“Don’t go away for a moment, Mr. Hammond.” Hammond watching the police with Rev. Nathan Stubbs as their captive disappeared up street, turned to see Martin Winch, the lawyer, hurry to his desk telephone.

“One—O—Two—Seven, North,” he called. “Bairdwell and Simms?—Could I speak to Mr. Simms?— Hello, Simms, Martin Winch of Winch, Stanton and Reid speaking— Simms, would you care to handle a police court case for us?— Yes, right away, if we can arrange the preliminary hearing for this afternoon— It’s a client of ours, Rev. Nathan Stubbs— Some trivial charge, yes— What we want is to get bail arranged, but there are reasons why we can’t very well be identified with the case just for the present— Will explain all that when I see you— Could you slip over to the district police court right now— Hold things until I get there with the bondsmen— That’s very decent of you, Simms, thank you.”

“We’re bound for the police station,” Winch explained as he hustled Hammond down the stairs to the street and into his car at the curb. “It might be essential to have you there, but whatever occurs keep a still mouth unless I tell you. Simms will do all the talking that is necessary.”

On the way Winch stopped opposite the entrance to a business block, and, leaving Hammond in the car, hustled upstairs. Presently, he returned with two other men who jumped into the rear seat of the car and Winch started the machine without taking time to introduce them to Hammond.

Winch led the way into the district magistrate’s office, where Rev. Nathan Stubbs was already arraigned before the magistrate. The two mounted police were swearing out papers for his incarceration on a nominal charge of vagrancy. Winch motioned Hammond to a seat in the rear of the auditorium and sat down beside him, while the two strangers, whom Hammond surmised were the bondsmen, went on up and inside the rail, where they were met by a sleek-looking young man, who, he knew, must be Simms. The prisoner straightened and a distinct look of relief came over his face.

It was all very formal, very monotonous, as preliminary hearings usually are. There was very little talking, and most of it in an undertone that didn’t carry to the point where Hammond and Winch were sitting. The most audible sound was the scratching of the magistrate’s pen. Finally it ceased, bail was put up and the magistrate announced the case adjourned until the following morning.

Winch asked Hammond to wait a moment and went forward and joined the group around the accused, now temporarily a free man on one thousand dollars security put up by the two strangers. Hammond was convinced Winch supplied the collateral.

The magistrate arose from his desk, and with customary abruptness the courtroom cleared. Winch, Simms, Rev. Nathan Stubbs and the two bondsmen left the building through a side door. Hammond found himself alone.

He was about to go in search of Winch when the latter appeared at the public entrance. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Hammond,” he apologised. “In my haste to get this beastly matter straightened out I had forgotten about you for the moment. As it happened, we did not need you, and I have to leave you to your own resources for a little while.

“Could you come up to my office, say in an hour?” Winch looked at his watch. “It’s almost five now. Come up at six. You can’t get back to the limits now until to-morrow morning at the earliest, and it is extremely important I should have a talk with you before you go.”

The arrangement did not appeal as any too attractive to the young man, particularly in view of what happened at his afternoon interview with the lawyer, but he promised to abide by it.

II

At the appointed time Hammond went up to the legal offices of Winch, Stanton and Reid. An impatient-looking young male clerk was standing by the outer rail with hat and coat on ready to leave. The balance of the office staff had departed.

“Mr. Winch is engaged just now,” said the clerk, “but he left word for you to wait here. He will call you when he is ready.” Having delivered his message, the youth pushed through the double doors and ran downstairs three steps at a time.

Hammond swore under his breath. He hadn’t bothered about his evening meal, thinking the session with Winch would be of short duration, and he was tired and hungry.

He could distinguish the rumble of low-pitched voices in Winch’s private office, but could catch no word of what was said. Five minutes dragged by—ten—twenty—thirty. At a quarter to seven Hammond was furious enough to jump up and leave without giving any notice.The door of Winch’s office opened, and, Winch, poking his head out, called: “Come in, Mr. Hammond.”

Hammond crossed the threshold and drew back in amazement. Standing by Winch’s desk was a tall man, iron-grey of hair with a keen face and deepset, piercing dark eyes.

It was Norman T. Gildersleeve!

“How do you do, Mr. Hammond?” Mr. Gildersleeve greeted the young man quietly, extending his hand. “You weren’t quite prepared to meet me here?”

“Scarcely, Mr. Gildersleeve, but”—Hammond was regaining his composure—“I’ve become quite used to running into the unexpected since I parted with you on the night of September the twenty-third.”

Gildersleeve smiled. “Quite so, quite so,” he agreed. “However, we’ve decided to acquaint you with some of the missing details that have been baffling you, Mr. Hammond, though I must confess that there are a few things that we would like to know more about ourselves. Later on—”

“Yes, at the club, after dinner,” briskly cut in Martin Winch. “You and Mr. Hammond can get together in a side room and thresh the whole thing out. We’d better hurry over if we don’t wish to be locked out of the cafÉ.”

They departed in Winch’s car. At the City Club, Norman T. Gildersleeve’s appearance created no sudden sensation among the scattered few that were present. Apparently, the New York capitalist was not readily recognised, though his picture had appeared many times in the papers since his disappearance. Hon. J. J. Slack, M.P., who was a late arrival, alone picked him out. Slack came striding over to the table where Gildersleeve, Winch and Hammond sat awaiting their order.

“As I live,” he cried, “if it isn’t Norman Gildersleeve in the flesh!”“Hush,” admonished Gildersleeve in an undertone as the other gripped his hand. “I am anxious for this matter to slip over with as little notoriety as possible.”

“But you’ve already got all the notoriety that’s coming to you,” laughed Slack. “The papers have been full of nothing else since you dropped out of sight. Where on earth have you been?”

Gildersleeve shrugged. “Oh, just on a little private hunting trip above Moose Horn,” he replied. “I needed a rest and thought I’d take it in on my way here.”

Slack’s brows went up ever so slightly. “Bag any big fellows?”

He asked it innocently enough, but Hammond thought he caught the faintest of sarcastic inflexions.

Gildersleeve ignored the question. “Now that I’m back,” he remarked, “I’m anxious to see the pulp and paper mill get under way in time. By the way, Slack, how is the North Star getting on with the poles?”

“Swimmingly, swimmingly,” repeated the politician. “Nannabijou Bay is jammed almost to the last inch with timber. Away over the contract cut, I believe.”

“That’s fine. How about delivery?”

“Starts next week, soon as we get the last of our dredging contracts off our hands,” replied Slack. “We’ll have our whole fleet of equipment on the job.”

“Then there’s nothing in this talk that is going around of a strike among your tugmen?”

“Absolutely nothing,” emphatically assured Slack. “The North Star never had a strike in its history. The men tried to put up a bluff of going out, at the instigation of a nest of agitators, but they’ll never go out—they know better than to try any of that stuff on us. See you later, Gildersleeve.”

Gildersleeve’s eyes trailed after Slack’s retreating figure in a fixed, hard glitter. “When Ananias quit the job, he never dreamed he would have so illustrious a successor,” he commented grimly. “Slack’s one grand qualification for the presidency of the North Star is his magnificent ability as an unmitigated liar.”

The meal progressed in comparative silence. It was after they had retired to the privacy of a side room that Hammond, prompted by curiosity he had until now curbed, asked casually: “By the way, Mr. Winch, what became of the camp preacher you bailed out this afternoon—the Rev. Nathan Stubbs?”

Winch looked at Gildersleeve and they both smiled cynically. “He has disappeared—vanished in thin air, as you might say,” enlightened Winch.

“And left you in the air with bail?”

“It was cheap to lose him at any price,” spoke up Gildersleeve with a frown. “He was through with his job—and damned good riddance!”

III

Hammond began to see the drift of things. “So the preacher was a detective in your employ?” he surmised.

“Exactly—and you were sent out there as a foil to keep them guessing,” replied Gildersleeve. “He went in the disguise of preacher because it was the easiest rÔle to get away with without suspicion, every sort of preacher being allowed the run of the camps on account of some eccentric whim of the superintendent.”

“And your disappearance was—also a blind?”

“You’ve got the idea. I told Slack just now I was on a hunting trip, which was true—except that I was hunting inside information, not moose. To make absolutely sure of no leaks, Winch here was the only one in the plot with me. The arrest of the bogus preacher might have been a costly blunder if we hadn’t got him out before his identity was discovered.”

“How did they get the charge of vagrancy against him?”

“The Lord only knows. Smith and the gang of crooks who use him as a crafty, unscrupulous tool in their nefarious enterprises seem to have even the police of the country in their power. At any rate, Stubbs was arrested on a nominal charge of vagrancy, but ostensibly for some unnamed crime he was supposed to have committed on the limits.

“Now, Mr. Hammond,” continued the head of the International Investment Corporation, “I think I’d better be a little more explicit about matters before I come to a new proposal I have to make to you. You are fairly well acquainted with the facts in connection with the previous struggle with the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills Company, of which my corporation is the parent, and the North Star Towing and Contracting Company, are you not?—how we succeeded in getting the rights on the limits this October, pending the opening of our mill?”

Hammond nodded. “One way and another I have picked up a fairly good notion of the situation,” he affirmed.

“What you may not know,” continued the other, “is that a former Canadian company, of which I was the head, was behind many of the rival enterprises which tried to fight the North Star in this country, and failed. In fact, we, the pioneers in development work on the North Shore, were actually driven out by the North Star, whose crafty, underhand methods and strange power over the ruling authorities in government circles made it impossible to meet them in a fair fight. I was a heavy loser through those ventures, and, I may tell you that millions are at stake in this present undertaking projected to break the backbone of the slimy North Star outfit.

“But we got the edge on them this time from the start—and we intend to keep it. Nevertheless, I had no illusions as to the intentions of the North Star since the screws were put down tight on them by the new provincial government. I knew if there were a loop-hole through which they could slip to prevent delivery of poles to our mill in time to allow of operation on the date fixed in our agreement with the government that they would take full advantage of it.

“Early last June I placed several secret agents in one guise and another in the North Star’s camps, keeping close tab on operations and sending in regular reports. They could discover no grounds for suspecting trickery, however, except that the superintendent, A. C. Smith, was inaccessible and his comings and goings in the camp were as mysterious as the man himself.

“Then one day, toward the latter end of the summer, all our secret agents, who had secured positions as clerks, cookees and lumberjacks, were summarily dismissed and given twenty-four hours to get off the limits—all with the exception of an expert ex-secret service man from Chicago, Arnold by name, who kept his place in the camp as a consumptive landscape artist. Arnold made the discovery that there was some secret rendezvous up in the hill known as the Cup of Nannabijou, to which he was convinced Acey Smith repaired, though he was never able to trace him there. He further had a theory that the unknown powers behind the North Star were kept in touch with affairs through a wireless plant secreted in the Cup.

“That was the last report we received from Arnold. News afterward appeared in the papers that Arnold’s hat had been found floating in a creek up on the hill, and it was surmised that he had fallen into the rapids of the creek and was dashed to death.

“Arnold, however, eventually turned up, alive, in Chicago, and later came to my office in New York. The truth of the matter was he had been waylaid on the banks of the creek, overpowered and drugged while he was endeavouring to find the entrance to the Cup. He recovered consciousness in the room of a waterfront hotel in this city, where he found on the dresser a parcel and a bulky envelope. The parcel contained the loose cash he had in his pockets when attacked, his watch, fountain pen and a new hat similar to the one that fell off his head into the creek during his struggle with unknown assailants. In the envelope were all the pencilled notes he had made and secreted under the floor of his shack, and under the envelope he found a railway time-table with the connections between Kam City and Chicago under-scored. Arnold was quite fed up with the way they did things in Canada, and he took the obvious hint.

“All this made it the more imperative that I place some one on the limits who could get to the bottom of what coup the North Star was planning. I decided to come North myself to keep in close touch. In order to put our rivals and their spies off the scent and lend them a false notion of security, I planned to suddenly disappear off the train before it reached Kam City. Winch was not to discover this until the following morning and then see that my remarkable disappearance was given the widest possible publicity in the newspapers.

“It was while on the way to Kam City that I was impressed with the advantages of having a foil for the camp preacher in his work—some one whose entrance into the camps at about the same time as himself would arouse Acey Smith’s curiosity and suspicion and keep him for a time off the right track. I talked the plan over with Winch, and the result was we engaged you.

“Now there was no absolute certainty that Slack would take any cognizance of my request to find you a job on the limits, and possibly less that Acey Smith would take you on, even if he did, but I built on their curiosity being so aroused that they would employ you just to get at the bottom of what you were sent there for. Your entire ignorance of any definite object on the limits would, I conjectured, further baffle Smith. In the meantime, while his suspicions were focussed on you, Stubbs was to get in his good work. The result up to the time of your leaving the limits and Stubbs’ arrest was eminently satisfactory.”

“You think my leaving precipitated Stubbs into trouble then?” asked Hammond.

“No, I wouldn’t say that,” replied Gildersleeve. “Stubbs at the last minute tried to prevent your getting on the tug before it left, but that wasn’t what was at the bottom of his arrest. However, you both did well to stay out there as long as you did. We discovered the North Star’s plot to prevent delivery of the poles in time to frustrate it, we hope.”

“The strike?”

“You’ve guessed it. And the strike, as you have likely further surmised, has been cunningly engineered by the North Star principals themselves, though, mind you, that would be a difficult thing to prove and a dangerous statement to make publicly.”

“But,” contended Hammond, “the North Star must have known that, under the existing circumstances, you could bring government pressure to bear to force them to settle the strike and deliver the poles as per the contract.”

“True, but therein lay the very advantage of our knowledge in advance they were bringing this strike on,” explained the other. “We have thus been enabled to get in private touch with the attorney-general, as well as the minister of forests and mines, so that the minute the strike breaks a fiat will come through ordering the North Star to submit their strike to a swift arbitration. We did not suppose the North Star was relying on the strike alone to tie up delivery, but took it as a means to another end, which, undoubtedly was to have the plants in their various tugs blown up and disabled. The blame would be laid at the door of extremists among the strikers and they would thus be so crippled they could not move a pole from the limits to get our mills running on time.

“But we took care of that part of it,” continued Gildersleeve. “We got the mounted police on the job of watching not only the booms at the limits, but the North Star’s waterfront property in this city as well. Incidentally, to make doubly sure of not being trapped, we wired Duluth to have tugs and equipment ready to send over to us on a moment’s notice.”

“You knew that Acey Smith is leaving for Montreal to-night?” asked Hammond.

“We did,” said Gildersleeve. “The superintendent took care to have that generally noised about; there’s even an item in both local papers to-night about his trip. It has never been Acey Smith’s habit to advertise his personal movements, so we can discount that as another ‘red herring’ drawn over the trail. Just the same we have two detectives shadowing the pulp camp superintendent’s movements.”

Hammond had to smile over the idea. “Might as well send two men to shadow a timber wolf,” he observed ironically.

“Or the Devil himself,” agreed Gildersleeve. “However, I don’t think there’s much to worry about in that direction. Now we’ve come to a matter that I would like to talk over with you privately, Mr. Hammond—if Mr. Winch doesn’t mind.”

“Not the least,” said Winch. “If you think you’ll not be over-long I’ll wait for you in the rotunda, Norman.”

“We’ll not be long, Martin,” he was assured by Gildersleeve.

IV

“There are two loose ends out at those camps I want to have cleared up right away,” briskly opened Gildersleeve when the door closed behind Winch. “The one is what the North Star has hidden up in the Cup of Nannabijou, and the other is the purpose of that girl staying out on Amethyst Island.”

Hammond started. “You mean Miss Stone?”

“Yes. The fact that you got on intimate terms with her should be a very valuable asset to us. I suppose you’ve guessed that Stubbs was the one who so cleverly brought about your meeting with her?”

“No, I had not guessed it.”

“H’m—well! Let’s get to the point, Mr. Hammond: What all did you find out from her?”

“Please be a little more explicit, Mr. Gildersleeve: Just what are you driving at?”

“I’m sorry. I may not have made myself quite clear. Just what is her little part in the mystery out at the limits?”

Hammond suppressed his irritation. “Miss Stone has absolutely no connection with the North Star’s intrigues; of that I am certain,” he replied emphatically. “She is as much mystified, I am sure, by the strange occurrences at the limits as we have been.”

“She hypnotised you into believing that?” There was a politely shaded sneer in Gildersleeve’s tone. “Now see here, Hammond, you must remember we are dealing with the cleverest coterie of arch crooks on the American continent. There is nothing in the finer arts of intrigue and blackmail they have not practised in the past to gain their ends. They have never had equals for cunning and resourcefulness.

“Such precedent alone,” he pointed out, “should warn us that that girl with her pretty face has been introduced at this particular juncture with a purpose, if I hadn’t deeper reasons for conviction in the matter. My proposal therefore is that you go back to the limits, further cultivate the acquaintance of Miss Stone and find out as quickly as possible for your own benefit as well as ours all you can about her in that direction.”

Hammond had risen. “I think we may as well break off all our connection right now, Mr. Gildersleeve,” he said coldly. “I am going back to the limits, but this time let it be understood I’m going on my own.”

Gildersleeve at a glance took in the determination written in the young man’s face. “I see—I see,” he muttered significantly. “Well, in that case, Mr. Hammond—can we expect you to respect our previous confidences?”

“So far as it may be honourable and lawful to do so, yes.”

Somehow Hammond sensed that reply rankled Gildersleeve, but the latter responded, almost suavely: “Very well then, call around at Winch’s office in the morning and there’ll be a cheque waiting you to cover payment for your services according to our contract. Goodnight!”

He held the door for Hammond to pass out.