Part 4 (1/2)

Then he folded the scarf, and instead of returning it to the box, put it in one of the pockets of his coat.

”Pierrot won't care,” he excused himself. ”And it's the only thing, little girl--the only thing--I'll ever have--of you.”

Chapter V. Beauty-Proof

It was Pierrot who aroused Philip in the morning.

”Mon, Dieu, but you have slept like a bear,” he exclaimed. ”The storm has cleared and it will be fine traveling. Eh--you have not heard? I wonder why they are firing guns off toward Lac Bain!”

Philip jumped from his bed, and his first look was in the direction of the box. He was criminal enough to hope that Jacques would not discover that the scarf was missing.

”A moose--probably,” he said. ”There were tracks close up to the post a day or two ago.”

He was anxious to begin their journey, and a.s.sisted Pierrot in preparing breakfast. The sound of guns impressed upon him the possibility of some one from Lac Bain calling at the half-breed's cabin, and he wished to avoid further a.s.sociation with people from the post--at least for a time. At nine o'clock Pierrot bolted the door and the two set off into the south and west. On the third day they swung to the eastward to strike the Indians living along Reindeer Lake, and on the sixth cut a trail by compa.s.s straight for Nelson House. A week later they arrived at the post, and Philip found a letter awaiting him calling him to Prince Albert. In a way the summons was a relief to him. He bade Pierrot good-by, and set out for Le Pas in company with two Indians. From that point he took the work train to Etomami, and three hours later was in Prince Albert.

”Rest up for a time, Steele,” Inspector MacGregor told him, after he had made a personal report on Bucky Nome.

During the week that followed Philip had plenty of leisure in which to tell himself that he was a fool, and that he was deliberately throwing away what a munificent fortune had placed in his hands. MacGregor's announcement that he was in line for promotion in the near future did not stir him as it would have done a few weeks before. In his little barracks room he laughed ironically as he recalled MacGregor's words, ”We're going to make a corporal or a sergeant of you.” He--Philip Steele--millionaire, club man, son of a western king of finance--a corporal or a sergeant! For the first time the thought amused him, and then it maddened him. He had played the part of an idiot, and all because there had been born within him a love of adventure and the big, free life of the open. No wonder some of his old club friends regarded him as a scapegrace and a ne'er-do-well. He had thrown away position, power, friends and home as carelessly as he might have tossed away the end of a cigar. And all--for this! He looked about his cramped quarters, a half sneer on his lips. He had tied himself to this! To his ears there came faintly the thunder of galloping hoofs. Sergeant Moody was training his rookies to ride. The sneer left his lips, and was replaced by a quick, alert smile as he heard a rattle of revolver shots and the cheering of voices. After all, it was not so bad. It was a service that made men, and he thought of the English remittance-man, whose father was a lord of something-or-other, and who was learning to ride and shoot out there with red-headed, raucous-voiced Moody. There began to stir in him again the old desire for action, and he was glad when word was sent to him that Inspector MacGregor wished to see him in his office.

The big inspector was pacing back and forth when Philip came in.

”Sit down, Steele, sit down,” he said. ”Take it easy, man--and have a cigar.”

If MacGregor had suddenly gone into a fit Philip could not have been more surprised than at these words, as he stood with his cap in his hand before the desk of the fiery-mustached inspector, who was pa.s.sing his box of choice Havanas. There are tightly drawn lines of distinction in the Royal Mounted. As Philip had once heard the commissioner say, ”Every man in the service is a king--but there are different degrees of kings,”

and for a barracks man to be asked to sit in the inspector's office and smoke was a sensational breach of the usual code. But as he had distinctly heard the invitation to sit, and to smoke, Philip proceeded to do both, and waited in silence for the next mine to explode under his feet. And there was a certain ease in his manner of doing these things which would have a.s.sured most men that he was not unaccustomed to sitting in the presence of greatness.

The inspector seemed to notice this. For a moment he stood squarely in front of Steele, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, a twinkle in the cold, almost colorless eyechuckling, companionable laugh, such as finds its vent in the fellows.h.i.+p of equals, but which is seldom indulged in by a superior before an inferior in the R.N.W.M. Police.

”Mighty good cigars, eh, Steele?” he asked, turning slowly toward the window. ”The commissioner sent 'em up to me from Regina. Nothing like a good cigar on a dreary day like this. Whew, listen to the wind--straight from Medicine Hat!”

For a few moments he looked out upon the cheerless drab roofs of the barracks, with their wisps of pale smoke swirling upward into the leaden sky; counted the dozen gnarled and scrubby trees, as had become a habit with him; rested his eyes upon the black and shriveled remnants of summer flower-beds thrusting their frost-shrunken stalks through the snow, and then, almost as if he were speaking to himself, he said, ”Steele, are you beautyproof?”

There was no banter in his voice. It was low, so low that it had in it the ring of something more than mere desire for answer, and when the inspector turned, Philip observed a thing that he had never seen before--a flush in MacGregor's face. His pale eyes gleamed. His voice was filled with an intense earnestness as he repeated the question. ”I want to know, Steele. Are you beauty-proof?”

In spite of himself Philip felt the fire rising in his own face. In that moment the inspector could have hit on no words that would have thrilled him more deeply than those which he had spoken. Beauty-proof! Did MacGregor know? Was it possible-- He took a step forward, words came to his lips, but he caught himself before he had given voice to them.

Beauty-proof!

He laughed, softly, as the inspector had laughed a few moments before.

But there was a strange tenseness in his face--something which MacGregor saw, but could not understand.

”Beauty-proof?” He repeated the words, looking keenly at the other.

”Yes, I think I am, sir.”

”You think you are?”

”I am quite sure that I am. Inspector. That is as far as I can go.”

The inspector seated himself at his desk and opened a drawer. From it he took a photograph. For some time he gazed at it in silence, puffing out clouds of smoke from his cigar. Then, without lifting his eyes from the picture, he said: ”I am going to put you up against a queer case, Steele, and the strangest thing about it is its very simplicity. It's a job for the greenest rookie in the service, and yet I swear that there isn't another man in Saskatchewan to whom I would talk as I am about to talk to you. Rather paradoxical, isn't it?”