CHAPTER VI
STAMFORD MAKES A DECISION
Morton Stamford sat in his office staring at a blank sheet of copy paper. Already he was an hour behind his schedule for the day, and the compositors upstairs had sent down twice for copy. According to schedule this was his morning for preparing the week's editorials, but, though the town bell would announce noon in less than half an hour, he had not yet written a word.
What he should like to say he dare not. A certain diffidence, impelled by his Western experiences, held his pen from an attack on the Mounted Police. Back East as a newspaperman he had worked in so closely with the local police that he knew their every move in the development of their cases. Yet in the ten days since the murder of his friend, Corporal Faircloth, the Mounted Police seemed to have done nothing. Stamford knew of no clue, no sleuthing, and only vague suspicions. As a dignified newspaperman there was deep within him an instinct that he should, therefore, accept it as evidence of official inertia.
As a newspaperman, too, he had struggled to arrive at definite deductions as to the murderer, only to be confronted with a blank wall that drove him to the beginning again to reconstruct his case. It was the dead body of Kid Loveridge that upset all his calculations. The Kid's reputation was more along the line of proving him a murderer than the murdered, and that there was any connection between the Corporal and one of the wildest cowboys in Western Canada was impossible.
Hitting in and out of his conjectures were the forms of Cockney Aikens and Dakota Fraley, two men apparently as antagonistic in inclinations as they were intimate in business interests. Cockney's careless, good-natured ways appealed to him in a way that denied belief in inherent badness. Yet he had gathered the impression during the Police investigations on the spot that the big Englishman was not outside their suspicions. He resented that. Cockney was a friend of his. If the Police were working on that line he was prepared to stake——
His ruminations were interrupted by the opening of the door to the outer office, and the clumsy tramp of a heavy man. For a moment he waited for the familiar tap on his own door. All Medicine Hat knew where to find him. Not hearing the expected summons, he went out.
A great hulk of a stranger was standing in the middle of the office, feet braced, peering about him through large horn spectacles. His shoulders were stooped, his hands limp and awkward, his whole attitude and appearance more than hinting at anæmia and flabbiness. On his long black hair was perched a ludicrously small stiff hat; and he wore a high white collar and loose black bow tie, a suit built in a factory, and a pair of "health" boots that could not possibly possess any other attraction.
He seemed entirely oblivious of Stamford's presence, continuing to stare about at the untidy arrangement of tables and chairs, and over the partition that separated the office from the "job" room. He was interested; also he was accustomed to concentrating.
Stamford wanted most to laugh. The fellow filled the office with such an air of innocent curiosity that he felt no resentment at his own small share in the scene.
Someone laughed from the doorway, and Stamford started. It was such a merry, chuckling sort of laugh, so much in line with just the feeling Stamford himself had, that, though the laugh was a woman's, he vaguely thought of some uncanny echo that repeated what was in his mind.
When he turned to the doorway he was more doubtful than ever of the reality of the scene. A girl stood there—a beautiful girl—Stamford realised that first of all. Under her soft felt hat, with a sprig of flowers slanting nattily up toward the back, a fluffy bit of dark brown hair protruded. Stamford saw that next. He had a curious feeling that it would be nice to touch—and he flushed at the entrance of such unaccustomed thoughts.
She was looking at him, quizzically, still laughing. One little step forward she took.
"Amos," she said, and in the tone was the indulgence of a mother, though the man was years her senior, "Amos, don't you think you two had better meet? This is my brother Professor Amos Bulkeley, of the Smithsonian Institute," she said, turning to Stamford.
Her brother swept his big frame about with the cheeriest of smiles and extended his hand.
"You're the local editor, I suppose," he said, in a gentle voice. "We've come to you for help—naturally. Appealing to a newspaper for help is a habit we all have, from politicians up to ordinary burglars."
"So long as you're not collecting," grinned Stamford, "my resources are at your command. My week's accounts show that last week my charity expenses were seven dollars and twenty-five cents. To date that's about my net income per week."
"It's only information we're collecting," explained the girl. "We——"
"Excuse me, dear." Her brother stopped her sternly. "You haven't yet met Mr.—Mr.——"
"Morton Stamford," said the editor.
"Mr. Stamford, my dear. Mr. Stamford, this is my sister Isabel, as yet possessing the same ultimate name as myself. But there's still hope."
"I'm certain of it," murmured Stamford over her hand.
"Ahem!" said the Professor. "That's not starting badly."
"If you imply by that that we're to see more of each other——" began Stamford gallantly—and went crimson with wonder at the strange things his tongue was saying.
"Ahem again!" said the Professor slyly. "Isabel, I have always thought, has such a strange effect——"
"I'm sure Mr. Stamford has other uses for his time, Amos, and so have we." Isabel Bulkeley was blushing a little herself.
"I forgot," apologised the Professor. "This is strictly business. I'm here—we're here in the interests of the Smithsonian Institute. You may not suspect it, but you have history embedded in you—in the form of fossils that should have disappeared when your much-removed grandpa was scuttling through the tree-tops by his tail. I'm in hopes that the geanticlinal discoveries of my predecessors among the argillaceous cliffs of the Red Deer River will support my contention that somewhere the course of the river to the north of you may yield up the secrets of the Triassic, or at least the Jurassic stage of the Mesozoic period. Perhaps the Palæozoic. Who knows?"
"I confess I don't," said Stamford. "In fact, except that you seem to be using the language my mother taught me, I wouldn't know what you're talking about, were it not that I happen to be aware of the palæontological discoveries on the Red Deer. But that was three hundred miles west of here."
"I'm anxious to get beyond their tracks," said the Professor. "It was the New York fellows worked there—our deadly rivals. I contend that the Red Deer River did not in those days boast of circumscribed summer resorts. Why, a megatherium could lunch at Red Deer town and dine in Medicine Hat—at least the one I want to find could."
"And how can I help you?" asked Stamford.
"We don't know a thing—how we get there, where we can stay, what we can do."
"At last," sighed Stamford, "there's a tenderer tenderfoot than myself. For two long months I've been the baby of the Western family. Now I'm ousted from the cradle."
The Professor examined his own huge body doubtfully.
"How big's this cradle?" he asked.
"It'll hold you and your sister," replied Stamford gallantly. "But the man you want to see is Inspector Barker. In the West it's different: you don't consult the newspaper, but the Mounted Police."
He tapped a bell, and the "devil" stumbled down from the composing-room overhead.
"Give these to Arthurs," Stamford ordered, grabbing a handful of clippings from the pigeon-hole. "They'll keep him busy. I'll be out for a while. Watch the office till Smith comes back."
"I'm taking you down to the barracks myself," he explained to his visitors. "The Inspector might suspect you of ulterior motives. I confess," he added whimsically, "that you're different enough to justify it."
Inspector Barker and the editor of the Journal were on the best of terms. In Stamford's little body was all the romance of men physically unfitted to play a part in the pictures of their imagination; he had a scalp that tingled easily. And the Inspector had experiences to tell that would tingle any scalp not fossilised—as well as little reluctance about clothing his experiences with what might have happened. It wasn't often he was free to let himself loose to such an appreciative audience whose ideas could expand several sizes in response to a good yarn.
But it was plain enough that Professor Bulkeley was more susceptible, less inclined to question the reasonableness of the wildest yarn. The Inspector received him and his sister with generous hand, and a smile that took them to his heart. And their summer plans only added to his eagerness. This was something new in an extended experience popularly considered to have covered every possible phase of Western life.
"All the way from Washington, D.C., eh? Special visit to our benighted town, eh? Flattered is too mild a word. Bringing your sister adds the last drop to our overfull bucket of gratitude."
"Isabel," asked the Professor gravely, "did he put it as nicely as Mr. Stamford, d'ye think?"
The Inspector gurgled into his moustache, but Stamford was annoyed.
"You'll stay at the Double Bar-O," said the Inspector, getting down to business. "I think that'll give you a good centre to work from. Westward is only the H-Lazy Z. I don't think you'd care to stop there. Cockney Aikens is a queer fish. You mightn't understand him."
Stamford, in thought, came valiantly to Cockney's support. He was certain the Police had ideas about the big rancher that they did not care to disclose.
"'The Double-Bar-O!'" repeated the Professor. "What is it—a hotel?"
Stamford and the Inspector laughed.
"A ranch," explained the latter. "My dear man, your nearest hotel, when you get to the Red Deer, is over there on South Railway Street."
"But will they—will they take us in?"
"Professor Bulkeley," said the Inspector proudly, "this is Western Canada. You can lift the latch of any ranch in the country, any day, any time, and there's a plate and a bed for you as long as you wish to remain."
"But—ah—the pay? How much—about how much——"
"The only thing I forgot," interrupted the Inspector, "is to warn you that your welcome is limited to the period during which you don't mention pay."
"But we're strangers——"
"That's the only excuse for your suggestion. There are no strangers in the West in that sense of the word."
"So hospitable—so generous—so utterly natural!" beamed the Professor to his sister. "I suppose there's a livery here—with a nice buggy and a gentle horse that I can rent for two or three months."
Inspector Barker stroked his moustache thoughtfully.
"There are liveries—yes—but they won't let you have a horse for that long." He looked up suddenly. "Let me supply you. I've a couple of horses out there eating their heads off. It's cheaper for us to hire the few times we need them. But for goodness' sake, leave the buggy out. This is not a country for driving—not if you can ride. But perhaps your sister——"
"Isabel," declared the Professor proudly, "is a centauress." He added with a deprecatory grin: "I've never been on a horse in my life."
"Amos is going to learn some day," said Isabel hopefully. "Aren't you, Amos? Perhaps this is his chance—out on the boundless prairie."
"Miss Bulkeley," Stamford warned, "I wouldn't speak of the prairie as boundless. They'll think you're a poetess—and try to unload on you a parcel of worthless real estate. We're just hungry for people like that out here. But," he added dryly, "I don't believe they'll succeed."
"Is it a compliment, Mr. Stamford?" she asked gaily.
"No," he replied solemnly, "it's the truth."
"How ingenuous! How simple and sweet and natural!" gushed the Professor. And the little editor bemoaned his lack of inches.
"Ah, man, man!" teased the Inspector, when brother and sister were gone, the cumbersome Professor passing before the window a foot behind his quick-stepping sister. "In the West it's always Spring. A country that hasn't women enough to go round——"
"What in blazes are you driving at——"
"I didn't think it was in you, Stamford. I'm delighted to see something of the gallant again; I thought the West had lost it all these many years—or never had it. The poor Corporal had traces of it—— Ah!" as Stamford frowned, "I thought you had something heavier than a pretty girl on your mind when you called. Now, let's have it."
Stamford brought his fist down on the desk.
"Who murdered Corporal Faircloth?"
Inspector Barker readjusted the ink-well.
"If you don't mind, my boy, keep your thumping for your own desk. I have this one reserved."
Stamford, stubborn as small men can be, threw himself into a chair, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
"In ten days—what have you done? That's what I want to know. What are you planning to do? I'm going to sit here till you tell me."
The Inspector frowned, then smiled grimly.
"We close at six. Those who stay later—spend the night in there." He indicated the door leading to the cells.
Stamford's scowl drifted into a shamefaced shaking of the head.
"You don't seem to realise that your third in command was foully murdered, almost under your very nose! You don't——"
"Listen, Stamford! Did you ever hear of a murdered Mounted Policeman unavenged? Did you ever know the Mounted Police to drop the chase—even for shooting an antelope out of season?"
"But you've done nothing—nothing."
"We don't report to the Journal—it's not in the regulations."
"And there's Billy Windover," Stamford stormed on. "You haven't discovered his murderer."
"Wrap them in the same parcel——" The Inspector stopped abruptly.
"But I thought you suspected Cockney Aikens."
The Inspector turned on him fiercely. "Who said we suspected him—anyone? Stamford, Faircloth was your friend; he was not only my friend for five years but my third in command for two. Don't you think you'd better consult an oculist? We always suspect—everyone."
"Then why didn't you round up the whole gang that day?"
"Including yourself and Mrs. Aikens, Inspector West, four ranchers, sixty cowboys——"
"But I——"
"Yes, I know. Same with the others. It isn't always the obvious that explains. Suppose we'd arrested Cockney—or anyone at that time, where would have been our proof? We didn't even find the rifles—except Kid Loveridge's. Clues don't grow on bulberry bushes in a country where everyone can shoot—and so many do."
Stamford was thinking rapidly. The repetition of Cockney's name seemed to confirm his suspicions of the direction of the Police search.
"The thing has got a bit too much for my nerves—or something," he declared abruptly. "I've got to get away from it for a time—take a holiday. In reality it was to tell you that I came down."
"It isn't in the Police regulations, you know."
"Perhaps not, but I wanted you to know in case—in case anything happened."
"Nothing will happen—if you mind your own business."
But Stamford did not seem to hear; he was examining himself in a broken-framed mirror above the desk.
"I need bucking up. Meals—change of air—new methods and manners—something doesn't agree with me. I can't sleep."
"Never mind explaining," grunted the Inspector. "I'm not interested in your health. Here's West now. I've an appointment with him."
"By the way, West," he said, as the brand-inspector entered, "the local scribe is enquiring why we didn't arrest the whole countryside for Faircloth's murder that day."
West smiled in some confusion.
The Inspector laughed mirthlessly. "Yes, West, you're as critical as he. But if you—or Stamford here—had given me that day the details you've remembered since, other things might have happened."
"But I knew—I saw everything!" stammered Stamford.
"And told so little," snapped the Inspector. "So many after-thoughts are too late!"
He waved Stamford out. As the editor passed through the door he turned.
"Honest now, Inspector, whom do you suspect?"
But the Inspector was already talking to the brand-inspector.
The door closed—and opened again to admit Stamford's head.
"By the way, Inspector, I didn't tell you where I was going to take my holiday."
"You don't need to. The H-Lazy Z's as good as anywhere. Tell the Professor—if you see him; the Double Bar-O's only ten miles away—that I'm of the opinion that the schistosity of the stratification in the flexure of the Cretaceous period exposed thereabouts will simplify his investigations—or words to that effect. Give my love to his sister."
When the door closed again the Inspector ruminated. Then he scribbled a message to the police back at Stamford's Ontario home and called a constable to despatch it.
"West," he said, wheeling suddenly on the brand-inspector, "you don't happen in your wanderings to have come across two large dogs new to the district—part Russian wolf, part greyhound, I believe? A week ago they were under lock and key in the barracks corral. One night they disappeared. Nobody seems to have seen or even heard them go—and they were wild as wolves, with a howl that would shame a husky on a Labrador island on a moonlight night."
"Hm-m-m!" grunted the brand-inspector. "Large tracking dogs in the Police corral—deductions obvious."
"I don't care a hang for deductions. It's the dogs I want obvious. I was depending on them to run down these measly cattle-thieves who've been fooling my men all year. I thought maybe a good hound or two——"
"So did the cattle-thieves apparently," laughed West.
"Therefrom comes one interesting deduction; the cattle-thieves are local. But the stealing is too persistent and small to be otherwise."
"And now, I suppose, you'll get another pair to track the first?"
"No-o," replied the Inspector cheerfully. "It only makes another mystery to solve. At one time this looked like being a dull summer."