The Gold-Stealers by Edward Dyson (love books to read .txt) 📖

under which he and his mates always crawled to get at the opening leading into the Mount of Gold.

'In there,' he said, 'agin the wall.'

Harry and McKnight broke a passage through the saplings and ti-tree.

''Tween them two rocks,' said Dick; 'low down under the fern.'

'Yes,' cried Harry, 'here we are! Let's have the hammer, Peterson.'

Harry broke away projecting pieces of stone, widening the aperture, and Dick and the detective joined them at the opening.

'I'll go first,' said the boy. 'I can go down the ladder we made, but it mightn't bear a man.'

Dick went below and lit a couple of candles. Nothing had been touched in the drive, and he peeped into the shaft and saw that the loose dirt there was as he left it. Harry joined him in a few minutes and McKnight followed. The men came down on the boys' curious ladder, but with a rope about their waists, paid out from above. Downy was the last to go below, Peterson remaining on the surface to keep the crowd back from the entrance.

McKnight seized a candle, crawled to the extremity of Dick's diminishing drive, and examined the place curiously.

'It's right,' he cried, 'right as the bank. She's a dyke formation, I should say, an' rich. By the holy, we're made men--made men, Hardy!

Detective Downy was too deeply interested in his own quest to pay much attention to the miners.

'Now, my lad,' he said, 'where are we?'

'The bag's there under them lumps.' Dick held his candle low, throwing its light into the shaft. Downy dropped from the slabs placed across from drive to drive into the bottom, and going on his knees threw aside the lumps of mullock indicated by the boy. Dick followed him holding the candle, and watching his movements, anxiously at first, and then with terror. He flung himself down beside the detective, and plunged his hand amongst the rubble, then ceased and faced the detective, mute, despairing.

'Well, well,' cried Downy in alarm, 'what is it?

'Gone!' whispered Dick.

'Gone? Are you sure? We have not searched yet.'

'It's gone!'

'You may have made a mistake. Hardy, Mc Knight, lend a hand here.'

'No good,' said Dick, 'it's gone.--it's stolen. I put it right here, coverin' it with this flat junk an' a lot o' small stuff. I know--I know quite well.'

Harry and McKnight went into the shaft with shovels, and turned over the dirt stowed there to the depth of two feet, but the bag was gone.

'Show a light here,' Downy said suddenly, looking up at Dick from the slab on which he was seated above the two workers. He took the candle and examined the edge of the slab closely.

'You said the bag containing the stolen gold was made of hide.'

'Yes,' said the boy, 'green hide--just a calfskin bag, with the hair on.'

'Humph! Then here is proof that part of your story is true anyhow.' He held up a little tuft of reddish hair.

'Rogers had a skin bag, a red-an'-white one. Used to use it fer haulin' in the shallow alluvial at Eel Creek. I've seen it at his hut often,' said McKnight. 'But, I say, mister, if you' take the advice of an old miner you'll get out o' this just as quick as you can lick. See, the timber's been taken out o' this shaft, an' it's a wonder to me it ain't come down in a lump an' buried them kids long since. It's damn dangerous, I tell you.'

'Very good,' said Downy. 'First have a look into these drives and then we'll clear. Show me how you got through into the Red Hand workings, Dick.'

Dick led him along the drive and pointed out the little heap covering the opening where he had broken through.

'Do you think that dirt's been touched by anyone since you piled it there?' asked Downy.

'No,' said Dick, 'it seems jist the same.'

'Then the thief did not come that way.' The detective scattered the heap and examined the rough edges of the opening carefully. 'No cow hair there,' he said. 'We must hunt for that skin bag somewhere up aloft, Dick.'

When Dick reached the surface he found Hardy, McKnight, and Peterson standing apart from the crowd, with elate faces, talking earnestly.

'She's a rich dyke,' McKnight was saying, 'an' she'll go plumb down to any depth. We must get the pegs in at once, an' apply fer a lease. She just misses Silver Stream ground, an' the ole Red Hand is forfeit long ago. Boys, it's a fortune fer us.'

'Remember Phil Doon's a shareholder, too; his father's got to be in it,' said Dick.

'To be sure, lad, to be sure; all honest an' fair to the boy pioneers.'

Dick felt little enthusiasm about the Mount of Gold just then, for the loss of the bag of stolen gold troubled him sorely. He feared that Detective Downy regarded him as a liar and a cheat.


CHAPTER XX.

After coming up Downy examined the opening in the rock critically.

'Do you think a man might have made his way through that hole before you broke the edges down?' he asked Harry.

'Well, yes, with some crowding I think he might've.'

'Yet the boy said he had to squeeze his way through. Did you notice if the opening had been enlarged recently? Were there indications of recent breakages?'

'Yes, the stone had been broken in places. I s'posed the boys did that.'

'Perhaps. Here, Dick.'

Dick was quite sure neither he nor any of his mates had increased the opening. They kept it small because it was easier to hide; besides, he said, it was more fun having to squeeze through.

'Which of your mates took that bag?' asked Downy sharply.

'None of 'em.'

'Why are you so positive?'

''Cause I know they wouldn't be game.'

'Afraid of the darkness or the mine?'

'No, afraid o' me.' Dick squared his shoulders manfully.

'Get out--why should they be afraid of you?'

'Wasn't I legal an' minin' manager an' chairman o' the directors? If one did what I told him not to he'd get the sack an' a lickin', too.'

'Oh, he would, eh? Well, you'd better give me their names anyhow. And now,' he continued after jotting down the names of the shareholders of the Mount of Gold, 'show me the track you took when you dragged the hide bag through the quarry.'

Dick went back over his tracks, and Downy followed slowly on hands and knees, rescuing a hair or two from the edges of the rock or from a bramble here and there.

'Fortunately that bag of yours shed its hair freely, old man,' he said. 'here's corroborative evidence anyhow. The bag went down all right--now let's see what proof there is that it came up again.'

He returned to the hole in the rock and commenced another search, with his nose very close to the ground, moving slowly, and peering diligently into every little cranny amongst the stones. At length, after travelling about ten yards in the direction of the spring in this fashion, be called sharply:

'Hi, Dick What were you doing with that bag here?'

'Never had it nowhere near here,' answered Dick.

'Come, recollect; you put it down for a spell.' 'Didn't,' said Dick. 'Went straight along the side, an' dropped it into the shaft.'

'But look--there's hair on the top of this rock and a tuft on the corner. Mustn't tell me a cow would roost there, my lad.'

'Don't care--'twasn't me.'

Downy sat on the rock for a moment in a brown study, and the crowd, which had made itself comfort able in one end of the quarry and up one side, sat in awed silence, watching him closely, like a theatre audience waiting for some wonder-worker to perform his feats of magic.

The detective did nothing astonishing. After collecting a portion of the hair he deposited it carefully in his pocket-book, deposited the book just as carefully in his breast-pocket, and then climbed out of the quarry and marched away towards the township; and the crowd, relieved from the restraint imposed by the law as personified in him, gathered about the stone and examined it wisely, discovering a much longer and more significant sermon in it than Downy had ever suspected, and finding marrow-freezing suggestiveness in the marks of rust upon the face of the rock, which were declared by common consent to be bloodstains. Waddy confidently expected the gold-stealing case to culminate in the discovery of a particularly atrocious murder, and Ephraim Shine was selected as the probable victim. It was held by many that so good a man as the superintendent had seemed to be could not reasonably be suspected of consorting with a sinner like Joe Rogers with criminal intentions, and the idea that he had been murdered by the real thieves under peculiarly shocking circumstances was held to be more feasible, and was, in addition to that, highly satisfactory from a dramatic point of view.

The investigations of the people stopped short at the entrance to the shaft, where Peterson mounted guard and warned them off in the name of the law, and meanwhile Hardy and McKnight were pegging out the land preparatory to applying for a lease.

Downy went straight from the quarry to Shine's house, and, much to his surprise, found the missing man's daughter there. Christina had altered much during the last few hours: her face was now quite colourless, grief had robbed it of its sweet simplicity, and the buoyant ingenuousness had fled from her eyes. A new character was legible there, a strength of will more in keeping with her fine presence. The almost childlike sympathy was gone, and in its place was a trace of suffering and evidence of the deeper forces of her nature. The detective eyed her keenly, with surprise and interest, and saluted her in his most respectful manner.

'You have had the--eh, misfortune to meet me before, Miss Shine,' he said.

Christina merely bowed her head.

'I am Detective Downy. I have a warrant for the arrest of Ephraim Shine. I wish to search the house.'

'Yes,' said the girl quietly, and stepped from the door to make way for him.

Downy entered and commenced his search at once. He examined the whole place minutely, foolishly it seemed to Christina, who stood by the door apparently impassive but following all his movements with her eyes. He was particularly careful in overhauling a coat that her father had worn, and having gone through the three rooms he walked out and round the house. There was no place near where a man might hide but in the tank, and that was full of water, as he cautiously noted. He faced Christina for a moment, as if with the intention of questioning her, but changed his mind, wished her 'Good day,' and moved off.

Up to six o'clock next day nothing had been heard of Shine; he had disappeared in a most astonishing manner. The police of the whole country were alert to capture him, and it was thought that escape for him was impossible, if only on account of his physical peculiarities, which should have made him a marked man anywhere in Victoria or in either of the neighbouring provinces. Sergeant Monk and several troopers were stationed at Waddy, and were kept busy hunting in the old mines and all the nooks and