LOUIS BAC drifted like a gray shadow through the gray streets of San Francisco. Even the French colony, one of the most homogeneous units of the city, knew little more of him than the community at large. He was the son of one famous restaurateur and the grandson of another; he had been sent to a Lycee in Paris at the age of twelve, graduated from the University of Paris at twenty-two, and returned to San Francisco upon the death of his father a year later. The French colony were surprised that he did not go back to Paris after selling the restaurant--his energetic mother had pre-deceased her husband--but buried himself in the old Bac home behind the eucalyptus-trees on the steepest hillside of the city; otherwise his return and himself attracted no attention whatever until he flung his hat into the international arena.
Both his father, Henri Bac II., and his shrewd mother, Antoinette, had been agreed upon giving their studious ascetic little son a true American's chance to rise in the world, and, acting on the advice of their chief patron and the leader of the French colony, M. Cesar Dupont, who offered his escort, had sent the boy to the College Louis le Grand. They never saw their only child again; but although Louis had been reticent of speech, he proved a very prodigal with his pen. As the years passed it became evident--the entire French colony read these letters--that his goal was belles-lettres and that he was practising on his family. Finally, after many mutations his style became so formal and precise that M. Dupont became alarmed and, during his next visit to Paris, invited the young man to breakfast.
Louis by this time was eighteen, of medium height, as thin as all overworked, underfed, underoxygenated Lycee boys, with large gray eyes that were rarely raised, a long pale face, a long thin nose, a small thin-lipped mouth. The brow was abnormally large, the rest of the head rather small. It was not an attractive personality, M. Dupont reflected--he had not seen Louis for several years--but the boy carried something uncommon in his head-piece, or he, Cesar Dupont, fashionable merchant and bon viveur, had studied the craniums of a thousand San Francisco geniuses in vain.
He had taken his guest to the Restaurant de la Tour d'Argent, and while the duck's frame was being crushed he asked, abruptly:
"Have you given a thought to your future career, Louis? Of course you know you will not be obliged to drudge, but to be a professor of French literature is not without its eclat, and, I fancy, more in your line than commerce."
Louis's lip curled. "I have no more intention of being a professor than of being a merchant," he said in his cold, precise voice. "I shall write."
"Ah!" M. Dupont drew a sigh of relief. He had feared the boy would be forbiddingly reticent. "I hoped as much from your letters. Your refinement of mind and style are remarkable for a man of your years. Shall you write plays?"
A faint color had invaded the youth's cheeks under this considered flattery, and when he lifted his deeply set gray eyes to M. Dupont's it was almost with the frankness of man to man. But he was intensely shy, and although more at his ease with this handsome, genial patron of his family, he made his confidences without warmth.
"No. I shall write the novel. The dramatic form does not appeal to me."
"Ah! Yes. I am not surprised. Your style is certainly more narrative--descriptive. But to be a novelist, my son, you must have seen a great deal of life. You must know the great world--unless--perhaps--you contemplate writing romance?"
Again the delicate lip opposite curled, and Louis almost choked over his morsel of duck. "Romance? No, Monsieur. I am a realist by temperament and mental habit. Nor do I need the great world. Only one thing interests me--crime."
"Crime? Mon Dieu!" The amiable merchant almost choked in his turn, although he savored his duck more slowly than his Lycee guest. "Crime! But you are too young, my son, to be interested in anything so grim. Life is to enjoy. And how can you enjoy with your mind like a morgue?"
"We are not all made to enjoy in the same fashion. I enjoy intensely reading through old volumes of criminal records and trials--my master in psychology has kindly arranged that I shall have access to them. And I read with the greatest interest the details of current criminology. I shall never care for society, for I am too timid and dislike women. But I love the lonely grandeur of nature, and music, and great books and pictures. Have no fear, Monsieur, my mind is not polluted. It is purely scientific, this interest; the psychology of crime happens to appeal to my peculiar gifts."
"But--that is it--your gifts are literary--but yes! I do not like the idea of wasting them on that lamentable subdivision of human society which one ignores save when held up by a footpad. With but few exceptions it has appealed only to the inferior order of writing talent. Even in France the masters do not condescend. With them crime is an incident, not a motif."
"Has it occurred to you, Monsieur, that without the pioneers--"
"Oh yes, perhaps--but you--"