VI
While they were waiting to catch the connection at North Bay, Clement Seadon saw a man dodge out of the station telegraph office. He came out furtively, saw Clement near him, hung hesitating, and then with the movement of a weasel snapped back into cover behind the telegraph office door.
Clement walked away, but, always, he watched that door.
When the train for Cobalt drew up, he handed his bag to the black porter of his car—and still kept his eyes on the door. The young detective who accompanied him paused as he entered the train, and stood watching Clement’s antics. Clement heard him speaking over his shoulder. He mounted the steps of the train backwards. He said, “Gatineau, just keep your eyes on the door of the telegraph office, will you?”
The train began to pull out. A head appeared round the door of the telegraph office. The dark, swift eyes in the head scanned the train and platform.... Clement felt that, shrewd though that glance was, he and Gatineau were well screened by the side of the train. One look and the head was followed by a lithe, sinewy figure. This figure crossed the platform at a swift, loping run, jumped to the steps of a car farther back, and pulled himself into the train.
“You saw him?” said Clement. “That was Siwash Mike. He’s traveling with us to Cobalt.”
They went to their seats in the train. Clement sat facing back so that he could see any one who came forward through the train. He thought Siwash Mike would lie low, but these rogues were so bold and unscrupulous that he meant to be ready for all emergencies.
“I was rather startled to see him,” he said to Xavier Gatineau, “but, of course, I should have expected him. He has been following me from Quebec without a doubt.”
“Yes, in worrying about other things we forgot him,” admitted Gatineau. “He complicates matters. He’ll have sent Neuburg word that we are coming to Cobalt.... He was probably doing that in the telegraph office.”
The young detective’s surmise was a natural one. But it happened to be wrong—as they found out later. Siwash Mike had sent his message of their coming to Neuburg when they left Montreal. He had gone into the telegraph office at North Bay for quite another reason. But Clement and his companion were not to know that. They simply formed their deductions on the material they had, and as the material they had was limited, their deductions were wrong.
“Yes, they’ll know we are coming; they’ll be prepared for us. And we can do exactly nothing,” said Clement bitterly.
“Let’s try and think what they’ll do to checkmate us,” said the detective.
“That’s easy,” said Clement. “They’ll do what they’ve been doing or attempting to do ever since this affair began. They’ll get Heloise Reys out of our reach.”
“Not easy in a smallish town like Cobalt.”
“Then they’ll take her outside Cobalt.”
“But—but can they move her about at their will like that? She’s an intelligent woman. Wouldn’t she object, wouldn’t she see something wrong in this constant repetition of these tactics?”
“They’ll be plausible,” said Clement. “Their excuse will be logical. You must remember that this Gunning fellow is not supposed to know she is coming to him. However erratic his movements may seem, they’re his own, or appear to be his own. If they tell her at Cobalt that Gunning has left the town, gone off to a shack, or a mine in the wilds, she can’t say anything. That’s the sort of thing he would do, and she has to adapt herself to him. That’s how they’ll get her away. Gunning will go off somewhere—and she’ll follow.”
“It’s a tough problem,” said the little detective. And both men fell silent, thinking this tough problem out.
This was a new difficulty to cap the old one. Already Clement had felt that Heloise would be taken to some place hard to find in Cobalt, and now he felt that, thanks to Siwash’s message, she would be doubly hard to discover. And then suddenly, as he began to dwell upon Siwash’s unpleasant presence on the train he smiled.
“By Gad,” he cried, “it is just luck after all.”
The little detective looked at him sharply. Clement answered that look by saying:
“From our brother Siwash’s antics do you feel that he thinks we know he is on this train?”
“Why, no,” said the detective. “From the way he acted I think he thought we hadn’t seen him, and he hoped we wouldn’t.”
“That’s my conclusion,” smiled Clement. “He has us under his eye and expects no guile from us, simply because he thinks us innocent of his presence. And that’s going to help us.”
The detective’s eyes showed that he hadn’t grasped what Clement was driving at.
“This is what I mean. He, personally, fears nothing from us. He is confident that he can do his job without any suspicion or threat to himself. Now, what is his job—it’s to shadow us to Cobalt, see us safely there, and report. Do you agree with that; I mean do you think there might be something further for him to do?”
“No,” said the detective with thought. “I don’t see what more he can do. They’ll naturally want to hear from him exactly what we’ve been doing. He’ll probably turn us over to another man, or if, it being the dead of night, we went to the hotel, he’d judge we were safe for an hour or so....”
“And we’ll arrange that he thinks that. But the point is that you agree he’ll report. And who to?”
“Why, to Neuburg—the gang.”
“Yes—he’ll lead us to them,” smiled Clement quietly. The detective looked at him, and then smiled in return.
“Say, that’s pretty snappy thinking. Tell me the idea.”
“It’s based on the fact that he thinks we don’t suspect he’s following us. Now, this is my plan. When the train stops at Cobalt we’ll delay getting off until the last.... That’ll thin out the other passengers who alight ... that’ll make it easier for you to spot him, to fix him in your mind....”
“I’ve got him already,” smiled the detective. “That’s our job, you know, to remember men. I know him. I won’t miss him.”
“All right. But, anyhow, you’ll get a chance of picking him up easily if there are fewer people about. When we get on to the platform, and he has a chance of hearing all we say, I’ll arrange in a loud voice to have both the bags carried to the hotel. Then you will say to me (for, remember, we don’t suspect he’s there, we don’t suspect the gang knows we’ve come to Cobalt), also in a loudish voice, that while I’m reserving rooms in the hotel, you’ll have a word with the station master. I’ll agree to wait in the hotel lobby until you come to me.”
“And Siwash Mike overhears it all?”
“Siwash Mike overhears it all. And having overheard all that, he’ll do one of two things, I think. He’ll either shadow me, as the person he’s most concerned in, to the hotel or put another man on to me to follow me to the hotel—if there is another person; or he’ll decide that we’re safe for a short while, and so go off to report to Neuburg.”
“And I?”
“You keep your eye on Siwash all the time. You follow him. If he follows me to the hotel, follow him.... I shall go straight there unless I get some signal to join you. If I am in the hotel I’ll manage to keep my eye on the door all the time, so that if he moves off I’ll take a signal from you and join you at once—I know you’ve an electric torch. If you shine, then I’ll come out. But I’m rather hoping that if he feels certain we don’t know he’s here, he’ll go off at once after hearing our conversation about the hotel, and will trust his luck about getting his report in before we stir abroad. If that’s the case then we will both follow him.... We must plan a way for you to call my attention, should I have already gone towards the hotel....”
“That should be easy. You have to go up a pretty steep hill to get out of the station yard. The hotel is just across the road. From the hotel door you should command the approach; if you’ve not reached the hotel by the time he goes off, well, I should pass so close that I should be able to get you a warning.... But—but—he might go by car or by rig....”
“That would be the devil ...” began Clement; but the detective cried, “No, I don’t think it would. If he got right into a car or rig I would know at once what he was about. I’d take one of the other cars that are sure to be there, and that steep hill in the station yard will check his car, and enable me to pick you up.”
They talked out the general line of this plan, and the more they talked the most satisfactory it seemed. They would get to Neuburg’s headquarters by following the man who was trailing them, and who felt secure because he thought they didn’t know he was trailing them. There were, of course, dangers and difficulties bristling along the line of their proposed action.
“What if they do put another man on to shadow you?” the detective asked.
“We’ll have to deal with him—as the contingency arises,” said Clement grimly. “It is a risk we can’t avoid.”
“And we must beware of traps.”
“We must,” said Clement with a smile that was yet more grim. “Trap or no trap, I’m going into it. But I’m going in with my eyes open.” He patted his pocket where reposed a new pistol The Chief had given him. “I’m going in with my hand on the trigger, ready to shoot. I’m going in with an electric torch. I’m ready for all tricks—and I’ll have you with me. Armed, I suppose?”
The little detective’s hand went down to his pocket. “Automatic. Brother to the one The Chief gave you. And a good supply of magazine refills.”
“The two of us ought to be able to deal with them. But I don’t think there’ll be a trap. I can understand how I tumbled into it before. I gave the game away, I’m certain, by sending Joe Wandersun’s name in to Méduse Smythe at lunch. But here—how could there be a trap? As far as they’re concerned we’re entirely unaware that Siwash is on the train. There’s no reason or time for them to prepare traps. We’ll simply carry the day with surprise tactics—and, in any case, is there any possible other course of action open to us if we are to rescue that girl effectively and without loss of time?”
There was no other way. Now that Siwash had warned the rogues—as they thought he had done by telegraph from North Bay there was precious little time to lose—the only way to get to Neuburg, and the girl Heloise, was to follow Siwash, to him. There was no other plan so swift. And its boldness, Clement thought, must make it effective.
He would have been less sanguine had he known that in the telegraph office at North Bay, Siwash had not been sending a message but receiving one. That he had been fulfilling the instructions in that message at the moment when he had shown himself deliberately to Clement outside the telegraph office. If Clement had known all these things he might have hesitated. But he did not know.
He did not know. And when a closed car passed him groaning at the steep grade of the station yard hill at Cobalt, and following that car came another, with Xavier Gatineau, leaning out of it and calling to him, “Get in, get in, he’s in that car at the front. He’s swallowed our bait,” he got in joyfully.
Directly these things happened, Clement gleefully congratulated himself that their little comedy of deception had proved brilliantly successful. He fell back into the padded seat smiling. He watched the red rear light of the closed car in front picking up speed as it wound through the corkscrew streets of Cobalt. And his heart was saying, “To Neuburg.... To Heloise.... That car’s leading us to them.”
And in the front car Siwash Mike was chuckling. He leaned across to Joe Wandersun, who was driving, and cried, still chuckling, “They’ve bitten. They’ve bitten. They’re following.”