“This business with the whiskey has become a problem, Mr. Wilcox.”
Wilcox was talking with Blake O’Brian. “Since when did you take such a concern with temperance, Mr. O’Brian?”
“Since it brought the Mounties to Holt City, that’s when,” said O’Brian.
Durrant guessed that the two men were standing not twenty feet away on the other side of the wall. They spoke in low but not hushed voices.
“Durrant Wallace is onto Dodds. It won’t be long before he shuts him down. I think he’ll collar that fool for Deek’s murder. Dodds has it coming. That Red Coat is a real bulldog.”
“That’s what worries me,” said O’Brian.
“There’s nothing to be worried about. Nothing at all.”
“We’ll see,” said O’Brian.
“You’re going to have to trust me, Mr. O’Brian.”
Durrant could hear the two men shuffle in the warehouse.
“Okay. You’ve not let me down so far. But still, having the Mounties here in Holt City is not what we had planned for.”
“The murder of Deek Penner will be solved shortly. I have every confidence. Wallace will be back to sorting the post and sending wires by the time the next chinook blows through. There’s nothing to concern yourself with. Besides, he’s obsessed with the whiskey trade; he isn’t concerned about the contracts. He doesn’t understand them.”
The two men were silent a moment. Durrant pressed his eyes shut, straining to hear. When the two men spoke again, their tone was more hushed.
“Listen, Wilcox, I don’t need to tell you how much is at stake here. This contract is probably the most lucrative expenditure for the whole of the CPR. It’s got to be handled right.”
“I know what’s at stake, Mr. O’Brian.”
“Parliament is tied up in knots over this. The expenditure is four, maybe five times what we thought it would be. The numbers are staggering.”
“It costs a lot of money to put a railway where Fleming and Stephen and Rogers want it. The Kicking Horse Pass is a thousand-foot drop on the far side.”
“What I’m telling you is that there’s a lot of money to be made.”
“I know exactly what you are telling me. Everything is proceeding as we discussed, Mr. Vice-Chair.”
“What’s it going to take for the Canada Explosives Company to forfeit the contract?”
There was a long moment of silence.
“Well? What will it take?”
“Something dramatic, I’m afraid,” said Wilcox.
“That’s what worries me, sir.”
“It’s a nasty piece of work, the Kicking Horse Pass, Mr. O’Brian. It’s going to be a dangerous place for a navvy to find himself come the spring. I think we can assume that before the Tote Road is complete, more than a few of these fellows will be tucked in along side of the track. You’ll have every right to raise questions of the safety of the explosives work when that happens.”
Durrant opened his eyes wide.
“Alright,” said Blake O’Brian. “I expect to be kept up to date on this matter. The Parliament of Canada will suffer no further abuse of the public purse.”
“Of course, Mr. Vice-Chair,” said Wilcox. “Now, let me show you the rest of the stores we’ve put up. And in the next couple of days, I shall show you to the Kicking Horse summit, where work has already begun on the short-lived munitions plant there.”
Durrant heard both men laugh, the sound of their voices fading as they moved away. He turned to Charlie, who was wide-eyed, scanning around them. Charlie put a finger to his lips again. Durrant heard the large doors to the warehouse creak and watched as a light moved off towards the station.
Charlie tugged at Durrant’s arm and the two of them made their way by another pathway back to their bunk. Durrant stopped them on the path. “Wait a minute, son,” said Durrant.
Charlie looked around. The boy was obviously concerned about detection.
“Wait a minute,” Durrant repeated. From where they stood they could not see the station. “I need to get word to Steele. I need him to look into this man O’Brian. I should have done it sooner.” Charlie shook his head. “Yes, tonight,” said Durrant. “Take me to the station.”
Charlie looked around, getting his bearings. He tugged at Durrant’s arm and the two men circled through the woods. When they reached the Bow, Durrant could see the station a few hundred yards up river. Charlie led him along the frosty path to the rail bed, and then along the tracks the last fifty yards to the empty platform. There was no light on in the station.
“Okay, boy, you go and see if you can eyeball O’Brian or Wilcox in that office of his. Be quiet, and be careful,” said Durrant.
Charlie looked around him, then carefully picked his way across the tracks and up onto the station platform. Durrant watched him from his hiding place in the dark. He could just make out the lad creeping quietly up to the station along the wall. He knew he was asking a lot of the boy; he could not be certain that Wilcox or O’Brian weren’t dangerous. He did know that they were up to some malfeasance as it pertained to contracts.
Only Steele himself might be able to make the appropriate inquiries in Ottawa, Trenton, and elsewhere. Durrant knew that the police department in Trenton—O’Brian’s home town—was rife with cronyism and political interference. It was possible that inquires into the Member of Parliament’s affairs would at best be rebuffed, and worst, reported back to the MP immediately.
Charlie reached the door and headed for the window of Wilcox’s office. The boy crouched down and crept along the platform on hands and knees. He was beginning to straighten up when suddenly a light came to life in the office, and Charlie ducked down below the window.
Durrant could clearly see the outline of a man through the frosted glass, a lantern held aloft, its pale yellow light puncturing the icy pane and trickling onto the station platform. Charlie lay prone on the bare boards beneath the window.
Durrant stood up. He felt for the pistol, but considered his next move. If Charlie faced detection, what good would his pistol do? If they found Charlie snooping around the platform, what more could they do than scold the boy and deliver him back to his bunk? If O’Brian and Wilcox were rigging contracts . . . Durrant considered his assessment of the danger they posed. Could a rigged contract be enough to motivate a man to murder? It certainly could if there was a million dollars at stake.
Durrant focused his attention on the light in the window. He saw Charlie look back over his shoulder toward Durrant. Hidden in the darkness, Durrant’s hand signals to stay put were lost on the lad.
The light faded from the window, but soon the door to the station platform was pushed open, the frozen hinges protesting in the still night, and the two men stepped out onto the platform. The open door obscured Charlie from Durrant’s view. The shaft of light fell across the platform, and Durrant could no longer observe where the boy was hiding.
Durrant held his breath as the silhouetted figures of O’Brian and Wilcox pushed the door shut behind them. In a second they would turn and the light of their lamp would fall across Charlie’s prone form just ten feet from where they stood. The door was fastened shut and the lamp bearer—Durrant guessed it to be Wilcox—began to move.
Durrant slipped the Enfield—a better pistol for distance—from his holster beneath his coat. If either of these men laid a glove on Charlie, he would answer with force of his own. The Mountie held his breath.
The light of the lamp fell upon the platform beneath the office window—but Charlie was not there. Durrant exhaled a long stream of icy breath and felt his left hand relax on the hammer of the pistol. The two men walked from the station platform in silence. Durrant watched the lamp fade in the distance, and then disappear entirely.
Suddenly, Durrant felt a presence beside him, and he turned with a start. When he saw it was Charlie, he holstered the Enfield.
“Blue Jesus, boy, that was a close call.” He looked at the lad, who was smiling. “You like sneaking
around. Done that a lot, have you?” Charlie nodded. “Alright, lad,” Durrant said, straightening. “Let’s go and send this wire.”
From Durrant Wallace.
To Sam Steele.
Trouble at end of track. MP Blake O’Brian and Hep Wilcox overheard discussing explosives contracts and plan to rig transfer of demo contract from Canada Explosives Company to another party. Investigate O’Brian’s business arrangements in Trenton. Inform of any involvement with TNT production. Concern that lives at risk in process. Send word soon.
It was past midnight when Durrant and Charlie once again made their way over the slick pathways to the NWMP cabin. Durrant’s thoughts swirled with everything he had learned as they proceeded through the star-filled night.
The day’s conflicts continued to play out in the Mountie’s addled mind. Durrant knew little about the inquiry into such a crime as murder and he was beginning to feel in over his head. The North West Mounted Police had no investigation unit; their work on the Prairie didn’t call for it. Most often serious crimes such as theft and murder didn’t require an investigator so much as a fast horse. This was different. The culprit was likely hiding in plain view. Durrant knew that some of Canada’s more advanced police forces, such as those in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, were developing the ability to trace a man by his fingerprints, but such technology was not available to the North West Mounted Police. Even if it were, the murder weapon had been recovered from a pool of ice water. With no witnesses to the killing, and only Christianson’s account of the discovery of the body, there was precious little evidence.
It seemed to Durrant that solving this crime would come down to the circumstances. It would be a matter of determining who had the most reason for wanting Penner dead, and then flushing that person from the cover of plain view. The list of reasons people might have wanted the man dead was growing. The threat that Penner might throw a spanner in Dodds’ suspected moonshine operation was but one. The last few days had yielded two more: Penner’s reported confrontation with the mysterious spy for the Grand Trunk Railway, and now this clandestine relationship between Hep Wilcox, the MP Blake O’Brian, and the munitions contracts for the Big Hill section of the CPR. The entire affair left Durrant at a loss.
TWELVE
MEANS, MOTIVE, OPPORTUNITY
MORNING FOUND DURRANT ON THE banks of the Bow River near its confluence with the Pipestone River. He was again lost in deliberation when he heard a noise behind him. Durrant’s hand intuitively wrapped around the butt of his Bulldog.
“No need to draw your weapon, sir,” came a lilting voice from just a few feet to Durrant’s left. “I am unarmed, and a friend at that.”
Durrant, surprised that someone had come so close to him without him hearing, began to pull the pistol from the pocket just the same. He turned on the man and saw a gentleman in a long tan coat standing but ten feet from him. He was clean shaven and dark in the face, his nose peeling with sunburn; only his eyes were ringed in white, as if he’d had them covered while out in the sun. On his feet were heavy leather riding boots, on his head, a thick beaverskin hat. The man clenched an unlit pipe tightly in his teeth.
As Durrant turned, the gentleman turned too and extended his left hand in greeting. “I am Garnet Moberly. I am the engineer in charge of, among other matters, the laying out of the Kicking Horse Tote Road, and for proving the survey of the Canadian Pacific mainline down the Lower Kicking Horse Canyon and on into the Columbia country.” His accent was strong but clear. London, thought Durrant, but come to Canada by parts unknown.
Durrant let go of his pistol and stepped forward. Moberly moved two quick steps in and took Durrant’s hand.
“Sergeant Durrant Wallace. North West Mounted Police.”
“Indeed you are. It’s a pleasure, sir.”
“Pleasure is mine.”
“I’ve just returned from the Columbia. Upon checking in with Mr. Wilcox I was informed of the untimely demise of Mr. Penner, and of your arrival at The Summit to ensure justice is done.”
“The Summit?”
“Herbert Samuel and his brother Tom are fine lads, and no doubt the former is destined for great things, but I do not feel this cluster of shakes requires their name. This place has many a moniker: Laggan and Holt City among them, but it was called The Summit upon the arrival of the steel, and I shall call it that until our mainline is well and advanced from this glorious place and Her Majesty sees fit to bestow a proper name.”
The two men contemplated one another for a moment It was Moberly who broke the silence. “Sergeant Wallace, would you fancy a cup of tea?”
Durrant looked at the man. He was trim and stood six feet tall, broad across the shoulders even under his heavy coat. For the first time Durrant noticed the white line of a scar across his left cheek that looked like an awkward crease that extended from his left eye all the way to the line of the man’s jaw.
“That would be good,” Durrant said.
“Very well, please follow me to my cabin. I’ll have Mr. Jimmy bring us the service.”
They passed Mr. Kim’s laundry and the cut in the Bow River where the camp drew its water on the way to Moberly’s cabin. Durrant noted it was of a much sturdier construction than the others in the camp, save the station and the general store. The boards had been roughly hewn, but they were fastened with butterfly joints rather than the crude construction of heavy nails. Where most of the other huts in the camp were chinked with mud or a slurry of turf and plaster, Moberly’s walls were tightly constructed. There was no canvas roof; his abode sported a neat, if not practical, milled crown. His stovepipe was shining sheet metal, unlike the rusting and refurbished chimneys that adorned most other buildings.
Moberly opened the door to his cabin. “Please come in. I’ll see that Mr. Jimmy brings us cakes as well as the tea service.”
The interior was bright, and Durrant realized that the man had a functioning window in his domicile. A small bed was pressed against one wall, and on it a heavy pack, still bursting at the seams with winter gear, sat as though he really had only arrived back in Holt City that very hour. A small table was positioned against the wall on the opposite side of a warm, efficient looking woodstove. Where most of the cabins in Holt City had potbellied stoves or improvised ones made from upended barrels and jury-rigged tin cans as stovepipes, Moberly’s seemed to be of the finest quality and perfect for keeping a small space warm in the worst conditions. Two small, folding camp chairs were set out by the stove. The room was cozy and smelled clean and fresh. Durrant would not have been surprised to see flowers on the windowsill.
“Sergeant Wallace, please, take a seat. Let me step next door to see to Mr. Jimmy, and make a swift return. I am anxious to hear your stories of adventure and learn what progress has been made in apprehending Mr. Penner’s executioner.”
With that, Moberly took his leave, and Durrant sat down in front of the stove. He opened his coat and let his numb right hand rest on his leg. He had a chance to look about the room. Next to the overstuffed pack rested a Martini-Henry breech-loading rifle, and beside that a pair of twin Webley revolvers. Durrant twisted in his chair to regard the rifle better. It appeared to have suffered heavy use; its barrel had several nicks and gashes, and along the shoulder stock was a long deep score. Mr. Moberly, it seemed, was a soldier.
Durrant let his eyes drift further. A stack of books rested by the bed on an antique table. Next to the books was an exotic figurine with the head of an elephant and the torso of a man. Most interesting to Durrant, however, were the spear, shield, and ball club that adorned the wall above the bed. Nearly five feet in length, the shield was tan, black, and white in colour. It appeared to be made from a hide, reinforced with a richly coloured wood. The spear was short with a broad tip and a thick shaft. The club was nearly as long as the spear, and looked both dense and deadly. Durrant thought about Penner’s ruined face and head.
“I see you’re admiring the spoils of war, Sergeant.” Again, Moberly was there before
Durrant had become aware of him. A cool gust of wind from the open door seemed to reach the Mountie after Moberly’s words.
“You were in Africa?”
“And elsewhere.”
“You fought in the Zulu war?”
“Not so much a war as a slaughter.”
“For who?”
“Well spoken. The Empire had the last laugh, I dare say, but not before suffering serious losses.” Durrant looked at the long scar across the man’s face. “Indeed, Sergeant. We all carry our burden.” Moberly then laughed and said, “I can’t be certain if that spear is the assegai that took my eye and cleaved this line down my face, but it might well be.”
“Eye?”
“Indeed, sir, this bobble,” he said, pointing to the left eye, “is nothing more than a trinket, courtesy of Her Majesty.”
Durrant made an effort not to regard Moberly for too long, conscious as he was of such an intrusion.
“And the club?”
“The Zulu call it a knob-kerrie. It simply completes the set, Sergeant.” At that there was a knock at the door. “That would be our tea,” said Moberly, turning smartly.
The gentleman opened the door and a dark-skinned man entered the room with a tea service that he placed between the two chairs before the fire. Durrant regarded the man Moberly called Mr. Jimmy: he had hair shorn very short and the almond-shaped eyes of the Orient, but his skin was darker than the Chinese that Durrant knew worked on the western section of the railway. Durrant guessed that the servant was East Indian. The man set the tea service: there was a pot of tea and cups, all of the finest china, along with a plate of cakes and biscuits. Milk and sugar were in matching bowls.
“Thank you, Mr. Jimmy.” Wordlessly, the man left the room. “May I pour for you, Sergeant?”
“Go ahead,” said Durrant, and immediately felt bad for assuming Moberly was asking because of his game hand. This might be the only cultured man in this corner of the North West Territories, thought Durrant.
Moberly poured the tea. “Milk or sugar?”
“Black is fine, thank you.”
The End of the Line Page 17