Loe raamatut: «The Lady of North Star», lehekülg 4
“They were not all deceitful, surely?” expostulated the young man.
“No! Some are my friends still. I am going to England very shortly, and I shall stay with one of them in Westmorland.”
“Will you ever return here?”
“Most certainly. North Star is my home – I love it, and I have always felt myself safe here – until last night.”
Bracknell understood that she meant that she had felt that in this lodge in the wilderness she was safe from his cousin, and nodded his head.
“I understand,” he said, but forbore to add what was in his mind; namely, that if Dick Bracknell had not died on the previous night, North Star would be no longer the sanctuary it had been.
They walked forward for a moment without speaking. A rise in the ground covered with snow-laden saskatoon bushes hid the river from them for a little time, and as they breasted it, and the river came into view again, they surprised a pedestrian climbing up the bank. It was Mr. Rayner.
He was obviously a little startled by the meeting, but a moment later recovered himself.
“Been out for a constitutional,” he explained, “as far as the bend of the river, and I’ve had quite sufficient. Are you ready to return?”
The girl nodded, but the corporal, whose eyes were surveying the empty landscape in front, shook his head.
“I shall walk on a little,” he said, “I may be going up stream tomorrow. The Elkhorn falls in somewhere about here, doesn’t it?”
“Just beyond the bluff there,” answered Joy.
“Then I’ll take a look at it, and see what the trail is like.”
He nodded and walked on leaving Joy Gargrave to return with Rayner. He waited until they were out of sight and then descended to the frozen surface of the river, where the going was easier, the trail having been packed by prospectors moving up and down. He reached the bluff in a short time, but did not go round it. His gaze was arrested by the trail of a sled which had come down the bank to the river at a point just below the bluff, and by recent footmarks. He remembered the figure he had seen whilst walking with Joy Gargrave, unquestionably that of Rayner, for there were his footmarks turning south from the bluff. A thought struck him, and examining the snow carefully, he found no tracks running northward. A little puzzled he looked at the sled trail again, and there made the discovery that the single footmarks that ran side by side with the sled-trail, had been made not by one pair of feet but by two, some one having quite recently adapted his stride to the tracks already made. Puzzled and interested he followed the sled trail up the bank and began to trace it through the wood at the top.
An hour later, still following the sled-trail he struck the river again, and found himself exactly opposite the landing which led to North Star Lodge. As he realized this he nodded thoughtfully. The sled trail he had been following, when he had encountered Joy Gargrave, led directly across the river. But whose sled was it? And why had Rayner traced it so carefully, at the same time endeavouring to cover his own trail? The first question was one for which he had no answer, and the second was an equal puzzle. Clearly Rayner had been interested in the sled-trail since he had followed it for two miles; and plainly he was anxious to conceal his interest, since he had walked so carefully in the footsteps of the unknown driver, and had made no reference to the matter whatever. Did he know something – something that he did not wish to make known?
The corporal thought that very likely he did, but could not even conjecture what the secret knowledge might be. There was a puzzled frown on his face, as he turned in the direction of the Lodge, and when he came in sight of the house he became aware of a considerable bustle. In the open space in front two sleds were drawn up, and a considerable number of dogs were lying about or nosing in the snow for lost fragments of food. Two Indians and a half-breed were standing near the sleds smoking and talking. Bracknell recognized the half-breed for a man who had been in the service of the police as a driver.
“Hallo, Jacques,” he asked, “what brings you to North Star?”
Jacques grinned responsively. “I bring a letter – I and dese, Co’pral. Yees two dog teams to deleever one petite lettre. But we take sometings else back weeth us, I tink.”
“Indeed!” laughed the corporal. “What may that be?”
“I tink we take a lady, de lady of North Star!” The corporal gave vent to a whistle of surprise, and after a few more words passed into the house. There he met Mr. Rayner, who smiled at him.
“We have news for you, Corporal. We start for England tomorrow. A message has just reached us from my father, and Miss Gargrave’s presence is urgently required on a matter of business.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, and I think we shall all be glad to get away. That mysterious affair of last night would be rather a disturbing thing to reflect upon in a lonely place like this.”
The corporal nodded, made some casual remark, and passed to his own room, where he sat for quite a long time, smoking, with a very thoughtful look upon his face.
CHAPTER VII
JOY MAKES A REQUEST
AFTER the mid-day meal, at which Joy Gargrave did not appear, Corporal Bracknell left the house, and strolled down the road until he reached the place where the girl had passed him on the previous night. There he came to a standstill, his brow puckered in thought, then he swung to the right into the same path where he had found Koona Dick lying in the snow. He had gone but a little way however, when a noise behind him caused him to look round. Joy Gargrave was following him. He waited for her, and as she came up to him she said, “Mr. Bracknell, do you mind if I accompany you a little way? I should like to talk to you – if I may.”
“It will be a pleasure, Miss Gargrave,” he answered quite sincerely.
“Then if you do not mind we will turn aside into the wood. I – I do not care for this path, now, and we might be seen and interrupted by some one, and I have a request to make of you.”
“I am entirely at your service, Miss Gargrave.”
“Then we will turn – here.”
She indicated a place where the wood thinned a little, and turning with her, he fell into step at her side, and waited for her to begin, wondering what she might have to say to him. Half a minute passed in silence, then she began abruptly: “You will have heard that we are starting for England tomorrow?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Mr. Rayner told me. The decision is rather sudden, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “The journey is a quite unexpected one, just now. We had thought of waiting until the ice broke up and of canoeing down the river. But a letter has just come from Sir Joseph – Mr. Rayner’s father – stating that my presence is required in England at the earliest possible moment. The letter has been delayed, and Mr. Rayner tells me that it is requisite that we should start at once.”
“The business must be very urgent if you have to start on such a long journey at a day’s notice,” commented the corporal.
“It is not altogether that,” was the reply, “though Mr. Rayner insists that it is imperative that we shall make an early start. The truth is – ” she broke off, and then resumed in a quavering voice: “I am much upset by that mysterious affair of last night, and, Mr. Bracknell, I am afraid – horribly afraid.”
“Of what?” he asked, looking into her beautiful face to find it white and tense with emotion.
“Of my – my – of Dick Bracknell,” she answered quietly.
“But if he is dead, what – ”
“Do you think he is dead?” she cried sharply. “Tell me, Mr. Bracknell, what do you really think?”
“Last night,” he answered slowly, “I had no doubt whatever about it. But today – ”
“Yes, today?” she prompted anxiously.
“I am not quite so sure. His complete disappearance perplexes me. If he were dead as I thought, then some one has carried his body away; and if he were not dead, then some one must still have helped him, for he was in no condition to help himself.”
“That is what you think? Mr. Bracknell, do you know that there was a sledge in the wood to the left of that path?”
“I saw the trail,” he answered quietly, “and I saw you following it.”
“Whose sled was it?” she asked thoughtfully. “It was none of ours, and it was not yours, and it could not be that of a miner, for any such would have come to the Lodge, as we keep open house for the men on trail.”
“I do not know whose it can have been,” answered the corporal thoughtfully. “If we knew that we should have the key to the whole of this mysterious affair, possibly. But whoever it was he was anxious as far as possible to cover his tracks. He did not follow the trail up the river. He crossed to the track on the other side, and then turned off into the wood; he lit a fire there. I found the ashes after I left you this morning. He must have halted there for a little time, for the snow was pretty well trampled, and when he resumed his journey, he marched parallel with the river, and descended to the ice again just south of the bluff. I found his tracks coming down the bank there, and I imagine that from the point he must have followed the trail up-river.”
“Whoever could he be?” asked the girl in perplexity.
“I do not know. But tomorrow I am going to find out; my dogs will be fresh then, and after the rest I shall be able to travel fast. Of one thing I am convinced: whoever the man was he was not your husband. Dick Bracknell, as I said just now, was in no condition to help himself, certainly not to take the trail.”
For a moment Joy Gargrave did not speak, and as he looked at her he wondered what her thoughts were. He was still wondering when she broke the silence.
“Mr. Bracknell, I am afraid, terribly afraid. Somehow I feel that your cousin is not dead. I feel that he will come back here, and that is why we are hurrying away tomorrow morning. The letter from Sir Joseph Rayner serves for an excuse. Do you understand?”
“I think I do,” answered the corporal sympathetically. “You are afraid that Dick, having found out where you are, will return to worry you?”
“You know him, I have told you how I was trapped into marrying him, do you think that he is the man to leave me in peace?”
“He is likely to consult only his own interests,” agreed her companion.
“But I shall be safe from him in England, if what you tell me is true. He dare not go there openly, and if he were to appear at all, I should be able to protect myself, by invoking the police.”
“The police would only be too happy to afford you protection here,” answered the corporal earnestly.
The girl looked at him with grateful eyes. “You mean yourself. Yes! I know, but there is another service that I want from you – ”
“You have but to name it, Miss Gargrave,” he answered as she hesitated. “So far as duty allows, I am entirely at your service. Tell me what it is that I can do for you.”
“You can find out for me whether Dick Bracknell is alive or dead.”
The corporal had not anticipated the request, and he was a little startled by it. Instantly his mind reverted to the conversation he had had with Rayner. He recalled the hopes which the latter entertained, and wondered if this white-faced girl at his side was willing to help their realization. As that possibility flashed into his mind, he was conscious of a constriction about his heart. But he gave no sign.
“I should be compelled to do that in any case,” he answered quietly. “I cannot relinquish the work on which I started until I know what has become of the man who is known at headquarters as Koona Dick. Some one must know about him – probably the driver of the sled whose trail I followed, and I’ve got to find out. Vague reports are not regarded as satisfactory by the heads of the force.”
“You will let me know?” she asked instantly.
“I shall be glad to do so,” he answered quietly, and again he was conscious of the tightening about his heart.
“You see,” she explained, “my position is so anomalous. All my little world with the exception of my Newnham friend and yourself, my foster-sister, whom I told only last night, thinks of me as a spinster.”
“You are sure Mr. Rayner does not know of your marriage?” asked the corporal quickly, as a thought struck him.
“I am quite sure,” answered Joy readily, without giving any indication that she found any special significance in the question. “You see the part played by Lady Alcombe was not very credible, and I used my knowledge of it to ensure her silence. I wrote to her and told her that if the wedding was not kept secret, I should proclaim all that had happened to the world. Her vulnerable spot is the position she holds in society, and she knew how that would suffer if it became a matter of common knowledge that for a bribe she had schemed to marry to a scamp an innocent girl left in her charge. She wrote me a short note in reply, in which she said, that she would forget that the marriage had even taken place, and that I need not fear that it would ever become known. That is why I am so sure Mr. Rayner does not know. Lady Alcombe dare not betray me.”
Bracknell nodded. “I dare say you are right, but of course you cannot marry again until you are sure of that – ”
“I do not want to marry again!” interrupted the girl quickly, the blood flaming in her pale face. “Why should you think that I do, Mr. Bracknell?”
As the corporal met her blue eyes, clear and unshadowed by guile, his heart grew suddenly light, and on the moment he dismissed from his mind the thought that Joy Gargrave in any way shared Mr. Rayner’s aspirations. He laughed cheerfully as he replied, “I did not say that I thought you wished to marry again, Miss Gargrave. I was merely stating the law on the matter, and there is no personal significance to be attached to such a statement.”
Joy Gargrave smiled austerely. “I am not likely ever to marry again,” she said. “Once bitten, twice shy, you know.”
The corporal smiled in return, but as he marked her loveliness and remembered the figure at which the Northland had estimated Rolf Gargrave’s wealth, he thought to himself that many a man would endeavour to persuade her to a different mind, but he did not say so.
“Miss Gargrave, one never knows what the future holds – but whatever happens you can count me as your friend. I am not proud of my relationship to Dick Bracknell, even though it does make me some sort of a cousin to you. There is nothing that I will not do to serve you, and if anything that I learn will deliver you from your anomalous position, you may rest assured that I will let you know of it at the earliest possible moment.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bracknell,” she answered simply. “I shall be very grateful.”
They walked on a little way without speaking, then she turned to him suddenly. “You are my cousin, more or less, Mr. Bracknell, but I do not know your christian name.”
“It is Roger,” he answered smilingly.
“And if at any time I want to communicate with you, where – ”
“Headquarters at Regina. That will always find me sooner or later, no matter what part of the Territory I may be in.”
“I am glad to know that,” she said, “and if at any time you have news for me, any letter sent care of Sir Joseph Rayner will reach me.” She turned in her steps as she spoke. “I think I had better return now. There is much to do at the Lodge, and they will miss me. But I am glad to have met you, and glad to think that I can count you among my friends.”
She held out her mittened hand, and as he took it Roger Bracknell felt the blood surge warmly in his face, and in his grey eyes as he looked at her there was a flame that had she observed it would have told her that she had secured more than a friend. But she did not see it, and as she walked away there was a pensive look on the beautiful face.
The next day Corporal Bracknell, with his own team ready harnessed, watched Joy Gargrave and her escort take their departure. Four full teams of dogs drew their equipment, and snow having fallen during the night, Joy and her foster-sister wore the great webbed snowshoes of the North. They stood making their good-byes, then the half-breed driver gave the word.
“Mooch! Mooch! Linka!”
The leading dog gave a yelp, and strained at his collar, and a moment later all the teams were moving southward. Joy Gargrave waved her hand as she moved on, and he waved back and stood watching till the cavalcade was out of sight, then turning to his own dogs, he gave the word to move and set his face towards the snowy solitudes of the North.
CHAPTER VIII
KOONA DICK
AS HE TRAVELLED, Roger Bracknell’s mind was busy with the events of the past two days, and with the information he had gathered. That his cousin Dick should have turned out to be the man whose trail he had followed had occasioned no wonder after the first shock of surprise; but the mystery of the attack upon him, and of his subsequent disappearance, afforded him much food for thought. Some one had determined that Dick Bracknell should die, and some one had shot him. The question was – who was it? He had dismissed from his mind any idea that Joy herself had any complicity in that business, her frankness having quite killed the suspicions he had at first been inclined to entertain.
His thoughts swung round to Rayner. Did he know anything of the matter? He could find no satisfactory answer. It was true that immediately after the crime he had seen him entering the Lodge with a rifle, and he had certainly shown a keen interest about the sled which had waited in the wood, but from the first he had casually offered a sufficient explanation, and the instinct which turns every man into an amateur detective on the occasion of a mysterious crime would easily account for the second.
Besides – Rayner could have had nothing to do with the disappearance of Dick Bracknell’s body, for the corporal was quite sure that he had never left the house until he had done so with himself. True, he had betrayed a certain knowledge as to the place where the crime had been committed, but he himself might easily have communicated that knowledge to Rayner, though he could not recollect having done so, whilst on the other hand, the motive for such a serious crime as murder was not immediately apparent. It was true that Rayner designed to marry Joy Gargrave, but that of itself was not a sufficient motive unless he knew of the previous marriage.
“But does Rayner know of that marriage?” He uttered the question aloud, and answered it the same way, speech helping him to precipitate his thoughts.
“I think not! The girl is so positive … and Rayner has given no sign. There’s the deuce of a coil to be unwound somehow.”
He reached the bluff, turned it, and saw the junction of the tributary Elkhorn with the main river. When he reached it he halted his dogs and made a careful inspection of the trail. The new snow had drifted, but the thick pinewood which grew on the banks of the smaller stream had turned the snow in places, and about two hundred yards up, he came on the half-obliterated traces of sled-runners. He examined them carefully, stood for a minute or two in thought, then nodded his head.
“Turned up here out of the main trail, and will probably have made a camp somewhere. Anyway it is worth trying.”
He went back for his dogs, and turned up the Elkhorn. The trail at first was not very bad, and he made a good pace; but after the first two miles it worsened, and he struck an abundance of soft snow, presenting an absolutely virgin surface. This made the going very hard, and he marched ahead of his labouring dogs, packing the snow with the great webbed shoes of the North, lifting each foot clear almost perpendicularly, then planting it down to harden the surface for his canine team. Three miles or so he made, in spite of the cold, sweating like a bull, and then he reached a place where the wind had swept the ice like a broom leaving it almost clear of snow.
He examined the frozen surface, and after a little search found the marks of sled-runners on the ice. He searched further, but found nothing save these twin scars running parallel to one another. But one sled had passed that way, and he was sure that he was on the right track. A smile of satisfaction came on his lean face, and seating himself, on the sled he swung forward at a rattling pace.
The short day was coming to a close when the leading dog yelped suddenly, and with his followers began to manifest signs of canine excitement. Roger Bracknell himself sniffed the keen air. There was a fire somewhere, for the unmistakable odour of burning resinous wood reached his nostrils. He stepped off the sled, and hanging on to the gee-pole tried to check the pace of his team. His efforts however, were in vain. The dogs bent their heads to the ice and threw themselves against the collars, hurrying forward, as they had not hurried all day. They too smelt the burning pinewood, and to them it signified not merely human habitation, but freedom from the traces, and the frozen salmon which constituted their evening meal.
The corporal, finding his endeavours to restrain them vain, prepared for eventualities. Hanging on to the sled with one hand, with the other he unfastened the holster wherein he carried his service pistol. He did not know what to expect. That aromatic odour might come from an Indian tepee, from the hut of some lonely prospecting party, or from the camp of the man he was following; in any case it was as well to be prepared.
The leading dog yelped again, and the others responded in joyful chorus. The team swung suddenly towards the left bank, up a slight incline towards a clearing in the wood. Out of the gathering gloom a faint glow appeared, and then the shadowy outline of a hut. The glow was from a frosted parchment window, and the hut was the typical miner’s cabin of the North. Corporal Bracknell smiled and dropped his hand from the pistol-holster, finding the look of the place altogether reassuring. The dogs came to a standstill on the packed snow in front of the cabin, yelping delight, and whip in hand Bracknell waited, listening. If there were dogs at the cabin they might be expected to charge the new-comers, who fastened in the traces would be heavily handicapped. The charge he waited for did not come. There was no challenging answer to the yelping of his own team, and apparently the owner of the cabin was without dogs, or if he owned a team it was absent from home. This fact further reassured him and threw him still more off his guard. He stepped forward to the door of the cabin and rapped upon it with the butt-end of his dog-whip.
“Come in,” answered a hoarse voice.
The corporal felt for the moose-hide thong that worked the wooden catch, opened the door, and stepping inside turned to close it behind him.
“That’s right,” said the voice again. “Now put your hands up.”
The corporal jumped and his hands moved instinctively towards the holster as he swung round.
“Don’t!” snapped the voice. “Put them up, or by – ” Bracknell recognized the folly of resistance, and as he raised his hands above his head, his eyes swept the cabin for the speaker. A slush lamp against the wall, and the glow from the roaring Yukon stove gave light to the middle of the cabin, but the corners were in comparative darkness, and it was a second or two before he located the owner of the voice. Then, in a bunk in the corner furthest from the door, he caught sight of a man propped among furs and blankets. On the edge of the bunk rested a hand which held a heavy pistol pointing at himself. The face that he looked into was that which he had last seen in death-like repose in the snow near North Star Lodge – the face of Koona Dick. The eyes of the latter glittered wickedly in the firelight, and whilst the officer waited the voice spoke again, mockingly.
“The end of the long trail – hey, bobby?”
The corporal did not reply. Apparently his cousin was alone and comparatively helpless, or he would scarcely have waited his entrance lying in the bunk. His eyes measured the distance between them and he speculated what chance there was of the success of a sudden spring proving successful. But the man on the bunk evidently divined what was passing through his mind, for a second later he broke the silence again.
“I wouldn’t try it, officer, not if I were you. I may be a sick man, but I can still shoot.”
Roger Bracknell looked at the hand resting on the edge of the bunk. It was perfectly steady. He recognized the hopelessness of any attack proving successful, until the sick man was off his guard, and nodded casually.
“I give you best,” he answered, speaking for the first time.
The man on the bunk gave a chuckling laugh. “You seem wise,” he replied, “and if you do just what I tell you you’ll prove you are. You’ve got a gun, of course, in that holster of yours? Well, when I give the word, you will unbuckle the belt, and fling it pistol and all under the bunk here. No tricks, mind you. If your hand strays an inch from the buckle, I fire, and I warn you that I am a dead shot… Now you can get to work.”
The corporal dropped his hands to his belt, and as his fingers worked at the stiff buckle, wondered if he might run the risk of trying for his pistol.
“Quick! You’re too long!” cried the man in the bunk. Roger Bracknell hesitated for a second. His fingers fumbled at the buckle, then the belt swung loose in his hands.
“Throw it!” came the command in a peremptory voice.
The corporal threw it along the floor and it slid to the edge of the bunk, then his cousin laughed again.
“‘Wisdom is justified of her children.’ If you had a pious upbringing, bobby, you will recognize the Scripture. And now having got rid of your arsenal, you can sit down at the table, and put your hands upon it. That will be easier for you than standing there trying to touch the roof, but I warn you again – no monkey tricks or – ”
The pistol moved significantly, and the corporal moved towards the rough table, constructed out of a packing case.
“Keep your hands up, and shove that stool forward with your feet.”
The “stool” referred to was a log of wood, which as the corporal recognized, would prove a very good missile if a man had time to lift and throw it. Evidently his mentor realized that also, and was taking no chances, so, still at the pistol point, Corporal Bracknell pushed the log forward to the table, and then on his captor’s instructions seated himself with his arms resting on the table.
“Now,” said the sick man, with a short laugh, “we can talk in peace.”
“Talk away,” answered the corporal cheerfully.
“I will,” replied the other sharply. “There’s a question that I want to ask you… Why did you pot me in the wood at North Star Lodge three nights ago? That sort of thing is against the rules of your service, isn’t it?”
“It is,” answered the corporal, “and the answer to your other question is that I didn’t pot you.”
“You didn’t, hey? Then who the devil did?”
“I would give a goodish bit to know,” was the corporal’s reply. “The thing is a mystery to me.”
“But it’s no mystery to me,” answered the other, a trifle passionately. “You did it, and it’s no use trying to bluff me. I know you’ve been on my track for weeks, and that you were determined to get me by fair means or foul. If you think that lying is going to help you – ”
“I am not lying,” interrupted Roger Bracknell. “I give you my word of honour that I am telling you the truth – and I say that not because I am afraid. It is true that I was trailing you, and that I was close at your heels at North Star. But I never shot you, I found you lying in the snow, as I thought, dead, but I’d nothing whatever to do with the shooting.”
“The devil!” cried the sick man, and from his tones the corporal knew that he was convinced. “Then who did it?”
The corporal saw a chance of further surprising his questioner – and took it.
“Well, there was the person whom you went to meet – your wife, you know.”
“My wife!” There was amazement in Dick Bracknell’s tones, and for a moment after the exclamation he stared at the officer like the man who could not believe his ears.
“Yes, your wife, Joy Gargrave,” answered the corporal steadily. “You went to meet her in the wood, didn’t you?”
Dick Bracknell did not reply. His lips pursed themselves and he began to whistle thoughtfully to himself the while he stared at the man whose question he left unanswered. The corporal smiled a little, and continued —
“I should think that you would be the first to admit that Joy Gargrave was not without grievances sufficient to warrant extreme action on her part.”
“You can put that notion out of your noddle, at once,” replied the other harshly. “If you know Joy at all, you know that the idea of shooting me is the very last thing that would enter her head. She’s not that sort.”
The corporal remembered Joy’s confession and smiled whimsically at the unconscious irony of her husband’s testimony, then, still trying to move the other to some indiscretion of speech, he answered quietly, “You believe in Joy Gargrave? But have you thought what she must feel like? There are plenty of women who – ”
“Drop it,” broke in the sick man harshly. “The motion is preposterous. I won’t listen to it; and I warn you, I don’t share Joy’s scruples about shooting.”
“Nor about anything else, I imagine?” answered the corporal with a short laugh. “But we can easily settle whether Joy did it or not. Which side did the shot come from?”
“Now you’re asking me something,” answered the wounded man. “There were two shots, and they came from both sides of me. It was a regular ambuscade, and whoever fired meant to get me.”
“Where were you hit?” asked the corporal.
“Left shoulder! Drilled clean through,” was the reply.
“And which way were you facing when the thing happened?” asked the corporal. “Think carefully. It is rather important.”
“I was facing up the path, with my back to the main road. I had heard something moving and had turned round, just at the moment.”
“That settles it,” answered the corporal emphatically. “It was the shot from the left that did for you, and your wife was on the right.”
