“Keep an eye to the rear, Bob,” he muttered to me. “This may be a trap. But we’ve got to chance it to find out how things stand.”
I nodded acquiescence to this; for I myself craved to know how the thing had been brought to pass.
The group of men scattered. Save the Scot with the lantern, not one was in sight when Barreau halted the dogs and turned the toboggan on its side by the front of the store. Our lantern-bearer opened the door and stepped inside, motioning us to enter. My eyes swept the long room for sign of violent deeds. But there were none. The goods lay in their orderly arrangement upon the shelves. The same up-piled boxes and bales threw huge shadows to the far end. There was no change save in the men who stood by the fire. Instead of Montell warming his coat-tails before the crackling blaze, a thin-faced man stood up before the fire; a tall man, overtopping Barreau and myself by a good four inches. He bowed courteously, looking us over with keen eyes that were black as the long mustache-end he turned over and over on his forefinger. A thatch of hair white as the drifts that hid the frozen earth outside covered his head. He might have been the colonel of a crack cavalry regiment—a leader of fighting men. His voice, when he spoke, bore a trace of the Gaul.
“Gentlemen,” he greeted, “it is a very cold night outside. Come up to the fire.”
He pushed a stool and a box forward with his foot and turned to a small, swarthy individual who had so far hovered in the background.
“Leave us now, Dufour,” he said. “And you, Donald, come again in a half hour.” “Oui, M’sieu.” Dufour gathered up his coat and departed obediently, the Scot following.
As nonchalantly as if he were in the house of a friend Barreau drew his box up to the fire and sat down; thrust the parka hood back from his face and held his hands out to the blaze. But I noticed that he laid the rifle across his knees, and taking my cue from this I did the same when I sat down. A faint smile flitted across the tall man’s features. He also drew a seat up to the fire on the opposite side of the hearth so that he faced us.
“It is to Mr. Barreau I speak, is it not?” he inquired politely.
“It is,” Barreau acknowledged. “And you, I take it, are Factor Le Noir of King Charles’ House.”
“The Black Factor, as they call me—yes,” he smiled. “I am glad to have met you, Mr. Barreau. You are a hardy man.”