Forgotten Gold by Maxwell Grant & Walter Gibson

Author:Maxwell Grant & Walter Gibson [Grant, Maxwell & Gibson, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Espionage, Fiction, Thrillers
Publisher: Street & Smith
Published: 1941-01-18T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII. ZERN'S STROKE

IT took a long while for news to reach the Aureole Mine from New York. So long that the men stationed there had no idea, when morning came, that there had been a mysterious gun fray in Manhattan wherein a certain Professor Hiram Herkimer had been wounded and taken to the hospital by the police.

Probably the news would not have changed events at the mine. Things were bad enough in that locality; so bad, in fact, that both Bob Beverly and Harry Vincent had little interest in anything else.

Lying on a table in Bob's tent were ore samples like the last that they had sent to Morton Selwood - glittering chunks of rock that sparkled as gayly as gold, but did not contain a grain of the precious metal.

"Iron pyrites," identified Bob with a scowl. "Whoever named this stuff 'fool's gold' was right. It fooled us when we first saw it. It has me beaten, Harry."

"Why should it?" demanded Harry. "The stuff often shows up in the vicinity of gold mines, doesn't it?"

"Yes," admitted Bob, "but in this case we were working along a shaft where there was plenty of loose gold ore. If there had been a break in between, I could understand it. Of course, I don't know everything about gold mining, not by a great deal, but I've never heard of old ore stopping dead and the other stuff beginning."

"There must be an answer, Bob."

"There is an answer, Harry." Bob's tone was solemn. "One that I don't even like to think about. Suppose you let me keep it to myself until we've done some more work in the shaft."

Harry agreed. They stepped out into the sunlight, where Claude Althorn was assembling his gold-finder. The angular man arose, stroked his shocky hair. He looked tired, but his weather-lined face showed a smile.

"I'll have it working again soon," assured Althorn. "Not much use to you, Beverly, now that you've found gold. But it means a great deal to me."

Nodding, Bob drew Harry along. "Poor Althorn," he said. "He's so wrapped up in that machine of his that he hasn't an idea what has happened. Every time we bring ore down here he just nods and looks pleased. He hasn't seen our latest samples."

They turned toward the path that led to the mine shaft. Harry stopped when he heard a car coming in by the sand road, and Bob became curious, too. It wasn't one of their own cars returning, because everyone was either in camp or at the shaft.

As the car came into sight from a clump of scraggly pines, Bob recognized it.

"Sheriff Cady," he said. "We'd better talk to him. He was pretty decent about that mess we had the night when Peld was killed. Squared it with the coroner and all that. A good fellow, Sheriff Cady.

Cady didn't look like a good fellow when he stepped from his rattletrap car. It couldn't have been the sand road that had soured his disposition, for he was used to traveling such byways.

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