Pole trekked my old trail companion and friend, Corporal Doak, with Con- stable Woolams. Arresting the cul- prits in the heart of a Stone Age en- campment they brought them back to Tree River to await trial for murder. One night, as Doak slept, Aligoomiak sneaked from the barracks, purloined a loaded rifle and shot the Mountie. Then as Otto Binder, the Hudson’s Bay factor, crossed the ice for his morn- ing visit a bullet from the young Eskimo’s rifle struck him to the ice. Re-arrested as he attempted to shoot Somers and the remaining Hudson’s Bay man, Aligoomiak was bundled on a sled and carried back to the lonely barracks. White Man’s Law In June, 1923, Judge Dubuc headed a judical party from Edmonton down the long reaches of the Athabasca, Slave and Mackenzie rivers to Hers- chel Island to bring the white man’s law to the Land of the Midnight Sun. Aligoomiak and his uncle were sen- tenced to death and finally hanged on a gallows improvised in the “Bone House” of the erstwhile Pacific Steam Whaling Company at Herschel Island —thus making the Arctice safe, at last, for pioneering whites. Seventy-eight years have passed since those first Three Hundred set out to subdue the wild west and make it a little less wooly. Seventy-eight years of high adventure rolling back the frontier from the bald-headed prairie to the furthermost reaches of the Arctic—building up a tradition that will endure down through the ages. In Alberta Three thousand rank and file now follow in the steps of that pioneering Three Hundred. In Alberta, where the first dimunitive seed of redcoated supremacy was planted, the force now numbers ten officers, one hundred and thirty N.C.O.’s, two hundred and ninety rank and file; eighty civilians, and approximately thirty members of the Criminal Investigation Bureau. The cayuse has surrendered his place to two aeroplanes, one hundred and sixty cars, and four trained police dogs. Today the Mounted Police of Alberta enforce all Provincial and Federal Statutes, including the Crim- inal Code—to say nothing of Munici- pal by-laws in various towns under their direct policing. The swift-rolling auto has ousted the prancing steed and the Indian cayuse; the staccato cough of the motor-driven schooner has superseded the roll of York boat oars, and the winged “Thunderbird” has ousted the leaky birchbark. But the re- christened Royal Canadian Mounted Police have kept abreast of the times. There still remains the gold and scarlet . and with it a spirit in Page Sixty-eight keeping with those traditions that, overcoming all obstacles, has made it a a byword that “the Mountie aly gets his man!” ye >& a eee MISS X UNMASKED HER BOSS Continued from Page 7 prints later and wondering how many risks she had taken inside those walls. This is some of the fragmentary diary of those dangerous days, from reports smuggled to the authorities by Miss X: “October 11: Photographic appara- tus (listed) arrived. October 13: An- other meeting. G. (her code name for George) and a Mr. and Mrs. S., who spoke French. October 18: Mr. and Mrs. S. experimented 34 hours, photographic maps of London Under- ground. G. very jumpy.” Nervous Plotters Slipped-Up Nervous the conspirators may have been. But they were not careful enough. On certain photographic de- veloping dishes, the woman known as Mrs. S. left fingerprints. They did not match any in our collection at Scotland Yard. The flat was put under night and day watch by our Special Branch men. We saw Mrs. S. enter, carrying a package. Inside, she unwrapped a large blue- print. She told Miss X it was to be photographed in sections, and would need 42 exposures. Mrs. S. was obviously nervous. She brushed aside Miss X’s offer to help, and asked her to stay in the bathroom. When the pictures had been taken and the film developed, Mrs. S. seemed less worried. She allowed Miss X to help her hang the developed negatives to dry in the bathroom. Miss X took a risky opportunity to hold the negatives up to the light, memorized certain serial numbers and outlines... They Had Navy’s Top Secret Officials at Woolwich Arsenal, re- ceiving next day from Special Branch Detective Inspector Peel the hasty message passed on by Miss X, checked the serial numbers and memorized outlines .. . found they referred to the top secret blueprint of Britain’s latest design for 14-inch naval guns. On January 16 the chief spy, George, met a man at Charing Cross Underground, was seen to return to him a secret text-book on explosives. The man was a previously trusted scientist in the War Department ex- perimental chemistry laboratories. At the flat, Miss X reported, this text-book had been photographed, page by page. On a winter day, Miss X left th flat in Holland Road, met the eye ¢ the police watcher across the road, an walked to Windsor Castle Bar, whe she was to lunch with George. We watched them. Later the parted. George went to the flat, an set up some photographic apparatu He left at 7:30 for Charing Cro Station. He had made his first mistake! Uj til then it would have been his wor against the girl. And all his gan would have supported him. While he was setting up his phot graphic equipment with the scrupu ous care that had made him a mast. spy he used gloves and left no finge prints on the glazed dishes, glass neg: tives, nor the polished surfaces of th enlargers and camera boxes. The Big Shot is Trapped All set—he snapped a switch to te the two big arc-lights. One bul popped into darkness with a broke filament. George, anxious to get toh appointment at Charing Cross Statio1 stripped off his glove, put back replacement bulb, adjusted the gree metal lamp-shade, nodded his sati faction—and hurried out. Behind him—as I was to find unde my powerful little pocket microscop that gives me an enlargement of si diameters—he had left the clear in pression of his hasty fingers on th bulb, the green shade, the switch. It was useless now for him ever t protest ignorance of the photographi apparatus. The man he had arranged to mee at Charing Cross was a 38-year-old ex aminer in the department of the Chie Inspector of Armaments at Woolwid Arsenal. This official had on him | set of top-secret blueprints of de tonator apparatus. He was waiting for George at th station . . . and so were half a doze! Special Branch officers and Britis! Secret agents. One alert Special Branch man patronizing a bootblack while his eye: missed nothing, told me afterwards “After polishing my shoes, the urchit began reading a cheap thriller. Hé didn’t know he was in the middle of é real international spy story!” Trailed by a nondescript little man in shabby blue overcoat who was oné THE SHOULDER STRAP