Alexander.—Life! Alexander p. 22He 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. p. 22 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. p. 23He felt into the inner recesses of the old-fashioned wallet, and from one pocket extracted a thick sheaf of bank-notes. They were in large denominations—hundreds, fifties, and twenties. Brainard smoothed out the bills on his knee and carefully counted them; in all there was rather more than four thousand dollars. p. 23 “The old boy traveled with quite a wad!” he muttered, fingering the crisp bills. The touch of the money gave a curious electric thrill to his thoughts. Here was an evidence of reality that made the old man’s mumbled words and intense effort assume a reasonable shape. When Krutzmacht let Brainard take possession of this wallet, he knew what it contained. He trusted to a stranger in his desperate need. Still feeling around in the folds of the wallet, Brainard extracted a railroad-ticket of voluminous length for San Francisco. “He was on his way to the train!” Brainard exclaimed,
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