“My rifle,” he explained. “I had forgotten it was there. I rested it against the wall when you hailed me.”
The corporal nodded, but made no remark. His thoughts were engaged with Koona Bill lying out there under the shadow of the pines, and he was wondering what the meeting with Joy Gargrave would be like, guessing as he did that she must be the girl who had passed him out in the wood. His companion conducted him to a room that for the Northland was positively luxurious, and waved him a chair near the stove.
“You will like to change your socks and moccasins,” he said politely. “I will go and inform Miss Gargrave, and return for you in ten minutes or so. It should be almost dinner time.”
Corporal Bracknell nodded, and when the man had departed looked round the room with some curiosity. Nowhere in the wild region where his work was done was there another such room, he was sure. Even the commandant’s rooms down at the Post were poor beside it. The furniture was of excellent quality. The wall was match-boarded, hiding the outer logs, and there were furs everywhere. Pictures too! Something familiar in one of them caught his eye, and moving towards it he saw that it was a photograph of Newham College, Cambridge.
He stood looking at it, whistling softly to himself. He himself had been at Caius, and having a sister at Newham, had once or twice had tea in its precincts. He wondered what the picture was doing here in this lodge in the northern wilderness, and he was still wondering when a gong sounded. Hastily he began to change his socks, and the operation was scarcely completed, when the man who had introduced him to the house appeared.
“Ready, Corporal?”
“Almost,” he replied, and half a minute later stood up and nodded.
“This way,” said the other laconically, and led the way out of the room and across the wide passage. The policeman was prepared for surprises, but the appearance of the room into which he entered almost took his breath away. Except for the roaring Yukon stove, and the fur rugs on the polished floor, it was a replica of the typical dining-room of an English country house. The furniture was Jacobean, the table was laid with the whitest napery, and silver and glasses gleamed on its whiteness. He had a quick apprehension of oil-paintings on the wall, of a long-cased clock in the corner, and of two girls standing together near the stove, then his companion’s voice sounded.
“Corporal Bracknell! Miss Gargrave! Miss La Farge.”
He bowed to the two ladies in turn. The second he knew as he glanced at her was of French Canadian extraction, with perhaps a dash of Indian blood in her veins; but the first was a golden-haired English girl, tall, blue-eyed, with face a little bronzed by the open-air, and—the girl who had passed him with her face the index of mortal terror and her rifle at the trail. It was she who spoke in a voice that had the indescribable accent of culture.