“It says nothing about a dangerous illness.”
“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?”
The other letter contained a few lines only. They ran:
“All clear. Have seen Landor at Revelstoke. Break your journey there for signatures, etc. Be as clever as you are, my dear, for you are to have a shock at Sicamous. Play up. The Englishman who does not look brainy is safely interned at Montreal.”
“All clear. Have seen Landor at Revelstoke. Break your journey there for signatures, etc. Be as clever as you are, my dear, for you are to have a shock at Sicamous. Play up. The Englishman who does not look brainy is safely interned at Montreal.”
There were no initials even, and the message was written in block capitals.
“Bold,” said Gatineau, putting the message down.
“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 lastmoment. 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.”
“But how can they get money out of her—how keep her unsuspicious?”
“How did Nachbar plan to keep Roberts of Oregon from giving evidence?”
“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——”
The fear was realized. In the afternoon The Chief’s wire came. It said:
“Heloise Reys deposited sum £20,000 cash and securities extent £120,000 in Montreal Branch Dominion Consolidated from England before leaving that country. Same time opened account £5,000 cash Revelstoke branch. Week ago authority in own handwriting to transfer all fundssecurities Revelstoke branch. Most securities easily negotiable. New message. Neuburg is Nachbar. Warrant being issued.”
“Heloise Reys deposited sum £20,000 cash and securities extent £120,000 in Montreal Branch Dominion Consolidated from England before leaving that country. Same time opened account £5,000 cash Revelstoke branch. Week ago authority in own handwriting to transfer all fundssecurities Revelstoke branch. Most securities easily negotiable. New message. Neuburg is Nachbar. Warrant being issued.”
Of the whole of that pregnant message one passage, and one alone, stood out with a terrible significance.
Neuburg is Nachbar!
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 Sicamousnowto find out.”
“Now?” gasped Gatineau.
“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?”
“With a car, easy. There’s one due.”
“Get that car.”
“But to rush right in like this. Is it wise—safe?”
“I don’t care. We’ve been passive too long, anyhow. Come along. Find that car. It’s our turn to attack.”
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 afew 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.
“Miss Reys?” asked Gatineau in a sharp whisper.
“Yes—and that she-scoundrel, her companion.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 haven’t seen us,” said Clement.
“No, they certainly haven’t,” said Gatineau. “All the same——” he began, and he realized Clement’s intent gaze and stopped, and smothereda 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 sheasks for the message she is expecting—and does not get it?”
“Hell,” said the little detective explosively.
“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’tI?” 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 staring blankly at each other in the swaying car.
What could they 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 askfor 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?
Gatineau said “Hell” again, and then he said, “She’ll wire, sure.”
“Or ’phone,” said Clement.
“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.”
“You think she’d wire?”
“Sure I think she’d wire,” said Gatineau, his face brightening a little.
“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 pocketwireless sets would be very handy just now.”
“Got it,” shouted Gatineau.
“Got what, you little train jumper?” said a large, genial man coming into the saloon.
The little detective all but leaped at the superintendent.
“Walt, have you a train telegraph set in this car?” he cried.
“Good Lord!” said Walt. “What’s the joke?”
“I’m asking—have you?”
“Of course I have,” said Walt. “What’s the answer?”
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.”
“It may save a murder,” said Clement, watching the big man.
“Holy Mike!” cried the big Walt.
“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:
‘Wire Méduse Smythe Banff Springs Hotel as follows: All clear. Have seen Landor Revelstoke. All will be well. Don’t communicate him. Will let you know to-morrow or next day when you can come on here. Wait. No reason anxiety. Englishman who does not look brainy safely interned Montreal.Arthur Newman.’”
‘Wire Méduse Smythe Banff Springs Hotel as follows: All clear. Have seen Landor Revelstoke. All will be well. Don’t communicate him. Will let you know to-morrow or next day when you can come on here. Wait. No reason anxiety. Englishman who does not look brainy safely interned Montreal.Arthur Newman.’”
“Do you think that will answer?”
“It’ll answer fine—if she’s not suspicions.”
“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?”
“Rely on him. Walt, we’re ready if you are.”
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 thesaloon and began working the telegraph instrument. “Through to Sicamous,” he said.
Gatineau pushed the slip forward, “There’s your message.”
In a surprisingly short time the young man said, “They’re O.K.ing.”
“Ask them to repeat,” said Gatineau.
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.
“Five minutes,” smiled Walt. “That’s how it’s done, Mr. Seadon.”
“Yes, you people make the check-mating of rogues seem child’s play,” smiled Clement, and he went to his bunk almost with serenity.
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 clothesand 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:
“Arrived Banff. No message from you. M. S.”
“Blocked that, of course,” explained Cager.
“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.”
“What time?” asked Gatineau anxiously.
“About five.”
“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 from along the lake?”
“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.”
Gatineau was back in half-an-hour, his face was puzzled.
“Some news, Mr. Seadon,” he said. “Lucas—that’s Siwash, they don’t know his real name,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.”
“What!” cried Clement.
“Sure thing. Cousin Henry Gunning—he’s lying at death’s door.”
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 thissudden 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,” said Gatineau.
“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 ofgetting 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 healthyease 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.
Undoubtedly Gunning—neither of the other two men by the waterside were.
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.
“What are they doing?” he asked. “What are they up to in that boat?”
“The three of them there, an’ the woman,” said Gatineau, as they pushed out their boat again. “Three to face.”
“We’ll see,” said Clement. “When we get there—well, we’ll see.”
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.
“The earth might have swallowed them up. Not a sign of them.”
“And the woman—and Gunning?”
“Not a sign of them. Gone from the porch.”
“They’ve seen us. They’re taking all precautions.”
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, partlyto 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 ofcities 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.”
“Say—out here—pore feller.”
“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.”
“But—but it’s turrible infectious,” said the woman, at a loss.
“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 youstay there. Don’t you take no risk. I has to notify any risk of infec’ion.” She turned and went swiftly into the shack.
Clement and Gatineau were out of the skiff and up the bank in a flash.
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,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.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.
Gunning shakily got up. “Who th’ hell are you?” he demanded thickly.
“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 lawis 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.”
“Lies! Lies!” cried Henry Gunning. “You don’t bluff me.”
“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.”
“Murder!” said Gunning in a sharp voice.
“The murder at the hands of Neuburg, or Newman, or Nachbar.”
“That’s a lie!” snarled Henry Gunning.“There isn’t a murder in it. That’s a lie; that isn’t in it.”
“It is in it.”
“Murder. The same sort of murder as Nachbar did in Oregon.”
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.
“Drop it!” snapped a voice. “Drop that chair!”
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.
Clement dropped the chair.
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.
Mr. Neuburg said, “Sophie, take his pistol.”
The woman came behind the young Englishman and took the pistol from his injured hand. She pressed the muzzle of her own small weapon intohis 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.”
He waited for Clement to answer. Clement did not answer.
“Have you anything to say for yourself?” He wanted Clement to show his hand either by defiance or an attempt to temporize.
Clement unsatisfyingly said, “Nothing at all.”
Mr. Neuburg blinked at the invisible thing across Clement’s shoulder.
“I am afraid I want you to say something,”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.”
Clement did not answer.
“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!”
“Oh, no,” said Clement. “I’m not going to answer.”
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,“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.”
“I was speaking to Adolf,” said Gunning, snarling at Clement.
“Albrecht,” said Clement evenly.
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 inhorror on Nachbar. “God—but you lie, hewilldeny it.”
“Go on,” said Nachbar with a deadly evenness. “Go on, Seadon.”
“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.”
“Kill her—murder Heloise,” said Gunning in a whisper.
“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,Gunning—only Nachbar had seen to it that it would burst.”
“It’s a lie! It’s a lie!” shouted Gunning.
“Ask him.”
“It’s a lie! How could they kill her! How would they murder her?”
Clement had a sudden flashing intuition. “Ask him about the motor boat, Gunning?”
And the shot in the dark struck home.
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!”
He jumped forward and faced the big man.
“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!”
Gunning flung himself upon him.
There was chaos in that flimsy shack.
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. Theshoulders 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 Gunningtumbled 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 witha 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.”
“I’ll get hit if he fires,” Clement’s mind registered.
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,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.
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. Youcanhere. 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.”
He hoped that was the truth, although Neuburghadgot away.
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 tokillHeloiserather 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.
What was being done to the motor boat?
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.
“Christopher!” yelled Gatineau. “They’re shooting up the shack.”
“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.
With a yell Clement flung himself onto the porch.
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.
He could not hit Adolf Neuburg, who was steering it.
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.”
“You won’t,” said Clement. “We’re marooned.”
“No, we ain’t!” shouted another man. “There’s another motor boat—look!”
“Heknew that wasn’t any good,” said Clement, “or he’d taken it.”
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 womanand 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.
She screamed.
“Get in,” said Clement curtly. “We’re in a hurry.”
“No!” cried the woman. “No!”
“Shut up, you fool!” cried Siwash.
“No nonsense! In with you!” snapped Gatineau, as he drew the woman towards the boat. She struggled.
“It’s murder!” she shouted. “You know it’s murder!”
“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 peopleyet.”
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.
“The hand of Nachbar,” said Gatineau, holding up the cartridge.
“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.”
Clement, almost physically ill, shook his fist at the lake.
“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’vegotto 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.
“Heck! See the reason? He landed here. There’s a telephone.”
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.”
Young Canada swelled visibly with pride.
“Golly—an’ he might have gunned me any time, ’cos I was here, see?Ididn’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 ofskirts. 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.
“Then you didn’t hear who he called up on the ’phone?” said Gatineau.
“I was under the bed——” began Jimmy.
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.”
“Give ’em to me, then,” said Jimmy.
“What’s that?” gasped everybody.
“I keep on telling yer I was under that bed, an’ heard,” said Jimmy in contempt.
“Magnificent!” shouted Clement. “Who did he ring up?”
“A Revelstoke number. Ast fer a feller named Locust.”
“Lucas!” shouted Clement. “What did he say?”
“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.”