DR. HOWARD ARCHIE had come down to Denver
for a meeting of the stockholders in the San Felipe
silver mine. It was not absolutely necessary for him to
come, but he had no very pressing cases at home. Winter
was closing down in Moonstone, and he dreaded the dull-
ness of it. On the 10th day of January, therefore, he was
registered at the Brown Palace Hotel. On the morning of
the 11th he came down to breakfast to find the streets
white and the air thick with snow. A wild northwester was
blowing down from the mountains, one of those beautiful
storms that wrap Denver in dry, furry snow, and make the
city a loadstone to thousands of men in the mountains and
on the plains. The brakemen out on their box-cars, the
miners up in their diggings, the lonely homesteaders in
the sand hills of Yucca and Kit Carson Counties, begin
to think of Denver, muffled in snow, full of food and drink
and good cheer, and to yearn for her with that admiration
which makes her, more than other American cities, an
object of sentiment.
Howard Archie was glad he had got in before the storm
came. He felt as cheerful as if he had received a legacy
that morning, and he greeted the clerk with even greater
friendliness than usual when he stopped at the desk for
his mail. In the dining-room he found several old friends
seated here and there before substantial breakfasts: cattle-
men and mining engineers from odd corners of the State,
all looking fresh and well pleased with themselves. He had
a word with one and another before he sat down at the little
table by a window, where the Austrian head waiter stood
attentively behind a chair. After his breakfast was put
before him, the doctor began to run over his letters. There
was one directed in Thea Kronborg's handwriting, for-
warded from Moonstone. He saw with astonishment, as
he put another lump of sugar into his cup, that this letter
bore a New York postmark. He had known that Thea was
in Mexico, traveling with some Chicago people, but New
York, to a Denver man, seems much farther away than
Mexico City. He put the letter behind his plate, upright
against the stem of his water goblet, and looked at it
thoughtfully while he drank his second cup of coffee. He
had been a little anxious about Thea; she had not written
to him for a long while.
As he never got good coffee at home, the doctor always
drank three cups for breakfast when he was in Denver.
Oscar knew just when to bring him a second pot, fresh and
smoking. "And more cream, Oscar, please. You know I
like lots of cream," the doctor murmured, as he opened
the square envelope, marked in the upper right-hand cor-
ner, "Everett House, Union Square." The text of the letter
was as follows:--
DEAR DOCTOR ARCHIE:--
I have not written to you for a long time, but it has not
been unintentional. I could not write you frankly, and so
I would not write at all. I can be frank with you now, but
not by letter. It is a great deal to ask, but I wonder if you
could come to New York to help me out? I have got into
difficulties, and I need your advice. I need your friendship.
I am afraid I must even ask you to lend me money, if you
can without serious inconvenience. I have to go to Ger-
many to study, and it can't be put off any longer. My voice
is ready. Needless to say, I don't want any word of this to
reach my family. They are the last people I would turn to,
though I love my mother dearly. If you can come, please
telegraph me at this hotel. Don't despair of me. I'll make
it up to you yet.
Your old friend,
THEA KRONBORG.
This in a bold, jagged handwriting with a Gothic turn to
the letters,--something between a highly sophisticated
hand and a very unsophisticated one,--not in the least
smooth or flowing.
The doctor bit off the end of a cigar nervously and read
the letter through again, fumbling distractedly in his pock-
ets for matches, while the waiter kept trying to call his
attention to the box he had just placed before him. At last
Oscar came out, as if the idea had just struck him, "Matches,
sir?"
"Yes, thank you." The doctor slipped a coin into his
palm and rose, crumpling Thea's letter in his hand and
thrusting the others into his pocket unopened. He went
back to the desk in the lobby and beckoned to the clerk, upon
whose kindness he threw himself apologetically.
"Harry, I've got to pull out unexpectedly. Call up the
Burlington, will you, and ask them to route me to New
York the quickest way, and to let us know. Ask for the
hour I'll get in. I have to wire."
"Certainly, Dr. Archie. Have it for you in a minute."
The young man's pallid, clean-scraped face was all sympa-
thetic interest as he reached for the telephone. Dr. Archie
put out his hand and stopped him.
"Wait a minute. Tell me, first, is Captain Harris down
yet?"
"No, sir. The Captain hasn't come down yet this
morning."
"I'll wait here for him. If I don't happen to catch him,
nail him and get me. Thank you, Harry."
The doctor spoke gratefully and turned away. He began
to pace the lobby, his hands behind him, watching the
bronze elevator doors like a hawk. At last Captain Harris
issued from one of them, tall and imposing, wearing a
Stetson and fierce mustaches, a fur coat on his arm, a soli-
taire glittering upon his little finger and another in his
black satin ascot. He was one of the grand old bluffers of
those good old days. As gullible as a schoolboy, he had
managed, with his sharp eye and knowing air and twisted
blond mustaches, to pass himself off for an astute financier,
and the Denver papers respectfully referred to him as the
Rothschild of Cripple Creek.
Dr. Archie stopped the Captain on his way to breakfast.
"Must see you a minute, Captain. Can't wait. Want to
sell you some shares in the San Felipe. Got to raise
money."
The Captain grandly bestowed his hat upon an eager
porter who had already lifted his fur coat tenderly from his
arm and stood nursing it. In removing his hat, the Cap-
tain exposed a bald, flushed dome, thatched about the ears
with yellowish gray hair. "Bad time to sell, doctor. You
want to hold on to San Felipe, and buy more. What have
you got to raise?"
"Oh, not a great sum. Five or six thousand. I've been
buying up close and have run short."
"I see, I see. Well, doctor, you'll have to let me get
through that door. I was out last night, and I'm going to
get my bacon, if you lose your mine." He clapped Archie
on the shoulder and pushed him along in front of him.
"Come ahead with me, and we'll talk business."
Dr. Archie attended the Captain and waited while he
gave his order, taking the seat the old promoter indi-
cated.
"Now, sir," the Captain turned to him, "you don't want
to sell anything. You must be under the impression that
I'm one of these damned New England sharks that get
their pound of flesh off the widow and orphan. If you're a
little short, sign a note and I'll write a check. That's the
way gentlemen do business. If you want to put up some
San Felipe as collateral, let her go, but I shan't touch a
share of it. Pens and ink, please, Oscar,"--he lifted a
large forefinger to the Austrian.
The Captain took out his checkbook and a book of blank
notes, and adjusted his nose-nippers. He wrote a few words
in one book and Archie wrote a few in the other. Then
they each tore across perforations and exchanged slips of
paper.
"That's the way. Saves office rent," the Captain com-
mented with satisfaction, returning the books to his pocket.
"And now, Archie, where are you off to?"
"Got to go East to-night. A deal waiting for me in New
York." Dr. Archie rose.
The Captain's face brightened as he saw Oscar approach-
ing with a tray, and he began tucking the corner of his
napkin inside his collar, over his ascot. "Don't let them
unload anything on you back there, doctor," he said gen-
ially, "and don't let them relieve you of anything, either.
Don't let them get any Cripple stuff off you. We can man-
age our own silver out here, and we're going to take it out
by the ton, sir!"
The doctor left the dining-room, and after another con-
sultation with the clerk, he wrote his first telegram to
Thea:--
Miss Thea Kronborg,
Everett House, New York.
Will call at your hotel eleven o'clock Friday morning.
Glad to come. Thank you.
ARCHIE
He stood and heard the message actually clicked off on
the wire, with the feeling that she was hearing the click at
the other end. Then he sat down in the lobby and wrote a
note to his wife and one to the other doctor in Moonstone.
When he at last issued out into the storm, it was with a
feeling of elation rather than of anxiety. Whatever was
wrong, he could make it right. Her letter had practically
said so.
He tramped about the snowy streets, from the bank to
the Union Station, where he shoved his money under the
grating of the ticket window as if he could not get rid of it
fast enough. He had never been in New York, never been
farther east than Buffalo. "That's rather a shame," he
reflected boyishly as he put the long tickets in his pocket,
"for a man nearly forty years old." However, he thought
as he walked up toward the club, he was on the whole glad
that his first trip had a human interest, that he was going
for something, and because he was wanted. He loved holi-
days. He felt as if he were going to Germany himself.
"Queer,"--he went over it with the snow blowing in his
face,--"but that sort of thing is more interesting than
mines and making your daily bread. It's worth paying out
to be in on it,--for a fellow like me. And when it's Thea
-- Oh, I back her!" he laughed aloud as he burst in at the
door of the Athletic Club, powdered with snow.
Archie sat down before the New York papers and ran
over the advertisements of hotels, but he was too restless
to read. Probably he had better get a new overcoat, and
he was not sure about the shape of his collars. "I don't
want to look different to her from everybody else there,"
he mused. "I guess I'll go down and have Van look me
over. He'll put me right."
So he plunged out into the snow again and started for his
tailor's. When he passed a florist's shop he stopped and
looked in at the window, smiling; how naturally pleasant
things recalled one another. At the tailor's he kept whis-
tling, "Flow gently, Sweet Afton," while Van Dusen ad-
vised him, until that resourceful tailor and haberdasher
exclaimed, "You must have a date back there, doctor; you
behave like a bridegroom," and made him remember that
he wasn't one.
Before he let him go, Van put his finger on the Masonic
pin in his client's lapel. "Mustn't wear that, doctor. Very
bad form back there."
Read next: PART V. DOCTOR ARCHIE'S VENTURE#Chapter 2
Read previous: PART IV. THE ANCIENT PEOPLE#Chapter 8
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