For his own satisfaction, as well as hers, he outlined the plot against the Indians as he now saw it. Phil Brewster, he believed, had recognized platinum in the frog-gold which the Siwashes were discarding. The freighter had sent back to Montreal for Kluger to direct the harvest. Knowing at least something of Karmack's plight, Kluger had brought the Armistice murderer with him as an assistant and had posed him as a half-breed as part of the disguise. Whether or not the latter knew that the father of the youth he had caused to be slain in the Arctic lived in the immediate vicinity of the platinum bed was a question. At any rate, the criminal probably figured that he would be safer in a sealed British Columbia cañon than in the cafés of the city that lately has become the gayest in North America. Brewster undoubtedly had been riding guard outside under cover of his established freighting business.
The trio had corralled the Indians on their own claims in the easiest possible way--by giving them all the gold that was sluiced, while they took the six-times richer platinum. Their discovery that Bart Caswell had recognized their precious metal had sealed his death warrant. Its execution had been prompt, as she knew. He could only hope that the official executions which seemed called for would not be too long delayed.
After some persuasion and the reminder that Moira was a persistent young person, he sketched the steps by which he had walked through the local mystery. His conviction that Bart had robbed the stage, based on recognition of the uniform, had given him a "head start" and had proved a lever with the widow Caswell. She had started him on a "richer than gold" search. Moira herself, with her tip about the frog-gold, had spurred him, for he suspected it to be platinum. The squaw tale that the Siwashes were getting all the gold had helped, and the shaking of a platinum nugget from the ore sack had completed his enlightenment. As for the black-hearted Karmack, whose hair had turned red--well, that was an excellent piece of dyer's art, but one Scarlet Seymour would be long forgiving himself for not having recognized it as such that memorable night at the Venetian Gardens.