“Punishment? For what?” The man spoke in a low, fierce voice.
Wilder thought swiftly before replying. He understood that he was right up against the stone wall of the yellow man’s determination. There was only one course left him. If he could not climb it he must batter it to ruins. His earlier hazard was a small enough thing compared with the decision he took now. He rose from his chair and stood towering over the diminutive pair on the couch. His eyes were coldly compelling, and his whole manner was carefully calculated for its effect upon the helpless little woman, whom he could not help pitying.
“Here,” he cried sharply. “Let’s cut this fencing right out. You refuse to pass me the name you are known by. You refuse to tell me the meaning of this home hidden beyond human sight in a valley that’s full to the lips of oil. Well, I guess I’ll hand you the story you’re scared to hand me. You reckon you don’t fear a thing. Psha! You can’t get away with that play. It wouldn’t leave a two-year-old kid guessing. I’m quitting now. I’ve brought you into the open, an’ I’ve located in you an answer to a hundred guesses. I’m quitting now, but you won’t be left unwatched. You won’t get a chance to make a get-away. You’ve had mostly fifteen years to do that, an’ I don’t know why you stopped around with the man, Usak, threatening to come right back on you. Maybe because you’re blind and deserted. Maybe because you’ve a mighty big stake lying around. Maybe it’s because ther’s other queer folk of your own race, who, for their own reasons, don’t fancy letting you quit. It don’t matter. What does matter is I’m quitting now because this is Alaskan Territory. I’m going down country to get things fixed with the United States authority to have you brought right into our country to tell us how the missionary, Marty Le Gros was murdered by the Euralians who people these hills, and who I guess are nothing but a crowd of Japanese pirates out grabbing in whiteman’s territory. You’re scared of nothing, eh? Can you face that? Can you face the return of the man, Usak, whose wife was murdered at the same time? Can you tell us why they were murdered, and what happened to the great gold ‘strike’ that poor darn feller made? I’m quitting now just to fix this thing. An’ my boys’ll see you make no get-away meanwhile. And as for your threat of the Euralian pirates working the oil on this valley, that cuts no sort of ice with us. We’ve been fighting these folk a year an’ more. You see, we’re officers of the Canadian Police.”
The imagination, the sweeping grasp of the clear-thinking mind that had lifted Bill Wilder from the depths of the whirlpool of humanity that had early flooded the gold regions of the North, to the highest pinnacle of success in a traffic wherein vision and courage were the chief essentials, had served him now far better than he knew.
The first spoken words of the little Japanese woman in her terror had welded a hundred links together into a connected chain such as no amount of ordinary labour in investigation could have supplied him with.
There was no question except the given names of these people left in his mind. There were convictions that perhaps needed corroboration to reduce them to concrete facts. But that caused him no worry. It had been said of Wilder that half a story was all he needed, he could always supply the rest. It was so in the present case.
He left the house without a doubt remaining. This place was the home of the Euralian organization, or had been before that fantastic figure of avenging had left the man he had just parted from with eyeless sockets. What scenes had been enacted there he could only guess at. But there it was, safely hidden, with its watch tower, the heart of a natural fortress located with the profoundest judgment for the purposes desired. And he was convinced, that, at any rate, the man who still lived his darkened life there was surely one of the instruments, if not the actual instrument, through which the man, Marty Le Gros, had met his death. He was one of the Euralians, and, like as not, the chief organizing head, since deposed through his physical disability by his lawless subjects. Furthermore he had finally satisfied himself that he had achieved the thing he had set out to accomplish. The Euralians as they called themselves were definitely of Japanese origin.
As he passed into the surrounding woods the immensity of the truth he had stumbled upon came home to him in an almost overwhelming rush. The Yellow Peril which the world had talked of, feared, and politically discussed for over a decade, had suddenly become a reality to him. Here was just one little branch of it. And the manner of it gave point to the subtle, secret fashion in which it was being developed. Imagination was a-riot. These people were Japanese. They were probably a hardy people from northern Japan, under the control of a carefully chosen leader of capacity and knowledge, such as he realised the man he had just left to have been before his disaster of blindness. They were imported through the far-hidden northern inlets to the country on which, leech-like, they had battened. They came, a sea-faring race, over the northern waters, and set about the simple task of possessing this far, almost unpeopled territory, and extracting its wealth for their own service. And what became of that wealth, mineral and animal? What of the furs which they stole, or traded with the Eskimo? What of the oil of this valley? What of the unguessed wealth of coal deposits which were believed to exist? The gold, too, and the hundred and one other raw materials which littered this far-off, unexplored land?
The northern seas; the great harbours of the northern coasts, lost from view of the few scattered white folks, hidden amongst rugged, snow-capped hills, and more than half their time completely icebound. It was simple, so very simple to the north-men of Japan, who were born sailors. Doubtless a steady traffic among those hidden inlets went on, and disguised freighters passed to-and-fro between the Alaskan coast and the remoter ports of the land of Nippon.