"If he's nothing to you, why do you point that rifle at me?"
"I tell you he is nothing to us. But my father wouldn't betray a dog. And I won't. That's all. Now get out of these woods and come back to-morrow. Nobody'll interfere with you then."
Stormont smiled: "Eve," he said, "do you really think me as yellow as that?"
Her blue eyes flashed a terrible warning, but, in the same instant, he had caught her rifle, twisting it out of her grasp as it exploded.
The detonation dazed her; then, as he flung the rifle into the water, she caught him by neck and belt and flung him bodily into the spruces.
But she fell with him; he held her twisting and struggling with all her superb and supple strength; staggered to his feet, still mastering her; and, as she struggled, sobbing, locked hot and panting in his arms, he snapped a pair of handcuffs on her wrists and flung her aside.
She fell on both knees, got up, shoulder deep in spruce, blood running from her lip over her chin.
The trooper took her by the arm. She was trembling all over. He took a thin steel chain and padlock from his pocket, passed the links around her steel-bound wrists, and fastened her to a young birch tree.
Then, drawing his pistol from its holster, he went swiftly forward through the spruces.
When he saw the cleft in the rocky flank of Star Peak, he walked straight to the black hole which confronted him.
"Come out of there," he said distinctly.
After a few seconds Smith came out.
"Good God!" said Stormont in a low voice. "What are you doing here, Darragh?"
Darragh came close and rested one hand on Stormont's shoulder:
"Don't crab my game, Stormont. I never dreamed you were in the Constabulary or I'd have let you know."
"Are you Hal Smith?"
"I sure am. Where's that girl?"
"Handcuffed out yonder."
"Then for God's sake go back and act as if you hadn't found me. Tell Mayor Chandler that I'm after bigger game than he is."
"Clinch?"
"Stormont, I'm here to protect Mike Clinch. Tell the Mayor not to touch him. The men I'm after are going to try to rob him. I don't want them to because – well, I'm going to rob him myself."
Stormont stared.
"You must stand by me," said Darragh. "So must the Mayor. He knows me through and through. Tell him to forget that hold-up. I stopped that man Sard. I frisked him. Tell the Mayor. I'll keep in touch with him."
"Of course," said Stormont, "that settles it."
"Thanks, old chap. Now go back to that girl and let her believe that you never found me."
A slight smile touched their eyes. Both instinctively saluted. Then they shook hands; Darragh, alias Hal Smith, went back into the hemlock-shaded hole in the rocks; Trooper Stormont walked slowly down through the spruces.
When Eve saw him returning empty handed, something flashed in her pallid face like sunlight across snow.
Stormont passed her, went to the water's edge, soaked a spicy handful of sphagnum moss in the icy water, came back and wiped the blood from her face.
The girl seemed astounded; her face surged in vivid colour as he unlocked the handcuffs and pocketed them and the little steel chain.
Her lip was bleeding again. He washed it with wet moss, took a clean handkerchief from the breast of his tunic and laid it against her mouth.
"Hold it there," he said.
Mechanically she raised her hand to support the compress. Stormont went back to the shore, recovered her rifle from the shallow water, and returned with it.
As she made no motion to take it, he stood it against the tree to which he had tied her.
Then he came close to her where she stood holding his handkerchief against her mouth and looking at him out of steady eyes as deeply blue as gentian blossoms.
"Eve," he said, "you win. But you won't forgive me… I wish we could be friends, some day… We never can, now… Good-bye."
Neither spoke again. Then, of a sudden, the girl's eyes filled; and Trooper Stormont caught her free hand and kissed it; – kissed it again and again, – dropped it and went striding away through the underbrush which was now all rosy with the rays of sunset.
After he had disappeared, the girl, Eve, went to the cleft in the rocks above.
"Come out," she said contemptuously. "It's a good thing you hid, because there was a real man after you; and God help you if he ever finds you!"
Hal Smith came out.
"Pack in your meat," said the girl curtly, and flung his rifle across her shoulder.
Through the ruddy afterglow she led the way homeward, a man's handkerchief pressed to her wounded mouth, her eyes preoccupied with the strangest thoughts that ever had stirred her virgin mind.
Behind her walked Darragh with his load of venison and his alias, – and his tongue in his cheek.
Thus began the preliminaries toward the ultimate undoing of Mike Clinch. Fate, Chance, and Destiny had undertaken the job in earnest.
Episode Two
THE RULING PASSION
NOBODY understood how José Quintana had slipped through the Secret Service net spread for him at every port.
The United States authorities did not know why Quintana had come to America. They realised merely that he arrived for no good purpose; and they had meant to arrest and hold him for extradition if requested; for deportation as an undesirable alien anyway.
Only two men in America knew that Quintana had come to the United States for the purpose of recovering the famous "Flaming Jewel," stolen by him from the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia; and stolen from Quintana, in turn, by a private soldier in an American Forestry Regiment, on leave in Paris. This soldier's name, probably, was Michael Clinch.
One of the men who knew why Quintana might come to America was James Darragh, recently of the Military Intelligence, but now passing as a hold-up man under the name of Hal Smith, and actually in the employment of Clinch at his disreputable "hotel" at Star Pond in the North Woods.
The other man who knew why Quintana had come to America was Emanuel Sard, a Levantine diamond broker of New York, Quintana's agent in America.
Now, as the October days passed without any report of Quintana's detention, Darragh, known as Hal Smith at Clinch's dump, began to suspect that Quintana had already slid into America through the meshes of the police.
If so, this desperate international criminal could be expected at Clinch's under some guise or other, piloted thither by Emanuel Sard.
So Hal Smith, whose duty was to wash dishes, do chores, and also to supply Clinch's with "mountain beef" – or deer taken illegally – made it convenient to prowl every day in the vicinity of the Ghost Lake road.
He was perfectly familiar with Emanuel Sard's squat features and parrot nose, having robbed Mr. Sard of Quintana's cipher and of $4,000 at pistol point. And one morning, while roving around the guide's quarters at Ghost Lake Inn, Smith beheld Sard himself on the hotel veranda, in company with five strangers of foreign aspect.
During the midday dinner Smith, on pretense of enquiring for a guide's license, got a look at the Inn ledger. Sard's signature was on it, followed by the names of Henri Picquet, Nicolas Salzar, Victor Georgiades, Harry Beck, and José Sanchez. And Smith went back through the wilderness to Star Pond, convinced that one of these gentlemen was Quintana, and the remainder, Quintana's gang; and that they were here to do murder if necessary in their remorseless quest of "The Flaming