_The Mine in the Cauldron Depths_
I was awakened by the tinkling, buzzing call of the radio-diaphragm
beneath my shirt. I had left the call open.
It was Hanley. I lay down, eyeing my window which now was illumined by
the flat light of dawn.
Hanley's microscopic voice:
"Phil? I've just raised President Markes, there in Nareda. I've been a
bit worried about you."
"I'm all right, Chief."
"Well, you'd better see President Markes this morning."
"That was my intention."
"Tell him frankly what you're after. This smuggling of quicksilver from
Nareda has got to stop. But take it easy, Phil; don't be reckless.
Remember: one little knife thrust and I've lost a good man!"
I laughed at his anxious tone. That was always Hanley's way. A devil
himself, when he was on a trail, but always worried for fear one of his
men would come to harm.
"Right enough, Chief. I'll be careful."
He cut off presently.
I did not see Jetta that morning. I told Spawn I was hoping to see
President Markes on my petroleum proposition. And at the proper hour I
took myself to the government house.
* * * * *
This Lowland village by daylight seemed even more fantastic than
shrouded in the shadows of night. The morning sun had dissipated the
overhead mists. It was hot in the rocky streets under the weird
overhanging vegetation. The settlement was quietly busy with its
tropical activities. There were a few local shops; vehicles with the
Highland domestic animals--horses and oxen--panting in the heat; an
occasional electro-automatic car.
But there were not many evidences of modernity here. The street and
house tube-lights. A few radio image-finders on the house-tops. An
automatic escalator bringing ore from a nearby mine past the government
checkers to an aero stage for northern transportation. Cultivated fields
in the village outskirts operated with modern machinery.
But beyond that, it seemed primitive. Two hundred years back. Street
vendors. People in primitive, ragged, tropical garb. Half naked
children. I was stared at curiously. An augmenting group of children
followed me as I went down the street.
The President admitted me at once. In his airy office, with safeguards
against eavesdropping, I found him at his desk with a bank of modern
instruments before him.
"Sit down, Grant."
* * * * *
He was a heavy-set, flabby man of sixty-odd, this Lowland President.
White hair; and an old-fashioned, rolling white mustache of the sort
lately come into South American fashion. He sat with a glass of iced
drink at his side. His uniform was stiffly white, and ornate with heavy
gold braid, but his neckpiece was wilted with perspiration.
"Damnable heat, Grant."
"Yes, Sir President."
"Have a drink." He swung a tinkling glass before me. "Now then, tell me
what is your trouble. Smuggling, here in Nareda. I don't believe it."
His eyes, incongruously alert with all the rest of him so fat and lazy,
twinkled at me. "We of the Nareda Government watch our quicksilver
production very closely. The government fee is a third."
I might say that the Nareda government collected a third on all the
mineral and agricultural products of the country, in exchange for the
necessary government concessions. Markes exported this share openly to
the world markets, paying the duty exactly like a private corporation.
He added, "You think--Hanley thinks--the smuggling is on too large a
scale to be any illicit producer?"
I nodded.
"Then," he said, "it must be one of our recognized mines."
"Hanley thinks it is a recognized mine, falsifying its production
record," I explained.
"If that is so, I will discover it," he said. He spoke with enthusiasm
and vigor. "For you I shall treat as what you are--the representative
of our most friendly government. The figures of our quicksilver
production I shall lay before you in just a few days. Let me fill up
your glass, Grant."
* * * * *
The lazy tropics. I really did not doubt his sincerity. But I did doubt
his ability to cope with any clever criminal. His enthusiasm for action
would wilt like his neckpiece, in Nareda's heat. Unless, perhaps, the
knowledge that the smuggler was cheating him as well as the United
States--_that_ might spur him.
He added--and now I got a shock wholly unexpected: "If we think that
some recognized producer of quicksilver here is cheating us, it should
not be difficult to check up on it. Nareda has only one large cinnabar
lode being worked. A private individual: that fellow Jacob Spawn--"
"Spawn?" I exclaimed involuntarily.
"Why, yes. Did not he mention it? His mine is no more than ten
kilometers from here--back on the southern slope."
"He didn't mention it," I said.
"So? That is strange; but he is a secretive Dutchman by nature. He
specializes in prying into the other fellow's affairs. Hm-m."
He fell into a reverie while I stared at him. Spawn, the big--the only
big--quicksilver producer here!
* * * * *
The President interrupted my startled thoughts. "I hope you did not
intimate your real purpose?"
"No."
We both turned at the sound of an opening door. Markes called, "Ah, come
in Perona! Are you alone? Good! Close that slide. Here is Chief Hanley's
representative." He introduced us all in a breath. "This is interesting,
Perona. Damnably interesting. We're being cheated, what? It looks that
way. Sit down, Perona."
This was Greko Perona. Nareda's Minister of Internal Affairs. Spawn had
mentioned him to me. A South American. A man in his fifties. Thin and
darkly saturnine, with iron-gray hair, carefully plastered to cover his
half-bald head. He sat listening to the President's harangue, twirling
the upturned waxen ends of his artificially black mustache. A wave of
perfume enveloped him. A ladies' courtier, this Perona by the look of
him. His white uniform was immaculate, carefully tailored and carefully
worn to set off at its best his still trim and erect figure.
"Well," he said, when at last the President paused, "of a surety
something must be done."
Perona seemed not excited, rather more carefully watchful, of his own
words, and of me. His small dark eyes roved me.
"What is it you would plan to do about it, Senorito?"
An irony was in that Latin diminutive! He spread his pale hands. "Your
United States officials perhaps exaggerate. I am very doubtful if we
have smugglers here in Nareda."
"Unless it is Spawn," the President interjected.
* * * * *
Perona frowned slightly. But his suave manner remained. "Spawn? Why
Spawn?"
"You need not take offense, Perona," Markes retorted. "We are discussing
this before an envoy of the United States, sent here to consult with us.
We have nothing to hide."
Markes turned to me. And his next words were like a bomb exploding at my
feet.
"Perona _is_ offended, Grant. But I promise you, his natural personal
prejudice will not affect my investigation. Of course he is prejudiced,
since he is to marry Spawn's daughter, the little Jetta."
I started involuntarily. This pomaded old dotard! This perfumed, ancient
dandy!
For all the importance of my mission in Nareda my thoughts had been
subconsciously more upon Jetta--far more--than upon smugglers of
quicksilver. This palsied popinjay! This, the reality of the specter
which had been between Jetta and me during all that magic time in the
moonlit garden!
This suave old rake! Betrothed to that woodland pixie whose hand I had
held and to whom I had sung love songs in the magic flower-scented
moonlight only a few hours ago! And whom I had promised to meet there
again to-night!
This, then, was my rival!
* * * * *
Nothing of importance transpired during the remainder of that interview.
Markes reiterated his intention of making a complete governmental
investigation at once. To which Perona suavely assented.
"_Por Dios Senorito_," he said to me, "we would not have your great
government annoyed at Nareda. If there are smugglers, we will capture
them of a certainty."
From the Government House, it now being almost time for the midday meal,
I returned to Spawn's.
The rambling mud walls of the Inn stood baking in the noonday heat when
I arrived. The outer garden drowsed; there seemed no one about. I went
through the main door oval into the front public room, where first I had
met Spawn. He was not here now, nor was Jetta.
A sudden furtiveness fell upon me. With noiseless steps I went the
length of the dim, padded interior corridor to my own room. My
belongings seemed undisturbed; a vague idea that Spawn might have seized
this opportunity to ransack them had come to me. But it seemed not;
though if he had he would have found nothing.
I stood for a moment listening at my patio window. I could see the
kitchen from here; there was no one in it. I started back for the living
room. That furtive instinct was still on me. I made no noise. And
abruptly I heard Spawn's voice, floating out softly in the hushed
silence of the house.
"So, Perona?"
* * * * *
A brief silence, in which it seemed that I could hear a tiny aerial
answer. Then Spawn again. A startled oath.
"De duvel! You say--"
I stood frozen, listening.
"She is here.... Yes, I will keep her close. I am no fool, Perona."
Spawn's laugh was like a growl. "Later to-day, yes. Fear not! I am no
fool. I will be careful of it."
Spawn, talking by private audiphone, to Perona. The colloquy came to an
abrupt end.
"... Might eavesdrop? By hell, you are right!"
I heard the click as Spawn and Perona broke connection. Spawn came from
his room. But he was not quick enough. I slipped away before he saw me.
In the living room I had time to be calmly seated with a lighted
cigarette. His approaching heavy footsteps sounded. He came in.
"Oh--Grant."
"Good noon, friend Spawn. I'm hungry." I grinned at him. "I understand
my bargain with you included a noonday meal. Does it?"
He eyed me suspiciously. "Have you been waiting here long?"
"No. I just came in."
He led me to the kitchen. He apologized for the informality of his hotel
service: visitors were so infrequent. But the good quality of his food
would make up for it.
"Right," I agreed. "Your food is marvelous, friend Spawn."
* * * * *
There was a difference in Spawn's manner toward me now. He seemed far
more wary. Outwardly he was in a high good humor. He asked nothing
concerning my morning at the Government House. He puttered over his
electron-stove, making me help him; he cursed the heat; he said one
could not eat in such heat as this; but the meal he cooked, and the way
he sat down opposite me and attacked it, belied him.
He was acting; but so was I. And perhaps I deceived him as little as he
deceived me. We avoided the things which were uppermost in the thoughts
of us both. But, when we had very nearly finished the meal, I decided to
try him out. I said suddenly, out of a silence:
"Spawn, why didn't you tell me you were a producer of quicksilver?" I
shot him a sharp glance. "You are, aren't you?"
It took him by surprise, but he recovered himself instantly. "Yes. Are
you interested?"
I tried another shot. "What surprised me was that a wealthy mine
owner--you are, aren't you?--should bother to keep an unprofitable
hotel. Why bother with it, Spawn?"
I thought I knew the answer: he wanted Nareda's visitors under his eyes.
"That is a pleasure." There was irony in his tone. "I am a lonesome man.
I like--interesting companionship, such as yours, young Grant."
It was on my tongue to hint at his daughter. But I thought better of it.
"I am going to the mine now," he said abruptly. "Would you like to
come?"
"Yes," I smiled. "Thanks."
* * * * *
I wanted to see his mine. But that he should be eager to show it,
surprised me. I wondered what purpose he could have in that. I had a
hint of it later; for when we took his little autocar and slid up the
winding road into the bloated crags towering on the slope behind Nareda,
he told me calmly:
"I shall have to put you in charge of my mine commander. I am busy
elsewhere this afternoon. You will see the mine just as well without
me."
He added. "I must go to the Government House: President Markes wants a
report on my recent production."
So that was what Perona had told him over the audiphone just before our
noonday meal?
It was an inferno of shadows and glaring lights, this underground
cavern. As modern mining activities go, it was small and primitive. No
more than a dozen men were here, beside the sweating pudgy mine
commander who was my guide. A voluble fellow; of what original
nationality I could not determine.
We stood watching the line of carts dumping the ore onto the endless
lifting-belt. It went a hundred feet or so up and out of the cavern's
ascending shaft, to fall with a clatter into the bins above the smelter.
"Rich ore," I said. "Isn't it?"
The cinnabar ran like thick blood-red veins in the rock.
"Rich," said the mine commander. "That it is. Rich. But who does it make
rich? Only Spawn, not me." He waved his arms, airing his grievance with
which for an hour past he had regaled me. "Only Spawn. For me, a dole
each week."
The smelter was in a stone building--one of a small group of mine houses
which stood in a cauldron depression above excavations. Rounded domes of
rock towered above them. The sun, even at this tri-noon hour, was gone
behind the heights above us. The murky shadows of night were gathering,
the mists of the Lowlands settling. The tube-lights of the mine, strung
between small metal poles, winked on like bleary eyes.
"Of a day soon I will fling this job to hell--"
* * * * *
I was paying scant attention to the fellow's tirade. Could there be
smuggling going on from this mine? It all seemed to be conducted openly
enough. If the production record were being falsified I felt that this
dissatisfied mine commander was not aware of it. He showed me the
smelter, where the quicksilver condensed in the coils and ran with its
small luminous silver streams into the vats.
He was called away momentarily by one of his men, leaving me standing
there. I was alone; no one seemed in sight, or within hearing. In the
shadow of the condensers I drew out my transmitter and called Hanley.
I got him within a minute.
"Chief!"
"Yes, Phil. I hoped you'd call me. Didn't want to chance it, raising you
when you might not be alone."
I told him swiftly what I had done; where I was now.
And Hanley said, with equal briskness: "I've an important fact. Just had
Markes on secret wave-length. He tells me that Spawn has been saving up
his quicksilver for six months past. He's got several hundred thousand
dollar-standards' worth of it in ingots there right now."
"Here at the mine?"
"Yes. Got them all radiuminized, ready for the highest priced markets.
Markes says he is scheduled to turn them over to the government checkers
to-morrow. The Nareda government takes its share to-morrow; then Spawn
exports the rest."
I heard a footstep. "Off, Chief! I'll call you later!"
I clicked off summarily. The little grid was under my shirt when the
mine commander rejoined me.
* * * * *
For another half hour or to I hovered about the smelter house. A
treasure of quicksilver ingots here? I mentioned it casually to my
companion. He shot me a sharp glance.
"Spawn has told you that?"
"I heard it."
"His business. We do not talk of that. Never can I tell what Spawn will
choose to take offense at."
We rambled upon other subjects. Later, he said, "We work not at night.
But Spawn, he is here often at night, with his friend, the Senor
Perona."
That caught my attention. "I met Perona this morning," I said quickly.
"Is he a partner of Spawn's?"
"If he is so, I never was told it. But much he is here--at night."
"Why at night?"
The fellow really knew nothing. Or if he did, he was diplomatic enough
not to jeopardize his post by babbling of it to me. He said:
"Perona is Spawn's friend. Why not? His daughter to marry: that will
make him a son-in-law." He laughed. "An old fool, but not such a fool
either. Spawn is rich."
"His daughter. Has he a daughter?"
"The little Jetta. You haven't seen her? Well, that is not strange.
Spawn keeps her very hidden. A mystery about it: all Nareda talks, but
no one knows; and Spawn does not like questions."
Spawn abruptly joined us! He came from the black shadows of the lurid
smelter room. Had he heard us discussing Jetta? I wondered.