“What’s that!” Hammond in his excitement leaped up seizing the other by the collar. “Are you joking, or is this the truth you’re telling me?”
“Hold your horses, hold your horses!” urged the cook. “I’m tellin’ you what was supposed to have happened—what the mounties claim they saw. You knew they had arrested the Rev. Stubbs, the camp preacher, for takin’ part in it, didn’t you?”
“You’re away off again, Sandy; they arrested him on a charge of vagrancy.”
“Vagrancy my eye! That was only a charge to hold him on until they could get the goods on him for takin’ part in the abduction of the girl, and I heard since that Stubbs got bail over in Kam City and jumped it. But I’m one that ain’t takin’ much stock in that abduction talk,” continued the cook. “For one thing, the Big Boss and that girl was on friendly terms; in fact, he was the first one she came to see after she landed out here, and it’s known he used to go out and see her on the island when you weren’t busy takin’ up her time.” The cook grinned maliciously. “Don’t you think it looks mighty odd that, knowin’, as he must have knowed, that she was carried off like that, the Big Boss would leave for Montreal without botherin’ his head about it? No, that ain’t a bit like Acey Smith from what I know of him.”
“Then you think—?”
“That the whole deal was a frame-up between her and the Big Boss to keep the Mounted Police busy on a false scent and to mystify everybody else that’s tryin’ to find out what the North Star’s up to.”
“I can’t believe that!”
“Oh, you can’t, eh? Well, have you got a better hunch? Bein’ a bit soft on the girl maybe has made you short-sighted. Hold on, don’t get mad; I don’t blame you a bit, ’cause they tell me she’s some lallapaluza for good looks. And I ain’t meanin’ to cast any reflections on her in this deal either. Only, I like you, Hammond, and I wanted to help you out with my hunch if it was any good to you, just in case some of the rest of them was puttin’ something over on you.”
Hammond for the moment was silent in the face of these assertions. “But I can’t for the life of me see,” he mused presently, “how Rev. Stubbs was mixed up in it as you say.”
“Search me.” Sandy threw out his hands significantly. “For another thing, did you know that since the girl was supposed to be kidnapped and the Rev. Stubbs was arrested, his nibs, Ogima Bush the Medicine Man, has dropped out of sight too? He hasn’t been seen anywhere inside or outside the camps.”