The wolf pack

THE stillness was grave-like. The room was lit by a glimmer of light percolating through the thickly smoked glass of a kerosene lamp. The shadows were deep in the angles of the room, while around the stove, and on the table near by, upon which the lamp stood, the light was no more than sufficient for the barest visibility.

It was the office at the back of Pideau’s store, that small, partitioned-off apartment where the half-breed was in the habit of seeking hours of brooding solitude, pondering the reflections of a disreputable life. Just now its atmosphere was heavy with tragedy, and Stanley Fyles would gladly have exchanged it for the more wholesome chill of the night outside.

The policeman was standing quite still. He had been standing so for several minutes. Perhaps he was feeling the reaction of his discovery. Perhaps he was merely considering, studying, reading, translating the ugly thing upon which he was gazing. It may even have been that the sense of desolation prevailing, the human disaster of it all, had smote its way clear through the case-hardening with which the years of delving into criminal motive and psychology had armored him.

In spite of inadequate light, or, perhaps because of it, the details of the scene were arresting. There were the misty shadows where dust and cobwebs had accumulated through years of half-breed neglect and uncleanness. There were the shelves which looked to have been gone over by someone, careful that no private document should remain for prying eyes. Then the desk, littered with masses of papers, with every drawer in it standing open. The place had been ransacked from end to end.

An overturned chair lay directly in front of the stove which was itself by no means free from the general wreckage. The faint glimmer of fire in its heart was almost choked out of existence by masses of burned paper that filled the fire box. Then, directly in front of it, sprawled on the unclean floor immediately beside the overturned chair, lay the cold remains of a human life.

Fyles knew that defeat was complete.

It was all that remained of the Wolf’s partner, Pideau Estevan. He was stone dead and cold. He was shot through the mouth, with the result that half the crown of his head had been shattered. And the wreckage of it was splashed in every direction.

No great discerning was needed to tell the policeman what had occurred. For there, beside the body, just where it must have fallen from the hand that fired the exterminating shot, lay a heavy, old-time, seven-chambered gun, with the bore of a miniature cannon.

With the examination of that weapon had come much enlightenment. It had given Fyles a pretty full understanding of the man it had slain. Only one chamber had been discharged. The other six were still loaded. They were loaded with soft-nosed, explosive bullets!

Fyles’ search was over. It had been thorough. And it had not gone unrewarded. Now he was considering the sprawled body and telling himself many things which the sight of it suggested.

He knew that that shattered life represented the simple logic of events. To him it was the natural sequence of them consequent upon those last moments in the courthouse at Calford, when Superintendent Croisette had passed him his hastily written note.

Yes. It was the result of the breaking down of Annette’s evidence by the man, John Danson, that had flung Pideau into headlong panic. That was the hoisting of the red light of danger. With the conflict of testimony before the Court, with Annette and the Wolf confounding each other, Nemesis had arisen before the haunted mind of the half-breed. The suspicious, nimble Pideau, had needed no more. There could be only one development from that. The truth! The plain deadly truth! And he knew, he very surely knew, what that meant. The Wolf would be set free.

It was the Wolf’s freedom wherein lay the real answer to Pideau’s death. Fyles negatived the idea that any fear of the processes of the law could have driven the man to his desperate act. No. A creature of his type, who loaded his murderous gun with explosive bullets, was not the man to blow his own head to pieces out of fear of any process of the law. It was some far greater fear that appalled him. It was something infinitely more devastating than that; something vital, more personal. Something, the contemplation of which robbed him of the last shred of his brutish manhood.

With the Wolf certain to be set free Pideau had fled from Calford, headlong, pursued by all the hounds of hellish fear. And Fyles knew that that fear was well enough founded. With the Wolf free, and baying the trail, God help the man who had sought to do him injury.

At last the policeman removed his pipe and knocked it out on the stove, and his gaze at once lifted to an ill-scrawled envelope propped against the oily stand of the lamp. He gazed at it thoughtfully. It was addressed to the Wolf.

He was just a little curious. Had the letter been addressed by the dead man to Annette, Fyles would unquestionably have opened it. But with the superscription of the Wolf’s name he had refrained.

Now he speculated. What did it contain? Would it contain a clue to the queer association of these men? Would it tell him the answer to those many questions with regard to the Wolf which had puzzled his mind since his first contact with these people? Or, on the other hand, would it contain merely the cowardly defiance of a man, who, in his panic and despair could still find pleasure in the fact of having robbed the other of his vengeance?

Well, it was of no very great consequence now. And, anyway, he would be present when the Wolf opened it.

He dismissed the matter, and turned to the chair at the desk. He drew it up and set it near the stove so that the dead body of the half-breed was almost hidden from him. Then he sat himself down. And as he did so the door at the front end of the store crashed to.

The Wolf and Fyles were standing together. Where the Wolf stood he was in full view of the dead Pideau. And his dark eyes were held fascinated by the gruesome spectacle. Fyles, with the stove barring his view, was closely observing his companion.

After the slamming of the far door Fyles had waited. He had known at once the meaning of that crash. It was the thing for which he had planned and waited. It could only be the coming of the Wolf, and possibly Annette. He hoped and expected it would be the Wolf alone.

When the man pushed his way into the little office there had been one sharp ejaculation of amazement that seemed to hiss with the Wolf’s intake of breath as he made his discovery. Fyles said nothing. He watched. He was reading in his own way the flood of emotion the other’s expressive face was at no pains to conceal. He wanted the Wolf to realize every detail of the scene before he spoke.

When at last the Wolf turned from the man on the floor and looked at the policeman, the latter had risen from his chair.

“So you came right along—at once?” Fyles questioned. “The moment you saw the light in the window? Why?”

There was an instant change in the expression of the Wolf’s face. Fyles saw it abruptly harden. His eyes lit with a frigid gleam that warned the other of the ugly depths he had deliberately probed.

“To kill him!” the Wolf snapped. And the downright simplicity of it left no doubt whatever.

The policeman looked squarely into the fierce eyes and nodded.

“That’s why I had to get around ahead of you,” he smiled without provocation. “I meant to see you didn’t set that rope about your fool neck for good and all. I came for that. But I came to get him, too. He’s fooled us—both.”

Then Fyles indicated the letter propped against the lamp.

“For you,” he said.

The Wolf moved round to the table. Fyles watched the careful manner in which he avoided the body of his partner. He saw him tear the letter open and glance at its contents. Then he saw him thrust it into the pocket of his pea-jacket.

After that he picked his way round to the stove, and began to shake it down in the preoccupied fashion of a man whose physical action has nothing to do with his thought.

But Fyles wanted to know the contents of the letter.

“May I read it?” he asked simply.

The Wolf passed the letter without a moment’s hesitation.

“Sure,” he said. “You best read it.”

Fyles unfolded the paper. It was stained and dirty, like the envelope. He moved to obtain a better light. Then he read. The message was scrawled across the sheet in clumsy characters.

“Be good to my girl or I’ll bring all hell back at you.”

There was no signature. And certainly none was needed.

Fyles pondered the brief message, and he knew that here, at least, was the man. There was no attempt at disguise. His dying thought was for his daughter, Annette, and it was hopelessly mixed up with the almost childish impotence of a brutish threat.

“That’s Pideau!” The Wolf crushed the paper in his hand, and pitched it into the stove. “A ‘four-flush’!”

“He hated you good.”

Fyles began to button his fur coat. He had had enough of that place.

“Yes.”

The policeman pulled his fur cap down over his ears.

“But I’d say Annette meant something to him.”

“Yes.”

The Wolf’s monosyllable was devoid of interest.

“We best get along to the police shack,” Fyles suggested. “We can talk there.”

The Wolf looked down at the dead man. It was almost as though he were reluctant. As though, even with the man dead, he hated that he should escape him. He suddenly looked up into the policeman’s face.

“God! I needed to kill him bad!” he cried. Then with an outburst of bitter feeling: “That feller was hell’s own! A ‘four-flush’! My God! That don’t say haf. Ther’ wasn’t crime enough in the world fer him. He’d kill all the time, if he was sure he’d get away with it. But he was scared. Plumb scared! Say, he wasn’t human. Not from the day his mother got him. I’m sick. Yes. Plumb sick! He’s pulled his ‘four-flush’ on me an’ got away with it.”

Fyles looked into the troubled face.

“Has he?” The Wolf’s response was an impatient gesture, and Fyles shook his head. “You’re alive and free,” he added quietly. “You’ve got your stake and—Annette. You got all the world ahead of you. He’s—dead!”