V
The woman turned from the stove with a half-cry of fear as their boots clumped on the boards of the shack. She dropped the coffee can with a crash, and her lips clenched tight together as she saw the weapons in their hands. There was something significant in that sudden gesture of silence; she had seen pistols in men’s hands before—in the hands of men who shot regardless of sex.
Clement felt pity for her and the life she must have led. “We mean no harm, Mrs. Wandersun. Only you must keep quiet——”
“And not move,” added Gatineau. “Stand over in that corner there, Mrs. Wandersun—yes, in the angle of the walls. Now understand, no movement, no sound.”
They looked about the room quickly. It was a bare room, with a table and stove, and one window, next the door, looking on to the porch. There was a door into an inner room. Gatineau sprang across to it and looked in. It had a bed and a glassless window and very little else. The window was shut, the bed had evidently been used by the woman. Gatineau came out of the room, shutting the door. There was no need to go into that room. What they wanted was in this outer, living room.
In a corner was a truckle bed. On that bed was a man, his deeply-marked face pale and unshaven. He looked sick, and he stirred gently and moaned like a sick man, not opening his eyes to them. Gatineau gave him one look, then went and stood by the window, which was just by the foot of the bed. Crouching against the woodwork, the little detective watched the world outside, his pistol ready.
Clement acted quickly. From his pocket he took a piece of paper, unfolded it and put it on the table. He found that ink and pens were already there and he put the paper near them. It was a confession. He had drawn it up in the train coming from Banff. It set out the general lines of the plot as Clement saw it. And he meant Henry Gunning to sign it. It would frighten Gunning into fleeing the country, as well as an argument to use when he put the case before Heloise Reys.
He took a step to the bedside. The man under the blankets moved. It might have been merely the tossing of a sick body, it might have been anxiety. Clement looked down at the face, saw its looseness, its weakness, its degeneration; saw, too, in the outline of good looks how such a face might carry a fond memory right back to the time when this man was a fine, upstanding, clean-looking boy. Oh, yes, that face would call up memories that might well obliterate the present.
He said harshly, “Up with you, Henry Gunning. You’re found out. The game’s up.”
The man on the bed moaned and stirred. And he made a false move. He muttered, “Heloise.”
Clement saw red. “Up, you skunk!” he snapped. His hand went down, plucking at the blankets. With a twist they were on the floor. Henry Gunning, with one ineffectual grab at the disappearing clothes, lay looking up at Clement, his eyes full of fear, his mouth loose. He had reason for fear. He lay on the bed with his nightshirt on him, but beneath that were all his clothes (save the boots) he had worn but a few minutes ago as he sat a healthy man reading his newspaper on the porch of the shack.
Clement shifted his pistol to his left hand. “Do you get up yourself?” he snapped.
Gunning shakily got up. “Who th’ hell are you?” he demanded thickly.
“An Englishman like yourself, but a cleaner one,” said Clement with a strong sense of racial anger.
And at the name Gunning winced. But he pulled his wits, which were obviously fuddled, together and he stuttered, “What th’ hell do you mean by all this? Hey, what the hell——? Look here, I’ll have the law on you.”
“The law,” Clement sprang on him. “The law is over there”—he indicated Gatineau. “That is a detective come to settle with you, my friend.”
As expected, Henry Gunning stumbled back at the mere threat of the law. Terror shone in his face.
Clement followed up his advantage. “We’re here for you, Henry Gunning. We know all about you and this plot against Heloise Reys. We know how you lured her out here, how you want to get hold of her and her million of money.”
“Lies! Lies!” cried Henry Gunning. “You don’t bluff me.”
“Then you lied when you bragged at Cobalt, my friend,” snapped Clement. “Do you want me to tell you all that you bragged of in the billiard parlor of Cobalt?” Henry Gunning shrank back against the bed. “I see you are recognizing we know. Well, understand fully that we’ve got all the evidence against you. The story of those silver mines, the details of how Joe Wandersun pretended to act as a bona fide agent, the way Méduse Smythe became the companion of Heloise Reys, the meaning of Adolf Neuburg behind it all. We know the whole foul plot, the love making, the robbing of that girl, with the aid of Landor at Revelstoke—her murder.”
“Murder!” said Gunning in a sharp voice.
“The murder at the hands of Neuburg, or Newman, or Nachbar.”
“That’s a lie!” snarled Henry Gunning. “There isn’t a murder in it. That’s a lie; that isn’t in it.”
“It is in it.”
“Murder. The same sort of murder as Nachbar did in Oregon.”
There was a sudden movement from the corner. The woman moaned and fell against the wall. She had swooned—apparently. Only apparently.—As her body reached the floor her hands moved swiftly. Something flashed and spat. Clement had taken a step towards her. It saved his life. The bullet from a tiny pistol struck him in the fleshy part of the right forearm. He gasped in pain, staggered. Immediately things happened.
Gatineau had spun round at the sound of the shot. His attention for a fateful second was torn between the window, Gunning, and the woman. And Gunning hit him.
Gunning, unsteady, but still powerful, fell forward across the narrow gap between him and the unready detective. A great arm flailed, and his fist took the little man behind the ear. As Gatineau fell, Gunning fell on top of him, smothering him. Clement acted swiftly. He could not shoot because of Gatineau underneath. With a lightning gesture, he transferred his pistol to his right hand again, and grabbed at a chair. He made a stride forward.
“Drop it!” snapped a voice. “Drop that chair!”
A slim man was at the window. A slim man with one arm in a sling, but whose dark eye shone with steady purpose behind the sights of an automatic pistol.
Clement dropped the chair.
There was a movement by the door. The light from it was darkened by some huge and bulky figure. Clement turned his head. Smiling, without the slightest vestige of emotion, and looking steadily not into his eyes, but over Clement’s shoulder, the mountainous Mr. Neuburg came into the shack.