I
Setting out on his aërial trip over the Cup of Nannabijou did not prove so simple a matter as Hammond had at first conceived it would be. In the first place, he had to get permission from the department at Ottawa before the authorities at the Kam City armouries would even allow him to try out the plane. Though he despatched Inspector Little’s wire immediately after his arrival, it was Monday afternoon before a reply was forthcoming.
The next delay was in getting the machine in shape for the trip. For want of expert attention, the motors and accessories were wofully out of tune, and before he felt satisfied that they were in anything like efficient shape it was too late to make the trip Monday. On the short trial flights he made the engine still showed a disposition to sulk, but by careful handling he managed to keep it alive while in the air.
He determined to fly over the Nannabijou Limits as early as possible Monday morning. Monday night the storm came up, one of the worst experienced in Kam City in years, and the shed out on the exhibition grounds in which he had temporarily housed the machine, was unroofed by the gale and minor damages done to the wings of the plane that it took a couple of hours to repair.
The morning, however, broke crisp and clear, an ideal day for flying and making observations. From Kam City to the Nannabijou Limits was a little better than twenty miles, and Hammond figured he could make it in about twenty-five to thirty minutes at the outside.
But again he had trouble in making a start. Three times he went up and had to come down again to make fresh adjustments. It was ten o’clock before he was definitely on his way across the arm of the lake with the craterlike top of Nannabijou Mountain as his objective.
Though the wind had dropped, the lake was still creased with angry waves. He crossed Superior’s upper arm without mishap. As he neared the limits, his first unusual discovery was the immense amount of pulpwood thrown up along the North Shore and on the islands that dotted it as far as the eye could see. There was only one place all those poles could come from, the airman conjectured as his machine roared onward through the bright, sunlit upper air.
His hunch was confirmed when he came opposite the limits and secured a full view of Nannabijou Bay, empty of almost every pulp-pole.
He dropped down for a closer look. The Mounties still patrolled the waterfront, but the camp was a scene of animated chaos. Gangs of men were at work repairing the roadways riven deep by the torrents of the night before while others were engaged in removing the fallen timber that blocked every thoroughfare. He noted that the bridge over the Nannabijou River was gone and the hills were made more desolate by fresh fields of tangled windfalls.
As he swooped, Hammond glimpsed Inspector Little signalling to him to proceed direct to the Cup and return. The young airman picked out a likely looking landing place back of the limits, then shot his machine upward. He followed the course of the Nannabijou to the point where Solomon Creek made its confluence, when he swerved and followed the creek.
Below him now he could discern what had caused the flood that had swept down in the night and carried out the immense field of pulpwood boomed in the bay. The huge beaver-dam on the creek was gone, and where the lake had been, behind the dam, there remained only a slimy area of silt and mud. Thus it was brought home to him at a glance that the war between the rival lumber companies for the operating rights on the limits had been ended by the elements in favour of the North Star. . . The elements alone? He wondered. . . . Likely here was another mystery in the history of the North Star that would remain unsolved. Nobody had seemingly thought of the possibilities in case that lake of water behind the beaver-dam were set free.
Significant as all these things were, Hammond’s main interest was soon centred on the Cup of Nannabijou and its environs. As he glided over the draw in the cliffs along the creek trail to where it seemingly ended in the tunnel opening out over the rapids in the gorge he got a true perspective of the water-gate guarding the only entrance from the land side through the cliffs of the Cup. From his lofty point of observation he could note how the creek in the first place had cut a big oval-shaped “O” in the rock, leaving a high pinnacle in the centre.
But it was the man-made device for diverting the flow of water that most excited his curiosity. At the upper end, where the stream originally forked around the island of rock, was a contrivance like the walking-beam of an old-style steamship. From the ends of this beam, which sat in a steel pillar between the channels, connecting-rods reached down to sliding dams operating in slots cut in the sides of the channels. At the present moment, the dam on the western side was down, and the one on the eastern side up, thus forcing the whole volume of water from the overflow of the lake in the Cup down the latter channel, whose bed, when the dam on that side was closed forcing the water around the other way, formed a dry continuation of the creek trail to an upper tunnel leading through the cliffs and into the Cup of Nannabijou.
Chains extending from concealed mechanism below the walking-beam proved the dams to be operated by power. A tiny building, cleverly cached in a natural opening in the rocks at the west side, and from which copper wire was strung into the Cup, housed the hydro-electric plant where the current was generated. Hammond was scientific enough to conceive that the water-gate and the gong-signal near it were animated by a concealed magnet system at the simple pressing of an electric button somewhere.
As he swept into the Cup, Hammond’s discovery of the beautiful little mountain lake and the buildings above it, set off by their well-kept parklike surroundings, was even more of a revelation. From the plane it proved a wonderful picture—so wonderful that Hammond forgot he was in an area of danger until it recurred to him that here some place Josephine Stone was held captive.
But when he circled over the chateau and the wireless plant, he could discover no signs of life. He was certain if there were people about their attention would have long since been attracted by the roar of his engine. He decided to land and make an investigation in spite of the caution of Inspector Little that he should return to the camps after making observations from the air.
He slid down at a point in front of the bungalow.
II
The silence after quitting his machine seemed oppressive, and the place utterly deserted. He walked up on the verandah and rapped thrice on the chateau door. Receiving no answer, he tried the door. It was not locked, so he opened it and boldly entered. He was now determined to explore the building from top to bottom. The quaint, unusual appointments of the chateau at another time would have deeply interested him, but he felt he must work fast and be on the alert for surprise.
The rooms all bore the appearance of recent occupancy, but there were evidences that the house had been set in order before the departure of its people.
The sleeping chambers he examined last. All of these rooms had been swept, dusted and the beds made; but in one of them he picked up a fancy celluloid hair-comb. There was only one person on Nannabijou Limits to whom that could belong, and that was Josephine Stone.
The conviction brought home to Hammond from every quarter was that he had arrived too late. Josephine Stone’s captors must have carried her off to some other fastness. He thought of the building adjacent, but on going there he found the doors and windows securely locked. The blinds, however, were up, and he could get a clear view of all the rooms and the wireless plant inside. There was nothing else there beyond a number of empty bunks, a table and a few chairs.
It struck him that there was possibly another retreat hidden away in some other part of the Cup—perhaps up in the woods. He returned to the plane intending to make a thorough search of the area in the Cup from the air. But his engine was in a decidedly balky mood. He had a feeling it would fail him altogether, and, on an impulse of better judgment, he swung up and over the cliffs.
He had barely reached the confluence of Solomon Creek with Nannabijou River when the motor went dead.
Fortunately, by skillful manipulation of the planes, he was enabled to glide safely down over the timbered sides of the mountain to the cleared area just above Nannabijou camps.
His plane was soon surrounded by wondering groups of camp workers from among whom there strode a member of the mounted force. He leaned close as Hammond was getting out of the machine.
“Inspector Little would like you to go down to his quarters at once, Mr. Hammond,” he said. “I will see that your machine is taken care of.”