ter I located this
feller, Sternford, coming into Sachigo, I got word of some stuff
reported from one of your own camps way out north-west of Lake St. Anac.
Guess it's about the farthest north in that direction, and it's cut off
from any other camp by a hundred miles. On the face of it the stuff
didn't seem to need more than a single thought. It was to say my man was
quitting the camp. He'd sifted it right through, but there wasn't a
'jack' in the camp with any sort of story worth wasting paper on. There
wasn't a trace of our man that way, and he proposed drawing another
cover. At the end of his report was one of those notes these boys never
seem able to resist mixing up with their official work. It told me of
one of those scraps that happened in the camps, and he seemed mighty
struck by it. It was between the camp boss, Arden Laval, and a kid
called Sternford. Say, when I read that name I jumped. I felt like
handing my feller promotion right away. Well, his story was good anyway.
It seems this camp boss is about the biggest bluff in the scrap way
known to that country. The kid licked him. They fought nearly two hours,
'rough and tough.' And the kid would have killed his man, but for the
interference of a missionary feller called Father Adam. He broke 'em
loose with a gun, and when he got 'em loose he took the kid right away
so he shouldn't hand out the homicide he reckoned to. This report was
more than two months old when I got it. Anyway I got it after a feller
called Bull Sternford, a queer name by the way, had jumped in on the
Sachigo proposition."

The agent flung away his cigarette and helped himself afresh.

"Well," he went on, smiling, "I guess it didn't take me thinking five
seconds. I set the wires humming asking a description of this fighting
kid. I got it. It was my man. The feller at Sachigo. Well?"

Idepski's smiling interrogation was full of satisfaction.

"Go on." The watchful eyes of the financier seemed to have narrowed.

"Now, by what chance does this feller, Bull Sternford, come straight
from one hell of a scrap in a far-off camp belonging to Skandinavia to
run the business end of Sachigo? What happened after that fool
missionary got him away? And--"

Idepski broke off, pondering. He flicked his cigarette ash without
regard for the carpet.

Hellbeam stirred in his chair impatiently. His lips seemed to become
more prominent. His small eyes seemed to become smaller.

"You ask that, yes? You?"