They had reached the square frame building of the police post and paused at the door.
“There mustn’t be any mishap,” Raymes said smiling up into the earnest face of the man for whom he felt some sort of responsibility. “Are you yearning for that office of yours? Or do you feel like wasting an hour while I talk.”
Bill looked keenly down into the other’s twinkling eyes.
“What’s the game?” he asked with a directness that was almost brusque. Then he laughed. “But there, I guess I’m mostly ready to listen when George Raymes fancies talking. It isn’t every oyster that’s full of pearls. Sure. I’ll be glad of the excuse to dodge the office.”
The superintendent shook his head and his smile passed, leaving his face set and purposeful.
“Typhoid’s a deal more prevalent in oysters than pearls,” he said grimly. “Come right in.”
It was a bare, comfortless office, clean scrubbed and dusted but quite without anything in its furnishing to indicate the superior rank of the man who used it. It was characteristic, however, of the men whose ceaseless activities alone contrive that the northern outlands shall escape the worst riot of human temper. The boarded walls were hung with files. A small iron safe stood in one corner of the room, and a large woodstove occupied another. There was a roll-top desk near by the one window that lit the room, and a plain wooden cupboard stood against the wall directly behind the chair which Superintendent Raymes occupied. There were two or three Windsor chairs about the walls, and the only luxury the room afforded was a large rocker-chair into which Bill Wilder had sprawled his great body.
On the desk in front of the officer was a musty-looking file of papers. It was unopened at the moment for the man was contemplating one of several letters that lay beside it. He was leaning back in his revolving chair, and a curious, thoughtful look was in his reflective eyes. Bill Wilder was removing the paper band from the cigar the other had forced upon him.
Raymes looked up after awhile and sat regarding the man with the cigar.