"Slicker!" Then Jennifer fell into sudden laughter. "Oh, what a dear boy you are. It has done me all the good in the world to get angry with you just now."
"That's all very well." Slicker was not appeased. "But somebody's got to do something about it."
No one was realising this more keenly than Dick in Ducane's study. If Tempest had not been in arrears with the court-case work, occasioning much delay and later complications Dick would have been over here earlier. He had never suspected this, of course; but his natural instincts led him to desire to guard against all possibilities. Now Jennifer had got her work in first, and the results showed very effectively. For all his anger and disgust and keen disappointment Dick laughed more than once at the holocaust. Her accurate brain had grasped the salient points so thoroughly. There was absolutely nothing left which gave a clue to the real address or composition of the Canadian Home-lot Extension Company, although there were papers pertaining to it which were sufficient to show Ducane's connection with it, and also a number of notes in cypher which might contain clues if the key could be found.
On other matters there were papers which verified the scanty revelations discovered already in Robison's shack. The men had certainly been getting in permits under false names; they had been buying land from the breeds at absolutely cut-prices, and they had an infinitely more intimate knowledge of the values and owners of land in the district than any ordinary inhabitant could hope to have. But Jennifer had taken the poker to Ducane's camera-plates, and Tempest looked up over the wreck in some amusement.
"She has left a good deal to the imagination only," he remarked. "Of course one can tell that these two have been playing a crook game for years, and that Ducane was evidently scared off the field on the verge of a commission which Robison stuck to and tried to put through. What scared him, I wonder?"
Dick told of the photograph seen on Jennifer's lap on the steamer.
"He couldn't know that I'd recognise it, of course,"
