II
They had scored the first trick, but it was not altogether a signal advantage. It put Clement on his mettle. It enabled him to appreciate exactly the type of rogues he was dealing with. There was going to be nothing timid about their methods. They were bold and they were clever, they were going to take hold of every advantage and push it home ruthlessly. Clement did not mind that at all. He could be bold and ruthless, too, and because of his apparently casual manner his boldness and his ruthlessness could be carried off in a way which would baffle them.
In fact, no later than that afternoon, Clement, with an apparently thoughtless inconsequence, began to baffle them. He played for the second trick—and won it.
It was obvious that from the first the gang meant to block him from Heloise’s side. Clement smiled as he saw the little comedy being played. The Gorgon clung to the girl tenaciously. To double the guard, so to speak, the large fat rogue was called in.
They were clever. They played with infinite skill. The mountain of a man was drawn in with brilliant casualness. Heloise and the Gorgon looked at Ireland over the taffrail. They talked about Ireland. The Gorgon made a conspicuous mistake about an Irish headland ... and there was the large fat man putting her right, standing already one of that little group pouring out attractive facts about Ireland with a pleasant, well-informed politeness.
It was one of those swift shipboard acquaintances. The apparent stranger had skillfully inserted himself into the duologue between the Gorgon and Heloise, and the Gorgon had, as skillfully, drawn him into the circle.
Clement, who had been hovering in the background saw what it meant. One of them, now, would always be at the girl’s side; effectually putting a stop to any particular and personal approach of his own.
The three watched Ireland until they had had enough of it. Then they walked the deck a little. Then the two ladies sat down, and the fat man, with invincible politeness, walked away. Clement exchanged a few words with the two women in their deck chairs; pleasant words, but of no effect. The Gorgon showed no signs of moving, Heloise was too polite to move away from the Gorgon.
The lunch bugle went, and they were separated. After lunch the Gorgon and Heloise were inseparable. They sat on deck chairs again. Tea came. Clement found that the Gorgon had whisked the girl into an alcove in the lounge. He was about to join them boldly, when the big fat man materializing with his unexpected swiftness, crossed the lounge and planted himself in the only other seat available. Clement smiled and sat and had his own tea and waited. He watched the trio. Presently his chance came. The fat man and the Gorgon suddenly involved themselves in one of those duologues in which the third person plays the part of a listener only. As the two talked Clement crossed to them swiftly and quietly—and snapped the girl from under their very noses.
It was one of those simple acts that baffle the clever. Clement slipped round behind the discussion, as it were, and said to the girl, “Coming for a stroll, Miss Reys?”
And Heloise came—alone. There was nothing for the others to do. To break off their discussion to fence with this pleasant young man would have looked strange. To come out with the girl was certainly impossible, for they had not been invited. They had to remain, apparently unconcerned, if they were not to draw attention to themselves and their actions.
And in his casual way Clement clinched his victory by drawing attention to any future “blockading” action the precious pair might attempt.
He took Heloise up to the boat deck, and found chairs and placed them in a spot that could only accommodate two, which was also quite neatly screened from casual view. He sighed, “Oh, well, this is very much better.”
“It isn’t strolling, anyhow,” laughed Heloise.
“Oh, I didn’t want to stroll, I just wanted to be selfish,” smiled Clement. “I wanted you to myself. There seem to have been millions of people about you ever since we came aboard.”
“Scarcely millions,” she smiled back. “Only my companion and that rather stout, quite pleasant Mr. Neuburg.”
“Only those,” said Clement, underlining the personality and the actions of the pair deliberately, “but they do seem to be rather clinging.... Always there seems to be a great crowd barring the way....”
“Always,” she laughed. “But we’ve only been on board half a day.”
“Perhaps I was looking forward,” said Clement, ingeniously emphasizing his point. “I saw it happening every day, every hour of the day, for the rest of the voyage.”
“You’re unnecessarily gloomy,” laughed the girl, not altogether displeased at the interest this good-looking young man took in her. “It won’t happen every hour every day.”
And Clement, with an inward chuckle, thought it wouldn’t. He left it at that. He had won that trick. Not merely would he have tête-à-tête talks with Heloise in the future, but he had so emphasized the attitude of the pair of rogues that their attempts to shut him out from Heloise must only engender suspicion in her mind.
After a moment’s silence Heloise said, “You’re rather hard on Mr. Neuburg. He’s a very pleasant person, and quite well-informed about Canada.”
“I’m quite well-informed about Canada myself,” said Clement.
“About shooting—sport”—she teased him.
“That—and other things,” Clement laughed back. “I know appearances are against me, but, really, there’s a solid core inside. I know quite a lot about Canadian industries, for instance.”
It was a casual remark delivered with an inconsequence that covered up the deliberate meaning Clement had put into it. And it struck home, as Clement had meant it to.
“Really!” she cried. “Industrial things—you know something about Canadian industries?” She was eager at once.
“Quite a lot,” said Clement. “You see, even if I didn’t happen to be keen—which I am—I’d have to take a personal interest. I’ve money invested in quite a number of Canadian concerns—agricultural machinery, fruit farms, grain areas, mines——”
“Mines!” breathed the girl. “Do you know something about mines?”
Under his casual easiness Clement Seadon thrilled. He had suspected from the beginning that the venture in which Henry Gunning was supposed to need backing must be mines; the district in which he lived pointed to that. But here was confirmation of that suspicion. He had touched the matter which was the foundation of the plot at his first attempt to find out. And he had also obviously done more. He had made the girl feel that he was a sympathetic and knowledgeable person to whom it would be easy to talk about mines and the prospects of mining. And, in fact, he was just that person. He said, “I know, I think, a very fair amount about mines. Oh, but not merely on the investing, but on the practical side, too. Before the war I went out for three months with a prospecting party—not as a fortune hunter, but as one who wanted to learn. It’s rather a fad of mine to get to know how things are done from the bottom up. As some of our money was invested in mines, it seemed to me that I should have a working knowledge of the whole proposition.”
“And you did your prospecting—where?” she asked, a little breathlessly.
“Oh—in Canada,” he said. And then he paused. Should he risk being specific? Would it frighten her to hear the name of the very place where Henry Gunning, her old lover, was living; and would that put her on her guard against him—as she had been on her guard against the questions of the little lawyer? Or would it, on the other hand, draw out confidences? He rather felt it might. He was, as far as she knew, quite outside her concerns, and she might want to learn things, just as he wanted to learn everything as early as possible if he was to act. And then as he hesitated, she said with extraordinary eagerness, “In Canada; but what part of Canada?”
Her eagerness decided Clement. “In British Columbia,” he answered, as a man mentioning something of no purpose. “To be exact, in the mountain valleys in the south of British Columbia. There’s a whole string of valleys there with rather beautiful lakes in ’em. We started at Penticton, on Okanagan Lake, and worked up northward.... They mostly grow apples and peaches there, but there was a good deal of mineral about, we’d heard. Anyhow—I say, I hope I’m not boring you—anyhow, we pushed slowly up those valleys to a little one-horse place called Sicamous——”
“Sicamous!” she cried, her eyes very bright, her cheeks exquisitely flushed, and for a moment Clement wondered if he had done right to mention that name. “Sicamous! But that’s real luck—for me, I mean. I actually want to learn something first-hand about Sicamous—and about the mining in those districts....”
With a throb of excitement and satisfaction, Clement, looking exactly like an Englishman who was no more interested than he should be when a pretty woman gave him her confidences, leaned forward to hear the next important words. And....
“Oh ... Loise.... Forgive me, Miss Heloise.... Where did you put the aspirin tablets?... I have a terrible headache.... I went to the cabin, and could not find them.... And I’ve looked for you everywhere....”
Before them stood the Gorgon smiling apologetically, wearily, but at the same time determinedly. She had arrived just at the right moment to interrupt revelations.