As the tug swung out with a great churning astern, Hammond caught the eye of the skipper looking out of the wheel-house above. Chuckling over the antics of the chagrined camp preacher, he jerked his head for Hammond to come up.

“Take a seat.” The genial-faced captain motioned Hammond to the cushioned bench at the back of the tiny wheel-house. “The sky-pilot seemed to be all fussed up about something, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” replied Hammond. “I’m at a loss to know what came over him all of a sudden. As a rule he never appeared to notice I existed around the camp.”

“Oh, I guess he’s harmless, from what I hear,” agreed the captain, “but you can never tell just what’s what about some of these queer birds they let hang around that camp. There’s that old Medicine Man, for instance, I wouldn’t trust my back to him two minutes in the bush.”

“Ogima Bush? You think he’s dangerous?”

The skipper yanked at the lever of the steam steering-gear and swung the tug due west outside the channel through the pulp booms. “There ain’t any bully in the camp will take chances on crossing him,” he said significantly.

“You’d think the superintendent would have him run off the limits.”“He daren’t, even if he wanted to,” declared the captain. “It’s long odds that old crock is cahoots with the Big Boss. At least everybody’s got that notion.”

“Speak of the devil,” he exclaimed next minute, “there’s the Big Boss heading for camp now.”

Hammond leaped to his feet and looked where the captain was pointing. Sure enough he could discern the superintendent’s red racing motorboat tearing over the water from a point the other side of Amethyst Island, bow up in air with a crash of foam under its midships.

“Try the glasses,” suggested the captain. Hammond fitted them to his eyes and adjusted the lenses. Acey Smith, at the wheel, was the only occupant of the tiny cockpit.

“Smith talked of going over to Kam City this afternoon,” suggested Hammond.

“Yes, he told me yesterday he was in a hurry to get things cleaned up so he could get away in time,” replied the other. “He intended to catch the night train for Montreal.

“Suppose you know there’s trouble on among the tug-men?” he queried turning from the steering-lever a moment.

“Strike?”

“Yes, and if the tugmen go out it means the pole-cutters and the white boom-tenders at the limits will down tools in sympathy tying everything up as tight as a river-jam.”

“Likely Smith’s going to Montreal to talk it over with some of the heads of the company, eh?” Hammond was sparring for more information.

“I dunno.” There came a faraway look in the captain’s blue eyes. “Hon. J. J. Slack, of Kam City, is supposed to be top dog of this outfit, and then again some think he’s only a straw boss. But if you asked a lot of people they’d tell you the real head push of this outfit hangs out in a place that’s a lot hotter than Montreal or Kam City.”

Hammond was scarcely paying any attention to the captain’s words. He had the glasses trained on Amethyst Island which they were now passing. The place had a deserted look. The doors of Josephine Stone’s cottage were closed and there was not a sign of life on the island. That seemed queer—very queer. Perhaps, he conjectured, she had gone over to their meeting-place on the beach and was expecting him to happen along.

But he swept the beach with the glasses for a glimpse of her in vain. Presently, two scarlet-coated policemen emerged from the bush on the mainland and walked up the rise to a bell tent that was pitched on the crown of the hill. There one apparently flung an order to his companion, and the latter set off at a loping run in the direction of the pulp camp.

A depressing presentiment swept over Hammond. He would have liked to have asked the captain to turn in and let him off at Amethyst Island, but he didn’t quite dare do that.

II

It was the captain who interrupted his reverie. “We were talking just now about that camp sky-pilot, the Rev. Nathan Stubbs,” he reminded Hammond. “I was saying that Smith lets Ogima Bush the Medicine Man have the run of the camps because he can use him for his own purposes. Now it’s different with that preacher fellow; it’s always been known that the Big Boss won’t order any kind of a Christian preacher out of camp so long as the preacher sticks to the gospel and his own particular line of trade.”

“Is that a fact?” This to Hammond was an entirely new side light on the character of the pulp camp superintendent.

“True as your standing there,” emphasised the skipper. “Why, all of us boat captains have standing orders that any of them chaps with their collars buttoned behind is to travel free back and forth to the camps whether they have a pass or not. It’s the same in the camp; they ain’t charged anything for grub and bunk and everybody has orders to use them polite and decent. At the same time, the Big Boss lets the preachers see they’re to steer wide of him. He has a way of doing that, you know, and the wise ones know enough not to try any of their holy groaning on a hard-boiled egg like him.

“There’s been every known kind of soul-saving genius knocking around our camps in my time; Catholic priests, highfaluting English churchers, Methodist missionaries, Salvation Army drum-beaters and the like,” continued the captain. “But I only know of one preacher who tried mixing it with Acey Smith. He was a bush-camp evangelist they called Holy Henry that used to rant to the lumber-jacks and lead them in psalm-singing all the way from the Soo up to the Rainy and the Lake of the Woods. Holy Henry was a wizened up bit of a man with big, thick glasses and mild-looking blue eyes back of them. But, Lord, man, hadn’t he a temper when he got blazing away at the devil and all his works! He’d chew up half a dozen dictionaries getting high-brow words to lambast sin and back-sliding, and he’d mix ’em up with camp slang in a way that would get the boys whether they wanted to listen to him or not. He’d ’ve been a popular guy, that preacher, if he hadn’t been so death on all the little games of chance the lumber-jack has a weakness for. That kind of gave him a black eye all over the North.

“We were taking out timber in the Dog Bay country when Holy Henry paid us his visit. The North Star camps were wide open in them days; nothing was barred but wild women and promiscuous booze-running. There was every known manner of winning or losing a wad from big wheels-of-fortune, chuck-a-luck, paddle-wheels and stud poker down to nigger craps. Nobody ever interfered so long as the men were on their jobs on time and there was no knife-sticking or gun-play. Why, the whole bunch used to gulp dinner like a lot of brush-wolves just so they’d have the biggest part of their noon-hour trying their chances for easy money. Some of the lucky ones cleaned up a pile of money and some that weren’t got cleaned out even to their whole season’s wages and their packsacks. Them was roaring days!

“When this here Holy Henry hits the camps everybody got to speculating just what end of the horn he’d come out at, and of course there were some long stakes put up right on that there question, but all the big odds was on Holy Henry breaking down on the job for quits inside of two weeks. I was in charge of a river gang in them days, and I remember having a nifty side-bet that he’d get so sick of trying to break up things he’d just slip away faking a bad cold or something of that sort.

“But what happened wasn’t what any of us had figured on. The first thing that fool preacher did was to go to the super’s. office and appeal to him to put the lid on. Acey Smith looks down at the little fellow with the thick glasses and the weak eyes with that sort of good-natured curiosity you see on a big St. Bernard dog when a poodle gets in his way. ‘This ain’t any Sunday school we’re running out here, Holy Henry,’ he says, ‘and saving souls isn’t exactly in my line; but if you can throw a scare of hell-fire into this outfit of blacklegs so that they’ll thumb hymn-books instead of poker decks, go to it. That’s your particular business and I won’t put any sticks in your way.’ Then he turns away with that little demon-grin of his and goes back to his work.

“Some of us that had big bets on the preacher quitting early thought to hurry him up by getting him peeved. So when he came out all sort of wilted-like we says to him to get his goat: ‘What you going to do about it now, Holy Henry?’

“‘I am going to pray for Brother Smith,’ he surprises us by replying. ‘I know he’s going to be on the side of the Lord.’

“That made us roar so that half of the camp heard us. ‘Brother Smith,’ mind you, he called him. We never quite got over that, but none dared to twit the super. about it. He’s mighty touchy on some things, is Acey Smith.

“All went along pretty much as per usual till Sunday came. Sunday was the red-letter gambling day at the North Star camps because the boys had full time at it with no other worries. Some of ’em used to piece the bull cooks to bring their meals to them so they wouldn’t miss a deal.

“Holy Henry had announced a morning service in a shack that had been turned over to him for that purpose, but not a man-jack turned up to it but an old Injun halfwit who’d been roped in by the Salvation Army and a one-eyed Hunkie who’d got religion at one of the weekday meetings. Holy Henry kneels down with his two-men congregation and prays silently for a few minutes. Then he went forth ‘clothed in the wrath of the Lord’ as he called it.

“And believe me, boy, that was some wrath. Somewhere outside he gathered up a piece of a broken handspike, and brandishing it around his head, he lands into first one camp shack and then another. He couldn’t make any mistake picking them random that way; they were all going full tilt. He’d burst through a door and land in like a little package of greased hurricane. Out would go his foot and over would go a table, chips, cards, money and all. Then he’d swing his club within an inch of the faces of the crowd. ‘Out of here, you bleary-eyed, low-lived, pigeon-toed, white-livered disciples of Baal!’ he’d yell. ‘Out, you sin-corroded, knock-kneed, flannel-mouthed desecrators of the Lord’s Day! Out, I say, for the wrath of God Almighty is upon you!’

“Say, you’d be surprised to see how quick he cleaned up the whole works. In about two minutes he’d smashed up about a thousand dollars’ worth of slot-machines and fortune-wheels with that hand-spike club of his. The crowd at first just stood around sort of paralysed and didn’t lift a finger to stop him. There was low growls, lots of curses, and threats of ganging him, but being that he was a preacher nobody seemed ready to start things.

“Some of the lads with level heads decided to go down and get the super. to interfere and decide what was to be done with the wild-eyed preacher. Smith was reading one of them high-brow books in his office when the delegation bursts in. He didn’t say a word, just got up, slips on his mackinaw and goes out to locate the cause of the disturbance.

“Holy Henry was smashing things about in the sixth shack on his list when the Big Boss poked his head in the door with the gang crowding up at his rear.

“‘What in hell does this mean?’ the super. raps out, spearing the preacher with them wicked, snapping black eyes of his. His face was like chalk from the cold anger he was holding back.

“Holy Henry was in the act of dumping a lot of poker chips and cards into the stove. The sweat was running down his face in little creeks and his thick glasses had got all steamed up, which didn’t matter because he was seeing all red up to that time. But the Big Boss’s words hit him like cold chunks of ice that had been shot into his system and the pep seemed to go out of him all at once. I’d seen bigger and stronger men than Holy Henry break down like that in front of Acey Smith, and I almost began to feel sorry for this trembling little bit of whiff of a fellow with that black devil of a man towering over him.

“‘It’s the Lord’s Day,’ he stammers. ‘I was just cleaning up these—these hell parlours.’

“‘Hell parlours—hell parlours,’ echoes the super. ‘Who in blue blazes gave you a license to wreck the camp? Tell me that!’

“The little fellow looked more sorrowful than ever and he says sort of quietlike: ‘I thought you were on our side, Brother Smith; I was doing this in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ.’

“If you ever saw a change come over the face of a man it was that that came over the super’s. He drew back like as if something had hit him, and the palms of his hands went up to his face as though he was choking. Maybe you’ve seen him do that sometimes? It’s like as if a devil inside him was trying to jump out and was strangling him.

“But next minute he walks over to the preacher and takes him by the arm. ‘Finish your job, Holy Henry,’ he says, ‘and if any one so much as lifts a finger at you, well—’

“He didn’t finish, but turns and glowers at the gawping crowd like a lion. ‘Men,’ he orders, ‘the lid’s down tight on Sunday gambling in these camps. You get that straight!’

“He said it, and that meant it was law. And it’s been law in the North Star camps ever since.“What became of Holy Henry? Now, I don’t know. Anyway, he was only a few days in the camp after that incident. At one of his meetings he made some fool remark about the Big Boss seeing a great light suddenly like the Bible says St. Paul did. That settled him for keeps.

“The next morning Acey Smith meets the preacher and stops him. ‘Holy Henry,’ he says, ‘you’ve shot your bolt—you’re through here.’

“‘But, Brother Smith,’ expostulates the little fellow, ‘I’ve just barely started my work in the Lord’s vineyard.’

“‘You beat it out on the next tug to some other vineyard—and don’t come back!’ cuts in the Big Boss, cold as ice. ‘And listen: I’m not brother to you nor to any other man. Furthermore, I ain’t any St. Paul seeing lights; I’m just a fighting he-man who doesn’t pray to God nor the Devil either. All I ask both of them to do is to give me a sporting chance to make good at my job.

“‘You’ve got me wrong about stopping that Sunday gambling stunt,’ he continues. ‘I did that partly because I can’t help being on the side of the man who’s got the guts to back up his convictions when the whole crowd is against him. But I put the lid down mostly because it struck me it would be good policy for the North Star to make its men take a rest on Sunday. You go and pack your turkey—the next tug leaves at noon.’”

The skipper paused when he had concluded his story. After a silent moment he turned to Hammond. “Now what do you think of that for a hard-hearted speech?” he asked.

“Just sounds like Acey Smith,” responded Hammond, “and I take it that what he told Holy Henry was just about the truth about himself.”

“Probably—probably,” reiterated the captain in an absent sort of a way as he fixed his gaze on the city wharves they were nearing. “But at the same time, I dunno. There’s a strange streak in that same Acey Smith. There’s things he’s done and does, on the quiet, that makes us older heads with the company admire him in spite of ourselves. But you can never get to know the Big Boss, no matter how long you’re around where he is. Just when you think you know him is the time he’s liable to do or say something so sudden and unexpected it will make your blood run cold. It strikes me while he’s talking to you with his tongue his mind is always busy thinking and plotting something else—thinking up plans maybe a year ahead.”

“This coming strike will likely give him lots of scope for thinking,” observed Hammond dryly.

“Oh, he won’t have so much to do with settling or breaking the strike,” declared the captain. “Them orders will come to Slack and him from their higher-ups.”

The skipper pressed a signal to the engine-room to slow down. They were swinging in to the city wharf.

III

Hammond alighted on the docks of Kam City and walked the streets expecting at any moment a blue-coated policeman or a plain-clothes detective would step forward and take him into custody in connection with the Gildersleeve disappearance. But no such thing happened. The very boldness of his entry must have set the sleuths of the law off guard, for at no time did he even find himself under suspicious scrutiny.

One thing at first absorbed his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. That was the uncertainty of what might have happened to Josephine Stone. Where could she have gone from the island? The appearance of Acey Smith in the vicinity of the island alone in his motorboat made him the more uneasy. It all brought home to him a dark thought that he had all along been trying to fight off—that Josephine Stone some way or another must be entangled in the baffling mystery of the Nannabijou Limits. But, in spite of constantly rising perplexities, he refused to think of her in bitterness or that she had in any sense been consciously deceiving him. He would not believe that a woman such as she would give her lips to a man, as she had to him, either in spirit of coquetry or to further dark intrigue.

It was possible she had merely gone away in her motorboat for a trip along the lakeshore, or she might have come over to the city for the day. But there had been a deserted look about her cottage on the island that weighed in upon Hammond—made him feel that something else had happened. Anyway, he must hustle with the affairs he had come to the city to attend to, so that he could get back to the limits and find out for certain where she had gone.

Gold lettering on a window in the second storey of a business block across the street reminded him that he had mapped out a definite program for the day and that right here was where he must make his start. The sign marked the quarters of the American consul. There he would find the little grey man, Eulas Daly, the first on his mental list of interviews. He crossed the street and sought out the consul’s office.

A tall, slim, alert-looking young man rose from his desk and genially inquired of what service he could be.

Hammond passed him his card. “Might I see Mr. Daly?”

“Mr. Daly?” repeated the other with a puzzled air.

“Yes—Mr. Eulas Daly, American consul.”

“A mere error in names, Mr. Hammond. I am the American consul in charge here, but my name is Frank W. Freeman.”

“Oh, I see,” surmised Hammond. “There has been a change—Mr. Daly has been recently transferred to another post?”

“Quite a year ago, my friend,” replied Mr. Freeman definitely. “Mr. Daly was transferred to the Buenos Aires office in October of last year and I have been in charge here since then. Perhaps there’s something I could do for you?”

“At that rate, no. Thank you,” acknowledged Hammond concealing as best he could his amazement and chagrin. “It was a personal matter between myself and Mr. Daly. I have been misinformed as to his location.”

Hoaxed!

Inured as Hammond was becoming to trickery and mystification, this latest revelation brought about a poignant disappointment. It seemed the more he probed the incidents following his contract with Norman T. Gildersleeve to go to the Nannabijou Limits the more complicated things became. Every attempt he had made to get at the bottom of things had resulted in fresh bewilderment until everything appeared like a bedevilled dream. But it was no dream. Cold conviction was upon him that it was quite the contrary—that it was a series of baffling incidents promoted for a dark purpose by a sinister agency behind the scenes somewhere.

According to this latest piece of information, the man giving his name as Eulas Daly, United States consul at Kam City, and who had brought about his meeting with Norman T. Gildersleeve, was travelling under false colours. If he were really a friend of Norman T. Gildersleeve there should have been no necessity for that. The obvious conclusion then was that he was a confederate of those who had lured Gildersleeve off the train. No doubt it was he who framed up the mysterious message that led the millionaire to leave the coach at Moose Horn Station, for Hammond now felt certain that the note delivered while he was in consultation with the president of the International Investment Corporation was a forgery, and that Gildersleeve had either been kidnapped or had met with foul play.

Responsibility to the man who had employed him for some secret purpose that was not yet obvious demanded immediate action on his part. It would be foolhardy, he conceded, to longer attempt to fathom the mystery alone or to conceal what he knew in connection with the affair. Before he reported to the police authorities, he felt it would be wisdom to consult the principals of the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills, who, if anybody, should be closest in touch with any new developments in the Gildersleeve mystery.

He dropped into a hotel whence he telephoned the city offices of the paper company. He was told that Artemus Duff, president and general manager, was out at the works and might not be back all afternoon. Hammond decided to go out to the works, and, as they were located at the extreme easterly limits of the city, he walked down to Front Street, which ran along the harbour, to catch a street car. He was standing at a car stop when the face of a man at the wheel of a motor car that whizzed by seemed to him to be startlingly familiar.

The motor car stopped a block up at the corner above the short street leading from the city docks. A man got out, paused a second on the walk looking down the street, then disappeared into the building on the corner.

Hammond’s first breathless impression was confirmed. The little grey man who got out of the car was the man who had introduced himself on the train as Eulas Daly, American consul.The young man lost no time in reaching the spot. The man who had got out of the car was not in the drug store on the corner, so he must have passed in the double doors just next it and gone up the stairs. Hammond took the steps three at a bound. The first floor up was entirely occupied by law offices. On the double glass doors he read the gilt-lettered legend:—

WINCH, STANTON & REID
Barristers, Solicitors,
Etc.

He decided to make a try for his man in there. At the rail just beyond the doors he was met by a young woman.

“It is very important that I meet the gentleman who just came in,” he announced to her.

“Mr. Winch?”

“Yes—Mr. Winch.”

She took his card, passed into one of the glass-partitioned private offices and returned after what to Hammond seemed an unjustifiable delay. “Mr. Winch will see you in ten minutes,” she said. “Just take a seat, please.”

Hammond was forced to cool his heels till the girl, after responding to an office ’phone call, indicated that Mr. Winch was ready to receive him.

Hammond at last had struck the right trail. The little grey man gazing up at him from across the desk in the private office was none other than the bogus Eulas Daly. But Winch did not look the least flustered; in fact, there was the barest trace of the geniality he had worn in the role of the American consul.

“Mr. Hammond,” he opened quietly, “I have a shrewd notion what questions you have in mind to demand of me. But, before we proceed with that, will you kindly tell me why you have violated your contract with Mr. Gildersleeve by leaving the Nannabijou Limits without notification?”

“Because I’m tired up with the whole business,” exploded the young man. “Because I’m not quite ass enough to stick out there on an assignment from a man who’s dropped out of sight. And, in the next instance, I want to know from you why you—”

“Just a moment, just a moment,” insisted Mr. Winch. “We’ll come to that presently. Did you know that your leaving the limits at this particular time may seriously jeopardise the plans Mr. Gildersleeve had in mind?”

“Mr. Gildersleeve has disappeared.”

“Even so. That, however, does not prevent his associates carrying on, does it? As I understood it, you agreed with Mr. Gildersleeve to remain at the limits in the capacity he sent you until you received word to return, and he emphasised the injunction that you were to remain no matter what apparently unusual things happened. Is that not a fact, Mr. Hammond?”

It was a fact—Hammond felt the full force of it now. For the moment he was not prepared with a reply. He was in grips with one of the most brilliant cross-examiners in the north country.

“But we will let that pass for the moment,” the lawyer proceeded. “You haven’t consulted any one else in the city about this matter?”

“No, but I was on my way to look up President Duff of Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills when I dropped in here.”

“You acted very wisely in coming here first,” commended Mr. Winch. “I would urge you not to consult Mr. Duff or any others about it, and, I might add, it is of as deep concern to you as it is to us that Mr. Gildersleeve’s intimate affairs in this matter should not become public under any consideration.”“But you haven’t told me why, when you accosted me on the train, you found it necessary to impersonate an American consul who has long since left the city,” insisted the impetuous Hammond.

A wry smile broke faintly over the lawyer’s face. “Gildersleeve was to blame for that,” he replied. “He insisted, for some reason that was never quite clear to me, that I should not disclose my real identity to you. It may have been that, in case you did not feel inclined to consider the suggestion to meet him, he did not wish you to know his legal advisor was acting as go-between. The use of Eulas Daly’s name was almost accidental. An old card of his must have by some chance got into my case. It appealed to me that for the interim the role of Eulas Daly would do as well as any other. I did not expect to see you again until this business was over with.”

This explanation did not impress Hammond favourably, but it was evident, from the matter-of-fact manner in which he related the deception, that Winch cared little how he took it.

So Hammond feigned as great an indifference as he asked: “Then you really did the preliminary work at Mr. Gildersleeve’s instance?”

Winch plainly did not relish being kept in the position of the cross-examined. “Yes,” he replied with a shrug. “Gildersleeve had selected you as a likely man for the job during the day while you were sitting talking to a companion next table to him in the dining car. He asked me to feel you out about it, and, at the moment you dropped into the smoker that evening, I was just about to set out in search for you.”

“One more question, Mr. Winch,” pursued Hammond. “You spoke a few moments ago about his associates ‘carrying on’ while Mr. Gildersleeve is absent. Am I to take it from that he is still alive?”

“We are certain of nothing,” answered the other, “but we have hopes for the best. It is not a point over which you need waste worry; the plans for his enterprises will be carried on as before.”

“Then there is nothing I could do that would assist in clearing up the mystery of Mr. Gildersleeve’s disappearance?” insisted Hammond.

“No—not a thing. Your plan is to return to the Nannabijou Limits this afternoon as quietly as possible,” suggested the legal man. “There you had best resume your former rÔle until such time as you are communicated with.”

“That sounds very well,” impatiently commented Hammond, “but, in the event of Mr. Gildersleeve having disappeared permanently, I might remain there for a very long time without any particular purpose being served.”

“In such a case I will personally take the responsibility of instructing you when to return,” assured Winch. “Furthermore, I will take it upon myself to guarantee that you are paid for your services according to the verbal contract between yourself and Mr. Gildersleeve.”

Hammond hesitated a moment. He was thinking about Josephine Stone and the possibilities of being near her again; otherwise he would not have entertained any proposal to return to the limits under the circumstances.

Before he could reply, however, there came sounds of a loud commotion from somewhere on the streets outside; jeers, the shrill cries of young boys and the rush of many feet.

IV

Winch rose from his desk and hurried to the window. As he looked out his face went grey with alarm and his lips moved in a single gasp:—“Hell!”

Hammond was at his side in a trice. The window overlooked the short street leading up from the city dock, where, in a surging crowd of men and street urchins, two red-coated policemen of the Canadian mounted force were escorting up the street a tall, black-whiskered man in dark baggy clothes.

“Some one has made a tremendous blunder!”

Winch thus spoke his thoughts with a solemnity that betrayed his inward agitation. At that instant the man between the two mounties looked up toward Winch’s window and gave utterance to a loud fierce yell.

Hammond gave a gasp of surprise.

The prisoner was the Rev. Nathan Stubbs, camp preacher at Nannabijou Limits.