But no, that would not do. There was one thing in the way still. If he only knew what he was here for he could act. As things stood, he feared to take the initiative lest he blunder into something that would upset the plan Norman T. Gildersleeve had in mind that night on the train when he had engaged Hammond at a thousand dollars a month to stay at the pulp camp till he received further orders. No matter how he theorised and tried to prop it up with possible purposes, it appealed more and more to him as a crazy assignment. Bagsful of mail was brought over daily on the tugs, and, so far as Hammond could see, the mail was delivered direct and with considerable despatch all over the camps. It should therefore be an easy matter for Gildersleeve to write him, if it were only a few lines, to let him know whether or not things were progressing as they should. Why didn’t Gildersleeve communicate with him?
IV
The plump figure and ruddy visage of Sandy Macdougal appeared momentarily at the cabin doorway and he flung a bundle of newspapers across at Hammond. “The Big Boss left them at the breakfast table this morning and said you might like to see them,” he explained. “I guess he’s beat it for somewhere for the day, for I saw him leave with his pack on his back just a minute or two after you left his office. Come over to the beanery for a chat when you’re through reading up the news.”
The head cook turned and departed for his realm of bake ovens and enamelled pots and pans.
That was Acey Smith’s humiliating system all over again, ruminated Hammond. Smith had eaten that very morning just two seats away from Hammond with the newspapers spread on the table before him. When he had finished breakfast, he folded them up and sat smoking until Hammond left the diner. Why did he wait till Hammond went out and then tell the cook to give him the papers? It was a by-word around the camps that Acey Smith never did anything out of the ordinary without a definite object in view. He was evidently baiting Hammond for a purpose.
Nevertheless, Hammond gathered up the newspapers gratefully. They were the first of recent date he had seen since coming to the pulp camp. The light in the cabin was none too bright, so Hammond took the papers outside and seated himself on a rustic bench back of the cabin.
The outer paper in the bundle was the Kam City Star of the previous morning, but Hammond, his eyes starting from their sockets, scarcely noted the dateline in the shock that went home from the three-column heading that fairly shouted at him in black-faced gothic from the upper left-hand corner of the front page:—
MAN RESEMBLING NORMAN T. GILDERSLEEVE
REPORTED SEEN NEAR PRINCE ALBERT, SASK.
MAY BE MISSING PULP AND PAPER MAGNATE