CHAPTER III
The Trail of Treachery
BUT young Mr. Law was sole agent of his own evanishment. The reason for his life in exile was well known to him, if largely a matter of indifference since his friendships had taken root in English soil. The message of the Rose he understood perfectly; but the hidden meaning of the Trey of Hearts so perplexed him that before leaving London he dispatched a cablegram to Digby, his confidential agent in New York:
"What do you know about the Trey of Hearts? Answer immediately."
Digby's answer forestalled Alan's arrival in Liverpool:
"Trey of Hearts was Trine's death-sign for your father. For God's sake keep away from America."
But Alan had more than once visited America incognito and unknown to Seneca Trine, and had confidence in his ability successfully to repeat the adventure—via a route of his own selection.
Eight days out of London, a second-class passenger newly landed from one of the C.-P. steamships, he walked the streets of Quebec, and dropped out of sight between dark and dawn, to turn up in the Canadian hamlet of Baie St. Paul, apparently a tenderfoot American woods-traveller chaperoned by a taciturn Indian guide.
Crossing the St. Lawrence by night, the two struck off into the hinterland of the Notre Dame range, followed the Riviere Quelle to its headwaters, and then crossed the Maine border.
On the second noon thereafter, trail-worn and weary, the two paused on a ridge-pole of the wilderness up back of the Allagash country, and made their midday meal in a silence which, if normal in the Indian, was one of deep misgiving on Alan's part.
Continually his gaze questioned the northern skies that lowered portentously, foul with the smoke of a county-wide conflagration that threatened unless soon checked to lay waste all northern Maine bone-dry with drought.
And the fires were making southward far faster than man might hope to travel through that grim and stubborn land. Even as he stared, Alan saw fresh columns of dun-coloured smoke spring up as the flames, spurred by a freshening wind, made league-consuming strides.
Anxiously he consulted the Indian. But his questions gained Alan little comfort from Jacob, who said that rain alone could stop the flames. After recommending forced marches to bring them by to-morrow's noon to the spot he called Spirit Lake, where canoes might be found to aid their flight, the Indian withdrew into sullen reserve.
They travelled far and fast before sundown, then again paused for food and rest. As Jacob set about preparing the meal, Alan stumbled off to whip the little trail-side stream for trout.
Perhaps a hundred yards upstream, the back-lash of a careless cast hooked the State of Maine. Too tired even to remember the appropriate words, Alan scrambled ashore, forced through the undergrowth that masked the trail, found his fly, set the State of Maine free, and swinging on his heel brought up standing, transfixed by the discovery of a rectangle of white pasteboard fixed to the trunk of a sapling: a Trey of Hearts, of which each pip had been neatly punctured by a .22 calibre bullet.
Nor had it been long there: when Alan scrutinized it he found the card innocent of weather-stains, the pin unrusted that held it, the wounds in the sapling raw and damp.
He carried it back to camp, meaning to consult the guide, but on second thought reconsidered. It was not likely that the Indian had overlooked the inevitable traces of human neighbours that must have been apparent to his woods-sharpened wits. So Alan waited for him to speak, and meantime determined to watch him narrowly, though no other suspicious circumstance had marked their association. It might turn out to be simply chance which had thrown that sinister card in his path.
The first half of the night was devoted to relentless progress southward. There could be no more question as to the need for urgent haste: overhead the north wind muttered; thin veils of smoke drifted through the forest, and ever the curtained heavens glared with reflected fires.
By midnight Alan had passed the limit of his endurance. Though Jacob declared that Spirit Lake was now only six hours distant, as far as concerned Alan he might have said six hundred. They camped in perfunctory fashion. His blanket once unrolled, Alan dropped upon it like one drugged.
The sun was high when he awakened and sat up, wondering what had come over the Indian to let him sleep so late. This was soon made clear. Jacob had absconded, leaving Alan barely food enough for a cold breakfast.
Overnight the fire had made tremendous gains. The nearness of his peril dwarfed the treachery of the Indian. Alan delayed long enough to swallow a few mouthfuls of raw food, gulped water from a spring, and set out at a dog-trot on the trail to Spirit Lake.
For hours he blundered on, holding to the trail mainly by instinct—the roaring of the flames ever more loud and ominous, the cloud of smoke ever more dense, the heat moment by moment more intense.
Finally he staggered into a little clearing, tripped over some obstacle, and plunged headlong, so bewildered that he could not have said whether he was tripped or thrown. As he fell a heavy body landed on his back and crushed him savagely to earth.
In less than a minute he was overcome, his wrists hitched together, his ankles bound. When his vision cleared he discovered Jacob squatting on his heels and regarding him with a face as immobile as the bronze it resembled.
Beyond, a woman in a man's hunting costume stood eying the captive as narrowly as the Indian, but with a countenance that seemed exultantly aglow over his downfall.
But for that look he could have believed the face that which had brought him overseas: feature for feature, she counterfeited the woman he loved; only those eyes, aflame with their look of inhuman ruthlessness, denied that the two were one.
He sought to speak. The breath rustled in his throat like wind whispering among dead leaves.
THEY HAD CRUSHED THEIR MAN … THEIR FILTHY WORK WAS DONE
THE FACE IN THE LOCKET BROUGHT MEMORIES OF WONDERFUL DAYS NOW PAST.
Thrusting the Indian aside, the woman knelt by Alan's head.
"So!" she said sweetly. "So, Mr. Alan Law!"
He made no effort to reply; the thought in his mind was that in those eyes was less of madness than of inhumanity; that this was less a creature bereft of reason than one brought into the world without a soul.
"No," she said, smiling cruelly, "I am not your Rose. But I am her sister Judith, born in the same hour, daughter of Can you guess whose daughter?"
He shook his head.
"You thought it a girl’s romantic nonsense that made Rose refuse you because of a secret barrier between you! But see this!” She held a card before his eyes. "You know it? The Trey of Hearts—the symbol of Trine—Trine, your father's enemy, and yours, and—Rose's father and mine!"
A gust of wind like a furnace blast swept the glade. The woman sprang up, glanced over-shoulder into the forest, and signed to the Indian.
"In ten minutes," she said, "these woods will be your funeral pyre."
Jacob picked Alan up and strode into the forest. Ten feet from the clearing he dropped the helpless man upon a bed of dry logs and branches.
Then, with a single movement, he disappeared.