Lady Merton, Colonist Part 24

The train drew up.

"Well, of all the nuisances!"--cried Philip, disgusted, as they prepared to leave the car.

Yerkes, like the showman that he was, began to descant volubly on the advantages and charms of the hotel, its Swiss guides, and the distinguished travellers who stayed there; dragging rugs and bags meanwhile out of the car. n.o.body listened to him. Everybody in the little party, as they stood forlornly on the platform, was in truth searching for Anderson.

And at last he came--hurrying along towards them. His face, set, strained, and colourless, bore the stamp of calamity. But he gave them no time to question him.

"I am going on," he said hastily to Elizabeth; "they will look after you here. I will arrange everything for you as soon as possible, and if we don't meet before, perhaps--in Vancouver--"

"I say, are you going to hunt the robbers?" asked Philip, catching his arm.

Anderson made no reply. He turned to Delaine, drew him aside a moment, and put a letter into his hand.

"My father was one of them," he said, without emotion, "and is dead. I have asked you to tell Lady Merton."

There was a call for him. The train was already moving. He jumped into it, and was gone.

CHAPTER XII

The station and hotel at Sicamous Junction, overlooking the lovely Mara lake, were full of people--busy officials of different kinds, or excited on-lookers--when Anderson reached them. The long summer day was just pa.s.sing into a night that was rather twilight than darkness, and in the lower country the heat was great. Far away to the north stretched the wide and straggling waters of another and larger lake. Woods of poplar and cottonwood grew along its swampy sh.o.r.e, and hills, forest clad, held it in a shallow cup flooded with the mingled light of sunset and moonlight.

Anderson was met by a district superintendent, of the name of Dixon, as he descended from the train. The young man, with whom he was slightly acquainted, looked at him with excitement.

"This is a precious bad business! If you can throw any light upon it, Mr. Anderson, we shall be uncommonly obliged to you--"

Anderson interrupted him.

"Is the inquest to be held here?"

"Certainly. The bodies were brought in a few hours ago."

His companion pointed to a shed beyond the station. They walked thither, the Superintendent describing in detail the attack on the train and the measures taken for the capture of the marauders, Anderson listening in silence. The affair had taken place early that morning, but the telegraph wires had been cut in several places on both sides of the damaged line, so that no precise news of what had happened had reached either Vancouver on the west, or Golden on the east, till the afternoon.

The whole countryside was now in movement, and a vigorous man-hunt was proceeding on both sides of the line.

"There is no doubt the whole thing was planned by a couple of men from Montana, one of whom was certainly concerned in the hold-up there a few months ago and got clean away. But there were six or seven of them altogether and most of the rest--we suspect--from this side of the boundary. The old man who was killed"--Anderson raised his eyes abruptly to the speaker--"seems to have come from Nevada. There were some cuttings from a Nevada newspaper found upon him, besides the envelope addressed to you, of which I sent you word at Roger's Pa.s.s. Could you recognise anything in my description of the man? There was one thing I forgot to say. He had evidently been in the doctor's hands lately. There is a surgical bandage on the right ankle."

"Was there nothing in the envelope?" asked Anderson, putting the question aside, in spite of the evident eagerness of the questioner.

"Nothing."

"And where is it?"

"It was given to the Kamloops coroner, who has just arrived." Anderson said nothing more. They had reached the shed, which his companion unlocked. Inside were two rough tables on trestles and lying on them two sheeted forms.

Dixon uncovered the first, and Anderson looked steadily down at the face underneath. Death had wrought its strange ironic miracle once more, and out of the face of an outcast had made the face of a sage. There was little disfigurement; the eyes were closed with dignity; the mouth seemed to have unlearnt its coa.r.s.eness. Silently the tension of Anderson's inner being gave way; he was conscious of a pa.s.sionate acceptance of the mere stillness and dumbness of death.

"Where was the wound?" he asked, stooping over the body.

"Ah, that was the strange thing! He didn't die of his wound at all! It was a mere graze on the arm." The Superintendent pointed to a rent on the coat-sleeve. "He died of something quite different--perhaps excitement and a weak heart. There may have to be a post-mortem."

"I doubt whether that will be necessary," said Anderson.

The other looked at him with undisguised curiosity.

"Then you do recognise him?"

"I will tell the coroner what I know."

Anderson drew back from his close examination of the dead face, and began in his turn to question the Superintendent. Was it certain that this man had been himself concerned in the hold-up and in the struggle with the police?

Dixon could not see how there could be any doubt of it. The constables who had rushed in upon the gang while they were still looting the express car--the brakesman having managed to get away and convey the alarm to Kamloops--remembered seeing an old man with white hair, apparently lame, at the rear of the more active thieves, and posted as sentinel. He had been the first to give warning of the police approach, and had levelled his revolver at the foremost constable but had missed his shot. In the free firing which had followed n.o.body exactly knew what had happened. One of the attacking force, Constable Brown, had fallen, and while his comrades were attempting to save him, the thieves had dropped down the steep bank of the river close by, into a boat waiting for them, and got off. The constable was left dead upon the ground, and not far from him lay the old man, also lifeless. But when they came to examine the bodies, while the constable was shot through the head, the other had received nothing but the trifling wound Dixon had already pointed out.

Anderson listened to the story in silence. Then with a last long look at the rigid features below him, he replaced the covering. Pa.s.sing on to the other table, he raised the sheet from the face of a splendid young Englishman, whom he had last seen the week before at Regina; an English public-school boy of the manliest type, full of hope for himself, and of enthusiasm, both for Canada and for the fine body of men in which he had been just promoted. For the first time a stifled groan escaped from Anderson's lips. What hand had done this murder?

They left the shed. Anderson inquired what doctor had been sent for. He recognised the name given as that of a Kamloops man whom he knew and respected; and he went on to look for him at the hotel.

For some time he and the doctor paced a trail beside the line together.

Among other facts that Anderson got from this conversation, he learnt that the American authorities had been telegraphed to, and that a couple of deputy sheriffs were coming to a.s.sist the Canadian police. They were expected the following morning, when also the coroner's inquest would be held.

As to Anderson's own share in the interview, when the two men parted, with a silent grasp of the hand, the Doctor had nothing to say to the bystanders, except that Mr. Anderson would have some evidence to give on the morrow, and that, for himself, he was not at liberty to divulge what had pa.s.sed between them.

It was by this time late. Anderson shut himself up in his room at the hotel; but among the groups lounging at the bar or in the neighbourhood of the station excitement and discussion ran high. The envelope addressed to Anderson, Anderson's own demeanour since his arrival on the scene--with the meaning of both conjecture was busy.

Towards midnight a train arrived from Field. A messenger from the station knocked at Anderson's door with a train letter. Anderson locked the door again behind the man who had brought it, and stood looking at it a moment in silence. It was from Lady Merton. He opened it slowly, took it to the small deal table, which held a paraffin lamp, and sat down to read it.

"Dear Mr. Anderson--Mr. Delaine has given me your message and read me some of your letter to him. He has also told me what he knew before this happened--we understood that you wished it. Oh! I cannot say how very sorry we are, Philip and I, for your great trouble. It makes me sore at heart to think that all the time you have been looking after us so kindly, taking this infinite pains for us, you have had this heavy anxiety on your mind. Oh, why didn't you tell me! I thought we were to be friends. And now this tragedy! It is terrible--terrible! Your father has been his own worst enemy--and at last death has come,--and he has escaped himself. Is there not some comfort in that? And you tried to save him. I can imagine all that you have been doing and planning for him. It is not lost, dear Mr. Anderson. No love and pity are ever lost. They are undying--for they are G.o.d's life in us. They are the pledge--the sign--to which He is eternally bound. He will surely, surely, redeem--and fulfil.

"I write incoherently, for they are waiting for my letter. I want you to write to me, if you will. And when will you come back to us? We shall, I think, be two or three days here, for Philip has made friends with a man we have met here--a surveyor, who has been camping high up, and shooting wild goat. He is determined to go for an expedition with him, and I had to telegraph to the Lieutenant-Governor to ask him not to expect us till Thursday. So if you were to come back here before then you would still find us. I don't know that I could be of any use to you, or any consolation to you. But, indeed, I would try.

"To-morrow I am told will be the inquest. My thoughts will be with you constantly. By now you will have determined on your line of action. I only know that it will be n.o.ble and upright--like yourself.

"I remain, yours most sincerely"

"ELIZABETH MERTON."

Anderson pressed the letter to his lips. Its tender philosophising found no echo in his own mind. But it soothed, because it came from her.

He lay dressed and wakeful on his bed through the night, and at nine next morning the inquest opened, in the coffee-room of the hotel.

The body of the young constable was first identified. As to the hand which had fired the shot that killed him, there was no certain evidence; one of the police had seen the lame man with the white hair level his revolver again after the first miss; but there was much shooting going on, and no one could be sure from what quarter the fatal bullet had come.

The court then proceeded to the identification of the dead robber. The coroner, a rancher who bred the best horses in the district, called first upon two strangers in plain clothes, who had arrived by the first train from the South that morning. They proved to be the two officers from Nevada. They had already examined the body, and they gave clear and unhesitating evidence, identifying the old man as one Alexander McEwen, well known to the police of the silver-mining State as a lawless and dangerous character. He had been twice in jail, and had been the a.s.sociate of the notorious Bill Symonds in one or two criminal affairs connected with "faked" claims and the like. The elder of the two officers in particular drew a vivid and d.a.m.ning picture of the man's life and personality, of the cunning with which he had evaded the law, and the ruthlessness with which he had avenged one or two private grudges.

"We have reason to suppose," said the American officer finally, "that McEwen was not originally a native of the States. We believe that he came from Dawson City or the neighbourhood about ten years ago, and that he crossed the border in consequence of a mysterious affair--which has never been cleared up--in which a rich German gentleman, Baron von Aeschenbach, disappeared, and has not been heard of since. Of that, however, we have no proof, and we cannot supply the court with any information as to the man's real origin and early history. But we are prepared to swear that the body we have seen this morning is that of Alexander McEwen, who for some years past has been well known to us, now in one camp, now in another, of the Comstock district."