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 wasoccupied 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.
It was a bitter moment.
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 theright 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.
Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes.
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.”
“A lady!” cried Clement, stopping in his stride. “What lady?”
“Oh, the one that left this morning,” said the porter.
“The one that went this morning?” echoed Clement stupidly.
“Yes, the one that left for Montreal.”
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.”
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?”
“None, sir. She seemed to expect that you was going to see her.”
“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 touchedClement’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 theEmpress of Pragueby 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 waspowerful 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 theEmpress.”
“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 inwhich 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 ofthistrap, just as I managed to get out of the one on theEmpress—the diamond tiara trap.”
“Ah,” said The Chief, looking up, smiling with his lips, but his eyes keen. “Thereissomething behind it all?”
“There is; but first, how soon can I get to Montreal?”
“Talking to us won’t hold you up,” said TheChief with unexpected penetration. “You can’t go before the night train.”
“Isn’t there something before that—any means?”
“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’llbe 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 theImperial, 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.”
“To Montreal?”
“To Montreal.”
That finished the clerk.
“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 theEmpressrobbery case.... See here, there is a lady stopping off at Montreal onImperial 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 mighttrace 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’sauthority 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:
“Henry Gunning is present working at Cobalt.”
“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’llget a through sleeper on that. Cobalt it is, Mr. Seadon.”
“But Cobalt is an unhandy place to get at.”
“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.
He, too, had booked through to Cobalt.
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 wasominous. 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.
“Two?” asked Clement.
“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.”
“Anything through from Sicamous?”
“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 asthough it were the confidence trick. He’s a friend of Gunning’s.”
“Ah,” said Clement. “You’ve heard something about Gunning.”
“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 against him?”
“Nothing proven—to our knowledge, but his habits are bad, and his company shady.”
“Have you found out anything about Siwash Mike?” asked The Chief.
“Nothing.”
“Neuburg?”
“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.Abruptly he leaned across the breakfast table. “Did they say what he was wanted for?”
The young man looked at The Chief before answering. The Chief nodded.
“Murder,” he said quietly.
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.”
“Are there many men answering to the description of Mr. Neuburg?”
“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,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.
Clement walked away, but, always, he watched that 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 toXavier 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.”
“Not easy in a smallish town like Cobalt.”
“Then they’ll take her outside Cobalt.”
“But—but can they move her about at their willlike 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.
“By Gad,” he cried, “it is just luck after all.”
The little detective looked at him sharply. Clement answered that look by saying:
“From our brother Siwash’s antics do you feel that he thinksweknow he is on this train?”
“Why, no,” said the detective. “From the wayhe 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?”
“Why, to Neuburg—the gang.”
“Yes—he’ll lead us to them,” smiled Clement quietly. The detective looked at him, and then smiled in return.
“Say, that’s pretty snappy thinking. Tell me the idea.”
“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.”
“And Siwash Mike overhears it all?”
“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.”
“And I?”
“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 hillin 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.
“What if they do put another man on to shadow you?” the detective asked.
“We’ll have to deal with him—as the contingency arises,” said Clement grimly. “It is a risk we can’t avoid.”
“And we must beware of traps.”
“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 canunderstand 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,isthere 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 messagebut 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 cameanother, 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.”
[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.
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.”
“There may be gunning,” said Clement.
“He knows that. All he said was that the burghad 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.”
He rose and spoke to the genial and husky driver about this.
“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.”
“Ain’t exactly done tatting all me life meself,” grinned the driver.
“I guess you haven’t,” smiled Clement, lookingat 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 itbecame 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,lookat 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.
“Have they seen us?” asked Clement.
“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.
“Where are we? What road?” demanded Clement.
“I miss my guess,” said the driver, his eyes fixed warily ahead for the abrupt and surprisingtwists. “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,doye 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.
Ahead of them the red light of the rear lamp swerved and vanished.
“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.
“They’re moving away,” cried the detective, now by Clement’s side.
“They know the ground, hang ’em,” said Clement.
“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.
“I see it,” he cried. “That’s the place, for a certainty.”
“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 the detective.
“There!” cried Clement. “Straight ahead. Why, we’ve got ’em. We’re on top of ’em. We’ve got ’em sure.”
There was a sudden and appalling bump.
“Fer th’ love of Mike....” yelled the driver.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’rebogged.”
In the distance the red light dwindled and dwindled, and abruptly was lost.
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 settlesthem.”
Clement, in rage, tore at the door of the car, opened it and made to leap out.
The detective gripped his arm. The driver, leaning back over the seat, joined the detective in that grip.
“Here, Steve,” snapped the driver. “You quit that.”
“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 occiputtin 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?”
“But—but—man, we must do something....” cried Clement.
“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, goingaway left, Steve, turning their back on that old mine.”
“They’ve gone on?” gasped Clement, in a tone of despair.
“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 whentheypicked 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.
“They’ve circled,” said Clement.
“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,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.”
“Forty miles away from Cobalt,” gasped the detective Gatineau.
“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;there’s no need for you to walk in, I’ll send back another car.”
“I’ll come along,” said Gatineau.
“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 givethemselves 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,havegained 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 voicedhis ignorance, Clement swung round on him with an inspiration.
“Do you know a man named Henry Gunning?” he demanded.
“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?”
“He’s certainly that. The whole world’s asking after him.”
“What do you mean by the whole world?” demanded Clement in some excitement.
“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 is Neuburg and Joe Wandersun—the big man is Neuburg,” said Clement.
“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——”
“The two ladies,” said Clement quickly.
“Yep, the queen one, a real swell Jane, and the plain prune one. They made the burg to-day, andthey 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 bethefound 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.”
“I don’t see at all.”
“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’.”
“An’ the lady——?”
“But ain’t I bin tellin’ you all the time Henry was gone when she came in?”
Clement stared amazedly at the faint blur ofwhite 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?”
“They certainly are.”
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.