“Yes, that has been done,” Crestwick answered. “By the way, one of the packers told me that the man who’s coming up to run the plant—Carsley, isn’t it?—has arrived. There were some fittings or something wrong and he stopped behind to investigate, but the packer seemed to think he’d get through soon after I did. That turns us loose, doesn’t it?”
“I dare say I could hand things over to him in about a week,” replied Lisle. “Then we’ll clear out. I suppose you won’t be sorry?”
Crestwick stretched out his feet to display his broken boots and rent trousers.
“Well,” he said, “since I left here, I’ve spent a good deal of my time in an icy creek, and it’s nearly a week since I had any sleep worth speaking of. We had to make a bridge for the freighters to bring those castings over and we’d no end of trouble to get the stringers fixed—the stream was strong and we had to build a pier in it. Not long ago, I’d have considered anybody who did this kind of thing without compulsion mad, but in some mysterious way it grows on you. I don’t pretend to explain it, but it won’t be with unmixed delight that I’ll go back to the city.”
He paused and fumbled in his pocket.
“I was forgetting your mail. I’m afraid it’s rather pulpy, but I couldn’t help that. By the way, I’d a letter from Bella, written at the Frontenac, Quebec. She’s brought Carew out; they’re going to Glacier very soon, and she still intends to look me up.”
Lisle opened the letters handed him and managed to read them, though their condition fully bore out Crestwick’s description. Two or three were on business matters, but there was one from Millicent, and he started at the first few lines.
“Miss Gladwyne and Miss Hume have sailed—they must have landed a week ago,” he announced. “She wants to go over the ground her brother traversed—you have heard of that project. Nasmyth sailed a week earlier to arrange matters at this end; but I don’t know how Miss Hume will get along.”
“It’s merely a question of transport,” asserted Crestwick with the air of an authority on the subject. “So long as you provide sufficient packers, with relays from supply bases, you can travel in comparative comfort, though it’s expensive.” Then an idea occurred to him. “They’re pretty sure to run across Bella; Miss Gladwyne knows Carew.”
Lisle sat silent a few minutes, conscious of a strong satisfaction. Millicent was in Canada, and there was no mention of Gladwyne! Then it struck him as curious that Bella should have come over at the same time. As Millicent knew Carew, it was very probable that Bella would insist on joining the expedition, which Millicent might agree to, if, as seemed likely, her rather elderly companion had to be left behind. Nasmyth had, no doubt, already reached British Columbia; and it looked as if those indirectly brought together by George Gladwyne’s tragic death would be reunited at the scene of it. This was, Lisle reflected, merely the result of a natural sequence of events, but there was for all that something strangely significant about it.