Karmack stepped closer with the light; indicated by gesture a knotted line of seal skin around the victim's throat, the end dangling down over his parkee.
"The Eskimo way!" muttered the trader brokenly.
The shudder that passed through Seymour's wiry frame was not observed by the companions of the inspection. No more was it caused by the untimely fate of Oliver O'Malley.
CHAPTER III
COMPLICATION ASTOUNDING
As is the silken kerchief to the Latin garroter, so is the Ugiuk-line to the Eskimo bent upon strangulation. Strong reason had Sergeant Seymour of the Mounted to realize the possibilities in the clutch of the stout cord made from the skin of a bearded seal.
Although he had made no mention of the fact in Karmack's quarters, when the trader pronounced warning that the out-of-hand Eskimos soon would be clutching for the throats of the wearers of the scarlet, already had they clutched at his. The vivid memory of his narrow escape had brought his involuntary shudder at sight of the sinister drape about O'Malley's throat.
On the farthest-North night of his last patrol, he had elected to sleep in a deserted igloo on the skirts of a village rather than suffer the stifle of an occupied one. After midnight he had awakened from a strangling sensation to find himself in the hands of two stalwart assailants. The knot of a similar seal-hide line was gripping his throat. He had thrown off the pair only by an effort so supreme as to leave him too weak to follow them through the snow tunnel into the storm. Probably he never would know their identity or be able more than to guess at their motive as one of fancied revenge.
Seymour did not speak of this now as they stood in the hut of tragedy. No more did he mention the news that slowly was filtering through the North that Corporal Doak, Three River detachment of the Royal Mounted, and Factor Bender of the Hudson's Bay company post had been slain in a brutal and treacherous manner. To spread alarm was no part of his policy. But over at the post was the Ugiuk-line that had been used on him and in his mind was a vivid idea of its practice in Eskimo hands.
From these—the fearsome souvenir and the shuddering memory—he suspected that the O'Malley case was not as open-and-shut as it seemed. For him, mystery stalked the crime, one that would not be solved by the apprehension of Avic, the Eskimo.