"But Jason Hobart had a wife," Donner said.
"What? What's that?" Young's eyes widened. "I found no record of a wife for any of them."
"Take my word for it."
"God in heaven! If my uncle had known that, he'd never have recruited Hobart."
"Why is that?"
"Don't you see he needed men he could trust implicitly, men who had no close friends or relatives to ask questions should they vanish."
"You're not making sense," Donner said flatly.
"Simply put, the reopening of the Little Angel Mine and the subsequent tragedy was a sham, a pretext, a hoax. I'm convinced my uncle was going mad. How or what caused his mental illness will never be known. His character altered drastically, even to the point of producing a different man."
"A split personality?"
"Exactly. His moral values changed; his warmth and love for friends disappeared. When I was younger, I talked to people who remembered him. They all agreed on one thing, the Joshua Hays Brewster they all knew and loved died months before the Little Angel disaster."
"How does this lead to a hoax?"
"Insanity aside, my uncle was still a mining engineer. Sometimes he could tell within minutes whether a mine would pay or not. The Little Angel was a bust, he knew that. He never had any intention of finding a high-grade lode. I don't have the vaguest idea of what his game was, Mr. Donner, but one thing I'm certain of, whoever pumps the water from the lower levels of that old shaft will find no bones."
Donner finished off his Manhattan and looked quizzically at Young. "So you think the nine men who went into the mine escaped?"
Young smiled. "Nobody actually saw them enter, Mr. Donner. It was assumed, and reasonably so, that they died down there in the black waters because they were never heard from again."
"Not enough evidence," Donner said.
"Oh, I have more, lots more," Young replied enthusiastically.
"I'm listening."
"Item One. The Little Angel's lowest working chamber was a good hundred feet above the mean water level. At worst, the walls leaked only moderately from surface accumulations. The lower shaft levels were already flooded because the water had gradually built up during the years the mine was originally shut down. Therefore, there was no way a dynamite blast could have unleashed a tidal wave of water over my uncle and his crew.
"Item Two. The equipment supposedly found in the mine after the accident was old, used junk. Those men were professionals, Mr. Donner. They'd never have gone below the surface with second-rate machinery.
"Item Three. Though he made it known to everyone that he was reopening the mine, my uncle never once consulted or discussed the project with Ernest Bloeser, the man who owned the Little Angel. In short, my uncle was claim jumping. An unthinkable act to a man of his moral reputation.
"Item Four. The first warning of possible disaster didn't come until the next afternoon, when the foreman of the Satan Mine, one Bill Mahoney, found a note under his cabin door that said, 'Help! Little Angel Mine. Come Quick!' A most strange method to sound an alarm, don't you think? Naturally, the note was unsigned.
"Item Five. The sheriff in Central City stated that my uncle had given him a list of the crew's names with the request that he give it to the newspapers in case of a fatal accident. An odd premonition, to say the least. It was as if Uncle Joshua wanted to be certain there was no mistaking the victims' identities."
Donner pushed back his plate and drank a glass of water. "I find your theory intriguing, but not fully convincing."
"Ah, but finally, perhaps above all, Mr. Donner, I have saved the piece de resistance until last.
"Item Six. Several months after the tragedy, my mother and father, who were on a tour through Europe, saw my uncle standing on the boat-train platform in Southampton, England. My mother often related how she went up to him and said, 'God in heaven, Joshua, is it really you?' The face that stared back at her was bearded and deathly white, the eyes glassy. 'Forget me,' he whispered and then turned and ran. My father chased him down the platform but soon lost him in the crowd."
"The logical answer is a simple case of mistaken identity."
"A sister who doesn't know her own brother?" Young said sarcastically. "Come now, Mr. Donner, surely you could pick your brother out of a crowd?"
"'Fraid not. I was an only child."
"A shame. You missed one of life's great joys."
"At least I didn't have to share my toys." The check arrived and Donner threw a credit card on the tray. "So what you're saying is that the Little Angel disaster was a cover-up."
"That's my theory." Young patted his mouth with his napkin. "No way of proving it, of course, but I've always had a haunting feeling that the Societe des Mines de Lorraine was in back of it."
"Who were they?"
"They were and still are to France what Krupp is to Germany, what Mitsubichi is to Japan, what Anaconda is to the United States."
"Where does the Societe-whatever you call it-fit in?"
"They were the French financiers who hired Joshua Hays Brewster as their engineer-manager of exploration. They were the only ones with enough capital to pay nine men to vanish off the face of the earth."
"But why? Where is the motive?"
Young gestured helplessly. "I don't know." He leaned forward and his eyes seemed to burn. "But I do know that whatever the price, whatever the influence, it took my uncle and his eight-man crew to some unnamed hell outside the country."
"Until the bodies are recovered, who's to say you're wrong."
Young stared at him. "You are a courteous man, Mr. Donner. I thank you."
"For what? A free lunch at the government's expense?"
"For not laughing," Young said softly.
Donner nodded and said nothing. The man across the table had just spliced one tiny strand of the frayed puzzle to the red-bearded bones in the Bednaya Mountain mine. There was nothing to laugh about, nothing to laugh about in the least.
15
Seagram returned the farewell smile from the stewardess, stepped off the United jet, and prepared himself for the quarter-mile trip to the street entrance of the Los Angeles International Airport. He finally reached the front lobby, and unlike Donner, who had rented his car from No. 2, Seagram preferred dealing with No. 1 and signed out a Lincoln from Hertz. He turned onto Century Boulevard, and within a few blocks entered the on-ramp south to the San Diego Freeway. It was a cloudless day and the smog was surprisingly light, allowing a hazy view of the Sierra Madre mountains. He drove leisurely in the right-hand lane of the freeway at sixty miles an hour, while the mainstream of local traffic sped by the Lincoln doing seventy-five and eighty with routine indifference to the posted fifty-five miles an hour limit. He soon left the chemical refineries of Torrance and the oil derricks around Long Beach behind and entered the vastness of Orange County where the terrain suddenly flattened out and gave way to a great, unending sea of tract homes.
It took him a little over an hour to reach the turn-off for Leisure World. It was an idyllic setting golf courses, swimming pools, stables, neatly manicured lawns and park areas, golden-tanned senior citizens on bicycles.
He stopped at the main gate and an elderly guard in uniform checked him through and gave him directions to 261-B Calle Aragon. It was a picturesque little duplex tucked neatly on the slope of a hill overlooking an immaculate park. Seagram parked the Lincoln against the curb, walked through a small courtyard patio filled with rose bushes, and poked the doorbell. The door opened and his fears vanished; Adeline Hobart was definitely not the senile type.
"Mr. Seagram?" The voice was light and cheerful.
"Yes. Mrs. Hobart?"
"Please come in." She extended her hand. The grip was as firm as a man's. "Goodness, nobody's called me that in over seventy years. When I received your long-distance call regarding Jake, I was so surprised I almost forgot to take my Geritol."
Adeline was stout, but she carried her extra pounds easily. Her blue eyes seeme
d to laugh with every sentence and her face carried a warm, gentle look. She was everyone's idea of a sweet little old snow-haired lady.
"You don't strike me as the Geritol type," he said.
She patted his arm. "If that is meant as flattery, I'll buy it." She motioned him to a chair in a tastefully furnished living room. "Come and sit down. You will stay for lunch, won't you?"
"I'd be honored, if it's no trouble."
"Of course not. Bert is off chasing around the golf course, and I appreciate the company."
Seagram looked up. "Bert?"
"My husband."
"But I was under the impression-"
"I was still Jake Hobart's widow," she finished his sentence, smiling innocently. "The truth of the matter is, I became Mrs. Bertram Austin sixty-two years ago."
"Does the Army know?"
"Oh heavens, yes. 1 wrote letters to the War Department notifying them of my marital status a long time ago, but they simply sent polite, noncommittal replies and kept mailing the checks."
"Even though you'd remarried?"
Adeline shrugged. "I'm only human, Mr. Seagram. Why argue with the government. If they insist on sending money, who's to tell them they're crazy?"
"A lucrative little arrangement."
She nodded. "I won't deny it, particularly when you include the ten thousand dollars I received at Jake's death."
Seagram leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. "The Army paid you a ten-thousand-dollar indemnity? Wasn't that a bit steep for 1912?"
"You couldn't be half as surprised as I was then," she said. "Yes, that amount of money was a small fortune in those days."
"Was there any explanation?"
"None," she replied. "I can still see the check after all these years. All it said was `Widow's Payment' and it was made out to me. That's all there was to it."
"Perhaps we can start at the beginning."
"When I met Jake?"
Seagram nodded.
Her eyes looked beyond him for a few moments. "I met Jake during the terrible winter of 1910. It was in Leadville, Colorado, and I had just turned sixteen. My father was on a business trip to the mining fields to investigate possible investment in several claims, and since it was close to Christmas, and I had a few days vacation from school, he relented and took Mother and me along. The train barely made it into Leadville station when the worst blizzard in forty years struck the high country of Colorado. It lasted for two weeks, and believe me, it was no picnic, especially when you consider that the altitude of Leadville is over ten thousand feet."
"It must have been quite an adventure for a sixteen-year-old girl."
"It was. Dad paced the hotel lobby like a trapped bull while Mother just sat and worried, but I thought it was marvelous."
"And Jake?"
"One day, Mother and I were struggling across the street to the general store-an ordeal when you are lashed by fifty-mile-an-hour winds at twenty degrees below zero when out of nowhere this giant brute of a man picks each of us up under one arm and carries us through the snowdrifts and deposits us on the doorstep of the store, just as sassy as you please."
"It was Jake?"
"Yes," she said distantly, "it was Jake."
"What did he look like?"
"He was a large man, over six feet, barrel-chested. He'd worked in the mines in Wales when he was a boy. Anytime you saw a crowd of men a mile away, you could easily pick Jake out. He was the one with the bright red hair and heard who was always laughing."
"Red hair and beard?"
"Yes, he was quite proud of the fact that he stood out from the rest."
"All the world loves a man who laughs."
She smiled broadly. "It certainly wasn't love at first sight on my part, I can tell you. To me, Jake looked like a big uncouth bear. He was hardly the type to tickle a young girl's fancy."
"But you married him."
She nodded. "He courted me all during the blizzard, and when the sun finally broke through the clouds on the fourteenth day, I accepted his proposal. Mother and Dad were distraught, of course, but Jake won them over, too."
"You couldn't have been married long?"
"I saw him for the last time a year later."
"The day he and the others were lost in the Little Angel." It was more statement than question.
"Yes," she said wistfully. She avoided his stare and looked nervously toward the kitchen. "My goodness, I'd better fix us some lunch. You must be starving, Mr. Seagram."
But Seagram's businesslike expression faded and his eyes came alight with sudden excitement. "You heard from Jake after the Little Angel accident, didn't you, Mrs. Austin?"
She seemed to retreat into the cushions of her chair. Apprehension spread across her gentle face. "I don't know what you mean."
"I think you do," he said softly.
"No . . . no, you're mistaken."
"Why are you afraid?"
Her hands were trembling now. "I've told you all I can."
"There's more, much more, Mrs. Austin." He reached over and took her hands. "Why are you afraid?" he repeated.
"I'm sworn to secrecy," she murmured.
"Can you explain?"
She said, hesitantly, "You're with the government, Mr. Seagram. You know what it is to keep a secret."
"Who was it? Jake? Did he ask you to remain silent?"
She shook her head.
"Then who?"
"Please believe me," she pleaded. "I can't tell you . . . I can't tell you anything."
Seagram stood up and looked down on her. She seemed to have aged, the wrinkles etched more deeply in her ancient skin. She had withdrawn into a shell. It would take a mild form of shock treatment to get her to open up.
"May I use your telephone, Mrs. Austin?"
"Yes, of course. You'll find the nearest extension in the kitchen''
It was seven minutes before the familiar voice came through the earpiece. Quickly, Seagram explained the situation and made his request. Then he turned back to the living room. "Mrs. Austin. Can you come here a moment?"
Timidly, she approached him.
He handed her the receiver. "Here is someone who wishes to speak to you."
Cautiously, she took it from his hands. "Hello," she muttered, "this is Adeline Austin."
For a brief instant, an expression of confusion was mirrored in her eyes, then it was slowly transformed and froze into genuine astonishment. She kept nodding, saying nothing, as though the detached voice over the line was standing before her.
Finally, at the end of the one-sided conversation, she managed to utter a few words "Yes, sir . . . I will. Goodby."
Slowly, she replaced the receiver and stood in a trancelike bewilderment. "Was . . . was that really the President of the United States?"
"It was. You can verify it if you wish. Call long distance and ask for the White House. When they answer, talk to Gregg Collins. He's the President's chief aide. It was he who passed along my call."
"Just imagine, the President asked me to help him." She shook her head dazedly. "I can't believe it really happened."
"It happened, Mrs. Austin. Believe me, any information you can give us concerning your first husband and the strange circumstances surrounding his death would be of great benefit to the nation. I know that sounds like a trite way of stating it, but . . ."
"Who can turn down a President?" The sweet smile was back. The tremor was gone from Adeline's hands. She was back on balance, outwardly, at least.
Seagram took her arm and gently guided her back to her chair in the living room. "Now then, tell me about Jake Hobart's relationship with Joshua Hays Brewster."
"Jake was an explosives specialist, a blaster, one of the best in the fields. He knew dynamite like a blacksmith knew his forge, and since Mr. Brewster insisted on only the top men to make up his mining crews, he often hired Jake to handle the blasting."
"Did Brewster know Jake was married?"
"Odd you should ask that. We had a little house in Boul
der, away from the mining camps, because Jake didn't want it known he had a wife. He claimed that mine foremen wouldn't hire a blaster who was married."
"So naturally, Brewster, unaware of Jake's marital status, paid him to blast in the Little Angel mine."
"I know what was printed in the newspapers, Mr. Seagram, but Jake never set foot in the Little Angel mine, nor did the rest of the crew."