The City of Numbered Days

"That's just what I mean. String it out. Make it last."

Brouillard sat back in his pivot chair and began to play with the paper-knife.

"And if I don't choose to 'string it out' – if I even confess that I am straining every nerve to do this thing that you don't want me to do – what then, Mr. Cortwright?"

The quiet retort jolted the stocky man in the arm chair as if it had been a blow. But he recovered quickly.

"I've been looking for that," he said with a nervous twinkling of the little gray eyes. "You've no business being out of business, Brouillard. If you'd quit puddling sand and cement and little rocks together and strike your gait right in ten years you'd be the richest man this side of the mountains. I'll be open-handed with you: this time you've got us where we can't wiggle. We've got to have more time. How much is it going to cost us?"

Brouillard shook his head slowly.

"Odd as it may seem to you, I'm out of your market this time, Mr. Cortwright – quite out of it."

"Oh, no, you're not. You've got property to sell – a good bit of it. We can turn it for you at a figure that will – "

"No; you are mistaken," was the quick reply. "I have no property in Mirapolis. I am merely a squatter on government land, like every one else in the Niquoia valley."

"For Heaven's sake!" the promoter burst out. "What's got into you? Don't you go around trying to stand that corpse on its feet; it's a dead one, I tell you! The Coronida titles are all right!"

"There are no Coronida titles. You have known it all along, and I know it – now. I have it straight from the bureau of land statistics, in a letter from a man who knows. The nearest boundary of the old Spanish grant is Latigo Peak, ten miles south of Chigringo. The department knows this and is prepared to prove it. And in the very beginning you and your associates were warned that you could not acquire homestead or other rights in the Niquoia."

"Let it go!" snapped the gray-eyed king of the pack. "We've got to get out alive and we're going to get out alive. What's your price?"

"I have answered that question once, but I'll make it a little plainer if you wish. It is beyond your reach; if you should turn your money-coining soul into cash you couldn't pay it this time, Mr. Cortwright."

"That's guff – boy-talk – play-ranting! You want something – is it that damned Massingale business again? I don't own the railroad, but if you think I do, I'll sign anything you want to write to the traffic people. Let Massingale sell his ore and get the money for it. He'll go gamble it as he did yours."

Brouillard looked up under the shaded electric globe and his handsome face wrinkled in a sour smile.

"You are ready to let go, are you?" he said. "You are too late. Mr. Ford returned from Europe a week ago, and I have a wire saying that to-night's through freight from Brewster is chiefly made up of empty ore-cars for the 'Little Susan.'"

The sandy-gray eyes blinked at this, but Mr. Cortwright was of those who die hard.

"What I said still holds good. Massingale or his son, or both of them, will gamble the money. And if they don't, we've got 'em tied up in a hard knot on the stock proposition."

"I was coming to that," said Brouillard quietly. "For a long time you have been telling me what I should do and I have done it. Now I'll take my turn. You must notify your associates that the 'Little Susan' deal is off. There will be a called meeting of the directors here in this room to-morrow evening at eight o'clock, and – "

"Who calls it?" interrupted the tyrant.

"The president."

"President nothing!" was the snorted comment. "An old, drunken gambler who hasn't got sense enough to go in when it rains! Say, Brouillard, I'll cut that pie so there'll be enough to go around the table. Just leave Massingale out of it and make up your mind that you're going to sit in with us. We've bought the mine and paid for it. I've got the stock put away where it's safe. Massingale can't touch a share of it, or vote it, either."

Brouillard shook his head.

"You are stubbornly hard to convince, Mr. Cortwright, but I'll try one more time. You will come here to-morrow evening, with your confederates in the deal, prepared to take the money you have actually spent in betterments and prepared to release the stock. If you fail to do so you will get nothing. Is that explicit enough?"

"You're crazy!" shouted the promoter. "You talk as if there wasn't any law in this country!"

"There isn't – for such men as you; you and your kind put yourselves above the law. But that is neither here nor there. You don't want to go into court with this conspiracy which you have cooked up to beat David Massingale out of his property. It's the last thing on earth you want to do. So you'd better do the other thing – while you can."

Mr. Cortwright sat back in his chair, and once more Brouillard saw in the sandy-gray eyes the look which had been in the son's eyes when the derelict fought for freedom to finish killing Stephen Massingale.

"It's a pretty dangerous thing to try to hold a man up unless you've got the drop on him, Brouillard," he said significantly. "I've got you covered from my pocket; I've had you covered that way ever since you began to buck and rear on me a couple of months ago. One little wire word to Washington fixes you for good and all. If I say the word, you'll stay on your job just as long as it will take another man to get here to supersede you."

Brouillard laughed.

"The pocket drop is never very safe, Mr. Cortwright. You are likely to lose too much time feeling for the proper range. Then, too, you can never be sure that you won't miss. Also, your assumption that I'm taking an unarmed man's chance is wrong. I can kill you before you can pull the trigger of the pocket gun you speak of – kill you so dead that you won't need anything but a coroner's jury and a coffin. How long would it take you to get action in the Washington matter, do you think?"

"I've told you; you'd have just about a week longer to live, at the furthest."

"I can better that," was the cool reply. "I have asked you to do a certain thing to-morrow night. If you don't do it, the Spot-Light will print, on the following morning, that letter I spoke of – the letter from my friend in the bureau of land statistics. When that letter is printed everybody in Mirapolis will know that you and your accomplices are plain swindlers, amenable to the criminal law, and from that moment there will never be another real-estate transfer in the Niquoia valley."

The promoter rose slowly out of his chair and stood leaning heavily with his fat hands, palms downward, on the flat-topped desk. His cheeks were puffed out and the bitten mustaches bristled like the whiskers of a gray old leader of the timber-wolves.

"Brouillard," he grated huskily, "does this mean that you're breaking with us, once for all?"

"It means more than that; it means that I have reached a point at which I am ashamed to admit that there was ever anything to break."

"Then listen: you've helped this thing along as much as, or more than, anybody else in this town; and there are men right here in Mirapolis – plenty of 'em – who will kill you like a rat in a hole if you go back on them as you are threatening to. Don't you know that?"

The younger man was balancing the paper-cutter across his finger.

"That is the least of my worries," he answered, speaking slowly. "I am all sorts of a moral coward, I suppose; I've proved that often enough in the past few months, God knows. But I'm not the other kind, Mr. Cortwright."

"Then I'll take a hand!" snarled the tyrant at bay. "I'll spend a million dollars, if I have to, blacklisting you from one end of this country to the other! I'll fix it so you'll never build anything bigger than a hog-pen again as long as you live! I'll publish your record wherever there is a newspaper to print it!" He pounded on the desk with his fist – "I'll do it – money can do it! More than that, you'll never get a smell of that Chigringo mine – you nor Dave Massingale!"

Brouillard tossed the paper-knife into a half-opened drawer and squared himself at the blotting-pad.

"That is your challenge, is it?" he said curtly. "So be it. Start your machinery. You will doubtless get me, not because you have money, but because for a time I was weak enough and wicked enough to climb down and stand on your level. But if you don't hurry, Mr. Cortwright, I'll get you first. Are you going? One thing more – and it's a kindness; get your son out of town before this Massingale matter comes up for adjustment. It will be safer."

"Is that all you have to say?"

"Pretty nearly all, except to tell you that your time is growing short, and you and those who are in with you had better begin to set your houses in order. If you'll come over here at eight o'clock to-morrow night prepared to do the square thing by David Massingale, I'll withhold the publication of that letter which will stamp you and your associates as criminals before the law; but that is the only concession I shall make."

"You've got to make at least one more!" stormed the outgoing magnate. "You don't have to set any dates or anything of that kind for your damned drowning act!"

"In justice to a good many people who are measurably innocent, I shall have to do that very thing," returned the engineer firmly. "The notice will appear in to-morrow's Spot-Light."

It was the final straw in the stocky promoter's crushing wrath burden. His fat face turned purple, and for a second or two he clawed the air, gasping for breath. Brouillard sat back in his chair, waiting for the volcanic upheaval. But it did not come. When he had regained a measure of self-control, Mr. Cortwright turned slowly and went out without a word, stumbling over the threshold and slamming the door heavily as he disappeared.

For a time after the promoter's wordless departure Brouillard sat at his desk writing steadily. When the last of the memorandum sheets was filled he found his hat and street coat and left the office. Ten minutes later he had penetrated to the dusty den on the second floor of the Spot-Light office where Harlan was grinding copy for his paper. Brouillard took a chair at the desk end and laid the sheets of pencilled government paper under the editor's eyes.

Harlan's lean, fine-lined face was a study in changing emotions as he read. But at the end there was an aggrieved look in his eyes, mirroring the poignant regret of a newsman who has found a priceless story which he dares not use.

"It's ripping," he sighed, "the biggest piece of fireworks a poor devil of a newspaper man ever had a chance to touch off. But, of course, I can't print it."

"Why 'of course'?"