But the Wolf was actively searching. Every fibre of the man was strung alertly. The policeman’s movements were telling him so much.
The Wolf was standing just within the doorway of the room, and near by to the desk on which lay Sinclair’s official diary. He was still wearing his furs, cap and coat. For the room was none too warm in the bitter temperature.
At last Fyles came over to the desk. He sat in the chair which he turned about to face the stove. He looked up into the Wolf’s face, and his scrutiny, while officially cool, had nothing particularly harsh or threatening in it.
“Say, you best shed that coat, boy, and pass over to the stove and thaw some of the cursed ice out of your bones. We got to make a long talk before we’re through, and it’s not good to sit around in furs. I had to ask you to come along over. But I left it till you were through with your day’s business before worrying you. I’m here to learn things about Sinclair.”
The Wolf inclined his head and unfastened his coat. He flung it off and removed his cap. And, as Fyles watched him pass across to the chair beside the stove it was with eyes of frank admiration. The Wolf’s manhood could not be disguised under the roughness of his hard prairie clothing.
The policeman’s thought flew to the only creature that to his mind was comparable with the body he was observing. It had all the grace, muscle, and sinuous activity of a tiger. There flashed through his mind in that instant a queer gladness that he had carefully prepared for any eventuality. He knew that unarmed, for all his experience, for all his own physical strength, if it came to a “show-down” between them his chances would be small indeed.
“I reckoned that way, Sergeant,” the Wolf replied, taking possession of the chair set ready for him, and thrusting his moccasined feet on the stove rail. “How d’you figger I can help you?”
The man’s smile intrigued Fyles no less than had the personality of the woman of the trail, only in a totally different way. He possessed a strange attraction, such as, for all her beauty and youth, for Fyles at least, Annette had failed to exercise. The Wolf’s quiet assurance, his never-failing, rather pleasant smile, his superb body, and obvious nerve made a tremendous appeal.
Yet Fyles saw in him a murderer, and a law-breaker in perhaps every direction. He wondered what was his born name.
“Say, you’re nicknamed ‘the Wolf’?” Fyles put his question with the abruptness of which he so well understood the value.