Opening the pea jacket of his winter uniform, he tucked both furs beneath his tunic. Closing and resealing the hut, he strode back to the police cabin. Had he intended to appropriate the silver and black treasures for his own gain, he scarcely could have hidden them more carefully.
CHAPTER VI
REGARD FOR THE LAW
Nowhere in the civilized world, perhaps, is there more respect paid to the coroner and his inquests than in the Dominion of Canada. This regard is not confined to the settled provinces, but reaches beyond the Arctic Circle even to the farthermost post of the Royal Mounted in latitude 76—Ellesmere Island, on the edge of the Polar Sea. This afternoon in Armistice was being devoted to the ancient formality of the law.
As one of the miners, brought in by Constable La Marr from Prospect to serve as juryman, put it in half-hearted protest to Seymour:
"You red coats would hold an inquest at the North Pole if word came to you that some one was violently dead up there."
In his capacity as coroner, Sergeant Seymour first called the inquest over Mrs. Olespe, whose Eskimo name was too complicated with gutturals for English pronunciation. Upon chairs and one of the bunks in the living room of the post sat the jury—the three gold hunters from Prospect and Factor Karmack. At a table beside his superior was Constable La Marr, acting as clerk of court.
The prisoner, more stolid than sullen, was brought in from the guard room and planted on another of the bunks beside Koplock, the interpreter who regularly served the Arctic Traders.
Seymour's first difficulty was to make certain that Olespe understood the warning that had been given him at the time of his arrest, for he had not entirely trusted the ability of the volunteer translator who had served him up North.
"Ask him if he knows who the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are," was the first address to the interpreter.