The Heart of Unaga Part 24

Steve nodded.

"I guessed he'd be talking of them."

"The old yarn of hibernating folks," the Scotsman said, his eyes alight with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Just that. Only, it's no--yarn."

Steve had no responsive smile. His eyes were serious with a conviction that promptly changed the other's att.i.tude. He searched an inner pocket and drew forth a neatly tied packet. This he unfastened while the other watched him curiously.

The wrappings removed, a bunch of something that looked rather like dried seaweed lay revealed. And a curious sweet odour made itself apparent on the still air.

Steve pa.s.sed it across to his companion without comment. And Ross took it, and, for some thoughtful moments, sat gazing upon the strange product of the hidden Unaga. Then he gingerly picked up some of the shrivelled weed for a closer examination, and, a moment later, pressed it against his nose and inhaled deeply. As he did so, Steve, watching him, beheld a sudden excited lighting of his eyes.

"You know it, Doc," he said. "I don't need to ask."

Steve spoke quite quietly, and the other continued to contemplate the stuff in the intent, absorbed fashion of a suddenly startled scientific mind. At last he withdrew his fascinated gaze.

"'Adresol!'" he exclaimed. And his tone was thrilling with the joy of the enthusiast.

"Yes."

"You knew it?"

The Scotsman's sharp question was accompanied by the searching of astonished eyes.

"Sure."

Ross made no attempt to return the weed. It seemed as though he found it impossible to deny its fascination.

"Tell me about it," he said, fingering the stuff with the tenderness of an artist contemplating some precious work of delicate craftsmanship.

"It's the key to the hibernating yarn," Steve said. "Yes, I need to hand it you all. That way you'll understand the things I've got in my mind."

It was a long enough story. Steve was anxious that nothing should be omitted that could convince the only man who could a.s.sist him in carrying out his plans. Sunset had nearly faded out of the sky by the time it was finished. He told everything as he knew it both from An-ina and the mother of Marcel. Also that which he had learned first hand, and from the diaries of Marcel Brand. The story of the dead chemist who had abandoned everything, even life itself, in the pursuit of the elusive weed lost nothing from his wide sympathy. And the crude use of the drug by the Indians formed a picture full of colour and romance.

Ross absorbed it all, and wonder and interest grew in his mind as he listened to the story of it.

At the conclusion he re-lit his forgotten pipe.

"And it grows there--in plenty?" he said, in profound amazement.

"Steve, boy, do you know what it means to find a big source of that stuff? Oh," he cried with a rush of enthusiasm, "it means--it means the greatest thing for suffering humanity that's been discovered in a thousand years. Here, I'll tell you. Oh, it's known to us folk, who've studied dope as a special study. It's been found in places, but not in much bigger quant.i.ties than would dope a fair-sized litter of piebald kittens. It's sort of like radium, and half a pint of the distilled drug would be worth over twenty-five thousand dollars. Maybe that'll tell you how much there is of it on the market. But it's not that. Oh, no, it's a heap bigger than that, boy. The plant itself is deadly in the green state. It exhales a poison you couldn't stand for ten seconds. Dried, its poison is killed stone dead. But it leaves behind it its priceless narcotic properties. And these are perfectly innocuous, and even health-giving. I don't need to worry you with the scientific side of it, but it'll tell you something of what it means when I say it suspends life, and you don't need to worry about the condition of the person who's doped with it. You said those darn Indians live to a great age. I believe it. You see, they live only _six months of the year_. They're dead the rest. Or anyway their life is suspended. I seem to know the name of that man Brand. I seem to recall it in a.s.sociation with 'Adresol.' Anyway, the work he's done mustn't be wasted. We'll have to get an outfit. A big outfit that can't fail to grab the secret of those neches upon Unaga. There's no small crowd of folk has any right to deny the rest of the world the benefits of this wonderful drug. We----"

"That's how I reckon," Steve broke in quickly. "But the thing's to be done the way I've figured."

"How's that?"

Steve was sitting up in his rocking-chair.

"I didn't hand you that stuff and my story of these things for pastime, Doc. I guess I'd learnt all you've told me from the books and papers of the boy's father. Knowing you for the man you are, and the way you most generally try to make a ten-pound heart look like a sparrow's egg by shouting at folks, I reckoned you'd see with me in this thing. That poor feller Brand. As you say, his work isn't to be wasted. He's left behind him a kiddie which hasn't a thing in the world, and if I'm any judge of things that kiddie was the whole sun, moon, and stars of his life. I'm thinking of that kiddie now. And I'm thinking of him alone. You're thinking of a suffering world. If there's twenty-five thousand dollars for a half pint of that dope the money belongs to the helpless kid of the man who's given his life to locate it. We don't need an outfit to get the neches' secret. We don't need a thing. There's just one man knows how to locate the place where Marcel Brand lived, and that's me.

There's not a living soul, not even Julyman, or Oolak, or An-ina, could ever make it without me. And I tell you right here there's no one ever learns it from me. That secret is for Marcel, and I figure to hand it to him, and all that's coming out of it. That's why I've told you these things. Now you'll understand what's in my mind when I say that I'm coming along back when I've settled with Garstaing, or failed to locate him. If I've settled with him I'll be in a hurry. And I'm going up north--north where no one can ever hope to follow me, with An-ina, and Marcel, and maybe Julyman and Oolak again, and I'm going to work this thing for the rest of my life for--Marcel. It's his, all of it. And what's left over is for the suffering humanity you're thinking about.

See, here, Doc, you and me, we aren't any sort of twin brothers of friends. We haven't been raised together. I hadn't a notion of you till I took charge of this station. But I know a man--a real man. And if you've the guts I reckon you have, then you'll help me to do the thing that's going to shut the gates of the h.e.l.l that's opened to swallow me up."

"You mean the care of the boy and An-ina?"

"Till I get back. Then you'll hand 'em over without--a kick."

Ross ran his great fingers through his hair, while he sought the last glow of sunset for inspiration.

"It's a h.e.l.l of a country--up there," he protested, after a moment. He was thinking of the child. He was thinking of Millie's possible protests at sacrificing the child to the terrors of Unaga.

"He was bred there." Steve's eyes were urgent. "It's handing to him the things his father would have wanted him to have. Think, Doc. By every moral right the 'Adresol' secret is his. It cost him a father. It cost him a mother. It would have cost him his life--a white man's life--if it hadn't been for the hand of Providence sending me along to him. Besides, it's all here, Doc," he went on tapping his breast. "He's been my anchor, my small, little anchor, but a mighty powerful one. He's saved me from all sorts of h.e.l.l, and I want to hand him the life he's saved in return. I want to raise him to a great manhood, and hand him a future that'll stagger half the world. And if I fail I'll have done all a mortal man can."

The rustle of a woman's dress in the hallway behind them heralded Millie's approach. Ross stood up hastily. He was just a shade relieved at the interruption. In a moment the atmosphere was changed from Steve's pa.s.sionate urgency to the domestic lightness of a happy wife's presence.

"Why, Mac," she cried, as she stood framed in the doorway, "you two boys still doping yourselves with smudge and tobacco smoke? That kiddie's only just gone off to sleep. He's a terrible tyrant, Steve, and just the sweetest ever."

She glanced quickly from one to the other, and in a moment the smile died out of her eyes in response to the seriousness she beheld in the faces confronting her.

"You've got around in the nick o' time," the husband said. "Steve's going away--East. He'll be back in awhile. Maybe a year. Maybe more. And when he comes back he--wants the boy. He wants to take him right away, and to raise him as his own. He reckons he's kind of adrift now, and the kiddie looks like handing him an anchor. He's yearning to make good for him, in a way that, maybe we, with our own two, couldn't hope to. We're guessing it's up to you. A year or so, and then you--hand him to his 'Uncle Steve.'"

Millie turned to the man who had battled for the boy's life. Her kindly eyes were promptly lit with all a good woman's sympathy. She remembered the man's pa.s.sionate devotion to his own. She remembered the terrible disaster that had overtaken him. Her thought went no further. At the moment it was incapable of going further.

She turned to the husband awaiting her reply, and there was a suspicious moisture in her clear smiling eyes.

"Say, Mac," she cried in her half tender, half humourous way, "by the way you talk folk might guess you were scared to death of the wife who didn't know better than to take you for better or worse. Steve doesn't need to worry a thing. You know that. I don't know the rights of his claim by the laws of the folks who're set to worry us. But there's G.o.d's claim that don't need lawyers to make plain. Little Marcel, bless him, is his. If he comes, night or day, one year's time or ten, G.o.d willing, he'll be here waiting for him, and I'll hand him over with two of everything for the comfort of his sweet little body."

CHAPTER XIV

MALLARD'S

The ladder of crime has its bottom rung in Mallard's. Those who essay the perilous descent inevitably gravitate, sooner or later, at Mallard's. It was Saney who was responsible for the statement; and Saney was a shrewd "investigator," and certainly one of the most experienced amongst those whose lives were spent in an endeavour to beat the criminal mind of Eastern Canada.

Mallard's was somewhere on the water front of Quebec. It stood in a backwater where the busy tide of seafaring traffic pa.s.sed it by. But it was sufficiently adjacent to permit its clientele swift and convenient access to the docks, at once a safety valve and the source of its popularity.

It was nominally a sailors' boarding-house. Heredity also conferred upon it the dignity of "hotel." Furthermore, its licence carried with it the privileges of a saloon. But its claims were by no means exhausted by these things.

According to Saney's view there was no criminal in the country, and very few of those who were worth while in the criminal world of the United States, who, at some time in their careers, had not pa.s.sed through one of its many concealed exits. It might, in consequence, be supposed that Mallard's was a more than usually happy hunting-ground for the investigator of crime. But here again Saney must be quoted. Mallard's, he said, was a life study, and, even so, three score and ten years was no more than sufficient for a very elementary apprenticeship. Further, he considered that Mallard's was the cemetery of all reputations in criminal investigation.

Outwardly Mallard's was no different from the other houses which surrounded it. It was part of a block of buildings which had grown up and developed in the course of a century or more. Its floors were several, and its windows were set one over the other without any pretence other than sheer utility. Its main doorway always stood open, and gave on to a pa.s.sage, narrow and dark, and usually deserted. The pa.s.sage ran directly into the heart of the building where rose a short staircase exactly filling the breadth of the pa.s.sage. At the top of the eight treads of this staircase was a landing of similar width, out of which turned two corridors at right angles. Beyond these the landing terminated in a downward stairway, exactly similar to the one by which it was approached. Beyond this, all description of this celebrated haunt of crime would be impossible, for the rest was a labyrinth of apparently useless pa.s.sages and stairways, ascending and descending, the following of which was only to invite complete and utter confusion of mind. The legend ran that the cellars, many floors deep, undermined half a dozen adjacent streets, and, in the block in which the place stood, no one had ever been found who could say where the house began and where it ended.

As a refuge for its benighted guests there was always a bed, of sorts, a meal and drink--at a price. If the visitor were legitimate in his claims on its hospitality he would fare no worse than a lightened purse at the time of his departure. If he were other than he pretended then it would have been better for him to have shunned the darkened pa.s.sage as he would a plague spot.

The owner of the place was never seen by the guests. It was administered, as far as could be judged, by a number of men who only intruded upon their clients when definite necessity arose. Then the intrusion was something cyclonic. On these occasions the police were never called in, and the nature of the disturbance, and the result of it, was never permitted to reach the outside. Mallard's was capable of hiding up anything. Its own crimes as well as the crimes of others.