“He told me that Henry Gunning had been Henry Gunning. He got drunk, as usual. He talked big about his idiot mine claims, as usual. He boasted about the millionaire he’d be when his soft-hearted English sweetheart married him—I suppose that’s as usual now. He then got a little drunker. Told the world that he was going to strike the trail and ‘show ’em all.’ And he struck the trail—and—so—vanished.”
“And Joe sat down on his hunkers and watched him go?” said Méduse bitterly.
“Leave Joe to me, my dear.” There was a nasty edge to the big man’s tone, the position of Joe was not enviable. “Joe says that the brute sneaked off in the night. Joe left him apparently sleeping the solid sleep of ‘bootleg’ whisky in his shack. He thought he was safe for eight hours. When he went there again in the morning Gunning had gone. He had taken his kit, slipped off somewhere in the dark.”
“Well,” snapped the woman after a pause. “It doesn’t stop there, does it? Joe didn’t just sit down and weep, did he? What’s he found out?”
Mr. Neuburg chuckled. “You are unerring, my dear,” he said. “As you imply, our good Joe did not sit down and weep.... People who work for Adolf Neuburg know better than to do that. Our Joe has found out things. Not everything, but something. This sodden and spineless Gunning struck east. No, my dear, do not spoil your burst of intelligence by asking the obvious. If I knew exactly where he had gone I should have mentioned it. You appreciate that? When one fails to mention things it is because one doesn’t know. But we will know. Siwash Mike is finding out. He will find out. That is his forte. In a day or two we shall know where this fool Gunning is.”
The woman vented an exclamation.
“Ah, you see that that is the point, my mild Méduse. In a day or two. That means, perhaps, a day or two longer here in Quebec, with that foolish-looking Englishman, who is far from foolish, on the spot. The situation is not excellent.”
The pair were silent for a moment. Clement, with ears straining, wanted to learn answers to several questions that passed through his head.
As though his thoughts had been communicated telepathically through the door, his speculations were immediately answered.
The voice of the big man boomed abruptly, “This Heloise has gone out to the postoffice, eh?”