CHAPTER XVIII

A CRYPTIC MESSENGER

From the Home Restaurant, the sergeant went to the stables where already he had made his horses comfortable. He secured a clothes poke from the pack of his outfit. The Bonanza Hotel proved advantageously informal in that he was asked "two dollars a night in advance," instead of being confronted with a register for his name and address. A key, attached to a tin disk too large for any normal pocket, was tossed to him by the grouchy boniface, who informed him he would find No. 12 at the head of the stairs.

Opening a canvas door supported on a pair of leather hinges, Seymour entered a tiny room lighted by a single window. It was furnished to the minimum with a blanketed cot, a chair and a table of the roughest construction.

As he sat on the edge of the cot, he recalled the crowded events of the life that had been his in the few months since the strangulation of Oliver O'Malley. Up at Armistice post, by now, the first mail must have arrived. Constable La Marr would know that a "court" was about to start from Ottawa to give Olespe of the Lady Franklin band a trial for his life. He'd know, too, that Avic would not be tried just then because the case against him would be incomplete without the testimony of Harry Karmack, the fugitive factor who undoubtedly had robbed the Arctic Trading Company. And when would he find Karmack--when and where? And Moira O'Malley, when would she arrive in Gold to join her bereaved father until that capture time?

The events of the day, however, were too stressing for his practical mind to long concern itself with anything but the matter immediately at hand.

"Richer than gold!" The last words of the widow kept recurring to his thoughts. What could this presumptuous crook of the wilds have had in mind? The sergeant could think, of course, of commodities that were more precious than the yellow metal, but of none that were indigenous to that upper corner of British Columbia.

So he puzzled over the remark until he concluded that Bart must have used a figure of speech. He would await the widow's interpretation.

Seymour was not surprised to find that he did not think of Mrs. Caswell as a participant in Bart's outlawry. Without protestations of innocence or any oral plea that she had tried in vain to reform the daring rascal, she had acquitted herself of culpability. The weary lines in the face that must have been beautiful not so long ago, the haunted look in her dark eyes, even her superb first effort at denial had won the Mountie's sympathy.

A knock on the canvas door of his room interrupted his study of the local situation. Arising, he unhooked the latch, whereupon the improvised door swung inward of its own weight and the accord of its makeshift hinges.

Disclosed in the frame, filling it perpendicularly but sadly lacking in horizontal proportions, stood a gaunt, miner-clad figure, distinguished by a pair of deep-set eyes which burned like living coals and a shock of white hair which waved its freedom when his slouch hat was removed.

"Will you pardon me, stranger; no intrusion meant." The voice was soft and a smile of utmost benignity came into play. "In the midst of life, we are in death."

"The missionary--Moira O'Malley's father and the uncle of the morning's colorful trailmate!" was Seymour's instant thought; but he gave no sign of the presumed recognition.

"Safe enough statement in this camp to-day," he said to his visitor.

"I'm the sky-pilot of these diggings," the other announced in a pulpit voice that rumbled through the hall.

"Won't you come in, sir?"

The missionary declined with a shake of his head. "I must hasten on my weekly rounds, distributing lessons from the Word. Won't you accept one of these and promise me to read it?" He held out a small tract taken from a handful which he carried.

The sergeant glanced at the title: "What Shall It Profit a Man----" He smiled tolerantly, thinking what a queer yet lovable character his future life's companion had for a parent.

"It is not meet that we should be seen in conference," O'Malley's voice had been lowered to a whisper; then suddenly it boomed so that all beneath the roof might hear: "I trust you will read that tract, brother--read and profit thereby." And with that, he stalked down the hall as though in search of other needy souls.

Seymour watched him. On getting no answer from the next door, the gaunt frame stooped to slip a tract under it. At another a woman answered his knock and a "sister" was informed that in the midst of life she was in death.

Back in his room, Seymour pondered the single whispered sentence with which the sky pilot varied what evidently were his wonted words when distributing tracts. Had Moira written that he had started for Gold and that he knew more than anyone in the world about the family's Arctic tragedy?

But that was impossible, for he had been able to spend but a moment with the girl when orders came to him at Montreal to report at once to the assistant commissioner in command of "E" Division at Vancouver. Seymour himself had not known then that he would eventually arrive in plain clothes at her father's mission station.

What, then, could the whisper mean unless there was a message--temporal rather than spiritual--for him hidden somewhere in the pamphlet?

But when he shook its leaves, no enclosure dropped out. He examined the margins without raising a sign. The inside back cover was blank but nothing had been written thereon. He remembered that the missionary had picked the tract seemingly at random from a pack of several dozen and he was discouraged.

Still, the whisper persisted. "It is not meet that we be seen in conference"--he recalled every significant word of it. Surely such words had not been spoken at random. Drawing the chair to the window, he sat down and began a more intensive study of the printed sheet. Soon, an ink dot beneath a letter rewarded him; then others. Presently he picked out a sequence of dotted letters spelling "P-a-r-d-o-n."

The process reminded him of reading sun-heliograph or taking a blinker message at night. Undoubtedly the communication was of importance that the girl should have gone to such trouble to assure secrecy. The uncle, too, must have shared the secret or he could not have been trusted to pick out the message-dotted tract. From his clothes poke, the sergeant took out a writing pad and with his pencil set the indicated letters into words, with this final result:

P-a-r-d-o-n m-y v-a-m-o-s-e a-n-d c-u-t B-o-t-h f-o-r g-o-o-d o-u-r c-a-u-s-e B-a-r-t s-a-i-d y-o-u c-o-m-i-n-g t-o h-e-l-p N-o-w m-u-s-t c-a-r-r-y o-n a-l-o-n-e B-e c-a-r-e-f-u-l K-e-e-p s-i-l-e-n-t C-o-m-e o-u-r c-a-b-i-n l-a-t-e t-o-n-i-g-h-t G-r-e-e-n R-i-v-e-r a-t G-l-a-c-i-e-r R-u-t-h D-u-p-e-r-o-w.

The message amazed him on more than one count. She had "left him cold" at the point of discovery and later on refused to recognize him on the streets of Gold for the good of "our cause." What cause? Unless that was her way of indicating law and order, he knew of no cause they had in common. Again, he was to "carry on alone." What did she expect him to carry on?

Of course, he meant to carry on until he had the man who would have kidnapped Moira O'Malley, except for the enactments of the snows. But why go back to Moira? This cousin was of a different type. Beautiful, to be sure, but not his sort of beauty--not the sort that thrilled and held him. He stopped ruminating with a jerk. Almost had he forgot----

Most puzzling of all was that "Bart said _you_ were coming." Who did she think he was, anyway? That she had made a faulty surmise of some sort was evidenced by the fact that she still held the crook at his assumed sergeancy value.

As for the rest of the message, nothing would please him better than to accept the strangely sent invitation to call. It would mean getting in touch with Moira quicker than he could hope to do if he continued his incognito role in the camp.

Seymour turned his attention for some time, then, to an intensive study of the blue print map of the district which he had purchased at the surveyor's office on riding into Gold that morning. His hope was to find a way toward the creeks after nightfall without asking questions.

His morning course to the point where he had overtaken the boyish-looking rider was easily traced, and thence into town. Working back, he found the trail over which Ruth Duperow had come and followed that to the mouth of Glacier Creek. Evidently the girl, for some reason, had taken a roundabout course that morning, for he found that a more direct trail to town followed the Cheena. His acquaintance with the Indian tongue was sufficient to spare him the map-maker's mistake of adding the word river to a name that really included it in the "na" suffix.

From such detail as was drawn into the map, he judged that Glacier was not much of a creek. It appeared to start in a nest of glaciers and to flow through a cañon as from the neck of a bottle. Between the Cheena and the cañon was drawn a square with a legend, "Indian Mission." That no mining claims were marked off on this creek, although those surrounding it were well staked, seemed remarkable; but the stranger did not try to guess the answer.

For no other reason than that the name had lodged in his mind, Seymour sought out Hoodoo Creek on the map and found the claim accredited to Cato--Thirteen Above. If the long-armed ox-man cited it in advancing his hopes with the widow, Seymour hoped that the number would exert its supposedly baleful influence.

From the blue-print, he turned to writing a report to his chief in Vancouver to whom word of the murder of his "Staff-Sergeant Russell Seymour" had undoubtedly been sent without delay. He took a grim sort of enjoyment in an opening after Mark Twain:

"I have the honor to state my safe arrival in Gold, B.C. Any reports of my violent death that may reach you are _slightly exaggerated_."

In the terse English that has made mounted police reports models of modesty, he told how he had "run into" two murder mysteries in addition to the embezzlement case which had brought him from the Far North. One of these, with its accompanying stage robbery, he believed he had solved except for stray angles that did not affect the capital crime. He was at work on the second murder case, with fair progress.

Over his final paragraph, which was headed "Suggestions," according to the form followed by the Force in official communications, he pondered deeply. Whatever he wrote there, he had reason to believe, would be incorporated into an order soon after passing under Assistant Commissioner Baxter's eyes. On this particular independent command, he was anxious not to make mistakes. Finally he wrote:

"Am not prepared to pass judgment, at this time, on the permanency of Gold. From what I have seen, however, the district sadly needs Dominion policing. Would suggest that you send at your earliest convenience one (1) sergeant and two (2) constables, mounted and with suitable camp equipment. As I may be working under cover on this second, unsolved murder, please instruct the sergeant to make camp on his own responsibility and act accordingly until he hears from me. Tell him to disregard reports of my demise as unfounded and----"

A strident "Come in!" evidently in answer to a knock he had not heard, sounded in the adjoining room and caused him to raise his pen from the paper with the sentence incomplete.

"Hello Brewster, glad I found you in."

The shrilled greeting was in an unmistakable voice. Its wording informed Seymour that the agreeable freighter of his morning's acquaintance was his immediate hotel neighbor.

"What can I do for you, Hardley, you honorable strong arm of the law?"

The voice was Brewster's--the same that had remarked the thinness of the tar-paper partitions. They were veritable sounding boards. Seymour could hear every word.

"Wanted to ask your advice, Phil, about some points in this Mountie's murder."

The genuine sergeant winced involuntarily. It was a very bad joke. He doubted that he ever would become accustomed to Sergeant Seymour spoken of as murdered--done for.

"Shoot," he heard Brewster invite.

"It's this way, Phil. Seymour must have been quite a responsible member of the Force. As you said this a.m., his snuffing is going to make a noisy roar-back. I got to report it to somebody in the Mounted--but who and whereat?"

Seymour fidgeted uneasily in the silence that followed, evidently due to Brewster's considering his answer. He detested eavesdropping; never had resorted to it on any of his cases. By way of letting the two in the adjoining room know of his presence, he scraped his chair noisily over the bare floor. This warning, however, failed to check Brewster, or even to lower his voice.

"I remember reading that Vancouver is the nearest staff-office of this new Canadian Mounted Police, but I've just been thinking---- If they send a lot of Mounties into Gold and run down these stage-robbing murderers, you're not going to get any credit. I'm strong for home industry, even in justice. Why don't you delay reporting the sergeant's death until you land your man?"

"Say you're a real friend, Phil, even if you do try to ride me sometimes. I need the credit for turning a trick like that. It might make me sheriff when the old man gets through. But--but would I dare?"

Seymour started for the hall but on the way, heard Brewster's reply:

"Write your report, Sam, but don't post it until after tomorrow's mail has gone. That'll give you a week. Then address the letter to Ottawa, which will give you a few days more. In that time, you ought to have the murderers rounded up. You can forget what I told you about there being any Vancouver headquarters."

Surprise at such advice from a seemingly public-spirited citizen delayed Seymour's knock until he had heard it through. Of course, all this might be merely a sign of real, though mistaken, friendship for Hardley. On the other hand, was it possible that Brewster had personal reasons for wishing to delay the coming of the Mounted?

With this question to the fore of his mind, Seymour knocked on the adjoining door and was invited in. His entry seemed not to disturb either of the two.

"Just wanted to tell you that the next room is occupied and that the partition between is more or less of a megaphone," he said in a light tone. "If you've any secrets----"

Brewster's laugh was natural enough to be reassuring. "If we were talking secrets, stranger, we'd take to the brush. I've lived in the Bonanza since the day it was opened, and I don't even think secrets behind these make-believe walls."

The sergeant dismissed his unintentional eavesdropping with a shrug and turned to the deputy.

"Out on the trail this morning you seemed to think you might want me later. You'll know now where to find me--Room number twelve."

"Forget this a.m., old topper. I was maybe a little mite excited out there at the scene of the crime. There ain't sech a lot of difference between deputy sheriffs and mounted sergeants. It might-a been me lying there deader than dead. Your happening along looked sort of queer. I'm seeing straighter now. You're welcome to Gold and I hope you get what you come for."

"You'll find me strong for law and order," Seymour replied.

This seemed to invite Hardley to real confidences. Beckoning Seymour from the doorway, he edged his chair closer to the cot on which Brewster reclined in his stockinged feet.

"Don't mind telling you two in confidence," he leaned forward and whispered, "that I'm in a fair way to nabbing the two who robbed the stage and killed Tabor and Seymour. Maybe I ain't seemed to be doing much, but I've got clews to burn already."

"You have?" cried Brewster, hunching himself into a sitting position on the cot.

Hardley nodded assuredly. "There were two of them in the bush lying for the sergeant this morning. One had a Winchester 30-30 and used it to kill Seymour. One rode a horse that was shod in front but plain behind." He paused, evidently, from his expression, to collect the encomiums he considered his due.

"Important if true, Sam," Brewster observed.

"Quick work," admitted the Mountie, honestly surprised; his hand was in the trousers pocket that held the cartridge case picked up that morning. "How in the world did you learn all that?"

Hardley seemed to relish supplying the details, even though he had to whisper them. Apparently he had forgotten that one of his confidants was an utter stranger both to him and to the camp, one whose name even he did not know. His was country-official vanity advanced to the _n_th degree.

"Dr. Pratt dug out the bullet, which fixed the brand of the gun with which the deed was done. Then I've got a half-breed boy on my staff who's keen as a Gordon setter in the bush. He found the horse track of the two from the scene of the crime. Now I'm looking for a man with a 30-30 repeater and a horse that's shy on shoes."

Surprised that Hardley should have shown so much initiative, and apprehensive that he was getting too near "home" for comfort, Seymour framed a diverting question.

"What do you know about the chap who was killed?"

"You mean this last one--Staff-Sergeant Seymour?" asked the deputy in turn, but merely as a preface, not waiting for an answer. "Kirby of the First Bank has heard of him. Says he was nicknamed 'Sergeant Scarlet' up in the Northwest territories, and is guilty of some of the hardest patrols ever made. He must have been a regular fighting machine. Autopsy proved that."

Sergeant Scarlet! That was the nickname Moira had given him! But others, to be sure, had used it before his beautiful Irisher. Perhaps his reputation as a man-getter had spread further than he knew.

Anyway, his chance to check up on Widow Caswell had arrived sooner than he expected. He showed casual but sufficient interest in the disclosures mentioned.

"The sergeant had been under fire before, and more than once," declared Hardley. "The doctor found a silver plate bracing his spine high up between the shoulders. And, would you believe it, there was a dent in that plate which looked as if he'd been hit in the identical repair spot by some later bullet!"

"Checked to a T," thought Seymour of the widow's tale.

He became more than ever anxious to be clear of the talkative deputy. With all his false surmises, the natural-born bungler had corralled some accurate information and might make a deal of trouble for him. At first chance he got back to his room.

With a few swift strokes, he completed and signed his report. His O.C. must be prepared for that murder report, whether Hardley finally acted on Brewster's advice or not.

Hurrying from the hotel into King Street, Seymour found the post office and mailed his letter. Then, although the hour was only seven, he advanced casually upon the Home Restaurant. He was eager to be on his way to the creeks before Hardley stumbled, as possibly he might, upon the fact that Seymour's rifle, stored with his outfit, was a 30-30 and that Kaw was "shod in front and plain behind."