And, indeed, through Spencer’s brain was running a Bedlamite jingle, a triolet of which the dominant line was Bower, Stampa, and Millicent Jaques. The meeting of Bower and Stampa was easy of explanation. After the guide’s story of the previous evening, nothing but Stampa’s death or Bower’s flight could prevent it. But the woman from the Wellington Theater, how had she come to know of their feud? He was almost tempted to quote the only line of Molière ever heard beyond the shores of France.
Like every visitor to the Maloja, he was acquainted with each of its roads and footpaths except the identical one that these three descended. Where did it lead to? Before he quite realized what he was doing, he was walking up the hill. In places where the sun had not yet caught the snow there was a significant trail. Bower had come and gone once, Stampa, or some man wearing village-made boots, twice; but the single track left by Millicent’s smart footwear added another perplexing item to the puzzle. So he pressed on, and soon was gazing at the forlorn cemetery, with its signs of a furious struggle between the gateposts, the uncovered grave space, and Millicent’s track round two corners of the square built wall.
It was part of his life’s training to read signs. The mining engineer who would hit on a six-inch lode in a mountain of granite must combine imagination with knowledge, and Spencer quickly made out something of the silent story,—something, not all, but enough to send him in haste to the hotel by the way Millicent had arrived on the scene.
“Guess there’s going to be a heap of trouble round here,” he said to himself. “Helen must be recalled to London. It’s up to me to make the cable hot to Mackenzie.”
He had yet to learn that the storm which brought about a good deal of the preceding twenty-four hours’ excitement had not acted in any niggardly fashion. It had laid low whole sections of the telegraph system on both sides of the pass during the night. Gangs of men were busy repairing the wires. Later in the day, said a civil spoken attendant at the bureau des postes, a notice would be exhibited stating the probable hour of the resumption of service.
“Are the wires down beyond St. Moritz?” asked Spencer.
“I cannot give an assurance,” said the clerk; “but these southwest gales usually do not affect the Albula Pass. The road to St. Moritz is practicable, as this morning’s mail was only forty minutes behind time.”
Spencer ordered a carriage, wrote a telegram, and gave it to the driver, with orders to forward it from St. Moritz if possible. And this was the text:
“Mackenzie, ‘Firefly’ Office, Fleet-st., London. Wire Miss Wynton positive instructions to return to England immediately. Say she is wanted at office. I shall arrange matters before she arrives. This is urgent. Spencer.”