I
Clement realized at once that he was trapped, and neatly. The thought
did not rob him of activity. The instinctive sense of action which is
in every athlete functioned immediately. He dashed, not at the torch
as every cornered animal or man would, as they expected him to do, but
away from it.
He swung cleanly on his heel, and jumped as he swung. He sensed that
there were several men in the room, and that they guarded the door. He
neglected the door. He leaped for the window. If he could smash that,
create an uproar in the Sault Algonquin, then he would attract help.
An oath came from a man as his game was realized. Something whistled
through the air, hit a wall with a soft and terrible thud. “Sandbag,”
registered Clement’s brain. He dodged, and there was another oath and
another miss.
A shadow, lean and leaping like a cat, shot from the darkness into the
dazzle of the torch. Clement saw a fierce, feline face, and one hand
stretched forward to clutch, while the other swung up to club.
“Siwash,” Clement’s brain signaled. He spurred his body forward with
a quicker drive of his foot, got in under the blow, and punched in
both hands hard and sure. Siwash staggered and his stick went flying
loose over Clement’s shoulder. Clement uppercut with a savage left,
Siwash jerked upward grotesquely, went over wildly into the blackness.
Clement hurdled his body, and his hand was on the advertisement boards
screening the window.
Adolf Neuburg was on him.
The mountain of a man with his unexpected and terrible agility swept
down from nowhere. His great hands went out plucking at the young
Englishman. His vast fists were free of weapons, for he was confident
in his enormous strength. And he grabbed at Clement, he did not
hit--that was foolish. His hand closed on Clement’s upper arm and
swung the lighter man round. Then Mr. Neuburg uttered a curious,
staccato yell. As his hand closed on the arm, the arm, instead of being
wrenched away, had closed on the hand, the upper and lower arms coming
together. As the Englishman swung round, his body doubled forward, and
Mr. Neuburg’s arm, caught and twisted, was vilely wrenched. The fact
that Mr. Neuburg endeavored to save his wrist and forearm by exerting
his huge strength only made matters worse--that is the great truth
underlying Japanese wrestling. But Mr. Neuburg did not know that.
He snatched his hand away as Clement unhinged, only to receive a
snapping right-hand swing to the side of the head. He bellowed, made a
furious swipe at the Englishman with his left. Clement ducked, slipped
in under it, banged right and left to Mr. Neuburg’s great face. And Mr.
Neuburg went down. He went down not because he had been knocked, but
because Clement had employed a trick he had once seen a shifty boxer
use. As he jumped in to hit, he had slipped his left toe behind Mr.
Neuburg’s heel. The force of the blow sent Mr. Neuburg reeling over
that toe.
But Mr. Neuburg had served his purpose. He had delayed Clement. Clement
knew it. Directly he had struck the mountain of a man, he darted, not
towards the window now, for the other men--how many were there?--must
be converging on that, but towards the door again, which should have
been left unguarded. The tussle had lasted moments only--but----
The man who had held the torch had not moved during all the fighting.
It was Joe, who was slow, but enduringly calm. He had seen Siwash go
down and out. He had seen the massive Mr. Neuburg go down. He saw
Clement dart away from the window towards the door. He stood still. His
hand held the blazing torch steady. But his other hand moved. It moved
in a long swinging arc. It completed its swing at the moment Clement’s
hand touched the door handle. Clement slumped forward against the door,
and then he crumpled nervelessly to the floor. The sandbag in that
swinging hand had reached its mark on Clement’s head with a beautiful
accuracy.
Joe played the light round Clement’s inert body. Mr. Neuburg scrambled
to his feet, snarling because he tried to help himself up with his
damaged wrist. He came to Joe’s side. Joe put out his hand, clicked on
the electric light. Both rogues stood over the Englishman. He did not
move.
“Some wildcat,” said Joe. He gazed down with grim admiration. He looked
at Siwash, still prone. He looked at Mr. Neuburg’s palpably damaged
face and wrist. A fourth man, so tall and thin that his bones seemed
loose and rattling, joined the two. He was the only other in the room.
He held a sandbag in his hand, but he had the general air of being a
tradesman. That gave his furtive pose a tone of nervousness. He looked
at Neuburg, moistening his lips in agitation--and did not speak. He
looked at Joe and did. “Dead?” he asked hesitantly. “Dead?”
“Aw,” said Joe without passion, “you make me tired. A little knock like
that killing any feller.”
Mr. Neuburg looked across the tall, thin man’s shoulder with an
emotionless chuckle. “Since our good Louis took to glue, his morale has
become--shall we say--very sticky?” he said softly.
“Well, mustn’t one preserve appearances, Adolf?” the thin man protested
nervously. “Now mustn’t one? If anything happened to cause trouble
would it help me--any of us? It is by keeping up the appearance of--of
honesty that we--we----”
“Timidity has given our dear friend Louis a certain wisdom,” said
Neuburg, smiling his creaseless smile. “There is something in what he
says.”
“That means,” commented Joe without emotion--“that means you ain’t
goin’ to dump this coyote inter the river.”
“No--no--no!” cried the gluemaker feverishly. “If it got out, that
would----” The man Louis seemed to have a terror of finishing sentences.
“Aw, you’re crazy,” said Joe. “You make me real tired. Get quit o’ him
once and for all, I says.”
“The shock of the water would bring him to,” murmured Mr. Neuburg, not
in friendliness towards Clement, but in speculation.
“We could fix that--rope him,” said Joe.
“And that would indicate foul play. So would hitting him over the head,
or shooting him before we slipped him into the St. Lawrence....”
“I could keep him safe,” put in the timid Louis. “Safe, up at top of
house. In that room he’d never get out. You see.”
“He’d have to get out sometime,” said Mr. Neuburg.
“I’d see that he didn’t.”
“Forever?” put in Joe dryly.
“Well--for long enough. For days, for a week--until you’ve got things
fixed....”
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Neuburg with quick decision. “You take
him up to that room of yours and keep him tight. Don’t forget he’s
a cunning one, whatever you do.--I’m not a pleasant person to have
trouble with.” Louis cringed away. “Right; you understand that. In a
few days we’ll telegraph you. Then you can let him free.”
“To raise hell,” sneered Joe sullenly, puzzled by Mr. Neuburg’s
decision.
Mr. Neuburg turned with his silent swiftness on Joe. He gazed bitterly
across Joe’s shoulder. “Do I give orders, Joe, or do you? Do I make
mistakes, Joe, or do you?”
Joe shuffled his feet anxiously. Mr. Neuburg was not looking at him,
but Joe dropped his gaze to the dirty floor. “Oh, I know you’re the
brains, boss ... but I don’t see ...” he muttered.
“I’m seeing for you,” sneered Mr. Neuburg coldly. “You’re a bright
feller in a rough-house, but thinking isn’t one of your assets. Just
for that I’ll explain to you. Item one, we don’t want trouble in this
business. Item two, if we can squash trouble it’s wiser to squash it.
Item three, if we can make this fool Englishman feel that he’s played
a losing game, that he’s only butting in where he’s not wanted--by
the girl; that the girl is happy and content with what she’s doing,
an’ so on, and so on, well, he’ll stop making trouble right then an’
there. Item four, given that the girl is what we know she is, and
Gunning being licked up to the scratch, an’ the pair or twain thrown
together--well, she’ll be content. Do you follow now, my friend? This
Heloise girl meets Gunning; Gunning is love’s young dream to her. They
fix it up together. That’s settled. We wire Louis here to release this
feller; he can even let drop where he is to find the girl. He comes
chasing after her. He finds her. She hasn’t a glance for him. She is
all for Gunning; maybe, even, she has married him--I think we can fix
that up, get a reason for the hurry. Anything this Englishman says to
her, he says against Gunning, so it will be an insult. He’ll be simply
out of it. So he goes away quietly, for her sake. Do you get it now?”
“If he _did_ go away quietly,” said Joe haltingly. “It has a good
sound, what you say, but----”
“And if he doesn’t go away quietly,” said Mr. Neuburg in a soft, cold
voice, “well, we will be, perhaps, in the wilds; at Sicamous, or
somewhere. Away from cities, from people who ask questions and pry
deeply. In the wilds, _accidents_ have a more plausible air, my good
Joe; dead men are less noticeable--than--say in Quebec!”
Joe looked at the big mountain of a Mr. Neuburg with a wide-eyed gaze.
“I see, you _want_ him to come out and be killed. You’re a wonder of a
devil, Adolf,” he said.
“Take his head, Joe, Louis will probably drop him before we get to that
room at the top. Louis, his legs.”
II
When Clement came to himself he was conscious of extreme darkness, an
agonizing pain in his head where that sandbag had landed, and also
considerable pain where his bonds bit into wrist and leg.
He also felt from the sounds drifting up to him that he was in a room
at the top of the gluemaker’s house, and probably a lumber room from
the musty smell of it.
It must be confessed that his first responsible emotion was not
thankfulness for an escape from what should have been death, but a
very hearty disgust at the way he had allowed himself to be captured.
In fact, when he realized how he had thrown away his chance and maybe
delivered Heloise into the hands of Mr. Neuburg and his gang, he lost
his nerve, and with a terrific output of strength tried to free himself
from his bonds.
He had seen heroes in the “movies” and Mr. Houdini free themselves from
their shackles often enough, and it had seemed a simple matter. The men
who had fixed his bonds, however, would have spoiled any movie hero’s
business. Not only could he not throw them off, but the struggle to do
so, so increased the pain of them and that of his head, that in the end
he fainted.
He was forced back to consciousness by the frightful sensation of blood
recirculating in his limbs. He writhed and moaned. An oath sounded at
his side, something was flung over his head, and handcuffs were snapped
on to his wrists. Clement struggled with the thing about his head,
while shuffling footsteps hurried across the boards but he only got the
rug--that is what it proved to be--away from his eyes in time to see
the legs and back of a tall, thin man flash out of the door. A strong
lock snapped home. Louis, the gluemaker, was not risking identification.
When he had recovered sufficiently, Clement sat up and took stock
of the situation. He was, as he had thought in the roof room of the
gluemaker’s. It was a big room, crowded with old junk. The room
was lit by a narrow window of the kind known to architects as a
“lie-on-your-stomach,” that is, it rose from the floor boards to end
at the slant of the roof about two feet above. By the light coming in
through the dirty panes the morning was well on, but whether it was
past his hour to see Heloise--9:30--he could not say.
He was sitting in the center of this room, with some fresh food and
water beside him. The gang then did not want him to starve. He also
saw that the gang had thought of him in other ways. The thin man who
had just bolted through the door, had been with him for no other reason
than to remove the tight ropes, and substitute manacles of an easier
kind.
He had snapped a pair of police handcuffs on his wrists, as Clement
knew, but before that he had put another pair on his ankles; these
were linked by a heavy chain to a staple in the wall. The chain was
padlocked.
Clement lifted the jug of water with both hands, took a long drink, and
then examined the handcuffs on his wrists. In less than a minute one
wrist was free. It was quite simple. These handcuffs were ratcheted to
take several sizes in wrists. In his hurry the thin man had not pushed
the ratchet of the right cuff beyond the first notch. Clement was
what might be called a third notch man--hence he had no difficulty in
slipping his wrist out.
The leg irons presented a graver problem. Unable to get them off with
his hands, he searched about for some means of removing them. He was
lucky. With difficulty he unearthed from a box full of odd tools, a
hacksaw. With this slowly and patiently, and with his attention always
alert for movements in the house, he sawed through the connecting links
of the ankle irons.
It was a tedious and painful business. He heard the mid-day “break”
sound from scores of factory sirens, but he worked on trying not to
think of what might be happening to Heloise.
She would remain on in Quebec, he told himself. She could not hurry
away, she would not leave without seeing him. He tried to convince
himself of this. He would see her in spite of this trap. And after he
had talked with her the whole bad business would be ended.
If he thought of Mr. Neuburg and his cunning, he said to himself, “He
thinks he has me here safely. He won’t attempt to attract attention by
hustling things.”
It was after two o’clock when he got free. Nobody had come up to him.
He had thought this would be the case since a day’s supply of food had
been left with him. Concealing the ankle cuffs under his socks, and
that on his left wrist up his sleeve, he lay down and looked out of the
window.
It was overlooking the yard he had studied yesterday from the cliff
behind. In that yard nothing was stirring save the “puff-puff-puff” of
the steam pipe. From this window to the yard was a sheer drop of some
seventy feet. On the other hand, the thin, topmost upright of the fire
escape was two feet away from the window, and level with it--if he
dared risk that.
He meant to. He forced the dirt-gummed window open, and, laying flat on
his stomach, wriggled his body inch by inch out of the narrow window.
It was soul chilling. To find himself poised there half in and half
out of that tube of a window, with nothing to aid him, and with that
horrible drop beneath him, unnerved him. He felt himself slipping,
going. For one moment he seemed to be clawing the empty air, with the
feeling that nothing could save him. He was dropping--
Then in a flash his nerve came back. He lunged forward and grasped the
slender iron girder of the escape, and there for an agonized moment he
hung swaying, helpless. He made a giant effort. The thin iron of the
fire escape support creaked and appeared to bend toward him. He heard
the structure groan. His feet came away suddenly, and his knees and
thighs struck the iron pole with excruciating pain. But the instinct
of preservation caused his limbs to act almost, it appeared, on their
own initiative. Just as his hands seemed about to be torn loose by
his weight, his legs circled the iron support and gripped. He slid
downward. In a moment he was crouching on the top platform of the fire
escape behind a rain-water barrel.
He remained there for a few minutes, regaining his breath and his
nerve, surveying the side of the cliff up which he must presently go.
Then he looked downward--and saw a man on the flat roof beneath the
fire escape.
The man had come out from the window of the house that was flush with
the roof. He stood, a slim, lithe figure, gazing idly about him. He
was occupied with nothing more significant than the after-lunch
exercise of picking his teeth. Clement knew who the man was. It was
Siwash Mike. He hoped Siwash Mike was one of those who liked to take an
afternoon siesta on his bed.
Siwash Mike stood there, easy, feeling, no doubt, that the world was
a good place to live in. Then he apparently decided what he was going
to do. He turned and reentered the house. Clement, thanks to his
rubber-soled shoes, was down another floor on the escape by the time he
emerged again. That was the fourth floor, through the window of which
Clement had seen Siwash himself enter the house yesterday.
The action of Siwash was now not satisfactory. Siwash was dragging
behind him a deck chair. Siwash--it was horrible to see it--had under
his arm a bundle of magazines with highly colored covers.... Siwash was
going to make an afternoon of it on that roof. An afternoon of it--and
Clement must leap from the escape to that roof, and cross it in order
to reach the cliff.
It was a bitter moment.
But Clement meant to get across that roof and up that cliff. And, what
is more, he meant to do it quickly. He could not afford to waste any
more time away from Heloise’s side. Indeed, he dare not waste time
here. At any moment some one might go up to the attic, find him gone,
and raise the alarm....
Raise the alarm! The thought flashed through Clement’s mind not with a
thrill of anxiety but with the thrill of a happy idea. With his eyes
on the now reposeful head of Siwash Mike, he felt the jalousies of
the window behind him. As yesterday, they were unfastened. He opened
one, slipped his hand in--yes, the window was wide open also.... In
another moment he was inside that window, and had closed the jalousies
behind him. Before him were the stairs, descending steeply into yawning
darkness. He went to the head of these. With his hands he made a
trumpet about his mouth. He opened his mouth. With the full power of
his lungs he yelled, “Siwash! Siwash!”
He nipped back to the jalousies. He looked down at Siwash Mike. The
half-breed was standing, glaring towards the house, his body tense and
alert. Clement nipped to the head of the stairs. He yelled again in a
tone of terrific alarm, “Siwash! Help!”
He heard a tumult below. When he got to the jalousies Siwash was no
longer on the roof. In a flash of seconds Clement was; had swung from
the escape to the flat roof; had dashed along that roof and had leaped
to the ledge of the low cliff. He was three parts up the cliff before
the fierce face of the half-breed appeared at the little window of the
attic.
The face appeared, scowled ferociously, then the right arm shot out.
The automatic in the hand came down, sighting on Clement’s climbing
figure. Clement shut his eyes and felt sick. He was a mark that could
scarcely be missed.
Nothing happened.
He opened his eyes.
Siwash’s face was turned away from him; he appeared to be arguing
vehemently with some one behind him in the attic. As Clement looked,
a long, thin arm with an incredibly bony hand stretched itself past
Siwash’s shoulder, and clutched avidly at the automatic pistol. Clement
did not waste time then. He was up the remainder of the cliff as fast
as his best climbing could take him. He was through the builder’s yard
at a run, though a man yelled at him to know his business.... And in
a near street he caught a taxi and went to the Château Frontenac as
rapidly as petrol could carry him.
As he went into the lobby he was stopped by the porter. “We’ve
been looking for you, Mr. Seadon,” the man said. “Looking for you
everywhere. A lady was asking for you.”
“A lady!” cried Clement, stopping in his stride. “What lady?”
“Oh, the one that left this morning,” said the porter.
“The one that went this morning?” echoed Clement stupidly.
“Yes, the one that left for Montreal.”
Clement glared at him. “You can’t mean Miss Reys, Miss Heloise Reys,
who was here with a companion?” he cried.
“That’s the lady I mean,” said the cataclysmic porter. “She was asking
for you right up to the moment she left.”
III
Clement Seadon was for the moment dazed by the dismaying unexpectedness
of the news.
He had lost. Mr. Neuburg and his gang had not wasted a moment. They had
whipped the girl out of his reach. They had effectually put a barrier
of distance between him and Heloise.
He had a bitter vision of Heloise traveling away from him--away through
this vast country where communications were scarce. She was more
completely in the clutches of those terrible and sinister people with
every mile she traveled, and he was less able to help. He stared at the
porter. “She’s gone,” he said. “She--didn’t the lady leave a message?”
“None, sir. She seemed to expect that you was going to see her.”
“Yes,” said Seadon. He could understand how bewildered Heloise must
have been when he did not keep his appointment of this morning. “And
you’re sure she went to Montreal?”
“Yessir,” said the porter. Some one touched Clement’s arm, somebody
said, “Seadon, old fellow....” Clement waved this hand aside without
looking round. “Just one minute,” he said. Then to the porter, “You’re
sure it was Montreal? I mean she wasn’t going further? Through to
Sicamous, for example?”
“Sure, they’re stopping off at Montreal, her and her lady fren’. Didn’t
I check their baggage to Montreal?”
Clement thought for a moment. What did that mean? Did it mean that
Heloise would stop in Montreal, or did it mean that she was merely
changing trains there in order to go to the place--wherever it
was--where Henry Gunning was lurking at the moment? That seemed the
more likely, and it was the more dismaying. She was going to some
unknown town in the tremendous continent. It filled him with dread even
to think of it.
His arm was touched again. He thanked the porter, turned, and saw the
captain of the _Empress of Prague_ by his side. “Hello, Heavy,” he said.
“I’ve been looking for you, old chap,” said the captain. “I want you to
meet The Chief.”
“The Chief,” echoed Clement vaguely. He saw a man of middle height with
astonishingly thick, square shoulders standing by the captain’s side.
He was a man with a firm, sunburned face in which big bones showed
strongly. His nose was powerful and high-bridged, and the skin round
the eyes was dark. The eyes were extraordinarily steady and keen, and,
since he was smiling, his face had a singularly pleasant, indeed,
tender kindness which tempered its undoubted resolution. Clement looked
at this man, and knew him for a staunch and extremely capable friend at
once. He said again, “The Chief?”
“He’s our policeman,” said the genial captain. “He’s down here to
find out why you weren’t arrested in that diamond tiara affair on the
_Empress_.”
“Is he, by Jove?” cried Clement abruptly, glancing at the strong,
intelligent face of The Chief with a sudden feeling of hope.
“He’s the head of the railway police organization,” explained Captain
Heavy. “Not the Dominion police, mind you. His name, by the way, is
Joseph Fiscal. And, seriously, he’d like a few words with you regarding
that robbery.”
“He’s the very man I’m wanting myself,” said Clement heartily, to the
surprise of the captain--nothing yet created seemed able to surprise
The Chief. “Can we go somewhere and talk?”
IV
The three men went into the private sitting room in the manager’s
office. The first thing Clement did was to take his left hand from the
pocket in which it had reposed since he escaped from the house in the
Sault Algonquin, pull up his sleeve, shake his arm, and so expose to
The Chief the handcuff still clasping his left wrist.
That redoubtable man looked at it calmly, fingered it, sat upright
slowly, and turned on Captain Heavy a dry, genial smile. His eyes
scrutinized the puzzled face of the captain for but a moment, then he
turned back to Clement. With the same movement his hand came out of his
pocket, and in the hand was a handcuff key.
In a moment, and with free hands, Clement was rolling down his socks,
exposing the handcuffs on his ankles.
The smile of The Chief became broader. “Is your friend quite as honest
as you think, Heavy?” he asked genially.
“Ab-solutely,” said Heavy in a perplexed tone. “Though he does seem to
have been trying to do Houdini stunts, and failing.”
“Not altogether failing,” smiled Clement, as The Chief’s key got to
work. “I managed to get out of _this_ trap, just as I managed to get
out of the one on the _Empress_--the diamond tiara trap.”
“Ah,” said The Chief, looking up, smiling with his lips, but his eyes
keen. “There _is_ something behind it all?”
“There is; but first, how soon can I get to Montreal?”
“Talking to us won’t hold you up,” said The Chief with unexpected
penetration. “You can’t go before the night train.”
“Isn’t there something before that--any means?”
“No,” said The Chief. He looked at Clement steadily. That look was a
request for information.
“Well, as I said, I want your help; but it’s going to be a tale, even a
sort of ‘shocker,’ a strange, unbelievable crime and mystery story.”
“_I’ll_ be able to appreciate it,” smiled The Chief. “Go on, Mr.
Seadon.”
So Seadon told the whole story from the beginning. He told everything,
indeed, except one thing. That thing was the little lawyer’s suggestion
that he should make love to and marry Heloise, and the fact that he had
himself arrived at the conclusion that the little lawyer had talked
wisdom. He did not talk of it, but perhaps the men who listened were
not unaware of his condition. The Chief smiled even more humanly.
Heavy, with a seaman’s bluntness, cried, “I remember Miss Reys, a
beautiful woman. To think that a pack of scoundrels.... Still, old man,
you’ve got The Chief with you now.”
Clement thought of Canada and its vastness. Even the most astute
chief of police would find it difficult to track a girl through that
immensity--and do it in time.
“Mr. Seadon is not quite sure about The Chief,” smiled the head of the
railway police.
“Well ... Canada’s such a huge place. It’s easy to vanish without trace
in such a country.”
“Oh, our system compares with the country,” said The Chief genially.
“That porter told you he’d checked Miss Reys’ baggage through to
Montreal? We’ll begin by confirming that.” He pressed a bell. A girl
came in. “How do, Miss Jeannette. I wonder whether you’d mind asking
Mr. Labage--he’s still at the rail reservation desk, isn’t he?--to step
along. Say, that’s real nice of you.”
Mr. Labage came in. The Chief said to him immediately, “How are you
keeping, Mr. Labage? That’s good. Now, I’m wondering if you can tell me
if a lady from this hotel and her companion, a Miss Heloise Reys and a
Miss Méduse Smythe, took reservations on any train pulling out to-day?”
“Sure she did. Both ladies reserved on the _Imperial_, leaving at 1:15
for Montreal.”
“That confirms it, then,” said Clement. The Chief only smiled, he was
after full proof.
“And say, did another feller, a big feller by name of Neuburg, go out
to-day?”
“He certainly did,” said the efficient Mr. Labage. “He, an’ a feller
with him, some one outside, had reservations on the morning train.”
“To Montreal?”
“To Montreal.”
That finished the clerk.
“And the next move, Chief?” asked Clement, for he knew that there
would be another move. He saw that The Chief had made it certain that
Heloise--and the gang--were going straight through to Montreal, and
were not leaving the train before. He was beginning to appreciate the
calm ability and keenness, yes, and the immense resources, lying behind
the genial smile of this man.
The Chief put out his hand to the telephone. “I want Montreal, Miss,”
he said into the receiver. “Get me Windsor Station, the Department of
Investigation.” He hung up and turned to Clement. “This feller Neuburg
is new to me. I’ve been thinking about him, but I can’t place him.
He must have come up from the States, or, he may have worked behind
others. The one class of life I am thoroughly acquainted with is bad
men. I know all the leading lights, but I don’t get him.... This
Gunning feller--we’ll get news of easy. And we’ll find out about this
Joe Wandersun. He’s Neuburg’s traveling companion on this trip, since
Siwash stayed, hey? P’raps we’ll trail up Siwash Mike, too. But this
Neuburg.... Give me an idea of him, Mr. Seadon.”
Clement described Neuburg as pointedly as he could, while The Chief
listened with his smile, as though it were but a good story, but his
level and capable eyes proved his keenness.
Clement had just finished his picture of the master rogue when the
telephone bell rang. The Chief picked up the receiver, “That Mac
speaking? This is The Chief. Who’s about?... Ah, Gatineau’s there.
Call him.... Oh, Xavier, it’s The Chief speaking. I’m in Quebec on the
_Empress_ robbery case.... See here, there is a lady stopping off at
Montreal on _Imperial No. 1_. She is a Miss Heloise Reys, she has a
companion with her, a Miss Méduse Smythe. I want her trailed. Find out
where she’s stopping, if she stays in Montreal. If she isn’t staying,
find out where she’s going and by what train she goes.--No, don’t
interfere with her, just find out what she’s doing. Got that? Next, I
want you to find out all you can about a feller called Henry Gunning,
and another called Joe Wandersun, both of Sicamous.” He gave the few
details Clement had been able to give of these men. “If you can’t find
out anything about ’em in Records, or from the Dominion police, just
flash through to Sicamous or Revelstoke. Got that? Next isn’t so easy.
I want to hear somethin’ about a man who calls himself Adolf Neuburg.”
He spelled it out. Then he described him with an accuracy which
was amazing, considering he had only had Clement’s not very expert
description. “This feller Neuburg seems to be an out-size bad hat, but
I can’t place him. We haven’t come across him, I know. But just find
out if there’s anything known. You might trace him through mining,
or you might pick up something about him in connection with British
Columbia. He pulled out of here for Montreal on the morning train,
see if that helps.... You’ve got all that? Well, if it’s possible,
long-distance me here at the Frontenac about Miss Heloise Reys. The
other stuff can keep. I’m pulling out myself by the night train.”
As The Chief put down the instrument Clement said enthusiastically,
“That’s splendid, it draws a noose round them. We’re bound to trace
them now.”
“Yes, there are possibilities in my job,” smiled The Chief. “We’ve got
many means of heading off rogues and finding out things about them.”
“And I’m going to give you another,” said Clement. “This Sherlock
Holmes business is contagious. Miss Heloise went because she had reason
to go. Yes, I know they must have persuaded her, but, and this is my
point, they wouldn’t have persuaded her unless they had something to
persuade with. At the bottom of this journey there must have been a
message.”
The Chief stood up, reached for his soft hat. “That’s it. She got the
message she was expecting about this Gunning man. You said she had
letters addressed to her at the post office. Come along, we’ll look at
that message.”
They went down the hill to the post office--where most of the notices
were in French. The Chief’s authority took them at once to a
superintendent, who had no difficulty in finding the duplicate of a
wire which Heloise Reys must have received late the night before. The
wire had come from Sicamous. It was signed by Wandersun--that meant
Joe’s wife had sent it. It said tersely:
“Henry Gunning is present working at Cobalt.”
“Cobalt,” said Clement, staring down at the flimsy slip. “That’s the
famous silver mining town, isn’t it?”
“Yes, and this Gunning is a miner,” said The Chief. “Well, that’s all
natural enough. You see what’s happened. When Gunning broke loose from
those toughs he came east, meaning probably to hit the high spots.
Somewhere this side of Winnipeg his money ran dry. Being on his uppers,
and being a miner, he’d just naturally think of Cobalt, for Cobalt’d be
the place where he would find his own job and at good money.”
“And I see how they persuaded Heloise--Miss Reys. They made her feel
that if she did not start for Cobalt at once there’d be every chance of
her missing him again. Gunning would wander off again directly he got
money into his pocket.”
“Yes, and they got her to go by that train because she’d be able to
catch a connection out of Montreal,” capped The Chief. “She’ll go out
by No. 17. It’s one of the few direct trains. She’ll get a through
sleeper on that. Cobalt it is, Mr. Seadon.”
“But Cobalt is an unhandy place to get at.”
“It’s just as unhandy a place to get out of, too. But it’s Cobalt she’s
gone to, take that as fixed, Mr. Seadon.”
Before they boarded the night train for Montreal they learned over
the long-distance ’phone that the girl and her companion had taken
reservations for Cobalt on the night train.
They also learned that a large man, answering unmistakably to the
description of Mr. Neuburg, with a companion, had left Montreal earlier
in the day.
He, too, had booked through to Cobalt.
V
All through the night journey Clement was sleepless. He was thinking
of Heloise and the danger she was in. His own adventures with Mr.
Neuburg and his gang had taught him that there was very little these
scoundrels would stop at, and the thought of that slim, beautiful and
fine-tempered girl at the mercy of creatures so base and so cruel was a
thing of terror.
What would happen to her? What, even now, was happening to her, or was
about to happen? He was tortured by a thousand fears.
That Neuburg was going on before he knew was ominous. He was going to
deal with the inveterate Henry Gunning so that he would appear at his
best when Heloise “found” him. From his own experience Clement felt
that what Mr. Neuburg took in hand would be done thoroughly.
At Montreal they were met by a slim, pleasant young man, with a quiet
manner and a nearly bald head. A satisfying young man, whose modesty
covered a definite ability to think and do things quickly. He told The
Chief at once that he had reserved accommodation for two on the next
train out to Cobalt.
“Two?” asked Clement.
“Xavier Gatineau here is going with you, Mr. Seadon,” said The Chief,
indicating the quiet young man with a nod. “It’s our case, too, you
know. We want to get to the bottom of that tiara business. Now, come
along and have breakfast with me. We have time before your train goes.
Xavier will tell us anything fresh.”
Over the cantaloupe and ice water and gaspé salmon and superb coffee,
that made the breakfast, the young man told them there was nothing
particularly fresh.
“The two ladies went through to Cobalt,” he said. “A point is they
traveled light. They took only suitcases. The heavy baggage was left
here--on demand. The baggage master told me that Miss Reys expected to
wire for it to be sent on somewhere.”
“That means they don’t expect to make a stay in Cobalt. It also means
that if they left in a hurry it wouldn’t be so easy to trail them,”
commented The Chief. “Well, we’re warned anyhow. I’ll take steps,
Xavier. If you lose the trail, or anything goes wrong, get a message to
me. I’ll try and have something at all divisions,[1] too, and I’ll send
a general warning west. Now, about Mr. Neuburg?”
“He pulled out early on the westbound. He’ll have changed at North Bay,
and so got to Cobalt last night. I haven’t been able to connect up with
Cobalt.--It’s not on our system, you know,” he explained to Clement.
“Neuburg had another man with him. Both only carried suitcases.”
“Anything through from Sicamous?”
“Joe Wandersun is a bad hat. We have his record, because he fell foul
of us once over false declarations in way-sheets. He’s got a shack
at Sicamous.... I’ve had a message through from the station master
there. Seems to be living more or less in retirement for the present.
Sicamous, anyhow, is no more than a scattered handful of shacks, no
scope for a man who lives by his wits. That’s what Wandersun has been
doing for years. He’s done a term in prison for fraud; it reads as
though it were the confidence trick. He’s a friend of Gunning’s.”
“Ah,” said Clement. “You’ve heard something about Gunning.”
“Our chap at Sicamous says he’s a remittance man. That’s a term in
British Columbia for a man who won’t work--a fellow who lives by
sponging. Gunning says he has mine claims, and is a booze artist.” The
young man’s eyes twinkled. “That’s our expression for a man given to
drink, Mr. Seadon.”
“Nothing against him?”
“Nothing proven--to our knowledge, but his habits are bad, and his
company shady.”
“Have you found out anything about Siwash Mike?” asked The Chief.
“Nothing.”
“Neuburg?”
“I’m going to hear from the Dominion police--perhaps; or, rather,
they’ll get on to you, sir. They don’t place him. But one of them said
he had an idea that the description you gave was like a man the U. S.
A. police were after. As far as he remembered, this man was wanted in
Oregon, well, considerably more than two years ago. They are going to
look into it, and get in touch with the U. S. A., too.”
From the way he spoke, Clement thought that the quiet young man was
holding something back. Abruptly he leaned across the breakfast table.
“Did they say what he was wanted for?”
The young man looked at The Chief before answering. The Chief nodded.
“Murder,” he said quietly.
Murder! Clement fell back in his chair, staring at the quiet, partly
bald young man who had made the calm statement.
“As far as the Dominion police could remember--it was a good while
back, you understand--it was a matter of murder, or complicity in a
murder. Something with a lot of money in it, and a man killed. But
they’ll find out the full facts.”
“Good God! and that girl is in this--this murderer’s power,” gasped
Clement, unable to think of anything else.
“It may not be the same feller, Mr. Seadon,” said The Chief kindly.
“It’s an old case, and they are only working from memory, not facts.”
“Are there many men answering to the description of Mr. Neuburg?”
“No,” said The Chief slowly. “But then I don’t know. An’ when we get
the Oregon description we may find it doesn’t fit him.”
“A case of money and murder ... that fits Neuburg,” said Clement. “Yes,
he’s a murderer and a thief, and--and that poor girl’s at his mercy. We
must do something.”
“We can’t do anything until you get to Cobalt, Mr. Seadon. Come now,
you mustn’t lose your nerve.”
But that was a thing easier to talk about than to do. Clement’s nerves,
very decidedly, had become jumpy. The thought that he had to sit
passive while that murderer had his way with Heloise filled him for a
moment with panic.
He suggested getting through to Cobalt by ’phone or wire and doing
something. It was only the soothing calm of The Chief, who, rightly or
wrongly, trusted only his own system that quieted him in the end. He
felt that there was no good doing anything until he and Xavier Gatineau
got to Cobalt. A false step, a clumsy movement, a hint thrown out by
some one not too sure of his job, and the rogues would take fright and
all their work would be undone.
And after all, as The Chief pointed out, Heloise could not be in danger
for a day or two, and, moreover, it was extremely unlikely that she
could get away from Cobalt before they arrived.
VI
While they were waiting to catch the connection at North Bay, Clement
Seadon saw a man dodge out of the station telegraph office. He came
out furtively, saw Clement near him, hung hesitating, and then with
the movement of a weasel snapped back into cover behind the telegraph
office door.
Clement walked away, but, always, he watched that door.
When the train for Cobalt drew up, he handed his bag to the black
porter of his car--and still kept his eyes on the door. The young
detective who accompanied him paused as he entered the train, and
stood watching Clement’s antics. Clement heard him speaking over
his shoulder. He mounted the steps of the train backwards. He said,
“Gatineau, just keep your eyes on the door of the telegraph office,
will you?”
The train began to pull out. A head appeared round the door of the
telegraph office. The dark, swift eyes in the head scanned the train
and platform.... Clement felt that, shrewd though that glance was, he
and Gatineau were well screened by the side of the train. One look and
the head was followed by a lithe, sinewy figure. This figure crossed
the platform at a swift, loping run, jumped to the steps of a car
farther back, and pulled himself into the train.
“You saw him?” said Clement. “That was Siwash Mike. He’s traveling with
us to Cobalt.”
They went to their seats in the train. Clement sat facing back so
that he could see any one who came forward through the train. He
thought Siwash Mike would lie low, but these rogues were so bold and
unscrupulous that he meant to be ready for all emergencies.
“I was rather startled to see him,” he said to Xavier Gatineau, “but,
of course, I should have expected him. He has been following me from
Quebec without a doubt.”
“Yes, in worrying about other things we forgot him,” admitted Gatineau.
“He complicates matters. He’ll have sent Neuburg word that we are
coming to Cobalt.... He was probably doing that in the telegraph
office.”
The young detective’s surmise was a natural one. But it happened to be
wrong--as they found out later. Siwash Mike had sent his message of
their coming to Neuburg when they left Montreal. He had gone into the
telegraph office at North Bay for quite another reason. But Clement
and his companion were not to know that. They simply formed their
deductions on the material they had, and as the material they had was
limited, their deductions were wrong.
“Yes, they’ll know we are coming; they’ll be prepared for us. And we
can do exactly nothing,” said Clement bitterly.
“Let’s try and think what they’ll do to checkmate us,” said the
detective.
“That’s easy,” said Clement. “They’ll do what they’ve been doing or
attempting to do ever since this affair began. They’ll get Heloise Reys
out of our reach.”
“Not easy in a smallish town like Cobalt.”
“Then they’ll take her outside Cobalt.”
“But--but can they move her about at their will like that? She’s an
intelligent woman. Wouldn’t she object, wouldn’t she see something
wrong in this constant repetition of these tactics?”
“They’ll be plausible,” said Clement. “Their excuse will be logical.
You must remember that this Gunning fellow is not supposed to know she
is coming to him. However erratic his movements may seem, they’re his
own, or appear to be his own. If they tell her at Cobalt that Gunning
has left the town, gone off to a shack, or a mine in the wilds, she
can’t say anything. That’s the sort of thing he would do, and she has
to adapt herself to him. That’s how they’ll get her away. Gunning will
go off somewhere--and she’ll follow.”
“It’s a tough problem,” said the little detective. And both men fell
silent, thinking this tough problem out.
This was a new difficulty to cap the old one. Already Clement had felt
that Heloise would be taken to some place hard to find in Cobalt, and
now he felt that, thanks to Siwash’s message, she would be doubly hard
to discover. And then suddenly, as he began to dwell upon Siwash’s
unpleasant presence on the train he smiled.
“By Gad,” he cried, “it is just luck after all.”
The little detective looked at him sharply. Clement answered that look
by saying:
“From our brother Siwash’s antics do you feel that he thinks _we_ know
he is on this train?”
“Why, no,” said the detective. “From the way he acted I think he
thought we hadn’t seen him, and he hoped we wouldn’t.”
“That’s my conclusion,” smiled Clement. “He has us under his eye and
expects no guile from us, simply because he thinks us innocent of his
presence. And that’s going to help us.”
The detective’s eyes showed that he hadn’t grasped what Clement was
driving at.
“This is what I mean. He, personally, fears nothing from us. He is
confident that he can do his job without any suspicion or threat to
himself. Now, what is his job--it’s to shadow us to Cobalt, see us
safely there, and report. Do you agree with that; I mean do you think
there might be something further for him to do?”
“No,” said the detective with thought. “I don’t see what more he can
do. They’ll naturally want to hear from him exactly what we’ve been
doing. He’ll probably turn us over to another man, or if, it being the
dead of night, we went to the hotel, he’d judge we were safe for an
hour or so....”
“And we’ll arrange that he thinks that. But the point is that you agree
he’ll report. And who to?”
“Why, to Neuburg--the gang.”
“Yes--he’ll lead us to them,” smiled Clement quietly. The detective
looked at him, and then smiled in return.
“Say, that’s pretty snappy thinking. Tell me the idea.”
“It’s based on the fact that he thinks we don’t suspect he’s following
us. Now, this is my plan. When the train stops at Cobalt we’ll delay
getting off until the last.... That’ll thin out the other passengers
who alight ... that’ll make it easier for you to spot him, to fix him
in your mind....”
“I’ve got him already,” smiled the detective. “That’s our job, you
know, to remember men. I know him. I won’t miss him.”
“All right. But, anyhow, you’ll get a chance of picking him up easily
if there are fewer people about. When we get on to the platform, and
he has a chance of hearing all we say, I’ll arrange in a loud voice
to have both the bags carried to the hotel. Then you will say to me
(for, remember, we don’t suspect he’s there, we don’t suspect the
gang knows we’ve come to Cobalt), also in a loudish voice, that while
I’m reserving rooms in the hotel, you’ll have a word with the station
master. I’ll agree to wait in the hotel lobby until you come to me.”
“And Siwash Mike overhears it all?”
“Siwash Mike overhears it all. And having overheard all that, he’ll do
one of two things, I think. He’ll either shadow me, as the person he’s
most concerned in, to the hotel or put another man on to me to follow
me to the hotel--if there is another person; or he’ll decide that we’re
safe for a short while, and so go off to report to Neuburg.”
“And I?”
“You keep your eye on Siwash all the time. You follow him. If he
follows me to the hotel, follow him.... I shall go straight there
unless I get some signal to join you. If I am in the hotel I’ll manage
to keep my eye on the door all the time, so that if he moves off I’ll
take a signal from you and join you at once--I know you’ve an electric
torch. If you shine, then I’ll come out. But I’m rather hoping that if
he feels certain we don’t know he’s here, he’ll go off at once after
hearing our conversation about the hotel, and will trust his luck
about getting his report in before we stir abroad. If that’s the case
then we will both follow him.... We must plan a way for you to call my
attention, should I have already gone towards the hotel....”
“That should be easy. You have to go up a pretty steep hill to get out
of the station yard. The hotel is just across the road. From the hotel
door you should command the approach; if you’ve not reached the hotel
by the time he goes off, well, I should pass so close that I should
be able to get you a warning.... But--but--he might go by car or by
rig....”
“That would be the devil ...” began Clement; but the detective cried,
“No, I don’t think it would. If he got right into a car or rig I would
know at once what he was about. I’d take one of the other cars that are
sure to be there, and that steep hill in the station yard will check
his car, and enable me to pick you up.”
They talked out the general line of this plan, and the more they
talked the most satisfactory it seemed. They would get to Neuburg’s
headquarters by following the man who was trailing them, and who felt
secure because he thought they didn’t know he was trailing them. There
were, of course, dangers and difficulties bristling along the line of
their proposed action.
“What if they do put another man on to shadow you?” the detective asked.
“We’ll have to deal with him--as the contingency arises,” said Clement
grimly. “It is a risk we can’t avoid.”
“And we must beware of traps.”
“We must,” said Clement with a smile that was yet more grim. “Trap or
no trap, I’m going into it. But I’m going in with my eyes open.” He
patted his pocket where reposed a new pistol The Chief had given him.
“I’m going in with my hand on the trigger, ready to shoot. I’m going
in with an electric torch. I’m ready for all tricks--and I’ll have you
with me. Armed, I suppose?”
The little detective’s hand went down to his pocket. “Automatic.
Brother to the one The Chief gave you. And a good supply of magazine
refills.”
“The two of us ought to be able to deal with them. But I don’t think
there’ll be a trap. I can understand how I tumbled into it before. I
gave the game away, I’m certain, by sending Joe Wandersun’s name in to
Méduse Smythe at lunch. But here--how could there be a trap? As far as
they’re concerned we’re entirely unaware that Siwash is on the train.
There’s no reason or time for them to prepare traps. We’ll simply
carry the day with surprise tactics--and, in any case, _is_ there any
possible other course of action open to us if we are to rescue that
girl effectively and without loss of time?”
There was no other way. Now that Siwash had warned the rogues--as they
thought he had done by telegraph from North Bay there was precious
little time to lose--the only way to get to Neuburg, and the girl
Heloise, was to follow Siwash, to him. There was no other plan so
swift. And its boldness, Clement thought, must make it effective.
He would have been less sanguine had he known that in the telegraph
office at North Bay, Siwash had not been sending a message _but
receiving one_. That he had been fulfilling the instructions in that
message at the moment when he had shown himself deliberately to Clement
outside the telegraph office. If Clement had known all these things he
might have hesitated. But he did not know.
He did not know. And when a closed car passed him groaning at the steep
grade of the station yard hill at Cobalt, and following that car came
another, with Xavier Gatineau, leaning out of it and calling to him,
“Get in, get in, he’s in that car at the front. He’s swallowed our
bait,” he got in joyfully.
Directly these things happened, Clement gleefully congratulated
himself that their little comedy of deception had proved brilliantly
successful. He fell back into the padded seat smiling. He watched the
red rear light of the closed car in front picking up speed as it wound
through the corkscrew streets of Cobalt. And his heart was saying, “To
Neuburg.... To Heloise.... That car’s leading us to them.”
And in the front car Siwash Mike was chuckling. He leaned across to
Joe Wandersun, who was driving, and cried, still chuckling, “They’ve
bitten. They’ve bitten. They’re following.”
FOOTNOTE:
[1] A division on the C.P.R. varies in length from approximately
115 miles to 140 miles. All trains change engines and crews at such
divisions.