A MILLIONAIRE VANISHES
I
AS the days went by Louis Hammond familiarised himself with the pulp camp
and its environs. He had plenty of time on his hands, for, as Acey Smith
had predicted, there was little else for him to do except “take in the
scenery.”
He gained a liberal education in the garnering of the raw product for the
paper-making industry. The Nannabijou Limits, he learned, comprised an
enormous block of wilderness territory some ninety square miles in
extent, most of which, outside of the great muskegs and mountain lakes,
was covered with forests of spruce, balsam and birch, representing
billions of money when transformed into the white paper on which many of
the great and lesser newspapers and magazines of the United States as
well as Canada would be printed.
The limits stretched east down the North Shore from the foot of the
Nannabijou range far beyond a point of vision and extended due north
inland a good fifty or sixty miles. They were bisected by the mighty
Nannabijou River, which emptied into the bay at the western fringe of the
camp between deep, precipitous banks. It was this stream that made the
Nannabijou Limits so desirable, because it made transportation of the cut
poles by water possible from the furthest inland reaches of the
territory. Armies of men were engaged in cutting, buck-sawing and
decking poles into the river, there being camp after camp, some of them
larger than that at the waterfront, for a good twenty miles up the
stream. Men and teams were constantly employed hauling supplies back to
them. Yet it was said that this season’s cut would scarcely make a
scratch on the gigantic Nannabijou forests.
From the mouth of the Nannabijou the cut and barked poles poured into the
bay in a wide, glistening white ribbon day and night, continually
expanding the tremendous booms, where Hammond was told there was already
nearly a million dollars’ worth of pulpwood. Later on, power-driven
mechanical loaders on scows would transfer the poles from the booms to
the holds of huge pulp-pole carriers, and in these they would be towed by
tugs to the mill yards in Kam City.
A large portion of the wood must be delivered that very fall so that the
Kam City Pulp and Paper Company could have their mills in operation on
contract time in October. Otherwise, the latter company would forfeit
their hard-won rights on the limits; and by the terms of the final fiat
of the Ontario government the North Star Towing and Contracting Company,
at present operating the limits, were bound to deliver the wood in
sufficient quantities to keep the Kam City Company’s mills running all
winter.
It was a stupendous undertaking—the most colossal in the history of
paper-making. And woven into this was the intense rivalry of the two
powerful paper companies concerned, a tension of bitter hatred that was
the more ominous because surface indications told nothing of what the
inevitable climax might be.
II
Hammond gained much of his information about the limits from his
shack-mate, Sandy Macdougal, the cook, who in the evening over a bottle
of rye whiskey became quite loquacious. It was through Macdougal he
learned of the presence of the girl with the high-arched eyebrows on
Amethyst Island, a bit of information that brought about a secret
determination to somehow or other come in contact with her, much as the
mere idea of again meeting her face to face perturbed him.
Of Acey Smith he saw little, caught only occasional glimpses of him now
and then as he went in and out of his office. No one seemed to know
where he kept himself a large part of the time. Actual operation of the
camps and dealings with the men were carried on almost entirely by the
assistant superintendent, a rawboned, hatchet-faced young man named
Mooney, who was as uncommunicative as a slab of trap rock.
Ogima Bush, the Indian medicine man, seemed to have the freedom of the
camp, to which he paid frequent visits, mixing with the workers of his
own race of whom there were several hundred employed in breaking up jams
in the river and tending the booms in the bay. They were what was known
as the “white water” men because of their hazardous work in the foaming
rapids.
Rev. Nathan Stubbs, the camp preacher, journeyed back and forth from one
camp to the other. He did not sleep in any of the camps but repaired
each night to some isolated shack he had fixed up for himself somewhere
in the fastnesses of Nannabijou Mountain. He seemed to purposely avoid
Hammond, as he did most of the executives of the limits, and a feature
that struck the young man as rather odd was that he never saw Ogima Bush
or the Rev. Nathan Stubbs and Acey Smith together or even in the camp at
the one time, though the Medicine Man frequently inquired as to the
superintendent’s whereabouts and on such occasions immediately struck off
as though he had an appointment with him some-where. It was plain that
Acey Smith looked upon the preacher as a pest and insisted on him making
himself scarce when he was about camp; as for the Medicine Man, there
seemed to be some understanding between him and the superintendent
whereby the former was quite confident of his status and privileges
anywhere on the limits.
There was something queer—so queer as to be absolutely uncanny—about this
gigantic pulp camp. Hammond could see that every intelligent worker in
it sensed this, but nobody understood it or could tangibly grasp a
glimmer of what it was. The morale among the cutting gangs, teamsters
and boom workers could scarcely be improved upon. Men who shirked their
work lost the regard of their fellows and either soon learned to put
their best into their efforts or left camp. The North Star Company held
the reputation of paying and feeding their employés better than any other
outfit in the north country. There were camp hospitals with camp doctors
and competent men nurses; it was even said that no man was docked for
lost time while he was really sick. Incidentally, there were no
evidences of iron discipline or slave-driving methods. But everywhere
among the men and their petty executives there was an undercurrent of
something akin to superstitious awe of the company and those who directed
its affairs.
Acey Smith himself seemed to be obsessed with this same haunting
apprehension. When he issued orders he did so more like one who is
interpreting definite commands from elsewhere. As Sandy Macdougal
analysed it to Hammond after his own peculiar fashion, “one felt as
though the whole show was being run by _some one or something that didn’t
cast a shadow_.”
III
His enforced idleness brought a notion to the young ex-newspaper man that
he could improve his time by writing, even if it were only a diary of his
experiences. He felt he must have something to occupy his time besides
roaming over the tote roads and riding around in the fussy little
gasoline tugs of the boom-tenders, so, early one morning he presented
himself at Acey Smith’s office and boldly asked if he might have some
loose writing paper. Acey Smith quite readily complied with his wishes,
going to the rear of his office and bringing to Hammond several pads of
blank sheets.
“I had been expecting you to come around for this,” he said, the ghost of
an exultant flicker playing at the corners of his mouth. “The ruling
hobby will force itself to the surface sooner or later, won’t it, Mr.
Hammond?”
“Meaning just what?”
“Just this: Set a man at doing nothing long enough and habit will drive
him back to the haunts of his old rut—especially if that rut is writing
for publication.”
Hammond illy-suppressed a start at this broad hint at knowledge of his
identity. “I have no designs for writing anything for publication, if
that’s what you’re driving at,” he, however, came back frankly.
“I have not the remotest notion that you will,” Acey Smith assured him
with a tinge of sarcasm in his tones. “In fact, I am quite confident
that for the present you won’t reach a publisher.”
He stared strangely at Hammond for a silent second, his black eyes
glazing in a weird fixidity. Hammond was conscious Acey Smith was
speaking now more as one trying to interpret a whim of the back mind:
“Now, if I were a novelist, which I am not, and in the mood, likewise
absent, I might make myself the author of the queerest tale ever written.
It’s a pity the world gets most of its literature second-hand and
consequently garbled; the man who lives things doesn’t write, and the man
who writes never seems able to live the things he writes about.
“Real writers then must be men born twice who never touched pen to paper
till their second existence, don’t you think so, Mr. Hammond?”
“I have never considered it from that angle,” replied the younger man.
“Thank you for the paper, Mr. Smith.”
“Think it over,” urged Acey Smith enigmatically as he whirled on a heel
and returned to his desk.
Hammond went away inwardly as chagrined as a disguised man who has had
his wig and false beard suddenly whisked from his head and face. His
attempt to conceal his identity from Acey Smith surely had been a
ridiculous farce. Perhaps the pulp camp superintendent knew more than he
did himself about what purpose lay behind his being sent to the limits.
The situation was a humiliating one, Hammond bitterly conceded as he sat
alone in the cabin he shared with the cook. It would be bad enough to be
found out and know what one was found out for, but it was infinitely more
exasperating to feel that he was a marked man without knowing the exact
nature of the predicament he had allowed himself to be dropped into.
Acey Smith had a manner of making Hammond feel like a mere outsider every
time they came in contact, and the latter, completely in the dark as to
the objects of his own mission, was as impotent to meet and parry the
other’s stinging thrusts as a man who fences with a blindfold on. Smith
did not exactly despise him; he had reason to believe that. It was
Smith’s lightly-concealed exultation over knowledge of his helplessness
that galled him so.
Hammond longed to meet the other on fair ground—in a battle of wits or
fists, he was not particular which, so long as he could exact
satisfaction for his hurt pride. But this fighting in the dark was a
hopeless business, and he was becoming weary of it.
Yet—what did Smith know? What _did_ he know?
With this conjecture came an inspiration that brought Hammond a newer and
a brighter viewpoint. When he more calmly mulled the situation over in
the seclusion of his quarters, it struck him Acey Smith was merely
guessing. He had not definitely referred to him as an ex-newspaper man,
but had merely insinuated he knew him to be a writer. This was a thing
one so shrewd of observation as the pulp camp master might easily surmise
when Hammond asked for writing paper. That subsequent drifting of his
onto the status of fiction writers was a cast for information, his
reference to the genius of writing men an obvious attempt at flattery—and
the hook was baited with a hint that he himself had a life-story that
would be worth while getting hold of.
The whole thing seemed so clear now that Hammond accused himself of
stupidity in not seeing through it before. Hammond’s plan therefore
would be to follow the plane of the least resistance and let Smith go on
thinking what he pleased. Even better still, why not approach Smith for
that “queerest tale” he had referred to and make a play to his vanity?
No doubt egotism was Acey Smith’s most vulnerable point and the _open
sesame_ to his confidence, as Hammond in his journalistic experience had
found it to be with most despotic executives, high or low.
But no, that would not do. There was one thing in the way still. If he
only knew what he was here for he could act. As things stood, he feared
to take the initiative lest he blunder into something that would upset
the plan Norman T. Gildersleeve had in mind that night on the train when
he had engaged Hammond at a thousand dollars a month to stay at the pulp
camp till he received further orders. No matter how he theorised and
tried to prop it up with possible purposes, it appealed more and more to
him as a crazy assignment. Bagsful of mail was brought over daily on the
tugs, and, so far as Hammond could see, the mail was delivered direct and
with considerable despatch all over the camps. It should therefore be an
easy matter for Gildersleeve to write him, if it were only a few lines,
to let him know whether or not things were progressing as they should.
Why didn’t Gildersleeve communicate with him?
IV
The plump figure and ruddy visage of Sandy Macdougal appeared momentarily
at the cabin doorway and he flung a bundle of newspapers across at
Hammond. “The Big Boss left them at the breakfast table this morning and
said you might like to see them,” he explained. “I guess he’s beat it
for somewhere for the day, for I saw him leave with his pack on his back
just a minute or two after you left his office. Come over to the beanery
for a chat when you’re through reading up the news.”
The head cook turned and departed for his realm of bake ovens and
enamelled pots and pans.
That was Acey Smith’s humiliating system all over again, ruminated
Hammond. Smith had eaten that very morning just two seats away from
Hammond with the newspapers spread on the table before him. When he had
finished breakfast, he folded them up and sat smoking until Hammond left
the diner. Why did he wait till Hammond went out and then tell the cook
to give him the papers? It was a by-word around the camps that Acey
Smith never did anything out of the ordinary without a definite object in
view. He was evidently baiting Hammond for a purpose.
Nevertheless, Hammond gathered up the newspapers gratefully. They were
the first of recent date he had seen since coming to the pulp camp. The
light in the cabin was none too bright, so Hammond took the papers
outside and seated himself on a rustic bench back of the cabin.
The outer paper in the bundle was the Kam City _Star_ of the previous
morning, but Hammond, his eyes starting from their sockets, scarcely
noted the dateline in the shock that went home from the three-column
heading that fairly shouted at him in black-faced gothic from the upper
left-hand corner of the front page:—
MAN RESEMBLING NORMAN T. GILDERSLEEVE
REPORTED SEEN NEAR PRINCE ALBERT, SASK.
MAY BE MISSING PULP AND PAPER MAGNATE
In fevered haste, Hammond skipped over the subheadings to the despatch
below them date-lined from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, with date of the
day previous:—
To-day, lumbermen coming in from the woods north of here told of the
arrival in the McKenzie camps of a middle-aged stranger strongly
resembling the descriptions sent broadcast of the missing Norman T.
Gildersleeve, of New York, head of the International Investments
Corporation, whose disappearance from a transcontinental train bound
east from Winnipeg, on the night of September 23, caused a sensation
in financial circles in Canada and the United States.
Strength is lent the theory that the man is Norman T. Gildersleeve by
the statement of the lumbermen that the stranger seemed to be
afflicted with loss of memory. He told the superintendent of the
camps that he had seemed to come out of a state of trance after
leaving a train at the terminus of the bush railway and had no idea
who he was or where he came from. He put up for the night at the
lumber camp, but the next morning disappeared as mysteriously as he
had arrived.
Mr. Gildersleeve, it will be remembered, first dropped out of sight
while on a train bound from Winnipeg, Man., to Kam City, Ont. His
intended visit to the latter place, it is understood, was in
connection with the construction of the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills
plant, a Canadian subsidiary of the International Investments
Corporation, now being erected at the lakeport town.
Since Mr. Gildersleeve’s disappearance the police of the Dominion
have been vainly scouring the country for trace of him. The news
from the McKenzie Camps to-day will no doubt provide a fresh trail,
though how Mr. Gildersleeve could travel back west almost a thousand
miles without being identified by some one, particularly trainmen, is
beyond the comprehension of authorities here.
There followed a grist of newspaper theories in which Hammond was not
particularly interested. He scanned thoroughly the newspaper and two
others in the bundle, but found no other items throwing further light on
the mystery. An editorial in the edition he had first read caught his
eye. It dealt with the odd circumstances of Norman T. Gildersleeve’s
disappearance and was headed:—
APHASIA, OR LOSS OF IDENTITY
Aphasia—aphasia—where had Hammond recently heard or read that word? Then
with an electric start he remembered that disconcerting first question
Acey Smith had flung at him the night he arrived at the pulp camp: “_What
do you know about aphasia_?”
A coincidence it must have been, he reflected on calmer deduction. Acey
Smith, out here at the pulp limits, twenty miles from the nearest outpost
of civilisation, could then have no knowledge of Gildersleeve’s
disappearance several hundred miles west of the port of Kam City.
And yet—yet the Girl with the High-Arched Eye-brows had just been in to
see Smith previous to Hammond’s visit. She had been in the same coach of
the transcontinental when Gildersleeve had left the train at Moose Horn
Station and failed to return—and her nervous perturbation on two
occasions when she had caught sight of Hammond had been marked.
Great heavens, it could not be that she—this beautiful creature he had
dreamed about, whose wondrous blue eyes haunted his waking hours—that she
knew and had carried the news to Acey Smith! Hammond tried to banish the
thought as a low, unfounded suspicion. It was merely a sinister muddle
of events, he told himself, into which she, more so than himself, had
been innocently drawn. That was it—certainly that was it.
He leaped to his feet and turned at a raucous, croaking sound behind him.
A hoarse, half-angry, half-startled exclamation came through his teeth as
his gaze fell upon the gloomy, spectrelike figure of Ogima Bush the
Medicine Man standing between two birch trees directly behind his seat.
The Indian was as immovable, as untouched in face by any human emotion as
if he had always stood there a carved figure in wood. The scars on his
cheek-bones gleamed in fresh and horrid scarlet lividity, and his eyes
with their garish white setting glowed like embers of hate in a gargoyle
of unspeakable wickedness.
“What do you want?” demanded Hammond sharply.
“_Un-n-n-n ugh_.” The Medicine Man’s eyes centred on Hammond much as
they might have had he been a passing wesse-ke-jak while he gutturalled
it. “Ogima Bush takes what he wants. _Kaw-gaygo esca-boba_?”
He turned leisurely, chuckling queerly in his throat as he uttered the
question in Objibiwa.
Then he strode off into the bush quite unconcerned as to what answer
Hammond might make.