“Why, his name is Sven Larsen.  He’s Murchison’s clerk,” answered the Scot.  “And he was here all the time.”

“Sven Larsen!” yelled Wentworth.  “That half-wit!  Why, he hasn’t got sense enough to come in out of the rain!”

“Maybe ye’re right,” admitted McNabb, “but that isn’t what I hired him to do.”

With an oath, Wentworth pushed past Cameron and started for the door to find himself suddenly face to face with Sven Larsen.  “Get out of my way, damn you!” he cried.  “Go up in the loft and wallow in your stinking furs!”

“Furs!” repeated the clerk dully, but without giving an inch.  “Oh, yes, furs.”  He was looking Wentworth squarely in the eyes with a heavy stare.  “Some fur is good, and some is bad.  A Russian sable is better than a baum marten.”  At the words, Jean McNabb, who had been a silent but fascinated listener to all that transpired, leaned swiftly forward, her eyes staring into the uncouth face of the speaker, who continued, “And when the coat is dark, and of matched skins, it is very much better than any baum marten.  And when one receives the sable coat on a winter’s night from the hands of a beautiful Russian princess whom one is helping to escape through a roaring blizzard in a motor car—­or was it a sleigh?”

“Stop, damn you!” In the lamp-light the on-lookers saw that the face of the engineer had gone livid.  His words came thickly.  “You fool!  Are you crazy?  Have you forgotten Pollak, and what happened in the shop of Levinski, the furrier?  Where is Pollak?”

A slow grin overspread the face of Sven Larsen.  “I invented Pollak to cover a mistake I made.  There never was any Pollak, Wentworth, but there is a Russian sable coat.  The coat is in your trunk in the cabin.  It is the coat you stole from Miss McNabb on the night of the Campbell dinner.”

“Oskar!” cried Jean, leaping from her chair at the moment that Wentworth hurled himself upon Hedin.  Her cry was drowned in the swift impact of bodies and the sound of blows, and grunts, and heavy breathing.  McNabb and Cameron drew back and the bodies, locked in a clench, toppled to the floor, overturning a chair.

“Oh, stop them!  Stop them!” shrieked the girl.  “He’ll kill him!”

“Who’ll kill who?” grinned McNabb, holding her back with one hand, without taking his eyes from the struggling, fighting figures that writhed almost at his feet, overturning boxes and bales in their struggles.

“He’ll kill Oskar!  He’s bigger——­”

“Not by a damn sight, he won’t!” roared McNabb.  “Look at um!  Look at um!  Oskar’s on top!  Give him hell, lad!”

Jean had ceased her protest, and to her own intense surprise she found herself leaning forward, watching every move.  She cried out with pain when Wentworth’s fist brought the blood from Oskar’s nose, and she applauded when Hedin’s last three blows landed with vicious thuds against the engineer’s upturned chin.