Chapter 3

Calling the watchman, Hedin questioned him for half an hour, but learned nothing. He even made a personal inspection of every door and window in the store, and sent the watchman to the basement on a tour of similar inspection. When the man returned and reported nothing disturbed, Hedin left the store and proceeded directly to his room, where he spent a sleepless night in trying to solve the mystery.

After breakfast the following morning Jean McNabb sat before the little dressing table in her room when the doorbell rang, and the maid announced Mr. Hedin.

"Tell Mr. Hedin I can't see anyone this morning," she said, without looking up.

Again the maid tapped at the door, and entering, handed the girl a hastily scribbled leaf torn from a notebook. Jean read it at a glance, and her face flushed with swift anger. No salutation, only a few scrawled words: "Must see you at once. Purely matter of business--very important--about the coat."

Crossing to her desk the girl scribbled upon the reverse side of the paper. "Never talk business on Sunday. Coat will be at store as per agreement."

IX

On Monday morning old John McNabb entered his private office to find Hedin awaiting him. He glanced at the younger man inquiringly--"What ails ye, lad? Ye look like ye hadn't slept for a week."

"I haven't slept for two nights," answered Hedin. "There is no use beating around the bush. As a matter of fact, the Russian sable coat is missing, and I am to blame for it."

The old man stared incredulously. "Missin'!" he exclaimed. "An' you're to blame! What d'ye mean?"

Hastily, in as few words as possible, Hedin recited the facts as he knew them, while an angry flush mounted to the old man's face.

McNabb reached for the telephone and called a number. "Hello! Is that you, Jean? Come to the store at once, and bring your new fur coat--to my office. . . . What? No, that won't do, at all. Bring it yourself--I'm waitin'."

"I'll step outside while Jean--while Miss McNabb----"

"Ye'll stay where ye are!" snapped McNabb.

The older man turned to his desk, where for ten minutes he opened and closed drawers and rustled papers viciously. Then the door opened and Jean herself stepped into the room with the fur coat over her arm. "Well, Dad, here's the coat." She paused abruptly, glanced inquiringly at Hedin, nodded coolly, and continued, "Oskar said it needed a little tailoring, and that I was to bring it down this morning, but I didn't think there was any tearing hurry about it."

Her father took the garment, smoothed the fur with his hand, and asked casually, "Is this the coat ye wore from the store?"

"Why, of course it is."

"An' the one ye wore to the show?"

"Yes, yes," answered the girl impatiently. "I haven't so many fur coats that I would be apt to get them mixed."

McNabb ignored the impatience. "Ye've had no other coat in your possession since you selected this one?"

"No, I haven't. What's all this about?"

"Did Oskar tell you what kind of a coat you were gettin'?"

"Yes, a baum marten. Why, isn't it a baum marten?"

McNabb nodded. "Yes, it's a baum marten. Run along now. I just wanted to see which coat ye'd got. Here, take it along with ye. The tailor can wait."

With a puzzled glance at the two men, Jean took the coat, and with a toss of the head left the office.

McNabb turned to Hedin. "What have ye got to say now? Did the girl tell the truth?"

"Absolutely."

"Then that was the coat she wore from the store?"

"No--but she thinks it was. She doesn't know the difference."

For a long time John McNabb spoke no word but sat staring at his desk, pecking at the blotter with his pencil. He prided himself upon his ability to pick men. He knew men, and in no small measure was this knowledge responsible for his success in dealing with men. He had been certain that Jean and Hedin would eventually marry, and secretly he longed for the day. He had watched Hedin for years and now, despite the improbability of the story, he believed it implicitly. And it was with a heavy heart that he had watched the studied coldness of each toward the other. McNabb was a man of snap decisions. He would teach these young fools a lesson, and at the same time find out which way the wind blew. With a clenching of his fists, he whirled abruptly upon Hedin.

"What did ye do with the coat?" he roared. "It'll go easier with ye if ye tell me!"

"What do you mean?" cried Hedin, white to the lips, meeting McNabb's gaze with a look of mingled surprise, pain, and anger.

"I mean just what I say. Ye've got the coat--where is it?"

Hedin felt suddenly weak and sick. He had expected McNabb's anger at his foolish whim, and knew that he deserved it--but that McNabb should accuse him of theft! Sick at heart, he faltered his answer, and in his own ears his voice sounded strange, and dull, and unconvincing. "You think I--I stole it?"

"What else am I to think? What will the police think? What will the jury think when they hear your flimsy yarn--an' the straightforward evidence of my daughter? They'll think that the coat she wore to the show, an' that she still has, is the coat she wore from the store, an' that you've got the other. An' when Kranz tells of your midnight visit to the store, what'll they think then?" McNabb finished and, reaching for the telephone, called the police headquarters. A few minutes later the chief himself appeared, accompanied by the night watchman, Kranz, whose story of the nervous and agitated appearance of Hedin on his midnight visit to the store forged the strongest link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.

After the watchman had been dismissed, Hedin was subjected to a bullying at the hands of the burly officer that stopped just short of personal violence, and through it all he stubbornly maintained his innocence.

After another brief telephone conversation, the three visited the private room of the judge where, waiving a preliminary hearing, the prisoner was bound over to await the action of the grand jury, and his bail fixed at ten thousand dollars.

X

At the mouth of the alley that led from a side street to the rear of the jail, the policeman plucked at Hedin's sleeve, and turned in. Mechanically Hedin fell in beside him. Someone passed upon the street. "See who that was?" asked the officer maliciously, for he knew all the town gossip. Hedin scarcely heard the question. "It was McNabb's gal. Her throwin' you over fer this here Wentworth didn't give you no license to steal her old man's fur coat, all right--but maybe you ain't so onlucky, at that. Folks says she's all right--a little gay an' the like of that--but runnin' the streets at midnight, like she was a Saturday, with a guy that goes after 'em like Wentworth! Call it gay if they want to, but if it was anyone but old McNabb's daughter, they'd be callin' it somethin' else."

Smash! Hedin's fist drove with terrific force into the flappy jaw, and the big officer reeled, and crashed into the snow between a row of ash barrels, and a dilapidated board fence. The young man stared in surprise as he waited for the other to regain his feet. The officer's words had roused a sudden flash of fury, and with nerves already strained to the breaking point, he had struck. But the man, grotesquely sprawled behind the barrels, made no move.

Hedin glanced up and down the alley. It was empty. He was free! Swiftly he proceeded down the alley, passed the jail, and turned into the street. Here he slackened his pace, and walking leisurely to his hotel, hastily made up a light pack. Passing around to the rear, he took his skis from their place, walking to the edge of town, fastened them on, and was soon swallowed up in the jack-pines. For an hour he glided smoothly over the snow, and upon the edge of a balsam thicket sat down on a log to rest.

There were two courses open. Either he could return to Terrace City and face the charge against him as best he could, or he could keep going. It was only a few miles across country to Pipe Lake, where he could catch the P.M. for Detroit.

His thoughts turned abruptly from the problem of flight, and plunged into the problem of the missing coat. It was not conceivable that the garment had been destroyed; therefore it was still in existence. If in existence, somebody had it. Who? One by one, Hedin considered the personnel of the theatre party, and one by one he eliminated them until only Wentworth was left. Wentworth! If he could only prove it! He remembered that someone had casually remarked that morning at breakfast that Wentworth had gone North for old John McNabb. He had heard McNabb mention some pulp-wood lands in the North. Gods Lake, wasn't it? Why, Gods Lake post was old Dugald Murchison's post! Hedin remembered Murchison well. It was only last year he had spent a week as the guest of his old friend McNabb, and nearly every evening at dinner Hedin had sat at meat with them, and listened in fascination to the talk of the far outlands. He remembered the shrewd gray eyes of Murchison--eyes that bespoke wisdom, and justice tempered with mercy.

He smote his leg with his mittened fist. He would go North, straight to old Dugald Murchison, and he would tell him the whole story. Murchison would help him, and if Wentworth were innocent, then he, Hedin would return to Terrace City and give himself up. He would not be a fugitive from justice, for justice owed him the chance to prove his innocence.

Once his mind was made up, Hedin rose to his feet and slung the light pack to his back. Then he lowered the pack, and stood thinking. He would hit for Pipe Lake, but Hanson, the storekeeper at Pipe Lake, would recognize him. Tossing his pack aside, he scooped a hole in the snow, built a tiny fire of balsam twigs, and melted some water in his drinking cup. Then, setting a small hand mirror upon the log, he produced his razor and proceeded to shave off his mustache. This done, he grinned at himself in the mirror, as he reflected that Hanson had never seen him except in conventional clothing, and that he would never recognize him in mackinaw and larrigans, with his mustache gone.

Once more he stood up, kicked snow over his fire, swung the pack to his back, and started to skirt the swamp. Then suddenly he halted in his tracks. There was a mighty crackling of dry twigs close at hand, and a voice commanded gruffly, "Hands up!"

Instinctively Hedin elevated his hands as he stared into the muzzle of a revolver. Beyond the revolver he saw the grinning face of Mike Duffy, erstwhile lumberjack, then bootlegger, and now policeman; under the Hicks regime.

"Shaved her off, eh?" taunted the man. "Well, mebbe you'd 'a' fooled most folks, but you hain't fooled me none, special' as I be'n layin' in the brush watchin' you fer half an hour. You'd of got away from the rest of 'em too."

XI

Old John McNabb had not been long at his desk when the telephone bell rang and he picked up the receiver.

"Hello--who? Hicks? He--what? Where is he now? Got away! Well, you get him! Get him, or I'll get you! If he ain't back in jail to-day, off comes your buttons to-morrow--do you get that?" Old John banged the receiver onto the hook, and launched what would undoubtedly have been a classic of denunciatory profanity, had it not been interrupted in its inception by Jean, who had slipped into the office unnoticed at the beginning of the telephone conversation.

"Why, Dad!" exclaimed the girl laughing, as the red-faced man whirled upon her in surprise. "What a beastly temper you are in this morning! Who got away, and why are you so anxious to have him caught?"

"Oskar got away," he growled, apparently somewhat mollified by his daughter's tone. "Hicks started for jail with him an' Oskar knocked him down in the alley an' got away."

"Oskar! Jail! What do you mean?"

"I mean just what I say," answered McNabb, meeting the girl's startled gaze squarely. "A thirty thousand dollar sable coat is missing from the store, and no one except Oskar and I had access to the fur safe. He made up a cock-an'-bull story about letting you wear it Saturday to show up Mrs. Orcutt. He claims he went to the theatre to enjoy the effect on Mrs. Orcutt, when he discovered that you were wearing, not the Russian sable that you had worn from the store, but a baum marten coat. He hurried to the store to find that both the sable and the marten coats were gone----"

Old John noticed that as he talked the color receded slowly from the girl's face, leaving it almost chalk white, and then suddenly the color returned with a rush that flamed red to her hair roots. But he was totally unprepared for the sudden fury with which she faced him.

"And you had him arrested! Oskar arrested like a common thief! Are you crazy? You know as well as I do that he never stole a pin----"

"No, he never stole a pin, but there's some little difference in value between a pin and a thirty thousand dollar coat. They say every man's got his price."

"It's a lie!" cried the girl, stamping her foot. "But even if it were true, his price would be so big that there isn't money enough in this world to even tempt him! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Think what people will say!"

"I don't care what they say. He's got that coat, an' I'm right here to see that he gets just what's comin' to him."

"Well, what people will say won't hurt Oskar!" cried the girl. "They'll all know he didn't steal your coat! They'll say you're a fool! That's what they'll say--and they'll be right, too! It won't take him long to prove his innocence, and then what will people think of you?"

"He ain't got a show to prove his innocence," retorted McNabb. "Your own testimony will convict him. Didn't ye tell me right here in this room within the hour that the coat ye brought in was the one ye wore from the store, an' the one ye wore to the theatre?"

"And I thought it was," flared the girl. "But if Oskar says it wasn't then it wasn't. And let me tell you this--if you're depending on my testimony to convict him, you might as well have him turned loose right this minute! Because I won't say a word at their old trial. They can put me in jail, too, but they can't make me talk. The whole thing is an outrage, and I'm going right straight down to the jail and tell them to let him out this minute----"

"He's out all right," retorted McNabb. "He knocked Hicks down and escaped on the way to jail."

"I'm glad of it! I hope he broke that nasty old Hicks's head! And if they catch Oskar you had better see that they let him go at once--unless you want to see your own daughter married to a jailbird!"

XII

It was nine o'clock that evening when, growling and grumbling, Hicks himself moved heavily down the short corridor of the jail, and unlocked the door of the cell that held Oskar Hedin. "Come on out!" he commanded.

Hedin stepped in the corridor, and looked inquiringly into the officer's face. "What's up?" he asked.

"Bailed out," growled Hicks.

"Bailed out! Why, who----?"

"I don't know, an' don't give a damn. Someone that's got more money than brains. I wouldn't trust you as far as I could throw a bull by the tail, an' you needn't think I've forgot the poke in the jaw you give me. I'll git you yet."

Hedin paused upon the steps of the police station and glanced across the street where a light burned in the office of Hiram P. Buckner, attorney-at-law. Buckner held the reputation of being by far the most able lawyer in the vicinity, and Hedin's first impulse was to retain him. He crossed the sidewalk and paused abruptly as he remembered that Buckner was McNabb's attorney. Of course, the prosecution of his case would be in the hands of the state, but--why jeopardize his own case by employing a man who stood at the beck and call of the very man who was pushing his prosecution? He turned and proceeded slowly toward his hotel, and as he passed down the street a man stepped from the office of the attorney and followed. He was a large man, muffled to the ears in a fur coat. He followed unnoticed, into the hotel and up the stairs, and when Hedin entered his room and switched on the light the man stepped across the threshold and closed the door behind him. He turned and faced Hedin, throwing back the collar of his coat. Hedin gasped in amazement. The man was old John McNabb, and to his utter bewilderment, Hedin caught a twinkle in the old Scot's eye.

XIII

"'Tis the truth, I'd never ha' know'd ye, an' ye hadn't told me who ye was," welcomed old Dugald Murchison, as he gripped Hedin's hand in the door of the little trading post on the shore of Gods Lake. "Knock the snow from your clothes an' come in to the stove. You're just in time, for by the signs, the storm that's on us will be a three days' nor'easter straight off the Bay. Ye'd of had a nasty camp of it if ye'd of been a day later."

"The guide saw it coming, and we did double time yesterday, and to-day we didn't stop to eat."

Murchison nodded. "Ye come in up the chain of lakes from the south. 'Tis a man's job ye've done--this time o' year. Ye come up from Lac Seul, an' by the guide ye've got, I see the hand of John McNabb in your visit. For old Missinabbee won't go into the woods with everyone, though he'd go through hell itself for John McNabb. But come on in an' get thawed out while the Injun 'tends to the dogs, an' then we'll eat."

"Has Wentworth arrived yet?" asked Hedin, as he followed the factor toward the stove at the rear of the trading room.

Murchison shook his head. "Ye're the first this winter. But who's Wentworth? An' what'll he be doin' here? An' what are ye doin' here yourself? I suppose it had to do with John's pulp-wood, but the options don't expire till sometime in the summer. Why didn't he come himself?"

It was a long story Hedin unfolded as he and Murchison sat late over their pipes beside the roaring stove in the long, low trading room. The factor puffed in silence without once interrupting until the younger man had finished.

"So John is really goin' to build a paper mill up here? But why did John hire this Wentworth if he figured he couldn't trust him, an' why did he have ye under arrest an' bail ye out? Unless----"

The old factor paused and puffed at his pipe the while his eyes were fixed upon the deep shadows at the far corner.

"Unless what?" asked Hedin eagerly. "I thought, at first, that he believed me guilty of stealing the coat," he went on when Murchison didn't answer. "I know now that he didn't, but when I asked him the reason for my arrest, he only laughed and said that it was all part of the game." Then the younger man's voice dropped, and Murchison noted that the look of eagerness had faded from his face. "As to the hiring of Wentworth," continued Hedin, "that is another matter."

The factor rose slowly and, crossing to the door, opened it and hastily closed it again as a swirl of fine snow-powder enveloped him. Hedin caught the muffled roar of the wind, and in the draught of cold air that swept the room, the big swinging lamp flared smokily. Murchison returned to his chair and filled his pipe. "How's John's daughter comin' along?" he asked between puffs of blue smoke.

"Why, Miss McNabb is very well, I believe," answered Hedin, a bit awkwardly. "You were right about that storm," Hedin hastened to change the subject. "I'm mighty glad we made Gods Lake to-day, or we would have been held up for the Lord knows how long."

Murchison suppressed a smile, and hunched his chair a bit nearer the stove. "When all's said an' done then, the case stands about like this. This engineer will be along in a few days to begin work locatin' the power dam, an' lookin' up more pulpwood. John believes that Wentworth will let the options expire, an' then swing the stuff over to this man Orcutt an' his crowd--an he's sent you up to block the game."

Hedin nodded. "That's it."

"You're my clerk, an' your name's Sven Larson--that's a good Scandinavian name--an' you don't know nothin' about pulp-wood, nor options. I guess it would be best if we could put him up right here. We could be watchin' him all the while without seemin' to."

"I wonder when Wentworth will be here?" speculated Hedin.

"There's no tellin'. It's accordin' to the outfit he packs an' the guide he's got. They'll have to camp for the storm, an' the snow will slow them up one-half. The storm will last three days or four, an' after that, a day, mebbe a week. Anyways, 'twill give ye time to learn the duties of a factor's clerk, which is a thing the Company has never furnished at Gods Lake, but if John McNabb foots the bill, they'll not worry. 'Twould be better an' ye could play the dolt--not an eediot, or an addlepate--but just a dull fellow, slow of wit, an' knowin' nought except of fur."

Hedin laughed. "That won't bother me in the least."

Murchison shook his head. "'Twill not be so easy as ye think. Askin' foolish questions here an' there, forgettin' to do things ye're told to do, ponderin' deep over simple matters, an' above all ye're to neither laugh nor take offense when I berate ye for a dullard. Ye get the idea--your knowledge of fur is your only excuse for livin'?"

"I get it," smiled Hedin.

Murchison studied the younger man intently. "This Wentworth--how well did ye know him? Or, rather, how well did he know you?"

"You are wondering whether he will recognize me?"

The factor nodded. "Yes, I would not have known ye, for as I remember ye wore a mustache, an' were smooth of chin an' jaw, an' of course, ye wore city clothes. But one who had known ye well wouldn't be so easy fooled."

"He won't recognize me. We have met only a few times. But even if he had known me much better I wouldn't be afraid, because when I left Terrace City dressed in these togs, and carrying a lumberjacks' turkey on my back, I stopped into a cigar store and inquired the way to the station. The clerk who has seen me every day for years pointed out the way without a flicker of recognition in his eyes--and I didn't have this stubby beard then either."

Murchison seemed satisfied, and after showing his new clerk to his bed, he returned to the stove and knocked the ash from his pipe. "John is canny," he grinned. "As canny in the handlin' of women, as of men. He'll have the son-in-law he wants, an' careful he'll be that he's the man of the lass's own choosin'."

XIV

On the day after the big storm old Missinabbee returned to the southward, and the following day Wentworth arrived at the post, cursing his guide, and the storm, and the snow that lay deep in the forest. The half-breed refused to stop over and rest, but accepted his pay and turned his dogs on the back-trail. And as Murchison accepted McNabb's letter of introduction from Wentworth's hand in the door of the post trading room, his eyes followed the retreating form of the guide. For he had caught a malevolent gleam of hate that flashed from the narrowed black eyes as the man had accepted his pay.

"Ye have not seen the last of yon," he said, turning to Wentworth with a nod of his head toward the breed. "Alex Thumb is counted a bad man in the North. I would not rest so easy, an' he was camped on my trail."

Wentworth scowled. "Worthless devil! Kicked on my bringing my trunk. Wanted me to transfer my stuff into duffle bags and carry a pack to ease up on his dogs; and then to top it off with, he wasn't going to let me ride on the sled. But I showed him who was boss. I hired the outfit and believe me, I rode whenever I felt like it. He may have you fellows up here bluffed, but not me."

"Well, 'tis none of my business. I was only givin' ye a friendly warnin'. Come on now till I get my glasses on, an' we'll see what ye've got here."