There were seventeen policies in all and they aggregated an even million dollars. It thrilled Butler Murray to note his own name neatly typed upon the outside of each. Those papers possessed a remarkable fascination for him, not only because they meant the settlement of his debt to Muriel, but because his life, instead of being the wholly useless thing he had come to regard it, was really, by virtue of those documents, a valuable asset upon which he could realize at once.

One million dollars was a great deal of money, even to Butler Murray, and yet it was so easy! Why, it was even easier to make that amount than it had been to spend it! Although the former process might not prove so amusing, it at least offered a degree of interest wholly lacking in the latter.

When DeVoe entered, Murray greeted him warmly. "I'm glad I caught you, Henry. They told me you've been out West somewhere."

"Yes, I'm promoting, you know—mines!" DeVoe flung off his fur coat and settled into an easy-chair.

"Getting along all right?"

"No. My friends either know too little about mines or too much about me. I've a good proposition, though, and if I could ever get started, I'd clean up a million."

"It's not so hard to make a million dollars."

"How the deuce do you know? You've never had to try. By the way, why are you living here at the club? Where is Mrs. Murray?"

"She is at the farm with the children. We have—separated."

"No! Jove! I'm sorry. What does it mean—the road to Reno?"

"I hardly think she will divorce me, on account of the publicity; although she ought to."

"Woman scrape, I suppose."

"No, nothing like that. I've spent all her money."

DeVoe opened his eyes in amazement. "Oh, see here now, you couldn't spend it all! Why, she had even more than you!"

"It's all gone—hers and mine."

"Good Lord!"

"Yes. I was always extravagant, but I've been speculating lately. I thought I'd get a sensation either way the market went, but I was disappointed. I dare say I have exhausted my capabilities for excitement. It's a long story, and I won't bore you with it, but, to be exact, all I have left is the town house and the farm and the place in Virginia. There isn't enough income, however, to keep any one of them going."

"Well, well! You have been stepping along. Why, it's inconceivable!" DeVoe stirred uneasily in his chair. The calm indifference of this broad-shouldered, immaculate fellow amazed him. He could not tell whether it was genuine or assumed, and in either event he was sorry he had come, for he did not like to hear tales of misfortune. Butler Murray, the millionaire, was a good man to know, but—

"I sent for you because I need—"

"See here, Butler," the younger man broke in, abruptly, "you know I can't lend. I'm borrowing myself. In fact, I was going to make a touch on you."

"Oh, I don't want your money; I want your help. I think, perhaps, I'm entitled to it, eh?"

Henry flushed a trifle. "You're welcome to that at all times, of course, and if I had a bank-roll, I'd split it with you, but I just can't seem to get started."

"Suppose you had twenty-five thousand dollars, cash; would that help?"

"Help! Great Heavens! I could swing this deal; it would put me on my feet."

"I'm ready to pay you that amount for a few weeks of your time."

"Take a year of it, two years. Take my life's blood. Twenty-five thousand! You needn't tell me any more; just name the job and I'll take my chances of being caught. But—I say, you just told me you were broke."

"I received about fifty thousand dollars from the sale of the yacht, and I invested the money. I want you to help me realize on that investment." Murray tossed the packet of papers he had been examining into DeVoe's lap.

After scrutinizing them an instant, the latter looked up with a crooked, startled stare.

"Are you joking? Why, these are your insurance policies!"

"Exactly! There are seventeen of them, and they foot up one million dollars—the limit in every company. They begin to expire in March, and I don't intend to renew them. In fact, I couldn't if I wanted to."

The two men regarded each other silently for a moment, then the younger paled.

"Are you—crazy?" he gasped.

"The doctors didn't think so, and that is the heaviest life insurance carried by any man in America, with a few exceptions. Do you think they would have passed me if I'd been wrong up here?" He tapped his forehead. "I intend that you shall receive twenty-five thousand dollars of that money; the rest will go to Muriel."

DeVoe continued to stare alternately at the policies and his friend; then cleared his throat nervously.

"Let's talk plainly."

"By all means. You will need to know the truth, but you are the only one outside of myself who will. For some time I have felt the certainty that I am going to die."

"Nonsense! You are an ox."

"The more I've thought about it the more certain I've become, until now there isn't the slightest doubt in my mind. I took my last dollar and bought that insurance. Do you understand? I'm considered rich, therefore they allowed me to take out a million dollars."

"Sui—God Almighty, man!" DeVoe's sagging jaw snapped shut with a click.

"Let me finish; then you can decide whether I'm sane or crazy, and whether you want that twenty-five thousand dollars enough to help me. To begin with, I'll grant you that I'm young—only forty—healthy and strong. But I'm broke, Henry. I don't believe you realize what that means to a chap who has had two fortunes handed to him and has squandered both. I'm really twice forty years of age, perhaps three times, for I have lived faster than most men. I have been everywhere, I have seen everything, I have done everything—except manual labor, and of course I don't know how to do that—I have had every sensation. I'm sated and old, and sometimes I'm a bit tired. I have no enthusiasm left, and I'm bankrupt. To make matters worse I have a wife who knows the truth and two lovely children who do not. Those kids believe I'm a hero and the greatest man in all the universe; in their eyes I'm a sort of demigod, but in a few years they'll learn that I have been a waster and thrown away not only my own fortune, but the million that belonged to them. That will be tough for all of us. Muriel knows how deeply I've wronged her, but she is too much a thoroughbred to make it public. Nevertheless, she detests me, and I detest myself; she may decide to divorce me. At any rate, I have wrecked whatever home life I used to have, for I'll never be able to support her, even if I sell the three places. I'll be known as a failure; I'll be ridiculed by the world. On the other hand, if I should die before next March she would be rich again." Murray's eyes rested upon the package of policies. "Perhaps time would soften her memory of me. The youngsters would have what they're entitled to, and they would always think of me as a grand, good, handsome parent who was taken off in his prime." He smiled whimsically at this. "That is worth something to a fellow, isn't it? I don't want them to be disillusioned, Henry; I don't want to endure their pity and toleration. I don't want to be in their way and hear them say, 'Hush! Here comes poor old father!' Do you understand?"

"To a certain extent. Then you really intend—to kill yourself?" DeVoe glanced about the cozy room as if to assure himself that he was not dreaming.

"Decidedly not. That insurance wouldn't be payable if—it was suicide. I intend to die from natural causes—before the first of March."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Very little; keep me company, answer questions about my illness, perhaps; attend to a few things after I'm gone. You might even have to prove that I didn't take my own life. Do you agree?"

"Whew! That's a cold-blooded proposition. Are you really in earnest?"

"It took nearly my last dollar to buy that insurance. I will execute a promissory note to you for twenty-five thousand dollars, payable one year from date. Borrowed money, understand? The executors will see that it is paid. Is that satisfactory?"

"But you say you can't kill yourself and yet—Good Lord! How calmly we're discussing this thing! What makes you think you'll die of natural causes within the next three months?"

"I shall see that I do. Oh, I've thought it all out. I've studied poisons, but there is the danger of discovery when one uses them. They'll do to fall back upon if necessary, but there is a better way which is quite as certain, reasonably quick, and utterly above suspicion."

"What is it?" questioned DeVoe, interestedly.

"Pneumonia! I had a touch of it once, and I know. They nearly lost me. It takes us big, robust fellows off with particular ease and expedition. You and I will take a hunting trip; it is winter; I will suffer some unexpected exposure; you'll do what you can to save me, but medical attention will come too late. It won't take two weeks altogether."

"If you're looking for pneumonia I know the place. When I left, ten days ago, men were dying like flies. You won't need to go hunting it; it will come hunting you."

"Out West somewhere, eh?".

"The Nevada desert. That's where I'm mining."

"Deserts are usually hot."

DeVoe shivered. "Not this one, at this season. It's a hell of a country, Butler; five thousand feet elevation, biting winds, blizzards, and all that. You just can't keep warm. But the danger is in the Poganip."

"The what?"

"The Poganip; what they call 'the Breath of Death' out there. It's a sort of frozen fog peculiar to that locality."

"Then you accept my offer?"

Again DeVoe hesitated. "Are you really going to do it? Well then, yes. If I don't take your money, I suppose you'll employ somebody else."

"Good! We'll leave to-morrow."

"Can you get your affairs in shape by then?"

"I don't want them in shape. Don't you understand?"

"I see." After a moment the younger man continued, "It's all very well for us to plan this way—but I'm not sure we'll succeed in our enterprise."

"Why not, pray?"

"Well, I dare say I'm a good deal of a rotter—I must be to go into a thing like this—but I have a superstitious streak in me. Possibly it's reverence; at any rate I believe there is a Power outside of ourselves which appoints the hour of our coming and the hour of our going. I'm not so sure you can pull this off until that Power says so."

Murray laughed. "Nonsense! What is to prevent my shooting myself at this moment, if I want to?"

"Nothing, if you want to—but you don't want to. Why don't you want to? Because that Power hasn't named this as your time. I don't make myself very clear."

"I think I see what you're driving at, but you're wrong. We are masters of our own destinies; we make our lives as full or as empty as we choose. I have emptied mine of all it contained, and I don't consider that I am doing any one an injury in disposing of what belongs alone to me. Now we'll complete the details."

The speaker drew a blank note from his desk and filled it in.

It was with a very natural feeling of interest that Butler Murray watched the desert unfold before his car window a few days later as his train made its way southward from the main line and into the Bad Lands of the Nevada gold-fields. There was snow everywhere; not enough for warmth, but enough to chill the landscape with a gray, forbidding aspect. It lay, loose-piled and shifting, behind naked rocks, or streamed over the knife-edge ridges, swirling and settling in the gullies like filmy winding-sheets. All the world up here was barren, burned out, and cold, like his own life; it was a fitting place in which to end an existence which had proven such a mockery and failure.

Goldfield was a conglomerate city in the hectic stage of its growth. Rough, uncouth, primitive, it lay cradled in the lap of inhospitable hills upon the denuded slopes of which derricks towered like gallows. The whole naked country spoke of death and desolation.

A bitter wind laden with driving particles of sleet met the travelers as they stepped off the train.

DeVoe's headquarters consisted of a typical mining-camp shack in the heart of the town, containing a bare little office and two sleeping-rooms, the hindermost of which gave egress to a yard banked in snow and flanked by other frame buildings.

Murray selected the coldest apartment and unpacked his belongings, the most precious of which was a folding morocco case containing three photographs—one of Muriel and one each of the boy and the girl.

Then followed a week of careful preparation. Together the two men made frequent excursions to various mining properties. Murray mingled with the heterogeneous crowd of brokers, promoters, gamblers, and mine-owners; he took options on claims and made elaborate plans to develop them; he was interviewed by reporters from the local papers; articles were printed telling of his proposed activities. When he had laid a secure foundation, he announced to DeVoe that the time had come.

It appeared that the latter had by no means exaggerated the dangers of this climate, for men were really dying in such numbers as to create almost a panic, the hospitals were overcrowded, and Murray had been repeatedly warned to take the strictest care of himself if he wished to preserve his health. The altitude combined with the cold and wet and the lack of accommodations was to blame, it seemed, and accounted for the high mortality rate. Doctors assured him that once a man was stricken with pneumonia in this climate there was little chance of saving him.

That evening he let the fire die out of the stove in his room, then went next door to a little Turkish-bath establishment, and proceeded to sweat for an hour. Instead of drying himself off he flung a greatcoat over his streaming shoulders, slipped into boots and trousers, then stepped across the snow-packed yard to his own quarters, where he found DeVoe bundled up to the chin and waiting. His brief passage across the open snow had chilled him, for the wind was cruel, but he blew out the light in his chamber, flung off his overcoat, then, standing in the open door, drank the frost-burdened air into his overheated lungs.

"God! You're half naked!" chattered the onlooker. "You'll freeze."

The moisture upon Murray's body dried slowly. He began to shake in every muscle, but he continued his long, deep breaths—breaths that congealed his lungs. He became cramped and stiff. He suffered terribly. He felt constricting bands about his chest; darting, numbing pains ran through him. He could not tell how long he continued thus, but eventually the sheer agony of it drove him back. He closed the door and crept into bed, the clammy cotton sheets of which were warm against his flesh. Through rattling teeth he bade good night to his friend, saying:

"D-don't mind—anything I do or—say during the night."

DeVoe lost no time in seeking his own warm room, where Murray heard him stamping and threshing his arms to revive his circulation.

There could be but one outcome to such a suicidal action, the frozen man reflected. Stronger fellows than he were dying daily from half such exposure. Why, already he could feel his lungs congesting. Although the agony was almost unendurable, he forced himself to lie still, then traced the course of his blood as it gradually crept through his veins. Eventually he fell asleep, tortured, but satisfied.

Henry found him slumbering peacefully late the next morning, and when he arose he felt better and stronger than he had for years.

"Jove! I'm hungry," he said as he dressed himself.

"I expected to find you mighty sick," his friend exclaimed, wonderingly. "I slept cold all night."

"It seems I didn't catch it that time. I must be stronger than I thought."

He ate a hearty breakfast, and, although he tramped the hills all day in the snow and cold, watching himself carefully for signs of approaching illness, he was disappointed to discover none whatever. At bedtime he repeated his performance of the night before, but with the same result. When he awoke on the second morning, however, he found the desert town wrapped in the dark folds of a fog that chilled his marrow and clung to his clothing in little beads. It was a strange phenomenon, for the air was bitterly cold and yet saturated with moisture; mountain and valley were hidden in an impalpable dust that was neither fog nor snow, but a freezing, uncomfortable combination of both.

DeVoe hugged the fire all day, saying to his guest: "You'll have to do the trick alone, Butler; it's too deucedly unpleasant sitting there in the cold every night. I'll get sick."

"It's not very agreeable for me, either, and the least you can do is to keep me company. That's the agreement, you know."

After some argument DeVoe acceded, saying, "Oh, if you want me to hold your hand while you freeze I suppose I'll have to do it, although I can't see the use of it."

That night when Murray had regained his cheerless room after taking his Turkish bath he drank a goblet of raw whisky, then flung wide the door, and, standing upon the sill, half nude and gleaming with perspiration, inhaled the deadly Poganip. When the fiery liquor had driven the last drop of his hot blood to the surface he seized a bottle of alcohol and, upending it, drenched his body. If he had suffered previously, he now endured supreme agony. As the alcohol evaporated upon his naked skin it fairly froze the blood he had forced up from his heart's cavities. He groaned with the pain of it. Again he felt as if his body were coating with ice; his lungs contracted with that agonizing grip.

"This is too c-cold for me," DeVoe chattered, finally. "I'm going to beat it."

As Butler Murray cowered and shook in his bed an hour later he decided that his third and final effort had succeeded, for not only did he plainly feel the effects of that terrible ordeal, but by every law of nature and hygiene he was doomed. He had drunk the whisky to increase the peripheral circulation of his body to the highest point, then by the use of the alcohol had reduced his temperature to a frightful extent and driven his blood back, frozen and sluggish. That was inevitably suicidal, as the least knowledge of medicine would show; it could not be otherwise. He was very glad, too, for this suffering was more than he had bargained for.

He awoke in the morning feeling none the worse for his action. He did not even have a cold.

DeVoe's amazement at this miracle was mingled with annoyance which he showed by complaining: "See here, Butler, are you kidding? You might at least have a little consideration for my feelings; this suspense is awful."

"My dear fellow, I'm doing all I can." Murray filled his chest, then pressed it gingerly with his palm. There was not a trace of soreness; his muscles lacked even a twinge of rheumatism.

That day he had another window cut in the wall of his room, immediately over his bed, and, after exposing himself as usual upon retiring, left it open and slept in the draught. Finding that this had no effect, he undertook to sleep without covers, but the bitter weather would not permit, so he purchased drugs and, after returning from his Turkish bath, swallowed a sleeping-potion. When he could no longer keep his eyes open he lay down nude and dripping where the frigid wind sucked over him. Some time, somehow, before morning he must have covered himself, for he awoke between the sheets as usual. With the exception of a thick feeling in his head, however, which quickly wore off, he possessed no ill effects.

Day after day, night after night, he exposed himself with a deliberate methodical recklessness that seemed fatal; time after time his good constitution threw off the assault. DeVoe declared querulously that his friend looked even better than when they had arrived, and the scales showed he had put on five pounds of weight. The affair assumed an ironical, grisly sort of humor which amused Murray. But it was maddening to DeVoe.

One howling, stormy afternoon the former bundled his accessory into warm clothes and took him for a long walk. Leaving the town behind them, they plowed up through the snow to the summit of a near-by mountain where the gale raged past in all its violence. Henry was cursing the cold and grumbling at his idiocy in coming along, and, when he had regained his breath, growled:

"Understand, Butler, this ends it for me. I never agreed to kill myself. Hereafter you can make your Alpine trips alone. I've had a cold now for a week."

Murray laughed good-naturedly. "Remember, if I fail I can't pay you."

"For Heaven's sake, then, get it over with! I need that money and—I have nerves."

The former speaker opened his coat and DeVoe saw that he had left the house with no protection whatever beneath it, except trousers and footgear. His body was wet from the climb, but he exposed it openly to the storm until he was blue with cold, while the younger man stamped about, threshing his arms and lamenting his own discomfort.

That night Murray repeated his Turkish bath, swallowed his usual narcotic, and lay down upon his draughty couch to be awakened some time after midnight by a cry of "Fire." He noted dully that a vivid glare was flickering through his open windows, and saw that the roofs adjoining were silhouetted against a redly glowing sky; he heard a great clamor of shouting voices, gunshots, bells, running feet, so arose and dressed himself. Instead of donning his regular clothing, however, he drew on a pair of trousers, thrust his bare feet into rubber boots, then buttoned a rubber coat over his naked shoulders.

When he undertook to rouse DeVoe, Henry refused to get up, murmuring sourly beneath his blankets:

"It's too cold and I've just fallen asleep—been tossing around for hours."

"Very well. If it should spread in this direction I'll come back and help get the things out."

The blizzard of the previous day had increased in violence, and as Murray stepped out into it the cold sank through his thin garb and cut him to the bone. His rain-coat was almost no protection, the rubber boots upon his bare feet froze quickly, but he smiled with a grim, distorted sense of satisfaction as he decided that here perhaps was his long-awaited opportunity.

A winter fire in a desert mining-camp is a serious calamity. Water is scarce at all times, and at this particular season Goldfield was even drier than usual. Volunteers had already joined the insufficient fire department, but the blaze was gaining headway in spite of all. The wind played devilish pranks, serving not only to fan the conflagration, but to deaden human hands and reduce human bodies to helpless, clumsy things.

Butler Murray plunged into the fight with an abandon that won admiration even in this chaos. He had no fear, he courted danger, he led where others shrank from following. In and out of the flames he went, now blistered by the heat, now numbed by the wintry gale. His body became drenched with sweat, only to be caked in ice from the spray a moment later. Icicles clung to his brows, his boots filled with water. It was he who laid the dynamite, it was he who set it off and razed the buildings in the path of the conflagration, checking the swift march of destruction. Although he labored like a giant, taking insane risks at every opportunity, his life seemed charmed, and dawn found him uninjured, although staggering from weakness. Women brought him hot coffee and sandwiches, then when the fire was under control he returned to his quarters, half naked, as he had set out. It had been one long battle against the blind god luck and he had emerged unscathed. And yet he had not lost, for no human body could withstand a strain like this; his previous exposures had been as nothing compared with what he had undergone these many hours. If this did not bring pneumonia nothing could.

As he lurched up the frozen street men cheered him and something warm awoke in his heart, but when he stumbled into DeVoe's room he found that young man still in bed, his cheeks flushed and feverish. Henry was coughing and groaning; he complained of pains in his head and chest.

An hour later a doctor pronounced it pneumonia, and when the patient grew rapidly worse he was moved to the wretched excuse for a hospital. Murray snatched a few hours' sleep that night as he sat by his friend's bedside and the next day found him as fit as ever. But in spite of every attention DeVoe's fever mounted, his lungs began to fill, and on the second night he died.

The suddenness of this tragedy stunned Butler Murray and its mockery enraged him. He had promised DeVoe, toward the last, to take his body East, and now decided it was just as well to do so, for he had proven, to his own satisfaction at least, that he could not catch pneumonia, no matter how hard he tried. A few hours later, therefore, he was on the overland train bound for New York.

He had wasted a month of valuable time, but as to relinquishing his purpose, the idea never occurred to him.