"Bart said--'All you'll care to know, Marge old dear, is that I'm going to put something over in the name of the law and within it. I'm going to rectify a wrong. In the name of the Royal Mounted, I'm going to loot some looters.' That's what Bart said, and you can understand, Mr. Sergeant, how happy it made me."
For another brief moment, Margaret Caswell succeeded in forgetting her recent bereavement.
"That talk was the morning after the unfortunate stage--business," she went on with just a little break in her voice at the mention of the crime. "Bart went forth in his borrowed uniform to establish himself at the hotel as befits an officer. He dropped in here for supper and we had a fine talk. He told me that nobody seemed to doubt his authority and that the whole camp was breathing easier at sight of the scarlet and gold."
Exactly like a woman to be accurate about the clothes he wore, thought Seymour, and he pictured the swath the handsome crook must have cut in the new camp all excited with its first big crime.
"Bart knew that he would have to work fast," the woman was saying. "From letters or orders he found in the bag, he was aware that you would soon be coming in plain clothes. In spite of the fact that he would be acting in the name of the Law and that all his so-called lifting would be from Montreal crooks, he'd be forced to make a getaway over the Alaskan border, from there to catch some through steamer to the States."
"Montreal crooks!" More than ever was Seymour now interested. Was it possible that, in that inexplicable way of the almost trackless wilds, his trail here would cross that of Harry Karmack's--that his unsolved assignment might be completed and his pact with Moira validated? Harry Karmack, he well knew, had been hand in glove with the worst of Montreal's underworld characters, although there the lawless element had been able to cover the embezzler.
But the woman was going on: "It was agreed that I'd stay right here running this eating place, until I heard from him. You see, it was safe enough, for we had been very careful and no one suspected that there was any relationship. After that evening, I never saw Bart again to speak to."
That she might not yield to this call upon her emotions, Seymour put out a couple of rapid fire questions. "You think, then, that one of these so-called Montreal crooks got him? Any line on them?"