VI. A STRANGE DISCOVERY

“It is my belief that Dr. Max Syx is a deceiver.”

The person who uttered this opinion was a young engineer, Andrew Hall, who had charge of the operations of one of the mining companies which were driving tunnels into the Grand Teton.

“What do you mean by that?” asked President Boon, who was the principal backer of the enterprise.

“I mean,” replied Hall, “that there is no free metal in this mountain, and Dr. Syx knows there is none.”

“But he is getting it himself from his mine,” retorted President Boon.

“So he says, but who has seen it? No one is admitted into the Syx mine, his foremen are forbidden to talk, and his workmen are specially imported negroes who do not understand the English language.”

“But,” persisted Mr. Boon, “how, then, do you account for the nuggets scattered over the mountain? And, beside, what object could Dr. Syx have in pretending that there is free metal to be had for the digging?”

“He may have salted the mountain, for all I know,” said Hall. “As for his object, I confess I am entirely in the dark; but, for all that, I am convinced that we shall find no more metal if we dig ten miles for it.”

“Nonsense,” said the president; “if we keep on we shall strike it. Did not Dr. Syx himself admit that he found no free artemisium until his tunnel had reached the core of the peak? We must go as deep as he has gone before we give up.”

“I fear the depths he attains are beyond most people’s reach,” was Hall’s answer, while a thoughtful look crossed his clear-cut brow, “but since you desire it, of course the work shall go on. I should like, however, to change the direction of the tunnel.”

“Certainly,” replied Mr. Boon; “bore in whatever direction you think proper, only don’t despair.”

About a month after this conversation Andrew Hall, with whom a community of tastes in many things had made me intimately acquainted, asked me one morning to accompany him into his tunnel.

“I want to have a trusty friend at my elbow,” he said, “for, unless I am a dreamer, something remarkable will happen within the next hour, and two witnesses are better than one.”

I knew Hall was not the person to make such a remark carelessly, and my curiosity was intensely excited, but, knowing his peculiarities, I did not press him for an explanation. When we arrived at the head of the tunnel I was surprised at finding no workmen there.

“I stopped blasting some time ago,” said Hall, in explanation, “for a reason which, I hope, will become evident to you very soon. Lately I have been boring very slowly, and yesterday I paid off the men and dismissed them with the announcement, which, I am confident, President Boon will sanction after he hears my report of this morning’s work, that the tunnel is abandoned. You see, I am now using a drill which I can manage without assistance. I believe the work is almost completed, and I want you to witness the end of it.”

He then carefully applied the drill, which noiselessly screwed its nose into the rock. When it had sunk to a depth of a few inches he withdrew it, and, taking a hand-drill capable of making a hole not more than an eighth of an inch in diameter, cautiously began boring in the centre of the larger cavity. He had made hardly a hundred turns of the handle when the drill shot through the rock! A gratified smile illuminated his features, and he said in a suppressed voice:

“Don’t be alarmed; I’m going to put out the light.”

Instantly we were in complete darkness, but being close at Hall’s side I could detect his movements. He pulled out the drill, and for half a minute remained motionless as if listening. There was no sound.

“I must enlarge the opening,” he whispered, and immediately the faint grating of a sharp tool cutting through the rock informed me of his progress.

“There,” at last he said, “I think that will do; now for a look.”

I could tell that he had placed his eye at the hole and was gazing with breathless attention. Presently he pulled my sleeve.

“Put your eye here,” he whispered, pushing me into the proper position for looking through the hole.

At first I could discern nothing except a smoky blue glow. But soon my vision cleared a little, and then I perceived that I was gazing into a narrow tunnel which met ours directly end to end. Glancing along the axis of this gallery I saw, some two hundred yards away, a faint light which evidently indicated the mouth of the tunnel.

At the end where we had met it the mysterious tunnel was considerably widened at one side, as if the excavators had started to change direction and then abandoned the work, and in this elbow I could just see the outlines of two or three flat cars loaded with broken stone, while a heap of the same material lay near them. Through the centre of the tunnel ran a railway track.

“Do you know what you are looking at?” asked Hall in my ear.

“I begin to suspect,” I replied, “that you have accidentally run into Dr. Syx’s mine.”

“If Dr. Syx had been on his guard this accident wouldn’t have happened,” replied Hall, with an almost inaudible chuckle.

“I heard you remark a month ago,” I said, “that you were changing the direction of your tunnel. Has this been the aim of your labors ever since?”

“You have hit it,” he replied. “Long ago I became convinced that my company was throwing away its money in a vain attempt to strike a lode of pure artemisium. But President Boon has great faith in Dr. Syx, and would not give up the work. So I adopted what I regarded as the only practicable method of proving the truth of my opinion and saving the company’s funds. An electric indicator, of my invention, enabled me to locate the Syx tunnel when I got near it, and I have met it end on, and opened this peep-hole in order to observe the doctor’s operations. I feel that such spying is entirely justified in the circumstances. Although I cannot yet explain just how or why I feel sure that Dr. Syx was the cause of the sudden discovery of the surface nuggets, and that he has encouraged the miners for his own ends, until he has brought ruin to thousands who have spent their last cent in driving useless tunnels into this mountain. It is a righteous thing to expose him.”

“But,” I interposed, “I do not see that you have exposed anything yet except the interior of a tunnel.”

“You will see more clearly after a while,” was the reply.

Hall now placed his eye again at the aperture, and was unable entirely to repress the exclamation that rose to his lips. He remained staring through the hole for several minutes without uttering a word. Presently I noticed that the lenses of his eye were illuminated by a ray of light coming through the hole, but he did not stir.

After a long inspection he suddenly applied his ear to the hole and listened intently for at least five minutes. Not a sound was audible to me, but, by an occasional pressure of the hand, Hall signified that some important disclosure was reaching his sense of hearing. At length he removed his ear.

“Pardon me,” he whispered, “for keeping you so long in waiting, but what I have just seen and overheard was of a nature to admit of no interruption. He is still talking, and by pressing your ear against the hole you may be able to catch what he says.”

“Who is ‘he’?”

“Look for yourself.”

I placed my eye at the aperture, and almost recoiled with the violence of my surprise. The tunnel before me was brilliantly illuminated, and within three feet of the wall of rock behind which we crouched stood Dr. Syx, his dark profile looking almost satanic in the sharp contrast of light and shadow. He was talking to one of his foremen, and the two were the only visible occupants of the tunnel. Putting my ear to the little opening, I heard his words distinctly:

—“end of their rope. Well, they’ve spent a pretty lot of money for their experience, and I rather think we shall not be troubled again by artemisium-seekers for some time to come.”

The doctor’s voice ceased, and instantly I clapped my eye to the hole. He had changed his position so that his black eyes now looked straight at the aperture. My heart was in my mouth, for at first I believed from his expression that he had detected the gleam of my eyeball. But if so, he probably mistook it for a bit of mica in the rock, and paid no further attention. Then his lips moved, and I put my ear again to the hole. He seemed to be replying to a question that the foreman had asked.

“If they do,” he said, “they will never guess the real secret.”

Thereupon he turned on his heel, kicked a bit of rock off the track, and strode away towards the entrance. The foreman paused long enough to turn out the electric lamp, and then followed the doctor.

“Well,” asked Hall, “what have you heard?”

I told him everything.

“It fully corroborates the evidence of my own eyes and ears,” he remarked, “and we may count ourselves extremely lucky. It is not likely that Dr. Syx will be heard a second time proclaiming his deception with his own lips. It is plain that he was led to talk as he did to the foreman on account of the latter’s having informed him of the sudden discharge of my men this morning. Their presence within ear-shot of our hiding-place during their conversation was, of course, pure accident, and so you can see how kind fortune has been to us. I expected to have to watch and listen and form deductions for a week, at least, before getting the information which five lucky minutes have placed in our hands.”

While he was speaking my companion busied himself in carefully plugging up the hole in the rock. When it was closed to his satisfaction he turned on the light in our tunnel.

“Did you observe,” he asked, “that there was a second tunnel?”

“What do you say?”

“When the light was on in there I saw the mouth of a smaller tunnel entering the main one behind the cars on the right. Did you notice it?”

“Oh yes,” I replied. “I did observe some kind of a dark hole there, but I paid no attention to it because I was so absorbed in the doctor.”

“Well,” rejoined Hall, smiling, “it was worth considerably more than a glance. As a subject of thought I find it even more absorbing than Dr. Syx. Did you see the track in it?”

“No,” I had to acknowledge, “I did not notice that. But,” I continued, a little piqued by his manner, “being a branch of the main tunnel, I don’t see anything remarkable in its having a track also.”

“It was rather dim in that hole,” said Hall, still smiling in a somewhat provoking way, “but the railroad track was there plain enough. And, whether you think it remarkable or not, I should like to lay you a wager that that track leads to a secret worth a dozen of the one we have just overheard.”

“My good friend,” I retorted, still smarting a little, “I shall not presume to match my stupidity against your perspicacity. I haven’t cat’s eyes in the dark.”

Hall immediately broke out laughing, and, slapping me good-naturedly on the shoulder, exclaimed:

“Come, come now! If you go to kicking back at a fellow like that, I shall be sorry I ever undertook this adventure.”