THE EYES IN THE NIGHT
THE EYES IN THE NIGHT
THE EYES IN THE NIGHT
A belated sense of humour was stirring in Bill Wilder as he passed on to the quarters he had selected for his occupation. The room, he felt certain, was that usually occupied by his invisible hosts. Convinced of their secret surveillance of his movements he believed they would surely witness his audacious usurpation of their private apartment. It was the thought of this that brought the smile to his eyes. He was wondering what form their very natural resentment would take, for he had no doubt whatever as to what would happen with the position reversed. Anyway, he felt he was playing a trump card for bringing them into the open, and that, at present, was the thing he most desired. He would chance the rest. Meanwhile further speculation was useless, and he shrugged his broad shoulders, and his smile vanished under his resolve. He was determined on a prolonged vigil. He would pretend sleep and—await developments.
That was his purpose. But he failed to reckon with Nature and a vigorous, healthy body. And, furthermore, he had forgotten the oppressive humidity which weighed heavily upon the faculties. He had also forgotten that he had been bodily occupied for something like eighteen hours of the endless daylight. So it came that within five minutes of flinging himself fully dressed upon the dishevelled bed he fell into a deep slumber of the completely weary.
How long he slept he never knew. He was dreaming chaotically. He seemed to be deeply concerned with a hideously misshapen mountain from the sight of which it was impossible to escape. It was lofty, and heavily snow-clad, and its fantastic shape continually changed, assuming absurd likenesses to still more stupid things. First it looked like his block of offices in Placer. Then it resembled the Irishman Mike, with flaming top instead of red hair. Then, again, it somehow flattened out to a burlesque of the barren surroundings of Loon Creek, only to leap again into the shape of a golden domed palace with a watch tower reaching far up into the clouds. The last kaleidoscopic variation it assumed was the huge head of a dark-faced man, crowned with snow-white hair that streamed down over shoulders completely hidden under its dense cloak, and with a pair of eyes flaming with a fire that became agony to gaze upon. It was the lurid horror of those eyes that finally startled him into actual wakefulness. And he found himself sitting on the side of his bed staring at something that sufficiently resembled the nightmare horror of his dream to leave him in doubt of its reality.
He passed a sweating palm across his forehead. It was a gesture of uncertainty. Then, in a moment, full realisation came, and he leapt to his feet and his challenge rang out vital and determined.
“Not a move!” he cried. “Move and you’re dead as mutton! You’re covered! An’, sure as God, I’ll drop you at the first sign!”
He moved a step forward. His body was half crouching, and his fully loaded automatic pistol was leading threateningly.
There was no movement in response to his threat and he remained just where his first step had carried him, while horrified curiosity, as he gazed on the spectacle framed between the silken curtains of the arched entrance to the room, replaced his urgency of a moment before.
It was a man and a woman. And they were standing side by side. They were both something diminutive. Particularly was this the case in the woman. The man was sturdily built, with lank, snow-white hair that reached from the crown of his head, and hung down upon his broad shoulders. A long, snowy beard covered his chest with such luxuriance that it almost seemed part of the mane that flowed down to his shoulders. But all this, striking as it was to the just awakened man, was quickly lost sight of in the painful vision of a pair of eyeless sockets that gaped at him, filled and surrounded with vivid inflammation.
The man was in rough clothing not dissimilar from that which Wilder himself was wearing. His sturdy body was coatless and clad in a simple grey flannel shirt, while his nether garments were of the common moleskin type. He was old, but how old Wilder could not estimate with any certainty. His eyelessness, and his snow-white hair and beard made the task impossible. One thing alone impressed the onlooker in those first startled moments. The man was blind, and his skin, in sharp contrast with his hair, was of a darkish yellow. In a moment he had realised the truth of his original estimate of the nationality of his unwilling hosts.
The woman at the blindman’s side was a quaint, pathetic little figure. She, too, was old, with greying black hair. She was clad in something in the nature of a silken kimono, and looked as fragile as a figure of exquisite porcelain. Her slightly slanting black eyes were steadily searching the face of the white intruder while she stood clasping the hand of the man at her side, in a manner suggesting motherly solicitude. There was nothing resentful in her gaze. It was simply appealing, troubled, appraising.
The whiteman’s order held them. They remained motionless, without a word or sign, just where they had been discovered. It was almost as if, like naughty children, they were awaiting the expected chiding following upon some escapade in which they had been found out.
Realising their submission Wilder’s attitude underwent a change. He dismissed his tone of sharp authority, but retained his threatening gun in evidence.
“If you’ve a notion to come out into the open instead of spying around in hiding I’ll put this gun up, and we can talk,” he said, with a look in his eyes closely approaching a smile. “You see, I knew you were around, and only took possession of your room in the hope of bringing you out into daylight. Guess you’ve nothing to worry with if ther’s no monkey-play doing. Well?”
He eyed them both searchingly while he spoke, but it was the queer little, troubled-eyed woman whom he really addressed. The painful fascination of the man’s terrible eyes had passed leaving behind only a feeling of nausea.
After the briefest hesitation the woman spoke. She spoke in good enough English with just the faintest foreign accent and occasional awkward twist in her phraseology. Her voice was low and infinitely sweet, and her whole manner suggested intense relief from some overwhelming burden of terror.
“We feared it was the man, Usak, come back,” she said. “He say he would come, and we look for him all the time. But you are white. Oh, yes. You are not the Indian that he is. You come like all those others who look for the thing this country has to give. It is so? Yes?”
With the mention of the Indian whom Wilder knew to have been the servant of the murdered Marty Le Gros there came a movement on the part of the blindman. It was a gesture, sudden and almost forceful. And the hand that made it was that which the woman beside him was grasping. He half turned as though about to speak. But he remained silent, obviously restraining himself with difficulty.
Wilder saw the movement. He realised the man’s sudden disquiet. And he understood. A feeling of elation swept over him. These people feared the coming of Usak. These two strange, shy creatures in their far-off secret home. And Usak had threatened them with his return. Why?
Suppressing his elation Wilder smiled down at the woman, so helpless, so appealing in the terror she was unable to conceal.
“No,” he said almost gently. “I’m not Usak. I’m just a whiteman with two companions. Guess they’re white, too. You see, we came right on this place of yours without knowing about it. You don’t need to be worried. But I got to make a big talk with you before I quit. And seeing ther’s not a big diff’rence between day an’ night in this queer country do you feel like making that swell hall of yours below and sitting around for that talk? Do you? Both?”
Wilder’s gentleness was the outcome of an irresistible feeling of pity for the frightened woman. It had nothing to do with the thing he had in mind. The name of Usak was uppermost with him now, and he knew that one, at least, of these strange figures was in some way deeply connected with the ugly riddle it was his work to solve. His chivalry refused to associate the woman with it. It was different, however, with the man for all his terrible sightlessness. The man replied to him immediately and his voice was harsh and cold. Its tone was wholly uncompromising.
“We can talk,” he said shortly.
Wilder’s whole manner hardened on the instant. And his answer came sharply, and his tone was no less uncompromising than that of the other.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Lead the way down. And don’t forget ther’s a ‘forty-five’ gun right behind you all the way.”
Bill Wilder had long since learned the lessons of a country in which chance seemed to be the dominating factor of life. His hard schooling in the wide scattered goldfields of Yukon Territory had forced the conviction on him that chance was a better servant in this northern country than hard sense. And he knew now that sheer chance had flung him stumbling upon something that, if not actually the heart of the mystery of the murder of Marty Le Gros by the Euralians, was at least no mean key to it.
At the woman’s mention of the Indian, Usak, his mind had leapt back to the story which George Raymes had been able, however inadequately, to piece together from his old police reports. Usak, he remembered, was the husband of the squaw who had been murdered. These two people feared his coming so that they completely hid themselves at the approach of strangers. Usak hadthreatenedthem with his return. Therefore he had visited them before. For what purpose? They were frightened for their lives of him. Why should they be? Usak’s squaw had been murdered by—Euralians.
Surveying the sturdy back of the white-haired man, blinded, helpless, being led by the pathetic, devoted woman at his side, as he shepherded them to the hall below, he remembered once long ago, in his chequered career in Placer, to have seen a man whose eyes had been gouged in a bar-room fight. He remembered the hideous spectacle he had been left, and he knew that the man he had just discovered had endured the same terrible, inhuman, treatment. Usak? Was that the source of the terror he had inspired?
Reaching the hall his hosts took up their position standing near the centre, stone-built fireplace. They had faced about so that they confronted him, and Wilder understood the woman had simply obeyed the man’s unspoken command.
The harsh voice of the blindman jarred on the quiet of the room.
“You are an intruder,” he declared, his eyeless sockets turned unerringly on the whiteman’s face. “You invade our home unbidden. You threaten us with your gun unprovoked. You say you are a whiteman. We are helpless. I cannot even see you, and my wife is defenceless. Well?” He shrugged with infinite contempt. “You demand talk with us. Go on.”
Wilder’s impulse was to retort sharply. But he restrained it. Where there should have been pity for a blindman living out a darkened life in these far-off mountains there was only antagonism and instant prejudice. He understood how it came well enough. Instinct as well as swift conclusion warned him that behind those eyeless sockets there dwelt a mind driven by a nature something evil. For the moment, however, he must adopt conciliation. Any other course would, in all probability, defeat his ends. So his tone became that of easy moderation. He laughed.
“Guess I’m all you reckon, sir,” he said. “Yes, I’m an intruder, and I need to pass you a hundred apologies. But what else could I do? Anyway, the best now would be to hand you the meaning of the thing I’m doing. You see, I’m out looking for things. The sort of things this queer valley looks like handing out. I’m on a big prospect, and these hills look to be full of the things I want. This is the second year I’ve been on the trail, east, and west, and north, and now—well, I guess it hasn’t been for nothing.”
“Oil? You’ve found the oil this valley is full of?” The blindman’s question came sharply, but without alarm. His tone had lost something of its harshness, and Wilder was satisfied. With deliberation, and almost ostentatiously, he put his automatic pistol back into his hip pocket. And he knew that the quick eyes of the woman were watching his movements and conveying the story of them voicelessly, through her hand clasp, to the man. Then he moved over to the chair which was turned about from the bureau, and flung himself into it.
“Maybe,” he said. Then he indicated the couch which stood nearby to a tall carved wooden screen. “Won’t you sit?” he went on pleasantly. “It’s not for me to offer you a seat in your own house, but—” He broke off with a light laugh. “Maybe we’ll be quite a while talking.” His whole manner had assumed the cordiality he intended. There was a moment of hesitation. Then, without a word, the woman led her charge across to the dusty couch. But she did not move directly across. The couch stood opposite where they stood yet she led the man making a deliberate detour and Wilder was puzzled. Then, glancing down at the floor, he realised something which had hitherto escaped him. A large ugly stain of brown was splashed on the polished flooring.
There was no mistaking it. He recognised it instantly.
It was unquestionably a blood-stain, and by its extent he judged it to be blood from a mortal wound. His questioning gaze sought the two queer figures at once. The woman had carefully avoided it, and he interpreted her action in the only way possible. She evidently understood the origin of that stain, and repugnance inspired her movements.
They sat themselves on the couch side by side and Wilder went on as though nothing had distracted his attention. He turned his chair so that he faced them.
“Yes, ther’s oil in this valley,” he said. “My two friends reckon there’s enough oil to feed the whole world. But I’ve got scruples,” he laughed, “for all you may be guessing the other way. Say, before I get busy farther up the creek I’d be glad to know just how we stand. You’re here on an oil play? And I’m not yearning for trouble. Is this oil game your play? Have you a concession? Am I butting in on a big commercial proposition that’s already established? I’d be glad to know, Mr.—”
Wilder broke off invitingly. Yet, for all there were signs of the mollifying effect of his attitude in the man, several moments passed before a reply was forthcoming.
At last the snow-white head inclined affirmatively.
“You have scruples,” he said. “You desire not to butt in. Yet you invade my house. You ransack it. You treat it so as it is your right to do these things. You threaten with your gun when I come forth.”
He shrugged. But this time it was without any display of feeling. He was calmly questioning, and his attitude displayed a suspicion of puzzlement.
Wilder suddenly squared himself in his chair.
“Here,” he cried. “Let’s be frank. My name’s Wilder. Bill Wilder. I’m a gold man first and foremost. After that, why, I guess I’m just as much an adventurer as most of the folk of this Northland. That’s all right. I’m not out to rob a soul of anything he’s a right to. And as for the things you guess I had no right to do, just think a bit. Here I find a house without a sign of life. You choose to hide yourselves up. Well? A derelict house here in the Arctic? Why, I guess I’ve as much right to search it as to search for anything else this country’s got to show us. As for the gun play it seems to me a man has every right to protect himself when folks sneak in on him in the night. That’s my answer to all that’s worrying you. And my name, as I said, is Wilder. Who are you?”
There was a sweeping bluntness about the challenge that should have been irresistible. Wilder waited for the answer he demanded while reserving a trump card to play in case of refusal.
There was no change in the blindman’s attitude. There was no movement. His yellow face remained sphinx-like.
“Maybe I should not blame you,” he said, in his harsh fashion. “You make a good case. But—I am blind.
“Here,” he went on, in imitation of the other, with a slight gesture of his disengaged hand, “I will not tell you the things you ask. But I tell you some other. This valley is the great oil bed of these mountains, and the oil is being tapped. If you touch on this oil you will never leave the valley alive. Those who are working it have been doing so for many years. It is their established right, for no one has denied them in all the years. No one has come near. They find it and work it. It is equity. I have no place in this thing. I am—blind.”
Wilder’s eyes hardened. He glanced from the man to the woman. In the latter’s eyes was a look of renewed apprehension, almost of pleading, and he felt that she was waiting for the effect of her man’s words.
“Then you fear to tell me—who you are?” he asked quietly.
“I fear nothing.”
“Nothing? Yet you fear the coming of this man you call—Usak. You fear the sight of every stranger?”
Wilder’s gaze was on the anxious face of the woman. His words were for her benefit. But they had an unexpected effect. The blindman suddenly unbent.
“It is as I said,” he declared, his tone moderating but assuming a bitterness of real feeling. “I fear no one and nothing. I am blind. I am completely alone, but for my good wife. I live through her hands, her eyes, her will. What is the worst that may happen? Death? It is nothing—now. I am a dead man to the world—now. I am blind. Once it was not so. Once in this home, here in this valley, there were servants who worked at my command. There were many interests in my life. Now it is changed. The light has gone out, and with it have passed those who obeyed my will, those who depended for their well-being on my word. It is the way of such service. Rats never fail to quit the doomed ship,” he cried bitterly. “I have nothing to fear. Least of all—death.”
“Not even—punishment?”
Wilder’s hazard came instantly. It was well calculated. The blood-stain on the floor was within his view. Then there was the story of Marty Le Gros, and of Usak, who inspired such terror in the woman.
The yellow man started. It was as if an effort of will was striving for vision through his empty sockets. For a moment he made no answer, and headlong panic had returned to the woman’s eyes. It was the latter that removed the last shadow of doubt from Wilder’s mind.
“Punishment? For what?” The man spoke in a low, fierce voice.
Wilder thought swiftly before replying. He understood that he was right up against the stone wall of the yellow man’s determination. There was only one course left him. If he could not climb it he must batter it to ruins. His earlier hazard was a small enough thing compared with the decision he took now. He rose from his chair and stood towering over the diminutive pair on the couch. His eyes were coldly compelling, and his whole manner was carefully calculated for its effect upon the helpless little woman, whom he could not help pitying.
“Here,” he cried sharply. “Let’s cut this fencing right out. You refuse to pass me the name you are known by. You refuse to tell me the meaning of this home hidden beyond human sight in a valley that’s full to the lips of oil. Well, I guess I’ll hand you the story you’re scared to hand me. You reckon you don’t fear a thing. Psha! You can’t get away with that play. It wouldn’t leave a two-year-old kid guessing. I’m quitting now. I’ve brought you into the open, an’ I’ve located in you an answer to a hundred guesses. I’m quitting now, but you won’t be left unwatched. You won’t get a chance to make a get-away. You’ve had mostly fifteen years to do that, an’ I don’t know why you stopped around with the man, Usak, threatening to come right back on you. Maybe because you’re blind and deserted. Maybe because you’ve a mighty big stake lying around. Maybe it’s because ther’s other queer folk of your own race, who, for their own reasons, don’t fancy letting you quit. It don’t matter. What does matter is I’m quitting now because this is Alaskan Territory. I’m going down country to get things fixed with the United States authority to have you brought right into our country to tell us how the missionary, Marty Le Gros was murdered by the Euralians who people these hills, and who I guess are nothing but a crowd of Japanese pirates out grabbing in whiteman’s territory. You’re scared of nothing, eh? Can you face that? Can you face the return of the man, Usak, whose wife was murdered at the same time? Can you tell us why they were murdered, and what happened to the great gold ‘strike’ that poor darn feller made? I’m quitting now just to fix this thing. An’ my boys’ll see you make no get-away meanwhile. And as for your threat of the Euralian pirates working the oil on this valley, that cuts no sort of ice with us. We’ve been fighting these folk a year an’ more. You see, we’re officers of the Canadian Police.”
The imagination, the sweeping grasp of the clear-thinking mind that had lifted Bill Wilder from the depths of the whirlpool of humanity that had early flooded the gold regions of the North, to the highest pinnacle of success in a traffic wherein vision and courage were the chief essentials, had served him now far better than he knew.
The first spoken words of the little Japanese woman in her terror had welded a hundred links together into a connected chain such as no amount of ordinary labour in investigation could have supplied him with.
There was no question except the given names of these people left in his mind. There were convictions that perhaps needed corroboration to reduce them to concrete facts. But that caused him no worry. It had been said of Wilder that half a story was all he needed, he could always supply the rest. It was so in the present case.
He left the house without a doubt remaining. This place was the home of the Euralian organization, or had been before that fantastic figure of avenging had left the man he had just parted from with eyeless sockets. What scenes had been enacted there he could only guess at. But there it was, safely hidden, with its watch tower, the heart of a natural fortress located with the profoundest judgment for the purposes desired. And he was convinced, that, at any rate, the man who still lived his darkened life there was surely one of the instruments, if not the actual instrument, through which the man, Marty Le Gros, had met his death. He was one of the Euralians, and, like as not, the chief organizing head, since deposed through his physical disability by his lawless subjects. Furthermore he had finally satisfied himself that he had achieved the thing he had set out to accomplish. The Euralians as they called themselves were definitely of Japanese origin.
As he passed into the surrounding woods the immensity of the truth he had stumbled upon came home to him in an almost overwhelming rush. The Yellow Peril which the world had talked of, feared, and politically discussed for over a decade, had suddenly become a reality to him. Here was just one little branch of it. And the manner of it gave point to the subtle, secret fashion in which it was being developed. Imagination was a-riot. These people were Japanese. They were probably a hardy people from northern Japan, under the control of a carefully chosen leader of capacity and knowledge, such as he realised the man he had just left to have been before his disaster of blindness. They were imported through the far-hidden northern inlets to the country on which, leech-like, they had battened. They came, a sea-faring race, over the northern waters, and set about the simple task of possessing this far, almost unpeopled territory, and extracting its wealth for their own service. And what became of that wealth, mineral and animal? What of the furs which they stole, or traded with the Eskimo? What of the oil of this valley? What of the unguessed wealth of coal deposits which were believed to exist? The gold, too, and the hundred and one other raw materials which littered this far-off, unexplored land?
The northern seas; the great harbours of the northern coasts, lost from view of the few scattered white folks, hidden amongst rugged, snow-capped hills, and more than half their time completely icebound. It was simple, so very simple to the north-men of Japan, who were born sailors. Doubtless a steady traffic among those hidden inlets went on, and disguised freighters passed to-and-fro between the Alaskan coast and the remoter ports of the land of Nippon.
And meanwhile the penetration of this whiteman’s country was steadily progressing. Who could say the extent of that penetration? It was southern California over again. And the invaders were only waiting, waiting for the day to dawn when—
The breaking of bush just behind him as he passed on towards the creek brought him to a halt. He faced about alertly and his hand shot into the pocket where his automatic pistol lay ready for use. But it was withdrawn empty almost immediately. The diminutive woman with the slanting, terrified eyes broke from the undergrowth, something breathless from her exertion, and stood before him.
His eyes were smiling with a kindliness he made no attempt to disguise at sight of her. The memory of her devotion to her sightless man was uppermost for all he had fathomed the meaning of their presence on the river. She seemed to him a gentle creature, hopelessly condemned to a task of utter self-sacrifice. And he deplored the painful terror under which she suffered so acutely. The shame and pity of it all touched him deeply.
“Say, mam,” he said, in a re-assuring tone, “you took a big chance coming that way. I’m guessing for the thing that set you worrying to come up with me on the run in a heat liable to hand apoplexy to a brass image.”
But there was no re-assurance in the urgent gaze that looked up into his face. The poor creature’s bosom heaved with obvious emotion. She opened her almost colourless lips to speak, but no sound came. Instead she closed them again and glanced behind her fearfully.
Wilder understood. He had supposed her to be simply a messenger. Now he realised she feared discovery by the blindman she had left behind her.
Presently she turned to him again, and thrust one thin, delicate hand into the bosom of her gown where it remained while she flung a terrified inquiry at him.
“You go so to make it that they come and take him, and kill him, for the killing of the miss—the man, Le Gros?” she shook her head violently. “No, no!” she cried passionately. “He not kill Le Gros! They must not killhim. Sate kill Le Gros, and Usak come and kill Sate, and all the men. He fight to kill my Hela, too. But he put out his eyes. You are officer police. The great Canadian Police. You know good what is right, what is wrong. I tell you all. I tell you all the truth. My Hela not kill no man. It our dead son kill this man, an’ the other. I know. Hela tell me. He tell me all.” The smile had passed from Wilder’s eyes as he listened to the almost breathless, headlong rush of the poor creature’s desperate appeal for her man.
“Did he send you to say this?” he asked, knowing well that the man could not have inspired such acting in her.
“Hela send me?” The woman’s eyes widened. “No! Oh, no! If he know I am come then I—I know no more. Hela send me? No! I come for him. I come so you know all the thing he will not tell.”
“Why?”
“Because I die if you send and kill my Hela,” she cried, with a world of despair in the simple declaration.
Wilder stood for a moment thinking deeply. He turned from the pathetic figure which somehow distracted his judgment. And he knew that he must decide quickly and make no mistake.
Finally he turned to her again. And the smile had returned to his steady eyes.
“Tell me so I can understand,” he said gently. “Tell me all there is to it, just the truth. Tell me who you are, and what you’re doing around this valley. And if you show me the whole thing right, and if your—Hela—did not kill, then you need have no sort of worry he’ll come to harm through me. You get that? Pass me the story, and make it short. But it’s got to be sheer truth.”
The woman’s hand remained buried in the bosom of her gown, and now she raised the other, and, a picture of submission and humility, she stood with it pressed over that which was hidden in her bosom. Her black eyes were less fearful, her lined cheeks were less drawn. Her whole appearance suggested the passing of something of the weight of terror under which she had been labouring.
She began her story at once. She spoke quietly, in contrast with her recent emotion, and in the curious broken phraseology which denoted her rare use of a tongue she otherwise knew well enough.
She told him that her man was Count Ukisama—Hela Ukisama—and that she was his wife, Crysa. She told him that he was the head, and original organizer of the people who were called the Euralians. She told him they came, as he had already guessed, from Northern Japan, and were engaged in a great traffic in furs with the Eskimo, which were secretly exported in whalers from the far northern harbours of the country. But she warned him this was not the whole trade. There was oil and coal. But most desired of all was the gold which they had found in these northern valleys for years.
Close questioning, as she proceeded, quickly showed Wilder that she was completely ignorant of the methods by which this traffic was carried on. She knew nothing of the hideous murder and piracy which was the whole story of these yellow marauders. Obviously she was told by her husband only those things he considered were sufficient for her to know.
When she came to the story of Marty Le Gros, and his gold “strike,” it was clearly different. Here she was apparently aware of every detail, and she made it plain that after the coming of Usak, and Ukisama had been so inhumanly blinded, she had forced her husband to tell her the true meaning of the terrible thing that had happened.
It was a story that lost nothing of its awful significance from her broken and sometimes almost incoherent way of telling it. He learnt how Ukisama and his son Sate had heard of Le Gros’ “strike,” and how they strove by every means in their power to jump in on it. How they had searched Loon Creek from end to end, and finally abandoned their search convinced that the missionary had given that as the locality simply to mislead. Then at once they became angry and were determined to make him yield them his secret.
She told him of the descent upon the mission at Fox Bluff, where they meant to wring his secret from him, and how they had utterly failed through the impetuosity of her son, Sate, who, when the missionary prepared to defend himself with his guns, fired a reckless shot which mortally wounded him. Hela, she declared, deplored the act as ruining his chance of learning the man’s secret. Then she declared that the squaw of the man Usak had interfered, and again the hot-headed Sate had taken the matter into his own hands and shot her down.
“And your Hela, this boy’s father, just looked on while this was done?”
Wilder’s question came sharply when the woman narrated this incredible detail of her story with an air of entirely honest conviction.
“No, no,” she cried, and hastily launched a torrential defence of her blinded charge.
She denied flatly that her husband desired to harm a hair of the head of anyone. But Sate was a wild youth whom none could tame, and least of all his father. No. When his father found what had been done he became scared, and it was then he did the only thing left him. He fired the mission in the hope of hiding up his son’s crime. Then she said they hastened away, and came up the river with all speed. But they had forgotten Usak, whom they had not encountered. She did not know how it came, nor did her husband. But Usak knew them. He knew their home here in this valley, and he set out, and, by means they did not understand, he arrived at this house before them.
Then she detailed, with painful emotion the things that happened with Usak’s coming. How he, a great, fierce Indian man, stole in on the house and murdered their three servants—the rest all being away with her husband. The last one, after being mortally wounded by the Indian’s hunting knife, managing to reach her in the sitting hall to warn her. He fell dead on the floor in a pool of blood before her eyes. In her terror she had hastily fled to the secret cellars which were under the house, where they stored their trade in gold. And so she remained until Usak had passed from the house of death. Then long afterwards, she learned from Hela that he passed down the river and waited for their return with the canoe. He waited hidden on the bank. And he shot every man in the canoe as it passed, including their son Sate. He spared none. Not one—except her husband. And so her husband made the landing where she was awaiting him.
Then came the final tragedy. The Indian was in hiding. He had kept pace with the boat, and when Hela landed he leapt out on him to complete his terrible purpose. He fought not to kill but to blind. And he succeeded. He left her man alive, but with his eyes lying on his cheeks. And, before he went, he warned them what he had done was sufficient for the time. But that later, after a long time, he would return and kill them both.
“And he will come,” she wailed in conclusion. “For he is an Indian, and his squaw was killed by our son. He will come. Oh, yes.”
“Yet you stay here? Why?” Again came Wilder’s sharp question. He had steeled himself against the pity which the woman’s unutterable despair inspired.
The little creature shook her head in complete helplessness.
“How we go?” she asked. “It cannot be. He is blind. We are alone. The men leave us now he is blind. They trade for themselves. Hela no longer has power. They laugh in his face if he make order for them to obey. No. And they will not let him go either. They keep him here. They know. If he go back to Japan then another is sent who sees. Then these men no longer trade for themselves. No. They will not let him go. They keep him here. They pass us food. They let them not know in Japan the thing it is. An’ so they work the oil, and coal, and gold. And they travel far for the furs. And so it is. And then sometime Usak will come again, and then—and then—”
Suddenly she withdrew the hand which had remained all the time she was telling her story in the bosom of her dress. It was grasping a large, folded paper. She held it out, literally thrusting it at Wilder, who took it from her with gravely questioning eyes.
“What is it?” he demanded, and curiosity had replaced the sharpness in his voice.
“The plan of the gold. The gold of this Marty Le Gros. It is for you. I give it. So you will make it that Usak not come again to kill. You, an officer police.”
Wilder opened the paper and glanced at it. A clear exact drawing was inscribed on its discoloured surface. It was a map in minute detail, and he re-folded it quickly while his gaze searched the urgent eyes raised to his.
“You give me this?” he said, in a quiet fashion that revealed none of the surge of excitement with which he was suddenly filled.
“Yes.”
The little woman who had called herself Crysa Ukisama suddenly flung out her hands in an agony of vehement appeal.
“I give it. I take this thing from its place. This bad thing, which is evil to us. He not know I take it. Oh, no. Sate find it in the house of the missionary before they fire it. And he, Hela, not give it up. No. Yet he cannot see it. He cannot find this place. He say, too, it is evil, and no one must see it. So I hide it all this long time, and keep it. But I know. So long we keep it this Usak sure come back an’ kill us. It is for that bad paper he come. It make him come. You take it. You have it. And maybe you give it Usak so he will not come back. You officer police. You know this man? You say, Hela Ukisama send it so he not come an’ kill my Hela? You think that? You make him not come? Oh, I go mad when he come bimeby. Yes. He kill my Hela. Same as he kill all other man. I know. Oh!”
With her last wailing cry Crysa buried her face in her delicate, ageing hands, and a passion of emotion racked her frail body. Wilder looked on in that helplessness which all men experience in face of a woman’s outburst of genuine grief. He waited. There was nothing else for him to do, and, presently, the distraught creature recovered herself.
Then he reached out, and one hand came to rest on the silken-clad shoulder.
“You’ve told me the truth as far as you know it, my dear,” he said very gently. “You’ve been hit hard. Darn hard. So hard I don’t know just what to say to you. But you’ve done well passing me that story and that paper, and I’m going to do all I know to help you. See here, I’m not going to hand you out all sorts of rash promises, but, if there’s a thing I can do to stop that Indian man, Usak, getting around back here to hurt you, why, I’m just going to do it. Go right back to your man now. He’s been pretty badly punished. So badly it don’t seem to me he needs a thing more of that sort this earth can hand him. And as for you you’ve deserved none of it. Go back to him, and you have my given word, that, just as hard as I’ve worked on the thing the p’lice have sent me out to do, I’ll work to see no harm comes to you from this Indian man. So long.”