“Without proof that the disaster occurred through preventable causes I don’t see how he can produce grounds for damages,” asserted Hammond.
“Nor I,” returned the inspector. “Furthermore, Gildersleeve has not from the first dealt on the square with us or taken us into his confidence. Off-hand, I’d say he appears to me like a man who’s been beaten to it at a game of double-cross where he was as deep-dyed as the other fellow and now he’s aching to take his spleen out on a third party.
“But come, Hammond,” urged the inspector, “you run along to the dining camp and have a snack of lunch, and as soon as you get your clothes changed we’ll make a start.”
Sandy Macdougal was glad to see Hammond again, but he appeared to be particularly out of sorts and uncommunicative this morning. It was only when Hammond was leaving the dining camp that he had anything in particular to say.
“It ain’t none of my business,” he told Hammond, “but if I was asked for any advice, I’d say keep away from that Cup. There ain’t anybody white ever went up there monkeyin’ around that something didn’t happen they were sorry for.”
The little expedition which set out for the mountain was composed of Inspector Little, five of his most experienced men, Lynch the private detective and Louis Hammond. Before they struck out Inspector Little insisted there was no necessity for the civilians in the party carrying firearms and used this as an excuse for relieving Lynch of a murderous-looking revolver.
Lynch was loud in his protests that as a detective he should be allowed to carry the weapon, but it did not go with the inspector. “I am not carrying a gun myself,” he pointed out. “My men are armed and that is all that is necessary, for they are not liable to shoot unless it is a case of protecting our lives and their own.”
It was not only that he sought to guard against unnecessary bloodshed, but Inspector Little was not any too sure of his ground in entering the Cup of Nannabijou by means of force. The police held no warrant for the arrest of any one except Nathan Stubbs, the pseudo camp preacher, and the doughty inspector was far from convinced that Stubbs was up in the Cup. The only pretext on which he felt he could legally demand the privilege of entering the Cup with an armed force, in case resistance were offered, was the right to search for the missing girl, Josephine Stone.