Chapter XII: The Rendezvous

The spoken name had all the effect of a galvanic shock. "Alison!" Dexter kicked the blanket from his legs, and in the darkness blundered across the room. He reached the bunk, drew a match from his pocket, and struck a light. As the flame flared in the darkness he stared downward and saw the boy's motionless form stretched at full length on the mattress. From all appearances, the patient had not changed position since the evening before. He was lying in his blankets, facing the wall, with eyes closed, temples slightly flushed, and breathing evenly through half open mouth. Seemingly, he was sound asleep.

But unquestionably it was his voice that had been heard; furthermore, Dexter could have sworn that he was talking over a telephone.

However, there was no telephone here: none, at least, that the corporal was able to find. And such an instrument scarcely could have been hidden in the second it took him to spring across the room. Nevertheless, he settled his doubts by looking. He searched under the bunk and behind the bunk, and then leaned over to assure himself that there were no lumpy objects stuffed in the mattress. He was prodding at the pillow, when he felt a sudden movement, and was aware that Smith was looking up at him with a dull vacuous stare.

"What is it?" the young man drowsily mumbled.

"Whom were you talking to just now?" demanded the corporal.

"I?" Smith blinked his lids, and gazed about him with an expression of utter blankness. "What do you mean?"

"I heard something like a click, and a minute later you spoke: warning somebody not to come here--to go somewhere else."

"You heard me?" The boy started to raise himself in the bunk, and then fell back with a groan, grasping his injured arm. "Oh!" he sighed, "I--I nearly forgot. Must have had a good night. What time is it?"

"You were speaking to some one named Alison," persisted the policeman.

"Alison?" Smith shook his head slowly, regarded his inquisitor with heavy, sleep-dulled eyes. "You must have been dreaming--or else I was. If I was talking, I must have been having a nightmare. I don't remember--"

"Who's Alison?" cut in the officer sharply.

"Why, I don't know," said the other with a suppressed yawn. "Never heard of him."

Dexter lighted another match and peered searchingly at the face before him, and the boy's blue eyes returned his gaze with a look of blandest innocence. "Do you know a woman named Alison?"

"No," was the unequivocal answer.

"You didn't speak that name a moment ago?"

"Not that I know of."

"Where's Saddle Notch?"

"Is it a place--or what? Did I say that too?" Smith's mouth quivered in the faintest suggestion of a grin. "Gee, I must have been having a whale of a dream--thinking up all those things!"

Dexter stood for a moment in baffled silence, and then turned away with an impatient shrug. What was the use? The boy had all the best of it. The inquisition might be kept up for hours, and always he could cling to his one irrefutable assertion--that his talk was the meaningless jargon of dreams. The officer had no vestige of proof to establish the truth or the untruth of any statement that was made.

Nevertheless, Dexter was convinced that Smith had not been asleep, and he could not believe that the boy was talking to himself. He had said good-by to "Alison." Had he contrived in some unaccountable manner to get into communication with Alison Rayne? Impossible! The girl was Colonel Devreaux's prisoner, and by this time they would be camping thirty or forty miles farther down the valley. How to reach her by voice, except through radio or telephone? There was no other conceivable way.

So mystery again resolved itself into the bogy of a telephone line that did not seem to exist. Dexter had ransacked one cabin in futile search of a communicating circuit, and now his perplexity gave him no choice but to go through the same performance at this place. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he lighted a candle, and set about an irksome task.

He went out of doors first, and inspected the ground. The snow held no intruding footprints. Smith could not have been talking to any one who stood within earshot. No wires went out from the cabin, so it seemed equally certain that his voice had not been transmitted over a telephone line. Wireless? That last remaining possibility was easily settled. He searched the interior cabin from end to end, floor, walls, roof, fireplace, prying into every imaginable nook and cranny; and found not one piece or part of radio equipment. Nor was there anything about the place to suggest that the owner might be engaged in any business other than fur trapping. The first streaks of daylight were beginning to filter through the windows when Dexter finally gave it up as a hopeless puzzle.

The boy had been watching from the bunk, without comment, his artless face betraying nothing more than mild curiosity. The corporal scrutinized him with narrow eyes. His pose of innocence was well put on, but Dexter could not help but feel that it was assumed for the occasion. From the beginning he had refused to believe that the young man had told his right name, and the suspicion persisted that he was in some way involved in the affairs of the incomprehensible girl who had quitted this cabin two days before. Whether awake or asleep, he certainly had spoken the name "Alison," and it all sounded strangely like a warning.

Dexter darkly pondered the significance of the words he had overheard. Assuming that the impossible might have happened--that a message could carry by some queer, occult agency through the intervening leagues of forest--then its purport was unmistakable. "Don't come here. Go to Saddle Notch." The boy's speech carried definite instructions. Were the words, by miraculous chance, intended to reach the girl? If she could come and go at will, as the mysterious conversation might seem to indicate, there was but one inference to be drawn: she had escaped from Devreaux.

Following his startling line of conjecture thus far, the rest was only simple logic. If the girl actually had fled from the hands of one policeman, naturally her friends would attempt to warn her away from a cabin where a second policeman had established himself. She would be advised to strike for a safer retreat. Saddle Notch! In a sudden flash of intuition, the corporal persuaded himself that he knew the place. Riding across the west range two days ago he had been struck by the appearance of a peculiarly shaped mountain with two outstanding peaks, and a cleft or notch between, that bore an amazing resemblance to a gigantic saddle. The mountain stood amid a cluster of other high peaks in a wild and lonely region, about twenty miles southwest of this spot. Such country offered ideal refuge to any fugitive who might be hard pressed, seeking to hide.

For a moment the corporal considered the strangely suggested possibilities. No doubt it would prove a futile chase to go ranging through the forests on a flimsy hint of this sort; yet a blind instinct urged him to go. He hesitated for an instant, and then, with a nod and a fleeting smile, he made his decision. If by any millionth chance Alison Rayne had broken away from Devreaux and was traveling to a meeting at the Saddle Notch with some unidentified friend, then he, the policeman, would also be there to keep the rendezvous.