The Man in the Twilight. Cullum Ridgwell
incline.
Standing passed into the house. His confidential man of many races looked up from his work. The quick, black eyes were questioning. He was perhaps startled at the swift return of the man whom he regarded above all others.
Standing spoke coldly, emphatically.
"There's a man coming along up. He's a sailorman, and he's dressed in dirty dungaree, and he's carrying a sack of mail. Now see and get this clearly, Loale. It's important. It's so important I can't stand for any sort of mistake. When he comes you've got to send him right into my room with the mail-bag. I want him to take it in himself. You get that?"
The half-breed's eyes blinked. It was rather the curious attitude of an attentive dog. But that was always his way when the master of the Sachigo Mill spoke to him.
Pete Loale was quite an unusual creature. He looked unkempt and unclean, with his yellow, pock-marked skin, and his clothes that would have disgraced a second-hand dealer's stores of waste. But for all his lack in these directions there was that in the man which was more than worth while. Out of his black eyes looked a world of intelligence. There was also a resource and initiative in him that Standing fully appreciated.
"Sure I get that," he said simply. Then he repeated in the manner of a child determined to make no mistake. "He's to take that mail-bag right into your office—himself."
"That's it. Don't knock on my door. Don't let him think there's a soul inside that room. Just boost him right in. You get that?"
The half-breed nodded.
"I'll just say: 'Here you! Just push that darn truck right inside that room, an' don't worry me with it, I'm busy.' That how?" The man hunched his slim shoulders into a shrug.
"See you do it—just that way," Standing said. Then he turned to Bat. "We'll get inside," he went on. "He'll be right along."
They passed into the office. The door closed behind them and Standing moved over to his seat at the crowded desk.
"Wal?"
Bat was still standing. He failed to grasp his friend's purpose. His wit was unequal to the rapid process of the other's swiftly calculating mind.
Standing littered his writing-pad with papers. He picked up a pen and jabbed it in the inkwell. Then he flung it aside and adopted a fountain-pen which he drew from his waistcoat pocket. His eyes lit with a half-smile as he finally raised them to the rugged face before him.
"You sit right over there by that window, Bat," he said easily. "If you get a look out of it you'll be amazed at the number of things to interest you." He nodded as Bat moved away with a grin and took the chair indicated. "That's it. Just sit around, and you won't see or even hear the fellow with the mail fall in through the door. And maybe, sitting there, you'll want to smoke your foul old pipe. Sort of pipe of peaceful meditation. Yes, I'd smoke that pipe, old friend, but you can cut out the peaceful meditation. You need to be ready to act quick when I pass the word. It's going to be easy. So easy I almost feel sorry for—Idepski."
"It is—Idepski?" Bat filled and lit his pipe.
"It surely is. No other. And—I'm glad. Now we'll quit talk, old friend. Just smoke, and look out of that window, and—think like hell."
Bat's understanding of his friend was well founded. The extreme nervous tension in Standing was obvious. It was in the wide, dark eyes. It was in the constant shifting of the feet which the table revealed. For the time, at least, the cowardice Standing claimed for himself was entirely swamped. He was stirred by the headlong excitement of battle in a manner that left Bat more than satisfied.
Once Bat turned from his contemplation of the piled-up country beyond the valley. It was at the sound of Standing's fiercely scratching pen. And his quick gaze took in the luxury of the setting for the little drama he felt was about to be enacted.
It was a wide, pleasant room, built wholly of red pine, and polished as only red pine will polish. There was a thick oriental carpet on the floor, and all the mahogany furniture was upholstered in red morocco. There were a few carefully selected pictures upon the walls, hung with an eye to the light upon each. But it was not an extravagant room. It suggested the homeland of Scotland, from which the owner of it all hailed. The Canadian atmosphere only found expression in the great steel stove which stood in one corner, and the splendid timber of which the walls of the room were built.
But Bat's eyes swiftly returned to their allotted task, and his reeking pipe did its duty with hearty goodwill. There was the sound of strident voices in the outer room, and the rattle of the door handle turning with a wrench.
The door swung open. The next moment there was the sound of a sack pitched upon the soft pile of the carpet. And through the open doorway the harsh voice of Loale pursued the intruder in sharp protest.
"Say, do you think you're stowing cargo in your darn, crazy old barge?" he cried. "If you fancy throwing things around you best get out an' do it. Guess you ain't used to a gent's office, you darn sailorman—"
But the door was closed with a slam and the rest of the protest was cut off. Bat swung about in his chair to discover a picture not easily to be forgotten.
Standing had left his desk. He was there with his back against the closed door, and his lean figure towered over the shorter sailorman in dungaree, who stood gazing up at him questioningly. The sight appealed to the grim humour of the manager. He wanted to laugh. But he refrained, though his eyes lit responsively as he watched the smile of irony that gleamed in the mill-owner's eyes.
"Well, well." Standing's tone lost none of the aggravation of his smile. "Say, I'd never have recognised you, Idepski, if it hadn't been that I was warned you'd shipped on the Lizzie." He laughed outright. "I can't help it. You wouldn't blame me laughing if you could see yourself. Last time I had the pleasure of encountering you was in Detroit. That's years ago. How many? Nearly seven. It seems to me I remember a bright-looking 'sleuth,' neat, clean, spruce, with a crease to his pant-legs like a razor edge, a fellow more concerned for his bath than his religion. Say, where did you raise all that junk? From old man Hardy's slop-chest? Hellbeam makes you work for your money when you're driven to wallowing in a muck-hole like the Lizzie. It isn't worth it. You see, you've run into the worst failure you've made in years. But I only wish you could see the sorry sort of sailorman you look."
Standing's right hand was behind him, and Bat heard the key turn in the lock of the door. He waited. But the trapped agent never opened his lips.
Idepski had seen Standing and the other down at the quay-side. He had left them there when he started up the hill. Yet—A bitter fury was driving him. He realised the trap that had been laid. He realised something of the deadly purpose lying behind it. So he remained silent under the scourge that was intended to hurt.
For all the filthy dungarees tucked into the clumsy legs of high leather sea boots, the dirty-coloured handkerchief knotted about his neck, the curious napless cloth cap with its peak pulled down over one eye, that curious cap which seems to be worn by no one else in the world but seafaring men, it was easy enough for Bat to visualise the dapper picture, that other picture of Walter Idepski that Standing had described. The man possessed a well-knit, sinuous figure which his dungarees could not disguise. His alert eyes were good-looking. And, cleaned of the black, stubbly growth of beard and whisker, an amazing transformation in his looks would surely have been achieved. But Bat's interest was less with these things than with the possible reaction the man might contemplate.
For the moment, however, the situation was entirely dominated by Standing, who displayed no sign of relaxing his hold upon it. He flung out a pointing hand, and Bat saw it was grasping the door key.
"You'd best take that chair, Idepski," he ordered. "You've opened war on me, but there's no need to keep you standing for it. You'll take that seat against my writing table. But first, Bat, here, is going to relieve you of the useless weapons I see you've got on you. Get those, Bat! There's a gun and a sheath knife, and they're clumsily showing their shape under his dungarees."
It was the word the