He thrust back his chair and rose to his feet, the old note of subdued laughter rumbling in his chest.  “And because I make this wager with myself, I cannot kill you, M’sieu David—­though that might be the best thing to do.  I am going to take you to the Chateau Boulain, which is in the forests of the Yellowknife, beyond the Great Slave.  Nothing will happen to you if you make no effort to escape.  If you do that, you will surely die.  And that would hurt me, M’sieu David, because I love you like a brother, and in the end I know you are going to grip the hand of Black Roger Audemard, and get down on your knees to Carmin Fanchet.  And as for Marie-Anne—­” Again he interrupted himself, and went out of the cabin, laughing.  And there was no mistake in the metallic click of the lock outside the door.

For a time David did not move from his seat near the table.  He had not let Roger Audemard see how completely the confession had upset his inner balance, but he made no pretense of concealing the thing from himself now.  He was in the power of a cut-throat, who in turn had an army of cut-throats at his back, and both Marie-Anne and Carmin Fanchet were a part of this ring.  And he was not only a prisoner.  It was probable, under the circumstances, that Black Roger would make an end of him when a convenient moment came.  It was even more than a probability.  It was a grim necessity.  To let him live and escape would be fatal to Black Roger.

From back of these convictions, riding over them as if to demoralize any coherence and logic that might go with the evidence he was building up, came question after question, pounding at him one after the other, until his mind became more than ever a whirling chaos of uncertainty.  If St. Pierre was Black Roger, why would he confess to that fact simply to pay a wager?  What reason could he have for letting him live at all?  Why had not Bateese killed him?  Why had Marie-Anne nursed him back to life?  His mind shot to the white strip of sand in which he had nearly died.  That, at least, was convincing.  Learning in some way that he was after Black Roger, they had attempted to do away with him there.  But if that were so, why was it Bateese and Black Roger’s wife and the Indian Nepapinas had risked so much to make him live, when if they had left him where he had fallen he would have died and caused them no trouble?

There was something exasperatingly uncertain and illogical about it all.  Was it possible that St. Pierre Boulain was playing a huge joke on him?  Even that was inconceivable.  For there was Carmin Fanchet, a fitting companion for a man like Black Roger, and there was Marie-Anne, who, if it had been a joke, would not have played her part so well.