“To the mountains,” said Gatineau.
“Why?”
“Three Pins is a difficult and little known pass. I know it. A hard journey, but it can be reached from here-and Revelstoke.”
“Can we get there quicker than by following Neuburg’s trail?”
“Sure! But why worry? We can put a cordon round him. We’ve got him.”
“I’ve got to see him taken with my own eyes before I believe that. Also I want to do some of the taking myself. I owe Neuburg something. And then there’s Lucas ‘with all he can get hold of.’”
“Well, what about it? What do you think that means?”
“I think it means £145,000 of easily negotiable securities and cash,” said Clement. “Remember The Chief’s wire. I’m going to see with my own eyes that Miss Heloise Reys does not lose it.”
A motor trolley jerked them up along the mountain track, and dropped Clement, the detective and two men at a little wayside station that seemed to be clinging by sheer strength to the rocks under the snow-clad crags.
A guide and horses met them, and they rode off along the mountain trails, skirting ravines and river gorges by paths that seemed to poise them on the lip of sickening drops. They climbed up and up until the air took on the nip of the everlasting snows. They pushed forward until they seemed lost in a Dantesque hell of bleak gray rock and somber spruce furred valleys.
When night came down, they camped fireless for fear of giving the alarm to the huge, ugly and indomitable rogue who must even then be pushing his way through the mountain passes in their neighborhood. They had time on their side. They knew they must be ahead of him.
In the chill mists of dawn they were up and away again, striking through the stark, craggy Valleys for the lonely pass under the Three Pins. Toiling up from the Arrowhead district, on the other shoulder of the range must be the shady bank clerk, Lucas. Would they be present at the rendezvous of the two criminals? Would they be there at the right time and at the right place?
It was noon before the guide pointed to a curious mountain with three sharp points, the Three Pins. They dismounted and pressed through the wild and rocky forests with infinite caution. Quite suddenly the guide put up his hand. They crept to his side.
There beneath him sat a man.
He was a young man, lolling on a rock and smoking. He was dressed with a nattiness that was incongruous amid that bleak scenery. But beside him was a haversack, and his city-cut clothes showed evidences of rough wear. It was Lucas.
One of the men sighted his rifle on him, but Gatineau’s hand went out. He whispered:
“Not yet. Wait for Neuburg.”
They waited, watching the young man in that aching silence, in that almost startling clearness of air.
An hour, and suddenly the young man sprang up.
A bird call had abruptly sounded.
The young man stood looking about. The call sounded again. He grabbed his haversack and began to move.
Clement was impatient to get out at him; again Gatineau checked him.
“Neuburg’s here. That was his call,” he said. “He’s in hiding. He’s waiting to see whether Lucas’s movement draws anything.”
Lucas walked eagerly up the trail, with all eyeswatching him. There was no movement or sound on the mountainside above him. A minute passed. Suddenly they saw Neuburg standing above the trail.
He had slipped silently out of the shadow, and was standing quietly looking round. Lucas changed direction at once, and ran up to him.
Gatineau, too, began to move. The men with them spread out to form a half-circle about the little detective, who headed straight through the spruce, going with the skill of a trapper towards the big murderer.
They dipped to a hollow, rose to a point where they could see the two men. Neuburg was talking rapidly. As he talked he put his hand behind him, raised it with a revolver, and fired straight at Gatineau in cover.
Gatineau shouted and fell. Two shots rang out. Lucas fell dead and Neuburg began to run.
He dived straight for the bush, crashing the branches aside with his huge figure. In a moment he had plunged into the gloom. Clement was after him, and one of the men cut across to head the big fellow.
In front, Clement heard the crashing of the murderer’s passage, and even at times caught the back swing of the branches. Once he saw the brute, sighted and fired. Once a revolver spat and a bullet screamed close to his head. They scrambled into a rocky pocket and out again. Ahead therecame a sudden shout, the explosion of two guns close together, and a great scream of rage and fear.
Clement broke cover to see a man struggling in the great arms of Neuburg. Neuburg was trying to break the fellow’s back with knee and hands. Clement shouted and leaped forward. Neuburg turned, snarling like an animal, and flung his victim at the Englishman’s knees.
Clement went down, but was up and running again at once. They were among rocks now, heading for a small torrent that roared down the mountain side. Neuburg dodged in and out of the rocks making for the stream, and there was blood along his trail. That was slowing him; he was hit.
By the stream Clement got him in the open and shouted and fired. Neuburg turned and with blazing revolver came back.
He charged like a bull. His revolver spat once, twice, but already Clement had jumped to cover behind a tree. The revolver spoke again, and then the murderer snarled in rage, dropped it and came on with his empty hands. Clement fired at his legs twice, apparently missed, and then flung his own empty pistol at the oncoming brute.
It struck him in the chest, and he brushed it aside as though it had been a gnat. Then he closed with Clement.
They went down, Clement battering with his one useful fist at the gross face. Neuburg ignored allblows and ground him back and into the earth, held him there, and felt blindly with his right hand for a piece of rock.
He found it and struck. Clement just had time to wriggle his head, and only his hat was crushed in. The great arm went up again with the huge, jagged splinter of stone. It poised, waiting its certain chance. Clement tried to struggle, but with knee and arm the giant man held him rigid. The arm with the rock heaved to strike.
Some one—the guide—came leaping straight from the blue at the poised Neuburg. The man simply took a header straight at the murderer. Head and shoulders and fists struck, and Neuburg went over. Clement wriggled up like a flash and flung himself on the huge brute.
Another man limped up at a run and hurled himself into the wriggling mass.
They fought and squirmed to hold the bull-like creature down. He shook them off. They went at him like terriers, clutching at leg or arm. A great fist flailed out and sent one man backwards into the bush. Clement shifted and caught him round the neck. He found himself being lifted into the air. He clung tighter, the other man gripped with clawing fingers at a thick arm. The arm swung and shook and the man went into the bushes spreadeagled. The great body whirled and Clement found himself spun off against a rock.
The first man was at it again, but once more Neuburg was running.
He ran with a lurching step towards the torrent. They yelled at him to stop, to throw up his hands. He lumbered onward. When he reached the torrent, a man fired. Neuburg staggered, steadied himself, then jumped clear out into the boiling fall.
They saw him hang swaying amid the welter of white and angry water, his feet slipping on a slab of rock on the very lip of the fall. Then the giant arms were flung wide, and he toppled into the stream.
They saw his body just for one minute, turning over and over in the torn and angry water at the bottom of the fall, three hundred feet below. Then it was gone.
Mr. Neuburg was finished.
They found Gatineau, by the body of the dead Lucas, making the best of a flesh wound along the ribs.
“As you thought, Mr. Seadon,” he said, “Lucas skipped with the securities. They’re all here, £145,000 pounds worth of them.”
“Well, that point is cleared up,” said Clement. “We’d better head for Banff now, and Miss Reys.”
“AndMrs. Neuburg, alias Méduse Smith,” grinned Gatineau, who had learned much from the wanderers. “I’m going to arrestoneof the family, anyhow.”
After the arrest of Méduse Smythe, tactfully carried out by Gatineau, Clement sought out Heloise.
On the terrace of the Arabian Nights Hotel at Banff, where the lawns go down in emerald under spruce to meet the shining turquoise waters of the Bow, and the mountains stand about to cup the beauty of the exquisite place, Clement found her.
He walked out amid that divine quiet that the slurring rush of the Bow falls only makes more delicate, and for a moment he was held by the glowing beauty of the place. Then he heard a quiet voice cry with a catch of gladness:
“Clement!”
He turned and went to her as she stood against the miracle of a view, and it was minutes before they realized that, by the rights of things, they should not hold each other like this.
Then she stood away from him, blushing. Her eyes for a moment left his face and for the first time saw his arm.
“Clement!” she cried. “Your arm ... I did that?”
“You—never!” he laughed. “How could you?”
“I did—it was Neuburg?”
“Yes,” he told her. “But how did you guess that?”
“Oh, I’ve been guessing it since Quebec, and now that little detective has let me know. What a little fool I’ve been, Clement. I’m not fit to look after myself.”
“The little lawyer, Hartley Hard, suggested you needed special protection.”
“Hartley Hard.... But what sort of protection would be adequate for a little idiot like me?”
“He seemed to think marriage might meet the case.”
“Oh,” she murmured, blushing again.
“I think it a splendid idea myself. What do you think, Heloise?”
“I—I—I think my opinion of lawyers has improved enormously,” she whispered.
It really was not until the next day that they had a sensible discussion of all that had happened, and even that was inextricably mixed up with the plans of a honeymoon.
THE END
Popular Appleton Fiction
Absorbing Adventure and Romance