II
“Come in!”
The command came clear and loud with an odd vibrating quality in its not inhospitable note.
The room which Hammond entered, an office in the fore of the superintendent’s living and sleeping quarters, presented a scene of orderly confusion. Its desks were littered with newspapers, magazines and typewritten flimsies, and on its wall shelves sprawled reference books, encyclopedias, dictionaries and thumb-worn volumes of the classics.
The place struck Hammond as not being unlike the work-rooms of free-lance writing men he had known. But the one occupant, a tall, magnificently set-up figure of a man, was obviously not of the type that put their dreams on paper, but live them.
He barely glanced up when Hammond entered.
The visitor, awaiting recognition, was struck by the conscious power and subtle craftiness that lurked in the pale, exotic features of the other. Stratagem, deep and super-capable, might be read in the eyes, black as night, over which the lids compressed ever so faintly now in a dreamy, faraway gaze. Wide, coldly-moulded temples, under close-cropped, crisp black hair, surmounted a face not to be put out of memory once even casually visualised, and the whole bespoke a mind that, one sensed, worked a dual lightning shift, analysing and sifting its impressions ever in advance of action and word. The lower features narrowed symmetrically to the alert, square-set chin; spare beneath the rounded prominence of the cheek-bones, with a sensitive mouth that could compress thin-lipped with a flicker in its half-smile that was cruel as sin.
The superintendent arose and walked slowly over to a desk and tossed down the limp-covered encyclopedia volume he had been perusing, then he turned and studied Hammond queerly, quite as one might study an inanimate object while in the depths of a mental problem, only this man’s eyes held a ghostly, diabolical light.
“Mr. Hammond, what do you know about aphasia?” was his startling first question.
“Not a great deal,” replied Hammond seeking to retain an unsurprised outwardness. “Refers to loss of identity or something of that sort. That encyclopedia ought to—”
“That being so,” cut in the other, seeming to return to actual surroundings, “will you please be seated and tell me what’s on your mind. Smoke?”
Hammond lifted a cigarette from the other’s case. “You are Mr. A. C. Smith, the superintendent?”
“Acey Smith will do out here.”
“As you seem to already know, my name is Hammond. I came looking for a job.”
“A job?” He swept Hammond’s raiment with his scornful eyes. “What’s so suddenly gone wrong with the world of white collars and derby hats?”
“I brought this letter of introduction from Hon. J. J. Slack, M.P.”
“Well.” Acey Smith grunted amusedly, tore open the envelope and merely glanced at the contents. He turned to Hammond with a trace of a sneer playing about his mouth. “Indicates I’m not to bother trying to find out what you’re wanted for and to slap you on the pay-roll at a hundred a month and found.”
Hammond stifled indignant surprise. “I suppose you have something I can do?”
“Do?” There was something like a hiss in Acey Smith’s half-laugh. “Take in the scenery, I’d suggest. There’s a devil of a lot of it going to waste hereabouts.”
“There’s a mistake somewhere, Mr. Smith. I didn’t come out here to loaf, but to tackle a job and earn the money.”
The other smiled in better-natured scorn. “Say, Hammond,” he derided, “what are you trying to put over on a poor, benighted bush superintendent? You know as well as the scribe angel knows that Old Man J.J. isn’t forking you out the North Star’s good money for what you’re going to do, but for what you’ve done.”
Hammond, remembering a warning, became cautious. “Nevertheless,” he persisted, “I would at least like to make a show of earning the money.”
“That’s better,” approved Acey Smith. “Tell me what you did for a living before J.J. tucked you out here.”
Again Hammond felt the need of being guarded before those black, soul-searching eyes. “Lawyer,” he prevaricated.
“Full-fledged?”
“No, student.”
“H’m, hard-boiled is the only kind I could use. Oh, well, if you find it hard to keep your mind occupied you might camouflage as an extra check with the pole-counting squad. But your principal business, young man, will be doing as you damned well please, except when you get explicit orders to do otherwise.
“By the way,” in a more friendly tone, “how was J.J. looking when you last saw him?”
“Pretty fit, though he seemed worried.”
“Politics is a hell of a game, isn’t it?” pronounced Acey Smith. “But you had better be turning in; you look mussed up and tired. You bunk with the head cook in the little shack next door up. First thing in the morning slip over to the camp store and get a bush outfit. Those parlour duds of yours are high-sign invitations to the ‘flu,’ and we don’t encourage funerals.”
Hammond thanked him, said good-night and turned to leave the room. His hand was on the door-latch when Acey Smith seemed to glide through the air to his side. He felt his wrist seized in a grip of steel.
“Spy!”
It came a hissing accusation that sent Hammond’s hot blood to his head. He flung the other free of him. “No, damn you,” he answered fiercely, “and I’m not a timber wolf either!”
He could not have explained what inspired him to say that, but at the words, Acey Smith cowered back as one might from the clinging clout of a logging whip. Hammond did not know that a man’s face could at one moment hold so much of evil as leaped at him from Smith’s. His head jerked back and the eyes that darted fire at Hammond were no longer the eyes of a human being. The taut lips bared back from the even white teeth in a hateful snarl; then Acey Smith’s hands went up to his face convulsively, the palms cupping his lower features.
He whirled on a heel like an Objibway in a war dance. Next instant when he faced Hammond he was laughing quietly. “We’ll drop the play-acting,” he said, “and I’ll take you up and introduce you to your shack-mate, Sandy Macdougal, the cook.”
“You are sure I am not a spy?”
“I am satisfied you are not what I feared for your own welfare you might have been. Let’s go.”
But the cook had turned in and was snoring raucously when they reached his quarters, a substantial log shack that stood directly opposite the huge dining-camp. Four bunks were built into the further wall of the one-room interior, each equipped with a mattress and any amount of dark-grey blankets. The place was dimly illuminated by a sullen fire that gave out fitful, subdued cracklings in the little sheet-iron heater banked for the night with green wood.
Acey Smith lighted a wall lamp. Only one of the bunks was occupied, so Acey Smith directed Hammond to the other lower, bade him good-night and left abruptly.