The La Chance Mine Mystery

by Susan Morrow Jones

That thought assured me of two things. It was Dunn and Collins who had hidden the wolf bait in my wagon, for Hutton could never have done it and reached the corduroy road before us; and Paulette must really hate Hutton savagely, for she must have known whom she was shooting at on my swamp road! That made me feel better—a little—but there was something I wanted to know. I turned on Dudley for it.

"Look here, I never heard anything about Valenka but newspapers' stories, till to-night. But, if you know the inside of the business, how did that cousin Macartney was talking of ever get hold of that emerald necklace? Didn't Macartney imply he was in British Columbia?"

"He was more likely anywhere than where he'd have to work—if he could get money out of a girl," Dudley snapped. "What I think is that he was masquerading as a servant in the Houstons' house—a chauffeur, perhaps—anything, that would let him hang round and drive a girl half wild. He was a plain skunk. I don't know how he managed the thing, but I know he was there in the Houstons' house, somehow, if Paulette doesn't think so"—he forgot all about the Valenka—"and that he took those emeralds; left the girl powerless even to think so; and disappeared. I never saw him; don't even know what he looks like. But if ever I get a chance I'll hand him over to the law as I'd hand a man I caught throwing a bomb at a child!"

I said involuntarily: "Shut up!" I knew it was silly, but I felt as if walls might have ears in a house that sheltered Paulette Brown,—though I knew Marcia was in bed and asleep, and there was no one else who could hear. "You're never likely to see him here, anyhow," I added, since I meant to see him myself first, somehow; after which I trusted he was not likely to matter. And I thought of something to change the subject. "What were you going to say to-night about no one having seen poor old Thompson—when you cut yourself off?"

"Oh, that," Dudley replied almost carelessly. "It mayn't amount to anything, and I only shut up because I didn't want Macartney to take the wind out of my sails by saying so. It was just that if Thompson ever went to Caraquet it ought to be simple enough to find the boy who took his horse back to Billy Jones, and—there's apparently no such boy in Caraquet! What set me on Billy Jones first was that he stammered and stuttered about not knowing him, till I don't believe there ever was any such boy. He's never been heard of since, any more than if he'd gone into the ground. And what I want to know is why?—if it's all straight about Thompson and Billy Jones!"

I was silent, remembering—I don't know why—the half-dead boy I had carried home to Skunk's Misery. There was no cause to connect him with the return of Thompson's horse to the Halfway, yet somehow my mind did connect him with it, obstinately. I had never really discovered how he had been hurt by a falling tree, and without reason some animal instinct told me the two things belonged together and that they were queer. But before I could say so, Dudley burst into unexpected speech, his little pig's eyes as fierce as a tiger's: "Look here, Stretton! I'm going to find out who drowned Thompson, and who took Van Ruyne's emeralds—and hand them both over to the law, if I die for it. And when I say that you know I mean it!"

I did. But once more I made no answer, for I thought I heard Marcia in the passage. I am quick on my feet, and I was outside the door before I finished thinking it. But it was not Marcia outside; it was only Macartney. Yet I stopped short and stared at him, for it was a Macartney I had never seen. He was close to the living-room door, just as if he had been listening to Dudley, and his face was the face of a devil. I never want to see set eyes like his again. But all the effect they had on me was to make me furiously angry, and I swore at him.

"What the devil's the matter with you, Macartney? What do you want?"

"My keys," roughly. "I left them somewhere around this passage and I had to come back for them; I couldn't get into my office. As for what's the matter"—he lowered his voice and motioned me some feet away, out of the light from the living-room door—"I heard all Wilbraham said just now, and by gad, the man's crazy! We've got to get him off all that rot about Billy Jones, or any one else, murdering Thompson; it's stark madness. Both of us know Billy wouldn't murder a cat! And there's another thing, too! I heard all Wilbraham said about that Valenka girl's cousin, and I wish you'd tell him to go slow on it. I was in too much of a rage, or I'd have gone in and told him myself. Dick Hutton was a friend of mine; no matter how much he was in love with a girl who'd got sick of him for Van Ruyne, he wasn't the kind to sneak round the Houstons' house as a servant. I won't let any one say that with impunity. It's no use my telling Wilbraham so in the state he's in to-night, but you might gently hint it when you've a chance. I wish to heaven he'd give up drink and drugs and being an amateur detective!" He shrugged his shoulders with a complete return to his ordinary manner. "I'm sorry I startled you just now, but I was too cursed angry to say I was here. Oh, there are my keys!" He stooped, picked them up off the floor, and went out with a careless good night.

"Was that Macartney?" Dudley inquired as I went back to him. "I thought he'd gone!"