His father growled some unintelligible answer. As Anderson went to the door he again called after him angrily: "You were a d---- fool, George, not to find those dibs."
"What, for the mine?" Anderson laughed. "Oh, we'll go into that again at Vancouver."
McEwen made no reply, and Anderson left him.
Anderson woke before seven. The long evening had passed into the dawn with scarcely any darkness, and the sun was now high. He sprang up, and dressed hastily. Going into the passage he saw to his astonishment that while the door of the Ginnells' room was still closed, his father's was wide open. He walked in. The room and the bed were empty. The contents of a box carefully packed by Ginnell--mostly with new clothes--the night before, were lying strewn about the room. But McEwen's old clothes were gone, his gun and revolver, also his pipes and tobacco.
Anderson roused Ginnell, and they searched the house and its neighbourhood in vain. On going back into his own room, Anderson noticed an open drawer. He had placed his pocketbook there the night before, but without locking the drawer. It was gone, and in its place was a dirty scrap of paper.
"Don't you try chivvying me, George, for you won't get any good of it. You let me alone, and I'll let you. You were a stingy fellow about that money, so I've took some of it. Good-bye."
Sick at heart, Anderson resumed the search, further afield. He sent Ginnell along the line to make confidential inquiries. He telegraphed to persons known to him at Golden, Revelstoke, Kamloops, Ashcroft, all to no purpose. Twenty-four--thirty-six hours passed and nothing had been heard of the fugitive.
He felt himself baffled and tricked, with certain deep instincts and yearnings wounded to the death. The brutal manner of his father's escape--the robbery--the letter--had struck him hard.
When Friday night came, and still no news, Anderson found himself at the C.P.R. Hotel at Field. He was stupid with fatigue and depression. But he had been in telephonic communication all the afternoon with Delaine and Lady Merton at Lake Louise, as to their departure for the Pacific. They knew nothing and should know nothing of his own catastrophe; their plans should not suffer.
He went out into the summer night to take breath, and commune with himself. The night was balmy; the stars glorious. On a siding near the hotel stood the private car which had arrived that evening from Vancouver, and was to go to Laggan the following morning to fetch the English party. They were to pick him up, on the return, at Field.