Josephine Stone was startled from her reverie by the parting of the shrubbery down by the island shore. Five tall, powerful-looking Indians sprang into view.
In the lead was a ghastly figure—the Indian Medicine Man who had so startled her in the trail yesterday.
A face more sinister than his would be difficult to conceive. Dark, almost to the blackness of an African, his features bespoke evil cunning and a sense of power that was made the more disconcerting by the livid red gashes on the cheek-bones and by the brilliant jet-black eyes around which the whites showed garishly. Straight, lank black hair fell to his shoulders, where row upon row of glistening white wolves’ teeth were arrayed. He wore no head adornment save a single eagle’s feather stuck in a band of purple at the back of his head.
“Henry!” Josephine Stone called to her Indian man-of-all-work. The latter and his sister came out of the house and took places by her side, but she could see they were quaking with fear.
The quintette from the woods came to an abrupt halt before them. For the moment Josephine Stone felt reassured on noting they carried no arms. The weird figure in the foreground bowed low, while his four companions stood motionless as carved statues.
“Wonderful white lady,” he addressed her in low, guttural tones whose enunciation was perfect. “Ogima Bush, the Medicine Man, brings this message: It is the will of Ogima’s master that the white lady go from here.”
In her trepidation and bewilderment, Josephine Stone could scarcely find words to reply. “I do notunderstand,” she faltered. “Am I—ordered off this island?”
The Medicine Man bowed again. “It is the will of Ogima’s master,” he repeated. “The white lady is to go from here with Ogima. No harm will come to her.”
His eyes flamed upon Henry and his sister standing by her side, as he addressed them sharply; commands in the Objibiway tongue that were like flying knife-blades.
Like galvanised automatons, Miss Stone’s servants moved away and marched down to the waterfront.
Their treacherous behaviour brought out the spirit of the girl. For the moment, in her disgust, she forgot her own perilous predicament. “Cowards!” she cried after them, “to be frightened by a cheap fakir.
“As for you,” and she turned her flashing eyes upon the Medicine Man, “go back and tell your master the white lady says he can go—to the devil!”
White with anger she swayed, a beautiful figure of defiance—a fragile white woman, alone, mocking a powerful savage. The Medicine Man’s head went up, his black eyes gleaming admiration—and something else, something that burned into her very soul in its ravishing masterfulness. His lips parted and from them came a sibilant gasp.
Next instant he stepped forward; a swift, panther-like movement. She sprang out of his grasp and swift as light sped back through the cottage door. From a handbag just inside she snatched out a small automatic.
She whirled the pistol into his face. “Now, you get out of here,” she cried, “or I’ll—shoot to kill!”
Ogima Bush paused. But instead of leaping back, he drew himself to his full height and calmly folded his arms, the faintest traces of a smile about his mouth as he looked down into the muzzle of the deadly little gun. “If wonderful white lady shoot,” he said calmly, “she see a man die.”
In that moment, for all his wicked hideousness, the Indian was magnificent. He was facing death, gambling on a one remote chance that she could not thus deliberately slay him.
Josephine Stone hesitated, her finger trembling at the trigger. She never exactly knew how it happened so quickly, but in the winking of an eye the red man’s left hand flew out and closed over her wrist and fingers. The automatic spat harmlessly past his cheek out into the open and was flung from her hand to the floor. She felt herself whisked from her feet as lightly as if she had been a child. She scratched and tore at his face and throat impotently as he leaped through the doorway and raced across the island to the beach.
Josephine Stone screamed and screamed again. He made no attempt to stop her; his low, mocking laugh was her only answer. But over his shoulder she saw that her cries had had the desired result. Five mounted policemen standing in astonishment by their tent on the hill up the lakeshore sprang forward and tore down toward the island.
Ogima Bush with his burden stepped into the stern of a big rowboat, and at his command two of his husky bucks bent over the oars and made the craft fairly shoot across the intervening gap to the mainland. The others of the party had apparently crossed previously.
The bow of the boat was barely beached when Ogima Bush leaped out into the shallow water with the girl. As if by magic the Indian oarsmen disappeared into the curtain of the woods. The Medicine Man followed, tearing through the trees and dense growth as swiftly and skillfully as a flying moose, at the same time protecting her so that not even a branch scratched against her face or caught in her garments.
Far behind she could occasionally catch sounds of thefloundering efforts of the pursuing policemen. Twice she tried to cry out to attract their attention, but all her strength seemed to have left her and it was all she could do to ward off a swoon. He seemed to carry her with as great ease as he might a babe, and she had to admit to herself with a certain deference and respect.
The crashings of the policemen through the bush behind them grew fainter and fainter and finally were lost in the distance.
Presently Ogima Bush stepped out upon a winding man-wide trail. He stood listening a moment, then gave vent to three calls like a crow. An answering “caw, caw, caw” came from the right just ahead. The Medicine Man plunged forward.
Another turn brought them to what was to Josephine Stone more familiar territory. They were on the trail that led across Solomon Creek to the foot of the cliffs of Nannabijou. She saw that they had come by a more difficult but much shorter route than the one by which she and Louis Hammond had come up the day previous. At the approach to the creek bridge four Indians stepped out each holding a handle of a crude sedan built of poles and cedar boughs. Muttering low commands in the Objibiway tongue, the Medicine Man placed Josephine Stone on the cross-seat fashioned between the two main poles. The girl recognised the folly of offering further resistance to her captors; her only resource now, she knew, was to await a strategic moment for escape. At a grunt from Ogima Bush the carriers plunged forward and across the bridge with their burden, the Medicine Man striding behind them.
The young woman experienced a distinct sense of relief at being free from the encircling arms of the grisly Indian. She now had opportunity of scrutinising the four carriers. They were not any of them the sameIndians as those who had accompanied the Medicine Man to her cottage. Each of these men wore a single eagle’s feather in his hair, similar to the one affected by the Medicine Man. The girl remembered that the single feather was the insignia of chiefship and that no red man save a witch doctor or headman of the tribe dared venture into the zone of the Cup of Nannabijou, whose black cliffs frowned menacingly upon her from above.
Josephine Stone’s feelings were a mixture of wonder and apprehension as the strange-looking party crossed Solomon Creek, toiled up the trail and finally debouched into the passageway in the cliffs that led to the tunnel she and Hammond had visited.
In the interim she had time for cool reflection. Rescue was for the present beyond question, away up in these wild hills, and she knew any attempt on her part at escape would be equally hopeless. It would be quite as futile to attempt to gain information as to the object of her abduction from her sombre captors. It suddenly struck her that her visit with Hammond to the water-sealed entrance to the Cup of Nannabijou might have had something to do with her present plight. She knew the Indians looked upon the vicinity of the Cup as forbidden ground. The priests of the mystic region might be determined to have an explanation of the trespass, or worse still, be intent on punishing the offenders. Acey Smith’s reference of the day before to an enemy whom he seemed to fear might molest her during his absence recurred to her. No doubt the superintendent had been well-intentioned when he had insisted that she leave the island with him. He might have had his own good reasons for being mysterious about it, and now she hadugly proof of a real danger he probably had in mind.
Her reflections were cut short by the sudden entrance of the party into the gloom of the tunnel, down which they carried her carefully to the point where it opened out on the rocky brink of the roaring mountain torrent. The bearers paused and let the sedan down on the four short posts that served for legs. Not one of them spoke or committed a motion. She glanced backward. Had it not been for the blinking eyes of the men behind her, they could have represented figures of bronze. Ogima Bush had disappeared.
Her eyes were momentarily blinded by a wicked green flash of light that illuminated the passageway, and with it came a deep gonglike alarum from above.
There was a vibrating, thundering sound, and with its advent the waters in the stream channel began to drop; dwindled swiftly to a mere trickle and finally disappeared entirely except for the moisture retained on the smooth-worn rock of its bed.
Amazement was still upon Josephine Stone when she heard Ogima Bush utter a guttural command at her side. He had reappeared as silently as he had dropped out of sight and now walked with a firm hand to the side of the sedan as the bearers carried it down the stone steps to the bed of the stream.
They moved only about fifty or sixty yards, around a very abrupt curve, when they came to a stop opposite another short flight of steps leading to a tunnel through the cliffs similar to the one by which they had entered the stream-bed below.
Once in the tunnel, Ogima Bush again disappeared. Josephine Stone heard the gonglike alarum, the roar of released torrents, and the waters went sweeping down the channel they had just emerged from.
Just how the stream was diverted from and returnedto the portion of its course that formed a section of the passageway up into the Cup she was curious to understand. She fancied that a dam or shut-off was manipulated by some one in charge above on signals sent by means of the gong.
In the weird novelty of it all the girl almost forgot her own precarious situation; that she was the captive of a lawless Indian magician, whose cunning, wicked face was an index of the unscrupulous, ruthless soul that lay behind the black eyes whose whites showed with such savage garishness. Furthermore, for the moment, the fact that she knew nothing of whom she was to be taken before or the fate that might await her had ceased to weigh heavily upon her mind. The adventurous side of it and curiosity to know what was the object of it all engrossed her more.
With a suddenness that made her eyes wince they moved out from the semi-gloom of the tunnel to the bright sunlight of the open.
They were on the inside of the Cup of Nannabijou.
Josephine Stonegasped involuntarily at the restful beauty of the scene that lay before her.
It was like a bit of some fantastic fairyland cached away up in the hills, surrounded on all sides as it was by what seemed an unbroken and impregnable wall of black cliffs.
To her left and occupying almost half the area inside the Cup right up to the cliffs back of her, where its overflow escaped through a narrow opening, reposed a mountain lake like a silver-grey mirror reflecting the walls of the Cup on the further side in absolute clarity of detail. To the right, from the point by which the party had entered, the land rose at a gentle grade till it reached the foot of the walls of rock on that side and the farther end possibly three-quarters of a mile away. Back of the clear area of green sward at the lake-front was a great forest of glistening white birch trees making a natural background for a landscape picture indescribably perfect in the dull gold of the morning sunlight.
But it was the vast green plot up which the carriers were transporting her over a winding, gravelled walk, bordered to either side with shrubs and small electric light standards such as are used in city parks, that most amazed the young woman. Miniature fountains, built of amethyst encrusted rock, were set out here and there in little green “islands” isolated by means of linkedcircles branching out at regular intervals from the main gravelled path.
Before them, in the centre of the great lawn, stood a great rambling building, constructed of unbarked cedar, with screened verandahs and odd-looking little towers at its corners. Some little distance from this château was a smaller building and before it on high, white-painted poles were what were unmistakably wireless aërials. Heavy copper wires carried up on a series of poles from a point back in the opening of the cliffs indicated that somewhere in the cascades formed by the overflow of the lake a hydro-electric plant was located, whence the current was brought for light and power to this strange habitation in the heart of the wilderness.
Once Josephine Stone looked back into the face of Ogima Bush. On the instant she thought she caught a quizzical, amused expression on his swarthy visage, as though the Medicine Man were actually enjoying her bewilderment. But his features relapsed as quickly into the grim, stoical lines they habitually held, so that only the wicked eyes above the livid red gashes in his cheeks seemed alive and human.
As the party approached the château a plump, middle-aged woman with a kindly, beaming face came out on the verandah and down the steps to the walk.
It was Mrs. Johnson, Miss Stone’s companion.
The Indians eased down the sedan, and, as Miss Stone stepped out, quickly carried it away to the rear of the château, Ogima Bush striding away with them.
“Josie!” cried the elder woman as she embraced the other. “I was really beginning to think something had happened.”
Bewildered, the girl looked into the face of her friend. “Happened?” she echoed. “I should say somethinghashappened. I never dreamed of meeting you here.”
“Why Josie, dear, what’s wrong? Didn’t you send word for me to come yesterday morning?”
“I send word? I never sent any such word: I didn’t know I was coming myself!”
“Well, for the land’s sake! They came after you had gone away with Mr. Hammond yesterday morning and told me you were moving right away back to a bungalow in the mountain. Mr. Smith said—”
“Mr. Smith—the superintendent? Was he there?”
“Why, yes, Josie. It was he who suggested that it would much facilitate matters if I came here first to see that the Indian help set the bungalow in order. He was awfully nice about it, and they took me around the other side of the point in his motorboat. Then the Indians carried me up in that sedan to the entrance you came through to-day.”
“Well!” It was all Josephine Stone could say for her pent-up indignation. So this was Acey Smith’s work!
She saw through it all now. He had thought she would immediately accept his suggestion yesterday morning and come up to this place; so sure had he been, that he had lured Mrs. Johnson up here while she was out with Louis Hammond. Then—then when she had refused unless he explained, he had hired that hateful, horrible Indian and his band to carry her off by force. When she next saw Acey Smith—well, he’d know a piece of her mind about it!
But the elder woman was proceeding: “When the afternoon passed and you didn’t come, I began to feel worried, Josie, until word was brought up by one of the Indians that you couldn’t come till this morning. I was a little nervous in that big house all alone except for those Indians, but they seemed ready to do everything for me and I kept the electric lights going all night. Really, dear, it’s a wonderful place. Like something you’d readabout in a story-book—old, old furniture, great big rooms and huge fire-places and wall mirrors. And away off in one wing is a library full of queer books, and back of it again is a laboratory such as scientists use. But it’s locked up and you can see through the glass door that there’s dust over everything and it hasn’t been used for years.”
But Josephine Stone was too exhausted by her exciting morning’s experience to talk, let alone go about exploring the house. Her limbs seemed trembling under her as she entered the door. The reaction of a sleepless night and the events of the morning were commencing to tell on her. So, directly after Mrs. Johnson had procured her a hot cup of tea, she went direct to the room in the western end of the building which the elder woman said had been set aside for her. She flung herself on the bed without troubling to even take her shoes off, and pulling the coverlet over her dropped off to sleep immediately.
It was two hours later—almost eleven o’clock—when she awoke, quite refreshed. There was a light tapping at her chamber door. She leaped from the bed, adjusted her rumpled hair by the glass and smoothed out her skirt. She opened the door to find Mrs. Johnson in the hall accompanied by two Indians bearing a hamper. The Indians, at Mrs. Johnson’s direction, carried the hamper into the room and departed.
To her delight, Miss Stone found it to contain, neatly packed, her wardrobe from the cottage at Amethyst Island as well as her toilet articles and other personal effects.
“That awful-looking Indian and the two that just went out brought it,” explained Mrs. Johnson, which setJosephine Stone pondering over the sagacity which the wily Ogima Bush must have employed to revisit the island and safely spirit away her belongings under the very noses of the police.
While she was dressing, Miss Stone told the elder woman as much as she thought it policy to tell her of the events in connection with her forcible removal from Amethyst Island to the Cup of Nannabijou.
Mrs. Johnson listened with growing amazement. “I had thought—in fact, I was sure—that it was an arrangement between you and Mr. Smith,” she gasped. “I had no idea—”
“Oh, it was—in a way, pre-arranged,” hastily replied the girl. “But it was not entirely according to what I had planned. Do you think there is any way we could make our escape—at night, for instance—if we found it necessary?”
Mrs. Johnson shook her head emphatically. “This place is surrounded by an unscalable wall of cliffs,” she said. “There are but two openings; the one you came in where they turn the waters of the lake in by means of some gate operated by electric power and another tunnel through the cliffs down to the edge of Lake Superior on the northwestern side.”
“Why couldn’t we get out the latter way?”
“Because, Josie, it is merely a tunnel going down to the edge of the big lake or an inlet from it. That’s the way they get in their supplies for this place from the boats, but the upper end is closed by great, heavy double doors which are kept securely locked. They have some system of signals by which the Indians here are notified when a boat docks at the mouth of the tunnel.”
“And isn’t there any one in authority here besides those Indians?” insisted Miss Stone. “Are you surethere are no other buildings in the Cup besides these?”
“There are none that I have seen trace of, and I have heard no one giving orders except that frightful Ogima Bush. But,” and Mrs. Johnson lowered her voice, “Ihavefelt every hour I have been in this place that there is some one or something one never sees or hears—”
Her words were cut short by a hissing, crackling disturbance that suddenly broke loose in the upper air outside.
Mrs. Johnson reassuringly placed a hand upon her companion’s arm. “It is only the wireless, dear,” she explained. “It has sputtered away like that a couple of times since I’ve been here, but who operates it, unless it be one of the Indians, I have not been able to find out.
“Oh, yes, I had almost forgotten to tell you,” she added suddenly, “that hideous Indian Medicine Man seems to be hanging around outside to see you about something.” She went to the window and peered out. “He’s gone at last,” she observed. “He had been waiting around out on the lawn over there since he and the other two brought your belongings. I asked him if there was any message he had to leave; but he only made a noise in his throat like the snarl of a wild beast and walked away.”
It was a few moments later that Josephine Stone, while walking down to the shore of the little lake, was suddenly confronted by Ogima Bush.
He bowed low, holding in an extended hand a folded note.
Wonderingly, the girl accepted the missive which was addressed to her in a firm spencerian hand. When she had opened it she read with amazement greater still:—
Dear Miss Stone:—This is principally to set at rest any fears on your part as to your personal safety. No harm can reach you where you are, and at most you will not be asked to remain there for more than a few days.Believe me, it was not part of my plan that you should have had to go through the disagreeable experience that befell you this morning, which, for reasons I hope to be able to explain later, I was unable to prevent without endangering your interests. Circumstances promoted by others over whom I had no control did that.If there is any detail for your comfort or convenience which may have been overlooked, please advise me. The bearer of this note, Mr. Ogima Bush, is absolutely trustworthy so far as the affairs of my friends are concerned. Mr. Bush will therefore safely convey any message you may have for me before I leave this afternoon for the east. Yours to command,Acey Smith.
Dear Miss Stone:—This is principally to set at rest any fears on your part as to your personal safety. No harm can reach you where you are, and at most you will not be asked to remain there for more than a few days.
Believe me, it was not part of my plan that you should have had to go through the disagreeable experience that befell you this morning, which, for reasons I hope to be able to explain later, I was unable to prevent without endangering your interests. Circumstances promoted by others over whom I had no control did that.
If there is any detail for your comfort or convenience which may have been overlooked, please advise me. The bearer of this note, Mr. Ogima Bush, is absolutely trustworthy so far as the affairs of my friends are concerned. Mr. Bush will therefore safely convey any message you may have for me before I leave this afternoon for the east. Yours to command,
Acey Smith.
“You wait here.” Josephine Stone addressed the Indian, who stood with eyes averted to the gravel walk.
“Un-n-n-n ugh,” he gutturalled. “Ogima wait.”
She hurried back to the château and returned with a pencil and some sheets of paper. Seating herself on a little rustic bench, she three times started a reply to Acey Smith’s note, but each time failed to find words coldly expressive of her contempt for the man who could knowingly allow her to suffer the indignities she had met with that morning.
Finally she tore all the sheets into little shreds and flung them angrily to the ground. Into the sinister face of the Indian there came a look of actual apprehension as she arose from the bench.
“Tell Mr. Smith I have no answer for him!”
The Medicine Man pointed to the torn bits of paper on the walk. “Maybe Ogima tell Big Boss white lady make words many times and throw away.”
Miss Stone’s eyes were blazing as she stamped herlittle foot on the gravel. “You tell him what I told you to tell him—nothing more!”
The Medicine Man quailed before the white wrath of the girl, a ridiculous, crestfallen creature for the moment in his savage trappings. “Un-n-n-n, Ogima tell him what white lady say—no more,” he answered supinely with a hand above his head as though to ward off an expected blow. “Big Boss maybe get heap mad; tell poor Ogima he lie.”
“I hope he beats you within an inch of your life!”
The Indian drew himself up to his full height at that.
“No hit Ogima Bush,” he declared pompously. “Mister Smid Big Boss of camp; no boss of Ogima. Un-n-n-n, Smid no boss Ogima!”
“Well!” There was a wealth of biting sarcasm in the girl’s tones. “Then who is Ogima’s boss, pray?”
“Ogima’s boss same boss as Big Boss—same boss as Mister Smid.” The Indian was looking straight down into her eyes. His wicked black optics softened in a flash that transformed him, transfixed her with its intensity.
He placed his right hand over his left breast as he said it in tones scarcely above a sibilant whisper: “Ogima’s boss is J.C.X.”
With another low bow, the Medicine Man whirled on a shoe-packed heel and strode swiftly away up the walk in the direction of the water-locked gate of the Cup of Nannabijou.
A few minutes later the girl heard the gong in the cliffs announce his departure.
WhenLouis Hammond went away from the City Club after his conference with Norman T. Gildersleeve he was convinced of two things. The one was that Gildersleeve had not told him the entire truth. There had been a furtiveness about the demeanour of Gildersleeve that irritated Hammond: furthermore, there had been the acknowledged duplicity of Winch in passing himself off as a United States consul, not to mention Gildersleeve’s veiled insinuations as to Josephine Stone’s connection with the North Star. To Hammond’s way of thinking, these and other elements of Gildersleeve’s methods did not “hang” very well. The other conviction was that the North Star people had been cognizant of Gildersleeve’s plans from the very first. There was now no doubt, in view of what had happened, that Acey Smith, the pulp camp superintendent, suspected, or perhaps knew definitely, from the night he landed that he, Hammond, was identified with Gildersleeve and had been sent out to the limits for the purpose of aiding in balking the North Star’s plans. That being so, either Acey Smith had his own hidden objects in view in allowing Hammond the freedom of the camp, or else—well, Hammond rather scouted the idea that the Argus-eyed master of the Nannabijou Limits considered him a nonentity in this conflict of wits who wasn’t worth troubling his head about. It couldn’t be that, he surmised, because Smithwas not the type to overlook any possibilities of interference with his plans. The deeper motive that he might have had in view eluded Hammond’s shrewdest deductions. Out in the woods Acey Smith was playing at his own game, and more experienced men than Hammond had failed to fathom him. Even those most closely associated with him admitted they never intimately understood this most inaccessible man of moods.
Anyway, Hammond felt immensely relieved to be free of all responsibility to either of the contending companies, and, having cashed Norman T. Gildersleeve’s cheque in payment for his services next day, he began planning a certain little affair of his own.
He was unable to get passage out to the limits until noon, and the trip was made on a cranky, wheezing little gasolene tug manned by inexperienced seamen.
The tugmen’s strike was on. Not only had all the North Star seamen left their boats, but they had taken out with them the crews of all the other towing and salvaging companies between the Soo and the Head of the Lakes. It was rumoured that the strike would next extend to the grain carriers and the passenger and freight boats plying up and down the Great Lakes.
The lumberjacks’ unions, however, had not yet called their sympathetic strike. At the Nannabijou Limits Hammond found things much the same as when he had left, except that there seemed to be a large number of strange men prowling around the camp, who, though they wore bush garb, were patently not North Star men. At regular intervals, along the waterfront and the roads leading up into the woods, armed members of the Canadian Mounted Police were stationed, obviously for the protection of property in case violence followed.
The lumberjacks were plainly in a sullen mood, especially the foreigners, on whom the presence of theuniformed representatives of Canadian law and order produced an ugly irritation. But, under the iron rule of Acey Smith, weapons of any sort beyond the axes which the men used in their work were strictly forbidden, so that an armed outbreak was out of the question.
Hammond himself, on landing and producing his pass of identification, was requested to step over to a little group of police, where his pockets were lightly tapped to detect the possible presence of concealed weapons. “Sorry to put you to this bother, sir,” smiled the officer in charge. “Just a matter of form, you know. Connected with the North Star Company, I suppose?”
“No,” replied the young man. “I am here on private business of my own, but I expect to be in camp for a short time.”
The officer gave him a sharp look as though committing his face to memory. He seemed about to ask another question, but instead nodded politely to signify the interview was over.
Sandy Macdougal was enjoying his afternoon nod when Hammond dropped in at their bunkhouse, but immediately after the latter’s entry the cook rolled out of the blankets in his sock-feet. “Cripes, didn’t I lock that door?” he gasped as he sat blinking at the newcomer. “Huh, guess I’m gettin’ nerves, but the goings on here lately is enough to make a manloco.”
“Why—what’s up now, Sandy?” laughed Hammond.
“Place is alive with cut-throats,” declared the other. “Fellow has to sleep with one eye open to watch that one of ’em don’t come in to bean him for his wad.”
“Yes, I saw a lot of strangers about the camp,” observed Hammond. “Who are they anyway?”
“Gang of low-brow detectives and strike-breakersbrought in from Winnipeg and Duluth on a towed barge early this morning. They’re the scum of creation, and the way they gave orders to my boys when they came in for eats—well, when Acey Smith comes back he’ll have another strike on his hands. My outfit didn’t hire on here to be bossed around by no second-class bums like them.”
“So the North Star’s putting up a bluff of breaking the strike?”
“North Star nothin’!” derided Sandy. “If it was I wouldn’t feel so cussed mean toward them. This gang’s been put in here by the other company—the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mill crowd—to take hold of the camp work if the North Star’s pole-cutters and boom-tenders go out in sympathy with the tugmen. Mooney put me wise, and you bet we make ’em whack up for every meal they get here at rates just the same as if they was stoppin’ at the Royal Aleck in Winnipeg.”
Hammond whistled. “So that’s the idea, eh?” He had to concede to himself that Gildersleeve must have acted with considerable despatch. No doubt he intended to use these men for waterfront land work when he got his tugs over from Duluth to convey the poles to Kam City.
“Oh, they ain’t goin’ to come very much, at that,” insisted Macdougal. “Any old time this strike is settled it will be settled by the North Star itself—and it won’t be settled till then, not if they bring all the strikebreakers and mounties between here and hell’s gangway to the camp.”
“So you think the North Star has the upper hand in this deal, Sandy?”
Macdougal fished out his black bottle and insisted on Hammond having a “nip” with him. “If they ain’t got the upper hand right now,” he replied, “they will haveit when the shuffle’s over. There ain’t any outsider can come in here and put it over Acey Smith. . . . And believe me, whatever is his game, I’m one who wants to see the Big Boss win. Here’s to him!”
The deep underlying note in Sandy’s tones made Hammond gaze at him fixedly. “You used to say, Sandy, that he was the king of crooks,” he reminded. “You used to say, in fact, that Acey Smith was a devil in human form.”
“Crook he may be and devil too,” conceded the other. “But I’m with him because—” and Sandy smote a nearby bench with his fist,—“because he’s a man! He’s one of them kind of men that if the whole world was jumpin’ at his throat he’d put his back again’ a rock and fight it out without askin’ help or sob-stuff from any of ’em. And he’d go down grinnin’ that little devil-grin o’ his and tellin’ them all to go to hell and be damned to them—that’s the kind of a man the Big Boss is!”
Hammond did not smile at this unexpected outburst of hero-worship. The little Scotch-Canadian was so emotionally intense about it.
“Listen, Hammond,” he was saying. “The Big Boss likely is as black a rascal as they say he is, and that’s a whole lot; but he never fights the weak or the poor. Ain’t I seen what he’s done unbeknownst to most for unfortunates in this camp? Ain’t I been in the city when I seen him stop on the street to help a blind bum over a dangerous crossin’ when everybody else was hustlin’ by and lookin’ the other way so they wouldn’t see their duty? Don’t I know that in the hard times six years ago it was this same Acey Smith who bought up a row of shacks in the coal docks district where the landlords was dumpin’ whole families out because they had nothin’ to pay them with, and don’t I know that none of them has ever paid since when they was hard up? I knowbecause it was one of my side jobs to look after them houses and see that the taxes was paid.
“Yes, and I could tell you lots of other things about the Big Boss that would be just as hard to believe,” the cook went on. “Suppose you never heard about the case of that Frompton girl?”
Other matters were uppermost in Hammond’s mind, but he knew there was no stopping Sandy when the talking mood was on him, so he said good-naturedly: “No, Sandy, tell us the story.”
“That all happened in the days before the war when the Big Boss was feelin’ a lot more cocky than he seems to be nowadays,” began the cook. “This Frompton girl, who was a waitress in one of the city eatin’ houses, was something of a good looker, but it seems that down east she’d had a nasty bit of past, mostly some low skunk’s fault who deceived her and skipped out leavin’ her to face it alone. After her baby, maybe lucky for its poor little self, died, her and her mother came up to Kam City where nobody knew them. But scandal like that, especially if it’s about a woman, will travel. One night a young blood, a son of one of the wealthy ginks in the town, being a little worse of bootleg, tried to get fresh with her, and the hot-tempered little thing hauls off and biffs him in the face. The poor prune wasn’t man enough to take his medicine, but bawls her out with some dirty remark about what she’d been in the town she’d come from. I guess she got seein’ red over that, for she picked up a catsup bottle and bashed him on the head with it. The rich man’s son came near kickin’ the bucket from that clout, and, as it was, he was a month or so in the hospital before they were sure he’d pullthrough. They didn’t pull the girl up for attackin’ him, because his family didn’t want the notoriety; but she was held in jail on a charge of disorderly conduct till they’d see what would happen to him. Then, if he lived, they intended to bring her before the magistrate and get her packed off to a reformatory as an example of what happens to bad girls who beat up rich men’s sons.
“Well, I happened to know some of the crowd that was mixed up in the rumpus and had been followin’ the case. One night when the Big Boss was in the dinin’ camp havin’ supper I threw down the paper and started to cuss.’
“He looks over at me and asks: ‘Why all the sweet language, Macdougal?’
“I starts in and tells him all about the case and how I thought the world was all wrong that nobody would lift a finger to help out a poor, fallen woman like this one. He listened with a lot more interest than you can generally get out of him, and I wound up by sayin’, ‘Cripes, what’s all the preachers for that they don’t start in scorin’ the guilty parties instead of standin’ by while everybody pans the girl?’
“‘The preachers ain’t to blame, Sandy,’ he comes back. ‘Most of the preachers go as far as they dare in settin’ the world right, and every once in awhile you read about some of the darin’ ones being bumped out of their pulpits for speakin’ their minds.’ Then his face gets chalk-white like you see it when he’s mad. ‘It’s this system they call Society needs fixin’, Sandy,’ he sneers. ‘Society that just wants to use the law and the preachers to keep its chosen crowd out of jail in this world and out of hell in the next.’
“Think of him, the king of the big timber crooks, a-talkin’ this way. But that was just like him—always contrary to everybody else.
“‘Macdougal,’ says he suddenly, ‘don’t you wish you was a great lawyer?’
“‘Why?’ I asks.
“‘Because,’ says he, ‘you could defend this girl before the court and maybe cheat the thing they call the Law.’
“‘I never thought of that,’ I replied, but I could see there was something comin’.
“That little devil-grin flickers around the Big Boss’s poker face that’s always there when he’s plannin’ hellery. ‘We ain’t lawyers, Macdougal,’ he states, ‘but I know where the money can be found to hire the best sob-stirrin’ lawyer in Kam City, and if he gets her clear there’ll be a bonus of a couple of hundred in it for him.’
“I knew what that meant. I had wished myself into the job of hirin’ the lawyer and seein’ that he got the money on the quiet. Acey Smith outlines how I am to go about the deal and says: ‘If the lawyer gets her off, we’ll see if we can’t get a job for her.’
“To make a long story short we got Jacobs, the best lawyer on them sort of cases in Kam City, and he puts up such a talk for her, a-quotin’ Scripture and so on, that he had everybody in the courtroom except the district crown attorney wipin’ the corners of their eyes. He winds up by statin’ there was a party who was prepared to start her off fresh on a decent job. The old magistrate was so taken with Jacob’s speil he said he thought she hadn’t had a chance, and, after a lecture to her on the straight and narrow path, he lets her off without even the suspended sentence the crown attorney tried to horn in with as a last resort.
“It was Jacobs turned the girl and her mother loose on me when they insisted on thanking the man who’d put up the money to defend her, and in a weak moment, bein’ kind of flustered, I promised to take them to him. I’ll never forget what happened when I took them outto the old camp layout on the tug. As I said, the girl was rather a good-lookin’ kid and she hadn’t commenced to get that hard jib women who go under seem to take on. She seemed still kind of dazed over it all when I walked her and her mother into the superintendent’s office. ‘There’s the man,’ says I before I had yet thought just what I was doing. ‘There’s the man you can thank for savin’ you from the clink.’
“The Big Boss he scowls at me as black as thunder and I knew I’d put my foot in it for fair, but the girl breaks down and falls at his feet, a-sobbin’ that she wasn’t worth savin’. In sort of hysterics she was. For once the Big Boss seemed like he didn’t know what to do. He looked around wild-eyed as though he’d like to beat it out the door. But he couldn’t, because in her little cryin’ fit she’d taken a strangle hold on his boots. So he lifts her up and chucks her into her mother’s arms.
“‘Get up, girl,’ he cries kind of hoarse and bashful-like. ‘I ain’t your judge, and if you’ve done any wrong I don’t know anything about it and don’t want to. The North Star’s goin’ to offer you a job, and Macdougal here has the lookin’ after of that. Go straight, girl,’ he adds, fixin’ her with them flashin’ coal-black eyes of his, ‘and if any one throws this thing up at you again let us know about it and there’ll be little old hell to pay!’
“Then he packs us back on the next tug with orders where she was to look for the job. It wasn’t in a North Star office, but one of the other factories in town that people say is run with North Star money.
“But don’t you think there wasn’t a curtain-call for me when I got back to camp for givin’ away to the girl and her mother as to the man whackin’ up for her lawyer. The Big Boss nearly fired me.
“‘You don’t know me, Macdougal,’ he grits. ‘I ain’t a movin’ picture hero such as you seem to think. Didn’tI tell you we were in on this thing just for the fun of cheatin’ the law? Besides, it wasn’t my money but the North Star’s that paid for her lawyer, and it was the North Star’s influence that got her that job, just the same as the North Star has rescued other people from the clutches of the law that it knew it could use. That girl’s one of us now and she’d go through hell-fire in the company’s interests if she was asked to. If you wasn’t blind you’d have seen that from the first. Beat it to your beanery and don’t let me ever hear you mention a word about this again.’
“Aye, he’s a queer, queer man, is Acey Smith,” concluded the cook. “Sometimes it seems to me something is eatin’ the heart out of him—something burnin’ inside him and fillin’ him up with hellery. Sometimes I think he’s a good man with a devil in him that won’t give him no rest.”
The cook’s story, like others he had heard, impressed Hammond even if it did increase the enigma that hung about the personality of the timber boss. “It is certain he has some fixed method in all this madness of his,” Hammond mused as much to himself as to his companion. “One object undoubtedly is to keep every one guessing what his real motives are. He has to keep himself pretty much a mystery in order to carry out the orders of his bosses.”
“Oh, but he ain’t carryin’ out their crooked work just for the money there’s in it,” spoke up Macdougal. “There’s something deeper’n that. I’ve been a-studyin’ the man too close and too long to believe that. It’s something inside the man himself that makes him carry on as he does.”
“I’ll quite agree with you there,” responded Hammond. “You call it a devil while I would call it an obsession of mind or a ruling mania: all of which arepretty much the one and the same thing, except that our forefathers called it a devil and let it go at that. If one could only get the key to that obsession they’d soon be able to clear up the whole mystery of this camp.”
“Aye, Hammond, if youcouldget the key,” observed the cook, “but Acey Smith is canny enough to keep that key locked up in a dark place that nobody knows but him.”
“Tomy mind,” continued the cook, “that same key has got something to do with them big booms of poles lyin’ out there in the bay waitin’ to be delivered to the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills. Puttin’ one and two together I could see the drift of things so far as the strike is concerned if it wasn’t for all the queer side issues, includin’ that pretty girl that was stoppin’ out on Amethyst Island. What was the idea of her whiskin’ out of there the way she did?”
Hammond gasped. “Then—then shehasleft?”
“I thought you knew all about it.” Sandy Macdougal scrutinised his companion almost suspiciously.
“Honestly, Sandy, I’m in the dark. The last time I saw Miss Stone she said nothing about any plans for leaving in the near future.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered! Why man, she left there the morning of the day you went to Kam City. She was supposed to have been carried off by a gang of Indians, and—”
“What’s that!” Hammond in his excitement leaped up seizing the other by the collar. “Are you joking, or is this the truth you’re telling me?”
“Hold your horses, hold your horses!” urged the cook. “I’m tellin’ you what was supposed to have happened—what the mounties claim they saw. You knew they hadarrested the Rev. Stubbs, the camp preacher, for takin’ part in it, didn’t you?”
“You’re away off again, Sandy; they arrested him on a charge of vagrancy.”
“Vagrancy my eye! That was only a charge to hold him on until they could get the goods on him for takin’ part in the abduction of the girl, and I heard since that Stubbs got bail over in Kam City and jumped it. But I’m one that ain’t takin’ much stock in that abduction talk,” continued the cook. “For one thing, the Big Boss and that girl was on friendly terms; in fact, he was the first one she came to see after she landed out here, and it’s known he used to go out and see her on the island when you weren’t busy takin’ up her time.” The cook grinned maliciously. “Don’t you think it looks mighty odd that, knowin’, as he must have knowed, that she was carried off like that, the Big Boss would leave for Montreal without botherin’ his head about it? No, that ain’t a bit like Acey Smith from what I know of him.”
“Then you think—?”
“That the whole deal was a frame-up between her and the Big Boss to keep the Mounted Police busy on a false scent and to mystify everybody else that’s tryin’ to find out what the North Star’s up to.”
“I can’t believe that!”
“Oh, you can’t, eh? Well, have you got a better hunch? Bein’ a bit soft on the girl maybe has made you short-sighted. Hold on, don’t get mad; I don’t blame you a bit, ’cause they tell me she’s some lallapaluza for good looks. And I ain’t meanin’ to cast any reflections on her in this deal either. Only, I like you, Hammond, and I wanted to help you out with my hunch if it was any good to you, just in case some of the rest of them was puttin’ something over on you.”
Hammond for the moment was silent in the face ofthese assertions. “But I can’t for the life of me see,” he mused presently, “how Rev. Stubbs was mixed up in it as you say.”
“Search me.” Sandy threw out his hands significantly. “For another thing, did you know that since the girl was supposed to be kidnapped and the Rev. Stubbs was arrested, his nibs, Ogima Bush the Medicine Man, has dropped out of sight too? He hasn’t been seen anywhere inside or outside the camps.”
“That might easily be,” discounted Hammond. “The Medicine Man was always erratic in his comings and goings.”
“And you don’t think the girl was a party to the kidnappin’ frame-up?”
“No, I certainly do not!” There came a warning glint into Hammond’s eyes. “And I say that because I know Miss Stone would not willingly be a party to a crooked deal put up by Acey Smith or any one else.”
“H’m, then what happened her and where is she now?”
“I’ve got a theory where she’s been taken, and that’s what I’m going to set about proving right away.” Hammond rose and strode to the door. At the threshold he turned. “Sandy,” he said, “I’m awfully much obliged to you for this little chat, and I think you’ve helped me a whole lot with the problem. In a couple of days’ time I think I’ll be able to get at the bottom of this whole mystery, or else—”
“Or else what?” insisted the cook.
“Or else I’m going to the mat with Acey Smith and choke the truth out of him!”
The cook rose to offer some better advice, but Hammond flung out the door and hurried down to the waterfront.
Hammond went direct to the tent occupied by Inspector Little, the officer in command of the Mounties. The Inspector was busy with one of the members of his force going over some papers.
“Sorry to trouble you, Inspector,” opened Hammond, “but I’d like to make an appointment to meet you privately on a confidential matter.”
The inspector turned the papers he was examining face downwards on the little camp table and looked up. “If it is an important matter,” he suggested crisply, “we may as well deal with it at once.”
“Itisquite important,” Hammond assured him.
Inspector Little turned to his aide. “You may go, Sergeant,” he indicated.
Alone with the officer, Hammond briefly explained that he was a personal friend of the young lady, Miss Josephine Stone, who had been carried away by force from Amethyst Island, and he had come to offer his services in helping to locate her. He added that he had a theory where she could be found and was ready to start on an expedition by himself to locate her once he had gained the necessary permission of the police. He briefly referred to the arrest of Rev. Nathan Stubbs and the rumour that he was suspected of being a party to the abduction. He said nothing, however, about his knowledge that the fake preacher was really a detective in the employ of Norman T. Gildersleeve, fearing such a statement would lead him into complications that would only delay the expedition he had in mind. He did express the opinion that the camp preacher could have had no part in the abduction.
The inspector stared at him fixedly. “What particulargrounds have you for that last statement, Mr. Hammond?” he asked.
“Well, for one thing he was down here at the dock at noon when I left that day. I scarcely see how he could have got back here so soon.”
“That was Stubbs’ own contention when we quizzed him about it. So we arrested him on a nominal charge of vagrancy to hold him on suspicion of being implicated in the abduction. In the first place,” argued the officer, “if he were innocent, why should he jump one thousand dollars bail put up by his lawyer through mysterious friends? With much less than a thousand dollars he could have cleared himself of the vagrancy charge.”
Hammond knew the very important reason Norman T. Gildersleeve had for getting the pseudo preacher out of the awkward position his continued incarceration would have brought about, but he cautiously held silence on that point.
“We had, as a matter of fact, very good grounds for suspecting Stubbs of not only being implicated but of being the ring-leader in the abduction of the young lady,” Inspector Little continued.
“Then he was actually seen taking part in the abduction?”
“Disguised, yes,” enlightened the inspector. “There has been something altogether queer going on in these camps for some time as you likely know from your own experiences, and I have no doubt the carrying off of Miss Stone is but a side issue of some intrigue on foot between these rival lumbermen. One or the other of the companies concerned must have put up Stubbs’ bail.
“However, I have to admit that suspicion first fell upon the camp preacher through some chance remarks on the part of Mr. A. C. Smith, the superintendent, onthe very morning the affair took place. Mr. Smith came down to my tent early to ask me to go up and have breakfast with him and to inquire if there were anything he or any of his men could do to help us out in getting settled. A mighty charming and interesting chap that man Smith for all his enemies say about him, and he has at least shown us every courtesy since we’ve been here.
“Well, when we were just about to leave for the dining camp he whirled and asked me a remarkable question. ‘Did you ever know of one man successfully impersonating two different characters in life, Inspector Little?’ He put it with that odd little smile of his—a sort of whimsical grin that makes you think he’s reading your answer before you utter it.
“‘Well,’ I answered in a spirit of banter, ‘there was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, for instance, and I’ve known certain actors on the stage who did it pretty smartly.’
“But he seemed to be serious about it. ‘I have reason to suspect such a dual role is being played in real life on these limits,’ he said. Then he asked: ‘Did you closely observe that camp preacher, Rev. Nathan Stubbs, who was down around the docks here a little while ago?’
“‘I did,’ I answered, for it is part of our business to take sharp note of all strange characters.
“‘And you looked over the Indian Medicine Man they call Ogima Bush who was around here when you were putting up your tents late yesterday afternoon?’
“I told him I had, wondering all the time what he was coming to. Then he asked me if I had noted a peculiarity about both their eyes; that, while the Indian had two little wounds either painted or gashed under his, the camp preacher had talcum or some other powder thickly spread over what seemed to be tiny scars in the same places on his face.
“‘By Jove,’ I answered, ‘now that you mention it, I have noticed that, and though their clothing, colour of skin and get-up is different, they are about the one height and build.’
“‘And they are both mysteries,’ he supplemented.
“‘Harmless fakirs, though?’ I hazarded.
“‘If they were,’ he replied briskly, ‘or rather if I were sure they were, I wouldn’t take up your time about the matter. I am convinced, Inspector, that they are bothvery dangerous characters.’
“His tone of conviction impressed me. ‘And you feel certain it is one man playing two rôles?’ I insisted.
“‘Oh, I’m not saying that,’ he replied. ‘But the fact that you have noted the same facial peculiarity in those two characters gives me an idea which is further strengthened by the circumstance that no one has seen the two of them about any part of the camps at the same time.’
“I thereupon suggested that if he, as superintendent of the camps, requested it we could arrest the party on a charge of vagrancy while he was playing either rôle and thus get at the bottom of the thing. But, on the other hand, I added, I would much favour keeping a close watch on the actions of both Ogima Bush and Rev. Nathan Stubbs until such time as there appeared to be more definite grounds for making an arrest.
“‘That would be much the better plan, Inspector,’ he approved. ‘As I am going away from camp for a few days I thought I would at least draw your attention to the circumstances, and, in case there might be some mischief afoot behind this apparent masquerading, you could be on the lookout for it.’
“I thanked him and the subject was not again mentioned during our conversation. That very morning, and it must have been a short time after our talk, MissStone was forcibly carried off by a band of Indians headed by the Medicine Man.”
Hammond sat bolt upright at this information, but he suppressed comment while the inspector proceeded.
“It was not until the patrol down at Amethyst Island waterfront had exhausted every effort to run down the abductors of the young lady and failed that they sent in a report to us. The result was that we didn’t hear of it until after dinner. The preacher was in the camp, seemingly quite confident that his disguise was impenetrable. His surprise when the handcuffs were slipped onto him was good enough to be genuine. Sure enough though when a handkerchief was applied to the paste and talc powder on his cheek bones it disclosed two tiny white scars under either eye in the self-same spots where the Indian had the red gashes, not to mention the false beard which we left on his face for the time being.”
Hammond sat dumbfounded at this recital. Those tiny white scars under each eye! Gildersleeve was the only white man he had ever seen with such peculiar marks. So—so Gildersleeve had really played the part of the camp preacher himself? That much was patent now, and there seemed every circumstantial incident to imply that he was also Ogima Bush, though Hammond could scarcely conceive that any make-up could transform a white man into such a thorough-going savage.
“The rest of the story is likely familiar to you, Mr. Hammond,” the inspector was proceeding. “You know how Stubbs was arraigned in Kam City on a charge of vagrancy, bailed out by friends and immediately disappeared. It is all a mighty queer mix-up that stands in need of thorough investigation, but,” with a wave ofthe hand and a raising of the brows, “the Mounted force were sent out here to protect property and maintain law and order in case of a strike, and without a shadow of a clue to work on it’s pretty difficult getting on the trail of the principals behind the outrage on Amethyst Island. Now, if you have any additional facts that would be of use to us, or can give us tangible help of any sort in locating Miss Stone, we will certainly be glad to avail ourselves of your assistance.”
Hammond was incensed at the evident duplicity of Gildersleeve. But at the same time he was tired of theorising, and of attempting to unravel the puzzles which Nannabijou Camp confronted him with almost daily since he had first arrived there. So he thrust aside the temptation to enlighten the head of the Mounties on what he knew of the part Gildersleeve must have played.
“I told you I had a theory as to where Miss Stone has been carried off,” he reminded the inspector. “As a matter of fact, I am certain she has been taken up into a hiding-place in the Cup of Nannabijou.”
“What—up above those cliffs on the hill? Why, man, our chaps say there’s no opening in that wall of cliffs and they are unscalable.”
“They are popularly believed to be so,” replied Hammond, “but it is a fact that there are parties who make a headquarters of some sort up there, and they have a secret entrance.”
“Well!” The inspector pursed his moustached mouth in polite skepticism. “You know how they get in and out?”
“Not for certain, but I do know a better and a quicker method.”
“Yes?”
“The air route.”
“H’mph.” The inspector evinced a sudden interest.“Yes, thatwouldbe practical for scouring the whole country back of here. But where are you going to get an airplane and an airman?”
“There’s an old scouting single-seater in Kam City in fairly good shape. I happened to see it in the armouries while I was rambling around the city a couple of days before I first came out here. It’s the property of the government. That’s why I came to you; as head of the Mounted Police you could no doubt induce the government authorities to lend us the machine for this purpose.”
“But your airman?”
For answer Hammond threw back the lapel of his coat displaying the airman’s wings which he modestly wore over his left vest-pocket. “I can take care of that part of it,” he suggested. “I saw three years’ hard work in the air overseas, two years of which I put in playing tag with Fritz.”
“Good enough!” Proof that Hammond had been a fighting airman seemed to dissipate the inspector’s last doubt.
“There’ll be no harm in giving this thing a try,” he decided, “and by Jove, we’ll get busy right off. We’ll send you over to Kam City in one of the police motorboats to-morrow morning. I’ll give you a wire to file to Major Lynn at Ottawa, and he’ll get things through for us without unnecessary red tape. But look you, Hammond, when you go up to the Cup you have only instructions to look around, get the lay of the land and come right back here to me. Then we’ll act!”
The inspector glanced at his watch. “Now, by the way,” he suggested, “I’ve some confounded routine to look after that will keep me busy for the best part of a couple of hours. But after tea drop in for an hour orso, old chap, and we’ll have a pipe and talk over the details of this thing.”
Hammond went away highly elated. At last he was to get a real chance to do some active work in ferreting out the mystery of the Nannabijou Limits, and—he fervently hoped—to meet again Josephine Stone, the girl with the high-arched eyebrows, and the woman of his dreams.