CHAPTER III THE CORPORAL FINDS A LETTER

“DISAPPEARED!” As he echoed the corporal’s word in a hoarse voice, Rayner looked hastily and fearfully into the shadows, and then added, “Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” answered Corporal Bracknell tersely. “This is the place where he lay. That is his blood in the snow there; and you can, see the print of his body if you look.”

“Then—then he was not dead after all?” asked Rayner in a strange voice.

“I would not say that. I would have taken my oath that there was no life in him. I even felt his heart!”

“But in that case, how has he got away?” inquired Rayner quickly. “Dead men do not walk away from the place where they die.”

“No,” answered the corporal quietly. “But they may be carried. It seems to me that there are more footmarks here than there were when I came on Koona Dick lying in the track; but I cannot be quite sure of that, as I did not look about very carefully.”

“Why not?” asked the other a trifle critically. “I should have thought that would have been the very first thing that you would have done.”

[25]

“In ordinary circumstances it would,” was the reply, “but I had left my team in the main track, and to do that overlong is not wise. One might get separated from it, you know. Also I had already guessed that there was a homestead not very far away, and it seemed the sensible thing to go there first, and learn anything that I could that would help in the elucidation of the mystery of the dead man.”

“Um! And did you learn anything?”

“More than I expected.”

“Indeed!” answered Rayner sharply. There was a new note in his voice, and the corporal felt rather than saw that the other was staring at him in the darkness. “May I ask what that was?”

“It was that you were acquainted with Koona Dick.”

“I have never spoken to him in my life,” replied Rayner quickly.

“But you knew him or you had heard of him. I saw you start when I mentioned his name at table.”

His companion laughed uneasily. “You have sharper eyes than I gave you credit for, Corporal Bracknell. It is quite true that I had heard of Koona Dick. I heard of him in my journey up, and what I heard was not to his credit. Your presence here implied that he was in this district, and one had no hankering for such an unpleasant neighbour.”

“And Miss Gargrave, had she only heard of him also?”

As he asked the question the aurora flashed[26] suddenly in the Northern sky, and in its light reflected from the snow the corporal saw that Rayner’s face was white and troubled. The light faded almost as suddenly as it flamed, and with that look in his mind the policeman waited for the answer to his question. It seemed to be an intolerable time before Rayner spoke in a hoarse and shaking voice.

“How can I tell you? If you feel that it is absolutely necessary to obtain an answer to that question, I can only suggest that you should approach Miss Gargrave herself.”

In his heart Bracknell knew that this answer was a mere evasion. Rayner knew more than he was willing to confess, and the policeman wondered what it was, and what link there was between him and Miss Gargrave and Koona Dick. He considered a moment, and then deliberately forced the pace.

“I have not told you everything, Mr. Rayner. I do not know what relation you stand to Miss Gargrave, but—”

“I am her cousin,” interrupted Rayner, “and my father is her guardian and lawyer.”

“Is that so?” answered the corporal. “Then there is more reason why I should tell you what I intended to do. I have not told you yet how I came to find Koona Dick. I had turned in from the river because I smelt burning wood. I thought that maybe the man I was after had encamped somewhere in this immediate neighbourhood. I found the avenue leading to North Star Lodge and began to follow it. I turned from the main road[27] into the wood on a fresh sled-trail which I imagined and still imagine was Koona Dick’s. I had gone only a little way, when, as I have already told you, I heard two rifle shots and a woman’s cry in quick succession to each other. I ran back to the road, and after waiting a moment I began to follow it. I had reached the point where this path cuts into it, when happening to glance across I saw a woman coming towards me across the snow. I halted in the shadows, meaning to speak to her, but I caught sight of her face, and she did not see either my team or myself.”

“You saw her face—plainly?” interrupted his listener quickly.

“Quite plainly.”

“And would you recognize it again?”

“I have already done so,” answered the corporal quietly.

“Indeed?”

“Yes, the woman was your cousin, Miss Gargrave.”

“My dear fellow,” cried Rayner, breaking into discordant laughter. “You surely are not going to charge Joy with shooting Koona Dick?”

The corporal was not disturbed by the laughter. To his ears it sounded forced, and the contemptuous protest in his companion’s words left him unmoved.

“There is one little thing that I have not told you, Mr. Rayner, and to me it seems to be significant. Miss Gargrave carried a rifle.”

“There is nothing strange or even significant in that,” replied the other quickly. “My cousin is an ardent sportswoman, and had probably been[28] after game. Besides, as I told you, I think, there are timber wolves about. They are dangerous beasts in hard weather, and one does not go far unarmed in this district.”

Corporal Bracknell answered these suggestions by some of his own. “Miss Gargrave was running down the path which led to this spot. To my eyes she was plainly distraught, and I may remind you that she fainted when I told you that Koona Dick was dead.”

Rayner laughed again hardly. “You are persistent, Corporal, but there is nothing in a girl fainting when she is told rather dramatically that a man has been shot dead almost at her own door. Aren’t you a little imaginative? Indeed,” he laughed again, “having heard a rifle shot have you not imagined all the rest? I am told that a lonely trail plays the deuce with a man’s nerves. You say that you saw Koona Dick lying here, dead; but he is not here—now, and he can’t—”

“I haven’t imagined that anyhow,” interrupted Bracknell, pointing to the dark stain on the snow, “and I haven’t imagined any of the other things I have told you, either. Believe me, Mr. Rayner, my nerves are in perfect order.”

Rayner stamped his feet in the snow. “Possibly! But there is no need that we should freeze, whilst we discuss the point, is there? I do not understand police procedure, but if you have quite finished here, I think we might return to the house. I have no desire to lose my toes through frost-bite.”

“I can do nothing here, tonight,” replied[29] Bracknell quickly. “I shall have to wait until morning. I am quite ready to return.”

Rayner did not reply. Swinging on his heel, he began to move in the direction of the lodge. The corporal followed him in silence, and they had almost reached the main-road when something light caught his moccasined foot. He looked down and discerned what looked like a piece of paper. Stooping quickly, he picked it up, and crushed it in his mitten, as his companion turned round, as if to wait for him. At first he thought Rayner must have seen him make the find; but as the other spoke, was reassured.

“I hope you will not disturb my cousin unnecessarily tonight, Corporal Bracknell.”

“I shall not trouble her at all, Mr Rayner. There is no need that I should—yet.”

“Nor at any other time, I hope.”

“I share that hope, most fervently,” answered Bracknell, with an earnestness that the other evidently found convincing, for he did not speak again until they were seated in the front of the stove in the room where they had dined. Then he tried to make light of the situation. “Corporal,” he laughed, “the laws of hospitality are sacred in the North. Even though you feel you must drag us all down as your prisoners, they must be honoured. We have some very old brandy here, indeed it is incredibly old, and its quality is equal to its age. You will take a glass with me, and another cigar?”

“I shall be delighted, thank you, Mr. Rayner.”

Rayner produced a decanter and glasses, and[30] poured out the brandy, and whilst the officer was lighting his cigar, Miss La Farge entered the room.

“How is Joy?” asked Rayner quickly.

“Better, thank you. She sent me to make her excuses for tonight; and to ask how you had sped.”

“Only fairly,” answered Rayner, with a smiling glance at the corporal. “We did not find the dead man whom Mr. Bracknell averred he saw.”

“That is very strange,” said the girl wonderingly.

“Yes,” was the reply, “very strange, so strange indeed that I have tried to persuade the corporal that all that he has told us is just a snow-dream.”

“But you have not persuaded him?” asked Miss La Farge, with a quick glance at the corporal’s face.

It was Bracknell himself who answered. “No, I have not, as yet, been persuaded, Miss La Farge.”

“My eloquence was wasted, Babette,” laughed Rayner easily. “Corporal Bracknell has that British stubbornness which is a nuisance to our friends and a terror to our enemies.”

Miss La Farge laughed as she replied, “That is a characteristic of the male persuasion.”

With a smiling nod she withdrew, closing the door behind her, and Rayner rose from his chair and drew a curtain of moose-hide over the door.

“Miss La Farge is a good companion for my cousin.”

“From French Canada, I suppose?” queried the corporal.

“Father was of that stock, but her mother was[31] partly of Scotch descent, partly native. Joy’s mother died young, and Babette’s brought them up together. They are foster-sisters and inseparables.”

Bracknell nodded, and sipped the brandy thoughtfully, and the other continued, “I do not know what will happen when Joy gets married.”

“Is that an early possibility?” asked the corporal, with a sudden quickening of interest.

“I hope so,” replied Rayner, with a bland smile.

The corporal made the inference that he was meant to make. “Then you—”

“It is not quite settled yet, but I hope it will be very shortly. The wilderness years necessitated by her father’s will are nearly over, and I am to take her ‘out’ from here. I hope then that we shall be married, and live in England.”

For a moment the corporal did not reply. He looked at the bland, mask-like face before him, saw, as he had already noted, that the steel-like blue eyes were too close together, that the lips were sensual; and as he did so, the beautiful face of Joy Gargrave, as he had seen it at table, rose before him, and somehow he found Rayner’s suggestion of coming wedlock utterly distasteful. The man, as he felt instinctively, was not a man to be trusted with a girl’s happiness. Why he should have that feeling he could not tell; but it was there, and it was only by an effort that he was able to reply affably.

“For Miss Gargrave, England, no doubt, is much to be preferred.”

“Much!” agreed Rayner, then added, “Having[32] told you so much, you can understand that I feel rather inclined to resent your suggestion that Joy has anything to do with the mysterious affair out in the wood there. She may have heard the name of Koona Dick as I myself have, but that she knew him, that she shot him, is the very wildest thing for any one to imagine. I really cannot think how you can entertain it for a moment in face of the utter absence of motive.”

“That is a strong point certainly,” conceded Bracknell.

“That she happened to be in the neighbourhood is nothing. I was in the neighbourhood, you were in the neighbourhood—”

“Yes,” interrupted the corporal with a smile, “that is true. But there is no reason why I should shoot Koona Dick, and there was every reason why I should take him prisoner.”

“You are not suggesting that there was any reason why Joy or I should have done such a thing, I hope?”

“Far from it. I know of none, but of course in an area where crime is committed every one is suspect until the criminal is found.”

Rayner laughed easily, and to the corporal’s quick ear there was a note of relief in his tones as he replied, “In that case there is no need why we should worry, however one may resent the personal implication of such a general suspicion.”

He pushed the decanter towards the corporal, who shook his head, and rose from his chair.

“Thank you, no more tonight, Mr. Rayner. If you will excuse me, I will go to my sleeping[33] quarters. I have had a very hard day, and must be up betimes in the morning.”

“As you will,” answered Rayner, and a moment later led the way to the bedroom which the policeman was to occupy. For the North it was a luxurious one, but the corporal scarcely noticed it. The moment the door had closed behind Rayner, he thrust a hand into his tunic pocket and drew forth a crumpled piece of paper. It was the paper he had picked up in the snow. He opened it out, and as he caught a word or two of the writing it contained, a swift light of interest came into his eyes.

Setting a chair in front of the stove, he seated himself, and very carefully smoothed the paper on his knee. Then he took it up and began to read.

“My dear Joy,—

“This note will no doubt be something of a shock to you; as I imagine you must think I am no longer in the land of the living; at any rate I have not heard from you for a very long time, and so can only presume that such must have been your idea. But here I am and in a sweat to see you.

“An accident gave me the knowledge of your whereabouts, and now I learn that you are not alone. Therefore I shall not visit the house, in the first instance, without your invitation, but I must see you, and in an hour’s time after your receipt of this I shall look for you in the little path that goes towards the hill. It is a long time since that day at Alcombe, which I am sure you will not have forgotten, and you and I, my dear, should have[34] much to say to each other. Do not fail to come.

“Dick....”

When he reached the end, the corporal sat staring at the letter like a man hypnotized. It was in pencil, written on a page torn out of a memorandum book, and the writer had evidently been about to sign his full name, and then had changed his mind, for the beginning of the surname had been crossed out, and the more intimate “Dick” left to stand alone.

“Then she did know him!” he whispered to himself. “She went out to meet him. She—”

He did not finish his utterance, but lifted the paper the more carefully to examine the signature. He was interested in the unfinished surname, and spelled out the letters carefully, “B-r-a.” He repeated them to himself several times, trying to guess the sequence that should follow, then suddenly he started to his feet, and a startled look came into his eyes.

“Good God!” he whispered. “If it should be so?” He stood for quite a long time, his face the index of profound thought and concern, then he bestowed the incriminating letter in a place of safety, and prepared for bed. But it was long before he slept. From somewhere in the forest came the long-drawn howl of a wolf, and in response the dogs outside bayed in chorus, but it was his own silent thoughts, and not these noises of the wilderness, that kept sleep from his tired eyes.