On Secret Service Part 36

However, he figured that it wouldn't do any harm to spend a week or two in the neighborhood of the Columbia--and, as events turned out, it was a very wise move.

Partly out of curiosity and partly because it was in keeping with his self-a.s.sumed character of lumber prospector, Marks made a point of joining the gangs of men who worked all day and sometimes long into the night keeping the river clear of log jams and otherwise a.s.sisting in the movement of timber downstream. Like everyone who views these operations for the first time, he marveled at the dexterity of the loggers who perched upon the treacherous slippery trunks with as little thought for danger as if they had been crossing a country road. But their years of familiarity with the current and the logs themselves had given them a sense of balance which appeared to inure them to peril.

Nor was this ability to ride logs confined wholly to the men. Some of the girls from the near-by country often worked in with the men, handling the lighter jobs and attending to details which did not call for the possession of a great amount of strength.

One of these, Marks noted, was particularly proficient in her work.

Apparently there wasn't a man in Northport who could give her points in log riding, and the very fact that she was small and wiry provided her with a distinct advantage over men who were twice her weight. Apart from her grace and beauty, there was something extremely appealing about the girl, and Ezra found himself watching her time after time as she almost danced across the swirling, bark-covered trunks--hardly seeming to touch them as she moved.

The girl was by no means oblivious of the stranger's interest in her ability to handle at least a part of the men's work. She caught his eye the very first day he came down to the river, and after that, whenever she noted that he was present she seemed to take a new delight in skipping lightly from log to log, lingering on each just long enough to cause it to spin dangerously and then leaping to the next.

But one afternoon she tried the trick once too often. Either she miscalculated her distance or a sudden swirl of the current carried the log for which she was aiming out of her path, for her foot just touched it, slipped and, before she could recover her balance, she was in the water--surrounded by logs that threatened to crush the life out of her at any moment.

Startled by her cry for help, three of the lumbermen started toward her--but the river, like a thing alive, appeared to thwart their efforts by opening up a rift in the jam on either side, leaving a gap too wide to be leaped, and a current too strong to be risked by men who were hampered by their heavy hobnailed shoes.

Marks, who had been watching the girl, had his coat off almost as soon as she hit the water. An instant later he had discarded his shoes and had plunged in, breasting the river with long overhand strokes that carried him forward at an almost unbelievable speed. Before the men on the logs knew what was happening, the operative was beside the girl, using one hand to keep her head above water, and the other to fend off the logs which were closing in from every side.

"Quick!" he called. "A rope! A--" but the trunk of a tree, striking his head a glancing blow, cut short his cry and forced him to devote every atom of his strength to remaining afloat until a.s.sistance arrived. After an interval which appeared to be measured in hours, rather than seconds, a rope splashed within reach and the pair were hauled to safety.

The girl, apparently unhurt by her drenching, shook herself like a wet spaniel and then turned to where Marks was seated, trying to recover his breath.

"Thanks," she said, extending her hand. "I don't know who you are, stranger, but you're a man!"

"It wasn't anything to make a fuss about," returned Ezra, rising and turning suspiciously red around the ears, for it was the first time that a girl had spoken to him in that way for more years than he cared to remember. Then, with the Vermont drawl that always came to the surface when he was excited or embarra.s.sed, he added: "It was worth gettin' wet to have you speak like that."

This time it was the girl who flushed, and, with a palpable effort to cover her confusion, she turned away, stopping to call back over her shoulder, "If you'll come up to dad's place to-night I'll see that you're properly thanked."

"Dad's place?" repeated Ezra to one of the men near by. "Where's that?"

"She means her stepfather's house up the river," replied the lumberman.

"You can't miss it. Just this side the border. Ask anybody where Old Man Petersen lives."

Though the directions were rather vague, Marks started "up the river"

shortly before sunset, and found but little difficulty in locating the big house--half bungalow and half cabin--where Petersen and his stepdaughter resided, in company with half a dozen foremen of lumber gangs, and an Indian woman who had acted as nurse and chaperon and cook and general servant ever since the death of the girl's mother a number of years before.

While he was still stumbling along, trying to pierce the gloom which settled almost instantly after sunset, Marks was startled to see a white figure rise suddenly before him and to hear a feminine voice remark, "I wondered if you'd come."

"Didn't you know I would?" replied Ezra. "Your spill in the river had me scared stiff for a moment, but it was a mighty lucky accident for me."

At the girl's suggestion they seated themselves outside, being joined before long by Petersen himself, who, with more than a trace of his Slavic ancestry apparent in his voice, thanked Marks for rescuing his daughter. It was when the older man left them and the girl's figure was outlined with startling distinctness by the light from the open door, that Ezra received a shock which brought him to earth with a crash.

In the semidarkness he had been merely aware that the girl was wearing a dress which he would have characterized as "something white." But once he saw her standing in the center of the path of light which streamed from the interior of the house there could be no mistake.

The dress was of white silk!

More than that, it was made from material which Marks would have sworn had been cut from the same bolt as the sample which the Collector had shown him in Seattle!

"What's the matter, Mr. Marks?" inquired the girl, evidently noting the surprise which Ezra was unable completely to suppress. "Seen a ghost or something?"

"I thought for a moment I had," was the operative's reply, as he played for time. "It must be your dress. My--my sister had one just like it once."

"It is rather pretty, isn't it? In spite of the fact that I made it myself--out of some silk that dad--that dad brought home."

Ezra thought it best to change the subject, and as soon as he could find the opportunity said good night, with a promise to be on hand the next day to see that the plunge in the river wasn't repeated.

But the next morning he kept as far away from the girl--Fay Petersen--as he could, without appearing to make a point of the matter. He had thought the whole thing over from every angle and his conclusion was always the same. The Petersens were either hand in glove with the gang that was running the silk across the border or they were doing the smuggling themselves. The lonely cabin, the proximity to the border, the air of restraint which he had noted the previous evening (based princ.i.p.ally upon the fact that he had not been invited indoors), the silk dress--all were signs which pointed at least to a knowledge of the plot to beat the customs.

More than that, when Marks commenced to make some guarded inquiries about the family of the girl whom he had saved from drowning, he met with a decidedly cool reception.

"Old Man Petersen has some big loggin' interests in these parts,"

declared the most loquacious of his informants, "an' they say he's made a pile o' money in the last few months. Some say it's timber an' others say it's--well, it ain't n.o.body's concern how a man makes a livin' in these parts, s'long as he behaves himself."

"Isn't Petersen behaving himself?" asked Ezra.

"Stranger," was the reply, "it ain't always healthy to pry into another man's affairs. Better be satisfied with goin' to see the girl. That's more than anybody around here's allowed to do."

"So there was an air of mystery about the Petersen house, after all!"

Marks thought. It hadn't been his imagination or an idea founded solely upon the sight of the silk dress!

The next fortnight found the operative a constant and apparently a welcome visitor at the house up the river. But, hint as he might, he was never asked indoors--a fact that made him all the more determined to see what was going on. While he solaced himself with the thought that his visits were made strictly in the line of duty, that his only purpose was to discover Petersen's connection with the smuggled silk, Ezra was unable entirely to stifle another feeling--something which he hadn't known since the old days in Vermont, when the announcement of a girl's wedding to another man had caused him to leave home and seek his fortunes in Boston.

Fay Petersen was pretty. There was no denying that fact. Also she was very evidently prepossessed in favor of the man who had saved her from the river. But this fact, instead of soothing Marks's conscience, only irritated it the more. Here he was on the verge of making love to a girl--really in love with her, as he admitted to himself--and at the same time planning and hoping to send her stepfather to the penitentiary. He had hoped that the fact that Petersen was not her own father might make things a little easier for him, but the girl had shown in a number of ways that she was just as fond of her foster-parent as she would have been of her own.

"He's all the daddy I ever knew," she said one night, "and if anything ever happened to him I think it would drive me crazy," which fell far short of easing Ezra's mind, though it strengthened his determination to settle the matter definitely.

The next evening that he visited the Petersens he left a little earlier than usual, and only followed the road back to Northport sufficiently far to make certain that he was not being trailed. Then retracing his steps, he approached the house from the rear, his soft moccasins moving silently across the ground, his figure crouched until he appeared little more than a shadow between the trees.

Just as he reached the clearing which separated the dwelling from the woods, he stumbled and almost fell. His foot had caught against something which felt like the trunk of a fallen tree, but which moved with an ease entirely foreign to a log of that size.

Puzzled, Marks waited until a cloud which had concealed the moon had drifted by, and then commenced his examination. Yes, it was a log--and a big one, still damp from its immersion in the river. But it was so light that he could lift it unaided and it rang to a rap from his knuckles.

The end which he first examined was solid, but at the other end the log was a mere sh.e.l.l, not more than an inch of wood remaining inside the bark.

It was not until he discovered a round plug of wood--a stopper, which fitted precisely into the open end of the log--that the solution of the whole mystery dawned upon him. The silk had been s.h.i.+pped across the border from Canada inside the trunks of trees, hollowed out for the purpose! Wrapping the bolts in oiled silk would keep them perfectly waterproof and the plan was so simple as to be impervious to detection, save by accident.

Emboldened by his discovery, Marks slipped silently across the cleared s.p.a.ce to the shadow of the house, and thence around to the side, where a few cautious cuts of his bowie knife opened a peep hole in the shutter which covered the window. Through this he saw what he had hoped for, yet feared to find--Petersen and three of his men packing bolts of white silk in boxes for res.h.i.+pment. What was more, he caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of their conversation which told him that another consignment of the smuggled goods was due from Trail, just across the border, within the week.

Retreating as noiselessly as he had come, Marks made his way back to Northport, where he wrote two letters--or, rather, a letter and a note.

The first, addressed to the sheriff, directed that personage to collect a posse and report to Ezra Marks, of the Customs Service, on the second day following. This was forwarded by special messenger, but Marks pocketed the note and slipped it cautiously under the door of the Petersen house the next evening.

"It's a fifty-fifty split," he consoled his conscience. "The government gets the silk and the Petersens get their warning. I don't suppose I'll get anything but the devil for not landing them!"

The next morning when the sheriff and his posse arrived they found, only an empty house, but in the main room were piled boxes containing no less than thirty thousand yards of white silk--valued at something over one hundred thousand dollars. On top of the boxes was an envelope addressed to Ezra Marks, Esq., and within it a note which read, "I don't know who you are, Mr. Customs Officer, but you're a man!"

There was no signature, but the writing was distinctly feminine.

"And was that all Marks ever heard from her?" I asked, when Quinn paused.