"I was the thief," he said, quietly. "Here are your notes, but take my advice. Never talk about your money before strangers." Intense relief overcame a feeling of resentment at the trick played upon me, and, after all, was it not in my own interest? So I put my pride—and my notes—in my pocket and thanked my friend for the service he had rendered me, which I never duly appreciated until long afterwards.
"MY POCKET-BOOK AND THE THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS HAD GONE!"
On the platform we found Knaggs in a very surly frame of mind, which Dalton laughingly ascribed to overnight indulgence in "tanglefoot." But the joke was apparently ill-timed, for the American turned and left us with an oath, to his friend's amusement.
"Good-bye, De Windt," said the latter. "We may meet again, and if ever I can do you a turn, for Mary W——'s sake, count upon me."
Three or four months elapsed, during which period I heard nothing more of my fellow-travellers, but I received a letter from Mrs. W——, who had been informed of her husband's death by an anonymous correspondent—Dalton, no doubt. This was in the spring of 1897, however, and my mind was too much engrossed with personal affairs to give the matter much attention. A bad attack of the gold-fever then raging on the Pacific Coast had resulted in my resolve to leave Vancouver and seek a fortune in the Klondike. I need not describe the now familiar perils and privations of that ghastly voyage: the grim passes, stormy lakes, and treacherous rapids; the cold and starvation that littered the dark and dangerous road to the "Arctic El Dorado" with dead and dying victims. Suffice it to say that I eventually reached my destination, and in less than a year had "struck it rich" enough to acquire several good claims. Early in March, 1898, I returned from my claim up the Koyukuk to Dawson City, and took up my quarters at an hotel, intending to return by the first steamer to St. Michael, and thence, by the sea route, home.
The River View Hotel was not a cheerful residence, although its numerous guests were very festively inclined. The restaurant at dinner-time resembled a bear-garden, and between meals dapper New York barmen ministered to the wants of a rowdy mixture of nationalities from all ends of the earth. Time hung heavily on my hands, although there was plenty of gaiety of the disreputable kind to be found in most mining camps. Dawson swarmed with gambling and drinking saloons, but crime was rare, for the North-West Police keep a sharp eye on evildoers, especially the harpies of both sexes who fleece lucky miners. You did not need, in those days, to go to the creeks for gold, for the dust was flung about so recklessly that modest incomes were made by sweeping out the dancing halls. One night of debauchery often left wealthy men as poor as when they first started out from home without a penny. And there was some excuse for the poor prospector, coming straight from months of cold, hunger, and hard work on some lonely gulch into a crowded, brightly-lit saloon, with champagne, music, and friends galore, to say nothing of a gambling table in the background. Even I, who should have known better, was occasionally drawn into some dazzling pandemonium which, by daylight, would have sickened me to contemplate.
Thus it came to pass that I found myself one night at the Imperial Casino in company with a friend who, like myself, was heartily sick of his gloomy bedroom at the River View Hotel. The Imperial, like most of its kind, consisted of a dancing-hall leading into a smaller compartment screened with green baize, which occasionally parted to disclose a roulette table. The noise and stifling air of the first room were, as usual, unbearable, and we struggled through a rowdy crowd of men and women to the inner sanctum, where a number of players were assembled. For a time we watched the game with interest, for the high stakes would have attracted a crowd at Monte Carlo, but these ragged, mud stained gamblers lost or won their money gracefully and without the push or wrangle that often occurs on the Riviera. I have seen more fuss made over a five-franc piece at Monte Carlo than over a thousand dollars in Klondike.
To this day I don't know what induced me to fling a stake upon the table. My friend, sick of the fetid atmosphere, had left me, and I was following him, when the solitary number I had backed turned up. I then carelessly heaped my winnings on the zero and became the unwilling object of all eyes when the ivory ball jumped into the space numbered by that wicked little circle. From that moment I won without cessation, chiefly, I suppose, because of my absolute indifference to loss. In an hour I was the gainer of an enormous sum, which, consisting largely of nuggets and gold-dust, was difficult to handle. A carpet-bag was borrowed from the proprietor, by whose friendly advice I made my exit through a back door, and hastened along the snowy, silent street to my hotel. As I neared my hotel a figure stood out from the doorway of the River View, and I recognised Barlow, of the North-West Mounted Police, who a few hours previously had been my guest at dinner.
"Don't shoot, old man," said my friend, as a revolver gleamed in the moonlight; "it's only me. We have got a big job on. The safe in the office here was rifled last night, and the thief is supposed to be living in the hotel. J——, of Scotland Yard, and ten of my men are inside; so if the joker tries any games on to-night it will be all up with him. By the way, you look a bit suspicious with that bag. Gold from Gluckstein's, is it? Whew! Oh, pass in; you're a match for any hotel sneak." And with a cheery "Good night" I left my friend vainly endeavouring to keep warm in a temperature that would have tried the patience of a Polar bear.