"Magic skin," he murmured half aloud after the fashion of men who find themselves often alone in the wilderness. "You widen the mystery; may you help to close it!"
Gently, without shrinking from the cold touch, he removed the last clutch of O'Malley's fingers from the black fox--probably the pelt of ostensible contention. Close examination of this showed the same conditions to exist.
Neither of the foxes had been trapped in the present winter; both had been cured at least a year.
"Magic skin," he repeated, and breathed a wish too fervent for utterance even in the hut where he stood alone.
In the act of wishing, memory put its finger on him. There came to mind that famous tale of Balzac's, "The Magic Skin." The story dealt with the hide of an ass which, with every wish invoked from it, shrank until the greedy owner was threatened with the disappearance of his magic possession.
Perhaps Seymour had best cease wishing. But he recalled he had a pair of magic skins in hand; grew defiant of the venerable myth, and wished again, more fervently even than before that it would fall to his lot to solve the deepened mystery of the Oliver O'Malley murder.
Opening the pea jacket of his winter uniform, he tucked both furs beneath his tunic. Closing and resealing the hut, he strode back to the police cabin. Had he intended to appropriate the silver and black treasures for his own gain, he scarcely could have hidden them more carefully.
Nowhere in the civilized world, perhaps, is there more respect paid to the coroner and his inquests than in the Dominion of Canada. This regard is not confined to the settled provinces, but reaches beyond the Arctic Circle even to the farthermost post of the Royal Mounted in latitude 76--Ellesmere Island, on the edge of the Polar Sea. This afternoon in Armistice was being devoted to the ancient formality of the law.
As one of the miners, brought in by Constable La Marr from Prospect to serve as juryman, put it in half-hearted protest to Seymour:
"You red coats would hold an inquest at the North Pole if word came to you that some one was violently dead up there."
In his capacity as coroner, Sergeant Seymour first called the inquest over Mrs. Olespe, whose Eskimo name was too complicated with gutturals for English pronunciation. Upon chairs and one of the bunks in the living room of the post sat the jury--the three gold hunters from Prospect and Factor Karmack. At a table beside his superior was Constable La Marr, acting as clerk of court.