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Delafield Affair

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“I heard of it at the time, but it was after I left the city. It was so long ago that I forget the details. Skipped, didn’t he, with a lot of funds? Or was he the one who defaulted and jumped into the Charles River?” Conrad had an eagerness of speech and manner that in a man of less vigor would have been accounted nervousness. Voice, face, and gesture were alive with it as he responded: “Jump nothing! except to get out of reach of his creditors! He’s alive yet and making money somewhere, and I mean to find him! I’ve got a particular interest in that man, and when I come up with him he’ll have a particular interest in me. For I’m going [Pg 21]to give him such a song-and-dance as he’s never had before.” Bancroft listened calmly, his face and manner as impassive as usual, but his eyes narrowed as they met his companion’s excited gaze. Smiling slightly, he replied, “What has he done to stir you up so? You must have been too young to be interested in financial investments then.” “So I was, directly. Nevertheless, it happens, Aleck, that the Delafield affair has influenced me and my life more than any other one thing. My father lost everything he had in Sumner L. Delafield’s smash-up. I was fifteen years old then, and getting ready to go to Michigan University—afterward I was to study law and be a prominent citizen. My father met Delafield first during a business trip to Boston—we lived in central Illinois, and father was well-to-do—and, just like everybody else, he gave the man his entire confidence. You remember, of course, how Delafield came to the top as a regular young Napoleon of business, and soon made a reputation as one of the big financiers. When he turned up missing one fine morning, and it was found that the bottom had dropped out of everything, most people believed he had [Pg 22]killed himself. But he hadn’t, I happen to know, and he’s still alive. Well, my father had been so influenced by Delafield—the fellow must have been a persuasive cuss—that he had put everything he could raise into the man’s schemes, and had even mortgaged our home. He had a weak heart, and when he read the news of Delafield’s default and disappearance he fell out of his chair dead. The sudden shock of it all prostrated my mother, and she died in giving premature birth to a child. So there was I, a fifteen-year-old boy, suddenly dropped to the bottom of poverty, with two younger sisters and a little brother to take care of. “I tell you, I swore vengeance on that man. I promised myself I’d hunt him down if it took a lifetime. I’m on his trail now, and I’m not going to leave it until I run him into his hole. Then I’m going to stand him up and call him to his face all he deserves; and give him a gun, so he can have a fair chance for his worthless life, and take one myself; and then I’ll put a bullet through his scoundrel brain if I have to hang for it afterward!” In the adjoining room Lucy Bancroft, with wide eyes and heightened color, was listening [Pg 23]to Conrad’s story. The thrill of keen-edged purpose in his tense and eager tones had set her nerves to vibrating until her body was a-tremble. At his last sentence Curtis brought his fist down on the table with a crash that almost startled her into outcry. A moment of silence followed, and then she heard her father’s cool and even voice, “But suppose he should put one through yours first?” “Oh, he’s welcome to do that if he can draw quicker or shoot straighter than I can. He’ll get one through his head before the baile is over, and that’s all I care about. The round-up’s coming, and I reckon he knows it. For to-day I got a letter from Tremper & Townsend of Boston, who settled up his affairs after his disappearance, enclosing a check for five hundred dollars, saying he wished it sent to me as the first instalment of the amount he owed my father, which he hopes, before long, to be able to pay in full.” Bancroft flicked the ash from his cigar with unusual care, looked at it with contemplative interest, and drew a whiff or two before he spoke. Turning to Conrad with a quizzical smile, he said: “Well, Curt, doesn’t that rather take the edge off your purpose? Why are you still shaking your gory locks and [Pg 24]roaring like a wounded bull at him when he’s evidently doing the square thing by you? Why don’t you let up on your chase and give him a chance?” “Not on your life,” was Conrad’s emphatic rejoinder. “It’s too late in the game for me to take repentance and an honest purpose on the hoof! He’s found out that I’m getting hot on the scent and he wants to buy me off—that’s all that check means. It’s not the loss of the money that sticks in my craw; it’s the deviltry he worked years ago. Whenever I find that he’s discharging his debts to all his other creditors, who aren’t after him hot-foot, then I’ll consent to wait for my parley until he has settled the whole score.” Lucy arose from the bed depressed with a vague sense of trouble. The longing seized her to be out-of-doors again, alone with her father on the wide plain, with the wind smiting her face and filling her lungs and making her forget everything but her own joy in being alive. She rubbed her eyes, smoothed her face, and forced herself to smile at the reflection in the mirror until her agitation was subdued. And presently, smiling and self-possessed, she opened the door into the [Pg 25]front room, just as her father was finishing some friendly advice to Conrad. “Well, Curt, it’s your affair,” he had said, “and if you are so dead-set on getting that kind of revenge I suppose you’ll go ahead and get it. But you’d better be careful; if this man is desperate he might try to head you off by the same means. And you couldn’t exactly blame him for objecting to being shot in his tracks, or for taking measures to keep you from doing it. For my part, I never thought revenge was a paying investment, and I still believe you’re foolish to waste your time, energy, and money in that sort of business. “Ah, Lucy, is that you?” he went on, as she opened the door. “Come in, dear. Have you had a nap, and do you feel better?” “Yes, thank you, I’ve rested beautifully, and I’m ready to start whenever you wish,” she replied. Conrad produced a bottle of port wine, telling them as he filled their glasses that it had been sent him by a friend in California in whose cellars it had lain for twenty years, and that it would be a good tonic for Miss Bancroft. The friend had promised to send him more, and with her permission he would [Pg 26]take a bottle to her the next time he went to Golden. As they stepped out of the house Lucy looked toward the west, whence the wind came, and as it struck her full in the face she gasped for breath and her slender body swayed in its rushing current. She grasped her wide hat brim with both hands and held it down so that it made a frame for her face. Laughing with joy she turned to Curtis. “Oh, I love these winds, Mr. Conrad! I know they blow sand into your eyes and pelt your face with gravel, but they make you feel so good! I always want to dance when I’ve been out in a wind like this for a minute or two.” She took half a dozen dancing steps across the little lawn. “And they are so pure and sweet,” she went on more seriously, “and make you feel so—so right that it seems as if they ought to blow all the wickedness out of one’s mind.” “Jiminy! I wonder if she heard what I said in there!” thought Conrad with inward panic. But he smiled down at her glowing young face and his eyes shone with admiration as he replied: “That is a beautiful theory, Miss Bancroft, but I’m afraid it doesn’t pan out much in practice. It rather seems [Pg 27]to me that most people who come to New Mexico have that sort of thing blown into them instead of out of them. As for myself,” and he grinned broadly, “I can’t say that I feel any increase in righteousness, no matter how much I waltz around in these zephyrs.” “And you must have given them a fair trial, too!” she laughed back. “But you may make all the fun you like of my little pet theory, Mr. Conrad. I shall believe in it just the same, and like the country just as much.” “No; she didn’t hear, and, besides, she said she’d been asleep, so it’s all right,” thought Curtis with much relief, as he went on eagerly: “I’m glad you’re pleased with us and our winds, so that you’ll want to stay. I assure you, Miss Bancroft, you can’t find such a superior quality of wind anywhere else in the United States.” “Oh, I’m going to stay, not on account of the wind, but on account of my father, who, I assure you, Mr. Conrad, is the most superior quality of father to be found anywhere in the United States! I’ve been away from him so much that now I’m perfectly happy to be with him all the time. You see, when my dear mother died five years ago, [Pg 28]father put me in a boarding-school, and afterward sent me to Chicago for a year to study music, and there I had that attack of typhoid fever that came so near to killing me. But I’m here with him at last, and I mean to stay. And I’m learning to ride now, Mr. Conrad, and father thinks I’m getting on very well; don’t you, daddy?” She turned to her father, as he came beside them at the carriage wheel, with a fond smile and a touch of her hand upon his arm. “Oh, yes,” he answered, returning her smile and patting her shoulder; “you are doing bravely, Lucy. You’ll soon be scouring the plain like the heroine of a dime novel.” “No New Mexican girl,” said Conrad as he helped her into the carriage, “thinks she can really ride until she can rope a steer. If you’re going to be such an enthusiastic New Mexican you’ll have to learn tricks of that sort. Get your father to bring you out here some day, and I’ll give you lessons in cowboy riding.” “Agreed! that would be great fun!” she exclaimed, smiling down at him, her eyes twinkling and the dimples dancing in and out of her cheeks. “We’ll come out, won’t we, [Pg 29]daddy, after Miss Dent comes. I shall remember your promise, Mr. Conrad.” Curtis waved a last good-bye as they turned the corner of his corral, and went back to his desk and his interrupted mail. “A mighty good fellow Aleck Bancroft is,” he said in a half-aloud tone. “He doesn’t palaver a lot, but he makes you feel he’s your friend. I wonder if I said too much about Delafield. That check had wound me up and I sure talked more than I meant to.” Long hours of solitude out-of-doors with only a silent plain around him and a silent sky above are likely to make a man so yearn for the sound of a human voice, though it be only his own, that he falls into the habit of thinking aloud. Conrad had the social temperament and it had not taken the wide and silent spaces of earth and air long to engender in him the habit of making companionship out of his own speech. He pulled thoughtfully at his sunburned moustache for a moment as he considered the matter. “It might have been just as well if I hadn’t said so much,” he went on aloud, “but he’s close-mouthed and a good friend of mine. No, she didn’t hear me—that’s sure. How pretty she is when her eyes twinkle and her dimples come and go! I [Pg 30]hope that wine will come in time for me to take her a bottle the next time I go to Golden. Well, I can call on her, anyway, and apologize because it hasn’t. Hello! Here’s a letter from Littleton! Has he got hold of something new about Delafield?” <div class="blockquot">“I was down in the northern part of your Territory last week on other business,” he read, “and I happened to meet a man who is, I think, on the trail of the very same person we’re after, though he’s been working it from the other end. If I’m right about it, the man we want is now some prominent and respected citizen of New Mexico, and maybe some good friend—or enemy—of yours at this moment. The man I met is Rutherford W. Jenkins, of Las Vegas. You probably know him—” </div> “Sure! And know him to be a skunk!” Conrad exclaimed with a contemptuous snort. <div class="blockquot">“I couldn’t get much out of him,” the letter went on, “although I gave him a tip about the trail we’re on and a little of Delafield’s history as a bait. He snapped at it, and then began to dissemble his satisfaction, so I’m sure it is of value to him. But not even firewater would make him give up anything more. However, I feel pretty sure that he either [Pg 31]knows already who Delafield is or expects soon to find out. I think he’s working at it with an eye to the possibilities of blackmail of one sort or another. Perhaps if you see him yourself you can get something out of him.” </div> Conrad’s face glowed with satisfaction as he finished the letter. “The birds won’t get a chance to make any nests in my hair this trip! I’ll sashay up the line this very night and I’ll find out who Delafield is from Jenkins, if I have to choke the life out of him to do it. God!” His vengeful desire glowed like a blue flame in his eyes. He jumped to his feet, stretched out his arms, and clenched his fists. “Sumner L. Delafield, it’s getting time for you to say your prayers!” <hr class="large" />[Pg 32] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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