Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The (37 page)

  Lord Averley went off, casket and all. Peters never came back to get his share of the blackmail, so Hagar supposed he had learnt from his master what she had done. As to Mrs Delamere, Hagar often wondered what she said when she read those letters signed 'Beatrice'. But only Lord Averley could have told her that and Hagar never saw him again; nor did she ever see Peters the blackmailer. Finally, she never set eyes again on the Cinque Cento Florentine casket which had contained the love-letters of – the wrong woman.

H
ESKETH
V
ERNON
H
ESKETH-
P
RICHARD (wisely, he abbreviated his name when it appeared on his books) led a life at least as eventful as those of his fictional creations. Born in India, the son of a soldier, he became an explorer, adventurer and big-game hunter who travelled around the world from Patagonia to Newfoundland and Haiti to Norway. He also found time to take the field regularly as a county cricketer, playing for Hampshire from the late 1890s to the outbreak of the First World War. During that war Hesketh Prichard, reputedly one of the best shots in the world, was given the task of training men to become snipers on the Western Front. Prichard published several books about his travels and also wrote fiction, often in collaboration with his mother, throughout his adult life. His stories about an aristocratic Spanish bandit, Don Q, later formed the basis for a Hollywood movie starring Douglas Fairbanks. Prichard was a friend of Conan Doyle and it is entirely unsurprising that he should venture into the field of crime fiction. The Flaxman Low stories, written with his mother, are about an occult detective and predate Hope Hodgson's Carnacki stories by a decade. The November Joe stories cleverly transfer Sherlockian skills to a setting – the Canadian wilderness – where they are eminently practical and, indeed, necessary. As one of the characters in the stories remarks, 'the speciality of a Sherlock Holmes is the everyday routine of a woodsman. Observation and deduction are part and parcel of his daily existence.'

Y
OU MUST UNDERSTAND that from this time on, my association with November Joe was not continuous but fitful, and that after the events I have just written down I went back to Quebec, where I became once more immersed in my business. Of Joe I heard from time to time, generally by means of smudged letters obviously written from camp and usually smelling of wood smoke. It was such a letter, which, in the following year, caused me once more to seek November. It ran as follows:

This was the letter which caused me to seek Mrs Harding's, but owing to a slight accident to the rig I was driven up in, I arrived late to find that November had gone up to a neighbouring farm on some business, leaving word that should I arrive I was to start for his shack and that he would catch me up on the way.

  I walked forward during the greater part of the afternoon when, in trying a short cut through the woods, I lost my bearings and I was glad enough to hear Joe's hail behind me.

  'Struck your trail 'way back,' said he, 'and followed it up as quick as I could.'

'Have you been to Harding's?'

  'No. I struck straight across from Simmons's. O' course I guessed it were probably you, but even if I hadn't known you was coming I'd 'a been certain you didn't know the country and was town-bred.'

  'How?'

  'You paused wherever there were crossroads, and had a look at your compass.'

  'How do you know I did that?' I demanded again; for I had consulted my compass several times, though I could not see what had made Joe aware of the fact.

  'You stood it on a log once at Smith's Clearing and again on that spruce stump at the Old Lumber Camp. And each time you shifted your direction.'

  I laughed. 'Did you know anything else about me?' I asked.

  'Knew you carried a gun, and was wonderful fresh from the city.'

  In answer to my laugh Joe continued:

  'Twice you went off the road after them two deer you saw, your tracks told me that. And you stepped in under that pine when that little drop o' rain fell. There wasn't enough of it to send a man who'd been a day in the woods into shelter. But I have always noticed how wonderful scared the city makes a man o' a drop o' clean rain-water.'

  'Anything else?'

  'Used five matches to light your pipe. Struck 'em on a wore-out box. Heads come off, too. That don't happen when you have a new scraper to your box.'

  'I say, Joe, I shouldn't like to have you on my trail if I'd committed a crime.'

  Joe smiled a singularly pleasant smile. 'I guess I'd catch you all right,' said he.

  It was long after dark when we reached November's shack that evening. As he opened the door he displaced something white which lay just inside it. He stooped.

  'It's a letter,' he said in surprise as he handed it to me. 'What does it say, Mr Quaritch?'

  I read it aloud. It ran:

'The skunk!' cried November.

  I had never seen him so moved. He had been away hunting for three days and returned to find this message.

  'The darned skunk,' he repeated, 'to rob her traps!'

  'Her? A woman?'

  'S. Rone stands for Sally Rone. You've sure heard of her?'

  'No, who is she?'

  'I'll tell you,' said Joe. 'Sal's a mighty brave girl – that is, she's a widow. She was married on Rone four years ago last Christmas, and the autumn after he got his back broke to the Red Star Lumber Camp. Didn't hump himself quick enough from under a falling tree. Anyway, he died all right, leaving Sally just enough dollars to carry her over the birth of her son. To make a long story short, there was lots of the boys ready to fill dead man Rone's place when they knew her money must be giving out, and the neighbours were wonderful interested to know which Sal would take. But it soon come out that Sal wasn't taking any of them, but had decided to try what she could do with the trapping herself.'

  'Herself?'

  'Just that. Rone worked a line o' traps, and Sal was fixed to make her living and the boy's that way. Said a woman was liable to be as successful a trapper as a man. She's at it near three year now, and she's made good. Lives with her boy about four hours' walk nor'west of here, with not another house within five miles of her. She's got a young sister, Ruby, with her on account of the kid, as she has to be out such a lot.'

  'A lonely life for a woman.'

  'Yes,' agreed November. 'And now some skunk's robbing her and getting her frightened, curse him! How long ago was that paper written?'

  I looked again at the letter. 'There's no date.'

  'Nothing about who brought it?'

  'No.'

  November rose, lighted a lantern, and without a word stepped out into the darkness. In five minutes he returned.

  'She brought it herself,' he announced. 'Little feet – running – rustling to get home to the little chap. She was here afore Thursday morning's rain, some time Wednesday, not long after I started, I guess.... I'm off soon as ever I can stoke in some grub. You coming?'

  'Yes.'

  Not much later I was following November's nimbly moving figure upon as hard a woods march as I ever care to try. I was not sorry when a thong of my moccasin gave way and Joe allowed me a minute to tie it up and to get my wind.

  'There's Tom Carroll, Phil Gort, and Injin Sylvester,' began November abruptly, 'those three. They're Sally's nearest neighbours, them and Val Black. Val's a good man, but...'

  'But what?' said I absently.

  'Him and Tom Carroll's cut the top notches for Sally's favour so far.'

  'But what's that got to do with...'

  'Come on,' snapped November, and hurried forward.

  I need say no more about the rest of the journey, it was like a dozen others I had made behind November. Deep in the night I could just make out that we were passing round the lower escarpments of a great wooded mountain, when we saw a light above glimmering through the trees. Soon we reached the lonely cabin in its clearing; the trees closed about it, and the night wind whined overhead through the bareness of the twigs.

  Joe knocked at the door, calling at the same time: 'It's me. Are you there, Sally?'

  The door opened an inch or two. 'Is it you, Joe?'

  November thrust his right hand with its deep scar across the back through the aperture. 'You should know that cut, Sal, you tended it.'

  'Come in! Come in!'

  I followed Joe into the house, and turned to look at Sally. Already I had made a mental picture of her as a strapping young woman, well equipped to take her place in the race of life, but I saw a slim girl with gentle red-brown eyes that matched the red-brown of her rebellious hair, a small face, pale under its weather-tan, but showing a line of milk-white skin above her brows. She was in fact extremely pretty, with a kind of good looks I had not expected, and ten seconds later, I, too, had fallen under the spell of that charm which was all the more powerful because Sally herself was unconscious of it.

  'You've been long in coming, Joe,' she said with a sudden smile. 'You were away, of course?'

  'Aye, just got back 'fore we started for here.' He looked round. 'Where's young Dan?'

  'I've just got him off to sleep on the bed there'; she pointed to a deerskin curtain in the corner.

  'What? They been frightening him?'

  Mrs Rone looked oddly at November. 'No, but if he heard us talking he might get scared, for the man who's been robbing me was in this room not six hours ago and Danny saw him.'

  November raised his eyebrows. 'Huh! That's fierce!' he said. 'Danny's rising three, ain't he? He could tell.'

  'Nothing at all. It was after dark and the man had his face muffled. Danny said he was a real good man, he gave him sugar from the cupboard!' said Sally.

  'His hands ... what like was his hands? ... He gave the sugar.'

  'I thought of that, but Danny says he had mitts on.'

  November drew a chair to the table. 'Tell us all from the first of it... robbing the traps and to-night.'

  In a few minutes we were drinking our tea while our hostess told us the story.

  'It's more'n three weeks now since I found out the traps were being meddled with. It was done very cunning, but I have my own way of baiting them and the thief, though he's a clever woodsman and knows a heap, never dropped to that. Sometimes he'd set 'em and bait 'em like as if they were never touched at all, and other times he'd just make it appear as if the animal had got itself out. I wouldn't believe it at first, for I thought there was no one hereabouts would want to starve me and Danny, but it happened time after time.'

  'He must have left tracks,' said Joe.

  'Some, yes. But he mostly worked when snow was falling. He's cunning.'

  'Did any one ever see his tracks but you?'

  'Sylvester did.'

  'How was that?' said Joe with sudden interest.

  'I came on Sylvester one evening when I was trailing the robber.'

  'Perhaps Sylvester himself was the robber.'

  Mrs Rone shook her head.

  'It wasn't him, Joe. He couldn't 'a' known I was comin' on him, and his tracks was quite different.'

  'Well, but to-night? You say the thief come here to-night? What did he do that for?' said Joe, pushing the tobacco firmly into his pipe-bowl.

  'He had a good reason,' replied Sally with bitterness. 'Last Thursday when I was on my way back from putting my letter under your door, I come home around by a line of traps which I have on the far side of the mountain. It wasn't anything like my usual time to visit them, not but what I've varied my hours lately to try and catch the villain. I had gone about halfway to Low's Corner when I heard something rustling through the scrub ahead of me, it might have been a lynx or it might have been a dog, but when I come to the trap I saw the thief had made off that minute, for he'd been trying to force open the trap, and when he heard me he wrenched hard, you bet, but he was bound to take care not to be too rough.'