valise, and looking out upon the pleasant landscape of the Loire valley, a contented expression on his brown young face.
He had already formulated to himself the exact plot of his movements from the moment he reached Paris. From the pleasant Frenchwoman who had been his neighbor at the ship’s table he had learned the address of a little hotel in the Bourse quarter, where she assured him that Americans rarely appeared. It was not far from the large bank in which he intended to deposit Melody’s burdensome fortune until he could make arrangements for disposing of it.
It did not take him long, therefore, to install himself at the little Hôtel des Voyageurs et Brésil, and to rid himself of his troublesome loot. Then he wrote a letter to Schneider Brothers, of Berlin, who, he had learned at the Crédit Lyonnais, were a well-known firm of bankers with an agency in New York. He wrote the Messrs. Schneider that in obedience to the instructions of the late Mr. Herbert Krutzmacht, of San Francisco, he wished to consult with them in regard to the disposal of some securities that he had in his possession. He would remain for the present in Paris, and he begged to suggest that the bankers should send a responsible agent to meet him at some place—preferably The Hague, whither he was going the following week.