“And I see how they persuaded Heloise—Miss Reys. They made her feel that if she did not start for Cobalt at once there’d be every chance of her missing him again. Gunning would wander off again directly he got money into his pocket.”
“Yes, and they got her to go by that train because she’d be able to catch a connection out of Montreal,” capped The Chief. “She’ll go out by No. 17. It’s one of the few direct trains. She’ll get a through sleeper on that. Cobalt it is, Mr. Seadon.”
“But Cobalt is an unhandy place to get at.”
“It’s just as unhandy a place to get out of, too. But it’s Cobalt she’s gone to, take that as fixed, Mr. Seadon.”
Before they boarded the night train for Montreal they learned over the long-distance ’phone that the girl and her companion had taken reservations for Cobalt on the night train.
They also learned that a large man, answering unmistakably to the description of Mr. Neuburg, with a companion, had left Montreal earlier in the day.
He, too, had booked through to Cobalt.
V
All through the night journey Clement was sleepless. He was thinking of Heloise and the danger she was in. His own adventures with Mr. Neuburg and his gang had taught him that there was very little these scoundrels would stop at, and the thought of that slim, beautiful and fine-tempered girl at the mercy of creatures so base and so cruel was a thing of terror.
What would happen to her? What, even now, was happening to her, or was about to happen? He was tortured by a thousand fears.