According to this latest piece of information, the man giving his name as Eulas Daly, United States consul at Kam City, and who had brought about his meeting with Norman T. Gildersleeve, was travelling under false colours. If he were really a friend of Norman T. Gildersleeve there should have been no necessity for that. The obvious conclusion then was that he was a confederate of those who had lured Gildersleeve off the train. No doubt it was he who framed up the mysterious message that led the millionaire to leave the coach at Moose Horn Station, for Hammond now felt certain that the note delivered while he was in consultation with the president of the International Investment Corporation was a forgery, and that Gildersleeve had either been kidnapped or had met with foul play.
Responsibility to the man who had employed him for some secret purpose that was not yet obvious demanded immediate action on his part. It would be foolhardy, he conceded, to longer attempt to fathom the mystery alone or to conceal what he knew in connection with the affair. Before he reported to the police authorities, he felt it would be wisdom to consult the principals of the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills, who, if anybody, should be closest in touch with any new developments in the Gildersleeve mystery.
He dropped into a hotel whence he telephoned the city offices of the paper company. He was told that Artemus Duff, president and general manager, was out at the works and might not be back all afternoon. Hammond decided to go out to the works, and, as they were located at the extreme easterly limits of the city, he walked down to Front Street, which ran along the harbour, to catch a street car. He was standing at a car stop when the face of a man at the wheel of a motor car that whizzed by seemed to him to be startlingly familiar.
The motor car stopped a block up at the corner above the short street leading from the city docks. A man got out, paused a second on the walk looking down the street, then disappeared into the building on the corner.
Hammond’s first breathless impression was confirmed. The little grey man who got out of the car was the man who had introduced himself on the train as Eulas Daly, American consul.
The young man lost no time in reaching the spot. The man who had got out of the car was not in the drug store on the corner, so he must have passed in the double doors just next it and gone up the stairs. Hammond took the steps three at a bound. The first floor up was entirely occupied by law offices. On the double glass doors he read the gilt-lettered legend:—
WINCH, STANTON & REID
Barristers, Solicitors,
Etc.
He decided to make a try for his man in there. At the rail just beyond the doors he was met by a young woman.
“It is very important that I meet the gentleman who just came in,” he announced to her.
“Mr. Winch?”