“Sure! But why worry? We can put a cordon round him. We’ve got him.”
“I’ve got to see him taken with my own eyes before I believe that. Also I want to do some of the taking myself. I owe Neuburg something. And then there’s Lucas ‘with all he can get hold of.’”
“Well, what about it? What do you think that means?”
“I think it means £145,000 of easily negotiable securities and cash,” said Clement. “Remember The Chief’s wire. I’m going to see with my own eyes that Miss Heloise Reys does not lose it.”
III
A motor trolley jerked them up along the mountain track, and dropped Clement, the detective and two men at a little wayside station that seemed to be clinging by sheer strength to the rocks under the snow-clad crags.
A guide and horses met them, and they rode off along the mountain trails, skirting ravines and river gorges by paths that seemed to poise them on the lip of sickening drops. They climbed up and up until the air took on the nip of the everlasting snows. They pushed forward until they seemed lost in a Dantesque hell of bleak gray rock and somber spruce furred valleys.
When night came down, they camped fireless for fear of giving the alarm to the huge, ugly and indomitable rogue who must even then be pushing his way through the mountain passes in their neighborhood. They had time on their side. They knew they must be ahead of him.
In the chill mists of dawn they were up and away again, striking through the stark, craggy Valleys for the lonely pass under the Three Pins. Toiling up from the Arrowhead district, on the other shoulder of the range must be the shady bank clerk, Lucas. Would they be present at the rendezvous of the two criminals? Would they be there at the right time and at the right place?