They stood and stared at each other. A night journey away was Neuburg and Gunning and Siwash Mike and Joe Wandersun’s wife. They were unsuspecting. They were preparing for some terrible crime perhaps, but they were unsuspecting.
Behind them were the two women going in a fast car to the Banff Springs Hotel. The woman who had most to fear was also unsuspecting. But she would cease to be so after she had been in the foyer of the hotel many minutes. She would ask for a message, a letter, or a wire—and she would not get one. At once because of her fear she would become anxious. She would communicate with Neuburg. He would be warned. He would know at once that his letter had gone astray, that something was wrong, and he would take steps to meet the crisis.
And the men moving towards him were standing in the saloon of a moving train, hanging, as it were, between the two danger points in a traveling isolation. What could they do?
Gatineau said “Hell” again, and then he said, “She’ll wire, sure.”
“Or ’phone,” said Clement.
“Yes, she might.... But who to? Joe’s wife, Mrs. Wandersun, went up to Gunning’s shack in a motor boat. She left word she wouldn’t be back. Remember, left word an’ a letter.”
“Siwash Mike, or Herbert Lucas, as he calls himself, may be there waiting for the ladies.”
“Yep, that’s so,” he thought a while. “But their shack might not have a ’phone. It’s unlikely, I think. An’ then ’phoning—would she risk it? Miss Reys might come in on her as she spoke.”
“You think she’d wire?”
“Sure I think she’d wire,” said Gatineau, his face brightening a little.