VI
As the massive Mr. Neuburg sat in his room certain that things were satisfactory, Clement Seadon, with much the same emotions, was searching for and finding the gluemaker in the Sault Algonquin.
The street was as unprepossessing as he imagined it would be. It was a narrow cañon, indescribably gloomy and muddy, between the tall, old, straight-faced houses that lined it. It was right round beyond the splendid old seventeenth century hospital, the austere Hôtel-Dieu, and in the area of the docks, too. From these latter it got some of its mud, and, perhaps, some of its lowering air. It looked a darkling, brooding, sinister street. Clement found it quite easy to imagine it a place where, in the grim old days, bravos quietly and expeditiously slit throats, or where fur hunters had been lured to be despoiled of the earnings of long, lonely months of trapping in the virgin wilds.
In this old and moody street, and in the grim and reticent houses that bordered it, almost anything might have happened in the early days of Canada—but most of those things, Clement thought, would have been evil. The street had an aroma of crime. One felt it, as it were, in the air, just as though centuries of wickedness about its narrow, greasy sidewalks had saturated it with an essential aura. It was a street fitted to be the headquarters of Mr. Neuburg and his gang of ruffians.
It was a short street, and it was easy to find the gluemaker’s. There were only two other business premises. The gluemaker’s, No. 7, was a tall, depressing house that was even dirtier than its neighbors. It had the distinction of keeping all its windows covered with the latticelike jalousies of France, as though its inmates were determined to keep themselves to themselves. It had one window on the ground floor, the shutters were back from this, but as it was filled with trade samples backed by trade advertisements, a view of the room behind was impossible. There was no doorway on to the street. Entrance was effected through a cartway. A heavy wooden gate covered this, with a smaller door for humans in it. Clement surmised that, having passed through this gate into the cartway that ran under the house (which joined to and made one of a block with all the houses on that side), one entered the house itself by a doorway on the left.
However, this cartway told him one thing. In spite of the fact that the cliff seemed to come up right behind the house, there must be a yard at the back of the gluemaker’s. Glancing along the face of the houses he obtained confirmation of this. There was no iron fire escape stair in front of this house and its immediate neighbors, although farther along the street this inevitable disfigurement of western cities zig-zagged down the faces of the buildings. That meant that the fire escapes—by law enforced—were at the back, and that there were yards there into which people could escape.
Getting round to the back was not easy. He found he had to climb through distant streets to watch the cliff-top, and when he arrived on top he had to trespass into a builder’s yard in order to look down on to the backs of the houses in the Sault Algonquin. As he did not wish to be disturbed, he hid behind a pile of scrapped rubbish.
No. 7 was easy to find. It was under the cliff where it sloped down rather less steeply. Clement noted that. At a pinch an active man might find a way down there. The yard was a fairly large one, littered with the rubbish of manufactory, and partly filled by a single-storied building, of very much later construction than the house itself. This had a flat roof and square walls, a jet of steam came out of a thin exhaust pipe—in it, undoubtedly, were carried on the mystical processes of gluemaking.
While Clement was studying the house, he became conscious that some one else had entered the builder’s yard where he had hidden himself. A young, slim man came casually into view, strolling with hands in pockets towards the edge of the cliff. Clement crouched closer in his shelter, and prayed that this workman—for that was what the young man seemed—had no business which would bring him round the pile of scrapped rubbish sheltering him.
Then, as he thought this, he noticed two peculiarities about the man. The first was, that in spite of his casualness, the young man had no more right to be there than himself. He was throwing keen, swift glances about him, as though he were doing something that he did not want other people to see.
The second thing about him was the color and the outline of his features, as well as the lithe slimness of his build. His face had a curious copper brownness that might have been sunburn, only it was deeper than sunburn. His features had a definite aquiline clear-cutness, rather individual features they were—like an Indian’s.
Clement tingled as he thought that. And even as he thought it, the slim man moved abruptly and swiftly to the cliff, glanced along it, and in a moment was descending the sloping face of it.
Clement stared and chuckled. And he muttered, “Siwash Mike. By all that’s lucky, it’s Siwash Mike come to Quebec to report on the doings and whereabouts of Henry Gunning.”
There could be little doubt about it. The newcomer was making his way, in such a fashion as to escape detection, to the gluemaker’s of Algonquin, the place where he was to report. From his hiding place, Clement followed his movements. They were sinuous and swift, veritably an Indian’s. He wriggled down the cliff by known footholds, reached the back yard of the gluemaker’s, poised for a moment just above it, and then sprang lightly on to the flat roof of the building—then that was possible. Clement saw that there was a ledge along the cliff that made the take-off for the jump easy.
Once on the roof, the slim man again adopted his casual air. He was to all appearances an occupant of the glue factory taking an airing on the roof. He dawdled about, hands in pockets, looking about him, up to the cliff, along the backs of the other houses. Then he strolled towards the house, poised himself on the edge of the roof just by the fire escape over the cartway. He jumped, caught it, scrambled on to the landing. Then very calmly, he walked up the iron stairway until he came to the fourth floor. The window of the fourth floor was shuttered but, apparently, not bolted, for the slim man opened the shutters without effort, slid through them into the house, pulled them to after him and disappeared.
Waiting for a minute or two Clement presently backed away from the shelter of his scrap heap, and made his way out of the builder’s yard. He had discovered two very important things. The first, that Siwash Mike had returned to the gluemaker’s to report the whereabouts of Henry Gunning. The second discovery was that there was a way into the gluemaker’s from the back.
He hurried back to the Château Frontenac. He was anxious to know what the massive Mr. Neuburg made of the first fact. And how far his own knowledge of the second fact was going to help him discover Mr. Neuburg’s future plans.