For an hour thereafter Keith told the story of the man-hunt.  It was his Iliad.  He could feel the presence of Conniston as words fell from his lips; he forgot the presence of the stern-faced man who was watching him and listening to him; he could see once more only the long months and years of that epic drama of one against one, of pursuit and flight, of hunger and cold, of the Long Nights filled with the desolation of madness and despair.  He triumphed over himself, and it was Conniston who spoke from within him.  It was the Englishman who told how terribly John Keith had been punished, and when he came to the final days in the lonely little cabin in the edge of the Barrens, Keith finished with a choking in his throat, and the words, “And that was how John Keith died—­a gentleman and a man!”

He was thinking of the Englishman, of the calm and fearless smile in his eyes as he died, of his last words, the last friendly grip of his hand, and McDowell saw the thing as though he had faced it himself.  He brushed a hand over his face as if to wipe away a film.  For some moments after Keith had finished, he stood with his back to the man who he thought was Conniston, and his mind was swiftly adding twos and twos and fours and fours as he looked away into the green valley of the Saskatchewan.  He was the iron man when he turned to Keith again, the law itself, merciless and potent, by some miracle turned into the form of human flesh.

“After two and a half years of that even a murderer must have seemed like a saint to you, Conniston.  You have done your work splendidly.  The whole story shall go to the Department, and if it doesn’t bring you a commission, I’ll resign.  But we must continue to regret that John Keith did not live to be hanged.”

“He has paid the price,” said Keith dully.

“No, he has not paid the price, not in full.  He merely died.  It could have been paid only at the end of a rope.  His crime was atrociously brutal, the culmination of a fiend’s desire for revenge.  We will wipe off his name.  But I can not wipe away the regret.  I would sacrifice a year of my life if he were in this room with you now.  It would be worth it.  God, what a thing for the Service—­to have brought John Keith back to justice after four years!”

He was rubbing his hands and smiling at Keith even as he spoke.  His eyes had taken on a filmy glitter.  The law!  It stood there, without heart or soul, coveting the life that had escaped it.  A feeling of revulsion swept over Keith.

A knock came at the door.

McDowell’s voice gave permission, and the door slowly opened.  Cruze, the young secretary, thrust in his head.

“Shan Tung is waiting, sir,” he said.

An invisible hand reached up suddenly and gripped at Keith’s throat.  He turned aside to conceal what his face might have betrayed.  Shan Tung!  He knew what it was now that had pulled him back, he knew why Conniston’s troubled face had traveled with him over the Barrens, and there surged over him with a sickening foreboding, a realization of what it was that Conniston had remembered and wanted to tell him—­when it was too late.  They had forgotten Shan Tung, the Chinaman!