The Project Gutenberg eBook of Double Crossed, by W. Douglas Newton.

AUTHOR OF “LOW CEILINGS,” “GREEN LADIES,”
“WESTWARD WITH THE PRINCE OF WALES,” ETC.

CHAPTER I

A little, knuckly man bounded into Clement Seadon’s cabin with an india-rubber violence. He snapped the door closed, and faced the startled young man.

“You needn’t think. You don’t know. I’m a complete stranger to you—in the flesh. But don’t talk. I haven’t much time.”

Clement glanced at the umbrella and obvious shore rig of the bounding little man.

“In fact,” he said, in the other’s manner, “you have no time at all. ‘All ashore’ was called two minutes ago.”

“Oh, don’t talk,” panted the little man. “This thing is terribly important. I mustn’t lose a moment telling you. You know Heloise Reys?”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t quibble, man. You [Pg 2] know her. You came from London to Liverpool in the same carriage as Heloise Reys.”

“Oh, that was Heloise Reys,” said the young man, dropping his dress-shirts and looking up with interest. “The Gorgon woman with her called her Loise.”

“Nickname,” said the little man breathlessly. “Her name is really Heloise—What I mean to say is, you do know her.”

“Not really,” said Clement with exasperating (and, one is afraid, deliberate) casualness. “A mere chance acquaintance.”

He refused to tell the little man that, having encountered her in the C.P.R. office, he had determinedly looked out for her on the boat train.

“Please do remember that I have the barest possible time to tell you what I must tell you. Don’t interrupt. Don’t quibble. You know her. She is good looking.”

His astonishment had given way to a sort of guarded amusement. He was of the genial type of young man, one who could see the humorous side of things quickly.

“Do take it from me,” he cried. “No mother, no father. No encumbrances, and no one to control her. Remember that, no one to watch over her. And she is very well off. Very rich.”

Clement could only stare. The little man swept on: “Very beautiful. Very charming. A girl with a gentle, tender heart—much too tender. Too quixotic. A fine character. Good family—and rich. Extremely rich. You understand all that?”

“Look here—what on earth are you driving at?” cried the astounded Clement.

“But do you understand?” wailed the little man. “Have you grasped it all? A worthy girl. A girl worthy of any man. A girl that any man can be proud of. A girl——”

This was too much for Clement. “I say,” he burst out, “I say, are you—are you asking me to marry her?”

The excited dance of the little man now took on a touch of relief as well as anxiety. “You grasp it. You see it,” he trilled. “Assuredly. Marry her—that’s it.”

“My dear idiot,” shouted Clement. “My dear madman. Don’t you understand that——”

“No time to understand,” skated on the little man. “No time at all. Know it’s all rapid and wrong and amazing, but that’s what I want. You marry her. You can do it. You’re young. Young and handsome and healthy. And a sea-voyage. Sea-voyages are the chance of sentiment. Idle days, luxurious days. Moonlight—looking at the wake. Oh, the very chance for falling in love.”

“Do you realize you’re talking like an idiot? I’ve only just met Miss——”

“I know. I know. Awfully like an idiot. That’s because I am in such a hurry. I know exactly how it all sounds to you—but, really, I can’t help myself. Such a time. But that’s what I want you to do—really. Fall in love with her. Make her fall in love with you. Make her promise to marry you. Before she gets to Canada make her promise to marry you. Don’t let her put you off. Force her to do it.”

Clement wanted to say that even lawyers went mad sometimes, but the little man hurled himself along.

“I’m a lawyer. I’m her lawyer. I’m your lawyer, too—one of them. That’s luck. When I saw you come out of the train with her, saw that you knew her, I noted that down as a piece of luck. You see I knew you were all right. Knew that through business—oh, I’m a partner of Rigby & Root.”

“Yes! Yes! Haven’t I been telling you that? We’re her lawyers, too. When I saw you together, I said to myself, ‘Good, that’s a second line of defense. If I fail to bring her to reason I fall back on Clement Seadon—Mr. Clement Seadon. He’ll be my second line. Good fellow. Good family. Young, attractive, handsome to the eye. Has wits. Has capacity. Has a brain in his head. Has pluck and physical strength, too. Can carry a thing through in spite of danger.’ ...”

As he said that, his rapid eye glinted on Clement. He was staccato, but he was not stupid. Clement stiffened. He was the type of clean, young Anglo-Saxon who did stiffen at the hint of danger. The type that goes about quietly, calmly avoiding trouble—but is not really heartbroken when trouble comes along. The little lawyer saw Clement stiffen, he chuckled internally and continued his express monologue.

“That’s what I said to myself when I saw you. I said, ‘Mr. Clement Seadon has all the qualities [Pg 6] necessary. An admirable second line of defense. And well-off, too. Rich. He’s not an adventurer hunting heiresses.’ That’s what I said when I saw you. And I went off to Heloise Reys’ cabin and tried to bring her to reason. Oh, I strove. I strove. I talked my best.”

“You strove, and strove—and then had to fall back on your second line,” said Clement, helping him out.

Clement’s mind was in a curious condition. He realized that all this was madder than anything had any right to be—and yet he was rather intrigued, rather interested. He could not have told why. The fact that the little man was a lawyer, and his own lawyer at that, may have been the reason. Or it may have been that suggestion of danger, of adventure, called to that instinct lying dormant in the young of Clement’s race. Whatever it was, mad though he felt the whole business to be, he sat and listened.

The lawyer said, “You are right. I could do nothing with her. I failed. I could not bring her to reason. She is so quixotic. So headstrong. She has the wrongest sense of what is right.... And then I have no proofs. Only fears, only suspicions. I couldn’t clinch the matter with her. I couldn’t bring home anything to her.”

“And what were you trying to bring home to her?” demanded Clement, who really thought he was entitled to some explanation.

“Bring home to her? The truth about that scamp. I was trying to make her see that she should not go out to Canada to marry him.”

Clement gasped. Also he felt a little stab of pain. Heloise was certainly most extraordinarily attractive.

“Marry him? Marry whom? Haven’t you just been insisting that she should marry me ?”

“Of course,” shouted the little man. “That’s it. That’s what I’m driving at.”

“But what are you driving at?” gasped Clement. “First you tell me to get her to marry me, then you tell me she is going to marry some one else.”

“Perfectly true,” said the little man. “She is making this journey to Canada to marry some one else, a man named Henry Gunning.”

Clement fell back, too, staggered for thought. “Are you a lawyer,” he demanded, “or are you an apostle of the Mormons?”

The little lawyer rushed over to Clement and caught him by the lapel of his coat. “No! no! no!” he cried. “Please do understand. It is this hurry that has made everything so complicated. She is going to Canada to marry Henry Gunning. But she must not marry him. She must be prevented. That’s what I want you to do. I want [Pg 8] you to make her marry you in order that she won’t marry Gunning.”

“Because,” said the lawyer, speaking earnestly and impressively, “because it’s a swindle. She’s got into the hands of rogues, of swindlers, of criminals. Of that I am sure. The whole thing is terribly evil. And she must be saved. You must save her.”

Clement was about to answer. There was a knock on the cabin door. Clement called, “Come in.”

The door opened about a foot. An evil and repulsive face looked in. The little eyes in the ugly face swiveled all round the cabin in a swift, furtive glance. They took in Clement; they took in the little lawyer. A palish tongue licked purple, dry lips. A husky voice croaked, “Beg pardin, sir!”

“Beg pardin,” said the hoarse voice again. “Just looking round ter see if all visitors is ashore. Bedroom steward, sir.”

The fully opened door revealed the white coat and bobbly trousers of a veritable bedroom steward.

“All right, my man,” said the little lawyer, “I’m going ashore in a minute.”

“Ha,” said the steward, coming in with the [Pg 9] satisfaction on his face such as policemen wear when they catch an authentic burglar. “ Should be ashore. Orders is that all visitors sh’d be ashore. Come this way, sir. Quick, please, sir.”

“Get out of this,” snapped the lawyer. “I’ll go ashore before the ship sails, never you fear.”

“You go ashore, now, see. Them’s me orders, an’ I’ve got to see that it’s done—can’t stop arguing.”

“I don’t want you to,” said the little man decisively. “Particularly as Captain Heavy is the person you should argue with. If Captain Heavy was wrong in saying I could stop aboard, I think you should be the one to tell him, not me.”

“Ca’pen Heavy.... Why didn’t you say that ’efore?” snarled the man. He went sullenly out of the cabin. The little lawyer waited for a minute, then he slipped out, too. He darted up the little alleyway that led to the main passage along the deck. Clement heard him say in a tart voice:

“My good man, I know my way off this ship—you needn’t hang about here waiting to conduct me off.”

In a moment he was back with Clement, talking [Pg 10] rapidly again, but this time in a noticeably lowered voice.

“He’s one of them. I thought he was. You’ll have to be on your guard against that steward.”

“One of whom?” asked Clement, trying to keep pace with the happenings. “One of the rogues, do you mean? Good heavens! are you telling me there is a sort of Villains’ Gang of them aboard this ship?”

“I don’t say it,” said the little man grimly, “but I shouldn’t be at all surprised if it were so. It’s a big thing, a terribly big thing, my friend, this marriage of Heloise. It is a matter of a million pounds sterling and more.”

III

He really was feeling a trifle dazed. The little man had so hustling a manner. Also, his own knowledge of the girl, Heloise Keys, was of the faintest kind. She was just a tall, slim girl whom he had found attractive enough to want to know again after his first meeting. She was quite pleasant, quite English, quite natural. Apart from her special attraction, she was just one of the millions of crisp, self-assured and self-contained young women of Britain.

He had met her, as he had said, twice. The [Pg 11] first time had been a delightful accident. He had arrived to book his passage at the Canadian Pacific Ocean Service Office in London, to find her there on the same errand.

What is more, there was a certain sense of comradeship in that action, for both intended to sail to Canada in the same ship, the Empress of Prague . One shipping clerk attended to both, he left the one cabin plan before them from which to choose their rooms, while he went away on the business of registering their tickets.

Clement had only to glance once at the cabin-plan to make his decision. He had sailed on the Empress before. All he had to do was to see whether his old cabin, which had been a comfortable one, was unoccupied. It was unoccupied. He jotted down its number to give to the clerk when he came back.

Heloise and her companion were not so decisive. Heloise, at least, showed all the hesitance proper to people unaccustomed to sea travel. The other woman was making suggestions, but Clement did not pay any attention to her. She was so obviously a companion, a servant, though of the cultured sort.

The clerk had tactfully pointed out a large cabin. After having spoken in glowing terms of it, he had gone off leaving the decision to the ladies. Clement had nothing against that clerk. As a clerk, he knew his business, which was to fill up [Pg 12] cabins. He was merely doing his duty in suggesting that cabin to people who did not know the art of selecting cabins—there were so many people who knew it too well, and would leave that cabin on his hands.

Clement noted the battle of indecision with some amusement. Also with some interest, because Heloise (only he didn’t know she was Heloise, then) was extremely pretty. Also he thought she was of that trusting and sweet disposition that will take the word of anybody—even of shipping clerks. Obviously, she was going to follow his suggestion.

When the shipping clerk went to the back of the office Clement saw to it that she didn’t. He looked up at her as she puzzled over the deck plan, smiled in a disarming way, and said, “I say, if you don’t mind my butting in, I wouldn’t take that inner room. You’ll find it hot and rather airless, and there’s no light at all except artificial light.”

She answered him before she thought about who he was. “Are you sure of that?”

“Quite,” he told her. “I know the Empress of Prague well; you’ll be quite comfortable on her, particularly if you take, say, that cabin over there, instead of that inner one.”

As he spoke he heard an indignant sniff from the companion. He looked beyond the girl and saw a comely, chilly, thick-set, middle-aged woman. A woman who had a broad and attractive smile [Pg 13] which, somehow, did not seem to penetrate deeper than the surface of her skin. It was the sniff and the smile that led Clement to christen her the Gorgon, then and there.

But the girl herself was not sniffing in moral indignation. She was pleased and friendly. “But it is jolly of you to help,” she cried. “You are sure that one over there is the better cabin?”

“As sure as I like light and fresh air,” Clement smiled at her. “You’ll get both in that, you see, it’s an outside cabin. Has—windows—ports, you know. And it’s roomier.”

“Then, that’s the one we’ll have, Méduse,” said the girl, and the Gorgon (really, Clement had been very apt in his nickname) said in a light voice slightly tipped with frost, “That is also the one I suggested. Remember I, too, have traveled on the sea before, Loise.”

The girl paid no attention to that. She did not allow herself to be distracted from Clement, as she was obviously meant to be distracted. She was, in fact, rather pleased to meet a young, good-looking, polished man, who was also to be a companion during the voyage across the Atlantic. She said, smiling, “I’m thoroughly mystified by all this sort of thing. I’ve never done anything but the cross-Channel trip before, and then only by daylight. The tricks of cabins and comfort are dark secrets, as yet. It is really very good of you to give me that tip.”

“Oh, travelers are a brotherhood who should band together in the face of the common enemy,” said Clement cheerfully.

“Not on the Empress ,” said Clement. “It’s a happy ship. But still there are always little things where the hardened traveler can help.”

“Hardened?” she echoed. “You must have begun before your teens then.... But it is rather nice, oh, and lucky, to meet some one who is going by the same boat. I have a feeling that going by boat must be rather like going to a new school—everybody is new and reserved. So that if one knows some one already....” They went galloping off into that chatter which overtakes vivid people who have found a common ground, and not even the sniffs of the Gorgon could check them. Definitely, Clement thought then, the Gorgon wanted to claw the girl away. She disliked the acquaintance.

Still, she did not have her way, though she hurried the girl off with some speed when the bargain over the counter had been completed. Even then the girl, as she went, held out the pleasant promise of their future meeting.

“We’ll meet again, then, on board,” she had nodded to him as she left the shipping office.

“Or on the boat train,” said Clement. “You’ll go up to Liverpool by that?”

Clement completed his own reservations, and went out of the office with a feeling of elation. He was already looking forward to his trip to Canada, where he hoped to get some sport: trout and salmon fishing, and later some duck shooting, and, perhaps, a chance at moose. But now his trip seemed a much jollier affair, and he wasn’t thinking of sport when he felt that.

She had been so pretty. She had such an extraordinary charm. She was fine and upspringing if she was slim. She carried herself so well. And her face was so vivid and alluring. Her skin was cool and white and glowing, and her features delicate and exquisite. She was more than pretty, she was beautiful.

And that candor and kindness that seemed to be her nature. A sort of honesty, a nobility that placed her right above petty feminine things—yet there was no denying the warm and tender femininity of her nature. A real woman, a beautiful woman. A woman in a million.

And yet he had not found out her name. Beyond the fact that her companion called her Loise, he knew nothing about her. He might have inquired from the shipping clerk. He did not inquire. He was as young and as straight-minded as that.

He had thought about her a great deal between that time and the sailing of the boat. And he was [Pg 16] early at Paddington on the day that the boat train left. He had got all his own luggage stowed with the celerity of an old traveler and was looking out for her some time before she arrived.

He helped her and her companion, the Gorgon. He had already found them a compartment, had secured it with a healthy tip. It was to be his own compartment, too, if she gave permission, and, delightfully, she did. He traveled with her all the way to Liverpool, but, looking back at it now, it had been rather a curious journey.

He had put certain things down to accidents, those accidents that will beset travelers at times. But now—he wondered.

In the first place, he had nearly missed the train. They had been sitting there, chatting, quite serenely, gazing with slightly amused contempt at those passengers of the breed always doomed to be late for trains. Then the Gordon discovered that a rather special parcel left in the baggage room yesterday (heaven knows why!—the Gorgon seemed the sort of feminine mystery who would do just that sort of thing) had not been retrieved. When the Gorgon mentioned the parcel, the girl Loise had made an exclamation of acute vexation.

Clement was young enough (and she was pretty enough) to seize such an opportunity of doing her service. He said decisively it might be rescued, and he asked crisply, “How much time have we?”

It was the Gorgon who had pulled her watch with (now he could see) astonishing celerity. The watch showed that there was a full thirteen minutes to spare before the train went. That was ample. The Gorgon gave him the cloakroom ticket for the parcel. The girl described its nature rather well in one or two words, and she indicated the shelf on which it had been placed.

Clement darted out to the cloakroom, not looking at the station clock, as he should have done. He reached the counter, put the ticket and a large tip on the zinc surface and exhorted the attendant to hurry. The attendant smiled happily at the tip, examined the ticket and said blandly, “Na-poo.” It wasn’t his ticket at all, it was one issued by another station, Victoria.

“Hang!” shouted Clement. “I must get that parcel ... there it is over there.” The girl Loise’s description and directions had helped him out. He told the attendant in vivid language who had left it. He was not kind to the Gorgon, but his picture of her was unmistakable.

“I remember,” said the attendant. “Remember the lady wot was wit’ ’er. A very pretty lady.... All the same, you ain’t got the right ticket.”

“Hang it all, man, don’t argue!” shouted Clement. “I’ve got to catch the boat train....”

And when he said that the attendant had suddenly become very much alive. He snatched at the parcel and swung it over. “’Ave you got to [Pg 18] catch it, well you’ve got to run blame ’ard ter do it. It’s just about going out.”

As Clement, sprinting like the deuce, ran for the train, he glanced at the station clock. Heavens! that wretched woman’s watch must be frightfully and femininely wrong. The train was just due to leave.

He simply flung himself by the ticket collector at the platform gate. The man shouted at him, but Clement fought his way by—if they wanted to question him they must do it at the other end. The train was just moving.

He flung himself at the door of the guard’s van. And the evil chance of such things seemed to be against him. A very large, a very bulky man was trying to do the same thing. He was an idiot of a man. He stumbled and fumbled. He blocked the way with his hideous ineptitude. So stupid was he that Clement had the feeling that exasperated people get, that is, the fool was doing it all purposely.

Clement Seadon was young and very active. While the excessive man still stumbled and blundered along beside a train steadily gathering pace, he nipped ahead of him, and with an agile twist was on to the footboard and into the van.

He turned at once to help the large fool. With a surprising access of nimbleness the big fellow was already in the train, standing beside him in the van. Already saying with a sort of purring [Pg 19] urbanity, “Well, that was the nearest shave—nearer for you, sir. I must apologize. I did not actually realize you were trying to get on the train. I thought you were a porter or some one trying to help me. I must apologize, sir.”

He said this with the utmost geniality, which, at the same time, seemed to be reserved. It was as though he spoke automatically the right things; but what he said had no relationship to what he felt. And while he spoke he stared fixedly across Clement’s shoulder, and Clement was aware of the smallness of his eyes and their astonishing closeness together.

Still everything had ended well, and he said as much. He parted with this far too much of a man, and made his way along the corridor to his compartment. Here he was not at all sorry for the accident. Both ladies were in a lively state of alarm, and that alarm gave way to a cheery thankfulness at seeing him safely on board once more.

Or rather with the girl Loise that was how things worked out, and, as far as he was concerned, the journey was made even more attractive by the emotion this little episode had called up. It was not quite so with the Gorgon. She seemed overwhelmed by the knowledge that it was her stupidity in the matter of her watch and the wrong cloakroom ticket that had nearly caused Clement to miss the train and the boat. Her apologies were [Pg 20] profuse, and she endeavored to make an amende by correcting, rather late in the day, the time on her watch.

The rest of the journey was uneventful (and Clement was now seeing things in a more acute light)—unless one could see something grave in the tiny incident on the landing stage.

Now that he looked at it, Clement began to see the strangeness of the happening. He had not been careless. He had instructed a porter fully before returning to help the ladies. He had even chuckled at his own efficiency when, on looking back, he saw the big man who had all but prevented his gaining the boat train, standing helpless near his own busy porter.

Nevertheless twenty minutes later Nicholson, his cabin steward, told him he could not find his luggage anywhere. Nicholson was not a man to make mistakes and if he said luggage could not be found, it could not be found. Angry as he was at the mishap Clement wasted no time. He had to have that luggage. Naturally, he could not possibly sail without a rag to his name.

The stuff that was in Clement Seadon came out in the way he handled this contretemps . He went straight to the Canadian Pacific shipping agent, and put the problem up to him. The man belonged to a service that suffers attractively from [Pg 21] an ideal of complete efficiency. The agent began to hustle.

He was, of course, helped by Clement. Clement had the type of mind that pays attention to a porter’s registration number when the porter holds up the metal plate upon which it is stamped to the hirer’s gaze. Clement remembered and repeated the number, and left the matter in the hands of the agent. In half an hour his luggage was on board the Empress .

A foreman had named the porter from the number; a dock policeman had stated that he had seen this man trundling the barrow-load of luggage away from the shed in the direction of the Cunard dock; the luggage was run to earth. The porter, on being taxed with his strange behavior, offered a wild and absurd story of having been told that Mr. Seadon had suddenly received orders to go by Cunard. A steward had come off the Empress just as he was going on to it, and given this very definite command.

He was, so the porter said, “a littlish, mean-looking ’ound of a steward.” Nicholson was a big man. And, though the porter may have based his description of the offending steward on anger, Clement, with a sudden blaze of comprehension, now recognized how well that description fitted the steward who had just tried to turn the little lawyer off the boat. Had that steward tried to keep him [Pg 22] off the boat also? It looked extraordinarily like it.

Thus, though he might have been inclined to scout the whole idea of the gang of rogues who were working to accomplish the undoing of the girl Heloise and her million pounds, as something absurd and unreal, actually the train of circumstances forced him to say limply:

“I know, stunning and absurd and incredible. It sounds all that, I know. To me it is all that—only, I’ve got to face things as they appear to me and I’ve so little to go on, yet so much. A huge fortune, that foolish girl’s happiness, and all that sort of thing—is at stake....”

He seemed anxious to impress Clement with the soundness of his case, and it was now Clement who cried, “But get on with it, man. You haven’t too much time. You’ll have to go ashore very soon. Tell me the facts.”

“Facts,” snapped the little man. “The first is she’s going out expressly to find and marry this weak-will, this ne’er-do-well Henry Gunning.”

“Engaged to him. Good gad—rubbish. Sheer quixotery. This is the story: They were brought up together—boy and girl. He was an unpleasant, feckless cub. His people had estates next old Reys. Both of ’em went about as kids. There was a sort of calf love. Both of ’em had it mildly ... nothing else to do in the country for the young but to be calves. Then he did something idiotic, and he was shipped off to Canada. His guardians did it—parents dead then.”

“Oh, general irritation with his spinelessness and low tastes, plus a crisis. They made use of that crisis. Matter of fact, he stole.”

“Oh, but a plausible thief,” snapped the little lawyer. “What he stole, he said, was his. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t, and he knew it. It was a picture, an Old Master, belonging to his family. Family had died up to its ears in debt—for which his own bad habits were mainly responsible. Everything had been sold to settle those debts. He knew that all right. But he stole that picture, sold it, and went on the spree with the proceeds. There you get the type of man he is in a nutshell.”

“Oh, he made a case. Said he thought he’d taken only what was his own. He bought her a silly little trinket, too, and made her believe he had sold the picture to get that. Absurd. But she was woefully young. She has a generous heart, and she was on the side of the scamp in affection. Well, that’s the beginning. He left her with the usual vows. He’d been unlucky. He had an unlucky nature, so he told her; but he was going to the great and grand New World to carve out a fortune for her. He would return, like the hero in a story, rich and powerful, and all because of her—all for her.”

“Not a bit of it. He’s the sort that doesn’t. Hasn’t the guts or the honesty. I don’t know what he’s done in the ten years he’s been away; nobody knows. I suspect a mountain of beastliness. But one thing I know. He hasn’t made that fortune.”

“My dear lad, isn’t that why she’s going out? Oh, of course, I’m running on too fast. Well, that is the reason, anyhow. First year or two there were plenty of letters. Then the letters dropped away. His were sloppy and disconsolate, I gather. He was the unlucky sort even in Canada, he let her know. Of course he was. Then the letters stopped altogether. For years nothing was [Pg 25] heard of him. Things went on with Heloise ever so much better. I thought she’d forgotten the ass. Then, quite suddenly, the whole of this business started again. Came at us, as it were, out of the blue.”

“I can’t quite explain. Know nothing definite, you see. First Heloise’s father died. He left her in control of this fortune. Really an immense fortune. When I mentioned the figure of a million pounds I meant it. It is more than true. Heloise continued for some time in a state of happy ordinariness. Then she had another letter from the scallywag Gunning. I don’t know what was in it, but it seemed to fling her right back to those old flapperish, calfish days. From what I could gather, Gunning was still fighting his luck. He was fighting (so he hinted) with dogged courage. He remembered his vow to her, and had kept himself staunch, unfettered, and upright because of it. He meant to redeem it; in fact, he hinted that there was a chance of redeeming it—if only his spell of bad luck would break. He had a big thing in view—a huge thing—that would bring him a great fortune. Then he would be able to come to her. But he didn’t do more than hint at this big coup he had in mind. I told Heloise that that was the man all over; that he was merely exhibiting his vague and spineless nature. Stupid [Pg 26] of me to say that. I was set aside as hard and unsympathetic at once, and nothing more was told to me. Heloise, naturally, thought it was his noble nature cropping out. He would tell her nothing until he had brought it off. He would be beholden to nobody until he had fulfilled himself. I said it was all rubbish; but Heloise, who thinks the best of everybody, clung to her view.... And then this confounded new companion supported that view, gave it a new strength?”

“I can’t answer riddles; I can only guess. Perhaps I am too easily suspicious. I suspected the old companion when she so inexplicably left Heloise’s service. Why? Well, it seemed illogical. She had an extraordinarily well-paid, extraordinarily comfortable job. It is the sort of job no woman of that kind would leave in a hurry. But she did. She said she had come into some money, a lot of it, and wanted to set up a little business of her own. Well, I couldn’t find out how she had come into that money—a few thousands it must have been. I tried to trace a source. I couldn’t find one. But she had the money from some one all right.”

“I suspect, only. No facts. This new companion made me more suspicious. She’s a Canadian, or says she is.”

“Perhaps that’s the reason Miss Reys chose her—a reason of sentiment,” said Clement.

“You’ve touched the crucial plausibility of the matter. That is why Heloise chose her. The departing companion recommended this creature—suspicious again. Heloise was not altogether smitten with her at first, but the fact that she knew Canada turned the scale. The sentimental note won. And then—too surprising for life, I think: an attractive coincidence, thinks Heloise—this new companion knows Gunning.”

Clement nodded. He, too, was beginning to think that the long arm of coincidence was beginning to suffer from strain.

“‘It only came out casually,’ says Heloise,” went on the little man; “but there’s the fact this companion who came to her by fishy means knew Gunning. Knew him well enough to sing rather an attractive song about him. Oh, she made it all sound very ordinary. She had not actually spoken to or known Gunning, but she had stayed at a place called Sicamous, where he was often to be seen, and where his name was very well known. He was known there as the Englishman whom providence had a grouch against. He was also known as the Englishman who would be a millionaire some day. No, don’t ask me why he was called that. That hasn’t been told me. I suspect my attitude of non-sympathy has been adroitly enlarged by that confounded companion. I’ve been [Pg 28] kept out of it. All I know is that Heloise is filled with a sort of sentimental certainty that Gunning is out there in the wilds needing help. He is fighting a lone hand against circumstances beyond his strength. He is there working doggedly with a great chance within his grasp; but for lack of means, for lack of support, for lack of money he cannot make good. That’s how I see it, and I can see how the sentimental side has been worked up to secure Heloise’s sympathy. She feels he won’t, he doesn’t write to her because of his pride. His self-respect, his sense of decency, his grit and all that sort of bunkum forbids his writing to the girl he loves and wants to marry. That’s how they are playing on Heloise’s candid and sympathetic nature.”

“Well,” said Clement. “It might be correct. Men are rather like that, don’t you think?”

“ Men , yes,” snapped the little lawyer. “Fellows like you, real men, would be like that. But Gunning—I don’t believe it.”

“My boy, I know Gunning. We acted for his people too. Gunning is not like that. He’s a moral tadpole. If he has changed, then the age of miracles has very certainly not passed.”

“I told you I didn’t know,” said the little lawyer. “I’ve been kept in the dark over that.”

“What do you mean by that? As I tell you, I think she is certainly in the dark concerning this foul plot that is being worked on her. But concerning this big coup that Gunning is supposed to be able to bring off—no. She knows all about that. She’s been writing letters to people in Canada. The companion has supplied her with addresses, I take it. She’s received replies that have convinced her of the genuineness of Gunning and his prospects. Of that I am certain.”

Clement frowned. Thinking, he said, “Exactly what do you think these rogues, if they be rogues, are out to do?”

“I think they are out to get control of rather more than a million pounds sterling, which, at present, belongs to Heloise.”

“How will they?” began the little lawyer in exasperation. Then he said more precisely and quietly, “I will tell you exactly what I think. I think that, somehow, a band of rogues in Canada has found out from Henry Gunning that there is a sort of engagement between him and Heloise. [Pg 30] They have learned from the same source that Heloise is worth a million of money. They have that rascal in their power. They have seen that through him there is a very good chance of getting that million of money into their power.”

“You’re making rather a long shot, aren’t you? After all, they must have known that they would have to reckon with Heloise, who will have something to say in the matter.”

“Not a long shot,” he insisted. “They probably saw her letters to him. If they read those letters they would see exactly the sort of girl Heloise is. She is fine, honest. She is too generous for this world.... She is undoubtedly quixotic, as I have told you several times. They would see that a girl like that would respond to adroit handling. Her sense of honor would lead her to remain true to the letter of the bargain she made with Gunning years ago. Her sense of chivalry would send her out post-haste to his aid, if that aid was required. She would feel that he was making a tremendous sacrifice for her, and she would at once be willing to make a tremendous sacrifice in return.”

“That’s her nature; generous to folly. She gives greatly, tremendously, if her heart is touched.... Well, that’s what these brutes have done. As I see it, they have assessed her, sized [Pg 31] her up. They have put this plot into motion. Cunningly they have reawakened her interest in Gunning; first, by that letter from him; then they got rid of the old companion, and substituted this—this temptress from Canada. She has spent all her days playing upon Heloise’s heart-strings. She has cast a spell, a glamour, a damned romantic glamour, over that poor girl. She has painted a picture of the stoic Gunning fighting against luck for her . Painted him proud and silent and full of pluck, refusing to call on her aid, though she has but to stretch out a finger, back up some scheme of his, and he will win—he will win a fortune and win her. Oh, they have painted for her a beauteous and beastly picture. The sort of picture that can have but one effect on such a girl as Heloise. She has become inspired by it. She sees the great and the generous way. If this true man, Gunning, is too proud to cry for help, then she should be proud to go to him and help him. She will make her sacrifice also.... So—so off she packs to Canada. She starts out like a sort of rapturous female knight-errant.”

“And then when she finds him,” he ended, his voice harsh with emotion, “there’ll be a love scene ... and a marriage ... and then ... God knows what they will do then ... but as sure as I’m here, Clement Seadon, they’ll get that million [Pg 32] ... and I daren’t ask myself how they will get it .”

Clement stood stiff with the tragedy that had suddenly burst in horror into that little cabin.

“I daren’t ask myself how they will get that million,” the little lawyer had said in emotion, and Clement shuddered. He saw the gaunt and lonely mountains of Sicamous (wasn’t that the place?). The dark, spruce-clad valleys, awfully lonely and awfully quiet. And in those silent valleys away from man—away from help and discovery—anything might happen.

He had a quick vision of the beautiful and splendid girl, and his skin crept with horror of—of the things that might happen.

He found that he had very little to say. He muttered lamely, “You are sure she is going out for this?”

“I think so. Of course she wouldn’t tell me that, but”—and a gleam in his eye relieved the horror of the moment—“but I, as her lawyer, have been called upon lately to settle heavy bills with all the milliners, dressmakers, and purveyors of dainty feminine trivia in the kingdom of woman’s shopping. I don’t want to let you into delicate secrets; but, even to the unsophisticated male, [Pg 33] such wholesale buying seems to point to one definite end.”

“I am a—a bachelor in such matters,” said Clement, glad to get the topic off the ugly strain. “But even with such preparations woman is not doomed to marriage. After ten years—Henry Gunning may not be likable. A man of the type you have described is an unpleasant object when he goes to seed; as, no doubt, he has gone to seed.”

“That gives me no ground for hope,” said the little lawyer. “He is plausible. He will probably get himself up to the scratch for the time being. Even this gang would see to that, don’t you think? His very seediness may make him seem more romantic—women are so illogically and amazingly made. And then in a lonely place.... No, the only safe and settled thing is to prevent the marriage. For you to prevent the marriage.”

Clement laughed with a touch of annoyed self-consciousness. “After all you’ve told me,” he said lamely, “I’ll keep my eye on her.”

“Rubbish—make her love you. Advise her? Good Lord, can any man advise a headstrong, well-educated young woman of the twentieth century. Advise her? Haven’t I been advising her not to do this mad thing for months! She’s [Pg 34] certain of herself. She’s so practical about the whole matter.—Advise her? You might just as well try to advise Mount Popocatepetl to melt into the plain. Don’t attempt to advise. Do! Love her. Marry her.”

A sharp voice came swiftly along the gallery outside. A boy, running with some urgency, was yelling a name.

“Marry her, man,” snapped the little lawyer. “I’m cut off from her. I can do nothing. I depend on you.” He listened to the boy’s yells. “My name. I’m wanted.” He sprang to the door, ran up the alley-way to the gallery. “Boy! Boy! I’m Mr. Hard. Want me?”

A shrill voice yelled, “Lookin’ fer you everywhere, sir. Hurry. Ca’pen Heavy’s compliments, you gotter get off the ship damn quick. Casting off now. Look sharp, sir.”

The little man swung round, called down the alley-way into which Clement had come, “Got to go ashore. Don’t forget what you’ve got to do.”

“Marry her,” snapped the little lawyer, already on the run. “Don’t give in to her. Make her marry you.”

“Holy romance!” he murmured to himself. “Here’s a thing with which to begin a sea voyage.”

He turned to go back to his cabin. Away along the gallery, by the staircase that led up to the smoking room, he saw two men standing. They were standing watching him. They stood there for but a second, and then, with furtive quickness, they stepped back out of his sight.

One was the steward with the evil face who had tried to get the little lawyer off the ship, and had, so Clement felt, tried to get him off the ship, too, by sending his luggage astray.

The other was a tall, huge, almost excessive man. A man with little, sinister eyes ... the man who had all but prevented his getting into the train. The man whom he had seen close to his baggage before it went astray. He was there watching Clement, talking to the evil steward in an intimate way.

“Ah,” reflected Clement. “So you are in this. You are one of them.... And now that I come to think things out, there was never any doubt of it.”

He sat down on his bunk to face the problem of saving the girl Heloise from a gang of rogues, of whom the companion, Méduse, this huge man, and the steward at least were members.

CHAPTER II

Clement Seadon got up from his bunk almost as soon as he had sat down on it. He was young, that is, he preferred swift action to deep thinking.

“It’s no good arguing about this,” he told himself. “It’s no good telling one’s cautious soul that outside the cinematograph and the painted pages of fiction, pretty young women aren’t the victims of gangs of rogues in this the twentieth century. She is. I’ve seen her. I’ve seen the gang and already felt them at work.... I’ve had circumstantial evidence pumped into me by that hurtling little lawyer. It all sounds mad. It all sounds untrue. But it happens to be true. I’ve got to do something.”

He suddenly realized how easy it was to say “I’ve got to do something.” How hard it was to do anything at all.

What could he do? Rush out and confront the [Pg 37] gang with their villainies—idiotic idea. He’d probably be put into irons as an irresponsible madman. There wasn’t any evidence. If there had been any, the little lawyer would have acted upon it, the criminal gang would have been slapped into jail before the ship sailed. Heloise—what a really suitable name for her, Heloise; how it fitted her curious, slim, rather exaltè kind of beauty—Heloise would have been rescued even before she started for Canada.... The voyage would not have been undertaken....

On second thoughts he was rather glad there had been no evidence. Gang or no gang, it was rather pleasant to think that Heloise Reys really would be with him on the Empress until they all reached Quebec.... And perhaps he’d be with her longer.

“All the same,” he reflected, “this isn’t going to be so simple as it looks. I only know indirectly that there is a gang at work to ensnare Heloise Reys. Nothing to go on except suspicion. Also, I must remember that Heloise herself is, to all intents and purposes, on the side of the gang. She wants to get to Henry Gunning and marry him. She does regard the one member of the gang she knows, this Gorgon companion, Méduse, not as an enemy, but as a tried, and trusted friend. If I do unpleasant and senseless things to the gang I make Heloise my enemy, through the Gorgon.... Oh, it’s infernally complicated. This isn’t [Pg 38] a matter for clumsy rough-and-tumble methods. This is a matter for wits, for brain work, for guileful intelligence.... However, I fancy I have a good share of guileful intelligence.”

As a matter of fact Clement was doing himself rather less than justice. He had rather more than his fair share of keen wits, only, as one of his friends said, “one never noticed it because he was so well-tailored.”

Clement Seadon was one of those young Anglo-Saxons—and their number is not so inconsiderable as our enemies imagined—who were responsible for so many German failures during the war. They were so entirely unlike the things they were capable of doing.

Clement, for example, looked indolent. He looked easy-going. He looked as if he cared for nothing very much, and hadn’t any particular intelligence. He was obviously very careful about the set of his clothes, and could be guaranteed to shine adequately in most sports and at any social gathering. He had blunt, but neat features, that conspired to give him a suggestion of geniality not easily moved from an habitual calm. People felt they could not take him quite seriously—until they suddenly bumped up against an extremely disconcerting and swift coolness of wit. Only then, when they had been “stung” did they note the squareness of the jaw and the lips, and the broad and quite definite power of his brow.

Clement Seadon, in fact, was rather a drastic sort of young man to those who thought he didn’t matter very much. In the Diplomacy, where he had served before the war, several quite brilliant brains had chuckled at him for an amiable and well-dressed ninny, whom it was ridiculously easy to twist round the finger. They had thought this until a sharp reprimand from their Governments, and, on some occasions, instant dismissal, taught them that some people are not so simple as they look, and that the cheerful young man who had seemed to them so easy a victim had actually been twisting them round his well-manicured fingers all the time—not they him.

Clement was not in Diplomacy now; he had thrown up his job to go to the front. His father, his only relative, had died during the war, so that after the armistice he had found himself in complete control of a very useful income, and with it a freedom to indulge his love of travel and sport, which, up to the war, he had only been able to assuage intermittently.

He was, then, a young man entirely free to do as he liked. A young man who preferred action, who did not ask for adventure, but wasn’t so very sorry when adventure came along; and also a young man who knew quite well how to enjoy the considerable mental faculties he happened to possess.... He was, as the little lawyer had felt, [Pg 40] quite the luckiest ally Heloise could find in a battle against the powers of crime.

“Obviously,” he thought, “I can do nothing just at present. I can’t strike at them until I find out their plot and have proof that they are criminals. What then? Consolidate my position with Heloise?—blessed word consolidate. That’s the first and only move. I must get to know her better; I must get her to trust in me. I must become intimate....”

At that thought he suddenly switched round and shook his fist at the place where he thought Liverpool must stand—the sound of machinery had told him some time ago that the ship had begun to move.

“Why did you talk of marriage,” he said with irritation, obviously referring to the little-head-long lawyer. “Marry the girl!... Marry her, that actually complicates things. I shall ... I mean I should feel just as much an adventurer, a conspirator, as this Henry Gunning person if I did ... if I ever thought of doing such a thing.” And then, with the inconsequence of the young, he said, “But she is astonishingly pretty and good company.... Oh, hang, that only makes it worse.”

“Marry her,” he went on. “That’s quite absurd, of course. I mean—well, it is quite absurd. [Pg 41] She’s got her mind set on Henry Gunning ... and she wouldn’t care twopence for a fellow like me. Indecent to think she would.... No, marriage is a bee in that old lawyer’s bonnet. But I’ll help. I’ll do all I can to help her. And that’s the first move; I’ll now lay the solid foundations upon which real friendship can be based.”

He went quickly along the gallery. As he passed along the balcony that overhung the dining saloon, he looked down at a little group of people collected about one of the tables near the door. Yes, old Maxwell was already filling up tables, and a few of the travel-wise were selecting them. Clement smiled. He was glad he was travel-wise himself.

But before he got to the end of the gallery he was pulled up in his stride. His way was blocked by a very large, a very solid, an immovable man. There was no getting past this human mountain. And the back of the human mountain was towards him, and he was obviously deep in some most absorbing contemplation. Clement said gently, “If you don’t mind.” And then he said, “Sorry, do you mind my passing?” And then he said, “Would you mind getting out of the way?” Then he touched the human mass on the shoulder, and shouted in his ear, “I’m through. I’ve said [Pg 42] everything I can remember.... The next move’s with you.... Just move!”

The dinosaur heaved a little. There was a perceptible undulation over its surface. A voice came back. “What’s that?”

But Clement did not finish. The mass, as though the thing that had held its attention had suddenly released it, came round with an almost dismaying swiftness—how could such a bulk actuate with such rapidity. A large man stood in front of Clement, bowing and apologizing.... A large man who seemed genial only on the surface, whose eyes were astonishingly close together, and looked steadily, not into Clement’s eyes, but at something mystical across his shoulder. It was the large fat man again. The large fat man who seemed instinctively to mix himself up in Clement’s accidents.

“I owe you a thousand apologies,” said the big man pleasantly and without the slightest sense of right. “I did not know you were behind me.” He smiled sleekly. “It seems that I am foredoomed to stand in your way, sir.”

“That,” Clement’s mind told him at once, “that is a threat—or a warning.” And he answered in his pleasantest, young-fellow-about-town voice, [Pg 43] “Does seem a habit of mine to come stealing up behind, so to speak.”

“And that,” he told himself, “is also a threat, or warning. Only he won’t see it. I’m much too well dressed.”

“Ah, ‘behind,’ that has an ominous ring. Let us hope it is not ominous,” smiled the large man with his artificial geniality, and he stepped aside and let Clement by.

And Clement went on musing, “But, by Jove! he did see. That was another warning. I shall have to keep my eyes on that large fellow. He, too, has wits and doesn’t look it.”

He ran down the accommodation stairs towards the dining saloon deck. On that deck he received another shock. Coming through the swing doors of the saloon was the Gorgon. She came out briskly with the gait of an old traveler. She saw Clement, and she smiled. Clement thought it a smile with malice behind it. As she passed him she nodded, and said brightly, “Well, we’ve started them.”

A commonplace remark. One of the ordinary, stupid, current phrases of travelers by liner. It referred, possibly, to the fact that the ship had sailed, that the voyage had started. It might mean only that. On the other hand it mightn’t. In the light of that smile Clement reserved his judgment until he had gone into the saloon.

He greeted Maxwell, the chief steward, as an [Pg 44] old friend, and asked if there were any good tables left.

“Nearly all the good tables,” said Maxwell. “Not many old travelers on this trip. You can take almost anything you like.”

Clement did not take what he liked. He examined the chart of tables and saw that what he liked had already gone. He had planned to sit at the same table as Heloise Reys. That is, he had schemed to be her companion at meals all through the voyage. That was the recognized move of the wise and old traveler. But he had not been wise quickly enough. As he looked down the chart he saw the names “Miss Heloise Reys,” “Miss Méduse Smythe” already inscribed.

And Miss Heloise Reys and Miss Méduse Smythe were to occupy a small table that would only accommodate two.

He had received his first check. He understood why the large fat man had blocked his way. He understood why the Gorgon had smiled with meaning.

They had scored the first trick, but it was not altogether a signal advantage. It put Clement on his mettle. It enabled him to appreciate exactly the type of rogues he was dealing with. There [Pg 45] was going to be nothing timid about their methods. They were bold and they were clever, they were going to take hold of every advantage and push it home ruthlessly. Clement did not mind that at all. He could be bold and ruthless, too, and because of his apparently casual manner his boldness and his ruthlessness could be carried off in a way which would baffle them.

In fact, no later than that afternoon, Clement, with an apparently thoughtless inconsequence, began to baffle them. He played for the second trick—and won it.

It was obvious that from the first the gang meant to block him from Heloise’s side. Clement smiled as he saw the little comedy being played. The Gorgon clung to the girl tenaciously. To double the guard, so to speak, the large fat rogue was called in.

They were clever. They played with infinite skill. The mountain of a man was drawn in with brilliant casualness. Heloise and the Gorgon looked at Ireland over the taffrail. They talked about Ireland. The Gorgon made a conspicuous mistake about an Irish headland ... and there was the large fat man putting her right, standing already one of that little group pouring out attractive facts about Ireland with a pleasant, well-informed politeness.

It was one of those swift shipboard acquaintances. The apparent stranger had skillfully [Pg 46] inserted himself into the duologue between the Gorgon and Heloise, and the Gorgon had, as skillfully, drawn him into the circle.

Clement, who had been hovering in the background saw what it meant. One of them, now, would always be at the girl’s side; effectually putting a stop to any particular and personal approach of his own.

The three watched Ireland until they had had enough of it. Then they walked the deck a little. Then the two ladies sat down, and the fat man, with invincible politeness, walked away. Clement exchanged a few words with the two women in their deck chairs; pleasant words, but of no effect. The Gorgon showed no signs of moving, Heloise was too polite to move away from the Gorgon.

The lunch bugle went, and they were separated. After lunch the Gorgon and Heloise were inseparable. They sat on deck chairs again. Tea came. Clement found that the Gorgon had whisked the girl into an alcove in the lounge. He was about to join them boldly, when the big fat man materializing with his unexpected swiftness, crossed the lounge and planted himself in the only other seat available. Clement smiled and sat and had his own tea and waited. He watched the trio. Presently his chance came. The fat man and the Gorgon suddenly involved themselves in one of those duologues in which the third person plays the part of a listener only. As the two talked [Pg 47] Clement crossed to them swiftly and quietly—and snapped the girl from under their very noses.

It was one of those simple acts that baffle the clever. Clement slipped round behind the discussion, as it were, and said to the girl, “Coming for a stroll, Miss Reys?”

And Heloise came—alone. There was nothing for the others to do. To break off their discussion to fence with this pleasant young man would have looked strange. To come out with the girl was certainly impossible, for they had not been invited. They had to remain, apparently unconcerned, if they were not to draw attention to themselves and their actions.

And in his casual way Clement clinched his victory by drawing attention to any future “blockading” action the precious pair might attempt.

He took Heloise up to the boat deck, and found chairs and placed them in a spot that could only accommodate two, which was also quite neatly screened from casual view. He sighed, “Oh, well, this is very much better.”

“Oh, I didn’t want to stroll, I just wanted to be selfish,” smiled Clement. “I wanted you to myself. There seem to have been millions of people about you ever since we came aboard.”

“Scarcely millions,” she smiled back. “Only my companion and that rather stout, quite pleasant Mr. Neuburg.”

“Only those,” said Clement, underlining the personality and the actions of the pair deliberately, “but they do seem to be rather clinging.... Always there seems to be a great crowd barring the way....”

“Perhaps I was looking forward,” said Clement, ingeniously emphasizing his point. “I saw it happening every day, every hour of the day, for the rest of the voyage.”

“You’re unnecessarily gloomy,” laughed the girl, not altogether displeased at the interest this good-looking young man took in her. “It won’t happen every hour every day.”

And Clement, with an inward chuckle, thought it wouldn’t. He left it at that. He had won that trick. Not merely would he have tête-à-tête talks with Heloise in the future, but he had so emphasized the attitude of the pair of rogues that their attempts to shut him out from Heloise must only engender suspicion in her mind.

After a moment’s silence Heloise said, “You’re rather hard on Mr. Neuburg. He’s a very pleasant person, and quite well-informed about Canada.”

“That—and other things,” Clement laughed back. “I know appearances are against me, but, [Pg 49] really, there’s a solid core inside. I know quite a lot about Canadian industries, for instance.”

It was a casual remark delivered with an inconsequence that covered up the deliberate meaning Clement had put into it. And it struck home, as Clement had meant it to.

“Really!” she cried. “Industrial things—you know something about Canadian industries?” She was eager at once.

“Quite a lot,” said Clement. “You see, even if I didn’t happen to be keen—which I am—I’d have to take a personal interest. I’ve money invested in quite a number of Canadian concerns—agricultural machinery, fruit farms, grain areas, mines——”

Under his casual easiness Clement Seadon thrilled. He had suspected from the beginning that the venture in which Henry Gunning was supposed to need backing must be mines; the district in which he lived pointed to that. But here was confirmation of that suspicion. He had touched the matter which was the foundation of the plot at his first attempt to find out. And he had also obviously done more. He had made the girl feel that he was a sympathetic and knowledgeable person to whom it would be easy to talk about mines and the prospects of mining. And, in fact, he was just that person. He said, [Pg 50] “I know, I think, a very fair amount about mines. Oh, but not merely on the investing, but on the practical side, too. Before the war I went out for three months with a prospecting party—not as a fortune hunter, but as one who wanted to learn. It’s rather a fad of mine to get to know how things are done from the bottom up. As some of our money was invested in mines, it seemed to me that I should have a working knowledge of the whole proposition.”

“Oh—in Canada,” he said. And then he paused. Should he risk being specific? Would it frighten her to hear the name of the very place where Henry Gunning, her old lover, was living; and would that put her on her guard against him—as she had been on her guard against the questions of the little lawyer? Or would it, on the other hand, draw out confidences? He rather felt it might. He was, as far as she knew, quite outside her concerns, and she might want to learn things, just as he wanted to learn everything as early as possible if he was to act. And then as he hesitated, she said with extraordinary eagerness, “In Canada; but what part of Canada?”

Her eagerness decided Clement. “In British Columbia,” he answered, as a man mentioning something of no purpose. “To be exact, in the mountain valleys in the south of British Columbia. [Pg 51] There’s a whole string of valleys there with rather beautiful lakes in ’em. We started at Penticton, on Okanagan Lake, and worked up northward.... They mostly grow apples and peaches there, but there was a good deal of mineral about, we’d heard. Anyhow—I say, I hope I’m not boring you—anyhow, we pushed slowly up those valleys to a little one-horse place called Sicamous——”

“Sicamous!” she cried, her eyes very bright, her cheeks exquisitely flushed, and for a moment Clement wondered if he had done right to mention that name. “Sicamous! But that’s real luck—for me, I mean. I actually want to learn something first-hand about Sicamous—and about the mining in those districts....”

With a throb of excitement and satisfaction, Clement, looking exactly like an Englishman who was no more interested than he should be when a pretty woman gave him her confidences, leaned forward to hear the next important words. And....

“Oh ... Loise.... Forgive me, Miss Heloise.... Where did you put the aspirin tablets?... I have a terrible headache.... I went to the cabin, and could not find them.... And I’ve looked for you everywhere....”

Before them stood the Gorgon smiling apologetically, wearily, but at the same time determinedly. She had arrived just at the right moment to interrupt revelations.

III

The Gorgon did interrupt revelations, but, as Clement had planned, the trick he had scored was a most useful one. More useful from the fact that the pair of rogues did not know how effectively the inconsequent-looking young Briton had taken measures against them. That is, they still continued the tactics of trying to shut Clement off from intimacy with Heloise.... The very method Clement had delicately drawn the girl’s attention to.

And of course the girl began to notice that the Gorgon was always at her side with a sort of leechlike doggedness. She began to notice that the massive Mr. Neuburg inevitably took up the siege, as it were, whenever her companion was away. Mr. Neuburg talked cleverly and also incessantly, but he wasn’t young and he wasn’t that rather attractive Mr. Seadon. Without realizing anything of its meaning, she felt that Mr. Seadon was, as he had laughingly suggested, being barred out by a crowd.

She began to show irritation—and independence. Mr. Neuburg found she was leaving him in the middle of conversations. Méduse Smythe could produce nothing important enough to hold her mistress at her side. The twain were not fools. They recognized they were beaten. They ceased their attentions with a brilliant [Pg 53] naturalness, but Clement knew that the eyes of Mr. Neuburg watched him always as he walked with Heloise.

Clement knew that the intelligence that was busy considering him was not one to be despised. He did not know the extent of the gang working to ensnare Heloise, but he felt that Neuburg was probably the brains of it, the master mind, and that he would act in a masterly manner, leaving very little to chance. To checkmate such a fellow would call for all his ability—and perhaps all his strength and courage.

All the same, though he was constantly on the alert, Clement made the most of his opportunities with Heloise. It was for the good of Heloise—and it was extraordinarily attractive for himself. He wasn’t going to marry her. That was absurd.... How could he? Only—only she was decisively and radiantly pretty. The singular glowing curd-whiteness of her skin, the vividness of her beautiful and delicate lips against the coolness of that skin, the clearness and steadiness of her eyes—all these things gave him an eversharpening sense of delight whenever he set eyes on her.

And her step suited his so perfectly. On board ship, one is immensely appreciative of any one whose step suits one perfectly. Her tall figure swung so gracefully, so untiringly, beside him as they walked, no matter if the sea was as smooth as polished glass—which the Atlantic rarely is—or [Pg 54] whether there was a “lop” on. She was as physically fit and as hard as he was, and she took the same zest in out-of-door things. He felt a sort of comradeship, a rightness in the fact that they should stride up and down the promenade deck together in such a perfect unison as almost to suggest they were one....

As though they were one!... but, of course, that was idiotic. They weren’t one. There was no suggestion of their being one. One—that meant marriage. And that question didn’t come up. Although, of course, the little lawyer had said ... “Oh, hang the little lawyer!” he muttered.

“Who are you hanging?” asked Heloise, who was near and who had heard the most lethal part of his muttering.

“I was hanging this top-heavy sea,” said Clement genially. “I wanted to show you the captain’s bridge—I’ve got permission—but with this lop....”

“Show me the captain’s bridge—now,” she laughed back. “The lop doesn’t matter—not a hang .”

That was part of her attraction. She really didn’t care a hang about things that made other people uncomfortable. She enjoyed risks. She was daring enough to go anywhere, see everything. They adventured into all the strange and usually unseen parts of that splendid ship, even as far as the boiler room. She was eager, she was [Pg 55] interested in everything, she had a zest for life. She was an ideal chum. More and more he began to perceive that she was the ideal chum—anyhow for one particular man. And presently he was saying not “Hang the little lawyer,” but “Hang Henry Gunning.”

Because both had a healthy disregard for exposure, and a healthy regard for fresh air, they became almost the sole occupants of the breezy boat deck. There they sat daily and talked; there in the evenings they sat, and sometimes did not talk.

In their talks they found splendid affinities. They found that they liked so many similar things: not merely sports, books, theaters, the open country and the other solaces of life, but other more significant things. They found that both cared most in life for character: for honesty, straightness, generosity, high-mindedness. They liked intelligent people rather than merely jolly ones. They liked people who did things rather than people who played at doing things. They found that they had a mutual austerity of ideal in their way of looking at problems ... would rather be the losers in anything than win underhand; they would take the difficult path if it was the right one, rather than the easy if it were wrong.

This brought them dangerously near to the core of the matter they were both engaged on, [Pg 56] dangerously near Henry Gunning ... yet both instinctively veered away from that.

But he had come in when she spoke of her journey to Canada—though even in this he came in only as “a friend, an old friend in whom I am interested.”

“I am going as far as Sicamous, at any rate,” she had said. “And that reminds me, there are things I wanted to ask you about Sicamous.... Perhaps you remember—we were interrupted?”

“Something about mines, wasn’t it?” said Clement with a careful casualness.

“Yes.... I want you to tell me all about mines in that area.... Now—please tell me.”

“But all about them. That’s a terrifically large order. In the first place, there’s nothing to say about them—and then there’s everything.”

“I mean by that there are not so very many mines—those at Nelson, on Kootenay Lake—silver-mines, they are—are perhaps the most important. But, on the other hand, it’s always supposed that there are great possibilities among those rocky valleys.”

“Not thinking of going in for mining, are you?” Clement teased—and with a reason.

“N-o,” said the girl. “It’s rather—it’s rather because a friend of mine is interested. Deeply interested. I wanted to learn if there is any foundation for—for expecting big things, immense returns from mining in the Sicamous district.”

Clement was excited. Then it was mining. That was the venture Henry Gunning was supposed to need backing for. He answered without any show of his emotion. “What exactly are your friend’s interests—silver, copper, gold?”

“All of them,” she answered quickly, and Clement though he saw the character of Gunning at once in that report. Your unsuccessful prospector is rather like that. He hasn’t merely a Golconda of one metal up his sleeve—he has all the rare metals in the world, only asking to be picked out of the surface ... if only some one will oblige with the money to buy picks. “All of them,” repeated the girl. “I understand that—that the claims (that’s right, isn’t it?) pegged out show rich veins of gold, copper and silver, and there’s also nickel—even platinum. It—is that possible?”

“I will say,” said Clement candidly, “It’s held to be possible. Prospectors are always saying that the whole of the district is a likely place for—yes, all those minerals.”

“They have, however, to be worked, I take it,” said Clement. “With mines you can’t really tell until they have been worked.”

“Oh——” said the girl rather pitifully. “Then don’t you think there is a possibility of an—an immense fortune in claims showing such good sample results?”

“There might be. There is always that possibility.... On the other hand, I should advise your friend to go with extreme caution.”

“I’m just being as honest as I can,” said Clement, with a meaning she could not appreciate, for actually he was. His whole instinct told him to pour the coldest of cold water upon that mining scheme—and yet he couldn’t altogether in fairness do that.

“I believe you are,” she said softly, and with a surprising intuition she added, “I believe you’d be honest even against your own interests.”

In the tiny and quite significant pause that followed that touch of curiously personal intimacy, Clement felt bound to say, “You see, Miss Heloise, mining is a risky venture. You can throw away more money and more easily in mining than you can in anything else—not even excepting theaters and newspapers. There are so many things that make it a gamble. The lode or stope may peter out. There may be immense difficulties in cutting [Pg 59] shafts. There may be fatal drawbacks in the matter of transport, of working, of labor, and scores of things.... Mineral finds that look good at the first assay may not pay for their keep when they come to be worked. I know these valleys. We came across some seams that looked good. They looked enormously good to a tenderfoot like myself, for example. But the experts with the party wouldn’t look at them. Nothing in them. Not worth the blasting.... Your friend certainly should be advised to move with the greatest care in this matter.”

“It hurts so to shatter people’s dreams,” she said in a low voice. And then she said on a lighter note, “But I remember—you talked of difficulties that turned on transport; most of the difficulties do, don’t they?”

“Well,” cried the girl, with glee, “that’s a difficulty that doesn’t hold good here.... The railway runs within a very short distance of the claims. Doesn’t that make it sound more hopeful?”

“It does,” said Clement, sure of himself. “Miss Heloise, if those claims are only a very short [Pg 60] distance from the railway, then they are claims that could not have been overlooked. Don’t you see ... railwaymen, engineers, prospectors, scores of people must have had a chance of poking round. If there had been anything good there, it would have been found long ago. And as it hasn’t happened—well——”

“I think,” said Clement impressively—this, he felt, was his great opportunity. He must drive home truth into the soul of this girl, though it was painful—“I think that you—that your friend should go into this matter with the most scrupulous attention, that you—that your friend should commit himself” (in his stress he overlooked the gender he had employed) “in no way. All the dealings should be made through unbiased experts—unbiased, Miss Heloise; some big mining consultants with a reputation for straight-dealing.... Nobody locally. I urge you to impress upon your friend the need of the greatest care.”

The girl gave a gasp. It was a gasp of misery. Clement felt sore and sorry for her—but he must say what he had to say. Then she said with pain, “Then you think—you think there might be something—underhand about such a venture.”

“Yes,” said Clement slowly, “I think there is a great possibility of there being something underhand in it—from what you tell me.”

“O-oh,” sighed the girl, and she fell back in her chair. Clement knew why she was overcome. His confirmation of the suspicions that the little lawyer Hartley Hard had fired at her, had forced her soul to face an ugly conviction.

Clement, inexpressibly sorry for her, followed her action with his eyes. He would like to help her, he felt in his heart an almost agonized desire to do something to soothe her wounded soul. She was so gentle, so young to have suffered a shock. He half turned in his eagerness to help her.

Something—a shadow where there should have been the gray-blue light of the open sea—caused him to lift his eyes.

Behind her chair, close behind, crouching against the bow of the boat that shielded them from the wind, filling up the space through which Clement should have been able to gaze straight out to sea, he saw a figure.

A great, a bulky figure. The black, the stealthy figure of a mountain of a man—listening.

What effect his warning would have on the girl, Clement did not know. Time alone would show [Pg 62] that. But he knew what would be the effect on the big and sinister man.

It would be a direct declaration of war. Neuburg had heard something which must tell him definitely that he—Clement Seadon—meant to prevent Heloise Reys from having anything to do with Henry Gunning and his wild-cat schemes.

In other words the mountainous Mr. Neuburg knew that Clement meant to prevent him getting the million pounds which he considered his legitimate plunder. And if Clement knew anything that was not the sort of threat that the big man would suffer quietly.

It was going to be a fight, and, an ugly one. He made no mistake about this Neuburg. He was a brilliant fellow and a criminal to boot. He would not only employ all his cunning, but he would also stop at nothing to gain his ends. Clement was perfectly certain that if it came to the pinch, Mr. Neuburg would kill him, or have him killed, if he felt it necessary.

But that thought only stiffened him. When he thought of Heloise and her beauty and her trustfulness at the mercy of such blackguards, his heart might grow sick, but his chin grew stiff also. He was not going to allow Heloise to be their victim.

In his cabin after he had said good-night to Heloise, he thought it out. Against a gang the odds were decidedly not in his favor. He could [Pg 63] be smothered by sheer weight if he fought them direct. Should he play carefully to try and win Heloise to reason? Not a trustworthy policy. They would be working against him all the time, and the slightest slip might prove disastrous. Should he wait and expose this mining scheme with his own knowledge? Dangerous again, there was no saying how Heloise’s emotions might react when she saw her old lover, or what cunning trick Mr. Neuburg might spring to win her emotions.

By Jove, after all, that little lawyer was right. It was the only sure thing. Marry her and her quixotic trip was finished. Marry her and Gunning was ended and all that Gunning stood for. Marry her....

“And I want to marry her,” he said to his looking glass. “Clement, my dear ass, do look things in the face. You think she’s adorable. The way she smiles; the way she lifts that soft little chin of hers; the sound of her voice; that boyish brave air of hers ... all of her is adorable. You know you want her, you know you want to marry her. Why put on this ‘She loves another’ pose? She doesn’t really love him—it’s just sentiment; while she does—well, she’s awfully fond of you. She is, don’t pretend. Propose to her at once, propose to her before you reach Quebec and you’ll carry [Pg 64] her away. Marry her, that’s it, you want to and you’ll also put a spoke in their wheels.”

And even while he was contemplating putting a spoke in the wheel of the gang, it was actually putting a spoke in his.

The big Mr. Neuburg had slipped from his hiding place, with that curious silent swiftness which went so strangely with his bulk, crossed the boat deck noiselessly, and went down to the promenade.

He found the Gorgon sitting there, and he dropped into the seat beside her. What he had to say was not very much, but it was apparently to the point. She listened attentively, nodded, and when he finished she rose.

“Make this your opening,” Mr. Neuburg said. “I know you are clever; this is a time for being very clever. Be very natural ... be very sympathetic ... do not pretend this letter has any significance for you.”

When Heloise, tired and dispirited, came down to the cabin, she found her companion already half undressed. Not very talkative, she never was, [Pg 65] but showing no emotion against or for anybody—Clement, of course, was the anybody. It was no different from any of the going-to-bed scenes that had taken place since they came on board—that is, it wasn’t until Heloise, stretching out her hand for her hairbrush, that inevitable feminine implement, encountered a folded sheet of notepaper. She picked it up absently. It was a business letter, that had been folded lengthways in three, and the printed heading was on the outside. She read the name of the firm which had sent it—Rigby & Root.

“Méduse,” she said in a surprised voice. “Did I leave this lying about?”

“Did you leave what lying about, Loise?” said the companion in a quiet voice, though, for all her apparent indifference, her singularly immobile eyes seemed to gleam below the surface.

At that, “Yes, you did,” said the companion—there was the nicest tinge of reproach in her voice; it was beautifully done. “You did—on the promenade deck. Yes, my dear Loise, it was on the very deck. I actually kicked it out of my way before it occurred to me that it really was a letter and not a dirty piece of paper. Then I picked it up, and saw that name on the outside—Rigby & Root. And I was surprised—your lawyers, of course; I knew that—so naturally I brought it straight down here....”

“That I don’t know,” said Méduse pleasantly. “Unless you are like me, and use the first thing that comes to hand as a bookmarker. It’s not always wise. I remember once opening a book at a young woman’s religious instruction class, and the piece of paper I had used as a marker slipped out for all to see ... and it was a handbill of the most lurid sort of play—a very fast play even. You see I....” Her manner was gossipy, perfect, but she did not have to carry her garrulous anecdote to a finish.

First, Heloise said, “But a lawyer’s letter.” And then with a sort of gasp she cried, “But it’s not my letter.”

The Gorgon switched round, smiling indulgently. “My dear ... but I saw the name at the top—Rigby & Root.”

“Yes, it’s from Rigby & Root,” said Heloise in a curious voice, for she was at that moment, and abruptly, a prey to strange emotions of doubt and suspicion.

The Gorgon’s look of smiling amazement was an admirable piece of acting. “But, my dear—whatever [Pg 67] are your lawyers writing to Mr. Seadon about?”

And that well-barbed dart was fired with beautiful precision. Without the slightest appearance of malice, the Gorgon had underscored the significant fact that Mr. Clement Seadon was connected with the little lawyer Hartley Hard (a partner in Rigby & Root), who had shown himself so prejudiced against Henry Gunning and Heloise’s journey to Canada. She looked at the girl, her eyebrows raised in faint amusement and surprise. “What could Mr. Hard be writing to Mr. Seadon about?”

Heloise did not read other people’s letters, but the circumstances made it impossible for her not to read that short and very businesslike communication. It was unthrilling. It dealt with the sale of certain stocks, and the buying of certain bonds. It was not signed by the irritating Mr. Hard. She said, “It’s not from Mr. Hard. It’s from Mr. Root himself” (Rigby was dead). “And it’s about nothing in particular—just business. Apparently Rigby & Root are Mr. Seadon’s lawyers also.”

Heloise had an air of dismissing any implication of underhand conduct. But she had not dismissed it. The surprising fact, brought before her mind so suddenly and neatly, made her feel that she had been trusting somebody who could not be trusted. He was in league with the man who had tried to hamper her movements.... She tried to tell [Pg 68] herself, of course, that there was no ground for such a thought; people can have the same lawyers without conspiring with those lawyers. But the shock of it, the coincidence of it cut the ground from under her.... This young man who had only just now taken pains to set her against Henry Gunning and his mining schemes was intimate with her lawyers, who had also taken pains to set her against Henry Gunning.... The facts seemed too pronounced to admit of coincidence.... And while she was feeling sore, rankled, the clever companion pushed the barb of suspicion a little deeper.

“How strange that you should both have the same lawyers,” she said with an air of innocent wonder. “How strange that he should know that Mr. Hard who has been so annoying to you.”

It was, of course, the attitude of Méduse Smythe to pretend that she had little or nothing to do with Heloise’s trip to Canada. She pretended all along to play a passive part. All the initiative was supposed to come from Heloise.

Méduse Smythe was clever. She had the master brain of Mr. Neuburg to prompt her, and she had played her cards subtly, so that although it was she alone who had inspired the high-minded girl to undertake this adventure, she was yet able to pose as no more than a lucky and accidental link in the chain of circumstances. Heloise thought of her only as a companion who was but faintly and sentimentally interested in an act of her employer’s [Pg 69] life over which she had no control. It was to keep up this air of being altogether outside the business that Méduse had said not that Mr. Hard was annoying to “us,” but that “Mr. Hard had been so annoying to you .”

Her attitude gave her so many advantages. Thus when Heloise said in answer to that little flick on the raw, “I wonder whether he knows Mr. Hard?” she was able to say with an admirable and impersonal air. “Well, it didn’t seem important before, but it may explain why he has monopolized you since you came on board.”

Heloise was suddenly aware how easily, how frequently she had slipped off with Clement Seadon. Had he monopolized her? Why——? She remembered how she had talked to him about Sicamous, about mining. How he had warned her.... Was that the reason? His lawyers were her lawyers ... her lawyers had warned her, too. Was that the reason?

And then as the girl sat quietly, feeling suspicious, miserable, hurt, the clever Miss Méduse Smythe improved the shining hour. She fired another little barb: “Of course, you are both young, and he is very handsome and has charming ways with him—I could understand your getting on so well together ... indulging in even a little ship-board flirtation.”

Heloise gasped. She was acutely conscious of Clement’s good looks, his charming ways—had [Pg 70] they been used to an end? And flirting—had she flirted?

“You?” smiled Miss Méduse tolerantly. “Oh, no, I don’t think you flirted, my dear. I know how you feel about your Mr. Gunning.” Heloise winced. She had not been feeling very much about Mr. Gunning lately. She was unpleasantly reminded of her inconstancy—as Miss Méduse Smythe meant her to be reminded. “I knew you were safe enough,” the smiling companion went on, “but I don’t know about that young man.... He seemed, well, yes, I must say, I think he flirted.”

That practically ended the conversation. A conversation with apparently very little in it, but a very telling conversation all the same. When Heloise went to bed she carried it with her. And as she tossed unsleeping, its different phases kept turning over in her mind, turning over and over with something of the steady throbbing of the engines in their ceaselessness.

So that while Clement Seadon, also awake, was tossing in his bunk, the throb of the engines beating out entrancingly the thoughts, “I’ll marry her ... I love her and I’ll marry her ... I’ll make her marry me ... I’ll save her through loving her....” Heloise lay awake asking herself: “Is he in league against me? Is he tricking me? [Pg 71] After all I thought of him, isn’t he tricking me? His lawyers are my lawyers. He has wormed out my secret from me ... things my lawyers did not know. Things they wanted to know? Was that accidental, or was it cunning? Is he fighting against—Harry?” She shivered in disgust at herself. “Harry ... have I acted honorably towards Harry? I have flirted with this man ... flirted! I’ve enjoyed his company, I’ve come to like him ...” she could not go on. She dare not go on. She dare not put her feelings for Clement Seadon under close examination.... “I’ve behaved dishonorably. I’ve forgotten Harry for this man who has—has been working against Harry.” Her heart chilled. “Perhaps his—his flirting with me was part of his plan against Harry....”

The whole of these thoughts jumbled and tumbled together in her anguished mind. The duplicity of Clement Seadon became entangled with her own inconstancy towards Henry Gunning, until, in the end, they became one and the same thing, and Seadon was the archvillain responsible for all ... as the adroit Mr. Neuburg and the clever Miss Méduse Smythe had meant him to be.

And so when the morning came Clement rose saying with immense purpose, “I’ll do it to-day. It’s the last day; to-morrow we land. I will tell her I love her to-day. I’ll make her love me.”

As he said that with great cheerfulness, Heloise, [Pg 72] rising, jaded, worn out, with a mind incapable of clear and unprejudiced thought, said, “I must find out. I’ll put it to the test. I’ll confront him with this letter. And if I am right....”

She knew a little pain, but that only strengthened her resolve. If she found out she was right, then it would be finished. Clement Seadon would not be allowed to intrude into her life again.

It was the last day of the voyage, and Clement Seadon, supremely conscious of the fact, was feeling baffled.

Again Heloise Reys was proving unapproachable. Again he was finding it difficult to get near her because of the crowd about her. The blockade of the first days of the trip was resumed.

But now Clement could not view this blockade with equanimity. He could not smile and bide his time—there was no time. Already they were passing up the mighty river St. Lawrence, already the end of the voyage was in sight. A few hours only were all that were left to him. He must get her alone.

He could not get her alone—not for a moment. And as the day relentlessly advanced, a further, a more disturbing thought was born in upon him—she did not want to be left alone with him. He began to realize this with a sense of dismay. It [Pg 73] was she who was putting barriers between them. It was she who kept her companion close at her side, who actually invited the big man to fill the vacancy when the companion went away. It was not the pair shutting him out; it was Heloise herself deliberately shutting him out with the pair.

He could not understand it. She had left him in perfect friendliness last night. There was no hint of misunderstanding—estrangement. Why had she changed? What was causing her to stand so aloof from him? Was it the doing of that precious rascally pair? Was it anything he himself had done or said? Was it, perhaps, the way he had talked about the mining venture? He did not think so. He knew that had pained her—that could not be helped; but it had not offended her. She had left him, well, in such a manner that he had felt confident of winning her as a lover....

No, it wasn’t that—but what was it? Some deep and cunning game of those rogues. Something subtle and devilish emanating from the brain of that master villain Neuburg—that was the only explanation. But what it was he could not find out. And the fact that there was so little time to find out, win back her confidence—that and the real ardor he felt for her, robbed his wits of their habitual steadiness, made them unstable, in a crisis.

And the crisis came. It came with an unfair abruptness. It could not be aught else, for Heloise’s wits were also in something of a whirl. [Pg 74] She was dreading the moment of confronting Clement, just as she was determined that she would do so. Her mind had been an affair of veering unstability all day. Now she believed him to be underhand, now she disbelieved. Now she hated him, now she thought he could do nothing dishonorable. Now she made up her mind to go to him, now she held back. She was a mass of hesitations and decisions; she was hot, and she was cold.

She made up her mind only a few minutes before the dressing-bugle sounded. Clement had tramped past her in dark loneliness, had turned and passed round the end of the deck. She felt, “I must do it now or never.” With an indefinite gesture, more than half an appeal for support, to her companion, she rose and went after him.

She expected to see him on the other side of the deck, and she would call him and hand him his letter.... But when she reached the end of the deck she actually ran into him. He had swung round on his heel, returned in his tracks.... As a matter of fact, he had made up his mind to talk to her, to demand an explanation from her.

They met. It was a shock. They stared at each other a little breathless. Then, “This is your letter,” said Heloise.

“Yes, it is,” he said. “But how on earth....” Heloise wasn’t going to trouble about trivial explanations.

“I looked at it because Rigby & Root are my lawyers as well as your own—did you know that?”

Clement was too honest, as well as too startled, to tell anything but the truth.

Heloise’s breath caught in something like a sob. There was a sudden blaze of contempt and anger in her heart; she had trusted this man ... and liked him.

“You knew,” she cried at him, and her face was white. “And you were acting in the interests of—of Mr. Hard?...”

Clement stared at her. This sudden attack had left his wits woolly and bewildered. And, of course, he was, in a sense, acting in the interests of Mr. Hard. If he said he wasn’t he would be lying. And yet Mr. Hard wasn’t the whole of the thing ... but the whole of the thing.... How could he explain it to her in this unsympathetic mood, in the presence of her archenemy and his, Miss Méduse?... He couldn’t explain. He could only temporize. He cried, “Miss Reys ... there is an explanation behind it all....”

He got no further. Heloise read his hesitation correctly. He was acting for Mr. Hard. He had, [Pg 76] under the guise of friendship, been conspiring against her....

She turned about. Clutching the arm of the clever Miss Méduse Smythe she walked away, left him.

VII

The first thing Clement Seadon did was to give way to one of those outbursts of anger that, in time, bring calmness. They had scored over him—they had tricked him, these blackguards. They had dealt him a very damaging blow.

Then from this anger against their very definite triumph, his cooling brain turned to the matter which had helped them to score that point. The explanation he found was perfectly simple. That letter had been stolen from his despatch case. He was not of the type that leaves letters lying about, particularly lawyers’ letters. Theft, that was the solution. Some one had been through his effects. They had found this letter, appreciated its worth as a means of alienating Heloise. They had been clever, as clever as he thought they were, and had struck at him at the psychological moment.

Who had been the thief? That, again, was easy. Who else but the rascally steward, a fellow in their pay, a member of the gang, who had the right to come and go in all the cabins. And, now that the thing was brought acutely to his mind, he recalled [Pg 77] seeing the rogue hanging about in the gallery, conspicuously near his door. He remembered him, not merely because of his redoubtably evil face, but also because he was so resolutely dirty.... His should-be white steward’s jacket had a beastly and disfiguring stain of yellow—rust, perhaps—up the left arm and shoulder.

Yes, that criminal-looking steward was the thief—but what matter? That part was passed and over. Could the thing be remedied? It looked black. It looked as though Heloise Reys would for the future hold him at arm’s length—only she must not. For her own sake, if not for his, he must prevent her holding him at arm’s length. He must speak with her.

It would be difficult. He might see and be able to speak to her to-night, after dinner, but he was not hopeful. She would evade him—Neuburg and the Gorgon would see to that. To-morrow—less hope to-morrow. The hustle and bustle of leaving the ship at Quebec would give no opportunity. At Quebec ... he gained a ray of comfort. At Quebec, yes, it might be done. He knew that she was to stay at the Château Frontenac for at least two days. She had told him she had rooms reserved there.... And so had he. Well, if he could not see her, even if he had to force himself upon her, during those two days, then he wasn’t the man he thought he was.

Quebec would be his salvation. Quebec would [Pg 78] see him right himself with her, put him on a footing which would enable him better to counteract the plans of her enemies. He felt more sanguine.

For the gang was not leaving things to chance. Mr. Neuburg, that master mind, was aware that Quebec would give him opportunities for regaining ground with Heloise. Mr. Neuburg meant to prevent that.

As the great liner pushed up the vast river towards that city of beauty and history, that on its great cliff hangs like a fairy citadel over the shining waters, Mr. Neuburg acted. He devised an acute, a cunning and a beastly plan for getting Clement Seadon out of the way.

As the big vessel was wharping into the dockside, Clement Seadon, who had remained on deck to the last possible moment in the hope of seeing Heloise Reys, went below. He went below disconsolately to gather together his traps, and to prepare for his effort in Quebec.

He went below, past the busy stewards working in their shirt-sleeves among the baggage, past their glory hole, full of their clothes and their intimate litter, past the many scattered trunks and suitcases ready to be taken off, past the wholesale reminders of voyages ended, and into his own cabin.

His own kit was, of course, already packed. A good traveler, he got through that swiftly and early. Now he gathered together his stick and his mackintosh and his hat ready for departure. He sat down on his bunk and felt for his cigarette case.

His cigarette case indicated the state of mind he was in; it was empty. For a moment, and in sheer desperation, he felt that he could not be bothered to unstrap his suitcase and dive to its bottom for smoking materials. Then he drove his melancholy from him, pulled the heavy leather case towards him.

In thirty seconds his hand encountered something hard and edgy. Something strange to his groping fingers.... He tugged it out....

In the palm of his hand lay a thing that glittered and flashed. A thing of immense worth— a woman’s tiara .

Then Clement Seadon jumped alertly to his feet. He saw the meaning of that tiara at once. It had been put there so that he should be branded as a thief, that he—by gad!—that he should be arrested, be kept under lock and key while Heloise Reys was in Quebec.

He saw it all. The devils, the clever devils, this was their plan—Neuburg’s plan—to get him out of the way.

What should he do? The thing was immensely valuable. Return it?... No, couldn’t risk wandering about with that in his possession, for anybody to fling accusations. Oh, but there was something quite simple ... there always is. The purser ... he’d run right along to the purser, hand it to him, say that he had found it. He’d do it now. He guessed he’d have to be quick. Neuburg and his gang would see to it that the loss of that tiara did not go long undiscovered.

He almost ran along the gallery towards the purser’s office. He did not get far. Before he came to the accommodation stairs that led up to the smoking saloon, stairs that stood between him and the purser, he heard an excited babble of voices coming down those stairs.

Yes, there was a definite excitement in them. Men’s voices raised in protest and advice. A woman’s voice, hysterical and accusative.... A woman who had a grievance.

It was absolutely impossible to go on. They were bound to see him ... and he had that damnable tiara on him.... He glanced about wildly.... There seemed no way of escape, and the voices were very near.... They were about to come round the corner.... Like a fox bolting to earth, Clement Seadon dived into the empty glory hole. He crouched behind the door amid the [Pg 81] hanging coats.... The voices passed him talking at a babble.... He heard them drifting along the gallery towards his cabin.... He stood up, scrutinizing his lair carefully. No other way out except by the door he had come in. He waited a few moments. Then he stepped out quietly, and walked a little way towards the purser’s office, he must not on any account show haste. He heard voices behind him, he faced about for a moment and looked.... It was a crucial moment. As he looked, the captain of the ship walked out from the alleyway in which his cabin stood, looked along the gallery towards him ... saw him.

He saw him and immediately called out, “Hello, Seadon” (genial Captain Heavy was an old friend), “I say, you’re the man we want. Would you mind coming along here for a moment, my good chap?”

Clement Seadon, with a throbbing heart, went along. He went to his own cabin. There seemed to be a crowd of people in that cabin. In the blur which his painful sensations brought to him, Clement could only distinguish one excited and angry lady and a steward—the evil little steward. He turned his face quickly away from these. He looked at Captain Heavy. He meant to say something to Heavy, but his mouth was parched.

Captain Heavy, his good-tempered face frowning, understood that inquiring look. “Yes, it does seem an idiot mob to thrust into a man’s cabin, [Pg 82] old chap. None of my doing. I—well, look here, it’s a rotten and unwarrantable thing, but—but you see this lady has lost a valuable piece of jewelry ... a diamond tiara.... She says it has been stolen....”

“Well—she says it has been stolen. And one of the stewards declares he knows who did it. In fact—in fact, old man, he has the—the effrontery to say that it was— you .”

“Well—well,” said the distressed captain. “Well—they came along to see for themselves—to—to search.”

CHAPTER III

There was a moment of deep silence in the cabin after the definite and cruel accusation was made. Clement swept the little crowd with a glance he strove to make amazed.

“I have been accused of theft! I am to be searched!...” he said. “My dear Heavy, this is absurd!”

“I know! I know! I’ve said that already. This la—they’ve taken the matter into their own hands.”

“And I stay here,” said the lady, like a figure of vengeance, “until the authorities come. I am not going to lose my tiara.”

“You’d scarcely do that, madam,” said the captain soothingly. “Even—even if Mr. Seadon had it, he could scarcely get rid of it. If he tried to get rid of it through his porthole people would see him—we’re alongside. And in any case his porthole is shut....”

Seadon, with a start, darted a glance to the porthole. Heavy’s remarks had closed that loophole pretty thoroughly, he thought.

“All the same, I stay,” said the lady implacably. “Unless, of course, Mr. Seadon allows us to search.”

“Is this the man who accused me?” Clement asked sharply, and as the captain nodded, “What’s the reason behind this charge?” he demanded cuttingly of the fellow.

“Reason b’ind it?” snarled the man. “Ain’t no reason be’ind it. It’s just that when Mrs. Smot said she lorst ’er dimend terara, well I recalled or recollected I’d seen you ’angin’ about suspicious like, comin’ out of ’er cabin where an’ when you ’ad no right to be there.”

“Oh, you’re her cabin steward. You’re the one who has the entré to her cabin. What’s the record of this man, Heavy?” Seadon rapped out the sentences with a fighting air, obviously trying to parry suspicion.

“Don’t know,” answered Heavy, who was feeling that it was rather stupid of Seadon to act like this, when a search, distasteful though it might be, [Pg 85] would clear him at once. “Don’t know. He only signed on this voyage; we don’t know anything about him.”

“If you think you c’n switch it off ter me,” said the steward with an evil grin, “lemme tell you I don’t mind being searched, anyhow.”

“Yes,” said the lady acidly. “I don’t see why any man, if he is innocent, should object to being searched.”

Clement acknowledged that he could no longer fence off the evil moment. He turned to the captain with a resigned air. “There are my bags,” he said. “I haven’t been in the baggage room since I came aboard, as your baggage master can testify. If that tiara is anywhere it is in my suitcases.” He pointedly drew attention to his suitcases. He noted that the steward attended to this fact. For though he searched the suitcases with great cunning, starting first on the one he had not put the tiara into, so as to hide his own knowledge, he seemed to have something on his mind.

It was very definitely on his mind after he had drawn blank in the suitcases, had drawn blank in his careful examination of the cabin, and had reassured himself that the porthole had been locked, anyhow, since this morning.

He stood up studying Clement with lowering and evil eyes. He said, “No, it ain’t anywhere [Pg 86] ’ere. Not in the suitcases or anywheres. There’s only ’imself.”

“You seem curiously anxious to fix suspicion on me,” said Clement sharply. “To divert it, I might say.”

“Captain Heavy,” said Clement, with an anger that must affect the captain, “Am I to submit to this outrage any longer? Is this man to fix suspicion on me for some reason of his own?...”

“I don’t want ter search ’im, if ’e don’t want it. There’s always th’ police,” said the steward.

Clement turned swiftly to the captain. He held his arms out straight. “Please search me, captain,” he said savagely.

Captain Heavy with a little shrug, and a “I wish this was merely a joke, old man,” searched Clement. He did the job in the Scotland Yard manner. It was complete, it was brilliantly thorough. When he had finished he stepped back and stared at the steward. He also stared at the lady. And he said, bitterly, “Well?”

The lady’s face showed that apoplectical tint that might come to even the best-nourished woman when she is torn by the two powerful but contrary emotions, those of groveling apology, and anger with a steward who had made her look a fool.

The steward—well, the steward simply goggled [Pg 87] at Clement. There was incredulity and also fear showing in his devastated countenance. He had been ready to pounce at the first glitter of a diamond. He had been ready to suggest some hiding place overlooked by the captain. He was sure that the tiara must be on Clement’s person since it was not in his suitcase—where he himself had put it.

Captain Heavy glared at him, and snapped, “Well, my man, what have you got to say? You’ve subjected a passenger on my ship to a disgusting indignity—for what?”

“It—it must be on ’im,” said the steward, sullenly backing away, his mind absolutely bewildered by the unexpected absence of the tiara.

“Must!” thundered the captain. “Good God! man, do you want me to take his skin off?”

“We’ll get to the bottom of this. As I knew, Mr. Seadon did not take that tiara. Why the devil did you accuse him? I want to know that? And now.”

“I think”—said Clement in a cold voice—“I think I have already suggested why.”

“Eh, Seadon? You suggested? What did you suggest, my good chap?” cried the captain, only too anxious for the good of his service to make amends.

“I suggested that he was anxious to fix [Pg 88] suspicion on some one—some one other than himself.”

“Yes—to divert suspicion. That’s it. That’s what you said,” snapped the lady, who not only had a natural instinct for finding scapegoats, but who owed the steward something for making her appear so conspicuously foolish.

“Ah, divert suspicion,” said the captain, swinging round on the steward and appreciating his substantial air of villainy for the first time. “I see. You are this lady’s cabin steward, and——”

Clement might have helped the good work along. There was no need. The lady was only too anxious to help the good work along herself.

“And he had the run of my cabin,” she piped. “ He could go in there whenever he liked, do what he liked, take what he liked.”

“I never,” snarled the steward, cringing back, glaring hate at Clement. He felt that this softy-looking young man had turned the tables on him in some way. He was afraid. But more, he resented the fact that this dandy fellow, who looked the last person to possess brains in good working order should be tying him in such a knot. As his wits darted back over the happenings and the talk in that cabin during the last few minutes, he saw, blazingly, that its apparent casualness had really been a net to entangle him. In a desperate effort to beat the brain working against him, he cried, “I never took nuthin’. If I ’ad, would I ’ave pushed [Pg 89] meself forward in this ... brought meself inter the limelight? I risked sumthin’ accusin’ ’im , though it was me duty.”

Clement might have said something. There was no need. He never believed in doing work others could do better. The incensed lady did it much better. She cried, “That was only your vile cunning. Of course it was. My tiara is missing—who would be the first person I would accuse? The cabin steward—naturally. And naturally my cabin steward would know it. If he wasn’t a thief—it wouldn’t matter. If he was—well, he’d do his best to divert suspicion, as Mr. Sneezedon——”

“—Seadon said. Oh, I see it. You suggested some one I did not know, on the other side of the ship, to lead me away. You joined furiously in the search so that I should be convinced that you, at least, were honest. Oh, I see it. I see it. You pretended to be honest to cover up your guilt.”

“Guilt ... cut out the guilt. I ain’t guilty,” snarled the steward, backing farther away, and watching Clement all the time. What had this man who looked so inconsequent, and wasn’t, up his sleeve. “I didn’t take that terara.” He made another desperate effort in defense. “An’—an’ why should I pick on this gentleman ’ere, of all passengers. Why?”

Clement cut in like a flash. This was his time [Pg 90] to speak. “Because at the very beginning of the voyage I kicked you out of this cabin—since you were in it, and had no right to be in it. Because you tampered with my private papers during the voyage, and you know I know it, and want either to prejudice beforehand any report I might make, or to get me out of the way.... Isn’t that true?”

“My God!” jerked the man at the mention of the papers, “’ow did you know that?... I mean I never did.” He stared at Clement, his face working. If the gang had utilized that stolen letter with great effect against Clement, he had turned their own weapon against them with dismaying force. The mere mention of it had staggered the steward. Already convicted of theft out of his own mouth the steward was at a loss. It was Captain Heavy who acted next. He rang the cabin bell imperiously. When Clement’s own steward, Nicholson, answered, he snapped, “Nicholson, have this man’s effects searched—at once . Make it a thorough search. A diamond tiara is missing. This fellow has accused Mr. Clement Seadon of taking it.” Nicholson regarded the evil-faced steward with a sudden glance in which benevolence was conspicuously absent. He knew Mr. Clement Seadon. Also Captain Heavy knew he knew Mr. Clement Seadon. “It’s more than likely that he has merely accused Mr. Seadon to distract attention from himself. Get to it.”

Nicholson got to it. With another unbrotherly [Pg 91] glance at the steward he nipped out of the cabin and sped towards the glory hole. The evil-faced lad attempted an air of insouciance. He even called after Nicholson, “Search ’ard, me bucky. I’ve already expressed me willingness.”

The lady who had been so ready to accuse proved herself more than ready to apologize. Her method of apology was lavish, but particularly unsatisfactory to the evil-faced steward. It was one long hymn of hate concerning the steward. His feelings grew more and more disturbed as the minutes passed.

He was confident it was all right, it was bound to be all right, he told himself. He’d been most careful. Nothing could go wrong with ’im. Nothing ... or anyhow, he thought nothing could go wrong with him. He saw no reason for feeling scared ... but....

Nicholson looked wisely at Clement; with resignation at his superior officer; with a certain touch of cheeriness at the evil-faced steward.

“In the pocket of this,” said Nicholson, lifting up a steward’s white jacket.

There was no doubt about it. That dirty coat [Pg 92] with its yellow stain—probably rust—on its arm and shoulder was unmistakable. Everybody recognized it. Clement Seadon had never forgotten it, in fact.

“A cunnin’ hiding-place,” said Nicholson. “Hunted all through his—his effects, as ordered, finding nothing. Never thought of looking in his coat. Never would have thought. Only we see it hanging in the glory hole.”

That was where Clement Seadon had seen it hanging last—in the glory hole when he had dodged in there for cover. He smiled.

“My oath!” burst out the evil-faced steward, seeing that smile. “My oath—in my coat pocket. You put it there.”

“Of course I put it there.” And only he and the steward knew that he was telling the truth. The others merely appreciated his sarcasm.

“That settles that,” said Captain Heavy. “Nicholson, take this brute out, and keep him safe until the police come aboard. Seadon, I can’t tell you how mad I am that all this has happened. It’s infamous.... If it’s any consolation, I’ll promise you that this scoundrel will be made to suffer in full....”

But the rest doesn’t matter, nor do the voluble apologies of the lady of the tiara matter. All that matters is that Clement Seadon left the Empress [Pg 93] for the Château Frontenac, just about the time that the police went on board her to arrest and convey the steward to prison.

And in the lobby of the Château Frontenac, the first person he saw was the mountain of a man—Mr. Neuburg.

Mr. Neuburg was standing facing the door, and he started perceptibly as Clement came into the hotel. He betrayed himself by a quick stride forward and a muttered oath.

Clement smiled. He said cheerfully, “Oh, were you expecting the other fellow? Sorry. He took my place—at the last minute. You’ll know where to find him, I think—or, anyhow, the first policeman will direct you——”

The mountain of a man stared across Clement’s shoulder for a moment. In his usually placid eye there was a red light of rage. His hand, with fist clenching, lifted to the level of his ribs. He gulped. Without another sign he swung round and went with his surprising swiftness out of the lobby.

When making his reservation at the reception counter he had carefully studied the room bookings before his name. The clerk had said to him, [Pg 94] “I’ll give you a nice room on the fifth floor, Mr. Seadon. A good room. Overlooks Dufferin Terrace and the river. One of the best rooms we’ve got.”

“I know it,” said Clement pleasantly. “Ripping view.... Have you anything on the same gallery as 359? I don’t mind if there isn’t a view.”

“Why, yes,” said the clerk, “I can give you 362. It’s round the corner, but it’s on the same floor and only three doors away. Same view, too. It’s an intercommunicating bathroom, but locked on your side, of course. You’ll like that room.”

Clement Seadon hastily scanned the names above his. Who had room 361—on the other side of his intercommunicating bathroom? His heart beat. He said,

The Frontenac has two lifts. As Clement knew this brilliant hotel quite well, he could choose his lift with cunning and so could get into his room without being seen on the gallery in which Mr. Neuburg had his door.

There was a matter for further satisfaction, and also, it must be said, for a certain anxiety in this business of rooms. He had had luck in getting a room next Mr. Neuburg’s. His choice of the [Pg 95] gallery itself had been deliberate. Heloise Reys had her room on that gallery.

He had looked for her name at once, before he had sought out the name attached to room 361. He had seen that the room booked to Heloise Reys was 359. The room booked to Méduse Smythe, the companion, was 360—it was to be expected. They had rooms together—probably also with a communicating bathroom. It was only when he had discovered Mr. Neuburg’s room that a feeling of anxiety crept into his thoughts. For, obviously, Mr. Neuburg had the room next Méduse Smythe. The gang had deliberately arranged to group themselves—and their victim—together. It probably went without saying that Méduse, the Gorgon, and Mr. Neuburg also had a communicating bathroom. They were all in rooms in line, the victim, Heloise, the gang, and himself.

Clement went quickly to his room, left the door ajar, so that he would not have to call out when the baggage man brought his baggage up—to call out loud would be to warn Mr. Neuburg—and went very quietly into his own bathroom. He felt the handle of his own internal door, found it bolted, slipped the bolt, and carefully opened it. The door of Mr. Neuburg’s room (there were double doors separating the rooms) was shut, and it was probably bolted; anyhow, Clement was not going to attract attention by trying the handle. What mattered was that there was only a single [Pg 96] thickness of door between him and the master villain. He could hear the mountain of a man moving about quietly inside his room. He heard him mutter an angry oath—probably directed at his own (Clement’s) head; then, luck of luck, he heard him use his telephone. It was of no importance. He was merely demanding his baggage from the porter, but it gave Clement the knowledge that, unless Mr. Neuburg whispered, it would be quite delightfully easy to overhear his conversations. Nothing more happened then, and Clement closed his own door again—and bolted it—as he heard the baggage man’s trolley coming along the passage.

Only when that fellow had gone did he bolt his outer door, slip into the bathroom, and wait for a conversation he thought was bound to come. Mr. Neuburg, he felt, must open his bruised heart to the companion Méduse.

He had some time to wait, but he did not mind. He was feeling satisfied with events. He had these devils on the hip. There was no doubt of that. They had given him definite facts to put before Heloise. He could go straight to her now and tell her how the lawyer’s letter had been stolen from him in order that Méduse Smythe could work on her feelings, and how the rogues had endeavored to get him out of the way with the business of the tiara.

They were bold, were they? He was going to [Pg 97] be bold, too. Heloise should have the cold facts without apology. He was more than certain how a clearly honest nature like hers would view the revelations. Neuburg was done, Méduse was done, Gunning was done—the plot was ended.

“Aah ... it is all right, Méduse? You are free.... You are alone for a few minutes?” ... A deep, slightly muffled voice said these words curiously close to Clement Seadon’s ear.

It was Mr. Neuburg speaking. The companion Méduse had come into the room on the other side of the bathroom door.

III

“Don’t talk, woman,” said Mr. Neuburg’s voice. “He is here, in this hotel.”

“He ... who?” gasped a female voice. It was a little fainter than Mr. Neuburg’s, who, Clement was delighted to hear, was in that masculine condition of rage when he must “take it out” on some one.

“Don’t be a dense fool,” the big man snapped. “He ...! Who ...! The Englishman, ninny. Is there another?”

“Pah! Do I have to keep on saying it? He is here. He has not been arrested. He is somewhere [Pg 98] in this hotel now . The Englishman, Clement Seadon, is here. He is free. Do you begin to gather ... just a glimmer, woman?”

“But”—the woman’s voice was almost scandalized—“but he was to have been arrested. Molke was to see to it that he was arrested.”

Clement heard the creak of a chair. The news had been too much for the amiable Méduse. She had had to sit down—and sit down hard. He would have liked to chuckle. He dare not. The snarling voice of the mountainous Mr. Neuburg said with bitter passion, “Ah, you begin to see. Something active begins to stir in your head. And you are shocked. Well, I did not thrill with joy myself.... No, I do not know how it happened. I only know I set Molke to effect this Englishman’s arrest, and it doesn’t happen; it is Molke who is arrested instead.”

“Yes; but that— that Englishman,” protested an incredulous female voice.

“Yes— that Englishman. Only, my dear Méduse, say ‘that Englishman’ with more respect. I assure you, he is like that. He does not look like intelligence at all. He looks a mere decoration. He looks a mere easy-going, meaningless, drawing-room young man without any wits of his own.... And—and it is Molke who is arrested after all. Just appreciate the fact, my dear. That is the [Pg 99] Anglo-Saxon. He does not look like anything in particular, and you find him sitting firmly on top of you just at that moment when you are beginning to rub your hands over the clever way you have knocked him down?”

“So tight,” snarled Mr. Neuburg, “that Mr. Clement Seadon walked smiling and calm into the lobby of the hotel, and still smiling, still calm, told me to my face that he had beaten me at my own game.”

“In his own way, of course. He told me that he was not in prison, but that the steward Molke was.... I am not so dull that I did not understand him completely. But—but, you see what it means?”

“That—that”—the woman was a little flustered before the bullying anger of her companion—“that means he is still a danger we have to contend with.”

“Women”—said the mountainous Mr. Neuburg—“women are the apostles of the obvious. Yes, he is a danger we have to contend with, my dear. Only he is something more. It means that he thinks we are a danger that no longer counts.... I see I will have to explain. This is truly your day for being heroically dull. This man who looks foolish is not. He knows that we have delivered ourselves into his hands. He is going to strike—strike [Pg 100] once and swiftly—and smash us. He will expose us to Heloise Reys. That is why he is so confident. His sort do not taunt for the mere sport of the thing.”

Clement smiled grimly, appreciating the acuteness with which Mr. Neuburg had sized up the situation. Mr. Neuburg, also, was no fool.

“He will speak with her. It will come to the same in the end. Oh, yes, I tell you that is what he will do. He is not a man to miss chances.”

Clement knew they would. He knew that to get that ten minutes’ talk with Heloise would not be an easy matter.

He listened intently. Since they meant to prevent him speaking to the girl, they might say how they meant to do it. He might, thanks to his splendid good luck, overhear their plan for check-mating him. That would be a crowning triumph. A silence settled down on the other side of the door. Then, surprisingly, astoundingly, Neuburg growled, “But there is something else. Gunning has broken loose again.”

Clement gasped—and so did the woman. But where his gasp was one of astonishment, that of the woman was one of anger. “Ah, that was what [Pg 101] made Joe look so sour on the quayside. I saw he was there,” she gasped. “Well—what is it now?”

“It is not revealed,” said Mr. Neuburg, being, apparently, sardonic. “Nor is it revealed to where he has—vanished.”

“My dear Méduse, he always leaves Sicamous. He is behaving, as he always behaves—the slack-willed, backboneless swine.”

Clement registered that character reading of Henry Gunning in his mind. Assuredly fortune was smiling on him to-day with her most genial smile.

“Just stop being clever, Adolf, and tell me exactly what Joe Wandersun told you on the quayside.”

“He told me that Henry Gunning had been Henry Gunning. He got drunk, as usual. He talked big about his idiot mine claims, as usual. He boasted about the millionaire he’d be when his soft-hearted English sweetheart married him—I suppose that’s as usual now. He then got a little drunker. Told the world that he was going to strike the trail and ‘show ’em all.’ And he struck the trail—and—so—vanished.”

“And Joe sat down on his hunkers and watched him go?” said Méduse bitterly.

“Leave Joe to me, my dear.” There was a nasty [Pg 102] edge to the big man’s tone, the position of Joe was not enviable. “Joe says that the brute sneaked off in the night. Joe left him apparently sleeping the solid sleep of ‘bootleg’ whisky in his shack. He thought he was safe for eight hours. When he went there again in the morning Gunning had gone. He had taken his kit, slipped off somewhere in the dark.”

“Well,” snapped the woman after a pause. “It doesn’t stop there, does it? Joe didn’t just sit down and weep, did he? What’s he found out?”

Mr. Neuburg chuckled. “You are unerring, my dear,” he said. “As you imply, our good Joe did not sit down and weep.... People who work for Adolf Neuburg know better than to do that. Our Joe has found out things. Not everything, but something. This sodden and spineless Gunning struck east. No, my dear, do not spoil your burst of intelligence by asking the obvious. If I knew exactly where he had gone I should have mentioned it. You appreciate that? When one fails to mention things it is because one doesn’t know. But we will know. Siwash Mike is finding out. He will find out. That is his forte. In a day or two we shall know where this fool Gunning is.”

“Ah, you see that that is the point, my mild Méduse. In a day or two. That means, perhaps, a day or two longer here in Quebec, with that [Pg 103] foolish-looking Englishman, who is far from foolish, on the spot. The situation is not excellent.”

The pair were silent for a moment. Clement, with ears straining, wanted to learn answers to several questions that passed through his head.

As though his thoughts had been communicated telepathically through the door, his speculations were immediately answered.

The voice of the big man boomed abruptly, “This Heloise has gone out to the postoffice, eh?”

“It is there,” said Mr. Neuburg. “Her agent at Sicamous—our good Joe—sent it before he left. He showed me a copy. He did quite well. He informs her that Henry Gunning has left Sicamous on one of his periodical trips—probably on business. He does not know where Mr. Gunning has gone, but he will cable when he finds out, or when Mr. Gunning returns ... as he should in a few days.”

“What is the matter with you, Méduse?” snarled the big man with an oath. “Where is the reason for suspicion? Gunning—the fool—is not supposed to know she is coming. If he likes to go off, well, it is merely a natural thing for him to do.... If anything, his going off destroys the suggestion of a plot, of his being kept there by us [Pg 104] as a bait for her. You are a fool, Méduse. This Englishman—he is destroying your nerve.”

“Yes, it is the Englishman. He is too unexpected. I do not like the idea of our remaining here several days with him about.”

“Well, you know his capacities; it will help to keep you alert. And we will deal with him—as best we can.”

The woman said, “Still—would it not be better to get her away? Would it be possible?”

“It would be better, but not possible,” said Mr. Neuburg. “We must remain here, in touch with the Sault Algonquin; Siwash is to report there. He is ‘in the air,’ as it were, and that is the only way we can keep in touch. No, my dear Méduse, it will not suffice that he cables. He will cable Sicamous, and Joe’s wife will send on the message to our soft-hearted little girl. But the cable is not good enough for us. We must know all the details: what Gunning is doing, what is his condition, and so forth, in order to know how to act. No, we must stay in Quebec until we see Siwash.”

“Yes, he is at the gluemaker’s in Algonquin. I see what you mean. He will be an addition to our forces if we have to deal with that Englishman. Joe is a useful man.... He may be slow at times, but he is not squeamish.”

Clement Seadon was glad of the hint. He would adopt a special alertness for the benefit of this [Pg 105] unknown and unsqueamish Joe. But more than this, he was exceedingly grateful for the address they had given him—the gluemaker’s in the Sault Algonquin. He rather fancied he knew the street. It was one of those in the old town, in that network of dark and narrow alleys crowded between the water front and the rocky cliff on which Quebec was piled up. It was good to know the local headquarters of the gang. Also, Siwash Mike—whoever he was—was to report there. It would be interesting to hear that report. One might gather a great deal of useful and destructive information about Henry Gunning and the plans of the gang from it. The woman Méduse was saying, “Yes, something must be done about this Englishman. I assure you, Adolf, I do not feel secure with him about. It is not merely that apparently his easy-going appearance covers an unnatural cleverness—but—but—we must not mince matters, he has an effect on this girl Heloise.”

There was a pause. Clement felt that the big Mr. Neuburg was impressed by the significance of the companion Méduse’s words. He knew that he himself was certainly impressed by the significance of Méduse’s words. His heart had suddenly leaped. His brain was singing. He could scarcely restrain himself from calling out, “Say it. Say what you mean plainly.” And, as before, it was as though the intensity of his own feelings compelled those in the farther room to be explicit.

“Ah,” breathed the mountainous man. “You mean that she is, perhaps, in love with him?”

“I mean,” answered the woman, “that it would be very easy for her to be in love with him. I do not think she knows it yet. But he—he would quickly make her know the state of her heart.”

“That is the devil,” said the big Mr. Neuburg, and his was the only expression that was vocal. “We must certainly deal with him....” And then came an unexpected happening, the woman hissed.

There was a sound of stealthy and swift movement in the room. A silence. Presently another movement of skirts, as though the woman was returning from a farther chamber. Then, “It is she. She has returned from the postoffice. I hear her moving in her room. I must go to her before she finds the bathroom door locked.” It was the companion Méduse, speaking softly.

Again movement. Again silence. A long silence. Clement heard the scratch of a match. Smelt cigar smoke. Heard a chair complain as a heavy body dropped into it. Then once more silence.

Clement decided that the next item of importance was to arrange for his talk with Heloise.

Although he was quite willing—so strong was his case—to say all that he meant to say in front of Méduse, and even Mr. Neuburg if necessary, he thought that a ten-minutes’ undistracted conversation with Heloise would give him a better chance of stating all the facts firmly and finally.

How to fix that up was the problem. As he was deciding whether he would risk telephoning to her room, his eye fell on his wrist watch. It was close to lunch time, and at once it came to him that not only did he want lunch himself, but that Heloise, being human as well as a goddess, would want hers.

He smiled suddenly as he saw how things might be managed, went down to the first floor where the great dining room was, and sat in a modestly remote seat in the lounge. Without being seen himself, he could watch everybody who came to or went from the dining room.

He had about twenty minutes to wait. Probably Heloise was telling the innocent Méduse that there had been a letter from her Sicamous agent at the Poste Restante, and that they had perhaps to stay a few days more in Quebec, and the reason why. But after that wait they both came.

From a safe distance Clement saw the captain [Pg 108] of the waiters lead them to a table, noticed that the room was not full, and that there were plenty of places at the end. Satisfied about this, he went downstairs.

In the lobby he selected a form, wrote on it, tore it up. Wrote on another, and then, apparently, thought better of it. But whereas he threw the first into the waste basket, the second he folded rather cleverly under cover of that action, and kept it in his hand. Then having convinced all about him that he wasn’t sending a message, he waited until he saw a page go upstairs with a caller’s form, went up himself, and waited at the turn of the stairs for the boy’s return.

“Take this call form to Miss Méduse Smythe. She and another lady are sitting at the fifth table for two on the window side. Call her name, please, but that’s where she is. Give the form to her, and come away quick.”

“And you don’t know where it came from to anybody—even the lady herself.”

“I gottcher,” said the page, grinning more expansively. He took the dollar and the call form. He went upstairs. Clement went after him. The page went into the dining room. Clement stepped [Pg 109] back quietly and swiftly into a deep passage where the male diners deposited their coats. He heard the boy calling out, “Miss Smidt—Miss Medoose Smidt.”

In seventy-five seconds Miss Méduse Smythe came by the end of the coat passage at a great pace. Clement had thought she would be swift. What he had written on the call form, in anybody’s handwriting, was:

The companion might have argued about that handwriting, but how was she to know that “Joe” did not have to disguise it. Clement had banked on that idea. And he had scored.

Miss Méduse Smythe was no sooner out of vision than he was in the dining room, alongside Heloise’s table, speaking to Heloise. “Miss Reys,” he said, “will you give me an opportunity to talk to you privately?...”

Heloise’s tone was affronted. Obviously she resented his speaking to her, but obviously, too, the extreme publicity of the place robbed her attitude of some of its effectiveness. It is to be feared that Clement had taken that into his calculations when he had decided on this plan.

“Miss Reys,” he said, “I want to speak to you—privately—for no more than ten minutes. And [Pg 110] I want you to understand that it is only the urgency of the matter that makes me force myself upon you.” She hesitated, looking up at him, her vivid face showing the keenness of her emotions. “Do you remember saying that you believed I’d be honest even against my own interests?” he asked.

The girl bent her eyes to the table. She was thinking quickly. “To-morrow morning I will be in the writing room at half past nine. Will that do? It will not be easy to manage it before then.”

He left her, and went to the back of the room, where there were a number of empty tables.

As he sat and ate his lunch the companion, Méduse came in. She was flustered, she was even scared. Clement was amused, but he did not think it mattered very much. She would not, he thought, mention the reason for her leaving Heloise—though actually there was no reason. Neither did he think that Heloise would tell her of the appointment she had made. His insistence upon privacy, the way he had snatched at the chance to speak to her alone at her table, the way he had [Pg 111] left her, would all tell Heloise that the companion Méduse was excluded from the secret.

And even if she did tell, it would matter very little. Clement would have his interview with Heloise no later than the next morning, for Heloise would see to it that it happened, and nothing very much could occur until that time. The rogues could not whisk her away against her will. They had to move delicately always.

And after he had spoken to Heloise, nothing at all could occur. He would have settled with Mr. Neuburg and his gang once and for all.

He finished his lunch after the two ladies, watched them out of the dining room, then he got his hat and stick and walked out through Quebec. He would take a look at this glue merchant’s in the Sault Algonquin. It was best to be “well-up” in every particular. Very cheerfully he walked through the Place d’Armes, and down the steep street of The Mountain to the huddled network of passageways—they can hardly be called roads—that crowded under the rocky scarp of the Grand Battery. He was feeling “good,” as the Canadians would say. Why not? Hadn’t he all the factors for victory surely in his grasp?

Possibly he would have felt less “good” if he had been aware of a little scene between the companion Méduse and the massive Mr. Neuburg that was even then taking place.

Both Heloise and the companion had gone up to their rooms, a prey to emotions. Heloise’s emotion was not altogether unpleasant. She was agitated at the prospect of an intimate talk with Clement Seadon on the morrow; but, like all people who trample on their feelings in order to bolster up their pride, she felt relief that this condition of chilly aloofness between them was coming to an end. As Méduse Smythe had told Mr. Neuburg, Heloise did not know exactly what her feelings were towards Clement Seadon, but she did know enough to realize that a renewal of their old companionship would be an extraordinarily pleasant thing.

Méduse Smythe’s agitation was of a different order. There was fear in it. She had received an imperative message from one of the conspirators; he wanted to see her in the hotel lobby. That fact in itself was disturbing. She hurried swiftly to the lobby—and there was no Joe. Nobody was there wanting her. What did it mean? Had Joe been frightened away? Or—or was it some ruse? She was puzzled, scared. She felt that her own wits were not capable of dealing with this matter.

She left Heloise, grappling with the feminine complications of preparing for a walk, in her room, passed swiftly across her own. She slipped [Pg 113] ajar her door of the bathroom that led to Mr. Neuburg’s room, and scratched stealthily on the inner door. That was the signal. She repeated it several times. It was not answered. Mr. Neuburg was not in his room. She half expected that; that might be the reason why Joe had sent in to her. She closed her own of these double bathroom doors, and her anxiety was increased. She must see and speak with Mr. Neuburg. It might be a matter that did not brook of delay. Her agitation developed steadily until both ladies got down to the lobby again, then, with a gasp of relief, she said, “Oh, there’s Mr. Neuburg.... Do you mind, Loise; I do want to speak to him about something before it slips out of my memory?”

She went across to Mr. Neuburg, who rose from his chair and bowed with all the affability of a mere acquaintance. She said, in quite an ordinary voice, as though discussing the weather, “I am going to give you a slip of paper. It seems important. Can you take it from me without being seen?”

Mr. Neuburg, with all the charm of a genial man of the world, and all the acuteness of a master rogue, bowed at once, led her to the magazine counter to the right of the lobby. “My dear Méduse, as I select a guide book for you, lean across me to reach those post cards, then you can drop your paper.”

The call form that was supposed to have come [Pg 114] from the man Joe was dropped. Mr. Neuburg picked it up with a guide book. He read it. He opened the guide book, as though in search for some locality, pointed to a page with his fat finger, and said, “When did you get this, Méduse?”

“Ha—and you went out at once, and Joe—he was not there, of course. He would not be there. This is a thing he would not do.”

“No—I did not see him. But then I did not look very keenly. Surely the Englishman does not know about Joe?”

“Somebody knows about Joe,” said Mr. Neuburg. “Somebody knows so much about Joe that he recognized that the name was enough to get you away from Miss Heloise into the lobby at a run. Who do you think would pull off a trick like that, my mild Méduse?”

“Certainly this is your day for being triumphantly dull, my dear. This Englishman has bewitched you.”

“Ah, my mild one, that is a thing that even I cannot tell you without finding out. It is to be found out. Now go back to the girl with this guide book, tell her the pleasant Mr. Neuburg has recommended it as the best of its kind—and remember that if your brain has turned into wool, you have the support of mine, which is particularly acute. That may restore and stimulate your wits.”

When the two ladies had gone out Mr. Neuburg sat and smoked and considered this unexpected happening deeply. His was a quite exceptional brain, and he had mastery over his thoughts and his memories. It was while he was going over his memories that the smoke of his cigar suddenly ceased to puff. That was the only sign exhibited by his impressive, placid and genial bulk.

At once he rose indolently, walked across the lobby to the reception desk. He asked in his affable way if he could see the room bookings. He looked through them. He stopped when he came to the name “Clement Seadon.” He stopped with reason, for he saw that Clement’s room was next his own. He stared at that number for a moment, said “Thank you” very politely to the reception [Pg 116] clerk, and mounted to the gallery on which his room stood.

He went not merely to his own room but walked round the corner of the gallery to the door of Clement Seadon’s room. As he stood there regarding it contemplatively, the chambermaid passed by. He looked at her, or rather across her shoulder, with that smile which was quite charming, but had not the slightest tinge of human emotion in it, and he said, “There is, I think, a blind in that room which is making noises in the wind. It destroys my nap. I have knocked on the door, but the occupant of the room is not there apparently. Would it be asking you too much to go in and pull up that blind, so that I can have my beauty sleep undisturbed?”

The girl smiled and opened the door. With a polite, “Thanks enormously,” Mr. Neuburg slipped away from her with his extraordinary swiftness. He went into his own room. He opened his one of the double doors between his room and Clement Seadon’s bathroom. He listened at the other door. He did not hear as well as Clement had heard, for the bathroom was between him and the Englishman’s room. But he heard. He heard the movements of the chambermaid, heard her rattling at the windows.

When the chambermaid came round the corner [Pg 117] of the gallery to ask if it was all right now, he was at his door beaming—but this time, perhaps, with a more natural good humor.

As the massive Mr. Neuburg sat in his room certain that things were satisfactory, Clement Seadon, with much the same emotions, was searching for and finding the gluemaker in the Sault Algonquin.

The street was as unprepossessing as he imagined it would be. It was a narrow cañon, indescribably gloomy and muddy, between the tall, old, straight-faced houses that lined it. It was right round beyond the splendid old seventeenth century hospital, the austere Hôtel-Dieu, and in the area of the docks, too. From these latter it got some of its mud, and, perhaps, some of its lowering air. It looked a darkling, brooding, sinister street. Clement found it quite easy to imagine it a place where, in the grim old days, bravos quietly and expeditiously slit throats, or where fur hunters had been lured to be despoiled of the earnings of long, lonely months of trapping in the virgin wilds.

In this old and moody street, and in the grim and reticent houses that bordered it, almost anything might have happened in the early days of [Pg 118] Canada—but most of those things, Clement thought, would have been evil. The street had an aroma of crime. One felt it, as it were, in the air, just as though centuries of wickedness about its narrow, greasy sidewalks had saturated it with an essential aura. It was a street fitted to be the headquarters of Mr. Neuburg and his gang of ruffians.

It was a short street, and it was easy to find the gluemaker’s. There were only two other business premises. The gluemaker’s, No. 7, was a tall, depressing house that was even dirtier than its neighbors. It had the distinction of keeping all its windows covered with the latticelike jalousies of France, as though its inmates were determined to keep themselves to themselves. It had one window on the ground floor, the shutters were back from this, but as it was filled with trade samples backed by trade advertisements, a view of the room behind was impossible. There was no doorway on to the street. Entrance was effected through a cartway. A heavy wooden gate covered this, with a smaller door for humans in it. Clement surmised that, having passed through this gate into the cartway that ran under the house (which joined to and made one of a block with all the houses on that side), one entered the house itself by a doorway on the left.

However, this cartway told him one thing. In spite of the fact that the cliff seemed to come up [Pg 119] right behind the house, there must be a yard at the back of the gluemaker’s. Glancing along the face of the houses he obtained confirmation of this. There was no iron fire escape stair in front of this house and its immediate neighbors, although farther along the street this inevitable disfigurement of western cities zig-zagged down the faces of the buildings. That meant that the fire escapes—by law enforced—were at the back, and that there were yards there into which people could escape.

Getting round to the back was not easy. He found he had to climb through distant streets to watch the cliff-top, and when he arrived on top he had to trespass into a builder’s yard in order to look down on to the backs of the houses in the Sault Algonquin. As he did not wish to be disturbed, he hid behind a pile of scrapped rubbish.

No. 7 was easy to find. It was under the cliff where it sloped down rather less steeply. Clement noted that. At a pinch an active man might find a way down there. The yard was a fairly large one, littered with the rubbish of manufactory, and partly filled by a single-storied building, of very much later construction than the house itself. This had a flat roof and square walls, a jet of steam came out of a thin exhaust pipe—in it, undoubtedly, were carried on the mystical processes of gluemaking.

While Clement was studying the house, he [Pg 120] became conscious that some one else had entered the builder’s yard where he had hidden himself. A young, slim man came casually into view, strolling with hands in pockets towards the edge of the cliff. Clement crouched closer in his shelter, and prayed that this workman—for that was what the young man seemed—had no business which would bring him round the pile of scrapped rubbish sheltering him.

Then, as he thought this, he noticed two peculiarities about the man. The first was, that in spite of his casualness, the young man had no more right to be there than himself. He was throwing keen, swift glances about him, as though he were doing something that he did not want other people to see.

The second thing about him was the color and the outline of his features, as well as the lithe slimness of his build. His face had a curious copper brownness that might have been sunburn, only it was deeper than sunburn. His features had a definite aquiline clear-cutness, rather individual features they were—like an Indian’s.

Clement tingled as he thought that. And even as he thought it, the slim man moved abruptly and swiftly to the cliff, glanced along it, and in a moment was descending the sloping face of it.

Clement stared and chuckled. And he muttered, “Siwash Mike. By all that’s lucky, it’s Siwash [Pg 121] Mike come to Quebec to report on the doings and whereabouts of Henry Gunning.”

There could be little doubt about it. The newcomer was making his way, in such a fashion as to escape detection, to the gluemaker’s of Algonquin, the place where he was to report. From his hiding place, Clement followed his movements. They were sinuous and swift, veritably an Indian’s. He wriggled down the cliff by known footholds, reached the back yard of the gluemaker’s, poised for a moment just above it, and then sprang lightly on to the flat roof of the building—then that was possible. Clement saw that there was a ledge along the cliff that made the take-off for the jump easy.

Once on the roof, the slim man again adopted his casual air. He was to all appearances an occupant of the glue factory taking an airing on the roof. He dawdled about, hands in pockets, looking about him, up to the cliff, along the backs of the other houses. Then he strolled towards the house, poised himself on the edge of the roof just by the fire escape over the cartway. He jumped, caught it, scrambled on to the landing. Then very calmly, he walked up the iron stairway until he came to the fourth floor. The window of the fourth floor was shuttered but, apparently, not bolted, for the slim man opened the shutters without effort, slid through them into the house, pulled them to after him and disappeared.

Waiting for a minute or two Clement presently backed away from the shelter of his scrap heap, and made his way out of the builder’s yard. He had discovered two very important things. The first, that Siwash Mike had returned to the gluemaker’s to report the whereabouts of Henry Gunning. The second discovery was that there was a way into the gluemaker’s from the back.

He hurried back to the Château Frontenac. He was anxious to know what the massive Mr. Neuburg made of the first fact. And how far his own knowledge of the second fact was going to help him discover Mr. Neuburg’s future plans.

VII

While Clement Seadon had been active, Mr. Neuburg had not been idle. He had sat and smoked for a while. Then having decided upon a plan, he rose and searched for something in his baggage. When he had found it, he opened his one of the pair of doors between his room and Clement’s bathroom, and for several moments did something to the foot of Clement’s door.

Having done this to his complete satisfaction, he sat and smoked and thought again. Three minutes after the time Clement had seen Siwash Mike enter the gluemaker’s, the telephone bell rang in Mr. Neuburg’s room. With one glance at the floor near the door he had just shut and bolted, he rose and answered the ring.

What he heard over the wire gave him apparently a pleasant surprise, for though his curiously impassive face showed no sign, he said, “Eh, but you have been quick, I did not expect you for a day or two.... No, say nothing now.... I will see you this night, about ten o’clock. And now listen——” And in his slightly purring voice he gave a string of directions. They were very guarded, for telephones have eavesdroppers, but quite explicit to understanding ears.

He hung up the telephone, dropped back into his chair again and thought and smoked. But after a perceptible minute this curious, immobile-faced man, allowed himself the luxury of a great laugh. It was a terrible laugh, but a short one. It was perhaps well it was so, for very quickly after there came the scratch at the communicating door, which betokened that Méduse Smythe had returned to her room, and was ready to serve him.

He sprang up at once, and again glancing at the floor by the other communicating door, let Méduse in. The woman said, “I have come back by myself. The girl wished to go for half an hour’s motor drive alone in the Battlefield Park.... No, the Englishman was not with her. She may be going to meet him, but I don’t think so.... The whole thing seemed a sudden thought on her part. Can I do anything?”

“You will,” he smiled at her with his mirthless grin. “This Seadon may be meeting her, but even [Pg 124] if he is or isn’t, I want you to go down to the lobby, watch for him coming in, and when he comes in, come up here as swiftly as you can and tell me. No, do not telephone up. Come yourself. I need you....” She made a step to go. “When you join me in this room don’t be surprised at anything. When I say things to you, play up—play up, remember that.”

It seemed only a few minutes before she was back in the room. Mr. Neuburg came through the intercommunicating bathroom at the sound of the key in her door. He looked at her, indicating the necessity for quiet.

“He came in just as I reached the lobby,” she said. “He did not see me. He came up straight to his room, I think.”

Mr. Neuburg caught her by the wrist, and both very stealthily went back to his room. He led her close to the doors that communicated with Clement Seadon’s bathroom. He paused, listened. He could hear no sound from the Englishman’s side of the doors. He looked at her, grinned, and pointed to the floor near their feet.

On the floor was a yellow-painted lead pencil. It was lying alongside a white line Mr. Neuburg had chalked on the floor. The woman Méduse stared down at it, wondering what on earth it all meant.... And as she stared down the pencil began to move.

There was no sound. The silence was profound. [Pg 125] There was nothing to indicate a reason for the pencil’s movement. And the pencil moved ... slowly, stealthily, cautiously it moved away from the chalk mark. It moved six inches and then it stopped. Mr. Neuburg looked into her face and grinned. His hand indicated the door leading to Clement Seadon’s bathroom.

Then the woman, looking closer at the pencil, understood. Round the waist of the pencil was a thin line, a line of thread. The thread ran from the pencil under the closed door. Undoubtedly it was attached to the inner door of the pair by a piece of wax. She understood at once that the Englishman was in the other room. Thread and wax would be invisible in the dim light and in the almost imperceptible space between the double doors; but as Clement’s door opened, its movement would be shown by the movements of the pencil.

The pencil had moved. The Englishman had opened his door. He was at the opening of the door now—listening for what he might learn through the closed door of Mr. Neuburg’s room.

The woman Méduse in a flash understood how the Englishman had learned the name of Joe, which he had used to get her away from Heloise at lunch time. Mr. Neuburg, in his brilliant manner, had solved that riddle.

Mr. Neuburg, in his brilliant manner, was going to make the most of his knowledge. Very [Pg 126] quietly he led the woman back to the door through which she had entered. He left her standing there with a soundless command to silence. He went to his chair and lowered himself softly into it. He picked up a newspaper and rustled it. He cleared his throat. He moved so that his chair would creak. He did this for a long ten minutes. Then abruptly he sprang up, making a definite noise, and moved towards her. “Ah, you are back, my dear Méduse,” he said aloud. “Where is the girl?”

“She wished to go for a drive alone in the Battlefield Park. No, the Englishman was not with her. She may be going to meet him, but I do not think so. The whole thing seemed a sudden thought on her part.”

“We cannot help it, anyhow,” said Mr. Neuburg, smiling in his sinister manner. “I do not think, on the whole, her seeing him will have much effect. I have good news—Siwash Mike has arrived.”

The companion Méduse was a little startled at that, but she played up. “But—is that possible? You did not expect him for a day or two.”

“It is a fact. He has arrived, my mild Méduse. I had a telephone message from No. 7 Sault Algonquin this afternoon.”

He said “No. 7 Sault Algonquin” precisely and clearly. He wanted the Englishman behind the [Pg 127] door to hear it. Clement Seadon behind the door heard it, and chuckled silently. He was certainly having great good fortune.

“Did—did Siwash say where he had found Henry Gunning? I suppose he has found him?” The woman was not playing up so well, Mr. Neuburg frowned bleakly; and yet, swiftly, he made her question serve his ends.

“Siwash knows better than to talk of matters like that over the telephone,” he said. “I take it that he has discovered the lurking place of our besotted friend Gunning. But I shall not know until to-night. I meet him at Algonquin at 10:30. He will report then.”

He said the last words very clearly. The Englishman was to hear them. Clement heard them and congratulated himself.

There was a pause in Mr. Neuburg’s room, then Clement heard the massive man speak again, “What are you doing to-night—you and the girl?”

“O-oh,” said the woman. “We are going to a concert of old habitant French songs. One of the ladies from the Empress told the girl she must not miss it for the world, so she booked seats.... But if you wanted me at Algonquin, I could have a headache.”

“You will not have a headache,” said Mr. Neuburg, very distinctly. “I do not want you at Algonquin. I want you by that girl’s side. But, and attend to this carefully, my dear Méduse, if [Pg 128] anything untoward occurs you must come to the gluemaker’s immediately. Understand that—you must come yourself. I will not have telephoning. I do not trust a woman on the telephone in so delicate a business as this. Follow carefully what I have to say. You may take a taxi, if you like, as far as the docks, but you must not take it into the Sault Algonquin, or to the door of No. 7. You understand? No curiosity, particularly that of the gluemaker’s neighbors, must be aroused. For that reason you will not knock at the door, which, you know, is in a cart gate, or wait about outside. All you need do is to push against the little door in the gate. It will be open. It will purposely be left open. Now you understand that perfectly?”

The woman understood that perfectly. She repeated the directions to show that she had it perfectly. Mr. Neuburg said, “That is good. I do not think anything untoward will occur, but we must always plan for any event. And now that you know everything, you had better go back to your room and await the girl. We cannot risk suspicion of any sort. Let us hope that Siwash will bring us definite and good news of Henry Gunning, and that what I hear at 10:30 to-night may mean a speedy finish to our big scheme.”

Clement echoed the sentiments. He hoped, in fact he felt certain, that what Siwash Mike would have to say about the vanished Henry would give him (Seadon) facts which, in addition to the other [Pg 129] damning material he had, would enable him to settle the accounts of these rogues swiftly and for all time when he spoke of them in his talk with Heloise Reys to-morrow morning.

Siwash Mike’s coming fitted into the situation as neatly as if it had all been thought out. Clement thought it might have been thought out, ordained, by Providence.

And not only had good fortune sent along Siwash Mike to-day, but good fortune had also stepped in to enable him to make the most of Siwash Mike. To be present when that rogue reported to his master was not going to be child’s play, but it was going to be simpler than he had first thought. The way down the cliffside to the gluemaker’s of Algonquin was a certain way in, but it would be difficult and dangerous in the dark. Now, thanks to his abounding good luck, he had overheard that all he had to do was to push against the little door in the big cart gate of the gluemaker’s, and it would be open . Good fortune had favored him with an easy entrance. How could he reject this offer of good fortune? He could not.

And Mr. Neuburg, as he sat in his own room and smoked, thought much the same thoughts. How could this Englishman reject this offer which good fortune apparently had offered him? No, the [Pg 130] fellow could not.... He would go to the gluemaker’s of the Sault Algonquin at 10:30 to-night.

He put on old clothes. He carried an automatic pistol in his pocket. He also wore rubber-soled brown shoes. His adventure was not going to be easy and without danger, and he was prepared for all eventualities. But, on the whole, his great good luck had given him an exhilarating sense of confidence, and as he passed through the dark streets of the lower town of Quebec, and into the cañon of lowering and silent blackness that night made of the Sault Algonquin, he felt sure of his success.

There was no one about. He reached the gluemaker’s unobserved. The face of the house was black, enigmatic. There was no sign of life or light. He pressed upon the little door in the big cart gate. Yes, it was yielding ... it was open. With a sharp movement he opened it wide enough to let his body through, slipped inside.

Under the arch of the house, the cartway was a cave of almost impenetrable blackness. Moving very slowly and very easily, Clement stole to the left. The door of the house must be there. He felt along the house wall. There was no window ... for yards there was nothing. Then his hand dropped into the recess of the door, slid across the woodwork, found the handle.... Softly, gently he turned. The door answered under pressure—it opened. Clement was inside a pitch black room.

There was just a faint sound ... something small fell ... something as small as a pencil.... Only in that terrific silence would he have heard so small a sound. Then complete silence ... silence bearing down like a shroud.... Slowly, cautiously Clement closed the door behind him ... took one, then another, then another step into the room.... Something tautened and snapped across his instep, a thread.... Things happened....

A hoarse whisper ... a sudden rush of movement ... a torch clicked, wavered, struck into his eyes with its brilliant and dazzling light ... there was a sweep of movement.... Men bore down on him in a terrific rush....

CHAPTER IV

Clement realized at once that he was trapped, and neatly. The thought did not rob him of activity. The instinctive sense of action which is in every athlete functioned immediately. He dashed, not at the torch as every cornered animal or man would, as they expected him to do, but away from it.

He swung cleanly on his heel, and jumped as he swung. He sensed that there were several men in the room, and that they guarded the door. He neglected the door. He leaped for the window. If he could smash that, create an uproar in the Sault Algonquin, then he would attract help.

An oath came from a man as his game was realized. Something whistled through the air, hit a wall with a soft and terrible thud. “Sandbag,” registered Clement’s brain. He dodged, and there was another oath and another miss.

A shadow, lean and leaping like a cat, shot from the darkness into the dazzle of the torch. Clement saw a fierce, feline face, and one hand stretched [Pg 133] forward to clutch, while the other swung up to club.

“Siwash,” Clement’s brain signaled. He spurred his body forward with a quicker drive of his foot, got in under the blow, and punched in both hands hard and sure. Siwash staggered and his stick went flying loose over Clement’s shoulder. Clement uppercut with a savage left, Siwash jerked upward grotesquely, went over wildly into the blackness. Clement hurdled his body, and his hand was on the advertisement boards screening the window.

The mountain of a man with his unexpected and terrible agility swept down from nowhere. His great hands went out plucking at the young Englishman. His vast fists were free of weapons, for he was confident in his enormous strength. And he grabbed at Clement, he did not hit—that was foolish. His hand closed on Clement’s upper arm and swung the lighter man round. Then Mr. Neuburg uttered a curious, staccato yell. As his hand closed on the arm, the arm, instead of being wrenched away, had closed on the hand, the upper and lower arms coming together. As the Englishman swung round, his body doubled forward, and Mr. Neuburg’s arm, caught and twisted, was vilely wrenched. The fact that Mr. Neuburg endeavored to save his wrist and forearm by exerting his huge strength only made matters worse—that is the [Pg 134] great truth underlying Japanese wrestling. But Mr. Neuburg did not know that.

He snatched his hand away as Clement unhinged, only to receive a snapping right-hand swing to the side of the head. He bellowed, made a furious swipe at the Englishman with his left. Clement ducked, slipped in under it, banged right and left to Mr. Neuburg’s great face. And Mr. Neuburg went down. He went down not because he had been knocked, but because Clement had employed a trick he had once seen a shifty boxer use. As he jumped in to hit, he had slipped his left toe behind Mr. Neuburg’s heel. The force of the blow sent Mr. Neuburg reeling over that toe.

But Mr. Neuburg had served his purpose. He had delayed Clement. Clement knew it. Directly he had struck the mountain of a man, he darted, not towards the window now, for the other men—how many were there?—must be converging on that, but towards the door again, which should have been left unguarded. The tussle had lasted moments only—but——

The man who had held the torch had not moved during all the fighting. It was Joe, who was slow, but enduringly calm. He had seen Siwash go down and out. He had seen the massive Mr. Neuburg go down. He saw Clement dart away from the window towards the door. He stood still. His hand held the blazing torch steady. But his other hand moved. It moved in a long swinging arc. It [Pg 135] completed its swing at the moment Clement’s hand touched the door handle. Clement slumped forward against the door, and then he crumpled nervelessly to the floor. The sandbag in that swinging hand had reached its mark on Clement’s head with a beautiful accuracy.

Joe played the light round Clement’s inert body. Mr. Neuburg scrambled to his feet, snarling because he tried to help himself up with his damaged wrist. He came to Joe’s side. Joe put out his hand, clicked on the electric light. Both rogues stood over the Englishman. He did not move.

“Some wildcat,” said Joe. He gazed down with grim admiration. He looked at Siwash, still prone. He looked at Mr. Neuburg’s palpably damaged face and wrist. A fourth man, so tall and thin that his bones seemed loose and rattling, joined the two. He was the only other in the room. He held a sandbag in his hand, but he had the general air of being a tradesman. That gave his furtive pose a tone of nervousness. He looked at Neuburg, moistening his lips in agitation—and did not speak. He looked at Joe and did. “Dead?” he asked hesitantly. “Dead?”

“Aw,” said Joe without passion, “you make me tired. A little knock like that killing any feller.”

Mr. Neuburg looked across the tall, thin man’s shoulder with an emotionless chuckle. “Since our good Louis took to glue, his morale has become—shall we say—very sticky?” he said softly.

“Well, mustn’t one preserve appearances, Adolf?” the thin man protested nervously. “Now mustn’t one? If anything happened to cause trouble would it help me—any of us? It is by keeping up the appearance of—of honesty that we—we——”

“Timidity has given our dear friend Louis a certain wisdom,” said Neuburg, smiling his creaseless smile. “There is something in what he says.”

“That means,” commented Joe without emotion—“that means you ain’t goin’ to dump this coyote inter the river.”

“No—no—no!” cried the gluemaker feverishly. “If it got out, that would——” The man Louis seemed to have a terror of finishing sentences.

“Aw, you’re crazy,” said Joe. “You make me real tired. Get quit o’ him once and for all, I says.”

“The shock of the water would bring him to,” murmured Mr. Neuburg, not in friendliness towards Clement, but in speculation.

“And that would indicate foul play. So would hitting him over the head, or shooting him before we slipped him into the St. Lawrence....”

“I could keep him safe,” put in the timid Louis. “Safe, up at top of house. In that room he’d never get out. You see.”

“Well—for long enough. For days, for a week—until you’ve got things fixed....”

“That’s all right,” said Mr. Neuburg with quick decision. “You take him up to that room of yours and keep him tight. Don’t forget he’s a cunning one, whatever you do.—I’m not a pleasant person to have trouble with.” Louis cringed away. “Right; you understand that. In a few days we’ll telegraph you. Then you can let him free.”

Mr. Neuburg turned with his silent swiftness on Joe. He gazed bitterly across Joe’s shoulder. “Do I give orders, Joe, or do you? Do I make mistakes, Joe, or do you?”

Joe shuffled his feet anxiously. Mr. Neuburg was not looking at him, but Joe dropped his gaze to the dirty floor. “Oh, I know you’re the brains, boss ... but I don’t see ...” he muttered.

“I’m seeing for you,” sneered Mr. Neuburg coldly. “You’re a bright feller in a rough-house, but thinking isn’t one of your assets. Just for that I’ll explain to you. Item one, we don’t want trouble in this business. Item two, if we can squash trouble it’s wiser to squash it. Item three, if we can make this fool Englishman feel that he’s played a losing game, that he’s only butting in where he’s not wanted—by the girl; that the girl [Pg 138] is happy and content with what she’s doing, an’ so on, and so on, well, he’ll stop making trouble right then an’ there. Item four, given that the girl is what we know she is, and Gunning being licked up to the scratch, an’ the pair or twain thrown together—well, she’ll be content. Do you follow now, my friend? This Heloise girl meets Gunning; Gunning is love’s young dream to her. They fix it up together. That’s settled. We wire Louis here to release this feller; he can even let drop where he is to find the girl. He comes chasing after her. He finds her. She hasn’t a glance for him. She is all for Gunning; maybe, even, she has married him—I think we can fix that up, get a reason for the hurry. Anything this Englishman says to her, he says against Gunning, so it will be an insult. He’ll be simply out of it. So he goes away quietly, for her sake. Do you get it now?”

“If he did go away quietly,” said Joe haltingly. “It has a good sound, what you say, but——”

“And if he doesn’t go away quietly,” said Mr. Neuburg in a soft, cold voice, “well, we will be, perhaps, in the wilds; at Sicamous, or somewhere. Away from cities, from people who ask questions and pry deeply. In the wilds, accidents have a more plausible air, my good Joe; dead men are less noticeable—than—say in Quebec!”

Joe looked at the big mountain of a Mr. Neuburg with a wide-eyed gaze. “I see, you want [Pg 139] him to come out and be killed. You’re a wonder of a devil, Adolf,” he said.

“Take his head, Joe, Louis will probably drop him before we get to that room at the top. Louis, his legs.”

When Clement came to himself he was conscious of extreme darkness, an agonizing pain in his head where that sandbag had landed, and also considerable pain where his bonds bit into wrist and leg.

He also felt from the sounds drifting up to him that he was in a room at the top of the gluemaker’s house, and probably a lumber room from the musty smell of it.

It must be confessed that his first responsible emotion was not thankfulness for an escape from what should have been death, but a very hearty disgust at the way he had allowed himself to be captured. In fact, when he realized how he had thrown away his chance and maybe delivered Heloise into the hands of Mr. Neuburg and his gang, he lost his nerve, and with a terrific output of strength tried to free himself from his bonds.

He had seen heroes in the “movies” and Mr. Houdini free themselves from their shackles often enough, and it had seemed a simple matter. The men who had fixed his bonds, however, would have [Pg 140] spoiled any movie hero’s business. Not only could he not throw them off, but the struggle to do so, so increased the pain of them and that of his head, that in the end he fainted.

He was forced back to consciousness by the frightful sensation of blood recirculating in his limbs. He writhed and moaned. An oath sounded at his side, something was flung over his head, and handcuffs were snapped on to his wrists. Clement struggled with the thing about his head, while shuffling footsteps hurried across the boards but he only got the rug—that is what it proved to be—away from his eyes in time to see the legs and back of a tall, thin man flash out of the door. A strong lock snapped home. Louis, the gluemaker, was not risking identification.

When he had recovered sufficiently, Clement sat up and took stock of the situation. He was, as he had thought in the roof room of the gluemaker’s. It was a big room, crowded with old junk. The room was lit by a narrow window of the kind known to architects as a “lie-on-your-stomach,” that is, it rose from the floor boards to end at the slant of the roof about two feet above. By the light coming in through the dirty panes the morning was well on, but whether it was past his hour to see Heloise—9:30—he could not say.

He was sitting in the center of this room, with some fresh food and water beside him. The gang then did not want him to starve. He also saw [Pg 141] that the gang had thought of him in other ways. The thin man who had just bolted through the door, had been with him for no other reason than to remove the tight ropes, and substitute manacles of an easier kind.

He had snapped a pair of police handcuffs on his wrists, as Clement knew, but before that he had put another pair on his ankles; these were linked by a heavy chain to a staple in the wall. The chain was padlocked.

Clement lifted the jug of water with both hands, took a long drink, and then examined the handcuffs on his wrists. In less than a minute one wrist was free. It was quite simple. These handcuffs were ratcheted to take several sizes in wrists. In his hurry the thin man had not pushed the ratchet of the right cuff beyond the first notch. Clement was what might be called a third notch man—hence he had no difficulty in slipping his wrist out.

The leg irons presented a graver problem. Unable to get them off with his hands, he searched about for some means of removing them. He was lucky. With difficulty he unearthed from a box full of odd tools, a hacksaw. With this slowly and patiently, and with his attention always alert for movements in the house, he sawed through the connecting links of the ankle irons.

It was a tedious and painful business. He heard the mid-day “break” sound from scores of [Pg 142] factory sirens, but he worked on trying not to think of what might be happening to Heloise.

She would remain on in Quebec, he told himself. She could not hurry away, she would not leave without seeing him. He tried to convince himself of this. He would see her in spite of this trap. And after he had talked with her the whole bad business would be ended.

If he thought of Mr. Neuburg and his cunning, he said to himself, “He thinks he has me here safely. He won’t attempt to attract attention by hustling things.”

It was after two o’clock when he got free. Nobody had come up to him. He had thought this would be the case since a day’s supply of food had been left with him. Concealing the ankle cuffs under his socks, and that on his left wrist up his sleeve, he lay down and looked out of the window.

It was overlooking the yard he had studied yesterday from the cliff behind. In that yard nothing was stirring save the “puff-puff-puff” of the steam pipe. From this window to the yard was a sheer drop of some seventy feet. On the other hand, the thin, topmost upright of the fire escape was two feet away from the window, and level with it—if he dared risk that.

He meant to. He forced the dirt-gummed window open, and, laying flat on his stomach, wriggled his body inch by inch out of the narrow window. It was soul chilling. To find himself poised there [Pg 143] half in and half out of that tube of a window, with nothing to aid him, and with that horrible drop beneath him, unnerved him. He felt himself slipping, going. For one moment he seemed to be clawing the empty air, with the feeling that nothing could save him. He was dropping—

Then in a flash his nerve came back. He lunged forward and grasped the slender iron girder of the escape, and there for an agonized moment he hung swaying, helpless. He made a giant effort. The thin iron of the fire escape support creaked and appeared to bend toward him. He heard the structure groan. His feet came away suddenly, and his knees and thighs struck the iron pole with excruciating pain. But the instinct of preservation caused his limbs to act almost, it appeared, on their own initiative. Just as his hands seemed about to be torn loose by his weight, his legs circled the iron support and gripped. He slid downward. In a moment he was crouching on the top platform of the fire escape behind a rain-water barrel.

He remained there for a few minutes, regaining his breath and his nerve, surveying the side of the cliff up which he must presently go. Then he looked downward—and saw a man on the flat roof beneath the fire escape.

The man had come out from the window of the house that was flush with the roof. He stood, a slim, lithe figure, gazing idly about him. He was [Pg 144] occupied with nothing more significant than the after-lunch exercise of picking his teeth. Clement knew who the man was. It was Siwash Mike. He hoped Siwash Mike was one of those who liked to take an afternoon siesta on his bed.

Siwash Mike stood there, easy, feeling, no doubt, that the world was a good place to live in. Then he apparently decided what he was going to do. He turned and reentered the house. Clement, thanks to his rubber-soled shoes, was down another floor on the escape by the time he emerged again. That was the fourth floor, through the window of which Clement had seen Siwash himself enter the house yesterday.

The action of Siwash was now not satisfactory. Siwash was dragging behind him a deck chair. Siwash—it was horrible to see it—had under his arm a bundle of magazines with highly colored covers.... Siwash was going to make an afternoon of it on that roof. An afternoon of it—and Clement must leap from the escape to that roof, and cross it in order to reach the cliff.

But Clement meant to get across that roof and up that cliff. And, what is more, he meant to do it quickly. He could not afford to waste any more time away from Heloise’s side. Indeed, he dare not waste time here. At any moment some one might go up to the attic, find him gone, and raise the alarm....

Raise the alarm! The thought flashed through Clement’s mind not with a thrill of anxiety but with the thrill of a happy idea. With his eyes on the now reposeful head of Siwash Mike, he felt the jalousies of the window behind him. As yesterday, they were unfastened. He opened one, slipped his hand in—yes, the window was wide open also.... In another moment he was inside that window, and had closed the jalousies behind him. Before him were the stairs, descending steeply into yawning darkness. He went to the head of these. With his hands he made a trumpet about his mouth. He opened his mouth. With the full power of his lungs he yelled, “Siwash! Siwash!”

He nipped back to the jalousies. He looked down at Siwash Mike. The half-breed was standing, glaring towards the house, his body tense and alert. Clement nipped to the head of the stairs. He yelled again in a tone of terrific alarm, “Siwash! Help!”

He heard a tumult below. When he got to the jalousies Siwash was no longer on the roof. In a flash of seconds Clement was; had swung from the escape to the flat roof; had dashed along that roof and had leaped to the ledge of the low cliff. He was three parts up the cliff before the fierce face of the half-breed appeared at the little window of the attic.

The face appeared, scowled ferociously, then the [Pg 146] right arm shot out. The automatic in the hand came down, sighting on Clement’s climbing figure. Clement shut his eyes and felt sick. He was a mark that could scarcely be missed.

Siwash’s face was turned away from him; he appeared to be arguing vehemently with some one behind him in the attic. As Clement looked, a long, thin arm with an incredibly bony hand stretched itself past Siwash’s shoulder, and clutched avidly at the automatic pistol. Clement did not waste time then. He was up the remainder of the cliff as fast as his best climbing could take him. He was through the builder’s yard at a run, though a man yelled at him to know his business.... And in a near street he caught a taxi and went to the Château Frontenac as rapidly as petrol could carry him.

As he went into the lobby he was stopped by the porter. “We’ve been looking for you, Mr. Seadon,” the man said. “Looking for you everywhere. A lady was asking for you.”

Clement glared at him. “You can’t mean Miss Reys, Miss Heloise Reys, who was here with a companion?” he cried.

“That’s the lady I mean,” said the cataclysmic porter. “She was asking for you right up to the moment she left.”

III

Clement Seadon was for the moment dazed by the dismaying unexpectedness of the news.

He had lost. Mr. Neuburg and his gang had not wasted a moment. They had whipped the girl out of his reach. They had effectually put a barrier of distance between him and Heloise.

He had a bitter vision of Heloise traveling away from him—away through this vast country where communications were scarce. She was more completely in the clutches of those terrible and sinister people with every mile she traveled, and he was less able to help. He stared at the porter. “She’s gone,” he said. “She—didn’t the lady leave a message?”

“Yes,” said Seadon. He could understand how bewildered Heloise must have been when he did not keep his appointment of this morning. “And you’re sure she went to Montreal?”

“Yessir,” said the porter. Some one touched [Pg 148] Clement’s arm, somebody said, “Seadon, old fellow....” Clement waved this hand aside without looking round. “Just one minute,” he said. Then to the porter, “You’re sure it was Montreal? I mean she wasn’t going further? Through to Sicamous, for example?”

“Sure, they’re stopping off at Montreal, her and her lady fren’. Didn’t I check their baggage to Montreal?”

Clement thought for a moment. What did that mean? Did it mean that Heloise would stop in Montreal, or did it mean that she was merely changing trains there in order to go to the place—wherever it was—where Henry Gunning was lurking at the moment? That seemed the more likely, and it was the more dismaying. She was going to some unknown town in the tremendous continent. It filled him with dread even to think of it.

His arm was touched again. He thanked the porter, turned, and saw the captain of the Empress of Prague by his side. “Hello, Heavy,” he said.

“I’ve been looking for you, old chap,” said the captain. “I want you to meet The Chief.”

“The Chief,” echoed Clement vaguely. He saw a man of middle height with astonishingly thick, square shoulders standing by the captain’s side. He was a man with a firm, sunburned face in which big bones showed strongly. His nose was [Pg 149] powerful and high-bridged, and the skin round the eyes was dark. The eyes were extraordinarily steady and keen, and, since he was smiling, his face had a singularly pleasant, indeed, tender kindness which tempered its undoubted resolution. Clement looked at this man, and knew him for a staunch and extremely capable friend at once. He said again, “The Chief?”

“He’s our policeman,” said the genial captain. “He’s down here to find out why you weren’t arrested in that diamond tiara affair on the Empress .”

“Is he, by Jove?” cried Clement abruptly, glancing at the strong, intelligent face of The Chief with a sudden feeling of hope.

“He’s the head of the railway police organization,” explained Captain Heavy. “Not the Dominion police, mind you. His name, by the way, is Joseph Fiscal. And, seriously, he’d like a few words with you regarding that robbery.”

“He’s the very man I’m wanting myself,” said Clement heartily, to the surprise of the captain—nothing yet created seemed able to surprise The Chief. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

The three men went into the private sitting room in the manager’s office. The first thing Clement did was to take his left hand from the pocket in [Pg 150] which it had reposed since he escaped from the house in the Sault Algonquin, pull up his sleeve, shake his arm, and so expose to The Chief the handcuff still clasping his left wrist.

That redoubtable man looked at it calmly, fingered it, sat upright slowly, and turned on Captain Heavy a dry, genial smile. His eyes scrutinized the puzzled face of the captain for but a moment, then he turned back to Clement. With the same movement his hand came out of his pocket, and in the hand was a handcuff key.

In a moment, and with free hands, Clement was rolling down his socks, exposing the handcuffs on his ankles.

The smile of The Chief became broader. “Is your friend quite as honest as you think, Heavy?” he asked genially.

“Ab-solutely,” said Heavy in a perplexed tone. “Though he does seem to have been trying to do Houdini stunts, and failing.”

“Not altogether failing,” smiled Clement, as The Chief’s key got to work. “I managed to get out of this trap, just as I managed to get out of the one on the Empress —the diamond tiara trap.”

“Ah,” said The Chief, looking up, smiling with his lips, but his eyes keen. “There is something behind it all?”

“Talking to us won’t hold you up,” said The [Pg 151] Chief with unexpected penetration. “You can’t go before the night train.”

“No,” said The Chief. He looked at Clement steadily. That look was a request for information.

“Well, as I said, I want your help; but it’s going to be a tale, even a sort of ‘shocker,’ a strange, unbelievable crime and mystery story.”

“ I’ll be able to appreciate it,” smiled The Chief. “Go on, Mr. Seadon.”

So Seadon told the whole story from the beginning. He told everything, indeed, except one thing. That thing was the little lawyer’s suggestion that he should make love to and marry Heloise, and the fact that he had himself arrived at the conclusion that the little lawyer had talked wisdom. He did not talk of it, but perhaps the men who listened were not unaware of his condition. The Chief smiled even more humanly. Heavy, with a seaman’s bluntness, cried, “I remember Miss Reys, a beautiful woman. To think that a pack of scoundrels.... Still, old man, you’ve got The Chief with you now.”

Clement thought of Canada and its vastness. Even the most astute chief of police would find it difficult to track a girl through that immensity—and do it in time.

“Mr. Seadon is not quite sure about The Chief,” smiled the head of the railway police.

“Well ... Canada’s such a huge place. It’s easy to vanish without trace in such a country.”

“Oh, our system compares with the country,” said The Chief genially. “That porter told you he’d checked Miss Reys’ baggage through to Montreal? We’ll begin by confirming that.” He pressed a bell. A girl came in. “How do, Miss Jeannette. I wonder whether you’d mind asking Mr. Labage—he’s still at the rail reservation desk, isn’t he?—to step along. Say, that’s real nice of you.”

Mr. Labage came in. The Chief said to him immediately, “How are you keeping, Mr. Labage? That’s good. Now, I’m wondering if you can tell me if a lady from this hotel and her companion, a Miss Heloise Reys and a Miss Méduse Smythe, took reservations on any train pulling out to-day?”

“Sure she did. Both ladies reserved on the Imperial , leaving at 1:15 for Montreal.”

“That confirms it, then,” said Clement. The Chief only smiled, he was after full proof.

“And say, did another feller, a big feller by name of Neuburg, go out to-day?”

“He certainly did,” said the efficient Mr. Labage. “He, an’ a feller with him, some one outside, had reservations on the morning train.”

“And the next move, Chief?” asked Clement, for he knew that there would be another move. He saw that The Chief had made it certain that Heloise—and the gang—were going straight through to Montreal, and were not leaving the train before. He was beginning to appreciate the calm ability and keenness, yes, and the immense resources, lying behind the genial smile of this man.

The Chief put out his hand to the telephone. “I want Montreal, Miss,” he said into the receiver. “Get me Windsor Station, the Department of Investigation.” He hung up and turned to Clement. “This feller Neuburg is new to me. I’ve been thinking about him, but I can’t place him. He must have come up from the States, or, he may have worked behind others. The one class of life I am thoroughly acquainted with is bad men. I know all the leading lights, but I don’t get him.... This Gunning feller—we’ll get news of easy. And we’ll find out about this Joe Wandersun. He’s Neuburg’s traveling companion on this trip, since Siwash stayed, hey? P’raps we’ll trail up Siwash Mike, too. But this Neuburg.... Give me an idea of him, Mr. Seadon.”

Clement described Neuburg as pointedly as he could, while The Chief listened with his smile, as though it were but a good story, but his level and capable eyes proved his keenness.

Clement had just finished his picture of the master rogue when the telephone bell rang. The Chief picked up the receiver, “That Mac speaking? This is The Chief. Who’s about?... Ah, Gatineau’s there. Call him.... Oh, Xavier, it’s The Chief speaking. I’m in Quebec on the Empress robbery case.... See here, there is a lady stopping off at Montreal on Imperial No. 1 . She is a Miss Heloise Reys, she has a companion with her, a Miss Méduse Smythe. I want her trailed. Find out where she’s stopping, if she stays in Montreal. If she isn’t staying, find out where she’s going and by what train she goes.—No, don’t interfere with her, just find out what she’s doing. Got that? Next, I want you to find out all you can about a feller called Henry Gunning, and another called Joe Wandersun, both of Sicamous.” He gave the few details Clement had been able to give of these men. “If you can’t find out anything about ’em in Records, or from the Dominion police, just flash through to Sicamous or Revelstoke. Got that? Next isn’t so easy. I want to hear somethin’ about a man who calls himself Adolf Neuburg.” He spelled it out. Then he described him with an accuracy which was amazing, considering he had only had Clement’s not very expert description. “This feller Neuburg seems to be an out-size bad hat, but I can’t place him. We haven’t come across him, I know. But just find out if there’s anything known. You might [Pg 155] trace him through mining, or you might pick up something about him in connection with British Columbia. He pulled out of here for Montreal on the morning train, see if that helps.... You’ve got all that? Well, if it’s possible, long-distance me here at the Frontenac about Miss Heloise Reys. The other stuff can keep. I’m pulling out myself by the night train.”

As The Chief put down the instrument Clement said enthusiastically, “That’s splendid, it draws a noose round them. We’re bound to trace them now.”

“Yes, there are possibilities in my job,” smiled The Chief. “We’ve got many means of heading off rogues and finding out things about them.”

“And I’m going to give you another,” said Clement. “This Sherlock Holmes business is contagious. Miss Heloise went because she had reason to go. Yes, I know they must have persuaded her, but, and this is my point, they wouldn’t have persuaded her unless they had something to persuade with. At the bottom of this journey there must have been a message.”

The Chief stood up, reached for his soft hat. “That’s it. She got the message she was expecting about this Gunning man. You said she had letters addressed to her at the post office. Come along, we’ll look at that message.”

They went down the hill to the post office—where most of the notices were in French. The Chief’s [Pg 156] authority took them at once to a superintendent, who had no difficulty in finding the duplicate of a wire which Heloise Reys must have received late the night before. The wire had come from Sicamous. It was signed by Wandersun—that meant Joe’s wife had sent it. It said tersely:

“Cobalt,” said Clement, staring down at the flimsy slip. “That’s the famous silver mining town, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and this Gunning is a miner,” said The Chief. “Well, that’s all natural enough. You see what’s happened. When Gunning broke loose from those toughs he came east, meaning probably to hit the high spots. Somewhere this side of Winnipeg his money ran dry. Being on his uppers, and being a miner, he’d just naturally think of Cobalt, for Cobalt’d be the place where he would find his own job and at good money.”

“And I see how they persuaded Heloise—Miss Reys. They made her feel that if she did not start for Cobalt at once there’d be every chance of her missing him again. Gunning would wander off again directly he got money into his pocket.”

“Yes, and they got her to go by that train because she’d be able to catch a connection out of Montreal,” capped The Chief. “She’ll go out by No. 17. It’s one of the few direct trains. She’ll [Pg 157] get a through sleeper on that. Cobalt it is, Mr. Seadon.”

“It’s just as unhandy a place to get out of, too. But it’s Cobalt she’s gone to, take that as fixed, Mr. Seadon.”

Before they boarded the night train for Montreal they learned over the long-distance ’phone that the girl and her companion had taken reservations for Cobalt on the night train.

They also learned that a large man, answering unmistakably to the description of Mr. Neuburg, with a companion, had left Montreal earlier in the day.

All through the night journey Clement was sleepless. He was thinking of Heloise and the danger she was in. His own adventures with Mr. Neuburg and his gang had taught him that there was very little these scoundrels would stop at, and the thought of that slim, beautiful and fine-tempered girl at the mercy of creatures so base and so cruel was a thing of terror.

What would happen to her? What, even now, was happening to her, or was about to happen? He was tortured by a thousand fears.

That Neuburg was going on before he knew was [Pg 158] ominous. He was going to deal with the inveterate Henry Gunning so that he would appear at his best when Heloise “found” him. From his own experience Clement felt that what Mr. Neuburg took in hand would be done thoroughly.

At Montreal they were met by a slim, pleasant young man, with a quiet manner and a nearly bald head. A satisfying young man, whose modesty covered a definite ability to think and do things quickly. He told The Chief at once that he had reserved accommodation for two on the next train out to Cobalt.

“Xavier Gatineau here is going with you, Mr. Seadon,” said The Chief, indicating the quiet young man with a nod. “It’s our case, too, you know. We want to get to the bottom of that tiara business. Now, come along and have breakfast with me. We have time before your train goes. Xavier will tell us anything fresh.”

Over the cantaloupe and ice water and gaspé salmon and superb coffee, that made the breakfast, the young man told them there was nothing particularly fresh.

“The two ladies went through to Cobalt,” he said. “A point is they traveled light. They took only suitcases. The heavy baggage was left here—on demand. The baggage master told me that Miss Reys expected to wire for it to be sent on somewhere.”

“That means they don’t expect to make a stay in Cobalt. It also means that if they left in a hurry it wouldn’t be so easy to trail them,” commented The Chief. “Well, we’re warned anyhow. I’ll take steps, Xavier. If you lose the trail, or anything goes wrong, get a message to me. I’ll try and have something at all divisions, [1] too, and I’ll send a general warning west. Now, about Mr. Neuburg?”

“He pulled out early on the westbound. He’ll have changed at North Bay, and so got to Cobalt last night. I haven’t been able to connect up with Cobalt.—It’s not on our system, you know,” he explained to Clement. “Neuburg had another man with him. Both only carried suitcases.”

“Joe Wandersun is a bad hat. We have his record, because he fell foul of us once over false declarations in way-sheets. He’s got a shack at Sicamous.... I’ve had a message through from the station master there. Seems to be living more or less in retirement for the present. Sicamous, anyhow, is no more than a scattered handful of shacks, no scope for a man who lives by his wits. That’s what Wandersun has been doing for years. He’s done a term in prison for fraud; it reads as [Pg 160] though it were the confidence trick. He’s a friend of Gunning’s.”

“Our chap at Sicamous says he’s a remittance man. That’s a term in British Columbia for a man who won’t work—a fellow who lives by sponging. Gunning says he has mine claims, and is a booze artist.” The young man’s eyes twinkled. “That’s our expression for a man given to drink, Mr. Seadon.”

“Nothing proven—to our knowledge, but his habits are bad, and his company shady.”

“I’m going to hear from the Dominion police—perhaps; or, rather, they’ll get on to you, sir. They don’t place him. But one of them said he had an idea that the description you gave was like a man the U. S. A. police were after. As far as he remembered, this man was wanted in Oregon, well, considerably more than two years ago. They are going to look into it, and get in touch with the U. S. A., too.”

From the way he spoke, Clement thought that the quiet young man was holding something back. [Pg 161] Abruptly he leaned across the breakfast table. “Did they say what he was wanted for?”

Murder! Clement fell back in his chair, staring at the quiet, partly bald young man who had made the calm statement.

“As far as the Dominion police could remember—it was a good while back, you understand—it was a matter of murder, or complicity in a murder. Something with a lot of money in it, and a man killed. But they’ll find out the full facts.”

“Good God! and that girl is in this—this murderer’s power,” gasped Clement, unable to think of anything else.

“It may not be the same feller, Mr. Seadon,” said The Chief kindly. “It’s an old case, and they are only working from memory, not facts.”

“No,” said The Chief slowly. “But then I don’t know. An’ when we get the Oregon description we may find it doesn’t fit him.”

“A case of money and murder ... that fits Neuburg,” said Clement. “Yes, he’s a murderer and a thief, and—and that poor girl’s at his mercy. We must do something.”

“We can’t do anything until you get to Cobalt, [Pg 162] Mr. Seadon. Come now, you mustn’t lose your nerve.”

But that was a thing easier to talk about than to do. Clement’s nerves, very decidedly, had become jumpy. The thought that he had to sit passive while that murderer had his way with Heloise filled him for a moment with panic.

He suggested getting through to Cobalt by ’phone or wire and doing something. It was only the soothing calm of The Chief, who, rightly or wrongly, trusted only his own system that quieted him in the end. He felt that there was no good doing anything until he and Xavier Gatineau got to Cobalt. A false step, a clumsy movement, a hint thrown out by some one not too sure of his job, and the rogues would take fright and all their work would be undone.

And after all, as The Chief pointed out, Heloise could not be in danger for a day or two, and, moreover, it was extremely unlikely that she could get away from Cobalt before they arrived.

While they were waiting to catch the connection at North Bay, Clement Seadon saw a man dodge out of the station telegraph office. He came out furtively, saw Clement near him, hung hesitating, and then with the movement of a weasel snapped back into cover behind the telegraph office door.

When the train for Cobalt drew up, he handed his bag to the black porter of his car—and still kept his eyes on the door. The young detective who accompanied him paused as he entered the train, and stood watching Clement’s antics. Clement heard him speaking over his shoulder. He mounted the steps of the train backwards. He said, “Gatineau, just keep your eyes on the door of the telegraph office, will you?”

The train began to pull out. A head appeared round the door of the telegraph office. The dark, swift eyes in the head scanned the train and platform.... Clement felt that, shrewd though that glance was, he and Gatineau were well screened by the side of the train. One look and the head was followed by a lithe, sinewy figure. This figure crossed the platform at a swift, loping run, jumped to the steps of a car farther back, and pulled himself into the train.

“You saw him?” said Clement. “That was Siwash Mike. He’s traveling with us to Cobalt.”

They went to their seats in the train. Clement sat facing back so that he could see any one who came forward through the train. He thought Siwash Mike would lie low, but these rogues were so bold and unscrupulous that he meant to be ready for all emergencies.

“I was rather startled to see him,” he said to [Pg 164] Xavier Gatineau, “but, of course, I should have expected him. He has been following me from Quebec without a doubt.”

“Yes, in worrying about other things we forgot him,” admitted Gatineau. “He complicates matters. He’ll have sent Neuburg word that we are coming to Cobalt.... He was probably doing that in the telegraph office.”

The young detective’s surmise was a natural one. But it happened to be wrong—as they found out later. Siwash Mike had sent his message of their coming to Neuburg when they left Montreal. He had gone into the telegraph office at North Bay for quite another reason. But Clement and his companion were not to know that. They simply formed their deductions on the material they had, and as the material they had was limited, their deductions were wrong.

“Yes, they’ll know we are coming; they’ll be prepared for us. And we can do exactly nothing,” said Clement bitterly.

“Let’s try and think what they’ll do to checkmate us,” said the detective.

“That’s easy,” said Clement. “They’ll do what they’ve been doing or attempting to do ever since this affair began. They’ll get Heloise Reys out of our reach.”

“But—but can they move her about at their will [Pg 165] like that? She’s an intelligent woman. Wouldn’t she object, wouldn’t she see something wrong in this constant repetition of these tactics?”

“They’ll be plausible,” said Clement. “Their excuse will be logical. You must remember that this Gunning fellow is not supposed to know she is coming to him. However erratic his movements may seem, they’re his own, or appear to be his own. If they tell her at Cobalt that Gunning has left the town, gone off to a shack, or a mine in the wilds, she can’t say anything. That’s the sort of thing he would do, and she has to adapt herself to him. That’s how they’ll get her away. Gunning will go off somewhere—and she’ll follow.”

“It’s a tough problem,” said the little detective. And both men fell silent, thinking this tough problem out.

This was a new difficulty to cap the old one. Already Clement had felt that Heloise would be taken to some place hard to find in Cobalt, and now he felt that, thanks to Siwash’s message, she would be doubly hard to discover. And then suddenly, as he began to dwell upon Siwash’s unpleasant presence on the train he smiled.

The little detective looked at him sharply. Clement answered that look by saying:

“From our brother Siwash’s antics do you feel that he thinks we know he is on this train?”

“Why, no,” said the detective. “From the way [Pg 166] he acted I think he thought we hadn’t seen him, and he hoped we wouldn’t.”

“That’s my conclusion,” smiled Clement. “He has us under his eye and expects no guile from us, simply because he thinks us innocent of his presence. And that’s going to help us.”

The detective’s eyes showed that he hadn’t grasped what Clement was driving at.

“This is what I mean. He, personally, fears nothing from us. He is confident that he can do his job without any suspicion or threat to himself. Now, what is his job—it’s to shadow us to Cobalt, see us safely there, and report. Do you agree with that; I mean do you think there might be something further for him to do?”

“No,” said the detective with thought. “I don’t see what more he can do. They’ll naturally want to hear from him exactly what we’ve been doing. He’ll probably turn us over to another man, or if, it being the dead of night, we went to the hotel, he’d judge we were safe for an hour or so....”

“And we’ll arrange that he thinks that. But the point is that you agree he’ll report. And who to?”

“Yes—he’ll lead us to them,” smiled Clement quietly. The detective looked at him, and then smiled in return.

“It’s based on the fact that he thinks we don’t suspect he’s following us. Now, this is my plan. When the train stops at Cobalt we’ll delay getting off until the last.... That’ll thin out the other passengers who alight ... that’ll make it easier for you to spot him, to fix him in your mind....”

“I’ve got him already,” smiled the detective. “That’s our job, you know, to remember men. I know him. I won’t miss him.”

“All right. But, anyhow, you’ll get a chance of picking him up easily if there are fewer people about. When we get on to the platform, and he has a chance of hearing all we say, I’ll arrange in a loud voice to have both the bags carried to the hotel. Then you will say to me (for, remember, we don’t suspect he’s there, we don’t suspect the gang knows we’ve come to Cobalt), also in a loudish voice, that while I’m reserving rooms in the hotel, you’ll have a word with the station master. I’ll agree to wait in the hotel lobby until you come to me.”

“Siwash Mike overhears it all. And having overheard all that, he’ll do one of two things, I think. He’ll either shadow me, as the person he’s most concerned in, to the hotel or put another man on to me to follow me to the hotel—if there is another person; or he’ll decide that we’re safe for a short while, and so go off to report to Neuburg.”

“You keep your eye on Siwash all the time. You follow him. If he follows me to the hotel, follow him.... I shall go straight there unless I get some signal to join you. If I am in the hotel I’ll manage to keep my eye on the door all the time, so that if he moves off I’ll take a signal from you and join you at once—I know you’ve an electric torch. If you shine, then I’ll come out. But I’m rather hoping that if he feels certain we don’t know he’s here, he’ll go off at once after hearing our conversation about the hotel, and will trust his luck about getting his report in before we stir abroad. If that’s the case then we will both follow him.... We must plan a way for you to call my attention, should I have already gone towards the hotel....”

“That should be easy. You have to go up a pretty steep hill to get out of the station yard. The hotel is just across the road. From the hotel door you should command the approach; if you’ve not reached the hotel by the time he goes off, well, I should pass so close that I should be able to get you a warning.... But—but—he might go by car or by rig....”

“That would be the devil ...” began Clement; but the detective cried, “No, I don’t think it would. If he got right into a car or rig I would know at once what he was about. I’d take one of the other cars that are sure to be there, and that steep hill [Pg 169] in the station yard will check his car, and enable me to pick you up.”

They talked out the general line of this plan, and the more they talked the most satisfactory it seemed. They would get to Neuburg’s headquarters by following the man who was trailing them, and who felt secure because he thought they didn’t know he was trailing them. There were, of course, dangers and difficulties bristling along the line of their proposed action.

“We’ll have to deal with him—as the contingency arises,” said Clement grimly. “It is a risk we can’t avoid.”

“We must,” said Clement with a smile that was yet more grim. “Trap or no trap, I’m going into it. But I’m going in with my eyes open.” He patted his pocket where reposed a new pistol The Chief had given him. “I’m going in with my hand on the trigger, ready to shoot. I’m going in with an electric torch. I’m ready for all tricks—and I’ll have you with me. Armed, I suppose?”

The little detective’s hand went down to his pocket. “Automatic. Brother to the one The Chief gave you. And a good supply of magazine refills.”

“The two of us ought to be able to deal with them. But I don’t think there’ll be a trap. I can [Pg 170] understand how I tumbled into it before. I gave the game away, I’m certain, by sending Joe Wandersun’s name in to Méduse Smythe at lunch. But here—how could there be a trap? As far as they’re concerned we’re entirely unaware that Siwash is on the train. There’s no reason or time for them to prepare traps. We’ll simply carry the day with surprise tactics—and, in any case, is there any possible other course of action open to us if we are to rescue that girl effectively and without loss of time?”

There was no other way. Now that Siwash had warned the rogues—as they thought he had done by telegraph from North Bay there was precious little time to lose—the only way to get to Neuburg, and the girl Heloise, was to follow Siwash, to him. There was no other plan so swift. And its boldness, Clement thought, must make it effective.

He would have been less sanguine had he known that in the telegraph office at North Bay, Siwash had not been sending a message but receiving one . That he had been fulfilling the instructions in that message at the moment when he had shown himself deliberately to Clement outside the telegraph office. If Clement had known all these things he might have hesitated. But he did not know.

He did not know. And when a closed car passed him groaning at the steep grade of the station yard hill at Cobalt, and following that car came [Pg 171] another, with Xavier Gatineau, leaning out of it and calling to him, “Get in, get in, he’s in that car at the front. He’s swallowed our bait,” he got in joyfully.

Directly these things happened, Clement gleefully congratulated himself that their little comedy of deception had proved brilliantly successful. He fell back into the padded seat smiling. He watched the red rear light of the closed car in front picking up speed as it wound through the corkscrew streets of Cobalt. And his heart was saying, “To Neuburg.... To Heloise.... That car’s leading us to them.”

And in the front car Siwash Mike was chuckling. He leaned across to Joe Wandersun, who was driving, and cried, still chuckling, “They’ve bitten. They’ve bitten. They’re following.”

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A division on the C.P.R. varies in length from approximately 115 miles to 140 miles. All trains change engines and crews at such divisions.

CHAPTER V

The two cars rushed through the night, switch-backing up and down the strange streets of that strange town. Clement had the queer feeling that he was passing through a dream city created by some fantastic fairy tale illustrator. The streets of Cobalt wound haphazard amid houses built haphazard. The bumpy driveway wriggled between buildings now on the road-level, now hanging above it on rocky outcrops. Now an ordinary side road was passed in the dusk. Now a flight of stairs shot upward in place of a road.

“We’ve got him,” said Clement cheerfully, looking out at the speeding car ahead, “and we’ll get Neuburg through him. That is, if your driver——”

“That’s all right,” said the detective Gatineau. “He’s game. I put him wise before I hired him. For twenty dollars and a little excitement he’ll do all you want him to do.”

“He knows that. All he said was that the burg [Pg 173] had been kind of sluggish anyhow for the past six months.... This is a mining town, you know. Don’t you worry, he thrives on excitement.”

The cars swept out of the town. Between the stiff, rocky hills and the giant humpings of silver mine workings they were pressing towards the wild tracts of the open country. The road grew deliriously worse.

“What about headlights?” asked the detective. “We don’t want Siwash or his driver to see us.”

“They haven’t yet,” said Clement. “That rear lamp would go out if they did. It’s a closed car, anyhow, and unless we were right up to them I don’t think they would notice our lights. But to be on the safe side they might be half-switched down, though.”

“Sure,” said that individual, and he checked down his lights until there was but a faint radiance on the road before them. “If this wasn’t such a hell of a trail I’d cut ’em out altogether. Must have some light. I’ll bump my springs to scrap else.”

“Put down all repairs to us,” said Clement. “You’re a good scout to take this on. There may be trouble.”

“I guess you haven’t,” smiled Clement, looking [Pg 174] at his burly figure. “Where are those chaps heading for?”

“Hudson Bay and the Arctic Belt gen’rally, sh’d say, from the way they’re hitting it,” grinned the man. “Somewhere fresh t’me anyways. Not that I mind novelties, only I hope this trail holds to wherever they’re going.”

There was, indeed, every indication that the trail would not. It had become astonishingly rough, so that they bumped and soared on the padded seats in an astounding way, their only satisfaction being that Siwash and his companion in front were also feeling the strain, and had checked their pace down to something more humanly bearable.

As the road grew rougher the country became more inhospitable and empty. Its emptiness, in fact, was impressive. They had, some time ago, left the last vestige of the township behind them. They had passed the last of the outlying mines—the blank and almost inhumanly empty grouping of a discarded and probably forgotten working. They were now heaving and shouldering along this strange trail, where grass proclaimed a lack of traffic, going always into a bleak, strange land where not even the bark of a dog gave indication of the dwellings of man. The enormous emptiness of it weighed on the mind.

The country over which they had been passing for hours, it seemed, had been flat. At length it [Pg 175] became broken up. The hard rock was thrusting its way up through the thin soil, first in little outcrops, then in mounds and bluffs that resembled the ground at Cobalt. The trail, which had gone forward as directly as an arrow, began to twist, worming round the rocky pockets, forever finding the most negotiable way. Then, in the midst of his automatic and quite unsplenetic growls at the tricky steering this new circumstance demanded, the driver said, “Hey, look at that big Swede. Hey, but just you look at him, hitting it up again.”

It was a fact. The car in front of them had abruptly increased its speed. From its steady, but cautious pace, it had suddenly started to run away.

“Not they,” said the driver. “That’s the explanation.” He pointed ahead of him towards the trail. Even as he pointed the reason for the change of speed became obvious. The car ceased its wild and stormy bumping. They were still pitched about, but the rough trail across country had ceased; they were on a road. As they wound in and out among the rocks they could see the fairly even and rutted surface under their headlights.

“I miss my guess,” said the driver, his eyes fixed warily ahead for the abrupt and surprising [Pg 176] twists. “I don’t know more’n you. It’s Nowhere in the middle of Neverwas.”

They ran on, twisting and turning along the crooked, rock-dodging path. Clement’s pulse began to beat with excitement. A made road—that meant a house. A house meant....

The driver said abruptly, his expert eye flashing to the side of the track and back again with a darting glance, “Thought so ... workings.” He pointed with a stabbing finger. “Stuff taken out of there—see. Ugh! ye brute, do ye want to go, prospecting wid yer nose?”

Clement looked to the side of the trail, but saw nothing of the signs of mining which the driver noted at a glance. But he saw and felt the road, saw signs of the presence of man in that, and he recognized that they were coming to the critical point of their ride. He braced himself alertly, looking ahead. His hand went into his pocket, caught at the automatic pistol and held it ready.

“Water, see,” said the driver, jerking left with his ear, to where something shimmered flatly and; eerily in the dark.

“Hell,” groaned the driver, and working his hands one over the other like a strenuous pianist, he whipped the car round an “S” curve into a straight, round another curve, and caught the distant twinkling of the red light again.

“There’s the outfit,” stabbed the driver. “You look. Don’t wanter pile her up....”

Clement imitated the action he had just seen the driver indulge in. He bent low down so that he could catch faintly the black silhouette of the earth against the fainter darkness of the sky. He saw merely masses of dark shades on shadow—fantastic, indeterminable shades—rocks, no doubt.... Then ... yes, there was the tall, square shoulder of a mine building, the frail fret of derrick against the dark, and the humped mound of slack.

“Seems so,” growled the driver. He swore deeply. He had lost the tail light. He was laboring round another cruel bend. He straightened out. “Where in creation....” he began, searching for the red light.

“There!” cried Clement. “Straight ahead. Why, we’ve got ’em. We’re on top of ’em. We’ve got ’em sure.”

“Fer th’ love of Mike....” yelled the driver. [Pg 178] He wrenched frantically at the wheel. “We’re off the trail ... off....”

There was a sudden succession of terrific and violent bumps. The car seemed to jump. It thrust forward, sank. Kicked again, buried its nose deep, and threatened to capsize. Then the hind part sank softly and squarely.... All movement ceased.

The all-but-buried headlights, the driver instinctively switched full on, shone on a flat, moist surface that threw back the rays with a curious, livid shine. The driver swore deeply.

“Steve,” he cried to Clement. “Steve, we’re done. We’re knocked. We’re beat.... We’re bogged .”

In the first car Siwash, leaning towards Joe Wandersun, smiled his cold Indian smile. “They’re in it, pard,” he said. “In it up to the lamps. That settles them .”

The detective gripped his arm. The driver, leaning back over the seat, joined the detective in that grip.

“We can get to these buildings in time—but we must hurry,” snapped Clement angrily, trying to struggle free.

“You can not,” said the driver. “You can get up to your occi putt in enduring mud, Steve, an’ that’ll be about the limit o’ your carnal activities. What we’ve hit is a slime lake. That mine dumped into here, see? It’s probably a little more solid than water, but more uneasy to swim in, see?”

“Sure, Steve, but with circumspuction. As we ain’t sinking no more, we have a sure base or deepo’ to work from. By workin’ cautious....”

“And while we are being cautious—with our lights full on—what will be happening at that mine, my good chap?”

“Not much,” said the driver. “A coyote prowling round, a bat flutterin’ hither an’ thither.... Not much more, Steve. This mine is an abandoned mine, Steve. C’n tell that by the surface o’ th’ slime....”

“An abandoned mine,” snapped Clement in an edgy voice. “But that’s just the place....”

“Moreover, Steve,” said the driver. “Moreover, our pals in the forward car did not go to or enter said abandoned mine. Take that as law, Steve. For why—I saw their headlights flash on the building and pass. I saw them lights turn beyond a big outcrop of rock further on, going [Pg 180] away left, Steve, turning their back on that old mine.”

“They sure have,” said the driver. “An’ it’s no good feelin’ sore about it. Circumstances is just gone bad on us, an’ that’s that. No call fer chasing a Hudson Six to Baffin Bay on the unaided feet.”

Clement, his eyes still fixed on the point in the darkness where the red light had vanished, dropped back into his seat. “What exactly happened?” he asked, more in a groan than anything else.

“We got bogged,” said the driver, with a touch of irony. “I was the tin horn, an’ well, we got bogged. See how it is? That trail takes a sharp loop round this lake. I came round in a crazy hurry, missed that tail light—then I picked it up dead ahead—that was when they picked up th’ straight again after getting round th’ lake. Me being that tin horn, I took me eyes off the trail for a fleck and drove right ahead instead o’ goin’ round. And—and, well, Steve, we was well and duly bogged.”

Clement groaned. Again, through the veriest slip, he had lost his chance of saving the girl Heloise.

“If they’d planned it, they couldn’t have beat us to it better,” said the driver, with a curse.

“Perhaps they did plan it,” said the detective Gatineau softly and suddenly.

“Eh,” gasped Clement; “but, of course, they didn’t do that. How could they know we....”

“Then why are they turning back?” said the detective. “There, abreast of us between those two rocks....”

Clement and the driver swung their eyes to the left. Between the two rocks, distantly, they saw the glow of automobile lamps. They shone steadily. Then the rocks hid them as they moved. Without a word the men in the bogged car sat staring into the darkness, searching it for those glowing lights. They came again from behind a rock. Now they were well to the rear. The significance of those lights was unmistakable.

“You’re damn right,” said the driver angrily. “They’re heading to cut the trail behind. They’re going to make Cobalt again by the same road.”

Before he could say another word Clement was out of the car. He plunged desperately, slime or no slime. He went down over his knees in the viscid stuff. He jumped forward. He found a shelf of rock, strode off it, again up to his knees. He went on. He slipped and half fell in a deeper pocket, and with the effort of recovery found himself on ground that was but shin deep. He plunged forward, and a bush whipped his faces. He was on solid ground at once.

He ran back along the trail until he met the face of the rock where the turn had been so disastrous to them. At this he sprang, clambering upwards. It was a hard, steep climb, but he was glad of it. The higher it was, the more commanding a position it would give him. He knew he was at the summit by the sudden sight of the departing car lights he obtained. But even as he scrambled erect those lights disappeared, leaving a faint, moving glow only.

Clement followed that steadily with his eyes. Then as the lights abruptly flamed into view, his hand went up, and the automatic pistol in it spoke and spoke again. As he fired, the lights disappeared, and he wondered if he had hit. They came again, and again he fired. He emptied his clip and jerked out an exclamation of anger as he reached into his pocket for a fresh magazine. As he did that, the lights vanished once more.

He heard a man panting by his side, and the detective Gatineau’s voice said, “Too far and too dark for fine shooting, Mr. Seadon, I’m afraid. Also it’s quite illegal.”

And even as he said that, his own automatic was pumping off, to be joined at least ten seconds later by the snap of Clement’s pistol.

But the darkness and the distance were against them. Both men fired once more when the lights showed, but the car appeared to go steadily and calmly on its course. Soon it swung into the trail, [Pg 183] and all that could be seen of it was the up flung haze of its great lamps. Presently even that was lost, though they could hear on the almost preternaturally silent air the drone of the car’s engines as they dwindled and sank into the distance.

“Yes, you were right. It was planned and we were deliberately tricked,” said Clement harshly, as he turned to clamber down to the car, and he did not, indeed could not, speak again, so hot was his anger against himself. When he reached the edge of the slime lake, within hailing distance of the stranded car, he called to the driver. “It was a trap, after all. A trap to maroon me out here miles away from anywhere——”

“About forty miles from Cobalt station, anyhow, Steve,” said the driver. “Forty miles, if it’s an inch.”

III

“I reckon that,” said the driver. “I reckon it; but don’t you ask me where we are. In the middle of the Sarah Desert of Africa, for all I know.”

“And we’re right out of touch of anybody. Miles away from the nearest house?”

“Hundreds of miles,” said the driver fervently and with convincing inaccuracy. “I don’t know of even a shack out this way.”

“I don’t suppose there is one ... trust Neuburg and his gang for that,” said Clement bitterly, reviewing the situation and finding its meaning.

“There may be a telephone in that old mine,” suggested the detective, with no great conviction.

“Oh, there may be,” said the driver. “There may be a Packard de luxe only waiting to take us back. Anyhow, to look won’t mean any harm. An’ it’ll be an occupation. There’s all the night yet.”

Clement and the detective went round by the trail to the abandoned mine. They felt their way carefully with their torches, and they carried their pistols ready. There was no need for the latter. The mine was dark and empty, its buildings degenerating into rot, its workings choked with weeds. There was not a telephone.

They had left another torch with the driver, and he had spent his time carefully surveying the position of the car in the rather vague hope that she might be got out of the slime lake on her own power. As Clement and his companion returned, he called out to them, “Nothin’ doing with th’ old girl. It’ll take a team to pull her clear, and an overhaul in a garage when she is clear an’ back at Cobalt. But she won’t sink any more, so she’s safe to sleep in.”

“We’ll send back that team,” said Clement. He turned to the detective. “Or, rather, I will; [Pg 185] there’s no need for you to walk in, I’ll send back another car.”

“A hell of a walk on a dark night with a trail bad enough to be easily missed. You’re risking a lot,” said the driver.

“We’ve got to,” answered Clement. “You see, the reason we were lured out here, and marooned, is, as I look at it, that those people in the car want to get us out of the way and keep us out of the way for a long time.... Isn’t that the way you see this, Mr. Gatineau?”

“That’s the only reason in it,” agreed the detective. “I should say that we got to Cobalt before Neuburg and his lot were ready for us. They had to decide on this desperate trick to get us out into the wilds and maroon us. I take it that the man in the car signaled to Siwash directly he saw him.”

“I agree in the main,” said Clement, who had been thinking hard. “But this thing has been well planned. They knew if they could get us out here we might be landed helpless.... And to get us out here, well, Siwash must have been the bait. I don’t see how they knew we knew of his presence on the train——”

“Perhaps his showing himself at North Bay was deliberate,” said the detective. “Half-breed Indians with all the tricks of the woods don’t give [Pg 186] themselves away so easily. Although it’s rather late in the day to remember that.”

“And the fact is neither here nor there, anyhow,” said Clement. “Our chief concern is that we are ten or more hours tramp away from Cobalt on this bad trail, and that during those ten hours Neuburg and his rogues will be able to do things—things connected,” he meant to mention Heloise Reys’ name, but he boggled at that, he said instead, “do things that our presence in Cobalt would have prevented. They have gained very valuable time.”

“But they, whoever you’re talking about, have gained it,” pointed the driver. “You can’t get away from that. That being so, where’s the value of risking that tramp along a dangerous trail in a dark night? It’s mortal easy to stray and get lost in these parts.”

“That’s a risk I think we’ve got to take,” said Clement. “They may be counting on the fact that we won’t try to follow the trail during the night; I mean by that they may need more time than those ten hours. Again, we may have luck, may hit upon a shack or a homestead where we could get a rig or some conveyance. And always, too, the closer we keep to their heels the more likely we are to throw their plans out.”

“I don’t know who they are, but these fellers seem a healthy lot of toughs from the indications thrown off,” said the driver. And as he voiced [Pg 187] his ignorance, Clement swung round on him with an inspiration.

“Henry Gunning,” cried the driver. “What, again! Do I know him? Why, the feller’s an epidemic.”

Clement, startled by the tone of the man’s voice, simply echoed the expression, “an epidemic?”

“In a manner o’ speaking, I mean he seemed an ordinary sort of feller up to a day or so ago. Then a big fat man hits the burg and he and a feller with him begins to agitate for this Henry Gunning——”

“That’s Neuburg,” said the driver. “Well, I can understand your lack of heartiness about him—a shifty-looking mammoth he is. Well then, they asked and asked for Henry Gunning, reg’ler raised the burg. And then, when they’d finished—when the subject might be considered dropped, so to speak—there came the ladies——”

“Yep, the queen one, a real swell Jane, and the plain prune one. They made the burg to-day, and [Pg 188] they asked. The big shark had nothin’ on them ladies in eagerness for Henry. An’ now here’s you.”

This seemed all very strange to Clement. If Neuburg had asked for Gunning, why should Heloise, in her turn, have had to ask so persistently? He said, “I don’t quite follow this. The big man asked for Gunning, you say, and then the lady.... Does that mean that Neuburg did not find Gunning?”

“Oh, he found him. You bet he found him all right, all right.” From the amusement in the driver’s tone it was evident that there was some ripe story connected with Neuburg’s discovery of Gunning.

Clement ignored that. “Well, then—why the lady? Why did she have to ask for Gunning?”

“Why,” said the driver. “Why, don’t you see, because that Neuburg feller found him first, see.”

“Well, he found him first, didn’t he. Took him away. Beat it with him——”

“What!” cried Clement. “Are you saying Gunning has left Cobalt with Neuburg?”

“First train out, sure,” said the man. “This morning, or rather, yesterday mornin’.”

“But ain’t I bin tellin’ you all the time Henry was gone when she came in?”

Clement stared amazedly at the faint blur of [Pg 189] white that in the darkness represented the driver’s face. In the pause the detective Gatineau said, “Then, Miss Reys, this lady and her companion, are still in Cobalt?”

Clement spoke. “Until the first train out,” he said bitterly. “That’s why we’re here. We were lured out here so that Miss Reys can be got away from Cobalt without our meeting or seeing her. They can’t very well get her out of Cobalt until the morning, so they got me, us, out of Cobalt instead.”

Indeed, it was unmistakable. Gunning had been whisked out of Cobalt to some unconjecturable place, either because he was not in a fit state to see Heloise, or because, hearing of Clement’s pursuit, Neuburg feared that his plan might be interrupted. The rest naturally followed.

It was a good thing that the motor driver came back with them along the trail to Cobalt. There were times when the track branched deceptively, and they might have gone astray. It was he who shone his torch on the dusty earth and said, “This way. There’s the heart-shaped tread of the new tire I got on me back wheel.”

Also he enlivened a monotonous journey by his story of the coming of Neuburg to Cobalt.

There was that grim humor in it that Clement [Pg 190] naturally connected with the mountain of a man and the circumstances.

Henry Gunning had been in a billiard saloon, “half-canned,” as the driver said, with “bootleg” whiskey. He had been bragging violently about the millionaire he’d be in ten minutes after his marriage. Neuburg had just walked into the billiard dive and looked at him—or rather looked over his shoulder.

Gunning had crumpled at once, and, a thing of limp fear had followed Neuburg “like a dorg.—”

“Jist like er dorg. Neuburg never said a word, but that Gunning feller put his moral tail between his hypothetical legs and went out arter him. When they made the train he was still follering th’ big man—without a word.”

The driver also told them about the coming of Heloise. He had been in that, too. He had heard that she was inquiring for Gunning, and, as he had seen all that had happened, he had “greased” along to the hotel. But, of course, he had not been allowed to get near Heloise.

“A woman with a glacial face handed me the frozen mitt,” he explained. “She come down an’ saw me in the lobby, and said she was glad to hear what I tole her, an’ it was very interesting, an’ she’d make a note o’ it, an’ here’s a dollar fer yer trouble an’ good-by.”

By the time the driver had finished they had tramped into the dawn. About them the land loomed gray and bleak, and full of up-shouldering masses of rock.

At the same time they gained a hope of being near homesteads, for the main trail was now broken by many branching tracks.

It was while they bent over one of these junctions that the next manifestation of Mr. Neuburg’s criminal efficiency developed.

A spurt of earth kicked up almost in their faces. And then another. They heard the snap of a pistol, and the “whit-whit” of bullets about them.

The driver sprang erect with an oath, but Clement caught him and flung him to the ground.

“Down on your tummy!” he snapped. “Crawl to cover under those rocks. There’s a man on that outcrop ahead, and he’s shooting to kill.”

As the three of them huddled to the earth under cover, there came a sparkle of light from the mound of rock ahead, and a bullet droned above them. At the flash, the driver darted his hand upward, fired every chamber of the five-shot revolver he carried. At once above his head the protecting rock splintered, and on a rock behind a bullet starred.

“Shootin’ me up,” breathed the driver as he reloaded. “I’ll teach him.”

“You won’t that way,” said Clement. “Not without damage to yourself. That must be the half-breed Siwash planted there to hold us away from Cobalt as long as possible. He’s up to all the tricks. We won’t be able to rush him, we’ve got to get him by guile.”

Clement who, in the broadening pallor of light, had been studying the ground, said crisply, “You shall. Stick your revolver round the farther end of your rock ... no more than your gun, if you value your arm, and when you’ve fired, whip it in sharp. No, don’t trouble to aim at anything. Ready. Now fire.”

The driver’s revolver spoke. Almost at once there was an answering sparkle from the rock-cliff, and the rock against which the revolver rested chipped into flecks of flying particles.

“He is,” said Clement, who had asked the driver to fire so that he might study their opponent’s position. “Lucky for us his first shots were mere sighters. But now he’ll get anything of us that shows. Also he moves after every shot. We won’t get him by pot shooting. We’ve got to tackle this fellow with some of his own cunning. And we’ve [Pg 193] got to do it quickly before the light gets too good?”

His mind, accustomed in the old days to trench warfare, sized up the situation quickly and accurately.

“Will you two crawl over to the left there? And, don’t forget, cover is life. I want you to get behind those rocks. When I give you the word, I want one of you to blaze at him and draw his fire. When he fires back, I want you both to loose off.... Can you fire with the left hand, Gatineau? Well, do, alternating your shots. I want that lad to be convinced that he has three men pinned here.”

“I had some practice at it in France.... Great training ground, France. Also, I’ve done quite a lot of stalking. Anyhow, it’s our only chance if we’re not to remain here all day.”

The two men crawled across to their stations and Gatineau fired at Siwash. The shot was immediately answered, and as immediately a very hearty fusilade burst from the two behind their rocks. Clement chuckled at the ardor Gatineau and his companion put into the business. It was [Pg 194] a real early morning “hate.” Not three men but a file seemed to be in action.

But though Clement Seadon was grinning, he was also fulfilling his own part of the plan. Directly the attention of the man on the rock was occupied, he began to worm his way in a wide circle to the right. He had good cover, and he made excellent progress. He was also helped by the clever coöperation of his companions. They went one better than instructions. Instead of remaining in one place and firing from that, they worked steadily along the arc to the left, and Siwash—Clement was certain it was Siwash—in swiveling round to follow them, naturally turned his back more and more on Clement. They drew fire with all manner of tricks.

Meanwhile Clement made definite progress. The ground was rocky and made for stalking. In about half-an-hour he reached a position from which he could see the fellow as he moved stealthily from point to point. It was, as he had thought, Siwash.

Actually, at one time, he had Siwash’s legs and thighs at the mercy of his pistol, but though the chances were six to one on his hitting, he decided not to risk it. If he wounded the fellow he might not put him out, while it would betray the double game they were playing. When he fired he must do so with absolute certainty of putting an end to this pistol play.

All the same, he had to fire before he was ready. He had worked round to a fairly good position, when he saw no more than the hands of Siwash (the rest was covered) doing a peculiar thing. The hands seemed to be rolling a cigarette. The hands finished rolling the cigarette, and, with the utmost cunning, it was lighted. A broad puff of smoke rose up, and another, immediately drawing a spattering of shots from the men below. Siwash, hidden, puffed for a minute on the cigarette, then the hands appeared again, and Clement watched them fixing the wet butt of the smoke cleverly to the face of a rock. Siwash had calculated the draught well, for the lighted end gave off a thin thread of smoke, which occasionally became puffs, in the now advanced light of the growing day. Directly he had fixed up the cigarette, he appeared and began to slink away between the rocks.... Then Clement fired.

He had to fire. He recognized Siwash’s game at once. Siwash meant to hypnotize the men below with that cigarette smoke. With their eyes fixed on that, they would not notice the fellow was worming round them. The first intimation of his tactics they would get would be a shot from their exposed flank, and that shot would be aimed to kill. Clement recognized this in a flash, and fired.

He saw Siwash jerk and dive forward out of sight. He thought he had hit, but did not waste time speculating on the matter. He nipped [Pg 196] forward rapidly to close with the brute. He had covered half the distance when he heard a shout, and saw the detective Gatineau on the ground where Siwash had fallen and disappeared. Gatineau stood upright, but drew no shot. Clement discarded cover and ran, scrambling over the rocks to join him.

He reached the spot, found Gatineau, but no Siwash. There was blood on the ground leading away through the rocks. Clement was about to ask questions when, with a loud “Got it, Steve,” the driver scrambled into sight. He had a large automatic in his hand as well as his own revolver.

“Say, you got him pretty,” shouted the driver. “But where is that bad man?”

“We saw him go down ‘smash!’ when you fired,” explained the detective. “He shot right into sight before dropping out of it; his gun dropped out of his hand, hit that rock there and went bouncing down to the foot of the outcrop.... I guess you hit him powerful. I came up here quick to get him if he wasn’t done, while the driver went for the gun.”

“He must be a pretty sick man, anyhow,” said Gatineau, pointing to the blood. “He can’t be far off.”

They followed the trail. It wormed in and out of the rocks, and against some of them was a smear [Pg 197] of blood. Then suddenly, across an open space ringed with rocks, they lost it. Siwash had evidently staunched the flow before he had crossed this place. They stared at the rocks, the hard surface of which showed no footprints. They could see no sign of movement.

“He might be at any point of the compass there,” said Clement. “We might hunt all day for him, and not find him.... And we don’t particularly want to find him.”

“No, the sooner we get to Cobalt the better,” agreed Gatineau. “And his teeth are drawn anyhow. We can lodge information at the town and the police there can deal with him—if he remains hereabouts to be dealt with. We’d better get along.”

It was another hour and a half before they reached Cobalt. Here they learned that the tactics of Mr. Neuburg had accomplished all that that villain desired. Heloise and the companion Méduse Smythe had left. They had taken tickets to North Bay. By this time they were already beyond North Bay and any telephone message that could be got there.

They had vanished into the maze of cross lines that radiated from that railway junction.

The journey from Cobalt to North Bay was [Pg 198] made on one of those skeleton motor trolleys railway men use to get from place to place. It was the only means of making the journey.

It was swift and thoroughly uncomfortable. They had to cling tight to the center handrail as they rocked and swung through a primitive country of bare rocks and skeleton like, burnt-out forests. Clement, bone-tired from his heavy and sleepless night, was saved from pitching onto the ballast several times by the grip of the motorman or Gatineau.

At North Bay, they had to walk across goods yards through groups of men to get to the station offices. This walk, slight though it was, seemed to have so curious an effect on Clement that he behaved entirely out of the normal. He refused to go on with Xavier Gatineau.

The little detective hesitated for a moment, puzzled, and Clement said quietly, “Go in—I must stay outside, for a reason.” In a louder voice he cried, “I’ll put these suitcases in the baggage room, and make inquiries there.”

Mystified at this strange behavior, Xavier Gatineau went into the station superintendent alone. When he came out half an hour later he expected Clement to be missing from the platform, but he was still there. His eye that caught Gatineau’s said, “Well?”

“The ladies have gone south,” said the little detective. “They’ve gone to a place called Orillia. [Pg 199] It’s a junction town. They can break off from there anywhere—back to Montreal, or to the West, or even down to the States.”

He gave his information in a matter-of-fact tone. He was astonished, in fact, horrified, when Clement Seadon said in a loud voice, “Orillia! I see it; it’s like them. They are banking on us rushing straight west to Sicamous, the dogs! While we scamper west, the meeting between Miss Reys and Gunning will happen at Orillia, or near it. Good God, it’s a neat blind. But, thank heaven, we have your organization behind us; that’s saved us; well steal a march on them to Orillia.”

Xavier Gatineau was completely mystified as well as aghast at this attitude. He was aghast that this stupid fellow should talk so that all the world could hear. He was mystified, because, unless Clement Seadon had suddenly lost his senses, this dash to Orillia was obviously not at all the thing to do.

Gatineau named the time of the train, trying not to feel that this young man was a fool. The young man exploded.

“Absurd! We can’t wait all that time. We must find a quicker way of getting there.”

“But, my dear man, we can’t wait hours,” shouted Clement, showing his anxiety with his waving hands. “Do you realize what may happen in those hours?” He began to stamp up the platform in his agitation.

“It can’t be helped,” snapped Gatineau, forced to follow him. “We’ve just got to wait.”

Waving his hands, arguing, Clement reached the end of the platform. He turned and shot a glance along it. He still waved his arms angrily, but in an even tone he said,:

“Think I’m acting like a looney, Gatineau? There’s a reason. Tell me anything more you’ve found out, quick.”

“I’ve found out that Neuburg and Gunning pulled out from here to the west. That means the meeting place won’t be in Orillia, but somewhere west, in Sicamous, likely.”

“More than that, I howled it,” said Clement still making wild gestures. “I wanted somebody to hear it. That thick-set man over there. He’s been shadowing me ever since we left the motor-trolley. Now play up, my lad....” He made a [Pg 201] gesture of resignation, and said aloud, “All right, then, I suppose there is nothing more for it but to wait. But it’s awful—ghastly.... What shall we do?”

“Ah! And a bath. I want one. We’d better get reservations to Orillia first, though,—save the rush at the end. Come along.”

As they went to their hotel, Gatineau made a point of crossing the road in front of a great shop window. He chuckled.

“Yes, he’s following us, that attentive friend of yours. It’s probably that Joe Wandersun. He’s the only one unaccounted for.”

“Easy. He’ll sleuth us to our rooms, then he’ll wire brother Neuburg somewhere west that we’re here and following hotly the blind trail to Orillia. You played him princely, Mr. Seadon. We’ll settle him.”

“Leave it to me. All I ask you to do is to dawdle about in the lobby of the hotel for five minutes before going to your room. I want to get out of the back to be ready when he comes out of the front door again.”

Clement was shrouded in bath towels when the little detective came back to the hotel. He was all smiles, and sat beaming at Clement as he fanned his young bald head with his hat.

“It was easy as fallin’ off a wall,” he grinned. “That feller went straight to the station telegraph and filled in a blank. He didn’t even look round. Here’s the blank.”

“What an ass,” said Clement. “He ought to have known better than to use the C.P.R. lines.”

“Couldn’t help himself. Look at the address, Banff in the Rockies; we’re the only cable company to serve it. Also, he thinks he’s well covered. Read it.”

“That’s true,” agreed Clement. “Well, this bears things out. The meeting place is in the west, at Banff probably instead of Sicamous. In fact it’s lovely. Banff and its beauty will be [Pg 203] idyllic for a—a lovers’ reunion. Also it is near Sicamous, and they can get away from it, as they can get into it, easily. The ladies will be able to work round behind us and reach there?”

“That quiets brother Neuburg, see?” grinned Gatineau in the face of Clement’s perplexity. “It tells brother Neuburg we’ve muddled the trail and cut back to headquarters at Montreal. Quite natural. You see, like you, I figured Neuburg’d want [Pg 204] reports, and he can get them from Montreal.”

“The Chief will see to that. I’ve sent all facts to him, he’ll send reports to Arthur Newman that will keep Neuburg purring. Trust The Chief, he’s a bear. Of course Nimmo Bates will sign ’em. Meanwhile we go comfortably to Banff.”

“Well, of all the calm, foreseeing, clever little devils.... It’s a dazzling idea, Gatineau. Neuburg will be certain we’re at a loss in Montreal, will think he has plenty of time, while all the time we are overhauling him.”

“That’s it,” agreed the little detective. “The only thing that worries me is will the girl—Miss Reys—figure according to plan. I mean if she has any sense she’ll be suspicious at all this roundabout traveling, this chopping and changing of plans.”

“I hope she will be,” said Clement. “But I’m afraid she won’t. She doesn’t know the country; her companion does. She’s bound to follow blindly. And then anything can be put down to the erratic movements of Gunning.”

Both had the sleep they needed, and a meal, and went to the railway station in good fettle. Under Gatineau’s instructions, Clement suddenly turned [Pg 205] from the platform and entered the booking hall as though making for the street.

The man who had shadowed him from the hotel did not hesitate for a moment, but trailed after him. In the middle of the booking hall the hand of Xavier Gatineau came down on his shoulder, and he swung round to find the muzzle of an automatic within six inches of his solar plexus. He started to put up his hands.

“I want you, Nimmo Bates,” said Gatineau. “I want you in connection with the jewel robbery on the Empress of Prague . Cut out the rough stuff, Joe, and go quietly.”

As Joe Wandersun stared amazed, three large railway policemen slipped out of the office.

“Take him along, boys,” said Gatineau. “The Chief will give you instructions in Montreal.”

As the police hustled the half-dazed rogue away, Gatineau went to the booking window.

“Say, Jim, got those reservations for Banff on the next westbound? Good.... She’s on time, I hope.”

CHAPTER VI

From North Bay to Winnipeg on the run to Banff, Clement was occupied mainly by monotony and his own anxious thoughts regarding Heloise. But at Winnipeg they picked up the trail again. Gatineau heard news from Montreal, and both saw the man with his arm in a sling—Siwash Mike.

There was actually nothing fresh concerning the ladies, it was obvious that they had doubled on their tracks in the tangle of railways south of North Bay; that was the first item Gatineau offered as they sat at lunch in the Alexandra Hotel.

“Well, no,” said the little detective. “They’re coming along here all right.”

“I like the positive sound of that,” smiled Clement. “You are positive?”

“Well, that’s as we expected. Miss Reys will [Pg 207] join them there—or rather all of us. We’ll be of the pleasant company, too.”

“Well, then,” said Clement, “all this being as we thought, would you mind telling me what the bad news is?”

“Hey?” cried the little detective, looking up from the soup that is called gumbo.

“Well, we’ve always felt fairly certain of that,” said Clement, after the first twinge of horror had run through him. “You mean, the matter is now decided?”

“As certain as we can be from the facts on hand. I’ve just read a message from The Chief. He’s sure. He’s been looking at those old descriptions provided by the Oregon police. Adolf Neuburg is Albrecht Nachbar, wanted for murder by U. S. A.”

“Queer that he should be alliterative in alias,” said Clement. “Arthur Newman.... Why has he used those initials again, I wonder?”

“Criminals do strange things,” said the detective. “It’s a kink in him, I suppose. P’raps Neuburg has a fancy those initials bring luck—that’s the sort of thing one finds in rogues. Or, it may be an easy way to keep his gang together; his A and [Pg 208] N may be so characteristic as to guard against forgery.”

“And it may, after all, be mere cleverness. Many people would not credit him with the daring of using names so similar, and be put off the trail.... But the fact is that Neuburg is Nachbar.”

“The Chief is sure; he sends along warning to be mighty spry in dealing with the feller. He’s a tough nut, is Neuburg.”

“I’ve already learned it,” said Clement dryly. “Was the crime a bad one?”

“Real bad. I kept my mouth shut about it until we could be sure—but it was real bad. The feller he killed was a rich dude in Oregon. There was some sort of crazy bucket-shop deal that this feller—his name was Roberts—was interested in.”

“He did not.... I see what you mean. His tactics appear to have been the same as now. He didn’t show up in the open, he merely played the part of a disinterested adviser to this rich man’s orphan. Fact is, nobody noticed Neuburg, or Nachbar as he was then, until Roberts died.”

“Yep,” said Gatineau. “That appears to be his method in these things.... Gets people into the wilds. Well, Roberts goes shooting into the [Pg 209] wilds and there is a hell of an accident. His gun bursts and he is killed outright.”

“At the inquest it was. That was the verdict. But when people began poking round they found it wasn’t. I needn’t go into it all, and, in fact, I have only the outline of the business, but the things that came out were these. First, a big, solid block of cash was missing. Second, Nachbar was linked up with that missing cash. Then people began to hunt for things.

“First, they got no change out of Nachbar. He produced letters and papers by the boxful to show that his dealings with Roberts were straight—forgeries, no doubt, but good ones, especially since the victim was a dead ’un—you can bettcher life Nachbar was sound on this. He’s the real brainy bad man, all right, all right. Things were kind of tied up until a fellow from the American Department of Justice began to find the trail of the murder. He found out that Nachbar had been in the district where Roberts was shooting, at the very time of the murder.”

Clement was rather startled. “That sounds rather crude for a criminal of Neuburg’s propensities,” he said.

“Nope, it wasn’t crude. He traveled by a different railway system to a different valley. He didn’t even go near Roberts’s camp. But this detective, who was nosing round, found that he had stayed [Pg 210] at a hotel in a neighboring valley for a week end shoot, that he had gone off, early in the morning of Saturday, the day of Roberts’ death, that he went out shooting without a guide, and though nobody could tell the direction he went, he had time to go somewhere close to where Roberts’s body was found.”

“They began to come down in a blizzard, once they started. Roberts’s actions had been unusual on that day. First, he had made his plans to go out shooting to the west with a couple of guides. Then, early, he had got a special delivery letter. After reading that letter, he changed his plans, went out shooting alone, and went east—that is, towards the hotel where Nachbar was staying. His body was found about half-way between.”

“The inquest was on a man accidentally killed. These points were passed over as interesting, but not relevant.”

“That letter was never found. It wasn’t on him when his body was brought in. Everything on him down to his bootlaces was impounded by the Court, but no special delivery letter was found. Some one had taken that letter from his body after his—apparently—lonely death.”

“It must have been signed for? Didn’t the postoffice know anything about it?”

“Nachbar wasn’t the one to slip-up over a detail like that. It had been sent from Roberts’s home district in a faked name—couldn’t be connected with Nachbar or the hotel where he was staying for his shoot. Still, it was a link. And on top of that it was found the gun that killed Roberts— wasn’t his .”

“No, it wasn’t his. It looked like his. It was just the sort of Winchester magazine rifle he used, but the dealer found the number and proved it wasn’t his. Some one must have swopped guns with him—while he was out, apparently, alone. And the gun he got in exchange for his own was a gun meant to burst and kill, an’ did burst an’ kill.”

“Did you think it would be? No, it wasn’t. It was proved that Neuburg had also left his hotel carrying a Winchester magazine—easy to effect a change, you see, an’ when he came back with the same sort of gun on his shoulder nobody had reason to suspect it was Roberts’s gun—then. Moreover, when Neuburg’s rooms were searched, it was found that he had kindly left an identical Winchester rifle behind—an’ it wasn’t Roberts’s.”

“An alibi. He could swear that this gun was the [Pg 212] gun he used on that murderous weekend.—Has the burst gun been traced?”

“No. But, of course, it is only a detail. It is obvious that Neuburg or Nachbar did that murder, though full facts have to be proved.”

For a moment they sat silent, and Clement, anyhow, was appreciating the full meaning of this revelation. Roberts’s murder, Heloise Reys’ case—how they ran parallel. Roberts was a victim because of his wealth—Heloise Reys was possessed of a million pounds. Nachbar kept in the background as far as Roberts was concerned. He was an advising friend; Neuburg played the same rôle to Heloise Reys. Roberts had been lured into the wilds; Heloise Reys was, even now, being lured into the wilds. Roberts was killed by a secret, brilliant “accident;” Heloise Reys ... Clement shivered. He stared at Gatineau.

“I told you,” said the little detective, “because I think it best to know exactly the ways and methods of this brute.”

“I understand,” said Clement. “And then there is the brighter side, too. It is certain that Neuburg is Nachbar. He’ll be arrested. When?”

“The Chief tells me he is getting a move on already,” said the little detective, and Clement caught a hint of hesitation.

“But—but that’s incredible. He’s a murderer, and you can arrest murderers without warrant, surely?”

“See here, Mr. Seadon,” broke in Gatineau. “Don’t you condemn the police in a hurry. Recollect that, keen as we may be, we can’t go about arresting folk off-hand. We’ve got to be sure we ain’t running innocent men into jail—an’ disgrace. This is complicated. It’s an old crime. We don’t know whether the American police have dropped it, or caught their man, or have definite news that proves Neuburg isn’t the feller we think he is. Until we can be sure we daren’t move. We’ve got to get in touch with the U. S. A. before we can hold him.”

“That’s logical, I suppose, but it is also rather terrible. And it will take—how long?”

A few days! Clement stared at the little detective: what might not happen in a few days?

“Yes, she’s got us, and it lies with us to keep Neuburg or Nachbar so that he won’t have time to do anything—critical. But I confess I’m rather fearful, Gatineau.”

Clement Seadon and the detective had made their way through the underground passage that leads from the great hotel to the railway station. They were to catch the train west to Banff. They were emerging into the booking hall when Gatineau caught hold of the Englishman’s arm.

Seen through the glass swing-doors of the passage a young man passed towards the platform walking swiftly. He was a slim, lithe young man with a dark, aquiline face. And he had his right arm in a sling. There was no mistaking the curious lilting walk, as there was no mistaking the features of the man.

“He hasn’t the air—an’ then, he’s got a grip in his hand. He is going to catch the westbound to join brother Neuburg at Banff.”

“Perhaps,” said Clement, remembering how they had been tricked before. “But why is he in Winnipeg?”

“That’s easy,” said the detective. “He probably got in here over the other railway north of Cobalt, and has changed onto our line for Banff. But we’d better watch him.”

They followed the half-breed cautiously, and saw him follow the crowd up the steps of Platform 6. There was no doubt that he was watching the westbound. Like a flash Gatineau did not go up the steps of Platform 6. He nipped up the steps of Platform 4. They arrived on the railway level just in time to see Siwash gain the platform. They took cover, and across the station watched him. They seemed astonishingly close, but it was obvious that he was not suspicious; he did not throw a glance their way.

Almost at once Clement said, “There is something more in this than merely catching the westbound, Gatineau. He’s waiting near the exit—for some reason.”

“He’s waiting for somebody, I guess,” said Gatineau. “Somebody who is stopping off the Montreal train.”

Clement’s heart jumped. Somebody who was stopping off from the transcontinental train—who could that somebody be? Heloise? Certainly his heart fluttered. Perhaps after all this was the end of the chase. It was more than likely Siwash had received some message from Neuburg at Winnipeg—he’d know how and where to pick one up, and that message had warned him to meet this [Pg 216] train and Méduse and Heloise who came by it. He thought that quite likely, and then Gatineau said, “But why that grip?”

Yes, that was a puzzle. If he was meeting some one, why carry baggage for a journey?

With its loudly clanging bell the great train steamed slowly into the station. Both men watched the half-breed with the keenest attention. He stood there quite passively as the passengers thronged out of the cars. He watched them indolently as they passed him in a stream. Then with an air of casualness he picked up his grip and strolled towards the train.

“Damn,” grunted Clement. “Nothing at all. He’s just going to board the train. Look here, we must look slippy, too, if we are to travel by her also.”

He picked up his own grip, began to move out to cross the intervening rails and platforms to the train. Gatineau said suddenly, “Hold on—ain’t that long scarecrow of a feller interested in our pal?”

Clement shot a look towards the train. He saw a tall man moving aimlessly after Siwash. Clement did not recognize this fellow until suddenly he caught a flash of a skinny leg and arm as the fellow dodged between the passengers, and he had an abrupt twinge of memory. Where the devil had he seen that scarecrow before?

Siwash had walked up to the car in which his seat was reserved. He handed his grip to the black porter, and then, after pretending to mount into the car, had turned back as though to take one last look at Winnipeg. In that moment he swept the whole of the platform with a searching glance—fortunately he kept his eyes on his own platform. Satisfied that there were no watchers, he turned and stared straight at the skinny man. The skinny man was by his side in a moment.

There was a swift talk between the twain. The skinny one listening attentively, and nodding his head as if he understood. Then Siwash took a paper from his pocket, and the other stretched out his long and skinny arm. And at that gesture, memory came to Clement. He remembered acutely such an arm stretching out from a small window clutching at the pistol hand of Siwash. “Heavens!” he breathed. “The fellow from the glue factory—from the Sault Algonquin at Quebec. Another of the beasts on the spot.”

III

The guards were shouting “All aboard.” Siwash turned and sprang into his car, while the skinny man strode towards the exit. Clement picked up his bag and went in the same direction. [Pg 218] Gatineau cried softly, “Say, we can’t monkey about; we’ll miss that train.”

“I’m going to,” said Clement grimly. “I want to find out why that fellow is here.”

“And I don’t like him being here,” said Clement. “I’m not going to leave anybody here to wait for Miss Reys unless I know the exact why and the wherefore of his waiting.”

Gatineau was by his side now; he was smiling. “Yep, I rather want to look at that paper myself. Say, if you catch hold of this grip I’ll trail that lad. Best be me—he may have recollections of your outline.”

An hour later Gatineau rejoined Clement in the lounge of the hotel. “That’s the sort of job that makes a feller ashamed to draw his pay,” he grinned, as he sat down. “Easy—made me cry, it was so easy!”

“No, sir; I’m not little Xavier miracle worker yet. But I’ve got him located. He’s in a rooming house in the dark areas off Portage Avenue—room 163 is his number. And he hasn’t the slightest fear that evil men like us are here and interested in him. Walked all the way to his dive without so much as a look round.”

“That’s good; that means that Siwash don’t know we’re here either. He’s gone off to Banff [Pg 219] and Neuburg without a suspicion. Well, what next?”

“We just go an’ call on our lean friend—he calls himself Jean Renadier, he’s a French-Canadian all right, though he says he comes from Montreal, not Quebec. I’ve got a man there spotting for me already, one of our local men, an’ I’ve arranged with the police to pull him on the Empress of Prague robbery charge—in silence. Shall we go?”

They went. On the way Gatineau told his plan: “I’ve arranged that we tackle him first, so that he don’t have any chance of destroying any paper. Then when we’ve got him, we call in the police. We’ll just walk up to his room, see? I’ll go in an’ you stay outside, because the sight of you might make him do things to his papers. When I’ve got him you can come in. Is that good?”

The spotter outside the rather dingy rooming house told them that Renadier had not left the building. As they went into it, he drew in, ready to help effect the arrest. Walking in boldly, and with a casual, “Renadier—room 163, ain’t he?” from Gatineau, they were able to mount to the man’s room as though they were friends of his. It was high up in the building, and at the dark end of a corridor. Gatineau softly tried the handle, found the door yielded, strode boldly in, shutting the door behind him—for the man must not catch a glimpse of Clement.

Clement heard Gatineau say something, and then the silence came down. It was a curious silence, intense, deep—disturbing. It seemed to draw itself out. It became full of significance. Clement pressed close to the door, listened—nothing! What was happening? Why did not Gatineau give some signal? Why should there be this appalling quiet in that room? It was uncanny, it was unreal—it was ugly.

He bent down in a sudden anxiety and put his ear to the keyhole. Nothing! There was no sound from the room. The room was apparently dead, vacant—a tomb.

He put his hand on the door. As he did so, two sounds came from the room, two soft sounds.

One was a soft knock—it might have been the heel of a boot kicking against the carpeted floor. The other was a slow, animal sound, low, guttural, choking.

Gatineau was stretched full length on his back. He was moving nervelessly, struggling feebly. Squatting over him was a tall, inexpressibly gaunt man. This fellow crouched over the detective’s chest with an almost stolid calm. His long, lean [Pg 221] arms were stretched downward. His thin, knotty hands were about Gatineau’s neck. He was carefully and calmly throttling the life out of the little detective.

Clement caught one glimpse of the preoccupied face before it turned upon him. The face of this calmly murderous man was utterly transfigured with fear—fear that, somehow, did not interfere with the efficient labors of killing a man. Then the eyes turned to him as he charged forward. The fear in the fellow’s face leaped to an absolute panic at the recognition of Clement—and yet the fellow acted with an astounding calm.

He simply fell flat. He made no attempt at active resistance; he simply fell flat upon Gatineau. Then, as Clement jumped forward, he rolled, quick as lightning, towards him. It was unexpected. Clement in his stride could not check. His foot caught the lank, rolling body, and he pitched forward. As he fell, the other leaped to his feet, and jumped to the door. Clement had shut the door, and he caught at the handle. That gave Clement time to grab at him. As he fell, Clement twisted as he had often done on the football field. He did not try to recover, he let himself go, while trying to fall as near the door as possible. He succeeded enough to enable him to get his hand to the tall man’s ankle. He grabbed and held. He braced himself to resist.

The fellow was astonishing. He did not [Pg 222] struggle. For a perceptible instant he stood there at the half-open door, staring down at the man who held his ankle. The look of devastating fear on his face was appalling. Clement had never seen any man so afraid. In that flash—it was no more than a single breath—he felt that the fellow was theirs—he was nerveless with fear. Then the lank man kicked him.

He kicked with his free foot coolly and deliberately—an astonishing kick when Clement recalled the sheer fright on the fellow’s face. So unexpected was it that Clement had only time to half-check the drive of the heavy boot with a quick-flung hand—and then his head rang and he saw a million stars.

After that, confusion. The lank man wrenched himself free and was running. Clement, dazed, tried to get up to go after him. He was knocked sideways by some one rushing by. It was only when he managed to get into the dark passage—that somehow seemed to be misty (but that was that fellow’s boot)—that he realized that the man who had bowled him over was Gatineau. He saw Gatineau running along the passage before him. Gatineau was groggy but determined. Rather groggy himself, he ran after Gatineau.

He had to trust to Gatineau. He couldn’t see the lean man, but Gatineau seemed to know. Gatineau went upstairs instead of down. Gatineau rushed across a roof landing instead of going [Pg 223] through one of three doors, and flung himself headlong on to a fourth door. That burst wildly open under his charge, letting in a bewildering flash of daylight. They were on the roof. Then Gatineau was running across the leads, and Clement after him—and, yes, there was the lank man running ahead.

The lank man rushed to the edge of the roof, started back, looked round with his incredibly fearful look, then dodged at a right angle. Gatineau could not check in time to head him off. But Clement could. He cut across the fellow’s path, and, like a fox, the fellow tried to double again. He dodged round a stack, and found Gatineau ready for him, pivoted, and ran for the parapet. He scrambled on to the parapet, and stood swaying, staring about him for a loophole of escape. Between him and the next roof was a ten-foot alley, but the other roof was lower, and he seemed to think it was a chance. Clement did not; he yelled, “Stop that, you fool. You’ll kill yourself.”

It was too late. The fellow had braced himself, had leaped. He went through the air in a way that showed he was no jumper. He seemed to hang in the air for an eternity. Then his feet came down on the parapet on the opposite side. For a breathless moment he hung there, clawing wildly, as though seeking to grasp support from the very air; then his balance went, he sagged backwards, [Pg 224] fell, went out of sight with an uncanny abruptness.

“My God!” cried Clement. “My God!” He felt physically sick. Gatineau had no time for sentiment. He was already running downstairs. He wanted to get to the man before the crowd.

Clement Seadon and Xavier Gatineau left Winnipeg by the next west-bound. Gatineau’s throat was a little sore, and Clement’s soul was more than sick at the death of the man who had played a part in his captivity in the gluemaker’s at Quebec; but apart from this they were little the worse for their experience—and little to the good either.

The lank man had fallen into a narrow yard between the houses, and his fall had not been noticed. Gatineau had got to him before anybody else. He had secured all the papers on the poor dead body, and had then seen to it that not only were the police informed, but that the matter was to be kept quiet for the present.

All they had found on the man was a number of letters making it plain that he was Louis Penible, a glue manufacturer of the Sault Algonquin, Quebec. There was also a single telegram signed A. N. bidding him travel at once to Winnipeg, where he would be met by “some one.” This telegram was sent off from North Bay. “Before we caught Joe,” said Gatineau. “It looks as though [Pg 225] Neuburg was summoning all his forces to hand rather than anything else.”

The only other piece of paper—the piece that had cost the wretched man his life, the piece Siwash had handed him at the station—was merely a plain sheet containing the address of the rooming house where he had died, and an address, “A. N., c/o Mrs. Wandersun, Sicamous.”

“Beyond telling us that Neuburg has gone on to Sicamous—is not stopping on at Banff—it seems a small thing to have brought about a man’s death,” said Clement.

“It might have been a big thing,” said Gatineau. “It might prove to be a big thing now. Neuburg has one man less, that may be useful to us. It is useful, too, because, so far as we can see, we have the whole gang under our eyes now—two arrested, the steward and Joe, one dead and the rest at Sicamous or traveling to it. We know where we are.”

But they did not know very much. They knew nothing about the whereabouts of Heloise Reys and her evil companion; they had no inkling concerning the plot Neuburg, the master-mind, had devised—save that it was concerned with a great deal of money, and with the luring of the victim into the wilds—just as it had been in Roberts’s case.

They passed across the rolling monotony of the prairies thinking the matter out. They passed through Calgary, a vivid, gold-washed town amid [Pg 226] foothills that seemed to cup the sunlight. They heard news of Neuburg and Gunning going on before them, but no other news.

From Calgary they climbed to the fairy ramparts of the Rocky Mountains, austere, snow-cowled, promising immensities and mysteries beyond. They mounted, step by step, the “benches” of the foothills, besides the breathless azure of the shining Bow River. Then abruptly the gate of the mountains was above them, silent, stark, sheer brooding as their train roared through The Gap, and then they were at Banff.

They went by car to the wonderful hotel perched like Aladdin’s palace on a spur amid mighty spurs. It was a peerless place. For the staging of a love scene one might have gone to the ends of the earth and not have found a better setting. The exquisite beauty of the surroundings called to the emotions—and yet Neuburg had rejected this spot and had gone on to Sicamous after but the shortest stay! Why? Clement thought the answer to that unspoken question must be an ominous one.

The Chief had been good at his word. He had sent word along the line, and the C. P. R. people at the hotel were ready for Gatineau. They had a thick bundle of telegrams and reports waiting for him—a bewildering bundle, for it included all Neuburg’s wires to his underlings, Nimmo Bates (that is, Joe Wandersun) at the Place Viger Hotel, Montreal, where (thanks to the cunning of The Chief) [Pg 227] he was supposed to be staying with Siwash Mike, and others. It contained the wires Neuburg had received, and it contained reports from The Chief himself, from the agent at Sicamous, and others. A truly awesome mass of paper.

“I think I’ll let you disentangle the story,” grinned Clement. “The very bulk of it frightens me, and I guess you are more used to it than I am.”

“Sure,” smiled Gatineau. “I’ll go through this and knock some sort of connected report out of it. You go an’ try a dip in the swimming pool, Mr. Seadon, an’ leave it to me.” He was running lightly through the duplicates of the telegrams. “Hullo! One moment, Mr. Seadon; here’s one to Méduse Smythe at Winnipeg—that must be to await her coming.”

“Yes, sir,” said the hotel manager, who was with them. “Miss Smythe and Miss Heloise Reys are coming to stay here. There is a suite booked for them.”

“And yet Neuburg and Gunning have gone on to Sicamous,” said Clement. “What does that mean? What is behind that move?”

Clement had his plunge in the hot sulphur pool [Pg 228] under the slope of a snow-tipped mountain, and, refreshed, went back to Gatineau in the manager’s office. Gatineau grinned at him.

“I guess I’ve made a connected yarn out of this jig-saw all right. In the first place, let me tell you that our dangerous pal Neuburg, Newman, or Nachbar, seems to be fairly certain that he has been given a new lease of life—has days on his hands in fact.”

“First place, he had booked here for himself and Gunning for an indefinite number of days. Then, quite suddenly, he decided to go off to Sicamous. He sent telegrams to various people—one to meet Siwash at Winnipeg, one to Nimmo or Joe Wandersun at Montreal, and another to sister Méduse—telling of the change. And the reason he feels safe is that you and I are definitely marooned in Montreal. The Chief has played the game as I expected he would. His fake wires coming, apparently, from Nimmo (who we know is in jail) are gems. We are apparently standing baffled in Montreal, hunting about for the trail. One can read between the lines that Neuburg is sure of that—f’r instance the mere fact that he wires to Nimmo at the Place Viger Hotel shows he thinks it all right. Again, his wire to Siwash confirms this. He tells Siwash to come on to Sicamous, not Banff. He also tells Siwash to meet Louis the gluemaker of Quebec on such and such a train at [Pg 229] Winnipeg and tell him there is no need to stand by and watch trains for us yet—that was evidently why he was sent for—but to meet Méduse when she arrives and do as she tells him. Oh, Neuburg is certain that we are out of the running for the time being, and it’s because of that, he’s gone off to Sicamous.”

Clement thought for a moment. “Yes, that sounds logical,” he admitted. “With us close up on his heels he would have to rush things. Probably his first plan to checkmate us was a lover’s meeting in this place of lovers. There would have been a—an affectionate reunion, and then, if we were threatened, the pair would have been spirited away. And what would have happened to Heloise Reys when they were lost?”

“However, what would have happened doesn’t matter. The plan’s changed. He had gone to Sicamous to prepare a more elaborate and a more certain plot—we can take that as certain. And—and the women follow after us?”

“Sure they do that,” put in Gatineau. “They are a day or more behind. As I thought, they did dodge about in that tangle of railways by North Bay for the express purpose of throwing us off the trail. Then they hit the main line behind us, and started west in earnest. They’ll stop off at [Pg 230] Winnipeg to pick up news from Neuburg, an’ then they’ll come straight on here.”

“That’s a point that baffles me!” admitted Clement. “Why come here? Why not go straight on to Sicamous?”

“The rest of the story explains something of that. I should say he wants time to be sure he’s got his plans perfect. According to the reports from our Sicamous man, he’s been acting rather strangely at that end. Our feller at Sicamous has sent on train letters, so his statements are full. Neuburg and Gunning arrived in due course at Sicamous station, but instead of going to Gunning’s shack on the lake, they stayed the night at Joe Wandersun’s house—where, of course, Mrs. Wandersun is living.”

“Next morning Neuburg went down to the lakeside and overhauled the big motor boat that Joe uses on the lake, but instead of going in it, the three—the woman as well—came to the station and caught a train for Revelstoke. Revelstoke is the nearest considerable town; they have to travel back towards Banff to reach it. Our agent at Sicamous is a real live man; he ’phoned through to one of our fellows at Revelstoke and caught the same train as Neuburg. Reaching Revelstoke, the trio did some shopping—shadowed by our men. The proceedings were ordinary enough, save that they seemed to show a strange passion for buying medical things. Also, Neuburg, giving Gunning the [Pg 231] slip, went into a store where mining outfits are sold and bought several high-explosive cartridges and a quantity of fuse .”

Clement made an exclamation at those words. He stared at the little detective, who said, “No, I don’t see what it signifies, but it is a matter worth noting. But there is something queerer to come. The woman and Gunning went off to dinner in a hotel. Neuburg did not go with them. Instead he went off by himself and found, because he was looking for it, an obscure sort of hash joint. He sat down and ordered a meal. Our fellow who was shadowing him walked in casually and got into a table nearby. Apparently there was nothing odd about Neuburg’s choice, but presently a young, smart-looking feller pops into this joint and sits down at Neuburg’s table. Neuburg was reading a paper by this time, an’ paid not the slightest attention. Soon, though, they got into conversation, just like two strangers. What they said, of course, our feller couldn’t hear, but it didn’t appear to amount to much; soon, too, Neuburg paid his bill and went out with a ‘Well, good-day, stranger. Glad to have become acquainted. I shall certainly try those creeks of yours for red fish.’

“Our feller guessed that Neuburg would go back to the other two—anyhow he risked it. He followed the smart young stranger instead, when he left the hash joint later. This feller sneaked round several blocks, as though he didn’t want people [Pg 232] to know where he’d been, and in the end he entered the Grand Dominion Consolidated Bank. In there he went behind the counter, hung up his hat and settled down to work. He was one of the employees. ”

There was a very significant pause. Both men looked at each other, and both men were thinking the same thoughts. They were recalling that Neuburg as Nachbar had worked through a bucket shop in his plan for robbing Roberts of Oregon. He was working through a bank now—not, of course, that the famous bank was acting as his confederate, but that the smart young man was. This fellow had no doubt figured in the bucket shop at Oregon, and had managed to worm his way into the bank at Revelstoke to further Neuburg’s ends—since, obviously, the master rogue had planned well ahead.

As Clement reflected on this point he reached for a telegraph form, and at once wrote the following to The Chief at Montreal:

“Find out what interests Heloise Reys has in Revelstoke Branch Grand Dominion Consolidated Bank. Neuburg has confederate there.”

“That may bring something,” he said, as he handed the message to Gatineau. “If Miss Reys has any money in that bank it must have been [Pg 233] transferred from the head office at Montreal. The Chief will be able to find out, eh?”

Gatineau said, “Sure,” added a code number to the message, and had it sent off at once. Then he went on with his story.

“After this business Neuburg met the other two in the hotel, and they all went back to Sicamous, where they loaded their purchases into the big motor boat. They didn’t, as our man thought they would, go on up the lake then, but went back to Mrs. Wandersun’s house. It was about one o’clock at night when Gunning and Neuburg actually left for his shack. A railwayman, who had been on watch, woke our feller, and he just had time to see them sneak off in the dark. They took an awful lot of additional packages with them, loading them secretly—a regular sort of moving day, our man writes, as though they were going to stay in the wilds for a hell of a time. The two men only got into the boat, and then, strangely, the boat left, not under power, but rowed.”

“That was Neuburg covering himself up,” said Clement. “Nobody saw or heard him leave, nobody can connect him with—with anything that might happen up at Gunning’s shack in the wilds. I suppose that’s all there is so far.”

“That’s all,” agreed Gatineau. “We know their movements to a dotted ‘i,’ an’ we know Miss Reys is coming on here. I suppose we had best just wait around until she comes?”

“Yes,” said Clement, “there seems nothing else to do at the moment. We must wait for a wire from The Chief about that money, anyhow. But I confess I don’t like waiting. Certainly Miss Reys appears to be coming here, but with these brutes, with that demoniac intelligence of Neuburg’s working against us, I am fearful. Who can say what sudden turn events might take, and—and what terrible crime might be committed without our being able to interpose?”

VII

Clement Seadon was manifestly uneasy. Not barring the path which led from Heloise to the archscoundrel at Sicamous made him feel safe. Not even the exquisite beauty of this delightful place could tranquilize him. He felt that some slip, some chance warning to Neuburg, might bring a calamity. Neuburg, that monster, with his cold, quiet, and uncannily placid intelligence, would act like a flash. He was, Clement felt, being so desperately driven that he would not hesitate to act desperately to attain his ends.

There was no doubting the fiend’s terrible capacity. Clement was sure that, in some way, Neuburg had already arranged to get control of Heloise’s money—or some of her money—through this bank, and his confederate in the bank, at [Pg 235] Revelstoke. He had already his evil fingers on that loot. All that he needed was to secure Heloise to make his control of her money complete. And, at a crisis, he would stop at nothing to secure Heloise—that meant her silence—in order to get that money.

Her silence. Clement shuddered. He saw, again, the mental picture of how Neuburg, as Nachbar, had secured the silence of Roberts of Oregon. The dead cannot give evidence.

Clement tried to quiet his nerves by going for a long tramp through the deep spruce woods that clung to the sides of the austere mountains, but half-way through it he became panicky and hurried back to the hotel in case he might miss some crucial message.

There was no message. He had to wait hours before anything came. Then it came from Sicamous. That message, however, was significant enough for those who could get an inkling of the ominous riddle behind it.

The agent at Sicamous reported that a young, dark-faced, slim man with his right arm in a sling had arrived at Sicamous. He had gone to Mrs. Wandersun’s shack. He called himself Lucas, and looked like a halfbreed.

The next fact was that a wire had come through from Méduse Smythe at Winnipeg, saying she was coming straight through to Banff. Immediately [Pg 236] on receipt of this, things happened. The man Lucas—despite his bad arm—went off up the lake in a canoe, apparently to Gunning’s shack. On his return there was a bustle. Mrs. Wandersun, in the language of the agent, flacked about like a worried hen.

She had run down to the station and had sent off a train letter to Heloise Reys—to await arrival at Banff—and also another to Méduse Smythe.

Having got rid of these letters, Mrs. Wandersun immediately prepared herself for a journey. That done, she bounced into her neighbor’s shack with a lamentable story of a friend taken dangerously ill up the lake. She said she had wired to his relatives, and she thought they were coming on. She said she was going to her sick friend with the young man Lucas to run the power boat for her, and she asked her neighbors if they would mind telling anybody who might arrive before Lucas returned, that he was coming back from the sick man in order to take them up to him.

Having impressed this upon her kindly friends, she got into the motor boat with Lucas, and went up the lake. Lucas had not returned yet. The agent had not pressed his inquiries for fear of stirring up suspicion.

Clement had listened to the reading of this report with a face grim and white. When it was finished he said, “This seems to be the first move [Pg 237] in the definite plot. Once she arrives in Sicamous, Heloise Reys will be spirited away into the wilds. You can see how they have planned it. Nobody but Lucas is to take her there; they don’t want outsiders to figure in this.”

“An’ it seems to me that they don’t want anybody—even Miss Reys—to get there before they are ready for her,” said Gatineau.

The one addressed to Heloise Reys was a simple letter stating that Henry Gunning had returned to Sicamous and had gone along the lake to his home. The letter said that Gunning was quietlike, and not quite his usual self. He said he was going to rest up for a while as he felt sort of seedy. The writer concluded by giving directions how to find his shack, and declared himself ready to do all in his power to help Miss Reys. He signed himself—Joe Wandersun.

“Joe Wandersun!” cried Gatineau. “Well, I’m gormed! How did he write that when he’s snug in jail at Montreal?”

“His wife—no. Remember Roberts, man, and how forgery apparently played its part in that case. The same capable scoundrel forged this.”

“Neuburg or Newman or Nachbar, or whatever you like to call him. Forgery is part of his game. [Pg 238] And there’s another point. You see it contains a hint of Gunning’s illness—illness is also part of this devil’s game.”

“No. Perhaps they’re going to use that as a weapon of shock, to make her lose her head at a moment when it will pay them for her to lose her head. But the other letter—the one addressed to Méduse Smythe?”

“Not so very bold,” said Clement. “The Englishman who doesn’t look brainy is interned at Montreal, you understand. He feels quite safe. He doesn’t think anybody will see that message but Méduse.”

“And you were right about their springing the dangerous illness upon Miss Reys at the last [Pg 239] moment. That’s what he means by the shock, eh? And Landor of Revelstoke——”

“The smart young man in the bank is undoubtedly Landor. It all fits in. Miss Reys is to call on the bank on her way to Sicamous to register her signature, and so on. Landor is the man who will interview her. All that is part of their plan for getting hold of her money. You can see how the hellish thing is developing.”

“My God!” muttered Gatineau. Then he said, “But the money. No woman would transfer a huge sum to a local bank, a bank that may, perhaps, only be going to serve her for a few days?”

“I am waiting for The Chief’s telegram,” said Clement. “That will tell us how much she has in the bank at Revelstoke. It seems illogical that she should have a large sum—yet I fear——”

Of the whole of that pregnant message one passage, and one alone, stood out with a terrible significance.

Neuburg was Nachbar, the murderer. Neuburg was the cold-blooded genius who slew Roberts of Oregon in the wilds, and for the sake of a huge sum of money. The telegram told that the girl, Heloise, had to hand a great sum of money, and she was being lured into the wilds—lured towards Nachbar, the brute who would let nothing stand between him and his greedy desire.

Neuburg was Nachbar the murderer—and Heloise was to be his next victim. Only dimly he heard Gatineau saying, “He wants to get all that money—£145,000. It’s all under the hand of his tool at Revelstoke. I see how it is. But what beats me is how any one would think of transferring——”

“Did she?” snapped Clement. “Wasn’t it forgery? Nachbar is a forger as well. Couldn’t he have forged that letter ordering the transfer?”

Gatineau cried, “Forgery! Yes, that’s it. That’s damn likely. But even though that letter was forged, I don’t see how they are going to work it. What’s the game?”

Clement suddenly became completely aware of the detective and what he was saying. He echoed the words, “What’s the game? I don’t know. But I’m going to find out. I’m going down to Sicamous now to find out.”

“Now. I can’t wait here passive. Anything might happen. That girl might be prevented coming here, might go right through, might be turned aside. I’m not going to run any more risks. I’m going to Neuburg. Can we catch a train?”

“I don’t care. We’ve been passive too long, anyhow. Come along. Find that car. It’s our turn to attack.”

CHAPTER VII

The rush to the train was a frantic episode, undertaken with the eye on the second hand of the watch. As they flashed down through the spruce woods and over the delightful bridge of the shining Bow, the detective, Xavier Gatineau, was scribbling a wire on a pad resting on his swaying knee.

“To our man at Sicamous,” he explained. “He must meet that train. When we get to the depot, will you jam that into the telegraph office? I’ll dive for the station master an’ arrange for accommodation, an’ hold the train if necessary. Phew! we’re cutting it fine.”

They were. They heard the train pull in and stop before they could see it. They saw the guards preparing to send the train away as they drew up, braking perilously beside the low platform. Clement sprang to the telegraph office without a word. Gatineau seemed to be half-way along the platform in the direction of the station master before their automobile had really stopped.

The handing in of the wire took no more than a [Pg 243] few seconds, but short though that time was, Gatineau was already beckoning him to the rear car when Clement appeared.

“Luck all the way,” said Gatineau. “Section superintendent’s private car hitched on to this train. This is it.... He’ll be here in a minute——”

He got no further. Clement suddenly caught his arm. “My God!” he gasped. “Look there—those women.”

Two women stood by the edge of the platform watching their suitcases being put into an automobile.

It was dark, but the two well-dressed figures could plainly be seen in the light of an arc lamp. One was a comely, chilly, thick-set, middle-aged woman—the Gorgon, Méduse Smythe. The other—Heloise.

No mistaking that slim, upstanding, gallantly poised figure. Even there in the darkness and newly arrived on a strange railway platform, she carried herself with a crispness, an air of daintiness, a grace of candid beauty. No mistaking her at all—and no mistaking the curious and quite sharp thrill that went through his own being as he looked at her.

“Yes—and that she-scoundrel, her companion. [Pg 244] They’ve arrived. Of course, I should have remembered this would be their train.”

“Did they see you?” demanded Gatineau, more practically. He had a sudden, unpleasant vision of the crafty Méduse Smythe sending telegrams ahead of them, warning Neuburg, upsetting their own hair-brained plan.

“I’m certain they didn’t,” said Clement. “And—and do you think, from their attitudes, that they did?”

Both men had drawn into the cover of their car, and as they looked, it was quite obvious to them that they had not been seen.

Uneasiness was not expected from Heloise; still, if she had seen Clement, with whom she had quarreled, who, on the word of Méduse, she was also well on the way to love, she must have shown some sort of nervousness. She showed none.

The Gorgon companion, who had every reason to show anxiety if she had, unexpectedly, set eyes upon that enemy who disconcerted her most—Clement Seadon—showed no anxiety. She was calm and smiling. With just the right smiling calm—no amount of acting could have given her precisely that air.

“No, they certainly haven’t,” said Gatineau. “All the same——” he began, and he realized Clement’s intent gaze and stopped, and smothered [Pg 245] a grin. Clement would not be fit for comment or reasoning until the train pulled out.

Clement gazed hungrily at Heloise. During the days of excitement and anxiety he had thought incessantly of her, and had, he thought, created an unreal dream woman. But as he looked at her he saw that she was better even than his dream. The beauty of her features, the charm of her movements, the whole crisp, boyish attraction of her came to him, even now, as a fresh revelation. Her car moved and he moved with it towards the observation platform.

“Mr. Seadon,” Gatineau protested. “The light shines upon the platform, if they turned and saw you....”

With a sigh Clement relinquished the most desirable sight in the world. Their own train started.

Presently he said, “They have arrived at Banff, Gatineau. That horror of a woman has arrived—and she will ask for a message from Newman. Do you appreciate that? She’ll go there expecting a message.”

“She won’t get one,” said Gatineau, grinning. He put his hand in his pocket. He drew out Newman’s—or Neuburg’s—train letter saying all was clear, and ordering Méduse to go to Revelstoke. “I brought it along with me. I thought of that.”

“Yes,” said Clement. “You thought of that. But did you think of what would happen when she [Pg 246] asks for the message she is expecting—and does not get it?”

“Just that,” agreed Clement. “She’ll raise it. She’ll get panicky. And she’ll do something.”

“She just will; she’ll fly to the wire or to the distance ’phone to Sicamous. She’ll get through to Neuburg. Why, in the name of Mike, didn’t I think of that?”

“Why, in the name of Michael, didn’t I ?” said Clement hardly. “It was my idiotic haste. But that doesn’t help. What does help? She’ll get through to Sicamous and Neuburg; she will warn Neuburg. And—and what can we do?”

They stood and stared at each other. A night journey away was Neuburg and Gunning and Siwash Mike and Joe Wandersun’s wife. They were unsuspecting. They were preparing for some terrible crime perhaps, but they were unsuspecting.

Behind them were the two women going in a fast car to the Banff Springs Hotel. The woman who had most to fear was also unsuspecting. But she would cease to be so after she had been in the foyer of the hotel many minutes. She would ask [Pg 247] for a message, a letter, or a wire—and she would not get one. At once because of her fear she would become anxious. She would communicate with Neuburg. He would be warned. He would know at once that his letter had gone astray, that something was wrong, and he would take steps to meet the crisis.

And the men moving towards him were standing in the saloon of a moving train, hanging, as it were, between the two danger points in a traveling isolation. What could they do?

“Yes, she might.... But who to? Joe’s wife, Mrs. Wandersun, went up to Gunning’s shack in a motor boat. She left word she wouldn’t be back. Remember, left word an’ a letter.”

“Siwash Mike, or Herbert Lucas, as he calls himself, may be there waiting for the ladies.”

“Yep, that’s so,” he thought a while. “But their shack might not have a ’phone. It’s unlikely, I think. An’ then ’phoning—would she risk it? Miss Reys might come in on her as she spoke.”

“But how does it help? I know if we could get in touch with Sicamous we could stop it ... but from a moving train.... One of these pocket [Pg 248] wireless sets would be very handy just now.”

“Got what, you little train jumper?” said a large, genial man coming into the saloon.

He didn’t get an answer. Instead, Gatineau swung round on Clement with a great laugh. “We’ve got ’em. Walt, here, will stop the train.”

“Walt, here, will be asked to do it first. Then he’ll think about it,” said Walt, with just that tinge of asperity that showed he had not been too neatly handled. Gatineau noticed that tone in a flash.

“Say, Walt, I guess I’m a bit fresh. We’re rather rattled, Mr. Seadon and me.... Oh, Walt, meet Mr. Clement Seadon, a friend of The Chief’s.... We’re on a big thing, a big criminal thing, and we did something quite stupid back in Banff that we can only put straight by telegraphing, an’ at once.”

“Well, we’re afraid of that,” agreed Gatineau. “You see, we daren’t wait!”

“You won’t wait,” said the superintendent. “I’m getting that set.” He began to run out of the saloon.

“All right, Walt,” called Gatineau. “We’ve got to figure out that wire first.”

He went over to the little writing desk near the rear window. He switched on the desk lamp and selected cable forms. At once he wrote: “Hold all wires from Méduse Smythe to Newman or Neuburg.” He looked up. “Will that do?” he asks. “Our man knows Neuburg; he’ll know what that telegram means. An’ we mustn’t block other wires. Neuburg may be expecting one from Nimmo at Montreal, f’rinstance, and might get anxious if he didn’t get it.”

“That’s true,” said Clement over Gatineau’s shoulder. “And while we’re stopping Méduse’s getting to Neuburg by wire, we might stop her getting to him in person. Write this:

“She won’t be suspicious—if Arthur Newman isn’t. This is from Arthur Newman.”

The little detective considered it carefully. “You’re right. It bears the authentic stamp of Arthur. Wondered why you were putting in that bit about the foxy bank man, Landor of Revelstoke. But I see why. Feeling that Newman is the only one to know about him, she’ll be certain this wire’s from him. An’ she’ll stay quiet at Banff accordingly.”

“That’s the idea. You feel confident that your man will send it correctly—as though it really, did come from Newman, I mean?”

The superintendent had been busy in the saloon with the young man who acted as his clerk. On the saloon table a telegraph instrument had been set up, and the young man was active with what looked like a long bamboo fishing pole that had electric flex instead of fishing line attached to it, as well as a curious hook at its top end. Walt gave orders to the youth to stop the train.

In a minute the long train groaned to a standstill, and at once the young man dropped from the observation platform at the rear of the car, and, first hooking the bamboo rod over one of the telegraph wires beside the track, did various things with electric plugs. Then he came back to the [Pg 251] saloon and began working the telegraph instrument. “Through to Sicamous,” he said.

The young man wrote down the message as it clicked back, Gatineau watching his writing hand. He had written the last word only when the detective said, “O.K. That’s all.” Then the bamboo pole and the plugs were disconnected, the instrument dismantled, a guard waved a light and the train moved on.

“Yes, you people make the check-mating of rogues seem child’s play,” smiled Clement, and he went to his bunk almost with serenity.

III

At Sicamous station a railwayman slipped on board the car and spoke to Gatineau. Gatineau and Clement left the train at once, walked straight into the pretty hotel that hangs right above the lake and is the only considerable structure in the place, and, passing straight through the lounge, found themselves in the manager’s sitting room.

A youngish man with the nondescript clothes [Pg 252] and the air of a homesteader got up from a rocker-chair and said: “You’re Mr. Gatineau. Pleased to meet you. And Mr. Seadon. My name is Cager. Plenty of news, Mr. Gatineau.”

“You sent the wire I asked?” asked Gatineau. The young man handed over a cable form. It was the wire to Méduse. “Good. Did the woman send anything?” Again, without a word, the young man handed over another cable form. Both men read it. It was to Arthur Newman c/o Wandersun. It ran:

“Any telephone message through, do you think, to Lucas or Siwash at Wandersun’s shack?”

“No telephone,” said Cager. “An’ then Siwash isn’t there. That is part of the news. He went along the lake yesterday—to Gunning’s shack.”

“Before those ladies made Banff,” said Gatineau with relief. “Unless, of course, they got a message through on the way.”

“They didn’t,” said Cager. “No wires, no train letters came through. I’ve been watching Siwash—Lucas, as he calls himself—pretty close. I guess he didn’t get any sort of message.”

“Not even that. But I don’t know why he went. He just went up in a canoe. I think he’s coming back. You see he was to meet them ladies, and the woman, Mrs. Wandersun, hasn’t come back, or Neuburg shown himself? No—then about those people who had a letter for Siwash when he came along—I mean those neighbors who were told that he was coming, and the ladies, too. Are they in this, do you think?”

“My opinion is, they’re just neighbors. They were here years before the Wandersuns showed up. My opinion is that they are not in with Neuburg.”

Gatineau thought a while. “We’ll risk it, anyhow,” he said. “Look here, Mr. Seadon, you’d better not show, but I will. I’ll go ’long an’ talk to them.... Got a boat to take us along the lake, Cager?”

“Not a power boat, just now. You can have a skiff or a canoe.... Skiff? Well, that’s less dangerous in a scuffle. I’ll get one ready while you’re going to the Bloss’s.” He went to the window. “That path leading up hill. It’s one of them two shacks you c’n see. There’s a chintz settee on the porch.”

“Some news, Mr. Seadon,” he said. “Lucas—that’s Siwash, they don’t know his real name, [Pg 254] they’re on the square all right—Lucas will be back to-morrow to meet the ladies.” He glanced deliberately at Clement. “He’s gone up the lake to sit at the bedside of his dear cousin Henry Gunning.”

Clement stared at him in amazement. That Gunning was dangerously ill seemed incredible.... Suddenly he remembered a passage in the Joe Wandersun letter to Heloise at Banff. He remembered a passage in Neuburg’s note to Méduse. He remembered the buying at the drug stores in Revelstoke, and Mrs. Wandersun’s going to a sick friend. He smiled grimly. “That’s the shock,” he said. “Remember Méduse was to be prepared for one, and to play up to it. She won’t expect to learn that a quite healthy man is abruptly at death’s door.”

“But I wonder what it means, just how it fits in with the scheme of that blackguard Neuburg? Don’t you see, it’s saddling that outfit with a sick man—even though he’s faking.”

“He’s got more time than he thought,” said Clement. “We’re at Montreal, don’t forget.”

“With the long distance wire ever handy. He may have time, but not for a long, sentimental sickness. I don’t see it fitting in.”

“No,” said Clement reflectively. “A long illness seems barred—but, look at the effect of this [Pg 255] sudden news of Gunning’s dangerous illness on a nature like Miss Reys. It’ll bowl her over. Coming at the end of all these lost trails and excitements, and the end of all the emotions she’s been bottling up for months, this sudden, dramatic threat at the last moment will emotionally sweep her right off her feet.”

“She’ll be crazy with anxiety—I see,” said Gatineau. “She’ll be right off her guard, not noticing anything but how he is to be looked after, that’s it. It’s a sweet move on that rotten rogue’s part.”

“Also,” said Clement, grimly, “Henry will look better in bed—more presentable. He’s been on the loose, and it probably shows. But what would look disgusting in a man standing on his feet, will only look like the ravages of illness in a man lying and moaning on a sick bed.”

“The pathetic stop,” agreed Clement. “And they’ll play it for all they’re worth to the undoing of that girl.”

In a very short time Clement Seadon and Gatineau were rowing up the lake towards Gunning’s shack. To their friends they would have been quite unrecognizable. Cager, the alert, had provided them with floppy hats and clothes and fishing tackle. To the world at large they were two westerners avid for the lake’s celebrated trout.

They had discussed with Cager the problem of [Pg 256] getting at Neuburg and his gang by stealth, and decided that they had best drift up to it alone under their fishermen disguise. To guard against any eventuality, a boatload of short, sturdy, and well-armed men followed them.

These men would wait behind a headland that cut off Gunning’s shack from the rest of the lake, and at a signal, or if, through glasses, they saw any signs of foul play, they would dash to the rescue.

Rowing up the lake, Clement could not repress a shudder at its ominousness. The great spruce-clad mountains came right down to the fillet of water, hemming it darkly. As they turned a shoulder, and the hotel and railway buildings, standing up sharply in this clear air a mile behind, were cut off from view, they seemed to be plunged at once into the heart of No Man’s Land. The dark lake was stark and empty and utterly beyond human touch and help, it seemed. What might not happen to Heloise in a place like this?

They went ashore at the headland to spy out the land. From amid the trees at its crest, Clement looked down on a mountain bay that might have been the crater of an extinct volcano in the mountains of the moon. At first it appeared almost terribly empty, then his glasses picked out a shack well hidden in the trees alongside the lake. He saw four people about that shack.

One was a man who sat smoking at his healthy [Pg 257] ease and reading a paper on the porch of the shack. One was a woman, who sometimes came out of the door of the shack with a flutter of garments. She stood for a moment, always, and looked along the lake. Once she picked up what obviously were glasses, to stare across the water. She was watching. She was Mrs. Wandersun; the man reading was undoubtedly Gunning.

These two men were in a motor boat. They were obviously working with some concentration on that motor boat. Only once, as Clement looked, did they become erect and examine something.

One of the men was a slight, slim fellow with his arm in a sling. That was Siwash.

The other was a big, massive mountain of a man, who sat up and moved with curiously swift movements. That was Neuburg.

Neuburg, the murderer, and Siwash, busy over something in a motor boat. Gatineau looked at Clement.

“The three of them there, an’ the woman,” said Gatineau, as they pushed out their boat again. “Three to face.”

Gatineau, as the least known of the two, stood up, plying his rod; Clement hunched over the rowing. They drifted round the headland. They moved slowly along the lake. Gatineau pretended to be dissatisfied with his sport. He pointed with a long arm, indicating more likely spots for a bite. Clement rowed languidly—there was a great deal of power in his rowing and it took the boat nearer and nearer the shack. Gatineau held up his hand, made a graceful cast, then he said, “Holy Mike!—vanished.” He did not refer to the fish. He said it softly, not because the fish might hear, but because in these silent places sounds carry amazingly.

“You mean Neuburg and Siwash have vanished?” said Clement in the same quiet tone.

Clement glanced back to the headland. It shut them off from the entire world. They could see no sign of humanity, not even of the three men in the canoe who were following them so cautiously. Gatineau fished sedately, partly to throw dust in the eyes of the people in or near the shack, partly [Pg 259] to give the men in the canoe time to make the headland. Always they drifted nearer and nearer the shack.

Presently—it was part of their plan—Gatineau placed his rod in the boat and sat down. He sat down facing Clement, facing in the direction of the shack.

“Might as well eat,” he said in a loudish, clear voice. Clement said nothing. It did not matter so much that Gatineau’s voice would carry across the water to the shack, but his own voice was known.

Gatineau began munching and surveying the lake. Suddenly he cried, “Say,” and his arm went out, indicating the shack. Clement, his hat well down over his eyes, his chin crouched in his shoulder, looked towards the shack. He said something. Gatineau answered clearly. “No, it ain’t deserted. Why, there’s smoke coming out of the stack. We sure can get some coffee there, or some hot water for our’n.”

He said this loudly, giving warning. If Neuburg and Siwash were in the shack, they had time to get out of it, to run to the bush and hide. Undoubtedly they would not want to be seen.

As they came close in under the shack, the woman appeared on the porch. She was a tall, wiry woman, as lithe-strung as a cat. She had the fierce, sharp, haggard air of a woman who had been wrenched from the more hectic pleasures of [Pg 260] cities to stagnate in the wilds. She stood in the break of the door looking down on them, her eyes bright, her face pale, her hand gripping the doorjamb violently to help her master her emotions. Gatineau called, “Hello, mother; who’d a thought of seeing a white woman here?”

“Hello,” she said in a dry voice. “Fishin’? Had luck?” Her tone repelled advances.

“Poor,” said Gatineau. “Say—we was thinkin’—I mean seein’ you had a fire, we thought as you’d allow us to boil a drop o’ water fer cawfee.”

The woman’s tongue went over her dry lips. “Better not come here,” she said in a gasp. “There’s a sick man in this shack.”

“Infectious,” cried the woman, catching too much kindliness in Gatineau’s tone. “Turrible infectious.”

“Still a drop of hot water fer cawfee,” said Gatineau. “We don’t want to butt in on your trouble, mother. But we’d be mortal obliged if you could give us a drop of hot water fer our cawfee.”

“Oh, but I don’t think a drop of hot water fer our cawfee’d matter much.”

The woman made a decision. “Here, throw up yer can with the cawfee in it, I’ll give you that water.” She caught the can deftly. “But you [Pg 261] stay there. Don’t you take no risk. I has to notify any risk of infec’ion.” She turned and went swiftly into the shack.

The woman turned from the stove with a half-cry of fear as their boots clumped on the boards of the shack. She dropped the coffee can with a crash, and her lips clenched tight together as she saw the weapons in their hands. There was something significant in that sudden gesture of silence; she had seen pistols in men’s hands before—in the hands of men who shot regardless of sex.

Clement felt pity for her and the life she must have led. “We mean no harm, Mrs. Wandersun. Only you must keep quiet——”

“And not move,” added Gatineau. “Stand over in that corner there, Mrs. Wandersun—yes, in the angle of the walls. Now understand, no movement, no sound.”

They looked about the room quickly. It was a bare room, with a table and stove, and one window, next the door, looking on to the porch. There was a door into an inner room. Gatineau sprang across to it and looked in. It had a bed and a glassless window and very little else. The window was shut, the bed had evidently been used by the woman. Gatineau came out of the room, [Pg 262] shutting the door. There was no need to go into that room. What they wanted was in this outer, living room.

In a corner was a truckle bed. On that bed was a man, his deeply-marked face pale and unshaven. He looked sick, and he stirred gently and moaned like a sick man, not opening his eyes to them. Gatineau gave him one look, then went and stood by the window, which was just by the foot of the bed. Crouching against the woodwork, the little detective watched the world outside, his pistol ready.

Clement acted quickly. From his pocket he took a piece of paper, unfolded it and put it on the table. He found that ink and pens were already there and he put the paper near them. It was a confession. He had drawn it up in the train coming from Banff. It set out the general lines of the plot as Clement saw it. And he meant Henry Gunning to sign it. It would frighten Gunning into fleeing the country, as well as an argument to use when he put the case before Heloise Reys.

He took a step to the bedside. The man under the blankets moved. It might have been merely the tossing of a sick body, it might have been anxiety. Clement looked down at the face, saw its looseness, its weakness, its degeneration; saw, too, in the outline of good looks how such a face might carry a fond memory right back to the time when this man was a fine, upstanding, clean-looking boy. [Pg 263] Oh, yes, that face would call up memories that might well obliterate the present.

He said harshly, “Up with you, Henry Gunning. You’re found out. The game’s up.”

The man on the bed moaned and stirred. And he made a false move. He muttered, “Heloise.”

Clement saw red. “Up, you skunk!” he snapped. His hand went down, plucking at the blankets. With a twist they were on the floor. Henry Gunning, with one ineffectual grab at the disappearing clothes, lay looking up at Clement, his eyes full of fear, his mouth loose. He had reason for fear. He lay on the bed with his nightshirt on him, but beneath that were all his clothes (save the boots) he had worn but a few minutes ago as he sat a healthy man reading his newspaper on the porch of the shack.

Clement shifted his pistol to his left hand. “Do you get up yourself?” he snapped.

“An Englishman like yourself, but a cleaner one,” said Clement with a strong sense of racial anger.

And at the name Gunning winced. But he pulled his wits, which were obviously fuddled, together and he stuttered, “What th’ hell do you mean by all this? Hey, what the hell——? Look here, I’ll have the law on you.”

“The law,” Clement sprang on him. “The law [Pg 264] is over there”—he indicated Gatineau. “That is a detective come to settle with you, my friend.”

As expected, Henry Gunning stumbled back at the mere threat of the law. Terror shone in his face.

Clement followed up his advantage. “We’re here for you, Henry Gunning. We know all about you and this plot against Heloise Reys. We know how you lured her out here, how you want to get hold of her and her million of money.”

“Then you lied when you bragged at Cobalt, my friend,” snapped Clement. “Do you want me to tell you all that you bragged of in the billiard parlor of Cobalt?” Henry Gunning shrank back against the bed. “I see you are recognizing we know. Well, understand fully that we’ve got all the evidence against you. The story of those silver mines, the details of how Joe Wandersun pretended to act as a bona fide agent, the way Méduse Smythe became the companion of Heloise Reys, the meaning of Adolf Neuburg behind it all. We know the whole foul plot, the love making, the robbing of that girl, with the aid of Landor at Revelstoke—her murder.”

“That’s a lie!” snarled Henry Gunning. [Pg 265] “There isn’t a murder in it. That’s a lie; that isn’t in it.”

There was a sudden movement from the corner. The woman moaned and fell against the wall. She had swooned—apparently. Only apparently.—As her body reached the floor her hands moved swiftly. Something flashed and spat. Clement had taken a step towards her. It saved his life. The bullet from a tiny pistol struck him in the fleshy part of the right forearm. He gasped in pain, staggered. Immediately things happened.

Gatineau had spun round at the sound of the shot. His attention for a fateful second was torn between the window, Gunning, and the woman. And Gunning hit him.

Gunning, unsteady, but still powerful, fell forward across the narrow gap between him and the unready detective. A great arm flailed, and his fist took the little man behind the ear. As Gatineau fell, Gunning fell on top of him, smothering him. Clement acted swiftly. He could not shoot because of Gatineau underneath. With a lightning gesture, he transferred his pistol to his right hand again, and grabbed at a chair. He made a stride forward.

A slim man was at the window. A slim man with one arm in a sling, but whose dark eye shone with steady purpose behind the sights of an automatic pistol.

There was a movement by the door. The light from it was darkened by some huge and bulky figure. Clement turned his head. Smiling, without the slightest vestige of emotion, and looking steadily not into his eyes, but over Clement’s shoulder, the mountainous Mr. Neuburg came into the shack.

Whatever Mr. Neuburg felt he hid it with the cold, enigmatic mirthlessness of his smile. But Clement knew that the great brute must be at a loss. Obviously, he appreciated the fact that if his opponent was here and not in Montreal, he must know far too much about Arthur Newman and his doings.

Clement realized this and meant to make the most of it. He must play for time. The three men in the canoe must have a chance to get to them, for, of course, they would have heard the pistol shot.

The woman came behind the young Englishman and took the pistol from his injured hand. She pressed the muzzle of her own small weapon into [Pg 267] his spine, just to show what any attempt to fight might mean. Then she stood aside. Henry Gunning stood up and away from the detective, who lay prostrate. He looked swiftly at the silent Neuburg, and then as swiftly turned his eyes away. He stared at Clement. He seemed to be puzzling over Clement. Siwash Mike left the window when Clement was disarmed. He came round into the room. He bent over the detective, his pistol held ready; but, satisfied that the little man was stunned, he picked up the automatic that had fallen to the floor and dropped it into his pocket. To make sure that Gatineau was not shamming, he kicked him sharply and savagely in the body. The prone man did not stir or groan.

Neuburg, after a speculative stare at Clement said, “You have blundered in on me again. You are clever, my exteriorly ingenuous young man. But not quite clever enough. However, clever enough to know that this is a very awkward situation for you.”

“Have you anything to say for yourself?” He wanted Clement to show his hand either by defiance or an attempt to temporize.

“I am afraid I want you to say something,” [Pg 268] said Mr. Neuburg with his smooth suavity. “Yes, I think I must ask you to give me a few explanations.” He waited. Again Clement did not answer. “Mr. Seadon, you are a worldly-wise young man; you are no fool. You will, I think, understand my position. There are certain facts I must have. I mean to have them.”

“I think you had better say something,” said Mr. Neuburg. His voice took on a curious purr.

“I am not a man who finds stubbornness agreeable. I will have those facts. Now, how and why are you here? Answer, you dog!”

As he spoke, the woman—perhaps something still feminine in her revolted against the horrors she thought bound to come—stepped to the table and picked up the paper Clement had put upon it. Neuburg read it through.

“A confession. Our bright Henry was to sign it, the girl Heloise was to read it, and all would be well. An ingenious plan, Seadon. A well-considered plan. You would have terrorized our backboneless Henry with threats. Perhaps you would have carried it through, for Henry is a cur. But you did not. I intervened. So far, then, that was your idea. But before——”

Clement, who had been watching Gunning’s face, observing the perplexity on it, said evenly, [Pg 269] “That certainly was my plan. But I changed it at the last moment. I was about to change it, that is, when you arrived. I found an unexpected ignorance in Henry Gunning. I found he knew nothing about—Nachbar.”

The big man’s hand moved upwards towards his breast in a startled and curious gesture. It was an instinctive defense against an unexpected blow. His breath came in a sudden sharp hiss. His eyes flickered to Clement’s face with a movement and with a light, startled, yet unfathomable. And no other sign did he give. Presently, “What is this talk about Nachbar?” he said, in a quiet, even voice.

Gunning said explosively, “This fellow said something about this Nachbar—and about murder. I don’t know what is meant.”

“They mean the same thing,” said Clement evenly, his attention keenly on the alert for any movement from the mountainous man, or Siwash, or the woman. “Nachbar—Albrecht Nachbar—is a murderer, Gunning.”

Gunning gasped, his eyes became wild. “What—who is this Nachbar?” he cried.

“You are speaking to him now,” said Clement. “Adolf Neuburg is Albrecht Nachbar—murderer.”

“A murderer!” cried Gunning. He shrank away from Neuburg, his face pale and working. “A murderer.” There was real disgust and horror in his tone. He was a real bad hat, but somehow that had touched to horror and disgust a clean streak in him. Then with a genuine anger he swung round on the big man. “Give him the lie, Adolf,” he shouted. “Fling the lie in his dirty face.”

Neuburg, or rather Nachbar, stood passive, his great face in an awful inscrutability. Only his right hand moved. It lifted, and its fingers caressed the flap of his coat pocket, caressed as if eager to get at something that lay in that pocket. Only when Gunning shouted once more, “Go on, Adolf, fling the lie in his face,” did he say, “Stop that, Gunning. Go on, Seadon. Go on.—Don’t stop at that. Let’s have all of it.”

He wanted to find out all Clement knew. He ignored Gunning’s horror and disgust. He was, no doubt, entirely confident of his supremacy over Gunning.

Clement, conscious of the play of that eager hand over the pistol pocket, said evenly: “Gunning, for reasons of his own, for reasons connected with Heloise Reys, this man has thought best to keep you ignorant of his real nature. He is Albrecht Nachbar who is wanted by the Oregon police for murder. He is careful not to deny it.”

“God!” breathed Gunning, his eyes fixed in [Pg 271] horror on Nachbar. “God—but you lie, he will deny it.”

“He won’t deny it,” said Clement, shooting at venture. “He won’t deny it—because he feels that, since I have unmasked him, it will be best for you to know what he intends to do to that girl, Heloise Reys.”

“Murder her! No—no; we aren’t going to do that. It’s a lie!” cried Gunning, shrinking in loathing.

“You are a clever young man,” said Nachbar to Clement. “Too clever. Go on.”

“You think he doesn’t mean murder? Ask him. Ask him if he hasn’t made up his mind to rob a rich young girl, as he made up his mind to rob the rich young man, Roberts of Oregon. Ask him if he didn’t plan to lure her to the wilds, just as he lured Roberts into the wilds. Ask him if, having planned to secure all her money through Landor at Revelstoke, as he secured all Roberts’s money in Oregon, he does not mean to kill her—kill her so that his robbery can be covered up, just as the killing of Roberts covered up that robbery.”

“It won’t look like murder. It’ll look like an accident. Just as Roberts’s death looked like an accident. A burst gun barrel while hunting, [Pg 272] Gunning—only Nachbar had seen to it that it would burst.”

Clement had a sudden flashing intuition. “Ask him about the motor boat, Gunning?”

Siwash Mike loosed an oath. The mountain of a man started as if stung. His mouth twisted in an ugly snarl. He made a step towards Clement. His right hand jerked to his pocket. The effect on Gunning was startling. That chance shot had exploded a definite fact in his mind.

“Motor boat,” he shouted. “That’s why you wouldn’t let me help.—Mending a perfectly sound motor boat. You liar! You—you Nachbar!”

“Out of the way, you dog. Out of the way!” snarled Nachbar, with a twisted mouth. His hand had flashed out of his pocket, and in it was a pistol. “Out of the way, you sot!”

At the first hint of violence Clement had dropped flat to the ground. The woman’s pistol snapped as he did so, and her bullet struck the planking where his chest had been. Nachbar and Gunning staggered in a wild tangle. The [Pg 273] shoulders of the huge man struck Siwash as, pistol ready, he jumped round to get at Clement. He was flung back. Even as he swayed under the impact, the little detective Gatineau, prone and overlooked on the floor, suddenly came to life. He became abruptly conscious. His arms went out and plucked at the half-breed’s ankles. Siwash went down with a bang. As he went down, Gatineau heaved himself up and forward with an astonishing strength and flung himself on the fallen man. Siwash screamed as Gatineau twisted his wounded arm, and his pistol clattered to the ground. Gatineau snatched at that pistol, and got it.

Gunning and the mountain of a man went in a long, wild stagger, across the shack. The table crashed as their writhing bodies smashed into it. They tripped and thudded into the wall. They stamped and wrestled clear, went in a writhe across the floor again. The woman failed to get out of the way. The fighting bodies struck her and she was knocked across the room. Then Gunning screamed. A huge, fat thumb was pressing, pressing with monstrous power, up under his jaw-bone beneath his ear. He screamed and wriggled to break away. Nachbar with his incredible mobility slipped clear. In the same movement his pistol flickered towards Gunning’s chest. A report and a scream sounded together, and Gunning [Pg 274] tumbled forward into the arms of the man who had shot him.

With his immense strength Nachbar flung the limp man from him and swept round to deal with Clement. Clement was ready. As the huge body bunched and the pistol hand jerked forward, Clement struck at it. As Clement had risen to his feet, he had grabbed the chair again, and that was what he struck with. The solid wood of the seat caught Nachbar’s wrist and arm, and with such force that the pistol was sent flying across the room. Nachbar bellowed and leaped to finish the young Englishman with his great hands. Clement dropped the chair in front of him.

His shins caught the flimsy structure as his huge body stumbled forward, and at the same time Clement landed with all his force on the big face. He struck again on the mouth, and then in the excitement strove to swing to the swaying chin with his injured right. He reached his mark, but the pain that shot through his arm was so exquisite that it both robbed the blow of its power and caused Clement to writhe. In that moment of suspension Nachbar, shaking himself like some giant beast that had been stung to rage by an insect, leaped on Clement.

They went down with a crash. Nachbar’s body caught the surface of the capsized table, and it split and broke under the fierce impact. Nachbar was on top. Clement strove to twist him off with [Pg 275] a Japanese wrestling throw, but the sheer weight of the man bore him down. His great legs were upon the Englishman’s body, his great knee was grinding down the injured right arm. A pair of huge hands were tearing away the Englishman’s left, were clutching at the throat.

Clement’s head was forced back and back until he felt his spine would snap. There was a cruel pressure on his gullet, and his blood was roaring in his ears. He felt that his body was slipping away into a deep and terrible abyss, and that as it slipped his strength was dropping swiftly away from him. The great body on him was grinding him down, crushing him down.

There was a thumping of heavy boots on the planking of the porch. Men were running and shouting. A great voice from the window yelled, “You—the elephant—shove your hands up—lively.”

More stampings. A voice shouted in the door, “Don’t shoot, Paul—t’ feller underneath.—That’s it, the butt.”

Nachbar jerked round and looked up. A man was upon him, his hand up, a pistol swinging by its barrel poised to strike. With his astonishing mobility, the mountain of a man was on his feet. His arm shot out and the threatening man thudded into a corner. The murderer was round at once, [Pg 276] springing in shack-shaking leaps of bewildering agility for the door that lead to the inner room. He reached the door, grabbed at the handle.

A Winchester banged from the window. Nachbar’s shoulders struck the door, burst it open. A rifle barked again, and the door crashed to in an echo of the shot.

There was a rush of feet across the room; the strong shoulders of two of the men from the canoe jammed together in its narrow length before they burst it open. Both men stopped dead, wheeled about.

“Gone!” yelled one of them. “Jumped clean through that window.” The three made for the door of the shack.

“One of you stay,” yelled Gatineau. “There’s the man an’ the woman to look to. The other two go after him, and shoot on sight.”

In a minute they heard the two crashing through the spruce on the trail of Mr. Neuburg.

VII

Clement, his head feeling bigger and more painful than any human head had a right to be, heaved himself from the floor, grabbed the pistol Neuburg had dropped, and made swaying for the door.

“You stop here, Seadon,” snapped Gatineau, as he handcuffed the woman (the other man was roping Siwash). “You can’t do anything outside. You can here. Gunning’s dying.”

So while the chase went on up the slope above the lake, Clement watched Henry Gunning die.

The fellow opened his eyes in a minute or two, stared dully at Clement, as though not realizing what had happened, and then suddenly he understood.

“Murder!” he choked. “I won’t have murder. I’m a swine, but I won’t have murder. No! ”

“Take it easy,” said Clement. “Don’t tear yourself to pieces. There won’t be any murder now.”

It was difficult to quiet the dying man, for, in his last hour, the clean streak in him had come out uppermost, and he was beside himself in his desire to prevent any hurt coming to the girl, Heloise Reys.

But he was quieted in the end. Suddenly he seemed to realize that he was about to die, and he ceased to rave and struggle. Abruptly he lay quiet.

“A fool all the time,” he said with a wry grin upon Seadon. “I muddled my life; I’m going to muddle my death if I’m not careful. Sit down beside me and listen. I’m going to straighten things out while I can.”

It was then that Clement heard the full story of the plot against Heloise Reys. It had been planned very much as he had thought.

Henry Gunning, a wastrel, had fallen into the power of Adolf Neuburg and his gang. One day Gunning had read in the paper a notice of the death of Heloise’s father. He had forgotten all about Heloise, but that paragraph had recalled their boy and girl affair, and, being the man he was, he had bragged, declaring that he might marry a millionairess if he chose.

Adolf Neuburg had in this way learned the whole story and seen its possibilities. He had at once begun to plot. He had arranged for the purchase of worthless mining claims, and had dictated the letter with which Gunning reawakened the girlhood emotions in Heloise’s heart. Then he had gone to England, bought out the old companion and seen that Méduse took her place, and so on through the story.

But the object all through was money, insisted Gunning. They had meant Heloise to sign away first the cash and securities she had brought to Canada, and then they hoped to get hold of the rest of the million. He was to make love to Heloise, even marry her to attain this end—but murder her, No !

He died on that profession of guiltlessness in the major crime. It had been impossible to argue with him, as well as useless. A muddler of his sort could not see the logical end to the plot. Could not see that the simplified end was to kill Heloise [Pg 279] rather than turn her loose penniless, as seemed to be Gunning’s vague idea.

And his ignorance of what was being done to the motor boat supported his contention.

Clement was about to turn to the imprisoned Siwash and demand the truth about the motor boat when there came a startling interruption.

From up the hill they heard shouts and shots. Gatineau and Clement instinctively dived towards the door. Something hit the shack with a resounding thwack.

“Neuburg’s come back,” shouted Clement. “Take the back. I’ll take the front.”

The shouts and shots redoubled. Then suddenly across the tumult they heard another sound. From the lake there came the quick, stuttering throb of a gasoline engine springing into life.

Away across the lake the big motor boat that had been at the stringpiece was shooting towards Sicamous. Behind it trailed the skiffs and canoes that had been tied up at the lakeside.

Clement shot out his arm and began firing. He was too late. The motor boat had gathered speed and was already covered by the trees.

CHAPTER VIII

They rushed to the water’s edge, as the two men who had been chasing Neuburg came tumbling down the slope through the trees.

“The feller’s an Indian!” they shouted. “Led us on a faked trail right up to the top, while he doubled back an’ made for the water. We only saw him when he’d got way out on it. Sakes, I wantter get that big feller just to cry quits.”

“No, we ain’t!” shouted another man. “There’s another motor boat—look!”

Indeed, the motor boat that had been left behind was the one they had watched Siwash and Neuburg tinkering with.

“Let’s have a look at it, anyhow!” cried one man, and he made a run at it.

“Not so fast!” snapped Clement, and, as the men stopped, bewildered—“Fetch out the woman [Pg 281] and the half-breed. Tell ’em to get into that boat first.”

Mrs. Wandersun was led out, Siwash following. She glanced round, hesitated when she saw there were no boats at the stringpiece. A hand urged her towards the motor boat.

“No nonsense! In with you!” snapped Gatineau, as he drew the woman towards the boat. She struggled.

“She’s crazy,” said Siwash, and with a forced calmness walked towards the boat.

“She isn’t,” Clement grinned at him. “How was she to know you hadn’t finished fixing it yet?” As Siwash turned, snarling at the trap into which he had fallen, Clement said to the men: “All right, get aboard and see what you can do with her—she’s apparently not quite ready for killing people yet .”

In five minutes he was looking at a dynamite cartridge, fixed cunningly near the gasoline tank. There was a time fuse by it, but not yet connected up.

“Yes,” agreed Clement, feeling sick. “That was to be the ‘accident’ in the wilds.”

“Sure,” agreed Gatineau. “Miss Reys was to be sent off in a hurry in that boat for something. Somewhere, when the time fuse expired—within sight of Sicamous, prob’bly—the dynamite would send up the gas tank. Boat and girl would just vanish before the eyes of men in a sheet of flame—a natural, brilliant, devilish accident.”

“By God!” he cried. “That man must not be allowed to get free! We’ve got to find him, Gatineau, and settle with him. We’ve got to get him.”

It was more than an hour before they were out on the lake, pushing towards Sicamous.

They did not go straight to that place. They had reasoned it out that Neuburg dare not go there. He would know that Sicamous was warned, and that only arrest awaited him.

They cut through the lake at their best speed, searching the shore on either side, swinging into little inlets and out again, in their search for the motor boat that had carried Neuburg.

A man in the bow shouted and pointed. They turned their eyes to the lakeside below a clearing. Piled high, with the boats she towed knocking at her rudder post, was the motor boat. Above the motor boat in the clearing was a shack. As they drove towards it, Gatineau rapped.

They made the shore; three of them piled out of their boat; two sat with guns ready for anything.

They ran to the shack, calling out, but nobody came to meet them. They hammered at the door post; there was no answer. They went in through the door into a living-room. It was empty.

Here they saw the trail of Neuburg. A cupboard had been forced and food taken from it, hurriedly, so that other food was scattered. On the table were two empty cartridge boxes, and several of the shells had fallen on the floor as the big man had emptied the cartons in a hurry. The telephone receiver dangled helplessly, and the wire had been snipped off short.

They pushed into the two bedrooms, one was stark empty, one seemed so, but Gatineau heard a whimper. Bending swiftly, he jerked a boy of ten from under the bed. Even as the little detective yanked the boy to his feet the kid pulled a gun, and only Gatineau’s agility saved him from a bullet in the stomach.

Clement grabbed the gun and shouted: “Here, stow that, sonny! You aren’t Buffalo Bill, you know.”

“I ain’t a bit afraid of you,” said the kid, pretending that what they thought crying was merely dust in his eye.

“No need, kiddo,” grinned Gatineau. “We ain’t the bad men; we’re just plain policemen.”

“Ho,” said the kid, visibly disappointed. Then he brightened. “That other feller wuz bad as bad.”

“Worse!” chuckled Clement. “He was a robber and a murderer, and everything.”

“Golly—an’ he might have gunned me any time, ’cos I was here, see? I didn’t run away.”

There was an uproar from the front of the shack, men shouting at each other, threatening. Clement and Gatineau went out. In the clearing was a wild-eyed homesteader, brandishing a club and threatening to brain the man they had put on guard. Again Clement played a soothing part.

“Easy on him, old son!” he shouted. “We don’t mean harm. We’re the police.”

“That’s right, pop,” said young Canada, leaning over the porch rail. “You stop being mad; there ain’t no call for it. I’m just putting things straight with these fellers here. Put up your gun, pard.”

The manly tone was smothered in a flutter of [Pg 285] skirts. A woman ran in from the scrub, yelling: “Jimmy! My Jimmy!” And Jimmy, the gunman, was in his mother’s embrace. A little girl and a smaller boy followed timidly.

Neuburg, they found, had run his boat ashore in the creek under the homestead while the man was back in the woods working. He had walked into the living room and held up the woman and her two youngest children.

“I was in the bedroom,” said Jimmy, the daring. “I saw what was what, so I nipped under the bed.”

Neuburg had stolen the food, packing it in his pockets, found the revolver, and stolen it and cartridges. Then he had ordered them out of the house while he spoke on the telephone. They had run straight to the husband.

The father interrupted angrily. “How could she hear? That’s why he drove my wife out.”

“Damn!” muttered Clement. “I’d give a hundred dollars to know who he called up on that ’phone, and what he said.”

“I keep on telling yer I was under that bed, an’ heard,” said Jimmy in contempt.

“Said something about things was all gone bust, and that he, this Lucas feller, must meet him at the Three Pins with all he could get hold of. Then he got out.”

“Three Pins is a difficult and little known pass. I know it. A hard journey, but it can be reached from here-and Revelstoke.”

“I’ve got to see him taken with my own eyes before I believe that. Also I want to do some of the taking myself. I owe Neuburg something. And then there’s Lucas ‘with all he can get hold of.’”

“I think it means £145,000 of easily negotiable securities and cash,” said Clement. “Remember The Chief’s wire. I’m going to see with my own eyes that Miss Heloise Reys does not lose it.”

III

A motor trolley jerked them up along the mountain track, and dropped Clement, the detective and two men at a little wayside station that seemed to be clinging by sheer strength to the rocks under the snow-clad crags.

A guide and horses met them, and they rode off along the mountain trails, skirting ravines and river gorges by paths that seemed to poise them on the lip of sickening drops. They climbed up and up until the air took on the nip of the everlasting snows. They pushed forward until they seemed lost in a Dantesque hell of bleak gray rock and somber spruce furred valleys.

When night came down, they camped fireless for fear of giving the alarm to the huge, ugly and indomitable rogue who must even then be pushing his way through the mountain passes in their neighborhood. They had time on their side. They knew they must be ahead of him.

In the chill mists of dawn they were up and away again, striking through the stark, craggy Valleys for the lonely pass under the Three Pins. Toiling up from the Arrowhead district, on the other shoulder of the range must be the shady bank clerk, Lucas. Would they be present at the rendezvous of the two criminals? Would they be there at the right time and at the right place?

It was noon before the guide pointed to a curious mountain with three sharp points, the Three Pins. They dismounted and pressed through the wild and rocky forests with infinite caution. Quite suddenly the guide put up his hand. They crept to his side.

He was a young man, lolling on a rock and smoking. He was dressed with a nattiness that was incongruous amid that bleak scenery. But beside him was a haversack, and his city-cut clothes showed evidences of rough wear. It was Lucas.

One of the men sighted his rifle on him, but Gatineau’s hand went out. He whispered:

They waited, watching the young man in that aching silence, in that almost startling clearness of air.

The young man stood looking about. The call sounded again. He grabbed his haversack and began to move.

“Neuburg’s here. That was his call,” he said. “He’s in hiding. He’s waiting to see whether Lucas’s movement draws anything.”

Lucas walked eagerly up the trail, with all eyes [Pg 289] watching him. There was no movement or sound on the mountainside above him. A minute passed. Suddenly they saw Neuburg standing above the trail.

He had slipped silently out of the shadow, and was standing quietly looking round. Lucas changed direction at once, and ran up to him.

Gatineau, too, began to move. The men with them spread out to form a half-circle about the little detective, who headed straight through the spruce, going with the skill of a trapper towards the big murderer.

They dipped to a hollow, rose to a point where they could see the two men. Neuburg was talking rapidly. As he talked he put his hand behind him, raised it with a revolver, and fired straight at Gatineau in cover.

Gatineau shouted and fell. Two shots rang out. Lucas fell dead and Neuburg began to run.

He dived straight for the bush, crashing the branches aside with his huge figure. In a moment he had plunged into the gloom. Clement was after him, and one of the men cut across to head the big fellow.

In front, Clement heard the crashing of the murderer’s passage, and even at times caught the back swing of the branches. Once he saw the brute, sighted and fired. Once a revolver spat and a bullet screamed close to his head. They scrambled into a rocky pocket and out again. Ahead there [Pg 290] came a sudden shout, the explosion of two guns close together, and a great scream of rage and fear.

Clement broke cover to see a man struggling in the great arms of Neuburg. Neuburg was trying to break the fellow’s back with knee and hands. Clement shouted and leaped forward. Neuburg turned, snarling like an animal, and flung his victim at the Englishman’s knees.

Clement went down, but was up and running again at once. They were among rocks now, heading for a small torrent that roared down the mountain side. Neuburg dodged in and out of the rocks making for the stream, and there was blood along his trail. That was slowing him; he was hit.

By the stream Clement got him in the open and shouted and fired. Neuburg turned and with blazing revolver came back.

He charged like a bull. His revolver spat once, twice, but already Clement had jumped to cover behind a tree. The revolver spoke again, and then the murderer snarled in rage, dropped it and came on with his empty hands. Clement fired at his legs twice, apparently missed, and then flung his own empty pistol at the oncoming brute.

It struck him in the chest, and he brushed it aside as though it had been a gnat. Then he closed with Clement.

They went down, Clement battering with his one useful fist at the gross face. Neuburg ignored all [Pg 291] blows and ground him back and into the earth, held him there, and felt blindly with his right hand for a piece of rock.

He found it and struck. Clement just had time to wriggle his head, and only his hat was crushed in. The great arm went up again with the huge, jagged splinter of stone. It poised, waiting its certain chance. Clement tried to struggle, but with knee and arm the giant man held him rigid. The arm with the rock heaved to strike.

Some one—the guide—came leaping straight from the blue at the poised Neuburg. The man simply took a header straight at the murderer. Head and shoulders and fists struck, and Neuburg went over. Clement wriggled up like a flash and flung himself on the huge brute.

They fought and squirmed to hold the bull-like creature down. He shook them off. They went at him like terriers, clutching at leg or arm. A great fist flailed out and sent one man backwards into the bush. Clement shifted and caught him round the neck. He found himself being lifted into the air. He clung tighter, the other man gripped with clawing fingers at a thick arm. The arm swung and shook and the man went into the bushes spreadeagled. The great body whirled and Clement found himself spun off against a rock.

He ran with a lurching step towards the torrent. They yelled at him to stop, to throw up his hands. He lumbered onward. When he reached the torrent, a man fired. Neuburg staggered, steadied himself, then jumped clear out into the boiling fall.

They saw him hang swaying amid the welter of white and angry water, his feet slipping on a slab of rock on the very lip of the fall. Then the giant arms were flung wide, and he toppled into the stream.

They saw his body just for one minute, turning over and over in the torn and angry water at the bottom of the fall, three hundred feet below. Then it was gone.

They found Gatineau, by the body of the dead Lucas, making the best of a flesh wound along the ribs.

“As you thought, Mr. Seadon,” he said, “Lucas skipped with the securities. They’re all here, £145,000 pounds worth of them.”

“Well, that point is cleared up,” said Clement. “We’d better head for Banff now, and Miss Reys.”

“ And Mrs. Neuburg, alias Méduse Smith,” grinned Gatineau, who had learned much from the wanderers. “I’m going to arrest one of the family, anyhow.”

CHAPTER IX

After the arrest of Méduse Smythe, tactfully carried out by Gatineau, Clement sought out Heloise.

On the terrace of the Arabian Nights Hotel at Banff, where the lawns go down in emerald under spruce to meet the shining turquoise waters of the Bow, and the mountains stand about to cup the beauty of the exquisite place, Clement found her.

He walked out amid that divine quiet that the slurring rush of the Bow falls only makes more delicate, and for a moment he was held by the glowing beauty of the place. Then he heard a quiet voice cry with a catch of gladness:

He turned and went to her as she stood against the miracle of a view, and it was minutes before they realized that, by the rights of things, they should not hold each other like this.

Then she stood away from him, blushing. Her eyes for a moment left his face and for the first time saw his arm.

“Oh, I’ve been guessing it since Quebec, and now that little detective has let me know. What a little fool I’ve been, Clement. I’m not fit to look after myself.”

“Hartley Hard.... But what sort of protection would be adequate for a little idiot like me?”

“I—I—I think my opinion of lawyers has improved enormously,” she whispered.

It really was not until the next day that they had a sensible discussion of all that had happened, and even that was inextricably mixed up with the plans of a honeymoon.

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