“That was the last report we received from Arnold. News afterward appeared in the papers that Arnold’s hat had been found floating in a creek up on the hill, and it was surmised that he had fallen into the rapids of the creek and was dashed to death.
“Arnold, however, eventually turned up, alive, in Chicago, and later came to my office in New York. The truth of the matter was he had been waylaid on the banks of the creek, overpowered and drugged while he was endeavouring to find the entrance to the Cup. He recovered consciousness in the room of a waterfront hotel in this city, where he found on the dresser a parcel and a bulky envelope. The parcel contained the loose cash he had in his pockets when attacked, his watch, fountain pen and a new hat similar to the one that fell off his head into the creek during his struggle with unknown assailants. In the envelope were all the pencilled notes he had made and secreted under the floor of his shack, and under the envelope he found a railway time-table with the connections between Kam City and Chicago under-scored. Arnold was quite fed up with the way they did things in Canada, and he took the obvious hint.
“All this made it the more imperative that I place some one on the limits who could get to the bottom of what coup the North Star was planning. I decided to come North myself to keep in close touch. In order to put our rivals and their spies off the scent and lend them a false notion of security, I planned to suddenly disappear off the train before it reached Kam City. Winch was not to discover this until the following morning and then see that my remarkable disappearance was given the widest possible publicity in the newspapers.
“It was while on the way to Kam City that I was impressed with the advantages of having a foil for the camp preacher in his work—some one whose entrance into the camps at about the same time as himself would arouse Acey Smith’s curiosity and suspicion and keep him for a time off the right track. I talked the plan over with Winch, and the result was we engaged you.
“Now there was no absolute certainty that Slack would take any cognizance of my request to find you a job on the limits, and possibly less that Acey Smith would take you on, even if he did, but I built on their curiosity being so aroused that they would employ you just to get at the bottom of what you were sent there for. Your entire ignorance of any definite object on the limits would, I conjectured, further baffle Smith. In the meantime, while his suspicions were focussed on you, Stubbs was to get in his good work. The result up to the time of your leaving the limits and Stubbs’ arrest was eminently satisfactory.”