When Ottenburg and his host reached the house on Colfax Avenue, they went directly to the library, a long double room on the second floor which Archie had arranged exactly to his own taste. It was full of books and mounted specimens2 of wild game, with a big writing-table at either end, stiff, old-fashioned engravings, heavy hangings and deep upholstery.
When one of the Japanese boys brought the cocktails4, Fred turned from the fine specimen1 of peccoray he had been examining and said, “A man is an owl5 to live in such a place alone, Archie. Why don’t you marry? As for me, just because I can’t marry, I find the world full of charming, unattached women, any one of whom I could fit up a house for with alacrity6.”
“You’re more knowing than I.” Archie spoke7 politely. “I’m not very wide awake about women. I’d be likely to pick out one of the uncomfortable ones—and there are a few of them, you know.” He drank his cocktail3 and rubbed his hands together in a friendly way. “My friends here have charming wives, and they don’t give me a chance to get lonely. They are very kind to me, and I have a great many pleasant friendships.”
Fred put down his glass. “Yes, I’ve always noticed that women have confidence in you. You have the doctor’s way of getting next. And you enjoy that kind of thing?”
“The friendship of attractive women? Oh, dear, yes! I depend upon it a great deal.”
The butler announced dinner, and the two men went downstairs to the dining-room. Dr. Archie’s dinners were always good and well served, and his wines were excellent.
“I saw the Fuel and Iron people to-day,” Ottenburg said, looking up from his soup. “Their heart is in the right place. I can’t see why in the mischief8 you ever got mixed up with that reform gang, Archie. You’ve got nothing to reform out here. The situation has always been as simple as two and two in Colorado; mostly a matter of a friendly understanding.”
“Well,”—Archie spoke tolerantly,—“some of the young fellows seemed to have red-hot convictions, and I thought it was better to let them try their ideas out.”
Ottenburg shrugged9 his shoulders. “A few dull young men who haven’t ability enough to play the old game the old way, so they want to put on a new game which doesn’t take so much brains and gives away more advertising10 that’s what your anti-saloon league and vice11 commission amounts to. They provide notoriety for the fellows who can’t distinguish themselves at running a business or practicing law or developing an industry. Here you have a mediocre12 lawyer with no brains and no practice, trying to get a look-in on something. He comes up with the novel proposition that the prostitute has a hard time of it, puts his picture in the paper, and the first thing you know, he’s a celebrity13. He gets the rake-off and she’s just where she was before. How could you fall for a mouse-trap like Pink Alden, Archie?”
Dr. Archie laughed as he began to carve. “Pink seems to get under your skin. He’s not worth talking about. He’s gone his limit. People won’t read about his blameless life any more. I knew those interviews he gave out would cook him. They were a last resort. I could have stopped him, but by that time I’d come to the conclusion that I’d let the reformers down. I’m not against a general shaking-up, but the trouble with Pinky’s crowd is they never get beyond a general writing-up. We gave them a chance to do something, and they just kept on writing about each other and what temptations they had overcome.”
While Archie and his friend were busy with Colorado politics, the impeccable Japanese attended swiftly and intelligently to his duties, and the dinner, as Ottenburg at last remarked, was worthy14 of more profitable conversation.
“So it is,” the doctor admitted. “Well, we’ll go upstairs for our coffee and cut this out. Bring up some cognac and arak, Tai,” he added as he rose from the table.
They stopped to examine a moose’s head on the stairway, and when they reached the library the pine logs in the fireplace had been lighted, and the coffee was bubbling before the hearth15. Tai placed two chairs before the fire and brought a tray of cigarettes.
“Bring the cigars in my lower desk drawer, boy,” the doctor directed. “Too much light in here, isn’t there, Fred? Light the lamp there on my desk, Tai.” He turned off the electric glare and settled himself deep into the chair opposite Ottenburg’s.
“To go back to our conversation, doctor,” Fred began while he waited for the first steam to blow off his coffee; “why don’t you make up your mind to go to Washington? There’d be no fight made against you. I needn’t say the United Breweries16 would back you. There’d be some kudos17 coming to us, too; backing a reform candidate.”
Dr. Archie measured his length in his chair and thrust his large boots toward the crackling pitch-pine. He drank his coffee and lit a big black cigar while his guest looked over the assortment18 of cigarettes on the tray. “You say why don’t I,” the doctor spoke with the deliberation of a man in the position of having several courses to choose from, “but, on the other hand, why should I?” He puffed19 away and seemed, through his half-closed eyes, to look down several long roads with the intention of luxuriously20 rejecting all of them and remaining where he was. “I’m sick of politics. I’m disillusioned21 about serving my crowd, and I don’t particularly want to serve yours. Nothing in it that I particularly want; and a man’s not effective in politics unless he wants something for himself, and wants it hard. I can reach my ends by straighter roads. There are plenty of things to keep me busy. We haven’t begun to develop our resources in this State; we haven’t had a look in on them yet. That’s the only thing that isn’t fake—making men and machines go, and actually turning out a product.”
The doctor poured himself some white cordial and looked over the little glass into the fire with an expression which led Ottenburg to believe that he was getting at something in his own mind. Fred lit a cigarette and let his friend grope for his idea.
“My boys, here,” Archie went on, “have got me rather interested in Japan. Think I’ll go out there in the spring, and come back the other way, through Siberia. I’ve always wanted to go to Russia.” His eyes still hunted for something in his big fireplace. With a slow turn of his head he brought them back to his guest and fixed22 them upon him. “Just now, I’m thinking of running on to New York for a few weeks,” he ended abruptly23.
Ottenburg lifted his chin. “Ah!” he exclaimed, as if he began to see Archie’s drift. “Shall you see Thea?”
“Yes.” The doctor replenished24 his cordial glass. “In fact, I suspect I am going exactly to see her. I’m getting stale on things here, Fred. Best people in the world and always doing things for me. I’m fond of them, too, but I’ve been with them too much. I’m getting ill-tempered, and the first thing I know I’ll be hurting people’s feelings. I snapped Mrs. Dandridge up over the telephone this afternoon when she asked me to go out to Colorado Springs on Sunday to meet some English people who are staying at the Antlers. Very nice of her to want me, and I was as sour as if she’d been trying to work me for something. I’ve got to get out for a while, to save my reputation.”
To this explanation Ottenburg had not paid much attention. He seemed to be looking at a fixed point: the yellow glass eyes of a fine wildcat over one of the bookcases. “You’ve never heard her at all, have you?” he asked reflectively. “Curious, when this is her second season in New York.”
“I was going on last March. Had everything arranged. And then old Cap Harris thought he could drive his car and me through a lamp-post and I was laid up with a compound fracture for two months. So I didn’t get to see Thea.”
Ottenburg studied the red end of his cigarette attentively25. “She might have come out to see you. I remember you covered the distance like a streak26 when she wanted you.”
Archie moved uneasily. “Oh, she couldn’t do that. She had to get back to Vienna to work on some new parts for this year. She sailed two days after the New York season closed.”
“Well, then she couldn’t, of course.” Fred smoked his cigarette close and tossed the end into the fire. “I’m tremendously glad you’re going now. If you’re stale, she’ll jack27 you up. That’s one of her specialties28. She got a rise out of me last December that lasted me all winter.”
“Of course,” the doctor apologized, “you know so much more about such things. I’m afraid it will be rather wasted on me. I’m no judge of music.”
“Never mind that.” The younger man pulled himself up in his chair. “She gets it across to people who aren’t judges. That’s just what she does.” He relapsed into his former lassitude. “If you were stone deaf, it wouldn’t all be wasted. It’s a great deal to watch her. Incidentally, you know, she is very beautiful. Photographs give you no idea.”
Dr. Archie clasped his large hands under his chin. “Oh, I’m counting on that. I don’t suppose her voice will sound natural to me. Probably I wouldn’t know it.”
Ottenburg smiled. “You’ll know it, if you ever knew it. It’s the same voice, only more so. You’ll know it.”
“Did you, in Germany that time, when you wrote me............