“One must admit that he did something of the kind,” Lucy remarked.

“Will you or Mrs. Stephen describe his looks?” Foster asked.

The girl did so and then inquired:  “Why didn’t you ask Lawrence?”

“If you want an accurate description of a man, it’s better to ask a women.  Our classifications are rather vague; we say he’s all right, a good sport, or perhaps an outsider.  You note all his idiosyncrasies, the way he talks, the color of his hair——­”

“I suppose we do,” Mrs. Stephen agreed with a smile.  “You are rather shrewd.”

“I don’t see why that should surprise my friends, but it sometimes does,” Foster rejoined and went to the flag station to ask about the train.

It stopped for him an hour later and he set off again on his search for Daly, which was complicated by the need for being on his guard against a man he did not know.  It looked as if Walters had told Daly that Lawrence was in British Columbia, and he had come out to join his accomplice; but, after all, if Foster did not know Walters, the man did not know him.  Another thought gave him some comfort:  Walters had plotted against Lawrence because his evidence might be dangerous, but probably knew nothing about Daly’s blackmailing plan.  The latter would, no doubt, consider any money he could extort was his private perquisite, and might try to protect his victim for a time.

As the train sped through the mountains Foster felt very much at a loss.  Indeed, unless luck favored him, he thought he might as well give up the search, and by and by got off at a mining town.  He had no particular reason for doing so, but felt that to go on to Vancouver would be to leave the place where his last clew broke off too far away.

The town, for the most part, was built of wood, and some of the smaller and older houses of logs, with ugly square fronts that hid the roof.  A high, plank sidewalk ran down the main street, so that foot passengers might avoid the mud, but the ruts and holes were now hidden by beaten snow.  At one end stood a big smelter, which filled the place with acrid fumes, and the scream of saws rose from sheds beside the river, where rusty iron smoke-stacks towered above sawdust dumps.  The green torrent was partly covered by cakes of grinding ice.  All round, in marked contrast to the utilitarian ugliness below, dark pines ran up to the glittering snowfields on the shoulders of the peaks.  Foster went to a big new hotel, which he found dirty and too hot.  Its bare walls were cracked and exuded resin; black drops from the central heater pipes stained the rotunda floor, which was torn by the spikes on the river-Jacks’ boots.  An electric elevator made a horrible noise.  The supper he got in the big dining-room, where an electric organ played, was, however, very good, and he afterwards sat rather drearily in the rotunda, watching the men who came in and out through the revolving door.