“Do just what I’ve told you to do!”

“He knows what he wants, even if he can’t say it,” Brainard muttered to himself as the ambulance moved off. “Poor old boy!”

p. 19III

p. 19

When Brainard opened the door of his room, he heard the rustle of papers on the floor, blown about by the draft from the window. He lighted his lamp and picked up the loose sheets, which were the typewritten leaves of his last play—the one that he had finally got back that very afternoon from a famous actor-manager, without even the usual note of polite regret from the secretary. The absence of that familiar note had dejected him especially.

He shoved the rejected play into his table drawer indifferently, thinking of the sick man’s last urgent look, and of the terrible effort he had made to articulate his final words. What did he mean by “Melody”? Perhaps the old fellow was really out of his head, and all the rest about his valuable papers in some private safe at the other end of the continent was mythical—the fancy of an unhinged mind.

But the memory of the old man’s face—of those keen blue eyes—made Brainard reject such a commonplace solution of the puzzle. The p. 20sick man had been in this room with him for a full half-hour, and the place still seemed filled with his positive, commanding personality.

p. 20

No! The man who signed “H. Krutzmacht” to the sheet lying on the table before him was no vague lunatic. Though he might be at the extremity of life, almost unable to articulate, nevertheless his purpose was clear to himself, and his will was as strong as ever.

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.

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