“Good,” said Susan again. “Mr. Ramey, is there anything on your car that says you’re from the government?”
“Ah—the plates, I believe.”
“But it’s behind the stables,” said Blossom, “and Mr. Dodge and Mrs. Beaumont never go back there.”
“Even better,” said Susan.
“Mrs. Dodge?”
“Yes?”
“Am I to understand that—”
“All you have to understand, Mr. Ramey, is that from now on you must speak to me directly about all this. My husband has no authority in this matter. In fact, in three weeks he and I will be divorced.”
“Mr. Ramey,” Blossom asked, “if Susan didn’t know about the uranium in that mine, and I didn’t know about it, how did the government find out about it?”
Mr. Ramey smiled.
“A college freshman discovered it. A college freshman at Brown University, a boy who’s never traveled out of New England in his life. In a course in geology he was given some specimens of earth to analyze—and one of the samples was from the Dirt Hole Mine in Nevada. He discovered that the earth was radioactive, and his professor determined that the soil sample contained a great percentage of uranium—nearly one-tenth of one percent.”
“That seems like a very little percentage to me,” said Susan.
“That one-tenth of one percent will make you the richest woman in Nevada within the year,” said Mr. Ramey. “I can almost guarantee you that. If you don’t believe me, I will be happy to introduce you to any number of people who’d be willing to take this place off your hands for a few thousand dollars an acre.”
Mr. Ramey laughed, but Susan and Blossom were dumbfounded.
“At any rate,” Mr. Ramey went on, “we very quietly sent someone out here to take samples of the earth from the mine—after all, the earth that had been analyzed at Brown was about thirty years old—and the results this time were even better.”
Blossom took Mr. Ramey back to his automobile. Inside the main house Colleen made certain that Barbara and Harmon were otherwise occupied. The government agent took off for Carson City, but said that he was available at any time if Susan needed him. Susan never even found out what particular agency he worked for, but there were so many new ones already that the name might not mean anything to her anyway.
However, there were many more important things to think about. Susan waited impatiently for Blossom to return. She needed someone to listen to her chain of reasoning and pick out the flaws.
“That man is the reason Harmon wants me to scuttle the divorce,” said Susan.
“Looks that way,” said Blossom, leaning against the window again. “But I thought he was already rich.”
“I thought so, too. At least there was always plenty of money—of course after living the way I’d lived for two years, having five dollars made me feel like Croesus’s favorite wife. But I never knew any details of Harmon’s finances. Maybe he doesn’t have as much as I thought he did.”
“No matter how much he has,” Blossom pointed out, “it’s not going to be as much as you’re going to make off this place.”
“How much we’re going to make,” Susan corrected her. Blossom started to protest. Susan waved away her objections. “You offered to take care of me when I didn’t have a penny or a prospect of a penny. Now you’re going to let me pay you back for that kindness. That’s all there is to it. But if you really want to help me, you can help me figure out what part Barbara is playing in all this.”
Blossom and Susan considered this question for a moment.
Susan said, “It won’t make any difference to her whether I’m rich or not.”
“That’s right,” Blossom agreed. “But would it make a difference to her if your husband was rich?”
“I don’t see why it should,” said Susan. “They’re only friends…”
Blossom looked at Susan meaningfully.
“Oh no!” Susan cried. “That’s impossible. She’s not his type. He only goes after singers, and hat-check girls, and girls who work in Macy’s.”
Blossom said nothing.
“Besides,” Susan went on hurriedly, “Marcellus always wanted Harmon to marry Barbara. But Harmon didn’t want to marry Barbara, and Barbara wanted to marry Jack. Barbara and Harmon grew up together. They were too close, Harmon said.”
“But she got married,” Blossom pointed out, “and he got married, too. Then they weren’t so close anymore. So maybe then…”
Susan thought about this for a minute.
“Yes, it makes sense. It makes perfect sense. Harmon wanted to divorce me so that he could marry Barbara. And that’s why Barbara wanted to divorce Jack. It also explains those photographs that Marcellus showed me. The ones that were faked. MacIsaac was working for Marcellus, but he was also working for Harmon. Harmon set up the photographs himself, hiring the girl from the Villa Vanity. That way Marcellus and I were supposed to think that Harmon was being unfaithful to me, but we would never guess that he was being unfaithful to me with Barbara, of all people…”
“Buzzards of a feather…” Blossom remarked.
Susan shook her head. “I feel as if I’ve been walking around with my eyes closed for the last three months. And poor Jack—I’m sure he doesn’t know either.”
“Still some things that don’t make sense,” said Blossom in deep thought. “Barbara inherited everything from her father’s estate, didn’t she? Once you’d torn up the will?”
“Yes.”
“Then why does she care whether Harmon gets the money from this mine or not?”
“If Harmon’s not as well off as I thought, maybe Marcellus wasn’t either. Jack didn’t even know how much Barbara inherited. She was very quiet about it, he said. Kept saying she couldn’t understand anything the bankers or the lawyers said to her, but she wouldn’t let Jack take care of it for her either.”
“So if they both had less money than you thought they did, that would be a reason for both of them to stay married. You’d be rich, and they could still carry on. Of course, if anything happened to you—if, for instance, you were chopped up in the propellers of an airplane, then Harmon would inherit everything.”
“Then Barbara could divorce Jack, and marry Harmon, and they’d live happily ever after.” Susan shook her head, grieving for her own stupidity and blindness. She’d underestimated both her husband and Jack’s wife. What she’d taken for insouciance, for deliberate superficiality of behavior and speech and attitude, was only a mask hiding deep-seated greed, selfishness, perfidy. In an odd way, she’d trusted their self-involvement, their laziness, their lack of passion or ambition.
She’d been betrayed in that trust.
Harmon and Barbara were wily, cunning, and avaricious. Compared to those two, she and Jack were babes in the woods, about to fall asleep forever beneath a blanket of leaves.
“I feel very stupid,” she said at last to Blossom.
Blossom shook her head. “You’re not stupid. Now that we’ve discovered the truth—and I feel sure that it is the truth—there’s nothing they can do.”
“Oh no, there’s actually a great deal—”
Susan was interrupted then by two noises that sounded at once.
One was a friendly sort of knocking at the door, and two voices outside that pleaded, Oh, may we come in? Harmon’s and Barbara’s voices.
The other noise was that of barking dogs, just outside the window. Scotty and Zelda.
Susan leapt instantly out of bed and started for the wardrobe where her clothes had been put. “Jack’s in trouble,” she said.
“You can’t go!” Blossom cried in a loud whisper.
“How can I not?” asked Susan. “Of course I’m going.”
She whisked off her nightgown, threw on a blouse, and pulled on trousers.
Susan? Miss Mayback? Are you in there?
“Let them in,” said Susan to her cousin.
Blossom shrugged, went over to the door, and unlocked it.
Ba
rbara and Harmon sauntered in, and then stopped dead at seeing Susan perched on the side of the rumpled bed, at once buttoning the blouse, zippering the trousers, and pushing her bare feet into boots.
“You’re well,” cried Barbara. “I take back what I said—that doctor isn’t a quack.”
“This is splendid,” said Harmon. “You look as if we’ll be able to start for New York tomorrow.”
“You and Barbara?” Susan asked. Blossom knelt at Susan’s feet, helping her into her boots.
“No,” said Harmon carefully, glancing at Barbara, “you and me.”
“Residency isn’t up for another three weeks,” Susan pointed out. “I certainly can’t return to New York before then, Harmon.” She stood, her boots on, and turned her back in order to tuck her blouse into her trousers.
“Where are you going?” Barbara demanded. It was the old Barbara. Imperious and shrill.
“To see Jack,” said Susan, turning around.
Barbara and Harmon stared.
“Jack?” Harmon asked.
“She’s hallucinating,” Barbara said to Blossom. “We ought to strap her down.”
Outside, Scotty and Zelda started up another frantic round of barking. Susan went to the window long enough to gesture to them with a finger on her lips. They went instantly silent.
Blossom rummaged in the drawer of a rickety dresser. She pulled out a battery operated torch. “Take this,” she said, handing it to Susan. “Here are extra batteries. I’ll go saddle Coral.” With that, Blossom hurried out of the room, leaving Susan alone with her husband and her new best friend in all the world.
As she hurriedly finished her dressing, Susan glanced in the mirror and saw Barbara and Harmon conferring with looks.
Oh yes, it all made perfectly wicked sense. She wondered why she’d never understood it before. These two had come much closer to each other than had she and Jack. Much, much closer.
“Jack is here?” Barbara asked at last.
“Yes,” said Susan. “Didn’t you know?”
“No, I didn’t. Why is he here?”
“I believe,” Susan said, “that he came here with the express purpose to tell me he loved me and that he wanted to marry me as soon as he had divorced you.”
Harmon gaped. Barbara tried hard not to gape.
“So, when the divorces are final, I’ll marry Jack, and, Barbara, you can marry Harmon. There’s no way you could possibly know it, I realize, but, Barbara, I’ll make you my confidante—Harmon is a splendid husband when the lights are turned out, if you know what I mean. Perfectly splendid. I just hope Jack is half as nice. This is very droll, isn’t it? Talking about such things so frankly. Oh well,” she laughed, “it’s just us giddy New Yorkers, I guess. Then we’ll all live happily ever after, I presume. The only difficulty, of course, is that you and Harmon will be possessed of the combined assets of two fortunes, and Jack and I will be poor as church mice, with nothing but this worthless Nevada land to call our own. Life is unfair, but unfair or not, we have to live it out to the bitter end, don’t we?”
Susan exited the room.
“Blossom!” she called. “I’m on my way!”
CHAPTER THIRTY
SUSAN BROUGHT NOT only the batteried torch, but more candles and matches, a spade, a trowel, two canteens of water, and a length of rope.
She’d left Blossom behind to make certain that Barbara and Harmon didn’t follow. If they asked, she was headed for Pyramid, where Jack was ensconced with the thieving McAlpines, paying ten dollars a night for a room that wasn’t worth seventy-five cents.
Wesley and Colleen actually were in Pyramid, and as soon as they got back, Blossom would send them on, in case Jack’s trouble was direr than Susan was capable of alleviating alone. In the meantime, it was Susan alone…
The first disappointment was that Jack was not to be found just outside the entrance of the mine, having twisted his ankle, for instance, or suffered a mild case of sunstroke, or been bitten by a snake whose poison induced temporary paralysis of the legs.
While Susan was untying the spade from the back of the saddle, Scotty and Zelda barked and yelped and flew into the mine and then flew out again when she didn’t immediately follow.
Susan nervously switched on the battery torch and went into the mine.
The first few yards seemed almost like home.
But Jack wasn’t there.
She called his name, softly at first, then loudly. Then more loudly still. No response.
Scotty and Zelda eagerly pushed on, and Susan unenthusiastically but hastily followed, the handle of the spade bouncing and jarring against her shoulder.
Down, and down more deeply still.
Past crumbling walls, and bowing ceiling supports.
Following the metal tracks laid in the floor of the corridor.
There were times she could touch both walls at once.
Sometimes her head brushed the ceiling.
She shone her light on the walls, on the ceilings, on the supports.
She did not shine it into the holes and passages on either side. She only followed the dogs onward.
Down, and more deeply still.
If Susan doubted the depth of her love for Jack Beaumont before, she could not doubt it now.
The tracks ended.
The dogs stopped in their tracks.
“Where is he?” Susan demanded.
There was no reply.
She shone her light around, but saw nothing but the walls of dirt, the ceiling of dirt, the floor of dirt, and the two dogs.
“Jack!” she screamed.
No reply.
Then an echoed noise, low and rumbling.
Snoring.
“Jack!” she screamed again. “Wake up!”
Then his voice, low and confused, “Susan?”
“Where are you?”
“Here.”
“Where is here?”
“I don’t know. I’m trapped. Right in front of you maybe.”
Because of the acoustics of the tunnel, it was not possible for Susan to tell exactly where the sound was coming from. Then she realized she had two excellent scouts with her.
“Zelda, where is Mr. Beaumont? Scotty, do you know?”
The dogs trotted through the last portal of wood, and Susan followed with the light.
The passage got narrower and smaller, which was a very nasty perception for Susan.
It was so dense and dark that the light she shone all around seemed dampened.
“Why did you come?” Jack’s voice asked from somewhere.
“Because you sent the dogs.”
“But you said if I got in trouble in the mine, you wouldn’t come. I never expected you to—”
He broke off suddenly.
“What’s wrong,” she cried.
“Nothing,” he whispered. “It’s just a little difficult to talk with this mountain on my chest.”
Finally she saw light reflected off a tiny patch of white.
“Jack, move your head.”
The white thing was Jack’s scalp.
“I see you,” she said. “Thank God.”
Then the batteries gave out, and Susan was left in darkness.
She closed her eyes and prayed a real prayer for the first time in many, many years.
“What happened to the light?” Jack asked from the blackness.
“It went out.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Susan’s voice sounded clearly in the darkness. “I’m quite certain,” Susan’s voice remarked, “that this is the most dreadful moment of my entire life.”
“At least you’re not buried in half a ton of dirt. Did you know, by the way, that you are owner of a very valuable property here?”
“Yes,” said Susan, remembering that not only did she have candles and matches in her pack, she also had extra batteries for the torch. She lighted a match. “It’s a uranium mine, I understand.”
That dim yellow light made her feel a great deal b
etter.
“If you knew that,” said Jack, “why didn’t you say something about it? It would certainly explain why Harmon doesn’t want to divorce you.”
She took out a candle and put the match flame to the wick. The light got brighter.
Susan’s spirits rose proportionately.
“I just found out half an hour ago. Some man from the government dropped by, I think, to make certain I didn’t sell the mine to a foreign power. You’re quite right,” Susan went on, dropping new batteries into the torch, “about why Harmon doesn’t want to divorce me. But do you know why Barbara doesn’t want to divorce you?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Jack. “I honestly haven’t thought much about Barbara in the past few hours. Other matters were more pressing.” Such as the fact that he was buried under half a ton of radioactive soil, three-quarters of a mile deep in the earth, and on top of everything else, had an itch on his right knee that might turn out to be his final sensation.
“The only reason Barbara wanted a divorce from you,” said Susan, brushing away a little dirt from the top of Jack’s head, “is so that she could marry Harmon.”
“Harmon?” echoed Jack, then added parenthetically, “That feels very good. Harmon Dodge. Barbara and Harmon.”
“Yes,” said Susan.
“I find that hard to believe.”
“But if Harmon wasn’t going to divorce me, then there was no reason for her to divorce you. It would be easier to keep their liaison secret if she were still married.”
“Barbara and Harmon?” Jack repeated, trying to get used to the idea. Something hard and cold pressed in over his face, stripping skin from his nose. It was Susan’s torch.
“I can’t see anything but dirt in there,” she said. “You really are buried.”
“I also thought Barbara was too lazy to be unfaithful,” Jack mused. “And I thought that Harmon was attracted only to hat-check girls.”
“I brought a spade,” said Susan. “Shall I dig you out?”
“Please,” said Jack.
Placing the light to one side and a lighted candle to the other, Susan began to dig, tossing the dirt over her shoulder, first to the right then to the left. Scotty and Zelda hung back in the darkness, out of the way of the flying debris.