chasers for a valuable consideration, was consummated both steps at once, just as boys, suspicious of each other, trade a broken jackknife and an apple—each with a hand on each, each letting go at the same moment.
The papers were prepared in the office of Pateller & Gridley, barristers. Lederer would have objected to them, had it not been unwise. For it was in that office that he and Dick had had prepared their location notices and also a general power of attorney from Dick, the brawn man, to Doctor Lederer, the brain man, so the latter could use his brain for the furtherance of their business at any time, whether or not the brawn man was personally present. That power of attorney was safely pinned in the inner pocket of Lederer's jaunty coat. His objection he could hardly have explained himself. It was based rather on the general principle that in matters sub rosa—and all Lederer's transactions, no matter how straight, were tinctured, by preference, with an undersurface flavor—no one affair should ever be linked with another affair.
Both Pateller and Gridley were out. They usually were. But their chief clerk, Bonbright, who was in, usually attended to simple matters of conveyancing anyhow, so there was no difference—except to Lederer who noted, with an inner frown, that this man was the same man who had made out the power of attorney from Dick to himself.
The papers were quickly signed and attested, and the consideration passed. Lederer, an hour before, had expressed a preference for currency over exchange “on the outside.” Currency was less safe than exchange, in case of theft. But Lederer, alert, worldly-wise, never feared theft. He accordingly was paid, for the transfer signed by himself for himself and by himself as attorney in fact for his copartner Richard Kibble, fifteen thousand dollars in fresh, crisp notes of the Canadian Bank of Commerce, Dawson City branch.
While Bonbright was preparing his acknowledgment upon the conveyance, Lederer did a simple, natural thing, a very slight thing, yet it was the mistake of his life. He gazed through the window—which faced the Dawson river front—and held his gaze for a moment or two upon the river steamer Moosomin, which was to be the last boat up the river. Bonbright was so used to making out acknowledgments that he did not have to concentrate upon them; and he observed Doctor Lederer looking at the Moosomin.
“Yes,” said Doctor Lederer, in answer to a polite inquiry as to what he was going to do now, “we're going to develop some other property we have.”
He was heard but not heeded—except possibly by Bonbright, who was indorsing the conveyance prior to handing it to Pateller & Gridley's two clients. The clients had asked him the question just in the way of one who says, “It's a nice day, isn't it?” They were not in the least interested in what Doctor Lederer did with himself or his money—which was a pittance to these men, or to the real principals they represented.
And thus ended, for Doctor Ferdinand Lederer, in perfect success, a long series of getting-acquainteds, feelers, hintings, passings from one man to another, covering the several months since he and Dick had staked the fraction. The chain had ended for the time in the blank wall of “It all depends on whether the fraction has got the stuff!” Dick had toiled and moiled and found the stuff. And now the real and successful end had come. On the narrow, crowded side- walk of the main street of Dawson, Doctor Lederer found himself alone, feeling very fit, and with more money in his pocket than he had possessed for several years. He wove through the sidewalk crowd, hardly aware that he was not alone. His intensities had begun delightfully to work upon him.
He was a man of infinite refinements of desire. He loved art, beauty, drink, food, raiment, horses, books, poetry, the society of intellectuals and even of ascetics—between times! His was a nature of complete sophistication, of perfect and utter artificiality. He could enjoy intensely just as he could suffer intensely—when deprived of enjoyment. An appetite unappeased gave him no rest, no peace. It was torture.
Appetite, for six months, had wound up in him like a fine steel spring. Now he felt the relentless pressure of it moistening his lips. About him were rough palaces of pleasure—food, drink, gambling. Uncouth! With a shudder he thought of Monte Carlo; even of Sydney. No, he could not relax—uncoil the fine steel spring of the subtle, beautiful passions that were his greatest natural gift—in this monstrous wooden city of the crude and cruel Northland of his immolation. For this that he had in his pocket,
