The Lady of North Star

As he gave the name he saw Joy Gargrave’s face grow white, and the trouble in her eyes was plain. Also, with the tail of his eye, he saw Mr. Rayner start violently, and guessed that both he and his hostess were not unacquainted with the man who lay out there in the snow under the shadow of the pines. For a moment after his reply there was a strained uneasy silence. The corporal removed his eyes from his hostess’s face and glanced round the table. Mr. Rayner was fingering the stem of a wine-glass nervously, whilst Miss La Farge was looking from him to Miss Gargrave with puzzled eyes. Evidently she was conscious that something unusual was taking place, but the corporal was sure that to her the name he had just spoken was without any special significance. That it was known to the other two people present he was certain, and he waited to see what would follow. The sense of strain grew more pronounced, then Mr. Rayner shuffled uneasily and broke the silence.

“I notice, Corporal Bracknell, that you speak of this – er – fellow in the past tense, and you say that he has escaped you finally. Do you mean to say that he is – a – dead?”

“He is lying in the snow in a path cut through the trees off the main road to the Lodge,” answered the corporal steadily, “and he has been shot, I think.”

“Good God!” ejaculated Mr. Rayner, in a voice that, whilst it expressed astonishment, seemed to the corporal to be a little flat. “And we have been sitting here, gassing, whilst – ” He broke off abruptly. “Joy,” he cried addressing Miss Gargrave, “you are ill. The shock of this story – ”

“It is nothing,” interrupted the girl in a shaking voice. “I – I – feel a little faint. If you will excuse me – ” She rose to her feet, staggered a little, and then, as Miss La Farge ran to her, fainted outright. For a moment Corporal Bracknell did not speak, though a look of utmost concern came upon his face. The situation seemed to him to be thronged with dreadful possibilities. Remembering the look on the girl’s face when he had encountered her in the forest road, and the rifle in her hand, he found in this faint further support for the suspicion which had occurred to him when he had stood by the supine body of Koona Dick. Living in the wilds, it was scarcely likely that the news of a dead man would affect her thus, if that news were without special significance for her. Death in the Northland – death sharp and sudden was not so uncommon as all that. Moving accidents by flood and field, by wild beasts and wild men, were part of the general circumstances of wilderness life; why, therefore, should the girl be thus affected by the news that he had uttered? Whilst Mr. Rayner assisted Miss La Farge to carry their hostess out of the room, he stood there, his mind occupied by this momentous question. The answer was one which took the form of a further question and which filled him with concern. Had she killed Koona Dick, with whom, as he was sure, she was acquainted?

Again he saw the beautiful face, the picture of terror and the eyes in their unseeing stare of horror, and wondered what was the meaning of it all. Had the girl seen the body of Koona Dick lying there in the shadow of the pines with his blood staining the snow, and was she merely frightened; or was her knowledge of a more intimate and guilty character? He could not decide, and whilst he was still wondering, the door of the room opened and Rayner entered. His face now was mask-like, and his voice was suave and even as he addressed the officer.

“I am afraid your story has been a shock to Miss Gargarve, who has not been very well all day. You will have to excuse her for this evening; but that is no reason why you should not finish your dinner, after which we might go out and look at this dead man. I suppose he will have to have sepulchre?”

“Even the worst of us should have that,” answered the corporal quietly, then added, “Miss Gargrave – she is better?”

“Yes, it was only a faint. I expect she found it rather shocking to think that whilst we were sat here, that man was lying dead in the snow outside.”

“I can understand that,” answered the other in a non-committal voice.

Mr. Rayner nodded. “Feminine nerves are unstable things.” A second later he asked, “Did I understand you to say that this man whom you were following was shot?”

“That is only a guess of mine,” was the reply. “I found him lying there in the snow, and only a few minutes before I distinctly heard a rifle fire twice.”

“But,” objected Mr. Rayner, “it does not follow that the shots you heard were directed against this man Koona Dick? I myself fired at a timber-wolf on the outskirts of the homestead just a little while before your arrival.”

“Did you fire twice?” asked Corporal Bracknell quickly.

“N – no! Once!”

There was a little hesitation before the reply was given. It was but the fraction of a second, but the policeman marked it, and suspected that the other had been a little uncertain as to what he ought to answer.

“But I heard two shots – one on the heels of the other,” answered Bracknell.

“One may have been the echo,” suggested Rayner. “Up here when it is still, sounds are easily duplicated.”

“No, it was not an echo,” asserted the corporal. “I am quite sure of that. I have lived in the wilds too long to be deceived in a small matter of that sort. The second shot was as real as the first. And there is another thing I ought to tell you, Mr. Raynor. Immediately after the second shot I heard a woman cry out.”

Mr. Rayner looked interested. “Are you quite sure it was a woman?” he asked. “It may have been the death-cry of this man – er – Koona Dick, which you heard.”

“That is just possible,” agreed the corporal. “Yet it seemed to me like the cry of a woman in terror.”

“It is easy even for trained ears to be mistaken up here,” said the other suavely. “Since I came here I have heard a hare scream like a child in agony. The cry you heard may have been no more than that of some small creature falling a victim to the law of the wild, which is that the strongest takes the prey.”

“Maybe!” said Bracknell laconically. In his heart he did not accept the explanation, plausible though it was.

“I am sure of it,” answered the other, as if determined to convince him. “In the silence of these northern forests, as I have noticed often of late, sounds seem to take strange qualities. The loneliness accentuates them, and if one has any reason for suspecting the presence of other humans besides one’s self, then every sound one hears seems to have some bearing on the unseen presences.”

“Perhaps,” replied the policeman, wondering why the other should be so persistent in the matter; “but you forget one thing which is rather fatal to your argument.”

“And what is that?” inquired Rayner quickly.

“Well, I was not expecting to find a woman up in this wilderness; indeed, it was the last thought in my mind. That fact makes your argument fail, at any rate as applied to the cry I heard.”

To this Mr. Rayner made no reply. He pushed a wine decanter towards the other, and rising from the table crossed the room to a cabinet, from which he took out a box of cigars.

“We will have a smoke, before going to look at this dead man.”

Corporal Bracknell accepted the cigar, which was of choice brand, and when he had lit it he looked at the other – and said thoughtfully. “I have been wondering why Miss Gargrave lives up here in the wilds?”

Rayner laughed a little. “I am not surprised at that. Everybody wonders. But the fact is that she has no real choice in the matter. As I dare say you will have heard, Rolf Gargrave was immensely rich, and he made his daughter his heiress, but on the condition that for three years after his death she should live at North Star Lodge. That is the explanation!”

“But why on earth should he make a condition of that sort – for a girl?”

“He was a crank!” replied Rayner contemptuously. “He was not an admirer of what is called modern civilization – indeed, he detested it most heartily and whilst he sent his daughter to England to be educated, he desired to protect her against society influences; and he believed that a few years in the North here, in touch with primitive life, would give her a distaste for the shams and artificialities of great cities. Also – I believe he was a little afraid of fortune-hunters and wanted Joy’s mind to mature before she met the breed.”

Bracknell nodded his understanding of the situation, and then remarked. “The place is not without its points – but to my thinking it has grave dangers also. When Miss Gargrave returns to civilization, the reaction from the hard life and the solitude of the North is likely to be so great that in the whirl she may be carried off her feet.”

“Yes, Rolf Gargrave does not appear to have thought of that. But there are others who have it in mind.” The corporal looked thoughtfully at his companion, and wondered what relation he stood to their hostess. It was a question that could not be asked openly, but remembering how once or twice the girl’s Christian name had slipped into Rayner’s speech he guessed that whatever the relationship was, it was a fairly intimate one. He was still wondering when his companion rose.

“If you are ready, Corporal Bracknell, we will go and look at – a – Koona Dick.”

The corporal rose with alacrity, and five minutes later, clad in outdoor furs, they were moving briskly down the road cut between the pines. As they walked, the policeman looked about him with keen eyes, and when they reached the point where the narrower path that he had followed branched off, noticed what had escaped him before, namely that the path was evidently continued on the other side of the road also. Rayner did not hesitate between the two. He made a straight line for the path which led to the place where Koona Dick had fallen. As they turned into it, the thought that he might be wrong appeared to strike him, and he halted abruptly.

“This path, wasn’t it? The left going towards the house, I think you said, didn’t you?”

“Yes, the left!” answered Corporal Bracknell quietly, but as he walked by the other’s side the question leaped in his mind. “Did I mention the left?” He could not remember. He doubted, and his doubts were strengthened by the fact that till a moment before he had not known that the path was continued across the main road. Thinking there was only one path, there was no reason why he should have mentioned the position of it. Yet the man by his side had known which path to take! As he walked on, he gave no sign, but a question leaped up in his mind. “How did Rayner know?”

Then simultaneously he and his companion came to an abrupt halt. At their feet in the snow was a dark blot. The corporal looked hastily round, then felt for his matches and struck one. As the wood caught, he stooped and examined the ground near the dark blot, where was the impress of a heavy body in the snow, and footmarks all round it. He stared at the trampled snow in amazement, then he examined the snow in the shadow of the trees. Its surface in the immediate neighbourhood was unbroken, save by the print of a single pair of moccasined feet, and those footmarks moved towards the place where Koona Dick had lain, and not away from it. He looked among the underwood in the neighbourhood of the path. The search in the darkness revealed nothing, nowhere was there any sign of the man whom they had come to look for.

“What is it?” asked Rayner in an odd voice. “What has happened?”

“A strange thing has happened,” said the corporal laconically. “The body we came to look for has disappeared.”

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.”