Artemus Duff, president and general manager of the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills, subsidiary-to-be of the International Investment Corporation, was in a very much perturbed state of mind. Mr. Duff was an excitable person, though otherwise a normal, hardheaded type of big business circles, quite inured to the ordinary run of difficulties that beset new undertakings such as the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills. But since his recent arrival from Toronto in Kam City a tremendous responsibility had been shifted to his shoulders, and though construction and installation at the mill had been progressing well up on schedule time, there were other incidentals that worried him exceedingly.

A plump little man with a round, clocklike face and rather small pale blue eyes, he sat chewing at an unlighted cigar and tilting back in a swivel office chair across the desk from Martin Winch, K.C., senior member of the legal firm of Winch, Stanton and Reid, solicitors for the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills Company. Martin Winch, incidentally, was known to have been a confidential adviser of Norman T. Gildersleeve, head of the parent company that financed the paper manufacturing concern. The interview had been at Duff’s earnest solicitation, the latter having an obsession that “something ought to be done” without a clear conception of what the “something” should be. The lawyer’s calm, unruffled manner of viewing the situation irritated Duff, who declared that “nobody seemed to see the crisis ahead except himself.”

“Mr. Gildersleeve’s disappearance has, as you state, occurred at a very critical period,” Winch agreed. “But, on the other hand, Mr. Duff, all the machinery is complete in the way of contracts and agreements protecting us, and I can’t see that there is anything more that we can do than sit tight and see that the North Star Towing and Contracting Company’s order from the government for delivery of the raw product to us is carried out expeditiously.”

“I am quite well aware of all that,” discounted the president of the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills, “and if Norman Gildersleeve were in the offing somewhere, or even if I knew exactly the plans he had in the back of his head when he approved of our agreement with the Ontario government and thereby agreed to the cutting and delivering contract on the part of the North Star Company I shouldn’t waste a moment’s worry over matters.

“I wouldn’t mind the responsibility of taking full charge of affairs,” he emphasised, “if I had a notion of Gildersleeve’s preconceived plans for meeting possible trickery on the part of the North Star; but Gildersleeve, apparently, took nobody into his confidence on that score.”

“But so far the North Star Company have not shown any tendency to violate the terms of the government fiat imposed on them,” argued the lawyer. “In fact, I understand they have now almost the required amount of poles boomed in Nannabijou Bay ready for delivery to the mill. To my way of thinking, outside of the unfortunate disappearance of Mr. Gildersleeve, everything looks exceedingly rosy.”

“That’s just it,” stormed Duff. “Everything looks rosy—too damned rosy!” He slammed his badly mangled cigar into a nearby waste-basket. “Everything looks too damned rosy to be of good omen where such notorious pirates as the North Star Towing and Contracting Company are concerned. Winch, are you conscious of the fact that the North Star has smashed and utterly ruined every commercial enterprise that has attempted to enter into competition with them in the North?”

“Oh, well—circumstances alter cases,” hedged the lawyer. “Things are different—”

“Of course they’re different,” derided Duff. “The North Star never tackles two swindling campaigns with the same methods or their victims would learn to plan successful counter attacks. Look you, Winch, I’ve been delving a bit into local history just for the very purpose of studying these people and their methods. Through political manipulation, bribery, legal trickery and downright commercial theft and robbery, when they could get away with it, they have utterly destroyed every enterprise that has threatened to interfere with their exclusive exploitation of the resources of this northern country.”

“I’ll admit they’ve been unscrupulous—brazenly unscrupulous and aggressive,” quietly returned the man of the law, “but I think you exaggerate somewhat, Mr. Duff. I could name you a dozen concerns competitive of the North Star Company that have thrived for years without interference.”

“All small-fry concerns,” pointed out the other. “The North Star’s apparent policy has been to let the little fellows alone—even nurse them financially at times with an end in view; it finds them useful allies when there’s government lobbying afoot or a big political coup to be pulled off.

“But tell me,” he went on, “what’s been the fate of every enterprise of dimensions that has attempted to exist within the zone of the North Star’s activities? Wasn’t the Upper Lakes Towing and Salvaging Company at one time the most flourishing marine concern on Lake Superior? What did the North Star do to them? Swept them from the North Shore till they hadn’t a propeller turning between here and the Soo. What happened the Independent Fur Trading Company that once held exclusive trading treaties with the Indians all the way north to the Bay Company’s boundaries? The North Star weaned their business away from them by selling the Indians alleged cough medicine that was five per cent pure alcohol and drove them out paupers. Where is the Oliphant Transfer Ship Company that enjoyed practically all the marine switching business in northern harbours? They’ve been supplanted by the Kam City Leg-boat Corporation, subsidiary to the North Star. Who’s behind the All-West Trading and Storage Limited that ousted the Dominion Grain Dealers and grabbed off all their elevators between here and The Hat? It’s the North Star—everybody knows that.

“Yes, I could go on enumerating until it sounded like a book of epitaphs from a commercial graveyard,” continued Duff. “The North Star did not pay thirty cents on the dollar of value for the business of any one of the unfortunate concerns it squelched out and absorbed. It was all accomplished by business buccaneering methods unparalleled on this continent for audacity and cunning. In every case, so far as I can learn, it was a totally unexpected coup, swift and certain as lightning, that crumpled up the North Star’s rivals.

“These things are what you’d call precedent in legal parlance, Winch,” opined Duff, “and therefore, what we’ve got to figure on meeting from the North Star is the unexpected—like a bolt from a clear sky.”

II

Martin Winch fussed with a sheaf of clipped typewritten sheets before him. “They cannot very well get away with any trickery in the face of this government order,” he persisted laconically.

“Just a scrap of paper so far as the North Star is concerned,” asserted Duff. “Legally it may be watertight from forty-nine different angles, but there’s bound to be a fiftieth with a loop-hole in it that nobody ever thought of but the North Star Company. You knew, of course, that Gildersleeve sensed this very thing; that he left New York this last time with the express purpose of thwarting some nefarious plot the North Star were hatching up.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” Winch appeared to be evincing a mild interest now. “Mr. Gildersleeve never even hinted at such a thing in his correspondence.”

“That’s just the trouble,” complained the paper mill president. “Norman Gildersleeve didn’t take any of us into his confidence with regard to his inside information and his definite plans, and when he dropped out of sight at this critical period he left us all helpless and in the dark.”

“You are sure Mr. Gildersleeve had reason to suspect treachery on the part of the North Star?”

“I know this much: He employed two of the cleverest detectives in the country to run down something crooked afoot on the Nannabijou Limits. One of the detectives returned a broken-down wreck of a man; the other just dropped out of sight. His hat was found floating on a creek at the limits and that’s all they ever heard of him afterwards. I do know that Gildersleeve got a line on something that means disaster for the Kam City Paper Mills if it is not thwarted in time.”Martin Winch drummed his fingers on the glass top of his desk and stared at the ceiling. “Yet I can’t see that anything short of hiring some one to blow up the mill would accomplish such an end for the North Star,” he observed skeptically.

“Which would be a crude, bolshevik method altogether lacking the finesse of the North Star. No, Winch, they’re figuring on getting the machinery that’s going into that mill of ours away from us for just what they’ll care to pay when they have us with our backs to the wall. I’m becoming positive that’s the objective of their plot.”

“You must have deeper reasons for your suspicions than appear on the surface, Mr. Duff.”

“I have. But, Good Lord, man, aren’t the surface indications sufficient? Here’s the North Star Company that once held exclusive cutting rights on all the available northern limits, docilely, tamely, allowing their initiative to pass into the hands of outside capital without even a murmur of protest. Tell me, does that look natural? It’s all the more ominous because up to the eleventh hour of our securing permanent rights on the Nannabijou Limits they have fulfilled their part of the contract to the letter.

“Doesn’t it strike you as passing strange that the North Star, which owned or controlled all the tugs and loading machinery on the upper end of the lake, accepted without even the slightest protest the government’s proposal that they cut and deliver the required poles that would make our acquisition of the limits complete?”

“It did seem odd at the time,” admitted the lawyer, “but then, they no doubt feared that obstruction of the government’s policy might have meant another order ousting them from the limits at once.”

“Nonsense! And you must know that’s nonsense!”Mr. Duff arose and paced the floor, jammed another unlighted cigar between his teeth and sat down again. “Winch,” he suggested, “just let us take the whole situation as it obtains to date, stand it on end, so to speak, and take a square look at it. Then tell me if you still think the present lamblike attitude of the notorious North Star timber pirates looks natural.

“In the first place, the North Star at one time owned outright or held cutting rights on practically all the pulpwood contingent to water-haul from the North Shore, with the exception of the crown lands known as the Nannabijou Limits, didn’t they? Well, back in those days the Ontario government had very little notion of the immense forest wealth of the North. The North Star got most of the concessions for a song, through political pull, graft, intimidation and downright theft in some cases. They bribed government officials right and left, moved survey lines overnight, had cruisers make false estimates, took out fake mining patents, and, on the pretence of cutting trails and tote roads in to mine sites that never existed, skinned the territory of all its best timber. They left a trail of commercial iniquity behind them, unparalleled on this continent, until it became a by-word that the North Star would rather win out by putting the law in contempt than accept a gift where everything was above board.

“The huge block of crown lands known as the Nannabijou Limits was the only territory held sacred from their nefarious exploitation. Government after government remained firm to the pledge of the late Sir John Whitson, when he was prime minister, that not a stick would be cut on the Nannabijou that was not manufactured into paper in Kam City.

“The North Star long had their covetous eyes on the Nannabijou Limits. They wanted them worse than any other concession in the North, because they knew the Nannabijou, bisected as it is by a great river with tributaries extending for miles and miles inland, meant the domination of the pulp and paper industry once it was secured.

“But the North Star Company were exporters,” continued Duff. “It is pretty well established that the North Star, controlled by Canadians whom no one has ever seemed able to name, owns two big paper mills in Eastern Ontario. They tried by every black artifice at their command to fleece the government for the Nannabijou and to get the embargo on export to the East in the raw state removed. But the government stood firm by the Whitson pledge and they failed in their attempts.

“Matters came swiftly to a head when we came on the scene and started to build a paper mill. The acute paper shortage had most to do with it. The government, tired of bickering and of the North Star’s professional lobbyists, suddenly announced that it was going to throw the Nannabijou Limits open for tender, and that the limits would be leased to the highest bidder simultaneously contracting to manufacture exclusively in Kam City and have a paper mill with a capacity of three hundred and fifty tons of paper a day in full operation by October the twenty-third of this present year.

“It was a drastic contract, so drastic that only the serious paper famine threatening would excuse any government for creating it.

“Along with other Canadian associates holding stock in the International Investment Corporation, I went down to New York to consult Norman Gildersleeve, the president, about it. Gildersleeve went thoroughly into the cruisers’ reports and the terms of the government agreement, and, to our surprise, almost immediately decided we should make a bid for the limits under all the terms laid down. We had part of the machinery on order for some time which would equip just such a modern mill as was required, he pointed out, and the only problem that confronted us was the securing of tugs and loading machinery for handling the poles between the limits and the mill.

“Just what I expected took place. Immediately the North Star got busy building a paper mill on a site in Kam City, and they put in a tender for the limits simultaneously with ours.

“The North Star Company were the successful tenderers. They were granted a year’s cutting rights with the privilege of renewing at the same figures provided they had commenced installing their machinery by June and were in full operation by October. Gildersleeve was not the least taken back. He said he expected it, but he told us to wait and see. You remember what happened. The North Star had no machinery to install in their mill by June. Gildersleeve and his associates put the skids under them by manipulating the market so that the United States plant manufacturing the North Star’s paper-making machinery went into bankruptcy and our people gaining control of it held the machinery. That left the North Star nicely in the air. There wasn’t another manufacturer could guarantee the construction of the machinery required in less than twenty-seven months’ time, partially on account of the scarcity of steel at that time.

“The Hon. J. J. Slack and his bevy of lawyers moved heaven and earth to get the time extended to two years and six months, but the government stood pat. Our original tender was accepted to date from the expiration of the North Star’s on October the twenty-third and we were to be given possession of all wood cut by the North Star this season on the Nannabijou. To appease the powerful North Star Company, however, the government inserted a rider in the agreement that should we fail in any particular of our contract, even through unforeseen accident, our lease on the limits would be automatically cancelled and that of the North Star would be immediately reinstated with an extension of time for the installation of their machinery.

“Then followed our fight against the eleventh hour inclusion of that drastic rider. It was all to no avail. The government, having satisfied the public that they meant business in getting the limits developed and a paper mill built, were prepared to wash their hands of the whole affair. We were as much as told we could either take it or leave it, as we pleased.

“Now then, Winch,” concluded Duff, “in the face of the North Star’s immediate willingness to act as contractor for us in getting out the poles on time when they could otherwise have left us in a mighty awkward fix for tugs, can’t you see that they have but one aim in this whole business?”

“You mean that—?”

“They have some definite plan for putting it over us so that we can’t live up to the terms of our agreement with the government.”

“But my dear Duff—”

“Hold on, I’m not crazy nor drunk either,” insisted Duff. “I have definite information that it was just this very possibility that Norman Gildersleeve was on his way here to thwart when he dropped out of sight. To be candid with you, old man, I came up here purposely to-day just to mull this whole thing over aloud to see if I could get a slant on what Gildersleeve suspected or if you could supply a clue. I confess I’m just as much in the dark as ever as to what move the North Star could make between now and the twenty-third of October to injure us. However, I have put a squad of guards on the booms in Nannabijou Bay to see that no trickery—”

III

The telephone bell interrupted Duff with an insistent jangling. Winch answered the call. “It’s Slack,” he said, placing a hand over the receiver. “He wants to talk to you.”

He passed the desk instrument to Duff. “Hello—yes, Duff speaking, Slack,” answered the latter. “Oh, I’ve been back in town since yesterday— Yes, it is unfortunate about Gildersleeve— No, nothing concerning him except what I’ve read in the papers— What’s that?— Yes, pretty busy— You are going out of town for a few days?— Well, right after you come back— Let me know and I’ll drop over— Thanks.”

Duff put up the phone. “Now, how the devil did he find out I was here?” he asked. “I left no word at the hotel nor at the plant as to where I was going. Wants to have a talk with me about something important right after he gets back from a trip to Ottawa.”

Duff rose and picked up his hat.

“Slack’s an oily customer,” commented Martin Winch stifling a sigh of relief that the interview with this fussy little man was over.

“Oily is the word, but I’m pretty well convinced he’s nothing more than a straw-boss at that,” returned Duff. “I’d give a mint of money, and so would a number of other people, to know who does Slack’s thinking for him.”

Duff departed in a finicky mood. A nasty doubt was growing within him as to the degree of co-operation he might expect from the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills’ lawyer, a doubt engendered by Winch’s apathetic attitude. No doubt Martin Winch, K.C., in common with many others, entertained a wholesome respect for the uncanny power of the North Star Company and its penchant for sooner or later squaring accounts with those who became over-zealous in meddling with its affairs. The disappearance of Norman T. Gildersleeve, head of the parent company controlling the Kam City Company, at this critical moment had more than likely shattered the initiative of Winch, who seemed to have small confidence in Duff’s ability to cope single-handed with the cunning of the North Star. It might be, grimly speculated Duff, that Winch was seriously considering the matter of throwing up his retainer and allowing some other legal firm to appropriate the fee and the hazards that went with it.