In the first case, Hammond’s remaining at the camp would be useless unless Gildersleeve suddenly recovered and returned to his duties. The second possibility would make it incumbent upon Hammond to tell the authorities what he knew with the least possible delay.
It all left him in a dilemma as to how he should act and take no chances on making a blunder of things. But wait—there was one link in the mystery, one of the first links at that that he had so far overlooked in the matter of its possibilities. That link was Eulas Daly, U. S. consul at Kam City, the man who had brought about his meeting with Gildersleeve. Why not slip over to the city and see Daly? Daly might be able to throw new light on the situation without Hammond disclosing anything that was confidential between himself and Gildersleeve. He would see about that at once anyway.
Hammond glanced at his watch and sprang to his feet. A tug would be pulling out for Kam City in less than an hour. That would just give him time to get back to camp and change his clothes for the trip. He planned to spend the night and the following day in the city if Daly’s information were re-assuring. If it were not he felt he must immediately see the police and tell them what he knew.
The young man hurried over the trail quite unconscious of the lithe, dark figure that rose from its hiding place at the edge of the bush and stole along in his wake as silent as a shadow. He reached the camp, changed his clothes, had a bite to eat in Sandy Macdougal’s kitchen and hurried to the superintendent’s quarters in search of a pass over on the tug.
Hammond was due to run into two new surprises, the first of which was a galling disappointment and the second of such a thrilling nature from a purely speculative standpoint that, for the time being, he forgot all about the first.
CHAPTER VIII
A MASTER MIND!
I
Artemus Duff, president and general manager of the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills, subsidiary-to-be of the International Investment Corporation, was in a very much perturbed state of mind. Mr. Duff was an excitable person, though otherwise a normal, hardheaded type of big business circles, quite inured to the ordinary run of difficulties that beset new undertakings such as the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills. But since his recent arrival from Toronto in Kam City a tremendous responsibility had been shifted to his shoulders, and though construction and installation at the mill had been progressing well up on schedule time, there were other incidentals that worried him exceedingly.
A plump little man with a round, clocklike face and rather small pale blue eyes, he sat chewing at an unlighted cigar and tilting back in a swivel office chair across the desk from Martin Winch, K.C., senior member of the legal firm of Winch, Stanton and Reid, solicitors for the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills Company. Martin Winch, incidentally, was known to have been a confidential adviser of Norman T. Gildersleeve, head of the parent company that financed the paper manufacturing concern. The interview had been at Duff’s earnest solicitation, the latter having an obsession that “something ought to be done” without a clear conception of what the “something” should be. The lawyer’s calm, unruffled manner of viewing the situation irritated Duff, who declared that “nobody seemed to see the crisis ahead except himself.”
“Mr. Gildersleeve’s disappearance has, as you state, occurred at a very critical period,” Winch agreed. “But, on the other hand, Mr. Duff, all the machinery is complete in the way of contracts and agreements protecting us, and I can’t see that there is anything more that we can do than sit tight and see that the North Star Towing and Contracting Company’s order from the government for delivery of the raw product to us is carried out expeditiously.”