The City of Numbered Days

by Francis Lynde

  XIV

  The Abyss

  It was at early candle-lighting in the evening of the day of renewed andunbridled speculation in Mirapolis "front feet" that Brouillard, ridingthe piebald range pony on which he had been making an inspection roundof the nearer Buckskin ditchers' camps, topped the hill in the new,high-pitched road over the Chigringo shoulder and looked down upon thevalley electrics.

  The immediate return to Mirapolis was no part of the plan he had struckout when he had closed his office in the Niquoia Building at one o'clockand had gone over to Bongras's to fall into the chance encounter withDavid Massingale. He had intended making a complete round of all theditch camps, a ride which would have taken at least three days, andafter parting from Massingale at the bank he had left town at once,taking the new road which began on the bench of the railroad yard. Butalmost immediately a singular thing had happened. Before he had gone amile a strange reluctance had begun to beset him.

  At first it was merely a haunting feeling of loss, as if he had leftsomething behind, forgetting when he should have remembered; a thing ofsufficient importance to make him turn and ride back if he could onlyrecall what it was. Farther along the feeling became a vague premonitionof impending disaster, growing with every added mile of the Buckskingallopings until, at Overton's Camp, a few miles short of theTriangle-Circle Ranch headquarters, he had yielded and had set out forthe return.

  If the curious premonition had been a drag on the outward journey itbecame a spur to quicken the eastward faring. Even the piebald ponyseemed to share the urgency, needing only a loose rein and anencouraging word. Across the yellow sands of the desert, through thelower ford of the Niquoia, and up the outlet gorge the willing littlehorse tossed the miles to the rear, and at the hill-topping moment, whenthe electric lights spread themselves in the valley foreground likestars set to illuminate the chess-board squares of the Wonder City, arecord gallop had been made from Overton's.

  Brouillard let the pony set its own pace on the down-hill lap to thefinish, and it was fast enough to have jolted fresh road weariness intoa less seasoned rider than the young engineer. Most curiously, thepremonition with its nagging urgency seemed to vanish completely as soonas the city's streets were under hoof. Brouillard left the horse at thereservation stables, freshened himself at his rooms in the NiquoiaBuilding, and went to the Metropole to eat his dinner, all without anyrecurrence of the singular symptoms. Further, when he found himself at atable with Murray Grislow as his _vis-a-vis_, and had invented aplausible excuse for his sudden return, he was able to enjoy his dinnerwith a healthy wayfarer's appetite and to talk over the events of theexciting day with the hydrographer with few or none of the abstractedmental digressions.

  Afterward, however, the symptoms returned, manifesting themselves thistime in the form of a vague and undefined restlessness. The buzzingthrongs in the Metropole cafe and lobby annoyed him, and even Grislow'squiet sarcasm as applied to the day's bubble-blowing failed to clear theair. At the club there was the same atmosphere of unrest; anexacerbating overcharge of the suppressed activities impatiently waitingfor another day of excitement and opportunity. Corner lots and theastounding prices they had commanded filled the air in the lounge, thebilliard room, and the buffet, and after a few minutes Brouillardturned his back on the hubbub and sought the quiet of the darkenedbuilding on the opposite side of the street.

  He was alone in his office on the sixth floor and was trying, halfabsently, to submerge himself in a sea of desk-work when the disturbingover-thought suddenly climaxed in an occurrence bordering on thesupernatural. As distinctly as if she were present and at his elbow, heheard, or seemed to hear, Amy Massingale say: "Victor, you said youwould come if I needed you: I need you now." Without a moment'shesitation he got up and made ready to go out. Skeptical to the derisivedegree of other men's superstitions, it did not occur to him to doubtthe reality of the mysterious summons, or to question in any way his ownbroad admission of the supernatural in the prompt obedience.

  The Massingale town house was one of a row of stuccoed villas frontingon the main residence street, which beyond the city limits became thehighroad to the Quadjenai bend and the upper valley. Brouillard took acab at the Metropole, dismissed it at the villa gate, and walked brisklyup the path to the house, which was dark save for one lighted room onthe second floor--the room in which Stephen Massingale was recoveringfrom the effects of Van Bruce Cortwright's pistol-shot.

  Amy Massingale was on the porch--waiting for him, as he fully believeduntil her greeting sufficiently proved her surprise at seeing him.

  "You, Victor?" she said, coming quickly to meet him. "Murray Grislowsaid you had gone down to the Buckskin camps and wouldn't be back fortwo or three days!"

  "Grizzy told the truth--as it stood a few hours ago," he admitted. "ButI changed my mind and came back. How is Steve this evening?"

  "He is quite comfortable, more comfortable than he has been at all sincethe wound began to heal. I have been reading him to sleep, and when thenight nurse came I ran down to get a breath of fresh air in the open."

  "No, you didn't come down for that reason," Brouillard amended gravely."You came to meet me."

  "Did I?" she asked. "What makes you think that?"

  "I don't think; I _know_. You called me, and I heard you and came atonce."

  "How absurd!" she protested. "I knew, or thought I knew, that you weremiles away, over in the Buckskin; and how could I call you?"

  Brouillard pulled out his watch and scanned its face by the light of theroadway electric.

  "It is exactly twenty minutes since I left my office. What were youdoing twenty minutes ago?"

  "As if I could tell! I don't believe I have looked at a clock or a watchall evening. After Stevie had his supper I read to him--one of thecreepy Kipling stories that he is so fond of. You would say that 'Bimi'would be just about the last thing in the world to put anybody to sleep,wouldn't you? But Stevie dropped off, and I think I must have lostmyself for a minute or two, because the next thing I knew the nurse wasin the room."

  "I know what happened," said Brouillard, speaking as soberly as if hewere stating a mathematical certainty. "You left that room up-stairs andcame to me. I didn't see you, but I heard you as plainly as I can hearyou now. You spoke to me and called me by name."

  "What did I say? Can you remember the words?"

  "Indeed I can. The room was perfectly still, and I was working at mydesk. Suddenly, and without any warning, I heard your voice saying:'Victor, you said you would come if I needed you: I need you now.'"

  She shook her head, laughing lightly.

  "You have been overwrought about something, or maybe you are just plaintired. I didn't say or even think anything like that; or if I did, itmust have been the other I, or one of the others, that Herr Freiborgwrites about--and I don't believe in. This I that you are talking todoesn't remember anything about it."

  "You are standing me off," he declared. "You are in trouble of somesort, and you are trying to hide it from me."

  "No, not exactly trouble; only a little worry."

  "All right, call it worry if you like and share it with me. What is it?"

  "I think you know without being told--or you will know when I say thatto-day was the day when the big debt to the bank became due. I am afraidwe have finally lost the 'Little Susan.' That is one of the worries andthe other I've been trying to call silly. I don't know what has becomeof father--as if he weren't old enough to go and come without telling meevery move he makes!"

  "Your father isn't at home?" gasped Brouillard.

  "No; he hasn't been here since nine o'clock this morning. Murray Grislowsaw him going into the Metropole about one o'clock, but nobody that Ihave been able to reach by 'phone seems to have seen him after that."

  "I can bring the record down to two o'clock," was the quick reply. "Heate with me at Bongras's, and afterward I walked with him as far as thebank. And I can cure part of the first worry--all of it, in fact; he hadthe money to take up the Cortwright no
tes, and when I left him he was onhis way to Hardwick's window to do it."

  "_He had the money?_ Where did he get it?"

  Brouillard put his back against a porch post, a change of position whichkept the light of the street electric from shining squarely upon hisface.

  "It has been another of the get-rich-quick days in Mirapolis," he saidevasively. "Somebody told me that the corner opposite Poodles's wasbought and sold three times within a single hour and that each time theprice was doubled."

  "And you are trying to tell me that father made a hundred thousanddollars just in those few hours by buying and selling Mirapolis lots?You don't know him, Victor. He is totally lacking the trading gift. Hehas often said that he couldn't stand on a street corner and selltwenty-dollar gold pieces at nineteen dollars apiece--nobody would buyof him."

  "Nevertheless, I am telling you that he had the money to take up thosenotes," Brouillard insisted. "I saw it in his hands."

  She left him abruptly and began to pace back and forth on the porch,with her hands behind her, an imitative trait unconsciously copying herfather in his moments of stress. When she stopped she stood fairly inthe beam of the street light. The violet eyes were misty, and in the lowvoice there was a note of deeper trouble.

  "You say you saw the money in father's hands; tell me, Victor, did yousee him pay it into the bank?"

  "Why, no; not the final detail. But, as I say, when I left him he was onhis way to Hardwick's window."

  Again she turned away, but this time it was to dart into the house. Aminute later she had rejoined him, and the minute had sufficed for thedonning of a coat and the pinning on of the quaint cow-boy riding-hat.

  "I must go and find him," she said with quiet resolution. "Will you gowith me, Victor? Perhaps that is why I--the subconscious I--called you alittle while ago. Let's not wait for the Quadjenai car. I'd rather walk,and we'll save time."

  They set out together, walking rapidly townward, and there was no wordto go with the brisk footing. Brouillard respected his companion'ssilence. That the thing unspeakable, or at least unspoken, was somethingmore than a woman's undefined fears was obvious; but until she shouldsee fit to tell him what it was, he would not question her.

  From the moment of outsetting the young woman's purpose seemed clearlydefined. By the shortest way she indicated the course to the Avenue, andat the Metropole corner she turned unhesitatingly to thenorthward--toward the region of degradation.

  As was to be expected after the day of frantic speculation and quickmoney changing, the lower Avenue was ablaze with light, the sidewalkswere passes of peril, and the saloons and dives were reaping a richharvest. Luckily, Brouillard was well known, and his position as chiefof the great army of government workmen purchased something likeimmunity for himself and his companion. But more than once he was on thepoint of begging the young woman to turn back for her own sake.

  The quest ended unerringly at the door of Haley's Place, and when DavidMassingale's daughter made as if she would go in, Brouillard protestedquickly.

  "No, Amy," he said firmly. "You mustn't go in there. Let me take youaround to the Metropole, and then I'll come back alone."

  "I have been in worse places," she returned in low tones. And then, withher voice breaking tremulously: "Be my good friend just a little longer,Victor!"

  He took her arm and walked her into the garishly lighted bar-room,bracing himself militantly for what might happen. But nothing happened.Dissipation of the Western variety seldom sinks below the level of acertain rude gallantry, quick to recognize the good and pure inwomankind. Instantly a hush fell upon the place. The quartets at thecard-tables held their hands, and a group of men drinking at the bar putdown their glasses. One, a Tri'-Circ' cow-boy with his back turned, letslip an oath, and in a single swift motion his nearest comrade garrotedhim with a hairy arm, strangling him to silence.

  "It's all gone, little girl; it's all gone!"]

  As if guided by the same unerring instinct which had made her chooseHaley's out of a dozen similar hells, Amy Massingale led Brouillardswiftly to the green baize doors at the rear of the bar-room. At hertouch the swinging doors gave inward, and her goal was reached.

  Three faro games, each with its inlaid table, its impassive dealer, itsarmed "lookout," and its ring of silent players, lay beyond the baizedoors. At the nearest of the tables there was a stir, and the dealerstopped running the cards. Somebody said, "Let him get out," and then anold man, bearded, white-haired, wild-eyed, and haggard almost beyondrecognition, pushed his chair away from the table and stumbled to hisfeet, his hands clutching the air like those of a swimmer sinking forthe last time.

  With a low cry the girl darted across the intervening space to clasp thestaggering old man in her arms and draw him away. Brouillard stood asideas they came slowly toward the doors which he was holding open for them.He saw the distorted face-mask of a soul in torment and heard themumbling repetition of the despairing words, "It's all gone, littlegirl; it's all gone!" and then he removed himself quickly beyond therange of the staring, unseeing eyes.

  For in the lightning flash of revealment he realized that once again thegood he would have done had turned to hideous evil in the doing, andthat this time the sword thrust of the blind-passion impulse had gonestraight to the heart of love itself.