“Oh, but he ain’t carryin’ out their crooked work just for the money there’s in it,” spoke up Macdougal. “There’s something deeper’n that. I’ve been a-studyin’ the man too close and too long to believe that. It’s something inside the man himself that makes him carry on as he does.”
“I’ll quite agree with you there,” responded Hammond. “You call it a devil while I would call it an obsession of mind or a ruling mania: all of which are pretty much the one and the same thing, except that our forefathers called it a devil and let it go at that. If one could only get the key to that obsession they’d soon be able to clear up the whole mystery of this camp.”
“Aye, Hammond, if you could get the key,” observed the cook, “but Acey Smith is canny enough to keep that key locked up in a dark place that nobody knows but him.”
CHAPTER XX
PREPARING TO BEARD THE LION
I
“To my mind,” continued the cook, “that same key has got something to do with them big booms of poles lyin’ out there in the bay waitin’ to be delivered to the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills. Puttin’ one and two together I could see the drift of things so far as the strike is concerned if it wasn’t for all the queer side issues, includin’ that pretty girl that was stoppin’ out on Amethyst Island. What was the idea of her whiskin’ out of there the way she did?”
Hammond gasped. “Then—then she has left?”
“I thought you knew all about it.” Sandy Macdougal scrutinised his companion almost suspiciously.
“Honestly, Sandy, I’m in the dark. The last time I saw Miss Stone she said nothing about any plans for leaving in the near future.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered! Why man, she left there the morning of the day you went to Kam City. She was supposed to have been carried off by a gang of Indians, and—”