Part 3

I generally mistrust the chance acquaintance on Canadian railway cars, but there was nothing of the "sport" or "bunco-steerer" about this man. At dinner we got into conversation, and the discovery of mutual acquaintances in England banished any lingering suspicions on my part; my companion was apparently glad, after many months of solitude, to exchange ideas with a fellow-countryman. The stranger had not seen England for seven years, during which period he had apparently tried his luck at most things--from gold at Coolgardie to rubies in Rangoon, in the lazy, desultory fashion of one to whom money is no object. His name, "Edgar Dalton," told me nothing, but the magic words, "Turf Club," in a corner of his card augured much. I expressed surprise at this lengthened and voluntary exile, but Dalton's sudden change of manner warned me that I was skating on thin ice. Domestic trouble, perhaps, or a woman, had sent him aimlessly roving over the world, and, anyhow, it was no business of mine. My eccentric friend had lately turned his attention to fur trading, he told me, and was now returning to Chicago from York Factory on Hudson Bay. The winter journey is a perilous one, but Dalton spoke of a thousand miles in a dog-sled as though it were a summer picnic. "I like roughing it," he said, frankly; "civilization bores me, and I loathe the very sight of a frock-coat!" I did not quite believe him, for the most ardent globe-trotter occasionally yearns for a sight of Piccadilly; but, anyhow, as I have said, it was no business of mine.

The evening passed pleasantly, for Dalton was excellent company, and we sat long and late over our cigars, chatting over his reminiscences, which would have filled an entire issue of THE WIDE WORLD MAGAZINE. It was only towards bedtime that a subject was broached destined to bring about strange consequences. "You say you know Milford well," said Dalton, naming a small town in Yorkshire; "did you ever meet a Mrs. W---- there?" The words were spoken with a hesitation that made me glance sharply at the speaker. Could this be the secret of his life--a hopeless passion for the beautiful woman whose sufferings had excited universal sympathy and whose love so many had sought in vain? To know Milford was to know or, at any rate, to have heard of Mary W----, who, a few years since, had figured as the innocent heroine of a notorious forgery case. The affair never reached a criminal court, for James W---- had successfully absconded with a large sum of money, and had never since been seen or heard of. Rumours were rife; some said he had gone to Australia, others that he was in the Argentine, others that suicide had wiped him out of existence as completely as a pebble dropped into the sea. And he would have been no great loss, for, according to all accounts, a more heartless scoundrel never breathed. But Mary W---- was still leading a quiet and lonely life, although she might legally have chosen a second husband from among the many men who had sought her hand. W---- I had never known, but his portrait had been freely circulated at the time of the crime, and a momentary suspicion that Dalton might himself be the man was quickly dispelled when I recalled the portly frame and bearded countenance of the forger. Not only did I know Mrs. W----, but I had, only the preceding winter, saved her life in an ice accident--a fact which raised me considerably in my fellow-traveller's estimation.

"I only asked you if you knew her," he said, "because I happened to know him. Poor beggar! He was shot last year in a gambling hell in Coolgardie."

Here the subject might have dropped, but that fleeting hours and the frequent reappearance of the conductor with refreshments revived it. There had clearly been something between Dalton and the forger's beautiful wife, either before or after her marriage. "I may tell you in confidence," were his last words that night, "that Mary W---- is and always has been very dear to me." A cloud passed over Dalton's face as he continued: "If things were different I should have been a better and a happier man. There, I won't bore you with my troubles, but here's my hand, Mr. de Windt, for saving that brave, unselfish woman's life. And remember, if ever you need a friend you'll find one in Edgar Dalton."

I was right, then, after all. This was but another victim who had worshipped vainly at the shrine of pretty Mary W----, and I wondered vaguely, as I dropped off to sleep, whether the "good angel of Milford," as she was called, had yet heard of her merciful release. For here, possibly, was a man who might bring some sunshine into her lonely life.

The next morning found Dalton seated at breakfast with a mysterious individual who had joined the train during the night. The stranger was a stout, florid man of about fifty, with shifty blue eyes, grey whiskers, and a perpetual smile. He wore a serge suit and a yachting cap, also a profusion of tawdry jewellery, and might have been anything from a prosperous drover to the skipper of a tramp steamer. The new-comer addressed Dalton as "Cap," and until the mystery was explained I marvelled at his apparent familiarity with the quiet, refined Englishman. But Mr. Hiram Knaggs, it appeared, had acted as agent in Chicago for Dalton during his northern trip, and had now met him by appointment to settle about the disposal of a consignment of valuable furs. Knaggs was a cheery, amusing fellow, notwithstanding his vulgarity and a painful habit of parading his wealth. At dinner that night he displayed a bulky pocket-book with which he pleasantly averred he could buy up the train and everyone in it. Encouraged, perhaps, by champagne and good fellowship, I then carelessly alluded to the comparatively modest sum that had caused me such anxiety, but a significant look from Dalton closed my lips. "Knaggs, of course, is all right," he explained afterwards, "but in a public car you can never be too careful." The incident struck me as being curious, for at the time there was no one within earshot of our table.

Dalton and his agent were leaving us at Winnipeg, and we had reached that town--then far from being the bustling city it has now become--when I awoke on the following morning. The berths lately occupied by my friends were empty, and I was surprised that Dalton, at any rate, should have left without a word of farewell. There was yet half an hour before departure, and I dressed hastily, intending to alight for a breath of fresh air. But a terrible shock was in store for me. My heart stood still and a cold sweat bedewed my temples, for when I placed my hand under the pillow it encountered only a worthless silver watch. My pocket-book and the thirty thousand dollars had gone!

I was about to call loudly for help, when a touch on the shoulder arrested me. It was Dalton, with a smile upon his face and the missing note-case in his hand.

"I was the thief," he said, quietly. "Here are your notes, but take my advice. Never talk about your money before strangers." Intense relief overcame a feeling of resentment at the trick played upon me, and, after all, was it not in my own interest? So I put my pride--and my notes--in my pocket and thanked my friend for the service he had rendered me, which I never duly appreciated until long afterwards.

On the platform we found Knaggs in a very surly frame of mind, which Dalton laughingly ascribed to overnight indulgence in "tanglefoot." But the joke was apparently ill-timed, for the American turned and left us with an oath, to his friend's amusement.

"Good-bye, De Windt," said the latter. "We may meet again, and if ever I can do you a turn, for Mary W----'s sake, count upon me."

Three or four months elapsed, during which period I heard nothing more of my fellow-travellers, but I received a letter from Mrs. W----, who had been informed of her husband's death by an anonymous correspondent--Dalton, no doubt. This was in the spring of 1897, however, and my mind was too much engrossed with personal affairs to give the matter much attention. A bad attack of the gold-fever then raging on the Pacific Coast had resulted in my resolve to leave Vancouver and seek a fortune in the Klondike. I need not describe the now familiar perils and privations of that ghastly voyage: the grim passes, stormy lakes, and treacherous rapids; the cold and starvation that littered the dark and dangerous road to the "Arctic El Dorado" with dead and dying victims. Suffice it to say that I eventually reached my destination, and in less than a year had "struck it rich" enough to acquire several good claims. Early in March, 1898, I returned from my claim up the Koyukuk to Dawson City, and took up my quarters at an hotel, intending to return by the first steamer to St. Michael, and thence, by the sea route, home.

The River View Hotel was not a cheerful residence, although its numerous guests were very festively inclined. The restaurant at dinner-time resembled a bear-garden, and between meals dapper New York barmen ministered to the wants of a rowdy mixture of nationalities from all ends of the earth. Time hung heavily on my hands, although there was plenty of gaiety of the disreputable kind to be found in most mining camps. Dawson swarmed with gambling and drinking saloons, but crime was rare, for the North-West Police keep a sharp eye on evildoers, especially the harpies of both sexes who fleece lucky miners. You did not need, in those days, to go to the creeks for gold, for the dust was flung about so recklessly that modest incomes were made by sweeping out the dancing halls. One night of debauchery often left wealthy men as poor as when they first started out from home without a penny. And there was some excuse for the poor prospector, coming straight from months of cold, hunger, and hard work on some lonely gulch into a crowded, brightly-lit saloon, with champagne, music, and friends galore, to say nothing of a gambling table in the background. Even I, who should have known better, was occasionally drawn into some dazzling pandemonium which, by daylight, would have sickened me to contemplate.

Thus it came to pass that I found myself one night at the Imperial Casino in company with a friend who, like myself, was heartily sick of his gloomy bedroom at the River View Hotel. The Imperial, like most of its kind, consisted of a dancing-hall leading into a smaller compartment screened with green baize, which occasionally parted to disclose a roulette table. The noise and stifling air of the first room were, as usual, unbearable, and we struggled through a rowdy crowd of men and women to the inner sanctum, where a number of players were assembled. For a time we watched the game with interest, for the high stakes would have attracted a crowd at Monte Carlo, but these ragged, mud stained gamblers lost or won their money gracefully and without the push or wrangle that often occurs on the Riviera. I have seen more fuss made over a five-franc piece at Monte Carlo than over a thousand dollars in Klondike.

To this day I don't know what induced me to fling a stake upon the table. My friend, sick of the fetid atmosphere, had left me, and I was following him, when the solitary number I had backed turned up. I then carelessly heaped my winnings on the zero and became the unwilling object of all eyes when the ivory ball jumped into the space numbered by that wicked little circle. From that moment I won without cessation, chiefly, I suppose, because of my absolute indifference to loss. In an hour I was the gainer of an enormous sum, which, consisting largely of nuggets and gold-dust, was difficult to handle. A carpet-bag was borrowed from the proprietor, by whose friendly advice I made my exit through a back door, and hastened along the snowy, silent street to my hotel. As I neared my hotel a figure stood out from the doorway of the River View, and I recognised Barlow, of the North-West Mounted Police, who a few hours previously had been my guest at dinner.

"Don't shoot, old man," said my friend, as a revolver gleamed in the moonlight; "it's only me. We have got a big job on. The safe in the office here was rifled last night, and the thief is supposed to be living in the hotel. J----, of Scotland Yard, and ten of my men are inside; so if the joker tries any games on to-night it will be all up with him. By the way, _you_ look a bit suspicious with that bag. Gold from Gluckstein's, is it? Whew! Oh, pass in; you're a match for any hotel sneak." And with a cheery "Good night" I left my friend vainly endeavouring to keep warm in a temperature that would have tried the patience of a Polar bear.

The barrack-like building was in darkness, and by the aid of a wax match I groped my way to my bedroom, a garret for which I paid, daily, the sum of twenty dollars. The door was fitted with a cheap lock which a missing key rendered useless, but I secured my winnings, which I carefully locked up, and then retired to rest with a mind at ease, thanks to a revolver under my pillow. I must have dropped off to sleep suddenly, for when I awoke the fag-end of my candle was sputtering in the socket. The next moment it had gone out, leaving me with no matches and an unpleasant suspicion that, while I slept, someone had entered the room. Conviction followed when I heard a moving body and loudly challenged the intruder. But there was no reply.

"If you don't answer, I shoot!" I cried through the darkness. There is short shrift for thieves in mining camps, and the next moment I had fired at random in the direction of the sound. Simultaneously the door was thrown open with a crash and the room flooded with the light of many lanterns. J----, the Scotland Yard man, and half-a-dozen policemen were soon surrounding a prostrate figure, clad in a grey sleeping-suit, which lay with a dark crimson mark over the heart, showing where my bullet had reached its mark. Great heavens! Had I killed him?

The bare idea filled me with horror, as I pushed my way through a ring of excited men and, kneeling by the side of the wounded man, gently raised his head. The features were already twitching in the death agony, the eyes were dull and glazed, but a faint smile flickered over the face as I realized, with the appalling terror of a nightmare, that I was looking upon the features of Edgar Dalton.

"Forgive me," he gasped, faintly, as I bent closer to catch his whispered words. "I never knew it was you. Knaggs will tell you. Give her----" The hand was raised, with a last effort, towards a thin gold chain around the neck, but death arrested it half-way. Edgar Dalton, killed by my hand, had expired in my arms!

"Come, sir, we can do no good," said J----, presently, as I continued to gaze vacantly upon the ashy face of the corpse. It was borne away by six stalwart troopers through the now crowded passages and stairway. "You've no need for remorse," added the detective, "for you've rid the world of as clever and cruel a scoundrel as it's ever been my lot to come across--and I have seen a few. Why, he has murders enough on his hands in Australia alone to hang him ten times over."

"Mr. Edgar Dalton?" I asked, almost speechless with amazement.

"Is that the name you knew him by?" said the Scotland Yard man, with ill-disguised pity for my ignorance. "Edgar Dalton, indeed! Why, the Australian Government has offered a reward of one thousand pounds for this man, dead or alive, for the past three years. I have been after him for seven years as James W----, the forger, and I think I am fairly entitled to the reward," he added. "For, you see, I have netted both birds this time. There's the other"--and he pointed to a man standing handcuffed between two troopers by the open doorway. His dejected appearance contrasted oddly with a gay suit of pink pyjamas, but although the smiling lips were now screened by a bristly moustache, and a carefully-curled auburn wig concealed the scanty grey locks, I had little trouble in recognising my old friend and fellow-traveller, Mr. Hiram Knaggs.

I was permitted to visit him the next day, and found him shivering, heavily ironed, in a cold, miserable shanty known as the town jail. Knaggs made light of his discomfort and the long term of imprisonment before him, but was inconsolable at the death of his leader. "A whiter man never breathed, Mr. de Windt," said the man, with tears in his eyes; and although I knew Knaggs for a consummate villain, I could scarcely restrain a feeling of pity for the abject figure before me. Nor, indeed, could I think of the dead man without compunction, for I could not forget the feeling of gratitude that had prompted him to save my notes from the greedy grasp of his confederate.

"He always spoke well of you," said the man, "and if he'd only known last night that the swag was yours he'd have been alive now. But I suppose the game was up, anyhow, with that J---- on our tracks."

And Hiram ground his teeth in silent rage as I left him--to be eventually sentenced to ten years "on the wood-pile," a local form of punishment which, owing to the Arctic climate, is seldom endured for long.

I was permitted to retain the gold chain and medallion, which contained a faded portrait of W----'s wife. Mary W---- still wears the little locket in memory of the worthless scamp who wrecked her life, but who, nevertheless, had loved her in his own wild way.

Two Girls in Japan.

BY IRENE LYON.

After six weeks of conventional sight-seeing in Japan the authoress and her friend decided that they had not yet seen the real thing, and so they decided to spend a week off the tourist track, living as far as possible the life of the natives. This amusing little article shows how they fared during their pilgrimage.

Gladys and I had been six weeks in Japan; we had worked hard at sight-seeing, and done all that was expected of us during that time, and yet we were not satisfied. Why? Well, we had luxuriated all the while in the most charming European hotels; we had slept in cosy beds with soft, springy mattresses; we had lounged in easy-chairs, eaten with knives and forks, and had been waited on hand and foot by noiseless Japanese "boys," who anticipated our every want. Within a week of our departure for Australia the full extent of our slackness was borne in upon us, and we at once decided to make up for lost time and to sacrifice personal comfort in a final effort to "see" Japan--the real Japan.

A trip down the Inland Sea was arranged, as affording a suitable opportunity to carry out our resolves, and one bright spring morning we set off from Kobe, armed with a basket of provisions and eating utensils--to be used only in case of dire necessity!

We travelled all day in an up-to-date, conventional train, and arrived at Onomichi towards evening. The proprietor of the principal inn had been informed of our intended arrival, so he came in person to meet us at the station, and we set off on foot for our new abode with an escort of some twenty to thirty of the inhabitants.

The "hotel" was a two-storeyed, wooden house, like most of its fellows. On reaching the threshold we discarded our shoes, took a surreptitious peep at our stockings, in order to assure ourselves that no holes were visible, and boldly entered.

A hearty--but unintelligible--welcome was extended to us by "madame" and her surrounding bevy of profusely-bowing attendants, and we were ushered into a room on the first floor which had been set aside for our use.

Our apartment was divided from the adjoining one by sliding panels which made no pretence at reaching the ceiling; it was entirely destitute of furniture, but at one side was a tiny alcove where a single vase reposed upon a raised dais, while hanging on the wall at the back was an elaborate "kakimono." The floor was covered with fine matting, and the inner walls were made of opaque white paper divided into diminutive squares. Round the outside of the house ran a tiny veranda, which was closed in at night with wooden panels.

Previously to starting Gladys and I had thoroughly primed ourselves as to the correct behaviour in Japanese circles, and as we knew that we should be expected to take a hot bath immediately on arrival we inquired at once for the bathroom. Another reason for not wishing to delay the important function of bathing sprang from our vague fear that every member of the household would perform his ablutions in the same water, and we were naturally anxious to have the first "look in."

After inspecting the bathroom our determination wavered,--but we pulled ourselves together and descended to the lower regions armed with towels and wrappers. Our first difficulty was with the entrance-panel, which, in addition to having no locks or bolts, absolutely refused to close properly. After several vain attempts the gap was eventually stuffed up, and we entered the dressing-room. I have yet to discover the intended use of the latter apartment, as for all the privacy it provided one might just as well have undressed in the public passage. About three yards square, and communicating with the bathroom, it was furnished with two large windows looking on to the hall, and there was not even so much as a pane of glass to obstruct the view of the passers-by. Gladys and I spent a considerable time in carefully filling these openings, and then, having satisfied ourselves that we were beyond the public gaze at last, we began, very diffidently, to undress, and afterwards entered the bathroom together, as we simply dared not venture in alone.

The bath itself--which looked like a large box--was a wooden structure built into a corner, and all round the inside ran a convenient ledge, for sitting on. The water being little short of boiling, our movements were decidedly cautious, and, curling ourselves up on the ledge, we tried to grow accustomed to the temperature by degrees before plunging right in. When, thinking to remove the traces of our journey by a vigorous application of soap, we began to scrub ourselves, it suddenly occurred to us that such a proceeding was not "etiquette," out of consideration to the other bathers. So we stepped out, soaped ourselves well, and rinsed our bodies with the wooden ladles supplied for the purpose, before getting back into the water again.