A STRANGE PACT ON A TRAIN
I
ON the night of September twenty-third, Louis Hammond had been
train-bound from Saskatoon east.
The transcontinental on which he was travelling had long since passed the
Saskatchewan and Manitoba boundaries and was thundering over the muskegs
and through the rock-cuts in the great wilderness of the Ontario divide.
While the porter was making up his berth, Hammond sought the smoker, but
it happened that a garrulous traveller was there holding forth on how the
league of nations should have disposed of things to bring about eternal
peace, and the young man fled as he might have from the deadly presence
of smallpox.
He passed on to the next coach, a compartment and parlour car. The
little smoker there promised peace and quiet. In it there sat alone a
spare grey little man with a cadaverous face, who looked up from the book
in his lap and gazed interestedly at Hammond. The latter lit his pipe
and taking a seat in the opposite corner beside the window peered into
the moon-bathed night and out over the shadowy wastes to the ragged
ranges, where fitful wisps of ground aurora seemed to race with the train
like wild ghouls of the night startled from their eeries by this mad,
man-made thing tearing through the solitudes.
“Wild country, isn’t it?”
The voice of the little grey man startled Hammond from his reverie. “It
is, magnificently so,” he replied. “There is something in its very
hostile majesty that fascinates me immensely.”
“Yes? Easterner, I suppose?”
“Not exactly.” Hammond laughed. The other’s geniality drew him out of
his mood. “You see, I’ve been a westerner too, and right here I feel
sort of neutral.”
The little grey man laughed with him, a low, sociable cackle. “Still,”
he pursued, “I’d wager you’re not a travelling man.”
“No,” a bit wearily. “Newspaper man—ex-newspaper man, I hope.”
The announcement seemed to agitate the little man more than such a
commonplace announcement should. He was silent a moment while he brought
forth a silver card-case. He lifted a bit of pasteboard from it,
scrutinised it through his glasses, hesitated as though about to replace
it in the card-case, then quite deliberately passed it to Hammond, who
took it in at a glance:—
EULAS DALY
UNITED STATES CONSUL,
RAM CITY, ONTARIO, CAN.
Hammond drew out one of his own cards from a vest-pocket and
reciprocated. The other still seemed needlessly perturbed. He spoke up
at last as though it had cost him some effort to select a tactful
opening: “And so you’ve quit the fourth estate, Mr. Hammond?”
“I intend to; that is, if I can otherwise earn a decent livelihood. I’ve
had five years of the living-ghost world and I want to get clear of its
grind and live things for awhile.”
“So—that is it? Quite natural too.” Mr. Daly seemed to be feeling his
way, syllable by syllable. “Do you know, it is almost providential that
you should have come in here at this moment, Mr. Hammond.”
“Yes?”
“It’s this way—you see: I just a few moments ago left a party who is
privately seeking the services of a man of your particular type—and he
wants him right away.”
“A newspaper publisher?” wryly.
“No—no, not a publisher. By George, I’ll bring him here to meet you.
What do you say?”
“Hold on,” exclaimed Hammond detaining him. “What is the job and who is
the man?”
“Your first question I cannot answer, because I do not definitely know
myself,” replied the American consul. “But you have just hinted to me
that you would like to play a part in big things, and if there’s one man
on the continent who holds that opportunity for you in the hollow of his
hand it is Norman T. Gildersleeve.”
The little grey man stood in the green-curtained entrance of the smoker,
an expectant twinkle in his grey eyes. “What do you say?” he reiterated.
“Go ahead,” agreed Hammond. “There can be no harm in meeting him
anyway.”
After Eulas Daly had gone, Hammond kept turning the name over and over in
his mind: Gildersleeve—Norman T. Gildersleeve? Where had he read or
heard that name before? Somehow it seemed connected with big business
and stock market reports. Ten to one he was looking for a private
secretary, a biographer or a publicity agent. Well, any one of those
things wouldn’t be so bad, and it would be a change from the exacting
grind of the daily newspaper where one was always behind the scenes of
big things in process, but never, never quite a part of them. Hammond
was twenty-five, the age of limitless discontent, alone in the world and
intensely ambitious.
But he was far from guessing the extraordinary nature of the proposition
that was about to be put up to him.
II
“Mr. Gildersleeve wishes to see you alone in his stateroom.”
Hammond noted that much of the previous enthusiasm had gone from the
little consul’s manner. His tone now was businesslike, matter-of-fact.
No doubt, conjectured Hammond, he had hoped to be a party to the
interview he had been instrumental in bringing about.
At the door of Gildersleeve’s stateroom, Hammond shook the hand of Eulas
Daly with a word of thanks for the interest he had volunteered in the
matter. “I’ll see you later and tell you all about it,” he said, a
promise, which, for unexpected reasons, he never kept.
Hammond found Gildersleeve with a litter of papers and documents
scattered about him and more protruding from the open jaws of a
travelling-bag. He was the cut of a typical captain of big business;
middle-aged, iron-grey, with a keen, cold face and the drift of a busy
career stamped all over his personality. Two tiny spots, livid white,
one below either eye, lent rather a sinister tone to his face, especially
when his brilliant dark eyes, set too close to the hawklike nose, were
looking straight at you. At first glance, those two marks appeared to be
birth-marks, but closer scrutiny disclosed them to be scars.
He did not offer his hand at first; just favoured the younger man with a
glance that was as swift as it was penetrating, then turned the document
on the little leaf-table before him face down and motioned his visitor to
a seat. When he spoke, Hammond felt an electric urge to be brief and to
the point.
“Mr. Daly has told me what he knows of you,” he opened. “Now, will you
kindly oblige me with such detail as you think important about yourself
and your capabilities?”
Hammond’s training had disciplined him in the terse use of language. He
told it all in less than ten minutes’ time.
Gildersleeve appraised him keenly, interestedly. “Good,” he approved.
“You’ll no doubt do, provided you care to accept what I have to offer
you. In any case, can I expect you to regard this interview as strictly
confidential?”
“You can,” replied Hammond simply. “As you no doubt know, such a promise
from a newspaperman is regarded as sacred.”
“Then we’ll get down to business. Would you, for instance, be prepared
to undertake an assignment, entailing little effort beyond strict caution
and secrecy, without being too inquisitive as to what its objects were?”
“That would depend on a number of things,” cautiously suggested the
younger man. “It would have to be distinctly understood it was clean and
above-board.”
“The moral side of it need not for a moment worry you,” smiled
Gildersleeve. “You will be asked to do nothing that would conflict with
your standards of honour, however strict they may be. In fact, in this
particular case, it would be best for you to avoid even the appearance of
trickery.”
“If I knew more about the nature of the job, Mr. Gildersleeve, I could
better judge my capabilities of taking hold.”
“Your newspaper training in mixing with men, combined with a
close-mouthed attitude will carry you through,” assured the other. “I’m
not saying there will be no risks, but such risks will be largely
contingent upon your own shrewd behaviour.”
Gildersleeve gazed at the window for a silent moment, then continued:
“The proposition in brief is this: You are to secure for yourself a
position of a clerical nature; say pole-counter, time-keeper or
office-assistant, with the North Star Towing and Contracting Company, out
at their camps on the Nannabijou pulpwood limits, located about twenty
miles south-east of the Port of Kam City, on the North Shore of Lake
Superior. You are to hold whatever job you select till I communicate
with you, and, while you are engaged at it you are to forget that you
have been a newspaper man, maintaining absolute silence to all concerned
as to your past and as to why I sent you out there. On these two points,
I’d like to repeat with emphasis, _you must be particularly cautious_.
“Now, as to remuneration: You will be paid by me personally on the
completion of the contract at the rate of one thousand dollars a month
for such time as you put in in addition to such salary as you draw for
your work from the company operating the limits. Afterwards, if you
point up to my expectations, I’ll be in a position to offer you a berth
that will perhaps be more congenial and unclouded by the mystery that
must for the time being surround this one.
“What do you think about it, Mr. Hammond?”
Hammond was for the moment lost for an answer. This high-salaried offer,
though it distinctly appealed to his adventuring spirit, took him off his
feet and the concealed object of his mission at the pulpwood limits made
him hesitate.
“I am not expected to spy on any one?” he insisted.
“I have assured you there will be nothing underhand about it,”
Gildersleeve reminded him.
“There is, however, a possibility I might not succeed in securing a
position with the contracting company.”
“There is such a possibility—a remote one, but the way will be made easy
for you. At Kam City you will make personal application to Hon. J. J.
Slack, M.P., president of the North Star Towing and Contracting Company,
presenting to him a letter of introduction I will furnish you with.”
The train slowed down to a grinding stop at a small flag station. It was
but a moment till it was in motion again.
“I’ll take it,” decided Hammond.
Before Gildersleeve could reply there came a light, insistent tapping at
the door of the stateroom. A coloured porter entered, bearing a sealed
envelope, passed it to Gildersleeve with a flash of very white teeth and
retired.
Gildersleeve ripped the message from the envelope, glanced at its
contents and pushed the button at his elbow. “Porter,” he requested when
the latter re-appeared, “how long does the train stop at Moose Horn
Station?”
“Twenty minutes, sah. We take on watah there, sah.”
“Very well, porter,” acknowledged Gildersleeve, passing the black man a
tip.
He reached for pen and railway stationery, and while he wrote hurriedly
said: “This note to J. J. Slack will act as the _open sesame_ to the job,
Mr. Hammond. You may read it before I seal it.”
Hammond took the proffered sheet and read:—
En Route to Kam City, Sept. 23.
Hon. J. J. Slack, M.P.,
Pres. North Star Co.,
Kam City, Ontario.
My dear Slack:—Am under immediate necessity of finding a berth out in
the woods for the bearer, Louis Hammond. Put him on at a clerical
job, not too arduous, at a good salary and charge the latter up to my
account. Please do so as quietly as possible, as it is highly
essential that my connection in this matter should remain absolutely
confidential. Yours very truly,
NORMAN T. GILDERSLEEVE.
“Now, Mr. Hammond,” Gildersleeve went on as he sealed and addressed the
envelope, “we’ll consider the matter closed for the present. Sorry for
the terrific rush, but there is an emergent matter that presses for my
immediate attention.”
He arose and grasped the young man’s hand. That strong grip was
reassuring, but it did not altogether dissipate a presentiment growing on
Hammond that he had let himself in for something that was even more
potential in its possibilities than it looked to be on the surface.
There was no more to be said, however, unless he changed his mind and
threw up the whole thing. He had not the slightest desire to do that.
III
Outside the stateroom door, Hammond stopped dead in his tracks. He was
looking into a woman’s face that was startlingly, unreally beautiful.
She had risen from among the chairs in the drawing-room of the coach, a
dazzling apparition with great wonder eyes under finely-pencilled,
high-arched brows. For the moment he was conscious he was staring
stupidly, unable to help himself; then her dark-fringed eyelids dropped
and the faintest traces of a vagrant smile lit up her divinely-moulded
features.
Hammond swung hastily down the aisle. Quite in a whirl he pitched into
the smoker. The train slowed down under a sudden shuddering of
air-brakes.
He looked out the window. A sign-board on the tiny frame building beyond
the equally diminutive platform told him it was Moose Horn Station.
A stateroom door opened somewhere and he heard a passenger hurry along
the aisle, out of the coach and down the train steps. Next instant he
saw Norman T. Gildersleeve, the man he had just been talking to, appear
on the station platform, wearing a light overcoat and carrying a small
black bag. Gildersleeve looked swiftly about the area where the dull
station lamp-light and the glow from the car windows fell, then hurried
around the side of the station building and disappeared in the shadows.
He had barely gone when another form seemed to rise out of the shadows
near the train somewhere, a tall, graceful figure of a woman in sable
furs and wearing a large picture hat. As if Hammond’s stare had
attracted her, she turned and glanced for a fleeting instant at the car
window. Hers was a savage, dark beauty with eyes so intense they glowed
like luminous discs of blackness in the shadowy light.
The woman went rapidly to the station, passed in the door, remained a
moment, re-appeared and returned down the platform to the train.
Hammond strode out to the vestibuled platform of the coach. He watched
the station area closely for Norman T. Gildersleeve’s return. But
Gildersleeve did not come back.
The engine’s bell sounded.
Hammond thought of his berth, but some movement within drew his gaze
through the glass door of the compartment coach. The door of
Gildersleeve’s stateroom was open, and the little grey man, Eulas Daly,
passed in, closing the door behind him. Hammond was sure Gildersleeve
was not with him and that he could not have preceded him.
The young man was about to leave when a silent form emerged from the
shadow near the coach door. It was the wonderful girl he had seen in the
drawing-room, but there was great perplexity in her face now. The train
was rapidly accumulating the even roar of its maximum speed.
The girl looked back and her eyes met Hammond’s beyond the glass of the
platform door. Her hand went to her lips as though to stifle a cry that
trembled there. The fright registered upon her face went to him like the
stab of a knife. Plainly, he was the cause of that fright. Mystified,
and somehow deeply hurt, he drew back into the shadows and she fled like
one fearing for her life.
With confusion still upon him, Hammond hurried to his berth in the
pullman.