An inner voice demanded he should make a herculean effort to find his bearings at once. So far as he was concerned, things had drifted as long as he intended to allow them.
He must work out a plan of action—must find the answer to the conflicting incidents of the past few weeks and meanwhile secure real and useful employment. He had it! No doubt the officials in charge of the Kam City Company’s pulp mill would instal him in the position Norman T. Gildersleeve had promised him that night on the train. First, he must find a means of getting to the city. It should not be a very difficult feat to steal aboard one of the outgoing tugs. Yet, if he did succeed in doing that very thing, what might be the possibilities of his getting back to see Josephine Stone? What if she should stand in need of his help and protection?
Hammond was on the horns of a dilemma, with the problem ever recurring to him: What was Josephine Stone doing here, and what could there be in common between her and the pulp camp superintendent?
The road to a mental solution of these questions proved as baffling as an attempt to find the reason for the numerous weird experiences he had gone through since the night he had made the deal with Norman T. Gildersleeve. All those circumstances, he conceived, had been too remarkable to be the result of mere accident. Human ingenuity was somewhere at work with its own ends in view, and, back of it all, Hammond was convinced, a sinister drama was being woven into the texture of affairs with a design of bringing some terrific climax about. All these apparent things must be the by-play of hidden plot and counter-plot.
However, what was the use of trying to analyse situations that seemed to lead nowhere? Hammond wanted action—and, he was going to have it. . . . He would wait till to-morrow, see Josephine Stone in the morning and find out definitely if she felt quite sure of her own safety in this wild place. Then, if everything appealed to him as well, he would stow away on the tug for town in the afternoon. Once off the tug at Kam City he would be a free citizen and he could make a trip back to Amethyst Island at his pleasure in a motorboat.
But the way was made easier for Hammond to reach Kam City than he for the moment hoped, with subsequent events seemingly gauged for his further bewilderment.
II
Coming in from a stroll in the bush in the late afternoon, Hammond was considerably surprised to discover patrols of the Canadian Mounted Police pacing the waterfront. Being hungry, he went direct to the dining-camp, expecting to learn from Sandy Macdougal, the cook, just what new crisis had arisen necessitating the presence of the police.
But he had finished the meal before the head cook came striding in. “Say, Hammond,” he opened, “the Big Boss told me to tell you he wanted to see you at his office as soon as you came in. Must be something all-fired important, for he seemed to be fussy about it, which is odd for him.”
Hammond hurried over. The interview was short. The superintendent handed him an envelope bearing his name in firm spencerian handwriting. “It contains a personal pass on any of the North Star tugs for the season,” he announced. “You are at liberty now to use it at your pleasure.”