The Gold-Stealers Part 30

'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, d.i.c.k.'

d.i.c.k 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 d.i.c.k, '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, d.i.c.k.'

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

'She's a rich d.y.k.e,' 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 d.i.c.k.

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

d.i.c.k 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, d.i.c.k.'

d.i.c.k 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.' d.i.c.k 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.'

d.i.c.k 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 fas.h.i.+on, be called sharply:

'Hi, d.i.c.k What were you doing with that bag here?'

'Never had it nowhere near here,' answered d.i.c.k.

'Come, recollect; you put it down for a spell.' 'Didn't,' said d.i.c.k.

'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 astonis.h.i.+ng. 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 towns.h.i.+p; 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 circ.u.mstances 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 s.h.i.+ne'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 s.h.i.+ne,' he said.

Christina merely bowed her head.

'I am Detective Downy. I have a warrant for the arrest of Ephraim s.h.i.+ne.

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 impa.s.sive 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 s.h.i.+ne; he had disappeared in a most astonis.h.i.+ng 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 corners of the district. Harry Hardy joined in the hunt throughout Tuesday. He had a feverish desire for employment--occupation for his mind which, in spite of the efforts he made to dwell upon the villainies of Ephraim s.h.i.+ne and the wrong he had done Frank, and the good reasons he had to hate him, would revert again and again to Christina; and then a wish, a cowardly wish, traitorous to his brother, cruel to his mother, and false to himself, stole into his heart, and he felt for one burning moment a hope that the searcher might escape for her sake, for the sake of sweet Chris, whose victory over him he acknowledged and nursed in secret with a wealth of feeling that amazed him, with a pa.s.sion he had never dreamed himself capable of. He fought this wish furiously, as if it had been a tangible thing: grappling with it, choking it in his heart, and stirring up in his soul a wilder hatred for his enemy.

Harry saw Chris for a moment on the morning after the arrest of Joe Rogers; the change in her startled him, his love flamed up, and pity tore at his heart strings. His triumph must mean suffering and shame for her.

Had he stood alone he would ten thousand times rather have borne what misfortune might have fallen to his lot than see her shamed and sorrowing. It was thoughts like these that rose up to make him his brother's enemy, and they were conquered in sweat and agony; and since his loyalty to his own kin could only be maintained at a fever heat, he stood forth as the most bitter and implacable foe of Ephraim s.h.i.+ne.

Coming from Mrs. Hardy's gate on that night at about nine o'clock, d.i.c.k Haddon collided with a breathless boy running at top speed in the direction of the Drovers' Arms, and the two went down together. When d.i.c.k had quite recovered he recognised the other, whom he had gripped with 'vengeful intentions, as Billy Peterson.