"I haven't forgotten that second cup of coffee, sir," the widow had presence of mind enough to offer. "If you'll be wishing for supper this evening, please come in by eight as I'll be closing early."
Seymour took this as both his dismissal and an appointment for the widow to finish. Until eight o'clock, then, he would have to wait to know what Bart Caswell had in mind that was richer than gold and was to be had on the Creeks of Argonaut with the aid of a Royal Canadian police uniform.
CHAPTER XVIII
A CRYPTIC MESSENGER
From the Home Restaurant, the sergeant went to the stables where already he had made his horses comfortable. He secured a clothes poke from the pack of his outfit. The Bonanza Hotel proved advantageously informal in that he was asked "two dollars a night in advance," instead of being confronted with a register for his name and address. A key, attached to a tin disk too large for any normal pocket, was tossed to him by the grouchy boniface, who informed him he would find No. 12 at the head of the stairs.
Opening a canvas door supported on a pair of leather hinges, Seymour entered a tiny room lighted by a single window. It was furnished to the minimum with a blanketed cot, a chair and a table of the roughest construction.
As he sat on the edge of the cot, he recalled the crowded events of the life that had been his in the few months since the strangulation of Oliver O'Malley. Up at Armistice post, by now, the first mail must have arrived. Constable La Marr would know that a "court" was about to start from Ottawa to give Olespe of the Lady Franklin band a trial for his life. He'd know, too, that Avic would not be tried just then because the case against him would be incomplete without the testimony of Harry Karmack, the fugitive factor who undoubtedly had robbed the Arctic Trading Company. And when would he find Karmack—when and where? And Moira O'Malley, when would she arrive in Gold to join her bereaved father until that capture time?
The events of the day, however, were too stressing for his practical mind to long concern itself with anything but the matter immediately at hand.
"Richer than gold!" The last words of the widow kept recurring to his thoughts. What could this presumptuous crook of the wilds have had in mind? The sergeant could think, of course, of commodities that were more precious than the yellow metal, but of none that were indigenous to that upper corner of British Columbia.
So he puzzled over the remark until he concluded that Bart must have used a figure of speech. He would await the widow's interpretation.