III
Hammond alighted on the docks of Kam City and walked the streets expecting at any moment a blue-coated policeman or a plain-clothes detective would step forward and take him into custody in connection with the Gildersleeve disappearance. But no such thing happened. The very boldness of his entry must have set the sleuths of the law off guard, for at no time did he even find himself under suspicious scrutiny.
One thing at first absorbed his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. That was the uncertainty of what might have happened to Josephine Stone. Where could she have gone from the island? The appearance of Acey Smith in the vicinity of the island alone in his motorboat made him the more uneasy. It all brought home to him a dark thought that he had all along been trying to fight off—that Josephine Stone some way or another must be entangled in the baffling mystery of the Nannabijou Limits. But, in spite of constantly rising perplexities, he refused to think of her in bitterness or that she had in any sense been consciously deceiving him. He would not believe that a woman such as she would give her lips to a man, as she had to him, either in spirit of coquetry or to further dark intrigue.
It was possible she had merely gone away in her motorboat for a trip along the lakeshore, or she might have come over to the city for the day. But there had been a deserted look about her cottage on the island that weighed in upon Hammond—made him feel that something else had happened. Anyway, he must hustle with the affairs he had come to the city to attend to, so that he could get back to the limits and find out for certain where she had gone.
Gold lettering on a window in the second storey of a business block across the street reminded him that he had mapped out a definite program for the day and that right here was where he must make his start. The sign marked the quarters of the American consul. There he would find the little grey man, Eulas Daly, the first on his mental list of interviews. He crossed the street and sought out the consul’s office.
A tall, slim, alert-looking young man rose from his desk and genially inquired of what service he could be.
Hammond passed him his card. “Might I see Mr. Daly?”
“Mr. Daly?” repeated the other with a puzzled air.
“Yes—Mr. Eulas Daly, American consul.”
“A mere error in names, Mr. Hammond. I am the American consul in charge here, but my name is Frank W. Freeman.”
“Oh, I see,” surmised Hammond. “There has been a change—Mr. Daly has been recently transferred to another post?”
“Quite a year ago, my friend,” replied Mr. Freeman definitely. “Mr. Daly was transferred to the Buenos Aires office in October of last year and I have been in charge here since then. Perhaps there’s something I could do for you?”
“At that rate, no. Thank you,” acknowledged Hammond concealing as best he could his amazement and chagrin. “It was a personal matter between myself and Mr. Daly. I have been misinformed as to his location.”
Hoaxed!
Inured as Hammond was becoming to trickery and mystification, this latest revelation brought about a poignant disappointment. It seemed the more he probed the incidents following his contract with Norman T. Gildersleeve to go to the Nannabijou Limits the more complicated things became. Every attempt he had made to get at the bottom of things had resulted in fresh bewilderment until everything appeared like a bedevilled dream. But it was no dream. Cold conviction was upon him that it was quite the contrary—that it was a series of baffling incidents promoted for a dark purpose by a sinister agency behind the scenes somewhere.
According to this latest piece of information, the man giving his name as Eulas Daly, United States consul at Kam City, and who had brought about his meeting with Norman T. Gildersleeve, was travelling under false colours. If he were really a friend of Norman T. Gildersleeve there should have been no necessity for that. The obvious conclusion then was that he was a confederate of those who had lured Gildersleeve off the train. No doubt it was he who framed up the mysterious message that led the millionaire to leave the coach at Moose Horn Station, for Hammond now felt certain that the note delivered while he was in consultation with the president of the International Investment Corporation was a forgery, and that Gildersleeve had either been kidnapped or had met with foul play.
Responsibility to the man who had employed him for some secret purpose that was not yet obvious demanded immediate action on his part. It would be foolhardy, he conceded, to longer attempt to fathom the mystery alone or to conceal what he knew in connection with the affair. Before he reported to the police authorities, he felt it would be wisdom to consult the principals of the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills, who, if anybody, should be closest in touch with any new developments in the Gildersleeve mystery.
He dropped into a hotel whence he telephoned the city offices of the paper company. He was told that Artemus Duff, president and general manager, was out at the works and might not be back all afternoon. Hammond decided to go out to the works, and, as they were located at the extreme easterly limits of the city, he walked down to Front Street, which ran along the harbour, to catch a street car. He was standing at a car stop when the face of a man at the wheel of a motor car that whizzed by seemed to him to be startlingly familiar.
The motor car stopped a block up at the corner above the short street leading from the city docks. A man got out, paused a second on the walk looking down the street, then disappeared into the building on the corner.
Hammond’s first breathless impression was confirmed. The little grey man who got out of the car was the man who had introduced himself on the train as Eulas Daly, American consul.
The young man lost no time in reaching the spot. The man who had got out of the car was not in the drug store on the corner, so he must have passed in the double doors just next it and gone up the stairs. Hammond took the steps three at a bound. The first floor up was entirely occupied by law offices. On the double glass doors he read the gilt-lettered legend:—
WINCH, STANTON & REID
Barristers, Solicitors,
Etc.
He decided to make a try for his man in there. At the rail just beyond the doors he was met by a young woman.
“It is very important that I meet the gentleman who just came in,” he announced to her.
“Mr. Winch?”
“Yes—Mr. Winch.”
She took his card, passed into one of the glass-partitioned private offices and returned after what to Hammond seemed an unjustifiable delay. “Mr. Winch will see you in ten minutes,” she said. “Just take a seat, please.”
Hammond was forced to cool his heels till the girl, after responding to an office ’phone call, indicated that Mr. Winch was ready to receive him.
Hammond at last had struck the right trail. The little grey man gazing up at him from across the desk in the private office was none other than the bogus Eulas Daly. But Winch did not look the least flustered; in fact, there was the barest trace of the geniality he had worn in the role of the American consul.
“Mr. Hammond,” he opened quietly, “I have a shrewd notion what questions you have in mind to demand of me. But, before we proceed with that, will you kindly tell me why you have violated your contract with Mr. Gildersleeve by leaving the Nannabijou Limits without notification?”
“Because I’m tired up with the whole business,” exploded the young man. “Because I’m not quite ass enough to stick out there on an assignment from a man who’s dropped out of sight. And, in the next instance, I want to know from you why you—”
“Just a moment, just a moment,” insisted Mr. Winch. “We’ll come to that presently. Did you know that your leaving the limits at this particular time may seriously jeopardise the plans Mr. Gildersleeve had in mind?”
“Mr. Gildersleeve has disappeared.”
“Even so. That, however, does not prevent his associates carrying on, does it? As I understood it, you agreed with Mr. Gildersleeve to remain at the limits in the capacity he sent you until you received word to return, and he emphasised the injunction that you were to remain no matter what apparently unusual things happened. Is that not a fact, Mr. Hammond?”
It was a fact—Hammond felt the full force of it now. For the moment he was not prepared with a reply. He was in grips with one of the most brilliant cross-examiners in the north country.
“But we will let that pass for the moment,” the lawyer proceeded. “You haven’t consulted any one else in the city about this matter?”
“No, but I was on my way to look up President Duff of Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills when I dropped in here.”
“You acted very wisely in coming here first,” commended Mr. Winch. “I would urge you not to consult Mr. Duff or any others about it, and, I might add, it is of as deep concern to you as it is to us that Mr. Gildersleeve’s intimate affairs in this matter should not become public under any consideration.”
“But you haven’t told me why, when you accosted me on the train, you found it necessary to impersonate an American consul who has long since left the city,” insisted the impetuous Hammond.
A wry smile broke faintly over the lawyer’s face. “Gildersleeve was to blame for that,” he replied. “He insisted, for some reason that was never quite clear to me, that I should not disclose my real identity to you. It may have been that, in case you did not feel inclined to consider the suggestion to meet him, he did not wish you to know his legal advisor was acting as go-between. The use of Eulas Daly’s name was almost accidental. An old card of his must have by some chance got into my case. It appealed to me that for the interim the role of Eulas Daly would do as well as any other. I did not expect to see you again until this business was over with.”
This explanation did not impress Hammond favourably, but it was evident, from the matter-of-fact manner in which he related the deception, that Winch cared little how he took it.
So Hammond feigned as great an indifference as he asked: “Then you really did the preliminary work at Mr. Gildersleeve’s instance?”
Winch plainly did not relish being kept in the position of the cross-examined. “Yes,” he replied with a shrug. “Gildersleeve had selected you as a likely man for the job during the day while you were sitting talking to a companion next table to him in the dining car. He asked me to feel you out about it, and, at the moment you dropped into the smoker that evening, I was just about to set out in search for you.”
“One more question, Mr. Winch,” pursued Hammond. “You spoke a few moments ago about his associates ‘carrying on’ while Mr. Gildersleeve is absent. Am I to take it from that he is still alive?”
“We are certain of nothing,” answered the other, “but we have hopes for the best. It is not a point over which you need waste worry; the plans for his enterprises will be carried on as before.”
“Then there is nothing I could do that would assist in clearing up the mystery of Mr. Gildersleeve’s disappearance?” insisted Hammond.
“No—not a thing. Your plan is to return to the Nannabijou Limits this afternoon as quietly as possible,” suggested the legal man. “There you had best resume your former rôle until such time as you are communicated with.”
“That sounds very well,” impatiently commented Hammond, “but, in the event of Mr. Gildersleeve having disappeared permanently, I might remain there for a very long time without any particular purpose being served.”
“In such a case I will personally take the responsibility of instructing you when to return,” assured Winch. “Furthermore, I will take it upon myself to guarantee that you are paid for your services according to the verbal contract between yourself and Mr. Gildersleeve.”
Hammond hesitated a moment. He was thinking about Josephine Stone and the possibilities of being near her again; otherwise he would not have entertained any proposal to return to the limits under the circumstances.
Before he could reply, however, there came sounds of a loud commotion from somewhere on the streets outside; jeers, the shrill cries of young boys and the rush of many feet.