III
“Forty miles away from Cobalt,” gasped the detective Gatineau.
“I reckon that,” said the driver. “I reckon it; but don’t you ask me where we are. In the middle of the Sarah Desert of Africa, for all I know.”
“And we’re right out of touch of anybody. Miles away from the nearest house?”
“Hundreds of miles,” said the driver fervently and with convincing inaccuracy. “I don’t know of even a shack out this way.”
“I don’t suppose there is one ... trust Neuburg and his gang for that,” said Clement bitterly, reviewing the situation and finding its meaning.
“There may be a telephone in that old mine,” suggested the detective, with no great conviction.
“Oh, there may be,” said the driver. “There may be a Packard de luxe only waiting to take us back. Anyhow, to look won’t mean any harm. An’ it’ll be an occupation. There’s all the night yet.”
Clement and the detective went round by the trail to the abandoned mine. They felt their way carefully with their torches, and they carried their pistols ready. There was no need for the latter. The mine was dark and empty, its buildings degenerating into rot, its workings choked with weeds. There was not a telephone.
They had left another torch with the driver, and he had spent his time carefully surveying the position of the car in the rather vague hope that she might be got out of the slime lake on her own power. As Clement and his companion returned, he called out to them, “Nothin’ doing with th’ old girl. It’ll take a team to pull her clear, and an overhaul in a garage when she is clear an’ back at Cobalt. But she won’t sink any more, so she’s safe to sleep in.”
“We’ll send back that team,” said Clement. He turned to the detective. “Or, rather, I will; there’s no need for you to walk in, I’ll send back another car.”
“I’ll come along,” said Gatineau.
“A hell of a walk on a dark night with a trail bad enough to be easily missed. You’re risking a lot,” said the driver.
“We’ve got to,” answered Clement. “You see, the reason we were lured out here, and marooned, is, as I look at it, that those people in the car want to get us out of the way and keep us out of the way for a long time.... Isn’t that the way you see this, Mr. Gatineau?”
“That’s the only reason in it,” agreed the detective. “I should say that we got to Cobalt before Neuburg and his lot were ready for us. They had to decide on this desperate trick to get us out into the wilds and maroon us. I take it that the man in the car signaled to Siwash directly he saw him.”
“I agree in the main,” said Clement, who had been thinking hard. “But this thing has been well planned. They knew if they could get us out here we might be landed helpless.... And to get us out here, well, Siwash must have been the bait. I don’t see how they knew we knew of his presence on the train——”
“Perhaps his showing himself at North Bay was deliberate,” said the detective. “Half-breed Indians with all the tricks of the woods don’t give themselves away so easily. Although it’s rather late in the day to remember that.”
“And the fact is neither here nor there, anyhow,” said Clement. “Our chief concern is that we are ten or more hours tramp away from Cobalt on this bad trail, and that during those ten hours Neuburg and his rogues will be able to do things—things connected,” he meant to mention Heloise Reys’ name, but he boggled at that, he said instead, “do things that our presence in Cobalt would have prevented. They have gained very valuable time.”
“But they, whoever you’re talking about, have gained it,” pointed the driver. “You can’t get away from that. That being so, where’s the value of risking that tramp along a dangerous trail in a dark night? It’s mortal easy to stray and get lost in these parts.”
“That’s a risk I think we’ve got to take,” said Clement. “They may be counting on the fact that we won’t try to follow the trail during the night; I mean by that they may need more time than those ten hours. Again, we may have luck, may hit upon a shack or a homestead where we could get a rig or some conveyance. And always, too, the closer we keep to their heels the more likely we are to throw their plans out.”
“I don’t know who they are, but these fellers seem a healthy lot of toughs from the indications thrown off,” said the driver. And as he voiced his ignorance, Clement swung round on him with an inspiration.
“Do you know a man named Henry Gunning?” he demanded.
“Henry Gunning,” cried the driver. “What, again! Do I know him? Why, the feller’s an epidemic.”
Clement, startled by the tone of the man’s voice, simply echoed the expression, “an epidemic?”
“He’s certainly that. The whole world’s asking after him.”
“What do you mean by the whole world?” demanded Clement in some excitement.
“In a manner o’ speaking, I mean he seemed an ordinary sort of feller up to a day or so ago. Then a big fat man hits the burg and he and a feller with him begins to agitate for this Henry Gunning——”
“That is Neuburg and Joe Wandersun—the big man is Neuburg,” said Clement.
“That’s Neuburg,” said the driver. “Well, I can understand your lack of heartiness about him—a shifty-looking mammoth he is. Well then, they asked and asked for Henry Gunning, reg’ler raised the burg. And then, when they’d finished—when the subject might be considered dropped, so to speak—there came the ladies——”
“The two ladies,” said Clement quickly.
“Yep, the queen one, a real swell Jane, and the plain prune one. They made the burg to-day, and they asked. The big shark had nothin’ on them ladies in eagerness for Henry. An’ now here’s you.”
This seemed all very strange to Clement. If Neuburg had asked for Gunning, why should Heloise, in her turn, have had to ask so persistently? He said, “I don’t quite follow this. The big man asked for Gunning, you say, and then the lady.... Does that mean that Neuburg did not find Gunning?”
“Oh, he found him. You bet he found him all right, all right.” From the amusement in the driver’s tone it was evident that there was some ripe story connected with Neuburg’s discovery of Gunning.
Clement ignored that. “Well, then—why the lady? Why did she have to ask for Gunning?”
“Why,” said the driver. “Why, don’t you see, because that Neuburg feller found him first, see.”
“I don’t see at all.”
“Well, he found him first, didn’t he. Took him away. Beat it with him——”
“What!” cried Clement. “Are you saying Gunning has left Cobalt with Neuburg?”
“First train out, sure,” said the man. “This morning, or rather, yesterday mornin’.”
“An’ the lady——?”
“But ain’t I bin tellin’ you all the time Henry was gone when she came in?”
Clement stared amazedly at the faint blur of white that in the darkness represented the driver’s face. In the pause the detective Gatineau said, “Then, Miss Reys, this lady and her companion, are still in Cobalt?”
“They certainly are.”
Clement spoke. “Until the first train out,” he said bitterly. “That’s why we’re here. We were lured out here so that Miss Reys can be got away from Cobalt without our meeting or seeing her. They can’t very well get her out of Cobalt until the morning, so they got me, us, out of Cobalt instead.”
Indeed, it was unmistakable. Gunning had been whisked out of Cobalt to some unconjecturable place, either because he was not in a fit state to see Heloise, or because, hearing of Clement’s pursuit, Neuburg feared that his plan might be interrupted. The rest naturally followed.