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 "She'll be there at five," announced Lahleet, as drily settling that question. "It's ten minutes of, now."

"But" Harrington's brow was puckered with a new perplexity. This Indian girl had rather—rather come it over him in some ways, and he didn't want to make himself appear ridiculous in Billie Boland's eyes. "By the way, Lahleet, how much did Adam John tell Miss Boland, I wonder? I have reasons for being vague about some things that happened last night—at least for the present."

If Lahleet's face had been toward him he would have seen a dark smile, almost feline, illuminate her features; but she was again leading down the trail. "You can be as vague as you like," she answered in an uninflected voice. "Be sure Adam John told her no more than that you would be expecting her at Hurricane Island landing at five."

"The nerve of that!" reflected Henry, yet was considerably relieved, until he realized that with Billie waiting at the landing and Lahleet paddling him over, vagueness might not be feasible.

But when they emerged from a belt of fern to stand upon the basin's edge, lo, there was Charlie Bigwind waiting in a launch to take him across. Had the girl divined? No telling. Her face was quite inscrutable and with one last touch of her hand he stepped into the launch.

"Good-by!" her fluted tone carried out to him across the widening stretch of water. He waved his hand and watched that magnetic little figure with a strange, speculative interest until the rounding of a point of greenery cut her from his view. The last glimpse was of the little brown hat snatched off and waved at him.

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 "Bless her heart!" reflected Harrington. "Doggone her mischievous little hide!"

With these conflicting observations he dismissed Lahleet Marceau from his mind and, as the rounding of another point of greenery brought the Cub Creek landing into view, his eyes sought eagerly for the shining coupé of Miss Billie Boland. It was not there.

"The gall of me—expecting it!" mumbled Henry to himself, but was disappointed for all that.

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HARLIE BIGWIND deposited Harrington on shore.

"How do I make town, I wonder?" he speculated, then paused to glance curiously about at the signs of recent automobile tracks carving the lush grasses, as if like hieroglyphics they concealed while they wrote down the things he wished to know of last night's fracas and its participants.

But when he had climbed by a short cut to the level of the main road, tunneling through perennial verdure, a coupé was there, with its open window framing a face in a picture hat.

"Why, Mr. Harrington! You have had an accident!" cried a startled voice, beautiful in its concern. "I—I wasn't quite sure where I was to meet you. Besides, that telephone message was so—so laconic that it awed me."

Harrington knew in a blurred way that the door of the coupé opened and that Miss Billie Boland was advancing to him along the highway.

"Are you much hurt?" she called to him across the twenty yards that intervened.

"Not much, thank you," he called back, gazing through a rainbow-mist to where, against a background of ferns, there advanced to him a swaying grace, clad in garments as exotic as the petals of an orchid.

"But what happened?" called Miss Billie again, in

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 a puzzled tone, as she took in the details of his rather grotesque appearance.

Harrington, unconscious now of the figure he cut, was slow in answering. He was seeing her more clearly with every step, dwelling on each new perception. Her frock was a pink foam that clung as if it loved the curves which molded it and, but for that hat, she might have been some garden nymph whose costume was a flower. Contrasts with another type of beauty were inevitable; but—here was his kind. He witnessed this to himself by quickening his stride.

"Just that I got a bang on the bean and a tumble in the water," he explained as they met. "A Siwash—man from my old platoon—pulled me out and a—another—another Siwash did me up."

"And of course those Indians learned their first-aid lessons like the others," Billie inferred, observing his bandages with professional approval.

"Hum—yes," mumbled Henry, guiltily aware that he had been vague by some kind of instinct rather than remembering to be designedly so.

But all other sensations were momentarily blotted out by Billie's young arm essaying to support him along the highway when he needed no support at all. And her whole manner was delicious. She wasn't upstage for a minute. She had come out here on this telephone call to taxi him into town just like a regular good fellow. He noted all this with deep inward trickles of delight; also that the girl's face was flushed with pleasurable excitement.

"And now?" she asked as the car was straightened out on the homeward road, "just what did happen? Something about the vault robbers, wasn't it?"

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 "Just a foolish break of mine, Miss Boland," apologized Henry, feeling somehow that many things were foolish—including himself—when he sat so close to this exciting presence; then he narrated, with certain studied omissions, something of what had happened.

The girl had listened gravely, much impressed. "That was big of you, Mr. Harrington," she said, "but it was rash." The blue eyes shifted to the roadway, but in the expression of her pliant lips remained the ghost of her disapproval. The mold of that disapproval made the expression altogether lovely to contemplate.

As they sped a pleasant fragrance of the forest came in from without; but there was another fragrance; subtle, elusive, delightful. It came from within—from her. It was infinitely delicate and delicately stirring. Yes—she was his kind.

"I—I am sorry that I missed the golf game," it occurred to him to say, "but—but I was overcome with drowsiness while that—that Siwash was working on me." He felt mean that having been vague at first, vagueness was required once more.

"After that terrible blow?" The blue eyes were round and lifted sympathetically to the mountainous bandages. "You poor man! I should think you would be. Don't mention it—now that I know why. But you had other appointments for the day, I believe."

"No; no other appointments," ruminated Henry; "at least nothing important."

The girl threw him a scrutinizing glance, saw that he was serious and then laughed merrily. "You didn't count Scanlon important then? How that will take him down!"

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 "Horrid to behold did now a second phantom appear before our gazing looks, staggering slowly towards us, and leaving a numerous retinue on the staircase; the garment of the spectre was stained with blood, the skull fractured, the eyes like two portentous comets!"

"Who art thou?" roared our leader, with a thundering voice, and the dreary cavern echoed to the sound.

"The phantom answered with a hollow dismal voice, "a damned soul!"

Old man. "What business hast thou in this castle?"

Ghost. "I want to be redeemed from hell."

Old man. "How canst thou be redeemed?"

Ghost. "By the forgiveness of my wife."


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 Henry started at the mention of the traitor, then experienced elation at perceiving that Miss Billie must have been quizzing her father about him last night after he left.

"You're not as impractical as that, are you," she harpooned into his mind amusedly—"to neglect a formal contract and the matter of emolument?"

"No; oh, no," Harrington disclaimed with a perplexed smile; and then, suddenly frank as a schoolboy, blurted: "In fact, I think I'm a good deal less impractical since you gave me that shot yesterday about peace-time slackers."

So unassuming, so uncomplaining, so grotesque in his wrinkled evening clothes and sheik-like headgear, and so gravely unaware was he, Billie had been quite unable to keep from laughing at this naive young man; but at this remark she was instantly all serious. "You mean that just from my chance word you've decided to get busy—at least to get busier?" She asked the question admiringly, making plain that she had exactly the same passion as her father to see everybody up and doing—to make two volts of energy crackle with human effort where only one had sizzled before.

Henry flushed up—he who was so unaccustomed to flushing—and felt an embarrassed desire to evade those questioning violet rays, but they pinned him helplessly. "Why, yes. It seems absurd—it sounds like bunk to be telling you this, Miss Boland; and perhaps it's only a coincidence, but, right after seeing you, I decided to be less impracticall. I went down to my office and registered a whole lot of new resolutions."

Charming curiosity and sly pleasure were both figured on Miss Boland's face, but the latter was too

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 furtive for Henry to discern it. "What sort of resolutions?" she inquired interestedly.

But Harrington was flustered and evasive, wondering why on earth he had said this to her at all. "Oh, just the usual kind," he hedged.

"Oh, not to smoke or drink or play poker, I suppose."

"Oh, no, believe me," pleaded Henry, and smiled wretchedly, seeing now that he would have to muddle through. "Just the usual thing for a caseless lawyer who sort of wakes up. Resolved to make more money for one thing, but resolved to hold fast to the—the spiritual element in my profession at the same time."

Miss Boland honored these avowals with an appreciative glance; yet chose to reflect upon his stammering distress in silence.

Harrington, too, was silent. Why was he making such an ass of himself about what had seemed such a perfectly rational and normal thing to do? Why did this gir] so thrill him and at the same time throw him off his stride? He was angry with himself and desperate. He didn't propose to remain thus ill at ease with anybody.

"Miss Boland," he demanded, as if she might hold the key, "what makes me so foolish, babbling this stuff to you?"

"Foolish?" The blue eyes threw him a glance of the gentlest reproof, utterly demolishing. "It seems very fine to me—as far as I understand it."

The young man gazed quite rapt. Hers was an angel face, an angel voice; he was beside himself, out of himself!

"Miss Boland?" he inquired in a startled tone, his

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 hand involuntarily upon her arm, his expression one that mingled honest doubt with glorified joy. "Could it be that I am in love with you? . . . Could it?"

The look Billie gave him was complex. If she laughed, he was done for.

"You should know, Mr. Harrington," she suggested.

"But I don't," confessed the man helplessly.

Then she did laugh, but not derisively; her manner lightly mischievous. "Are you—are you more than usually susceptible where womankind is concerned?"

"By Jove, I thought I wasn't," declared Henry, then smiling weakly; "but I must have been mistaken. Strange things have been done to me. The world was gray yesterday morning; before evening it was all lit up. Life was—just—just wiggling along; but within an hour it had become exciting, a thing to be rushed at.

"That's why I did that fool thing about the rope. That's why I stepped into this movie stuff with the vault robbers. That's why I made all those exalted resolutions. Life seemed all at once so big and vital that I wanted to rush right at it, to tackle anywhere, high or low, and throw it and sit on top. It must—it must be you, don't you think?" He smiled, this time, with engaging frankness; then went on:

"Just now as I've been sitting here, you seemed to me all at once—no, not all at once! You've been growing on me—off and on—through all these twenty-six hours I've known you, until you seem just the biggest, grandest adventure that ever was. I want to fling myself right at you."

The man was so serious that Miss Boland had to be.

"Do you think it could be that—that I am in love with you?" he persisted, gray eyes big and honest.

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 The corners of Miss Boland's mouth twitched, but she made them behave. It seemed to be a case wherein she was expected to assist. "It may be only infatuation," she speculated demurely.

"I—I can't believe it," said Henry, so desperate that he had quite lost his sense of humor.

"Or it might be that blow on the head."

"No!" he insisted. "When I look at you, Miss Boland, I know that if I have been able to fall in love with you my mind must be at its sanest."

"Your tongue is certainly at its glibbest," she rallied him; but all at once he was struck with a new compunction.

"But could love be worth anything," he demurred, ridiculously grave, "love that broke out in, say, less than twenty-six hours?"

"I believe that even measles require a longer period of incubation," teased Miss Boland; "which reminds me that I am on the way to a hospital with a wounded man."

"No, no," protested Henry quickly. "Just drop me at the hotel, please. I'll have Doc Austin come there and replace this turban effect with a piece of court-plaster the size of a postage stamp."

"As you will," said Billie, and with a flashy turn, drew up at the curb in front of the Hotel Gregory. Henry had scarcely noticed where they were and had a dismayed feeling that the drive had ended too soon. There was something not—not yet settled.

"Thank you for bringing me in," his lips were saying.

"It was a perfectly exciting pleasure," she sparkled. "If your hurt proves as slight as you think, perhaps you can make good on that golf game tomorrow."

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 Tomorrow! She had said tomorrow. "Even though I totter and fall down after every drive," affirmed Henry, seizing her hand rather violently.

"That will be very sporting of you," declared Billie.

"Good afternoon, Miss Boland!" said a voice right over Henry's shoulder.

Scanlon! Harrington's pose instantly stiffened; he controlled himself with an effort; for it was the voice of the traitor—those same throaty, powerful tones that he had heard last in the darkness of this early morning yonder by the decayed boat landing—the identical tones!

But when he turned, the speaker was not Scanlon at all. He was a man as large, but younger—not more than thirty-five. Burly of head and shoulders, with close-clipped yellow mustaches and a V-shaped patch of the hirsute upon his chin; with eyes abnormally bright and areas immediately beneath them abnormally dark and faintly seamed, a foreign-looking type or at least a cosmopolitan one.

Harrington's mind was groping. It was the very voice—yes; and the fellow, with all his silk hat and frock coat and spats, looked the villain underneath; looked the master mind of almost any sort of plot that was nefarious and evil and profit-promising. He looked a smarter, keener, more merciless and unscrupulous Hornblower! Yet he had addressed Miss Boland as if he were upon terms of familiar acquaintance with her. He was a stranger to Edgewater; how should he know Miss Boland then?

"Ah, Count Eckstrom!" Billie exclaimed in the tones of pleasant surprise. "Count Eckstrom—my friend Mr. Henry Harrington."

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 And Count Eckstrom bore himself like a thoroughbred, proffering a hand with such deference as he would have shown at meeting a cabinet minister, whereas Henry Harrington looked like a bandaged and bearded hang-over from some all-night debauch. Noblesse oblige. Henry must take it. He found it soft, albeit with sinews of steel.

"Pleased, I'm sure!" Harrington declared, and he really was—pleased as the trailing hound when for an instant he sights the fox.

"Most happy!" professed the nobleman with a bend from the hips and a smile that was wide and toothful, yet, to Henry's eye, expressionless as the grin of an opossum.

"And have you known Count Eckstrom long, Miss Boland?" he inquired, as with suave courtesy.

"Oh, ages and ages!" sparkled Billie, with a light of favor in the glance she bent upon the Count, which made Harrington hate him the more. "I met him three months ago in Paris, and two months ago in London and one month ago in New York; and to my surprise ran across him in Seattle last week where he had entrenched at the New Washington after traipsing up and down through our Northwest, looking at mountains and waterfalls, whipping out salmon waters and trying, I believe, even a cougar hunt. Four meetings—in four worlds—that makes us old acquaintances, doesn't it?"

The Count bowed a flattered assent, lifting his silk topper gravely.

"She doesn't know a darned thing about him," perceived Henry, thinking lightning-fast. "He's a crook—maybe one of these international and cosmopolitan

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Rh without overhanging. He spoke after they had stood just face to face almost long enough for awkwardness. "I haven't forgotten one item of your kindness to me on that rather bleak occasion."

"Bleak do you call it?" she laughed. "Why I found it, rather, tropical—'lush.' My neighbour on the other side wanted to talk to me of the White City."

"Then you made it doubtless bleak for him, let us say. I couldn't let you alone, I remember, about this—it was like a shipwrecked signal to a sail on the horizon." "This" obviously meant for the young man exactly what surrounded him; he had begun, like Mr. Bender, to be conscious of a thick solicitation of the eye—and much more than he, doubtless, of a tug at the imagination; and he broke—characteristically, you would have been sure into a great free gaiety of recognition.

"Oh, we've nothing particular in the hall," Lady Grace amiably objected.

"Nothing, I see, but Claudes and Cuyps! I'm an ogre," he said "before a new and rare feast!"

She happily took up his figure. "Then


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 crooks that you read about. . . . Cougars, eh! He's a big-game hunter, that fellow!"

"Promise to telephone me the moment Doctor Austin has concluded his examination," Billie adjured with one of her most fascinating looks of concern; and then reversed its English by adding: "Father will want to know."

Henry, wild with jealousy and bitter in his wrath, watched Count Eckstrom ride away in the seat he had vacated.

"With apologies to Tom Scanlon!" he said almost aloud and, turning, bumped into Scanlon himself.

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Y THE old Horny!" greeted Scanlon, a very worried expression making sudden departure from his face. "Henry, old man! I sure am glad to see you alive and back among us. I thought that bunch had croaked you. It was easy to guess you'd butted in."

Henry was staggered once more and must have given Scanlon a queer look, for the tones of his voice were again the very tones he had heard in the dark of early morning. They were exactly like the tones of Count Eckstrom. True, the speech of the two men was totally different. Count Eckstrom's choice of words was precise; he articulated them with distinction. Tom Scanlon's choice was apt to be vulgar, his accent slovenly and provincial. But yonder in the dark Henry heard only tones—a voice. Whose voice? . . . Which voice? . . . The puzzle banged his sore head like a blow.

"Where you been? What happened? Are you much hurt? Got any clues to who they were or where they went?" Scanlon spouted these queries excitedly, eagerly, as a man would who was vitally interested and spotlessly innocent. The manner of them should have allayed every doubt. But the voice. . . the voice! Henry swallowed hard. So help him, this of Scanlon's was the same voice. Helplessly Harrington's eyes shifted to where Billie's coupé was gathering speed with Count Eckstrom in it. That too was the same voice.

"No clues, Scanlon; no," he mumbled rather absently.

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 "Nothing but a bust on the bean. What did they take?"

"Book One of Deeds from the Recorder's office. From our office the old man's original patents, the original map of the Wilkinson survey made in 1890, and a certified copy of the treaty with the Salisheuttes in 1855 fixing reservation limits. A-course, it's just some melodrama of that nut, Hornblower's. Bunk to lend color to his threats. You'd ought to 'a' let them hang that fellow, Henry. You and J. B. ought. But J. B. is such a generous old sport that he'd keep a knife ready to lend to any fellow that was trying to cut his throat.

"However, that's neither here nor there now, Henry. What's eating me is, I've got some business with you for the Old Man." Scanlon had lowered his voice, for a crowd was gathering.

But Henry was inattentive. The perplexity of the dual voices had entangled him again. Every tone of Scanlon's revived his first suspicion; yet every word of the man and his manner tended to allay that suspicion. Henry was ninety-nine percent convinced that he had done Scanlon a grave injustice. But there remained that stubborn one percent.

"How soon can we talk?" urged Scanlon, nudging in close, for the group on the sidewalk was gaping and exclamatory, threatening momentarily to edge up and ask questions. "The Old Man's a nut for getting these things down in black and white and locked up in the safe. He was worried about you personally all day, but the minute he hears you're back and half-way all right, he won't give a darn for anything till I've got you signed up."

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 Henry straightened. "I was satisfied with Mr. Boland's simple assurance. Is he not satisfied with mine?"

"Of course he's satisfied with it, Henry," assured Scanlon, who assumed a fatherly manner. "That's just the habit of his mind. The letter—the letter—the letter of the contract—the letter of the law. That's Old Two Blades—to the last hair in his pernickety disposition. Remember that and it will help you a lot in dealing with him."

"Pernickety?" Henry stuck at the word. "I thought he was most reasonable."

"Reasonable, yes. But he wants what he wants the way he wants it. Give him that and he's reasonable. Most men are." Scanlon laughed; but it was a laugh of admiration, of devotion as of one who knew and loved the very weaknesses of his chief. "How soon can I talk to you, Henry, on this?"

"Oh, soon as I can get a bath and a beefsteak," consented Harrington.

"All right, come to my office at eight o'clock," proposed Scanlon.

"Your office?" demurred Henry. "It's you after me, isn't it?"

Scanlon hunched his shoulder as if someone had popped an awl into it. "Oh, all right," he smiled amiably, admiringly even; after a moment—"Your office it is." He gripped Henry's hand heartily; in turning from him he encountered that steadily augmenting group about the hotel door. "Say, you fellows!" he announced in friendly tones. "Henry's back; bunged up a little but not hurt. He nipped into 'em just as we figured; but they shook him off. He didn't

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 get a clue and doesn't know a darned thing any more than we do. What he needs is a tub and a shave. Now, let him get it."

At the desk a headline in the evening paper caught the young attorney's eye—"MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF HENRY HARRINGTON!" He gazed at it with a smile and a vain feeling.

"That's the first time anybody ever cared whether I disappeared, or not," he chuckled to the clerk as the latter handed him his key, and made for the stairway.

But Titmarsh was too quick for him. Titmarsh was editor and leading descriptive writer on the Edgewater Blade. He buttonholed unerringly; but Henry's cunning set forth the details most sketchily against a background of calculating voids. Titmarsh, however, was a very modern reporter. He saw the "story" first and the facts second. He perceived dramatic values even in the voids and legged it for his office, organizing a column as he ran.

"Bad contusion. . . . Temporary shock. . . . No fracture. . . . By Jupiter! But you're tough, Henry. They must have hit you with a railroad tie!" This was Dr. Austin's verdict, as he clipped away blood-matted hair and took stitches.

Bathed and shaved and fed, Harrington met Scanlon, and was tendered a retainer of five thousand dollars and a contract which provided a salary of five hundred dollars per month, with generous per diem for appearances. Henry had a feeling that he was being enormously overpaid, but, understanding that he was to represent Mr. Boland in other than the Shell Point interests, did not demur for a moment. These were shrewd men; and they must not be permitted to infer

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 that he was cheap. Besides, there was his new principle of thrift. He signed the contract in duplicate at that same desk across which he had boasted to Miss Marceau, "I shall never be retained by the other side"; and sat fingering the check for the retainer.

"You could make an awful hit with the old man, Henry, by investing that five thousand in the new cedar company," smiled Scanlon.

"I'm going to buy an auto—an auto built for two," answered Henry seriously, as if it was something he had thought over quite carefully.

Scanlon's yellow eyes lighted and his shoulders were shaken by a perceiving chuckle. "Oh, all right," he beamed, still in entire good-fellowship. "Spend it your own way. Our business is that you earn it."

Earn it! That was really a tactful expression which contributed to Henry's sense of comfort and good feeling; while now, as recognizing a new associate, he freshly considered Scanlon in the mass and on the hoof—Scanlon with that voice yonder in the dark, so identical with that voice which had ridden away in the coupé with Billie.

Just what was back of Scanlon, Henry wondered. He was a likable old buffalo—the Chief Counsel—but how thoroughly did Mr. Boland know him? Very thoroughly, no doubt, yet a study of Scanlon's broad, shrewd face did not tell Henry the story of their relations.

The story was that the two men had been associated almost from the beginning of things in Socatullo County. They had drifted into the timber together, a lawyer without clients and a king without a kingdom. Boland was ambitious and constructive; he employed

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 Had it been regarded as relevant, the High Court is likely to have included this proposition in its analysis. It would also not be consistent with the High Court's view that conduct can amount to bullying even though the perpetrator is not aware of and does not intend its adverse effect. In substance, the point may be relevant to the seriousness of the conduct, rather than to its nature. The High Court in the FDA Case did, however, recognise in relation to the second type of bullying conduct (abuse or misuse of power in ways that undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient) that intentionality is "in truth a reflection of that type of conduct".

65. In order to ensure the fairness of the process, and given that my role is not to determine as a matter of law what 'bullying' means for the purpose of the Ministerial Code, I have considered the position and made findings of fact with the DPM's representation in mind. I have therefore also addressed the questions whether he "knew or ought to have known" that any relevant conduct was offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting, or an abuse of misuse of power which was likely to undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient.

66. In addition, the DPM made representations that bullying: (1) entails "some element of targeting" of an individual or a group, whether or not intentionally; (2) does not "encompass generalised styles of working applied equally across a department which have an adverse effect on a minority of staff"; and (3) does not include behaviour which is "direct, demanding, challenging, rigorous or questioning … particularly where the recipient is a senior person in a high-stakes professional environment". For the same reasons as before, I have in making findings of fact given consideration to each of these matters.

(6) The production of this report

67. I have had invaluable assistance throughout the investigation from a number of officials working in the Cabinet Office. They would not welcome being publicly named. This report is, however, my own work and any errors or omissions are mine alone. I have not at any stage been put under any pressure as to what to investigate or not to investigate or as to what findings of fact should or should not be made.


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 talents where he found them; he was no haggler, no heckler; he asked only for results. There were times when he did not even ask questions and his reward was sure. He rewarded Scanlon; for Scanlon's results were obvious.

There were men in Boland's law department whose learning and whose legal acumen far exceeded Scanlon's. But besides these regulars at the law, he maintained a small force of irregulars, and he himself was the crafty strategist. He knew when the men of learning should exert their wits in framing contracts or battling in the courts; he knew when they should lay off and let the "irregulars" take the field. It would have been a shock to Henry Harrington to know that he had just been signed up as an irregular.

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ND now, Henry, here's the first piece of business," beamed Scanlon, exceedingly well pleased with himself; "a little job of diplomacy that Mr. Boland snatched right out of my hand. 'Don't muss that up at all. Give it to Harrington first thing,' he said to me, and here it is." From one of his after pockets the Chief Counsel drew forth a roughly folded blueprint. Henry recognized it as that map of a portion of the shores of Harper's Basin which Quackenbaugh and Scanlon had been arguing over in the den last night.

"It's this way, Henry," Scanlon expounded suavely. "Quack's got to have this island and it belongs to a buck Siwash named Adam John. Now some of these Indians are stubborn about their land, but the dope shows this Adam John was in your platoon overseas, and it was the Old Man's idea that if you'd go out there and offer him a fair price for his land he'd take it from you, smooth and easy—which would settle Quack's trouble quick, and let a whole lot of things go forward that are standing still now."

Henry's face had lighted at the name. "What'll you give Adam John for his island?" he demanded shrewdly, just as if he might not have been retained by the other side after all.

"It's worth probably three thousand dollars for the timber that's on it; it's not worth a damn for anything else," argued Scanlon.

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 "Let me give him five thousand dollars for it," proposed Henry impulsively. "I like to be generous."

"With other people's money? There are a lot like you." Scanlon's tone was dry. "All right, five thousand. Ten thousand if he holds us up. We've got to have it, you know."

"I don't believe in hold-ups," declared Henry, with a clamping of his lips. "I wouldn't encourage even one of my vets in 'em. Two thousand is premium enough. I'll see him tomorrow afternoon. The next day you can have your deed."

"That will be making it snappy," declared Scanlon with approving emphasis; then as Henry clamped the blueprint down with a paper weight, the Chief Counsel hitched his chair closer. His manner became mysterious and intimate; his voice was lowered significantly.

"As a matter of fact, just what did happen last night, Henry?"

Harrington told him; quite in detail, up to about two minutes before the blow—after that with voids, watching his expression narrowly.

Scanlon listened avidly, yet his only question, penetratingly put, was: "And when you got back to the place there wasn't a clue? . . . Not the sign of a clue?"

"Not one that I could mention," declared Henry. "Unless—by the way, who is this Count Eckstrom that turned up here yesterday and begins running around with Miss Boland right away? Have him looked up for me, will you? Have him looked up for a criminal record through your intelligence department."

Scanlon's mouth fell open. "Criminal record! An importation of Billie's with a criminal record?"

"Keep it dark but look him up," adjured Henry.

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 "I'll do it. I get his 'dosshiay, volunteered Scanlon heartily. "Good night."

Henry stood with a puzzled air contemplating the door which had closed upon his departing visitor. Was Scanlon just the most honest soul in the world, or was he a most convincing actor? Pending an answer, he reached for the telephone, for there were now things so much more pleasant to think of.

"Doctor's been and gone," he reported blithely, if tardily, to Miss Billie Boland; "I'm feeling perfectly chipper, you may tell your father."

"As to your head?"

"Yes, Miss Boland."

"And as to your heart?" He heard the silvery peal of her laughter.

"I didn't consult the doctor about it."

Again that silvery peal. He was both chagrined and stirred. That she could twit him about his stupid confession argued no depth of responsive feeling on her side, yet it argued also the establishment of most amicable relations. It argued—hope.

"I—I'll be on hand for the golf game," he stammered. "Goo—good night, Miss Boland."

"See you are! Good night." The clear voice cadenced and he knew she was still laughing at him, but he didn't care. "Am I in right?" he crowed, and hugged himself boyishly. "Well, I guess yes!"

Then his mind went absurdly off to the fracas on the island. "I wonder . . . I wonder who beaned me," he frowned. Nothing in the silence seemed to answer him and he subsided slowly into a nebulous state of mind. In the nebula a radiant figure glowed, a star, a goddess! at the recognition of whom he stared.

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 "Yes—I love her," he breathed, a slow smile lighting his face; "I love her." No longer did he reproach himself for having surrendered so soon. "I know a good thing when I see it," he boasted.

No longer did he feel chagrin at having half-confessed himself that afternoon. Rather, he was proud that the strings of his heart had been able to respond so quickly with the tune of a sublime passion when the soft breath of a gracious and beautiful woman had stirred them. And it was a sublime passion—else why was he sublimated by it?

He felt a new zest for all the works of life; and next morning the sun did not merely come up over the white shoulders of Mount Gregory; it burst up like a streaming glory and spread its sheen of light over all the territory of the three towns.

Yes—life had kindled for Henry Harrington. The Edgewater Blade proved this, for he was the hero of the two most sensational stories it had ever printed. "That's piling the blurb on thick," he smiled over his coffee, and felt a genuine confusion; "but I guess it won't hurt me any with the girl on the hill—what!"

As to the news value in these stories: well, for one thing, it appeared that the Blade had taken legal advice concerning the land titles and could assure its readers they were as sound as Gibraltar—as sound as the Government upon whose patents they were based. For another—as to the documents stolen: they were not irreplaceable.

The two affairs, the auction and the vault robberies, represented a typical Hornblower's mare's nest; that was the Blade's deduction. And Henry Harrington had emerged from both with luster—Titmarsh's stories

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 made clear—wherefore, after breakfast, the young attorney's progress along North Street to the office was almost triumphal. Everybody had to greet him, shake hands with him, slap him on the back, congratulate him on his daring.

But Henry shook his congratulators off long enough to stop in at Charlie Culp's place and leave an order for an automobile. "The finest little chase-about that five thousand dollars will buy." That was his specification, whereat Culp grinned, because the demand for nifty little cars designed exclusively for two had been looking up the last day or so in Edgewater.

Yet it was not apropos of this order for a car that Henry, as he rode out to the Country Club, assured himself stoutly: "But I won't tell her today. I'll show her I can contain myself a little while at least."

However, the very first glimpse of Billie in her golf togs was shattering to resolution of any sort. Her color scheme this morning was the greenest of green with the whitest of white—while the color contrasts in her face were never more vivid—those pinks, those reds, the eyes blue as the water of the inlet—the picture was devastating and her greeting was cordiality itself.

"And so everybody is talking about you today," she hailed; and the light of congratulation dancing in her eyes shook Harrington all loose inside.

"Absurd—what they're saying," he blushed; "let's go to it," and he motioned toward the links. His eyes fell before hers—he was in a strange state of confusion. "Lord, I've got to hold on to myself or I'll blurt it out right now," he confessed to himself. "Lord, I wish she'd stop looking at me that way." But he didn't wish it.

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 His only chance seemed to be to concentrate fiercely on his game; he beat her—most ungallantly.

She was a little vexed; but after the first blush of chagrin, secretly amused. "Do you go about everything with such deadly earnestness?" she taunted, still breathing quickly from the vigor of the play.

He bit his lips, confused again. "Was I—was I so deadly?"

"Yes; you were." She was almost pouty.

"It's you that have made me deadly," he accused, tentatively.

"I?" She eyed him mischievously from under long lashes. "Before me they had learned to call you 'Hellfire.

Harrington flushed at the old sobriquet, that seemed never so inapt as now, and was suddenly angry—with himself—with her. "You have made me deadly—deadly as a cobra," he charged, advancing on her. "I'm in love with you!" He said it savagely. "No doubt about it; I'm in love with you. In just forty hours you've made me want everything just because I want you."

Billie, leaning on her putter, dared to laugh at him—mockingly; but his earnestness would not be mocked. "You were in doubt yesterday," she reminded him.

"I have decided—it is love." He stood frowning.

"And is it much of a calamity to find that you are in love with me?" she twitted.

"The calamity is that it has come so quickly that you won't believe in it at all."

"You are speedy," she admitted, mirthful, yet admiring.

"Speedy! I'm a plunger," Harrington avowed hoarsely.

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 The blue eyes regarded him siftingly. "You may have fallen but you are not plunging!" she dared him slyly.

He took the dare—fiercely—with one of his fighting smiles. "Miss Boland—Billie, I want you!" he exclaimed, seizing her hand.

"Oh, now you are 'Hellfire'!" she laughed mischievously.

"As the steel wants the magnet so everything in me cries out for you," he clamored so fiercely that she became suddenly serious. "I'm not a mollycoddle. I don't pretend I haven't wanted other women. I wanted a woman once with all my soul; but that was in France."

Into Miss Billie's blue eyes there came a startled look.

"My want was very intense, because life itself was to be short and I had to be intense or get cheated," Harrington was assuring her. "But the want that makes me do this abrupt thing, speak these abrupt words to you this morning is far bigger. I wanted Jeanne so that I could have her and die. I want you so that I can have you and live. There is more in me than there was five years ago; more in me than there was twenty-four hours ago. You have made me something that I was not and that something, all of it, turns back to you, its creator. . . . I—I love you, Billie!" His impetuous utterance softened infinitely.

He sought to draw her toward him; but her hand struggled for its release and was permitted to obtain it. Her face had whitened, as did his. Her figure had straightened and she pushed him from her with a look of resentment, the reason for which he understood.

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 "I had to tell you" he urged huskily.

She laid a quick hand on his sleeve, perhaps partly to reassure him, perhaps partly because she found herself swaying dizzily.

"I know, I know," she whispered, with white lips, "But—but—of course, Mr. Harrington, you couldn't expect me to love you in forty hours. Know whether I love you?"

"Yes," he demanded. "Yes. You're quick. You know now. If something in you hadn't been drawn to me I couldn't have been drawn so headlong to you. Yes, I expect you to put your hands in mine this minute and say, 'I love you, Henry! He offered his hands to her and waited.

He did not have to wait long. She swayed toward him, lifting her bright face to his; and she did put her hands in his—but not with yielding in their pressure.

"You are very clever, aren't you?" she conceded with a sober smile. "And I do admire you very much. I am drawn to you, but I do not know yet that I am drawn in the same way that you are."

"Oh, but it must be the same!" Harrington urged.

"Yours is a reckless nature," she warned, with a slow sidewise shake of her pretty head that to Henry was utterly destroying; "mine is not. You plunge; I reflect. You feel that you want me to make your life complete. I consider if I could make my life complete through you."

"Your—your life complete?" stammered Henry, his emphasis revealing just the old, benighted male notion; yet she was patient.

"But I have a life to live," she reminded him. "My position, my opportunities" And then all at once

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 Henry understood that she was thinking of stocks and bonds and mills, all the wide inheritance that would some day be hers. "These confer on me an obligation. It's a trusteeship I was born to—not just to be a gay, careless spender and joy-chaser."

Henry's face lighted frankly. "I knew it," he beamed. "I knew you couldn't be just—just a bunch of chiffon. Of course, I'd—I'd expect to help you bear your responsibilities—if there was anything a fellow like me could do, but I don't pretend to anything much along that line. Love, I guess, is selfish. Love just wants what it wants. But I'd—I'd try not to hinder," he smiled, half playfully.

"Hinder?" The eloquent eyes threw him a look as conceding that a young man of just his qualities could be very helpful indeed—could be. "My love can't be just selfish," she explained to him; "it must remember those responsibilities. You see, father, being what he is, created them for me, and when I inherit that's part of it. Do you know what the world is demanding today, Mr. Harrington?" She was suddenly very much in earnest, and the more earnest the more beautiful she seemed to him. "It's that simple little word—enough! Enough of food, enough of clothes, enough of warmth, enough of house and home and light. Enough!"

It seemed to Harrington wonderful that a girl in Billie Boland's position should have thoughts like this—at a moment like this; for wasn't she encouraging him? Wasn't she taking the precaution to tell him what it would be like if he married her? Anyway, it deepened all his feeling for her.

"You're right, of course," he could agree avidly. "It's fierce—little shavers wanting just one grape, just

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 one taste of an orange, just one glass of milk for their breakfast, and they don't get it and they don't know why they don't get it; and it isn't their fault or a thing that they can help while they're little. By George, we ought all to be trying to do something to help them get it."

"It's a problem of production," the girl affirmed; "you have to heap it before you can scatter it. What the world needs is production—men like my father who make the traditional two blades grow."

"But it's a problem of distribution, also. Besides enough of food and clothes, the world wants the intangible things, love and faith and hope and . . . justice!" Henry reminded. "That's where we lawyers come in. We are battlers for the square deal. The courts are the agencies to see that the little shavers, the weak and helpless, are not trampled under the contending feet of these big producers you are talking about and pulling for."

The blue eyes looked puzzled. Billie appeared to view Harrington's enthusiasm with approval but his sentiments with doubt. "True, perhaps," she decided swiftly, "but abstract—rather vague, too vague, don't you think, for practical people to work at?"

Henry was slightly disappointed until her face brightened with: "But you are helping father to produce when you help solve his technical difficulties for him. When you help get the Shell Point reservation so that homes for a million people can be made out of trees that shelter the game a hundred Indians live on! When you get an Indian to give up his unproductive island for a shingle mill that will cover the roofs of ten thousand homes!"

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 It was Henry's turn to be puzzled. The Shell Point project was a dead secret—yet she knew it. She knew even about Adam John and his island—which was a small matter.

But the blue shafts of her eyes were holding him hard to the point: "That is so," he admitted with the emphasis of new discovery. "Yet it's really as a sort of special agent of justice that I come into these affairs—justice for your father—justice for the Indians—justice for all those people needing homes, needing roofs." He stopped, confused. This was vague. It sounded almost silly.

Billie noted his confusion and sweetly abolished it by a queen's decree. "I see you as a co-producer with father," she ruled, blissfully autocratic! And he went down the hill very, very happy—gravely, deeply happy. His existence had found its bright particular star and he was on terms of adoration with it. His devotion was to be permitted. He asked no more—now.

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HE next pressing business of Henry Harrington, taken up immediately after luncheon, was to pay his friend Adam John five thousand dollars for an island worth fifteen hundred. This was a pleasant task. All his life now, it seemed, was to be made up of pleasant tasks. A word from Quackenbaugh provided a motor launch and Henry was soon chugging eastward on the channel called South Inlet, but really the middle inlet, which was here a quarter of a mile in width.

Where this inlet entered Harper's Basin lay a flat island with a stand of rather poor timber upon it. This was Hurricane Island; less than two hundred yards separated it from the mainland on the south and it was less than six miles from North Street, so that within thirty minutes, say about two-twenty of the afternoon, Henry was stepping off upon a beach of wave-packed sand.

Another small motorboat was moored upon this beach, but it was old and temporarily disabled, with the engine opened up and parts of it scattered about in the bottom of the craft. Evidently, Adam John's trouble with his motor had overtaken him while fishing, for there was tackle lying about and a smell of smoking salmon in the air. Indeed smoke appeared drifting lazily from an almost flat roof barely visible one hundred yards away above the bushes. Adam John no doubt was there curing his fish.

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 Henry, in the bright sunlight of the June afternoon, loitered, drinking in the details of the scene. There were actual signs of an intent to chop out the forest and make the beginnings of a farm. Amid stumps some struggling stalks of corn were tasseling. Beside them appeared a small patch of thrifty-looking potatoes. A cow browsed near, tethered safely from the corn, and a runty horse whinnied from a yard of poles behind a little log stable. Signs of humble thrift, signs of domestic aspiration these, springing from the soul of a red man.

But then two things had happened to make Adam John superior: the Mission School—now taught by Miss Marceau—and the army.

Harrington raised a shout. A swart, sturdy figure emerged from the lodge and stood peering, then gave an answering shout, and Adam John walked straight down to Henry. He was wearing overalls and boots, with an ex-army shirt and a nondescript hat! A man below the medium height whose features had a half-emerged look; yet the sloe-black eyes were expressive of keenness and tenacity as his manner was of dignity.

"How!" greeted Henry, and outstretched a hand.

"How!" smiled the Indian with a kind of solemn joy. "You come see my place?" Plainly he was as proud of his island as a monarch of his throne. "You t'ink I make farm here—mebbe so?" he queried, indicating fondly his struggling corn and potatoes.

But Harrington shook his head. "You're a skookum Indian, all right, Adam; but it's too much of a job," he announced, surveying the timber. "Besides, I've got a better prospect for you than that. Mr. Boland wants your island for a shingle mill. Oh, but he will give

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 B.

(1) The investigation process

68. The investigation process has throughout been conducted on a consensual basis. The DPM himself requested that the Prime Minister should commission an independent investigation. Individuals who provided information to me did so voluntarily and each was asked specifically to agree (subject to confidentiality) that I might use their information for the purpose of the investigation.

69. I had no legal powers to compel the attendance of a witness or the production of documents. However, with no material exception, I was able to interview every person I wished. Documents were also produced on request by the FCDO and the MoJ and, where relevant, by individuals.

70. The investigation was not a form of litigation and was not governed by any strict rules of procedure or evidence. As to procedure, I sought throughout to ensure that essential principles of fairness and due process were observed. In relation to evidence, I have considered all contributions as a matter of substance, and regardless of form or type. Some types of contribution (such as an account of direct experience) were obviously of greater potential weight than others (such as an account of what one person told another about their experience). I have referred in this report to all such contributions as 'evidence', but without intending to suggest that any legal rules applied to matters of admissibility or weight.

71. My team liaised with the FCDO and the MoJ in order to ascertain which individuals:

 * (1) had themselves made or participated in one of the Complaints;

 * (2) wished to provide evidence to the investigation in relation to a formal complaint and in respect of conduct which they alleged had been experienced either directly or by someone else;

 * (3) wished to express views or recollections which were not based on direct experience.

72. I sought but did not purport to require the provision of written evidence. A total of 44 such contributions were submitted, many in the form of responses to a template questionnaire (used in part to assess which individuals I should interview) and others in the form of statements.


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 you a fine price for it," Henry smiled reassuringly—when Adam's face became sealed and uninviting. "That's my job—to buy it from you. I'll give you five thousand dollars for it."

This should have made the Indian brighten, but: "Me no like sell," he replied, surprisingly.

"But Mr. Boland wants it for a shingle mill," expatiated Henry.

"Me want for farm," announced Adam simply, quite as if what he wanted was as important as what the great man wanted.

"But you can take five thousand dollars and buy a much better farm, cleared and with buildings on it—all the hard work done," Henry expounded.

Adam John contemplated the face of his former commander soberly, anxiously, almost as appealing to him to understand the longings, the yearnings, the aspirations of a new-made citizen of a great country in whose behalf he had freely shed some tricklings of his mongrel blood.

"But I like do all hard work myself," he urged with a weak attempt at a deprecatory smile. "My father born this island; he die here. 'Sides, Great Father at Washington give me island for fight the Boche. She mine." He added gravely: "Look—flag! Look!"

Harrington followed Adam John's pointing finger to where upon the end of the smoking lodge was raised a small American flag. Henry smiled at the odd conceit, both touched and gratified. "Yes, yes; it's yours all right, old fellow," he assured; "but—but you see, Mr. Boland wants it!"

"And is Mr. Boland God?" demanded a pert voice from somewhere behind and above.

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 Henry turned, startled and amazed, yet a trifle thrilled—for he had recognized the voice. It was Lahleet, playing Indian again. Fifteen feet behind him she sat half-cradled in the limbs of a freshly felled madrone tree, smiling mockingly, one graceful arm clutching a branch above her head, one moccasined foot swinging idly and unsupported, while with the other she teetered gently like a child at play.

"Eavesdropper!" Harrington reproved, yet welcomed her as an ally; for in their last meeting she had covenanted to help him in a far more important project of Mr. Boland. "Look here, Lahleet," he began at once as losing no instant of time. "If you've been here long you can see that I've rather a job on my hands. I'm here on a very important mission—important to Mr. Boland because his engineers have recommended this island as the best, in fact the only feasible site for the new shingle mill; important to me, because it's the first commission of this kind Mr. Boland has ever entrusted to me, and I want to make good on it; important to Adam John because it's a chance to get five thousand dollars for his island. Won't you—won't you make him see reason?"

But as her tone had indicated, the girl was seeing Adam John's side of it. "What do you mean—reason, Mr. Harrington? Adam John has accepted the white man's ideals—some of them. It seems to him a fine feat, a proof that he is redeemed from savagery, if by painful labor he can turn this wilderness of his fathers into a white man's farm."

Adam John threw his foster-sister a grateful look. Her glib tongue was saying the things his slow lips could never have managed.

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 "But Mr. Boland will pay him such a generous figure that he cannot afford to indulge a—we must not encourage him to indulge a mere whim like"

The black eyes of Lahleet were grave with the gravity of the centuries, as she interrupted with: "To us poor aborigines, there are some values that cannot be expressed in figures. The satisfaction of making a farm here out of this tree-covered, root-tunneled soil is a profit to Adam John that cannot be expressed in dollars."

"But, Lahleet!" Henry expostulated." It just isn't common sense for"

"That is what ownership means, isn't it?" the girl inquired coolly, holding him at arm's length, as it were. "Freedom to do what one pleases with one's own, to sell it or keep it, lease it or refuse to, improve it or neglect it? That's all in the ownership idea, isn't it?"

"Certainly," admitted Harrington, baffled by the girl's perverseness.

"Then I repeat: Is Mr. Boland God?"

"Lahleet," rebuked the exasperated lawyer, "of course not. You know as well as I that Mr. Boland is a great big constructive genius who"

"Oh, I shall help you with Adam John," interrupted the girl coolly; "but let me understand one thing. Adam John the little and John Boland the great—they are both the same size before the law?"

Harrington nodded, smiling at the girl's odd conceit.

"And if John Boland wants to buy this island he can want to and offer a million dollars for it; but if Adam John wants to kecp it, he can refuse the million?"

"Why certainly—if he wants to; but we must not let Adam John be so foolish."

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 "No, I think not," agreed Lahleet; "and since you admit the principle, I will talk to Adam John; but it is his island—not mine. I will try to persuade him to yield his whim of a private purpose to the general good as contained in a shingle mill; but that is a hard proposition for a savage to grasp. I fancy if conditions were reversed it would even be a hard proposition for Mr. Boland to grasp. But Adam John is more hopeful soil for the development of a social conscience."

Harrington, having gained her consent to help him, could afford to be merely amused at the girl's acid subtleties, and turned seriously to Adam John.

"Old fellow," he said, "you're getting off wrong on this. I want you to think it over tonight—talk it over with Lahleet."

"Aw ri', me t'ink!" replied Adam John, but his lower lip was thrust out stubbornly. However, Harrington laughed hopefully, as he bade the two good-by. Even though Lahleet failed, he meant to get round the half-breed somchow—for Adam John's good, of course, as well as his own; and was rather full of this determination when he met Billie Boland just getting into her coupé in front of her father's office, whither he was bound to report to Quackenbaugh.

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UST back from your first successful mission?" Billie inquired radiantly; thus revealing unreservedly that she was keeping fairly close tab on the young man's movements. Besides it was ecstasy to have her gaze at him so interestedly; ecstasy to stand so close to the car window that he could feel the warmth of her breath upon his cheek; ecstasy to be frank with her even to the extent of disappointing her. "Not successful—no," he confessed; "not yet." And while the beautiful eyes continued their alert interested gaze, he told her something—not too much—but something of the ground of Adam John's refusal. Rather to his surprise, after the high-sounding last talk he had heard from Billie's lips, she manifested no perception even of Adam John's point of view.

"The poor Siwash!" she scorned. "Does he imagine the Boland Cedar Company will change its plans for him?" Then abruptly the scorn passed out of her expression and every line of her face seemed given over to personal concern for this young Mr. Henry Harrington's progress in her father's favor.

"You—you mustn't admit failure," she warned. "What business demands is results, you know. Father sticks out for them. The men who are going to the top in Boland General aren't the men who come back with an alibi. They're the men who come back with the goods. Be one of those, Mr. Harrington. Good

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 luck," she beamed, and thrust out a cordial encouraging hand to him.

Henry watched her departure with tingling sensations of joy and pride. "I'll show her," he chuckled. "I'll show her!" But to Scanlon, "I didn't get the deed," he confessed with a glum smile, holding up empty hands.

"The hell!" ejaculated Scanlon, and by his expression revealed both what a calamity it would be for the Boland Cedar Company not to get the island and what a calamity it would be for Harrington to have failed in his first commission from J. B. "Darn stubborn lot, these Siwashes," he frowned, when Henry had completed his explanation. "What are you going to do now?"

"Let the Indian sleep on it. Then in the morning I'm going to Quackenbaugh for authority to pay more."

"That's the thing," said Scanlon, "we don't want to have just to kick him off. Finesse first is the Old Man's motto."

"And always, of course," appreciated Henry. "In this instance there's no way you could force him off. The man's got a U. S. patent." If at this moment the Chief Fixer looked upon his newest aide as a babe in his innocence, he veiled the fact; in part perhaps because such innocence made him more serviceable.

Next morning Harrington reported to Quackenbaugh, a most impatient person, ascetic in appearance, and more autocratic in manner than Old Two Blades himself.

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 quick. Take it out there—twenty one-thousand dollar bills. Shake it in his face! He can't resist the sight of money. No Indian can. No white man can for that matter. My God, Harrington!" Quackenbaugh's lean and leathery face was tense and stern; his long squirrel tecth bit out his nervous speech. "This is important! Get that Siwash closed up and out of the way before Hornblower or some other crook gets hold of him."

Henry was assenting but thoughtful. "Paper money never looks much to an Indian," he reflected; "if it was gold—if I could pile up the gold—glittering before his eyes, it might win him."

"Well, take gold, then!" exclaimed Quackenbaugh with nervous eagerness; "that is, if there's twenty thousand gold in Gaylord's vaults since they don't circulate it any more. Most likely there is, though, if we want it. There's most anything in the town if we want it, eh, Henry?" And he reached for the telephone. This was the first time Mr. Quackenbaugh had called him Henry; and that young man might be pardoned for a sense of satisfaction in finding himself so cordially received and trusted by so eminent a member of that charmed circle of the Boland executives.

"Got twenty thousand dollars in gold twenties down there, Gaylord?"

"Just happen to have—owing to a whim of Mr. Boland's, yes." Gaylord was President of the First National but Mr. Boland was chairman of its board.

"I want it," said Quackenbaugh. "What's it weigh—that much coin?"

"About sixty-eight pounds," answered the banker after swift calculation.

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 73. I decided who should be interviewed. A total of 66 interviews were held, mostly in person and some by video conference. I conducted all of the interviews myself. If and to the extent appropriate, I sought to test the accounts provided, although I did not conduct (or purport to conduct) what might be regarded as a cross-examination. The interviews commenced on 20 December 2022. The last interview took place on 3 April 2023. I am grateful to all those interviewed, and all those who provided written contributions, for their cooperation and participation, particularly in circumstances where it must have been difficult for many to do so.

74. Each interviewee was entitled to be accompanied by a colleague or, where relevant, a trade union officer, acting purely in a supporting role. No legal representation was permitted at any interview.

75. A member of my Cabinet Office team attended every interview in order to take a note. A draft of the interview note was provided to each interviewee. The notes were prepared to a high standard of detail and accuracy. In most cases, subject to minor or incidental corrections, the notes were agreed. In a few cases, individuals did not respond to requests to approve the notes of their interview; in the absence of any objection, and in view of the quality of the note-taking, I have treated the notes in such instances as agreed. Some individuals wished to make additional comments or contributions; this was acceptable albeit that such matters were treated separately rather than as corrections to the note of interview.

76. At appropriate points in the process, and with the assistance of the Cabinet Office team, I considered all of the evidence so far obtained in relation to each of the DExEU Complaint, the FCDO Complaint and the MoJ Complaints. I carried out an exercise in selection of the material to be put to the DPM for his response. Separately in relation to each of the DExEU Complaint, the FCDO Complaint and the MoJ Complaints, I provided the DPM with a copy of the Complaint (or Complaints in the case of MoJ) and a summarised written statement of the additional matters arising from the investigation on which I sought his response. Where relevant, I provided supplementary or revised summaries to the DPM to take account of further evidence.

77. Following receipt of each of these packs of materials in relation to the FCDO Complaint and the MoJ Complaints, the DPM made a number of requests for documents. With


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 "Henry Harrington will be in for it, also for twenty thousand currency. Get 'em both ready."

Just like that Quackenbaugh had ordered forty thousand dollars out of the First National vaults to be used as pawns in the playing of a little game.

Power, thought Henry. Power! It was astonishingly pleasant to sit so close to the reins of power; but reservations began to occur to him.

"We might bring the Indian in here and show it to him," he suggested.

"Wouldn't have one-tenth the pull," decided the relentlessly eager Quackenbaugh after one thoughtful moment. "Dump it in his lap out there, and he can't get away from it."

"He'd probably refuse to come in here anyway," reflected Henry. "However, I'm going to be uneasy with all that pile in a motorboat. She might turn turtle or the bottom drop out or something." He was unaccustomed to using huge sums of money to bait traps with.

Quackenbaugh was entirely accustomed to it. Yet he confessed quite frankly: "So am I. When it's the raw stuff we're handling, I never get over having the shivers; but the man that hasn't got the nerve to take a chance when the stake is big enough never gets on with J. B. In this instance, the game is worth the chance; but we'll reduce the hazard by reducing the length of the marine voyage. We'll put a man with a sawed-off shotgun in a car with you and have you driven to the mouth of Cub Creek. The motorboat will meet you there and it's only two hundred yards across the channel to the island."

Henry looked relieved for a moment, but then re-

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 called. "And yet, if I bring anybody with me Adam John is likely to resent it and develop a sullen streak."

"You've got to go across alone," foresaw Quackenbaugh. "Nobody along but your engineer. When you're landed; the boat will go back and pick up the man with the shotgun and just keep casually circling the island. If anybody tries to leave it before you he will suspect something is wrong and investigate."

"All right," smiled Henry with resolution; "if you want to risk your forty thousand I'm willing."

"You try him first with ten of those bills and then you keep trying another and another till you get up to twenty. Twenty is the absolute limit!" The squirrel teeth of Quackenbaugh closed like the click of a steel trap. "If it's a question of more than twenty we don't pay anything. We fight! But if he doesn't fall for twenty thousand in pretty pictures, then you turn the gold loose at him."

So simply did Quackenbaugh conceive the matter. He wrote quickly "$20,000 currency $20,000 gold," on a piece of paper worth a fraction of a cent with a pen worth less than a nickel, scrawled his initials beneath and handed it to Henry.

But there was a little matter to be adjusted between Henry Harrington and James H. Gaylord, the matter of a necessary poke to the banker's jaw from the lawyer's fist, delivered some three days ago. This adjustment took time and it was all of eighteen minutes after Henry entered Gaylord's private office before that lithe, muscled young man stepped across the sidewalk with his spine stiffened by the weight of sixty-eight pounds contained in a coin sack with the seal of the U. S. mint upon it. This sack reposed upon his shoul-

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 der and leaned almost affectionately against his neck.

Now as Harrington stepped out upon the pavement, who should come striding along but Count Eckstrom—in golfing cap and knickers—to the links, perhaps, to meet Miss Billie Boland, quite evidently pleasure-bound. Rather to Henry's surprise, the count recognized him, although when they met last Harrington had been a sartorial wreck with a pyramidal bandage upon his head.

"You are a burden bearer, this morning, Mr. Harrington, I perceive," observed the count facetiously, pausing to offer a lofty and elegant clasp of his soft hand.

To take that hand, Henry had to shift his hold upon the ear of the coin sack, but he managed this. "Yes; that's my station in life," he bandied. "You belong to what we in America call the idle rich, I take it."

"Idle, but not rich," discriminated the count with a smile, and lightly detaching his fingers from Harrington's grasp, as though they had been held a little too close, he moved on at that unhurried but also unloitering stride which is supposed to distinguish the carriage of a gentleman.

As the car spun out along the Basin road, the blue water of South Inlet lay like a band of turquoise between sheets of emerald and the fragrance of the forest tingled in Henry's nostrils as zest for his duty and his opportunity tingled in his veins.

Three satisfactions warmed his breast: first, that he was going to do this thing for the Boland interests who were trusting him so largely and compensating him so generously; second, that he was going to do something nice for old Adam John, even over Adam John's

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 silly objection; third, that he was going to prove thereby to Billie that he was a sure enough go-getter. After the first two or three minutes, it was the third of these reflections that occupied his mind most entirely and most happily.

As the car swung off the grade at the mouth of Cub Creek, the same motorboat which had conveyed him yesterday curved gracefully in from the channel. Thus precisely did the cogs in the machinery of a Boland General operation fit into each other.

Gently Harrington deposited his valuable burden in the exact center of the bottom of the launch and a few minutes later he stepped ashore upon the island. He swung the bag of coin to his shoulder as lightly as if it had been a present of corn for Adam John's horse, and made his way toward the lodge walking straight and blithely.

He wondered if Lahleet had softened Adam John any. Somehow he feared not; he feared that her instinct would have overmastered her reason; that she could not be counted on. He would even be relieved if she were not about this morning. Apparently she was not, for as he rounded the corner of the lodge he came upon Adam John alone.

"Hello, Adam!" hailed Henry cheerily. With an apologetic start the Indian rose to his feet and stood sheepishly.

"Good morning, Lieutenant Harrington," he responded with a jerky bow.

"Adam John," began Henry, instantly aggressive, "I can't let you make a mistake about this matter. Can we go inside? I've got something to show you."

The Indian's eyes fixed themselves on Harrington's

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 face in an expression of dog-like devotion, but besides that there was a plea in them, as of one who prayed, "O well-meaning friend, lead me not into temptation!"

If Henry saw this he hardened himself against it and turned impatiently to the lodge. Resignedly, Adam John led him within. The narrow plank-walled shack was reeking with the smell of smoke and drying fish. Through the narrow windows light filtered, battling successfully enough with the smoke to reveal a table and two crudely homemade chairs. Upon the table was spread an army blanket. To one of the chairs Adam John motioned his visitor with ceremonious gravity.

"Now, Adam," Harrington appealed at once, "you mustn't be foolish. This is the rarest opportunity that ever came to a young man like you. I've got them to enlarge their offer. Adam John, they are willing to give you twenty thousand dollars for the island!"

Harrington in his headlong rush to jar Adam out of his obstinacy had forgotten entirely Quackenbaugh's instruction to bargain, thousand-dollar note by thousand-dollar note; or else had nobly disregarded it. But Adam John's countenance was sealed and hard as if it were the face of some old idol.

"Me no want money. Want farm!" affirmed the Indian more stubbornly than ever.

Henry bit his lip and frowned. "Look here, Adam!" he reproved. "I don't think you realize how much money twenty thousand dollars is. Look, I've brought it so that you could see."

Harrington drew from his pocket a long envelope, opened it, fanned out in his hand like cards twenty dark green Federal Reserve notes, with the face of Alexander Hamilton on each, and then papered the old

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ONE but the initiated know what a great question the servant question is and how many perplexing sides it has. The mistresses and servants, of course, fill the leading roles. Then, in the lesser, but still important parts, come the agencies, which despite the many voices clamoring against them, declare themselves public benefactors. Even the “funny man” manages to fill a aa [sic] great deal of space with the subject. It is a serious question, since it affects all one holds dear in life—one’s dinner, one’s bed, and one’s linen. I had heard so many complaints from long-suffering mistresses, worked-out servants, agencies, and lawyers, that I determined to investigate the subject to my own satisfaction. There was only one way to do it. That was to personate a servant and apply for a situation. I knew that there might be such a thing as “references” required, and, as I had never tested my abilities in this line, I did not


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 army blanket with them. The Indian could not repress a start of surprise, but as if to make up for this, relapsed into a more profound stolidity.

"Twenty one-thousand-dollar bills!" Harrington expatiated, and swept them up and counted them down one by one before the Indian's eyes, which, despite the taciturnity of his expression, never missed a movement of the money.

"Each of these is one thousand!" emphasized the lawyer. "There are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. A single one of these bills is a dollar a day for almost three years; and there are twenty of them; a dollar a day for sixty years, and that's longer than your father lived upon this island, Adam."

This must have seemed to the Indian an odd conceit, for his flat face was ornamented with a grotesque smile and for the first time since the money had been displayed, he raised his eyes to those of his friend and benefactor. But the smile faded. The look slowly changed to one of infinite perplexity, yet mingled with an infinite patience; as if he thought it strange that his friend could not understand him—as if he were being tortured but by one he loved and whose acts, therefore, he could not protest.

With a movement that was so gentle as not to be offensive, Adam John pushed the money from him. Yet the eager lawyer, watching every expression, thought he caught a twitch of the stolid facial muscles when the Indian's hand actually touched the money. He was weakening after all.

"Aha!" cried Harrington with a Mephistophelian laugh, as he restored the money to its envelope. "I almost got you that time, old scout. But if you waver

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 before pretty pictures, what will you do when I show you the real stuff? Money isn't money till you see it in the raw."

He reached craftily for the coin sack and presently a stream of gold twenties gushed out upon the blanket—beautiful, untarnished mintings, every one of them, each a dazzling sunburst—dozens, scores, hundreds, one thousand of them to be exact.

Some of the yellow discs had begun to roll and Adam John shrank as if they were fiery serpents hissing and darting at him, then started up, slapping them down upon the blanket and pushing them into the general heap.

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HAT wonder the simple-minded Adam John found his eyes, his soul riveted by this gushing sack of gold! What wonder that when he had pushed those fugitive coins back into the heap he found it impossible to withdraw his fingers but stood crouched forward with hands half-buried in the yellow pile—clinging to the coins as something he could not let go—holding them down as if they were demons that might leap at and destroy him—eyes blinking in the beams refracted by the glittering pile that sparkled and quivered like something alive.

"There," laughed Henry exultantly; for he saw that the gold had won. "There is your twenty thousand dollars, Adam, for your little old island."

The Indian was still blinking at the glittering mass before him, his fingers clutching or quivering so that there came a slight agitation from the center of the pile that made the coins more scintillant still. The savage in him appeared to have succumbed completely to the lure of the gold.

But slowly as a man gathers his resources for a tremendous moral struggle there were signs of a gathering strength in the face of the Indian. His teeth bit into his lips; his brows were lowered; his eyes narrowed. Deliberately he began to straighten, deliberately to withdraw his hands. At length they were free—entirely free of the gold. Above the pile he rubbed the fingers

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 the assistance of the FCDO and the MoJ, the documents requested were, so far as legitimately possible, collated and provided to the DPM prior to the relevant interview.

78. The DPM attended four separate interviews, taking approximately 2½ days in total. For convenience, the interviews were structured by reference to each of the DExEU Complaint, the FCDO Complaint and the MoJ Complaints. There was an additional interview in relation to the MoJ Complaints. The DPM engaged seriously and conscientiously with the investigation process. His interviews combined the provision of his evidence with the making of representations. He suggested a number of further interviewees, from whom I selected and interviewed those whom I considered were likely to be able to assist in relation to the allegations which had been made.

79. After the evidence-gathering phase of the investigation, the DPM made written representations. A number of these representations concerned the investigation process and the approach to evidence. It is important that I should respond to those representations in this report and have done so in the sections which follow.

80. I commenced the work necessary to make findings of fact and produce this report only after all of the evidence had been obtained and the DPM had made his written representations.

(2) The 'burden' and 'standard' of proof

81. As indicated above, the investigation was not governed by strict rules of evidence appropriate to court proceedings. Concepts applicable in legal proceedings such as the 'burden of proof' and the 'standard of proof' did not apply as such. However, as a general requirement of fairness, I have treated the burden of establishing any proposition as resting on the person who asserted it. I have made findings of fact on the basis that the applicable test is analogous to the balance of probabilities approach in civil proceedings.

(3) The scope of the Complaints

82. The Terms of Reference provide that I should establish the specific facts surrounding the Complaints. The published Terms of Reference refer in terms to the MoJ Group Complaint and the FCDO Complaint. The DExEU Complaint was added on 24 November 2022, at the Prime Minister's request. The MoJ Additional Complaints were added on 14 December 2022, again at the Prime Minister's request. In relation to both


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 of one hand against the fingers of the other as if shaking off the last hateful particle which might have adhered. At length he sat erect once more. His hands were off the table entirely and folded across his chest, fingers clasping the muscles of the arms tightly as if he restrained a mighty impulse. And yet his eyes would not give up their fixity. They were glued to that shining cone of coin. The struggle in his half-savage breast was still on.

How fierce that conflict was Harrington realized when he saw Adam John's eyes suddenly shiny with tears. Tears may come once or twice in a lifetime to the eyes of an adult Indian. Adam John's eyes since infancy had not been wet save from enemy gas. Now, bright from their briny bath, they found the eyes of Henry Harrington, but not with a look of grateful surrender. It was a glance of loving reproach they gave, after which the stiff lips of Adam John labored his look into words: "You—you make temptation for me, Lieutenant!"

Temptation!

The combination of that glance, those simple words, the tone in which they were uttered, cut through Harrington like a knife. All at once he saw what he was doing—that he was sccking vulgarly to lure this young man away from an ideal which, if wrong, was one that he ought to be persuaded out of, reasoned, guided out of—but not sordidly bribed out of. It filled him with a sudden sense of shame. But still his speech lagged behind his thought.

"Why, I'm showing you how much money is being offered for your land," he argued.

"Is that all you do?" gasped Adam weakly, and

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 passed a calloused yellow hand over his perspiring brow. "Don't! I no want to know."

There was a silence for many seconds in the smelly, smoky lodge, and then Harrington said abruptly: "Here, hold the bag!"

While Adam, trembling, held the sack, Henry in handfuls scooped up the double eagles and flung them hatefully within it. In the midst of this operation he was startled by the sense of another presence in the doorway; but before he could lift his eyes even there came a prolonged "Oo-o-o!" It was a shivery, shuddery note of exclamation, and it was uttered of course by Lahleet, after which she fixed one glance on Harrington and then grew frostily silent.

"Adam is disappointingly stubborn," Harrington said. "Even after I have been to the pains of showing him just how much money twenty thousand dollars is, he still refuses it."

"And that," commented Lahleet with a straight lip and a hard eye, "that is a refusal which a white man can't understand."

"Oh, yes—I can understand it," frowned Henry, for he was feeling very disappointed, "but it's foolish all the same."

"Foolish to be loyal to an ideal?" persisted the girl, advancing upon him.

"If it's a foolish ideal!" retorted Henry.

Lahleet, indignant, flashed a swift word in Chinook to Adam John; and the Indian as if in obedience to command swung the bag of gold pieces to his shoulder. "It heavy. Me carry for you," he said.

The girl must have been impatient to see the money out of the lodge and off the island—for when Henry, a

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 little put out with her and a little miffed at himself, walked with a kind of stiff dignity behind Adam John to where he lowered the gold to a cedar stump beside the boat-landing, Lahleet followed at a distance, as overseeing the departure.

A survey of the channel revealed to Harrington no sign of his engineer and the man with the sawed-off shotgun. No doubt they were still circling the island, patrolling in a leisurely, unobstrusive fashion so as not to excite suspicion; and would heave into view presently. Nevertheless, this slight delay served to increase his annoyance. When he saw Adam John studying the height of the sun anxiously, as if time pressed with him also, Henry spoke up sharply: "My boat will be here presently. You need not wait."

"Have to go nets," Adam John explained laconically. "Lieutenant scuse!"

"Sure!" averred Henry, with emphasis, although he could have bitten his tongue out with chagrin. He had failed again. What should he do next, he wondered, gritting his teeth in rising anger—mostly with himself.

After a balk or two the engine started and Adam John was borne swiftly out into the channel and headed up the basin.

"Men like John Boland ought to be very careful what they do to the souls of men like Adam John," Lahleet remarked from behind.

"But Mr. Boland did not know a thing about it," Harrington defended quickly.

"It's the same thing," the girl averred, with the black eyes round and tender in their reproaches. "What you were doing to Adam John's soul is the same thing that Mr. Boland does to all souls. He crushes their ideals

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 under an avalanche of gold. He drowns them in a tide of eager hope for wealth and prosperity. He intoxicates them with an atmosphere of flattery and mutual admiration. Quackenbaugh, Manter, Scanlon and the rest, why, they are mere ambition-drunk satellites of Boland, doing the same thing to others that he by his wicked genius has done to them."

"Mere unjust prejudice, Lahleet, every bitter word of it," denounced Harrington; then demanded with sudden anxiety: "But you still believe in Mr. Boland? You are still going to help me with the Indians?"

The girl surveyed him very calmly.

"Yes; I am going to help you; because I believe that what Mr. Boland proposes for the Shell Point Indians will be an inestimable boon for them, and because I believe that he keeps his pledged word. Not because I believe in him or his methods."

"You are stubborn about Mr. Boland, Lahleet, as stubborn as Adam John about his island. But"—Henry tried the effect of a clearing smile—"we won't argue. We two understand and believe in each other, and that's enough—we are still friends and—partners."

"Yes. But the Indian is a man who will not be hurried. He suspects any attempt to hurry him. I have dropped the seed. Now leave the Shell Point families to ruminate upon the idea, to palaver over it around their fires at night, and while they catch and dry their salmon. They will hear about your offer to Adam John. They will laugh and say that Adam was a fool. Some day they will ask for you to come and explain the matter. That will be the day of your opportunity." The girl's face had brightened, her entire manner changed, once she got on to this Shell Point affair.

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 "And now, if you don't mind being left alone," Lahleet suggested, "I think I must go. My canoe is on the other side of the island and my little Injuns are giving an entertainment tonight at the schoolhouse, so time presses."

"Not at all," assured Henry politely, "I'd walk across with you but" He indicated the sack of gold upon the stump. "Besides, my boat will be here at any minute."

"It's only a hop, skip and a jump for me," laughed the girl. "Good-by, Hen-ree!"

With no more premonition of tragedy than a butterfly when it flits across a field of poppies she danced away from him along the path, turned sharply to the right past where the cow was browsing, gave him one more glimpse of her bright face framed in green leaves and then disappeared in the timber.

"Where the devil is my boat?" speculated Henry, doing an imitation of Napoleon on St. Helena. "They must have stopped to fish. . . . Gee! I wonder if I've got to wait around here all day."

The man might have mused and chafed thus for two or three minutes in his loneliness when, listening for the faint chug of a motorboat, he heard instead a pistol shot and a scream from the forest at his back. The scream he recognized instantly—sharp, piercing, bloodcurdling—it was the voice of little Lahleet in some mortal terror or awful physical agony. That there were cougars on the island, that one had attacked her—this was his first formed theory, as he dashed into the forest.

It alarmed him further that the cry was not repeated.

"Lahleet! Lahleet!" he called loudly that she might

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 know help was coming. No answer came. He dashed on the more wildly, straight ahead at first, and then uncertainly, zigzagging a little this way, and a little that.

"Lahleet! he called more loudly. "Lahleet!" then checked his pace to listen. The only sound that came to him was the violent pounding of his own heart; but as his eyes roved through the short vistas of the forest they stopped at a log-like thing in a crush of ferns, log-like but with certain marked resemblance to a human form. He rushed upon it.

It was the body of a man, face down in the green tangle, wearing a blue flannel shirt and corduroy trousers. The trousers were encircled at the waist by a black leather belt while their bottoms were thrust into high laced boots. The back of the neck showed a reddish skin, purpling into the roots of well-kept hair.

Harrington laid his hand on the back below the left shoulder blade where a heartbeat should have been felt. There was none. Seizing an arm he turned the body over and drew back with a start. It was the face of Eckstrom—Count Eckstrom, with his carefully trimmed Vandyke, with the lace-work of dissipation in the puffs beneath his eyes, and—with a dark spot growing on the breast of the blue flannel shirt. A machinegun fire of questions leaped into Harrington's mind. What was Count Eckstrom doing in, say, a timber cruiser's garb? And how had he got into it so quickly from his golfing clothes? What was he doing on Hurricane Island? What was he doing with a bullet through his heart? And where was Lahleet?

The last question got its answer first. As, turning from the body, Harrington's eyes swept around him

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 the DExEU Complaint and the MoJ Additional Complaints, I was asked to establish the specific facts surrounding the complaints.

83. In his written representations, the DPM contended that the Terms of Reference were limited to the MoJ Group Complaint, the FCDO Complaint and the DExEU Complaint and that if I were to make factual findings in relation to any other matter, that would go beyond the authorised scope of the investigation. Although not stated in terms, the necessary implication was that the MoJ Additional Complaints were outside the Terms of Reference. The DPM's written representations went on to submit that if any matter other than the MoJ Group Complaint, the FCDO Complaint and the DExEU Complaint were to form the basis of findings, that would risk unfairness on the basis of a significant change in the Terms of Reference which was not notified to him.

84. I do not accept these representations about the scope of the Terms of Reference. I notified the DPM on 30 November 2022 that I would establish the specific facts in relation to the DExEU Complaint. Following the Prime Minister's decision on 13 December 2022, I wrote again the following day to inform the DPM that the MoJ Additional Complaints were to be investigated under the Terms of Reference. I stated: "As the current Terms of Reference allow me to consider this material, they do not need to be amended for this purpose". I made the same point in the course of my first interview with the DPM (about the DExEU Complaint). The DPM did not prior to his written representations suggest that it was unacceptable for me to investigate and find specific facts in relation to the MoJ Additional Complaints. I wrote to the DPM on 6 March 2023, including copies of all of the MoJ Additional Complaints and also including in the written summary the additional material that I had obtained during the investigation and to which the DPM's response was sought. I did not detect in the DPM's treatment at interview of the MoJ Additional Complaints any lack of attention to detail. Accordingly, I do not consider that there is or has been any unfairness in this respect.

85. I do, however, accept that there is a difference of principle between an allegation made by an individual who is a party to one of the Complaints and an allegation made by an individual who participated in the investigation only as a witness. The latter type of material had the potential to assist in relation to the presence or absence of any pattern in respect of the conduct alleged. But if such material was inconclusive or did not in


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 in the forest, the girl appeared, standing at a distance of a dozen paces, one hand raised to her pale and distressed face while the other grasped an automatic pistol. Her eyes were fixed upon the body of Eckstrom slowly crushing a new bed for itself in the ferns.

"Lahleet!" Harrington cried.

"The—the horrid brute!" she shuddered, and flung the pistol from her with the last atom of her strength, then fell fainting to the ground.

Harrington caught her almost as she fell.

"Lahleet!" he pleaded frantically, at the same time shaking her gently as if to rouse her. "Lahleet!" Slowly the dark eyes opened, slowly consciousness of her surroundings appeared to bear in upon her mind.

"Your gold!" she exclaimed with a start. "Your gold! Did you leave it alone? There are other men upon the island."

"Never mind the gold!" cried Harrington fiercely. "Are you injured?" His eyes searched her face solicitously, as tenderly he pressed her soft body against his own. How dear she was! What an exquisite little thing of her kind! But she would not be coddled and swung her feet to the ground, steadying herself by a clasp upon his shoulder.

"No, not injured!" she gasped, with a natural satisfaction, and her expression—it seemed to him—was not so much horror that she had taken human life as satisfaction that she had done a viper to his death.

"It's the Indian in her," Harrington thought.

"Your gold!" she insisted. "Your gold!"

Harrington had become suddenly anxious enough. The mere thought of the twenty thousand dollars alone and unguarded—for a time he had not thought of it

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 —was terrifying. As they emerged from the timber his eyes were straining for a glimpse of that cedar stump. It seemed an eternity before he made it out. Yes, there it was. But, God! It was naked! It was empty!

In an instant just what had happened became clear in Harrington's mind. Eckstrom, experienced crook that he was, had divined what he held in the bag upon his shoulder, had followed him with confederates to the island and spied upon him from a bush, awaiting opportunity. This came when Lahleet started upon her lonely walk. The attack upon her had been a fake, a ruse to draw him away from the gold. It had resulted disastrously for Eckstrom; but it had succeeded so far as the original object was concerned. The gold was gone!

Harrington wavered and leaned weakly against a tree. This was a perfectly staggering blow! It had fallen at the most inauspicious moment—threatening, obliterating his whole brilliant prospect. The humiliation of it was crushing. For a moment Henry Harrington was a very much dismayed, a very much embittered young man. Then he rallied. It was tough luck—fierce! Yet he could have done no differently. He had been the victim of cunning plotters. Wrath and resolution were quick within him. He plunged forward. He would survive the blow. He would trace and recover the gold. One scoundrel had got his due. The others should get theirs. Harrington ground his teeth, face aflame. He was "Hellfire" now.

But a new thought struck him like a bullet. There was another to be considered. Lahleet! more innocent victim than himself. It would be unfair to have her

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