I
The rush to the train was a frantic episode, undertaken with the eye on the second hand of the watch. As they flashed down through the spruce woods and over the delightful bridge of the shining Bow, the detective, Xavier Gatineau, was scribbling a wire on a pad resting on his swaying knee.
“To our man at Sicamous,” he explained. “He must meet that train. When we get to the depot, will you jam that into the telegraph office? I’ll dive for the station master an’ arrange for accommodation, an’ hold the train if necessary. Phew! we’re cutting it fine.”
They were. They heard the train pull in and stop before they could see it. They saw the guards preparing to send the train away as they drew up, braking perilously beside the low platform. Clement sprang to the telegraph office without a word. Gatineau seemed to be half-way along the platform in the direction of the station master before their automobile had really stopped.
The handing in of the wire took no more than a few seconds, but short though that time was, Gatineau was already beckoning him to the rear car when Clement appeared.
“Luck all the way,” said Gatineau. “Section superintendent’s private car hitched on to this train. This is it.... He’ll be here in a minute——”
He got no further. Clement suddenly caught his arm. “My God!” he gasped. “Look there—those women.”
Two women stood by the edge of the platform watching their suitcases being put into an automobile.
It was dark, but the two well-dressed figures could plainly be seen in the light of an arc lamp. One was a comely, chilly, thick-set, middle-aged woman—the Gorgon, Méduse Smythe. The other—Heloise.
No mistaking that slim, upstanding, gallantly poised figure. Even there in the darkness and newly arrived on a strange railway platform, she carried herself with a crispness, an air of daintiness, a grace of candid beauty. No mistaking her at all—and no mistaking the curious and quite sharp thrill that went through his own being as he looked at her.
“Miss Reys?” asked Gatineau in a sharp whisper.
“Yes—and that she-scoundrel, her companion. They’ve arrived. Of course, I should have remembered this would be their train.”
“Did they see you?” demanded Gatineau, more practically. He had a sudden, unpleasant vision of the crafty Méduse Smythe sending telegrams ahead of them, warning Neuburg, upsetting their own hair-brained plan.
“I’m certain they didn’t,” said Clement. “And—and do you think, from their attitudes, that they did?”
Both men had drawn into the cover of their car, and as they looked, it was quite obvious to them that they had not been seen.
Uneasiness was not expected from Heloise; still, if she had seen Clement, with whom she had quarreled, who, on the word of Méduse, she was also well on the way to love, she must have shown some sort of nervousness. She showed none.
The Gorgon companion, who had every reason to show anxiety if she had, unexpectedly, set eyes upon that enemy who disconcerted her most—Clement Seadon—showed no anxiety. She was calm and smiling. With just the right smiling calm—no amount of acting could have given her precisely that air.
“No, they haven’t seen us,” said Clement.
“No, they certainly haven’t,” said Gatineau. “All the same——” he began, and he realized Clement’s intent gaze and stopped, and smothered a grin. Clement would not be fit for comment or reasoning until the train pulled out.
Clement gazed hungrily at Heloise. During the days of excitement and anxiety he had thought incessantly of her, and had, he thought, created an unreal dream woman. But as he looked at her he saw that she was better even than his dream. The beauty of her features, the charm of her movements, the whole crisp, boyish attraction of her came to him, even now, as a fresh revelation. Her car moved and he moved with it towards the observation platform.
“Mr. Seadon,” Gatineau protested. “The light shines upon the platform, if they turned and saw you....”
With a sigh Clement relinquished the most desirable sight in the world. Their own train started.
Presently he said, “They have arrived at Banff, Gatineau. That horror of a woman has arrived—and she will ask for a message from Newman. Do you appreciate that? She’ll go there expecting a message.”
“She won’t get one,” said Gatineau, grinning. He put his hand in his pocket. He drew out Newman’s—or Neuburg’s—train letter saying all was clear, and ordering Méduse to go to Revelstoke. “I brought it along with me. I thought of that.”
“Yes,” said Clement. “You thought of that. But did you think of what would happen when she asks for the message she is expecting—and does not get it?”
“Hell,” said the little detective explosively.
“Just that,” agreed Clement. “She’ll raise it. She’ll get panicky. And she’ll do something.”
“She just will; she’ll fly to the wire or to the distance ’phone to Sicamous. She’ll get through to Neuburg. Why, in the name of Mike, didn’t I think of that?”
“Why, in the name of Michael, didn’t I?” said Clement hardly. “It was my idiotic haste. But that doesn’t help. What does help? She’ll get through to Sicamous and Neuburg; she will warn Neuburg. And—and what can we do?”
They stood staring blankly at each other in the swaying car.
What could they do?