Carmen's Messenger Part 33

"I shall not forget it," Lucy said with a shudder. "While I waited and wondered why he didn't come I thought the anxiety intolerable, but it was worse after we met Walters and the drunken guide. He wanted to join us, but I knew he was somehow to blame."

"Afterwards you had to wait alone upon the glacier. That wouldn't make you think any better of him."

"It did not," Lucy agreed, with a hard, fixed look. "I--you see, Lawrence was my lover--I spent two or three hours in agonizing suspense. I knew what I should feel when I stopped, but couldn't go on with the others, because I might have kept them back. It was freezing hard and now and then a little snow fell, but I scarcely noticed this; I was listening, as I hope I shall never listen again. Sometimes the ice cracked and a snow-bridge fell into the creva.s.se, but that was all, and afterwards the silence was awful. It seemed as if the men would never come. I couldn't go to meet them because of the creva.s.se; I dream about the horrible black opening yet. Lawrence was on the other side, out of my reach; he might be slowly freezing on the _couloir_, and I couldn't help. But I knew he was suffering for Walters'

negligence or perhaps his treachery."

Foster made a sign of sympathetic comprehension. "You hate him for this?"

"Yes," said Lucy frankly; "but not altogether because I'm vindictive.

The man who could make people suffer as Lawrence and I did ought to be punished."

"He ought. Well, I'm going to warn Lawrence, and no doubt the proper thing would be to be satisfied with this, but somehow I'm not. You see, Walters probably doesn't know we suspect him."

The girl's eyes narrowed and Foster knew she was afraid, but did not think fear was her strongest emotion.

"You mean he may try again?"

"That is what I mean. If he comes back, you must watch him, but keep him here until I arrive. If it's impossible for me to come, send for the police."

"Yes," said Lucy quietly, "I'll try."

"There's another risk," said Foster. "He may send an accomplice; they're a well-organized gang. In this matter, I'd sooner trust you than Lawrence." He stopped for a moment and gave her an apologetic glance. "Perhaps I've done wrong to alarm and put this heavy load on you."

"No," she said resolutely. "I have promised to marry Lawrence and must help him."

Then she rose and gave Foster her hand. "I must thank you for your confidence. If the need comes, I don't think I'll fail you."

Foster felt satisfied when she left him. Lucy was clever and had pluck. He had given her a hard part, but she would not shrink. One could trust a woman who was fighting for her lover.

After breakfast next morning, Mrs. Stephen showed Foster some photographs of the mountains, in one or two of which Lucy and Lawrence had a place, and he asked: "Have you a portrait of Walters?"

"No; the man who took these was staying here, and one day asked Walters to join the group he was posing, but he refused."

"How did he get out of it?"

Lawrence, who had come in with Lucy, laughed. "Rather neatly. Said he was a modest sentimentalist and would sooner leave his memory printed on our hearts!"

"One must admit that he did something of the kind," Lucy remarked.

"Will you or Mrs. Stephen describe his looks?" Foster asked.

The girl did so and then inquired: "Why didn't you ask Lawrence?"

"If you want an accurate description of a man, it's better to ask a women. Our cla.s.sifications are rather vague; we say he's all right, a good sport, or perhaps an outsider. You note all his idiosyncrasies, the way he talks, the color of his hair----"

"I suppose we do," Mrs. Stephen agreed with a smile. "You are rather shrewd."

"I don't see why that should surprise my friends, but it sometimes does," Foster rejoined and went to the flag station to ask about the train.

It stopped for him an hour later and he set off again on his search for Daly, which was complicated by the need for being on his guard against a man he did not know. It looked as if Walters had told Daly that Lawrence was in British Columbia, and he had come out to join his accomplice; but, after all, if Foster did not know Walters, the man did not know him. Another thought gave him some comfort: Walters had plotted against Lawrence because his evidence might be dangerous, but probably knew nothing about Daly's blackmailing plan. The latter would, no doubt, consider any money he could extort was his private perquisite, and might try to protect his victim for a time.

As the train sped through the mountains Foster felt very much at a loss. Indeed, unless luck favored him, he thought he might as well give up the search, and by and by got off at a mining town. He had no particular reason for doing so, but felt that to go on to Vancouver would be to leave the place where his last clew broke off too far away.

The town, for the most part, was built of wood, and some of the smaller and older houses of logs, with ugly square fronts that hid the roof. A high, plank sidewalk ran down the main street, so that foot pa.s.sengers might avoid the mud, but the ruts and holes were now hidden by beaten snow. At one end stood a big smelter, which filled the place with acrid fumes, and the scream of saws rose from sheds beside the river, where rusty iron smoke-stacks towered above sawdust dumps. The green torrent was partly covered by cakes of grinding ice. All round, in marked contrast to the utilitarian ugliness below, dark pines ran up to the glittering snowfields on the shoulders of the peaks. Foster went to a big new hotel, which he found dirty and too hot. Its bare walls were cracked and exuded resin; black drops from the central heater pipes stained the rotunda floor, which was torn by the spikes on the river-Jacks' boots. An electric elevator made a horrible noise. The supper he got in the big dining-room, where an electric organ played, was, however, very good, and he afterwards sat rather drearily in the rotunda, watching the men who came in and out through the revolving door.

There is not much domestic life in the new Western towns, whose inhabitants, for the most part, live at hotels, and the rotundas of the latter are used as a lounge by anybody who prefers them to the street.

In consequence, Foster could not tell who were guests and who were not.

By and by he filled his pipe, and a man who was lighting his held out the match, which Foster took with a word of thanks. It might have been a trifling politeness, but he thought the other had waited until he was ready.

"You're a stranger," the man remarked.

"Yes," said Foster, "I've just come in."

"Looking for business?"

Foster quietly studied the man. He was neatly dressed and looked keen and alert. It was possible that he was a storekeeper, or a real estate agent, which is a common occupation in a Western town.

"Well," he said, "I don't often let a chance of a trade go past, but when you're in a strange place, the trouble is to tell if you've got a snap or not."

"Sure thing," agreed the other. "What's your line?"

"Dressed lumber."

"Then I can't do much for you, but there's quite a lot of new construction planned and the boys will get busy as soon as the frost breaks," said the man.

He went on to talk about the trade of the town and province, and on the whole Foster was glad he had been in British Columbia before and knew something about the country. It was better to be cautious and he did not want to show he came from the east.

By and by another man crossed the floor and picked up a newspaper that lay near. As he did so, he gave Foster a careless glance, and then went back to the seat he had left. This was at some distance from the heaters and near the entrance, to which people kept pa.s.sing, but it commanded the spot that Foster and his companion occupied. Foster, however, could not detect him watching them, and soon afterwards the other man went out.

Nothing happened next day, but Foster stopped and in the evening called for Pete, whom he had sent to a different hotel, and strolled down the snowy street. It was very cold and few people were about. A half-moon hung above the summit of the range, and the climbing pines cut in ragged black ma.s.ses against the snow. After crossing a bridge on the outskirts of the town they stopped and looked about.

A few half-finished houses stood among blackened stumps in a cleared belt, where there were rubbish heaps and willows were springing up, but a little farther on the forest rose in a shadowy wall. It was quiet except for the roar of the river, and Foster s.h.i.+vered as he filled his pipe.

"It's a nipping wind. I'd better go down the bank a bit before I try to get a light," he said.

He pushed through the willows growing beside the creek, but dropped his matchbox, and Pete came to help him in the search. They found it, but before he could strike a match a man stopped at the end of the bridge and looked back up the street. Foster, imagining he was the fellow who had spoken to him at the hotel, touched Pete, and they stood very still.

The man might have seen them had he glanced their way, although the branches broke the outline of their figures, but he was looking back, as if he expected somebody to come up behind, and after a few moments went on again. He crossed the clearing towards a fence that seemed to indicate a road following the edge of the forest, and vanished into the gloom of the trees. Then, as Foster lighted his pipe, another man came quickly across the bridge and took the same direction as the first.

"I wunner if yon was what ye might ca' a coincidence," Pete said softly.

"So do I, but don't see how it concerns us," Foster replied. "I think we'll take the road straight in front."

They followed a track that led through the bush at a right angle to the other. The snow was beaten firm as if by the pa.s.sage of logs or sledges, and there were broad gaps among the trees, which rose in ragged spires, sprinkled with clinging snow. In places, the track glittered in the moonlight, but, for the most part, one side was marked by a belt of gray shadow. After a time, they heard a branch spring back; then there was a crackle of undergrowth, and a man came out of an opening ahead. It was the man who had first pa.s.sed them; Foster knew him by his rather short fur coat. For no obvious reason and half-instinctively, he drew back into the gloom. The man did not see them and went on up the track.

"Yon's a weel-kent trick in my trade," Pete remarked. "When it's no'

convenient to be followed, ye send an inquisitive pairson off on anither road. But I would like to see if he has got rid o' the ither fellow."