“Well?” he challenged. “You got me out of my club on the pretext of having something to say about a man named Keats whom I once knew; but from the look of things it appears to be much more likely that, with my own house affording you protection, I am to be coolly robbed of my watch, money, and such other valuables as you may be able to lay your hands on!”
The slim little figure had slipped gracefully into a chair, facing Dayler on the opposite side of the table. She smiled curiously.
“But, at least, I will keep my promise first, and tell you about this Keats,” she said. “Buck Keats, wasn’t it, Mr. Dayler? And, as your servants may be back in another half hour or so, we won’t waste any time in getting to the story. It goes back about twenty years. At that time you were in the Yukon, and pretty well away from civilization, and you had been prospecting all summer with your partner, a man quite a little older than you were, a man named Laynton, Joe Laynton—Square Joe, they called him in that country, and you ought to know why. He was a big man—in his body and in his soul—a God’s nobleman, wasn’t he, Mr. Dayler?”
Dayler was leaning forward, staring at her in a strange, puzzled way.
“How do you know all this?” he demanded sharply.
“I may not be quite accurate in the little details,” she went on. “You will overlook that. You and Laynton delayed your return to Dawson too long that fall. You were caught in bad weather. Your provisions ran low. Laynton met with a nasty accident with an axe. In reaching up above his head to cut some branches for fuel, the axe in some way glanced off and inflicted a very serious and a very ugly wound in his shoulder and chest. Things went from bad to worse. For days Laynton could do nothing but lie in his blood-soaked bunk. Provisions ran still lower. The winter was settling down hard. You had already delayed too long, and now Laynton couldn’t go. And yet you woke up one morning to find his bunk empty.”
She paused. Billy Kane’s eyes, as he stood beside the table, passed from one to the other. Her small gloved hand, resting on the arm of her chair, had closed tightly; and into Dayler’s face, grown haggard now, had come the look of a dumb beast in hurt.