It made him rather ashamed of the weakness and uncertainty to which he had confessed.

Of course they could do nothing with a woman; it wasn't a shooting business--yet.
But there was a debatable future, if the gist of the note on the table ran true to their unspoken analysis of it.

Promise of something like that was in Alan's eyes.
He opened the door.

"I'll have Tautuk and Amuk Toolik here at eight.
Good night, Alan!" "Good night!" Alan watched Stampede's figure until it had disappeared before he closed the door.
Now that he was alone, he no longer made an effort to restrain the anxiety which the prospector's unexpected revealment had aroused in him.
The other's footsteps were scarcely gone when he again had the paper in his hand.

It was clearly the lower part of a letter sheet of ordinary business size and had been carelessly torn from the larger part of the page, so that nothing more than the signature and half a dozen lines of writing in a man's heavy script remained.
What was left of the letter which Alan would have given much to have possessed, read as follows: "_--If you work carefully and guard your real identity in securing facts and information, we should have the entire industry in our hands within a year_." Under these words was the strong and unmistakable signature of John Graham.
A score of times Alan had seen that signature, and the hatred he bore for its maker, and the desire for vengeance which had entwined itself like a fibrous plant through all his plans for the future, had made of it an unforgetable writing in his brain.