Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police Part 7

"I understand now," he said. "You had me brought here--in this way--that I might hear what was said, and use it as evidence. But--"

"Oh, my G.o.d, I did not mean to do this," she cried, as if knowing what he was about to say. "I thought that if he betrayed his vileness to you--if he knew that the world would know, through you, how he had attempted to destroy a home, and how he offered my husband's freedom in exchange for--but you saw, you heard, you must understand! He would not dare to go on when he knew that all this would become public. My husband would have been free. But now--"

"You have killed him," said Philip.

There was no sympathy in his voice. It was the cold, pa.s.sionless accusation of a man of the law, and the woman bowed her face in her hands. He put on his service cap, tightened his belt, and touched her gently on the arm.

"Do you know where your husband is confined?" he asked. "I will take you there, and you may remain with him to-night."

She brightened instantly. "Yes," she said.

"Come!"

They pa.s.sed through the door, closing it carefully behind them, and the woman led the way to a dark, windowless building a hundred yards from the dead chief's headquarters.

"This is the camp prison," she whispered.

A man clad in a great bear-skin coat was on guard at the door. In the moonlight he recognized Philip's uniform.

"Here are orders from the inspector," said Philip, holding out MacGregor's letter. "I am to have charge of the prisoner. Mrs. Thorpe is to spend the night with him."

A moment later the door was opened and the woman pa.s.sed in. As he turned away Philip heard a low sobbing cry, a man's startled voice. Then the door swung heavily on its hinges and there was silence.

Five minutes later Philip was bending again over the dead man. A surprising transformation had come over him now. His face was flushed and his strong teeth shone in sneering hatred as he covered the body with a blanket. On the wall hung a pair of overalls and a working-man's heavy coat. These and Hodges' hat he quickly put on in place of his own uniform. Once more he went out into the night.

This time he came up back of the prison. The guard was pacing back and forth in his beaten path, so thickly m.u.f.fled about the ears that he did not hear Philip's cautious footsteps behind him. When he turned he found the muzzle of a revolver within arm's length of his face.

"Hands up!" commanded Philip.

The astonished man obeyed without a word.

"If you make a move or the slightest sound I'll kill you!" continued Philip threateningly. "Drop your hands behind you--there, like that!"

With the quickness and skill which he had acquired under Sergeant Moody he secured the guard's wrists with one of the coffin box straps, and gagged him with the same cloth that had been used upon himself. He had observed that his prisoner carried the key to the padlocked cabin in one of his coat pockets, and after possessing himself of this he made him seat himself in the deep shadow, strapped his ankles, and then unlocked the prison door.

There was a light inside, and from beyond this the white faces of the man and the woman stared at him as he entered. The man was leaning back in his cot, and Philip knew that the wife had risen suddenly, for one arm was still encircling his shoulders, and a hand was resting on his cheek as if she had been stroking it caressingly when he interrupted them. Her beautiful, startled eyes gazed at him half defiantly now.

He advanced into the light, took off his hat, and smiled.

With a cry Thorpe's wife sprang to her feet.

"Sh-h-h-h-h!" warned Philip, raising a hand and pointing to the door behind them.

Thorpe had risen. Without a word Philip advanced and held out his hand.

Only half understanding, the prisoner reached forth his own. As, for an instant, the two men stood in this position, one smiling, the other transfixed with wonder, there came a stifled, sobbing cry from behind.

Philip turned. The woman stood in the lamp glow, her arms reaching out to him--to both--and never, not even at Lac Bain, had he seen a woman more beautiful than Thorpe's wife at that moment.

As if nothing had happened, he went to the table, where there was a pen and ink and a pad of paper.

"Perhaps your wife hasn't told you everything that has happened to-night, Thorpe," he said. "If she hasn't, she will--soon. Now, listen!"

He had pulled a small book from an inner pocket and was writing.

"My name is Steele, Philip Steele, of the Royal Mounted. Down in Chicago I've got a father, Philip Egbert Steele, a banker, who's worth half a dozen millions or so. You're going down to him as fast as dog-sledge and train can carry you, and you'll give him this note. It says that your name is Johnson, and that for my sake he's going to put you on your feet, so that it is going to be pretty blamed comfortable for yourself--and the n.o.blest little woman I've ever met. Do you understand, Thorpe?"

He looked up. Thorpe's wife had gone to her husband. She stood now, half in his arms, and looking at him; as they were, they reminded him of a couple who had played the finale in a drama which he had seen a year before.

"There is one favor which you must do me, Thorpe," he went on. "At home I am rich. Up here I'm only Phil Steele, of the Royal Mounted. I'm telling you so that you won't think that I'm stripping myself when I make you take this. It's a little ready cash, and a check for a thousand dollars. Some day, if you want to, you can pay it back. Now hustle up and get on your clothes. I imagine that your friends are somewhere near--with the sledge that brought me up from Le Pas. Tomorrow, of course, I shall be compelled to take up the pursuit. But if you hurry I don't believe that I shall catch you."

He rose and put on his hat, leaving the money and the check on the table. The woman staggered toward him, the man following in a dazed, stunned sort of way. He saw the woman's arms reaching out to him again, a look in her beautiful face that he would never forget.

In another moment he had opened the door and was gone.

Chapter VIII. Another Letter For Philip

From beside his prisoner in the deep gloom Philip saw Thorpe and his wife come out of the cabin a minute later and hurry away through the night. Then he dragged the guard into the prison, relocked the door, left the key in the lock, and returned to Hodges' office to replace the old clothes for his uniform. Not until he stood looking down upon the dead body again did the enormity of his own offense begin to crowd upon him. But he was not frightened nor did he regret what he had done.

He turned out the light, sat down, coolly filled his pipe, and began turning the affair over, detail by detail, in his mind. He had, at least, followed Inspector MacGregor's injunction--he had followed his conscience. Hodges had got what he deserved, and he had saved a man and a woman.

But in spite of his first argument, he knew that MacGregor had not foreseen a tragedy of this sort, and that, in the eyes of the law, he was guilty of actively a.s.sisting in the flight of two people who could not possibly escape the penalty of justice--if caught. But they would not be caught. He a.s.sured himself of that, smiling grimly in the darkness. No one at Wekusko could explain what had happened.

He was positive that the guard had not recognized him, and that he would think one of Thorpe's friends had effected the rescue. And MacGregor--Philip chuckled as he thought of the condemning evidence in his possession, the strange orders which would mean dismissal for the inspector, and perhaps a greater punishment, if he divulged them. He would be safe in telling MacGregor something of what had occurred in the little cabin. And then, as he sat in this grim atmosphere of death, a thought came to him of M'sieur Janette's skull, of Bucky Nome, and of the beautiful young wife at Lac Bain.

If Mrs. Becker could know of this, too--if Bucky Nome, buried somewhere deep in the northern wilderness, could only see Hodges as he lay there, dead on the cabin floor! To the one it would be a still greater punishment, to the other a warning. And yet, even as he thought of the colonel's wife and of her flirtation with Nome, a vision of her face came to him again, filled with the marvelous sweetness, the purity, and the love which had enthralled him beside the campfire. In these moments it was almost impossible for him to convince himself that she had forgotten her dignity as a wife even for an hour. Could he have been mistaken? Had he looked at her with eyes heated by his own love, fired by jealousy? If she had smiled upon him instead of upon Bucky Nome, if her cheeks had flushed at his words, would he have thought that she had done wrong? As if in answer to his own questions, he saw again the white, tense face of the colonel, her husband, and he laughed harshly.

For several hours Philip remained in the shelter of Hodges' office. With early dawn he stole out into the forest, and a little later made his appearance in camp, saying that he had spent the night at Le Pas. Not until an hour later was it discovered that Hodges had been killed, the guard made a prisoner, and that Thorpe and his wife were gone. Philip at once took charge of affairs and put a strain on his professional knowledge by declaring that Thorpe had undoubtedly fled into the North.

Early in the afternoon he started in pursuit.

A dozen miles north of the Wekusko camp he swung at right angles to the west, traveled fifteen miles, then cut a straight course south. It was three days later before he showed up at Le Pas, and learned that no one had seen or heard of Thorpe and his wife. Two days later he walked into MacGregor's office. The inspector fairly leaped from his chair to greet him.

"You got them, Steele!" he cried. "You got them after the mur--the killing of Hodges?"

Philip handed him a crumpled bit of paper.

"Those were your latest instructions, sir," he replied quietly. "I followed them to the letter."

MacGregor read, and his face turned as white as the paper he held. "Good G.o.d!" he gasped.

He reeled rather than walked back to his desk, dropped into a chair and buried his face in his arms, his shoulders shaking like those of a sobbing boy. It was a long time before he looked up, and during these minutes Philip, with his head bowed low to the other, told him of all that had happened in the little room at Wekusko. But he did not say that it was he who had surprised the guard and released Thorpe and his wife.

At last MacGregor raised his head.

"Philip," he said, taking the young man's hand in both his own, "since she was a little girl and I a big, strapping playmate of nineteen, I have loved her. She is the only girl--the only woman--I have ever loved.

You understand? I am almost old enough to be her father. She was never intended for me. But things like this happen--sometimes, and when she came to plead with me the other day I almost yielded. That is why I chose you, warned you--"

He stopped, and a sob rose in his breast.

"And at last you did yield," said Philip.