III
At last his fingers encountered the little folded square. He opened it out and passed it to her. “You see it was unsigned,” he explained. “I was not in a position to know who it was from—”
He was cut short by a soft peal of silvery laughter. “Some one with an odd sense of humour is behind this,” she said passing the note back to him. “But the joke is on both of us.”
“On both of us?”
“Yes. Last night I too found a note pushed under the door of my cottage. It stated that a young man who was stopping at the pulp camp would like to meet me here this morning, and that if I honoured the appointment it might be to our mutual interest. So you see I obeyed the mysterious summons.”
“The notes then were most likely written by the same party.”
“Most likely. Mine was in a faint, back-hand scrawl.”
“Some outside party,” he suggested, “must have been seriously interested in our becoming acquainted.”
“One would fancy so.” There came a mischievous light into her blue eyes. “But we are not yet acquainted, are we, Mr. —?”
“Hammond—Louis Hammond,” he supplied.
“Mr. Hammond, I am pleased to meet you.” She rose and extended her little hand. “I am Miss Josephine Stone—or, perhaps you already knew?”
“No—but I confess I have been curious to know, ever since that night our eyes met on the train, or do you remember that?”
“Oh, yes—I do. You must have thought my actions strange that night. But there were so many odd things happened in that coach during the space of a few minutes I had become quite perplexed.”
“That brings us to a point where you might do me a great service, Miss Stone,” Hammond suggested eagerly. “Have you any idea what happened Mr. Gildersleeve?”
“Mr. Gildersleeve?” There was blank perplexity in her face.
“Then, you do not know him?”
“No, I do not remember ever having met a man of that name.”
Hammond was dumfounded. “Pardon me, then,” he offered. “I had thought you were a relative—or his secretary.”
“Was he one of the men you were talking to on the coach?”
“Yes. Mr. Gildersleeve, so the papers say, disappeared after leaving the train at Moose Horn Station that night.”
“Oh—I remember reading something about that in some of the papers brought over to the island. Was he the tall, stern-faced man who left his stateroom and got off at a little station shortly after you left him?”
“That was Mr. Gildersleeve.”
“I thought there was something mysterious about it all,” she said seriously. “I had been travelling with a friend, Mrs. Johnson, from Calgary. From Winnipeg east we were occupying a section in one of the other coaches, but I had gone back to the parlour car alone to read for awhile before I went to bed. Shortly afterwards, a dark, striking-looking woman came in and took a chair near me. We were alone at the time and I noticed she seemed to be keeping a keen watch on the stateroom of the man you say was Mr. Gildersleeve. First, there was a little grey-haired man went in.”
“That was Eulas Daly, an American consul,” explained Hammond.
“After he came out you later came up from the forward part of the coach and entered Mr. Gildersleeve’s stateroom,” continued Miss Stone. “When the door closed behind you, the dark woman leaned over and asked: ‘Do you know that man?’ I replied that I did not. Then she said: ‘His appearance fits the description of a notorious western bandit. I am one of the number of detectives who are shadowing him, so please don’t tell anybody what you see me doing.’
“Before I could recover from my surprise she tip-toed to the stateroom and stood with her back to it and her hands behind her. At first I thought she was simply waiting for you to come out. But when some little time later the porter came up the aisle she hastily withdrew her hands and I saw she had been holding against the door’s key-hole a small black boxlike instrument.”
“A dictaphone!” Hammond gasped.
“That’s what I took it to be. She kept it hidden from the porter and walked forward and out of the coach. When you came out of Mr. Gildersleeve’s room I wanted to tell you about the woman’s strange actions, but you took one startled look at me and fled.”
“Thus confirming the allegation that I was a highwayman,” Hammond laughed.
“I did not know what to think,” asserted Miss Stone. “After Mr. Gildersleeve left the train I saw you come out of the smoker and walk out to the platform. I summoned all my courage and followed as far as the platform door. It was some time before I succeeded in catching your eye. Then when I did I lost my nerve and ran away without warning you.”
“And you would have warned me—even when there was a possibility that I was a real desperado?”
Her eyes dropped before his ardent ones. “Sometimes,” she replied deliberately, “one’s sympathies will go out to—a desperado.”
For the moment Hammond almost wished himself a highwayman, but whatever his reply might have been it was stilled on his lips.
From out of the heart of the hills came a melodious, gong-like alarum, softly reverberating like the tone when exquisite cut-glass is struck.
The man looked at the girl. In her eyes he read as great bewilderment as his own.