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.”
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.”
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?”
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.
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.
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.”
[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.