I


To say the least, Mrs. Sayther's career in Dawson was meteoric. She
arrived in the spring, with dog sleds and French-Canadian _voyageurs_,
blazed gloriously for a brief month, and departed up the river as soon as
it was free of ice. Now womanless Dawson never quite understood this
hurried departure, and the local Four Hundred felt aggrieved and lonely
till the Nome strike was made and old sensations gave way to new. For it
had delighted in Mrs. Sayther, and received her wide-armed. She was
pretty, charming, and, moreover, a widow. And because of this she at
once had at heel any number of Eldorado Kings, officials, and adventuring
younger sons, whose ears were yearning for the frou-frou of a woman's
skirts.

The mining engineers revered the memory of her husband, the late Colonel
Sayther, while the syndicate and promoter representatives spoke awesomely
of his deals and manipulations; for he was known down in the States as a
great mining man, and as even a greater one in London. Why his widow, of
all women, should have come into the country, was the great
interrogation. But they were a practical breed, the men of the
Northland, with a wholesome disregard for theories and a firm grip on
facts. And to not a few of them Karen Sayther was a most essential fact.
That she did not regard the matter in this light, is evidenced by the
neatness and celerity with which refusal and proposal tallied off during
her four weeks' stay. And with her vanished the fact, and only the
interrogation remained.

To the solution, Chance vouchsafed one clew. Her last victim, Jack