CHAPTER XIII

HIS MONTREAL PROMISE

The scene in the rotunda of Montreal's impressive Windsor Station was as lively as it was metropolitan. Trains arrived with their outpourings of passengers, baggage laden, rejoicing at journey's end in the Paris of Canada. Immigrants, queerly dressed, stood about in huddled groups, waiting to be herded into the cars that would carry them to the wheat lands of Saskatchewan or the green forests of British Columbia. "Red caps" bustled about with the expensive looking luggage of tourists bound back to their own United States with their thirsts, for once, thoroughly quenched _sans_ any violation of law.

At one gate to the train shed, an explosive Frenchman bade a tearful farewell to a brother ticketed for Winnipeg. At another, behind a brass guard rail, a tall, upstanding citizen waited with impatience the coming of the Ottawa express. His fur coat was unbuttoned and an open-faced suit of evening clothes showed beneath. In fact, even his oldest friends in the far North might have passed him by without recognizing Staff Sergeant Russell Seymour, on special detail.

The hunt for Harry Karmack, embezzler of the funds of the Arctic Trading Company, Ltd., of course, had not been given up. This was Seymour's "special"--and would be until the fugitive was apprehended, as is the way of the Royal Mounted. Even a report brought to Fort McMurray by a wandering Chipewyan that the factor's body had been found frozen at the foot of Ptarmigan Bluffs had not halted the search an hour. The Indian's story was too "pat"; the last lost-in-blizzard note signed "Karmack" too obvious a plant.

A blizzard there had been, to be sure, a stem-winder. Just in time to escape the white scourge howling South, Seymour had mushed into Wolf Creek Station with his precious invalid. But he could not believe that the Armistice factor had permitted himself to be caught in the storm. Too long had Karmack been in the North to meet any such tenderfoot fate. An old trick, that of reporting one's self dead by freezing. The thief might have saved himself the expense of hiring the Indian to bring in the "death notice," for all it was believed.

This blizzard had held Seymour at Wolf for three endless weeks. There had been just one recompense. At the end of that period the mission surgeon had pronounced Moira sufficiently recovered to continue her trip by dog team. The weather had favored them and eventually they had found themselves in Athabaska, end-of-steel! The trains of the Canadian National and the Grand Trunk Pacific had carried them to Ottawa, the girl to a welcome in the home of friends, the sergeant to report at headquarters.

After a conference with the commissioner, Seymour had stepped out of uniform and into plain clothes. The still-hunt then begun had continued for three months, leading first to Quebec whence Karmack had originally hailed. There the sergeant had obtained information which confirmed his disbelief of the lost-in-blizzard note. Karmack had paid a stealthy visit to his old home and departed. Rumor had it that he had gone to the States. Therefore, Seymour did not cross the border to look for him. Knowing the man and his inclinations, the sergeant's hunch was Montreal. From a rented room on City Councillor Street, midway between the French and Up-town quarters of the city, he had played his hunch industriously, but so far without result. He had kept away from the mounted police headquarters on Sherbrooke West and not once had he been taken for what he was, even by fellow members of the Force.

He was growing tired of the city's confinement, but not discouraged. One day he would meet his man, know him no matter what his disguise.

This was to be a night off, the first he had taken since getting back to civilization. It was to be a gala, reunion night; and it was beginning, for the Ottawa express had just ground to a stop in the shed outside the high iron grill.

His pulse beat quicker as he scanned the in-comers--first the smoking-car compliment, then the day-coach passengers and, at last the Pullman elect. Then he saw her, coming with the poise of a queen, a small black bag in her hand. Neatly he hurdled the brass barrier and at the very gate he took her into his arms and kissed her.

"Moira, Moira! You're a glad sight for tired eyes," he murmured.

"But not here, Sergeant Scarlet; not here with the world looking on," she whispered in pretended protest.

He did not care how much of the world saw, for between them an understanding for life had been reached on the trail.

A taxi, its wheels wearing chains with which to grip the snowy streets, hustled them to the Mount Royal Hotel, where he had reserved a room for her. In less time than most men would have believed possible, she had rejoined him in the lobby, a vision fit to snow-blind the gods, gowned in shimmering silver with a black fringe setting it off.

Evenings with Moira were too precious to leave anything to chance and Seymour's program had been carefully prearranged. Again they took a taxi and the taxi took them out St. Catherine Street to a brilliant electric fairyland--the Venetian Gardens. What mattered it that snow never lies in the streets of Venice? Well might they have been in sunny Italy once they had climbed a flight of stairs to pleasure's rendezvous above.

As they entered the huge dancing room, the lights went low and the orchestra that doesn't "jazz" began the soft measures of a waltz. They did not wait to find their table, but swung away with the music--for their first dance together.

And when they were seated, she asked across the narrow board: "Do they teach dancing, as well as riding and straight-shooting, at the Regina depot, Sergeant Scarlet?"

"You're forgetting, you big beau'ful Irisher, that I've been to France since I left the Mounted's riding academy."

After they had danced again: "It's hard to wait, Russell. Sometimes I wonder if it's worth while. Will you ever get your man?"

On the frozen trail, after he had spoken the three magic words and she had returned them to him with equal fervor, they had agreed that marriage was not to be thought of until Harry Karmack had been brought to book.

It was a long moment before he answered.

"I've got to get him, Moira. There'd not be complete happiness for us with that business unfinished. You wouldn't want to change a fine old County Mayo name like O'Malley for that of a quitter would you, now? But know this, girl o' mine----"

He did not finish, his interest claimed by a large red-headed man, a bit the worse for liquor. This chap's attention had been attracted by a pair of police constables, resplendent in their brilliant uniforms, handsome young fellows attached to the Montreal detachment, which has a reputation for "swank."

"Take those young Mounties a bottle of wine and mark it down on my check," the rubric one was saying to the waiter.

The woman with him, a pretty French girl, reached across the table in an effort to quiet him.

"You leave me alone, Florette," he resented. "I got most all the money in the world and those brave lads work for next to nothing a year."

"Next to nothing a year." Seymour repeated the expression under his breath. Where had he heard that expression before as applied to the same Force which yonder cubs decorated? In a flash he was transported back to the trade-room of a sub-Arctic factor.

"But know this, girl of mine," Seymour repeated. "Get him I will."