HOW THE GOLD CAME DOWN
Richard, ever modest and in this instance something timid, was for having the wedding celebrated in Senator Hanway's study. He sought to give the preference an atmosphere of sentiment by saying it was there he first declared his love for Dorothy with his eyes. Bess protested against the study, and insisted upon St. John's Church. Richard was not to wed the most beautiful girl in the world, and then run away with her, making the affair a secret, as though he had stolen a sheep. What! did Richard imagine that Dorothy had been weeks over a trousseau to have it extinguished in the narrow compass of Senator Hanway's study? The marriage must be in St. John's where all mankind, or rather womankind, might witness and criticise. Bess would be bridesmaid, sustained thereunto by four damsels. Mr. Fopling should have his part as best man; it would be good practice for Mr. Fopling, and serve to prepare him for his own wedding, an event which Bess, under the exhilarating influence of Dorothy's approaching nuptials, had determined upon for October.
Mrs. Hanway-Harley joined with Bess for the church. Mrs. Hanway-Harley cast her vote delicately, saying she would have it expressly understood that she only gave it as a view. She hoped no one would feel in any sense bound thereby; she had not been, speaking strictly, a party to this marriage, nothing in truth but a looker-on, and therefore it did not become her to assume an attitude of authority. Mrs. Hanway-Harley would only say that churches were the conventional thing and studies were not.
Richard capitulated; indeed he gave way instantly and at the earliest suggestion of "church." His surrender, made with the utmost humility, did not prevent both Bess and Mrs. Hanway-Harley from demonstrating their position in full.
"When all is said," declared Richard, "the main thing is the wedding."
Mrs. Hanway-Harley would like to know what plans had been laid for the honeymoon. To what regions would the happy pair migrate, and for what space? Mrs. Hanway-Harley wore a look of reserved sadness as though she asked what cemetery had been selected as the destination of the funeral cortège, following services of final sorrow at the house.
Richard explained that, guided by Dorothy, Italy and its mountains had been pitched upon. They would go from Italy to France; then to England. The length of their stay abroad was to be always in the hands of Dorothy, who would bring them home to America whenever she chose.
Mrs. Hanway-Harley sighed economically, and suggested that Richard's happiness ought not to blind him to the subject of expense. It would cost a pot of money to make the journey intimated. In a sudden gush of hardihood Richard kissed Mrs. Hanway-Harley, and assured her that in all his life, a life remarkable for an utter carelessness of money, he had never felt less like reckoning a cost. From beginning to end he meant to close his eyes to that subject of expense. There the business ended, for Mrs. Hanway-Harley was too much overcome by the kiss to proceed.
Richard went home and, being full of that honeymoon the possible expense of which had alarmed the economies of Mrs. Hanway-Harley, summoned Mr. Gwynn. That austere man assumed his place on the rug in frigid waiting.
"Mr. Gwynn, you will go to London, and from there to Paris, and lastly to Naples, and at each place prepare for our reception. You will meet us in Naples somewhere from the middle to the last of June. I say last of June, for before we reach Naples we may idle away a fortnight in the Mediterranean. Have everything in perfect order."
"Very good, sir," said Mr. Gwynn.
Richard made a slight dismissive motion with his hand, as showing Mr. Gwynn that he might retire. Mr. Gwynn creaked apologetically, but stood his ground.
"What is it?" said Richard.
"If you please, sir," observed Mr. Gwynn, a gleam in the piscatorial eye, "if you please, sir, before I leave for Europe have I your permission to take out my first papers and declare my intention to become a citizen of this country?"
"May I ask what has moved you to propose this compliment for the United States?"
"Why, sir, should you be so good as to sanction it, I have a little plan, sir."
"Indeed; and what may be the plan which results so much to the advantage of this country?"
"I have a plan, sir," said Mr. Gwynn, with a hesitating creak, "always of course, sir, with your consent, to become a Senator, sir."
"Ah, I see," observed Richard with a fine gravity, "your acquaintance with Senators Gruff and Dice and Loot and others, and your study of those statesmen, have encouraged an ambition to make yourself one of them."
"Yes, sir, if you please, sir."
"And what State do you intend to honor as its Senator?"
"That I shall leave entirely to you, sir. I think you will agree, sir, that there are several States where the word of the Anaconda should accomplish what I desire, sir."
"Well," observed Richard, schooling his face to a difficult seriousness, "there has been much in your recent experiences, Mr. Gwynn, to justify the thought. It will do no harm were you to take the steps you suggest towards becoming a citizen, even if it should not end in a seat in the Senate, a place for which I cannot deny you possess many qualifying attributes. However, the great thing now is to get across to Europe with every possible dispatch and have all ready for our coming. We shall be abroad several months; on our return we may again take up this business of making you a Senator."
"Thank you, sir; very good, sir!"
Richard became ingenious; pursuing a bright idea, he took occasion to explain to Mr. Sands that the Hanway report on Northern Consolidated, which he, Mr. Sands, had been so intelligent as to purloin, having resulted in certain Wall Street advantages to Mr. Bayard and others, it was now determined that an annuity should be purchased in his, Mr. Sands', favor.
"The matter," said Richard, "will receive the attention of Mr. Bayard on June second. I am told it will provide you an annual income of full fifteen thousand dollars for the balance of your life."
Mr. Sands did not give way to the least excitement, but said that he was glad. He would hereafter avoid labor, and devote himself to the elevation of the workingman as represented in the union of printers. It is perhaps as well to set forth in this place that Mr. Sands adhered most nobly to his resolution. In the years that followed he flourished the terror of publishers and master-printers, advising many strikes for shorter hours and a longer wage, never failing from his personal fisc to furnish what halls and beer the exigencies of each strike made necessary, and wanting which no great industrial movement can survive.
Word of the coming wedding got about, and the gossipy murmur of it reached the ears of Storri. The news stirred his savage nature to the dregs.
"June, the first!" sneered Storri, as he paced his apartment in furious soliloquy. "Now we shall see! Yes, you little people must first settle with Storri! A Russian nobleman is not to be disposed of so cheaply! What if he were to steal away your bride? The caitiff Storms must then wait, eh?"
Storri snapped his fingers in vicious derision. He pictured the father and mother and bridegroom, when they arose on the wedding morning to find that the bride had been spirited away. Storri programmed a crime, the black audacity of which went far beyond that dark-lantern enterprise of Treasury gold upon which London Bill was so patiently employed. The design possessed the simplicity, too, which is a ruling feature of your staggering atrocity. The gold would be going aboard the Zulu Queen on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. With the first blue streaks of dawn on Monday, May thirtieth, say at four o'clock, the Zulu Queen, thinking on escape, must up anchor and go steaming down the Potomac. Now what should be less complex than to have Benzine Bob set fire to the Harley house an hour before the time to sail? A bundle of combustibles soaked in kerosene could be introduced into Senator Hanway's study; the details might be safely left with Benzine Bob, to whom opening a window or taking out a pane of glass offered few deterring difficulties. The Harley house would be instantly filled with fire and smoke. Storri and Benzine Bob, under pretense of saving life, would burst in the door. Storri would seize on Dorothy, who, if she were not already in a convenient fainting fit, might be stifled by muffling her in blankets. Steamboat Dan would be in the street with a cab, himself on the box as driver. Presto! Storri with his sweet prize would whirl away to the river front. The launch would be waiting; the fair Dorothy should find herself safe prisoner aboard the Zulu Queen before she knew what had taken place. True, there would be a crowd; the fire people, and what others were abroad at that hour, would rush to the burning house. And yet who would think of questioning Storri, so heroically rescuing life? Who would dream of stopping him who was only taking the rescued fainting one to safe shelter and medical help? In the bustle and alarm, Storri was bound to succeed; there was no least chance of interference.
If Storri could have read the jealous breast of the San Reve, in which kindly soil a wildest suspicion was never two hours old before it had grown to the granite dignity of things certain, his criminal hopes might not have soared so high! Had he known how his every step was shadowed by the sleepless Inspector Val, and that what the latter did not surmise was invariably told him by Steamboat Dan, his horrid confidence would have been less insolent in its anticipations!
Mayhap there be those among you who have "punched" the casual cow, and whose beef-wanderings included the drear wide-stretching waste yclept the Texas Panhandle. If so you have noted, studded hither and yon about the scene, certain conical hillocks or mountainettes of sand. Those dwarf sand-mountains were born of the labor of the winds, which in those distant regions are famous for persistent, not to say pernicious industry. Given a right direction, the wind in its sand-drifting will build you one of those sand-cones almost while you wait. The sand-cone will grow as a stocking grows beneath the clicking needles of some ancient dame. Again, the wind, reversing in the dance, will unravel the sand-cone and carry it off to powder it about the plain. The sand-cone will vanish in a night, as it came in a night, and what was its site will be swept as flatly clean as any threshing floor.
Thus was it with Senator Hanway on a certain fateful day in May, and less than a fortnight before the coming together of the convention which should pass on the business of a Presidential candidate. Compared with that other sand-cone of politics, to wit, Governor Obstinate, Senator Hanway outtopped him as a tree outtops a shrub. In a moment the situation, so flattering to Senator Hanway, was changed disastrously. Those winds which builded him into the most imposing sand-cone of all that dotted the plains of party had shifted, and with mournful effect. Senator Hanway, beneath their erosive influence, shrunk from a certainty to a probability, from a probability to a possibility, and then wholly disappeared. And this disheartening miracle was worked before the eyes of Senator Hanway, and before the eyes of his friends; and yet no one might stay the calamity in its fulfillment. The amazing story, avoiding simile and figure, may be laid open in a handful of sentences.
On that dread day, which you are to keep in memory, nothing could have been brighter than the prospects of Senator Hanway. The national delegates, some nine hundred odd, had been selected—each State naming its quota—and waited only the appointed hour to come together and frame the party's ticket. By count of friend and foe alike, Senator Hanway was certain of convention fortune; he was the sure prognostication for the White House of all the prophets.
And because the last is ever the first in the memory of a forgetful age, and therefore the most important, that which particularly contributed to the strength of Senator Hanway was his project of a Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal. There arose but one opinion, and that of highest favor, touching this gigantic waterway and the farsighted statesmanship which conceived it; that is, but one opinion if you except the murmurs of a few railway companies who trembled over freight rates, and whose complaints were lost in the general roar of Canal approval.
At this juncture, so fraught with happy promise for Senator Hanway, what should come waddling into the equation to spoil all, but a purblind, klabber-witted journal of Toronto, just then busy beating the beauties of the Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal into the dull Canadian skull. This imprint, as a reason for Kanuck acquiescence in the great waterway, proceeded to show how its effect would be to strengthen Canada in case of war between England and the United States. Batteries could be planted to defend the entrances of the canal, which might then be employed in quickly sending a Canadian fleet from the upper lakes into Ontario and vice versa. Twenty Canadian war boats, with the canal to aid them, could threaten New York in the morning and Michigan in the afternoon, and keep threefold their number of American vessels jumping sidewise to guard against their ravages. If for no reason other than a reason of defensive and offensive war, Canada should have the Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal. Thus spake this valuable authority of Toronto.
It was Mr. Hawke, among the adherents of Governor Obstinate, who saw the weapon that might be fashioned against Senator Hanway from the Canadian suggestion. Mr. Hawke had long been aware of Senator Hanway's interference against himself in the Speakership fight, and in favor of Mr. Frost. True, he did not know of those four hundred terrifying telegrams that so shook from his support the hysterical little goat-bearded one and his equally hysterical fellows; but Mr. Hawke had learned enough to ascribe his defeat to Senator Hanway, and that was sufficient to edge him with double readiness to do said statesman what injury he could. Besides, there was the native eagerness of Mr. Hawke to move everything for the good of Governor Obstinate.
Mr. Hawke came out in a well-considered interview concerning the Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal, in which he quoted in full the Toronto paper. Mr. Hawke agreed with the Toronto paper; in addition he solemnly gave it as his belief that Senator Hanway's real purpose had ever been to arm England against this country. Mr. Hawke became denunciatory, and called Senator Hanway a traitor working for English preference and English gold. He said that Senator Hanway was a greater reprobate than Benedict Arnold. Mr. Hawke rehearsed the British armament in the Western Hemisphere, and counted the guns in Halifax, Montreal, Quebec, Esquimalt, to say nothing of the Bermudas, the Bahamas, and the British West Indies. He pointed out that England already possessed a fighting fleet on the Great Lakes which wanted nothing but the guns—and those could be mounted in a day—to make them capable of burning a fringe ten miles wide along the whole lake coast of the United States. Buffalo, Detroit, Chicago, every city on the lakes was at the mercy of England; and now her agent, Senator Hanway, to make the awful certainty threefold surer, was traitorously proposing his Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal. Mr. Hawke, being a Southern man, and because no Southern man can complete an interview without, like Silas Wegg, dropping into verse, quoted from Byron where he stole from Waller for his lines on White:
"So the struck eagle stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart."
Mr. Hawke closed in with a burst of eloquence, but metaphors sadly mixed, by picturing this country as a "struck eagle," expiring at the feet of England. It then might find, cried Mr. Hawke, how it had winged the murderous shaft that stole its life away with the Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal. Senator Hanway was given his share in the picture as the paid traitor who had furnished that feather from the American Eagle's wing which so fatally aided the enemy in his archery.
To one unacquainted with the tinderous quality of political popularities, what ensued would be hard to imagine. Mr. Hawke's interview was as a torch to tow. A tiny responsive flame burst forth in one paper, then in ten, then in two hundred; in a moment the country was afire like a sundry prairie. Senator Hanway, lately adored, was execrated and burned in effigy. In short there occurred an uprising of the peasantry, and Senator Hanway found himself denounced from ocean to ocean as one guilty of studied treason. It was as much as one's political life was worth to be on terms of friendship with him.
Speaker Frost called, and explained to Senator Hanway that he could no longer hold the delegation from his State in his, Senator Hanway's, interest; it would vote solidly against him in the coming convention. Senator Gruff came under cloud of night, as though to hold conference with a felon, and said that he had received advices from the Anaconda President to the effect that nothing, not even the mighty Anaconda, could stem the tide then setting and raging in Anaconda regions against Senator Hanway. It was the Anaconda President's suggestion that Senator Hanway withdraw himself from present thoughts of a White House. The several States whose conventions had instructed for Senator Hanway, through special meetings of their central committees, rescinded those instructions. Throughout the country every vestige of a Hanway enthusiasm was smothered, every scrap of Hanway hope was made to disappear; that statesman was left in no more generous peril of becoming President than of becoming Pope. And all through the gorgeous proposition of a Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal, and the adroit use which the malevolent Mr. Hawke had made of it! The passing of Senator Hanway was the wonder of politics!
And yet that indomitable publicist bore these reverses grandly, for he was capable of stoicism. Moreover, he was of that hopeful incessant brood, like ants or wasps, the members whereof begin instantly in the wake of the storm to rebuild their destroyed domiciles. And from the first he lulled himself with no false hopes. As one after the other Senator Hanway found his prospects ablaze, the knowledge broke on him, and he accepted it, that the immediate future held for him no Presidency. It would be party madness to put him up; the party rank and file were in ferocious arms against him.
Senator Hanway drew one deep breath of regret and that was the limit of his lamentation. He was young, when one thinks of a White House; there still remained room in his life for three more shoots at that alluring target; he would withdraw and re-prepare for four years or eight years or—if Fate should so order the postponement of his ambition—twelve years away. The public memory was short; within a year his fatal Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal would be forgot. Meanwhile, what was there he might save from the situation as it stood?
Senator Hanway exerted his diplomacy, and as fruit thereof was visited by an eye-glassed gentleman—a foremost national figure, and the chief of Governor Obstinate's management. Senator Hanway showed the eye-glassed Mazarin of party how, upon his own withdrawal, he, Senator Hanway, might put Speaker Frost in his place and endow him with the major share of what had been his own elements of strength. Was there any reason why he, Senator Hanway, should refrain from such a step?
The eye-glassed Mazarin thereupon represented that it would be much better if Speaker Frost were to remain undisturbed in his House autocracy. It was over-late for Speaker Frost and the convention only days away. The die was already cast; Governor Obstinate would be nominated and elected. Once inaugurated, the eye-glassed Mazarin understood that it would be Governor Obstinate's earliest care to invite Senator Hanway into his Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. The scandal of the Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal would have blown itself out; also no one—against a President whose hands were full of offices—would dare lift up his voice in criticism of any Cabinet selection.
Senator Hanway was impressed by the hint of the eye-glassed Mazarin. The Treasury portfolio stood within ready throw of a Presidential nomination; he, Senator Hanway, might step from it the successor of Governor Obstinate whenever that gentleman's tenancy of the White House should come to an end. Likewise, the Treasury portfolio was as a thirteen-inch gun within pointblank range of the stock market.
Senator Hanway took a week to consider; he conferred with Senators Gruff and Price and Loot and lastly with Mr. Harley. Then he struck hands with the eye-glassed Mazarin, and published an interview in the Daily Tory saying that he, Senator Hanway, was not and had never been a candidate for the Presidency; that he was and had ever been of the opinion that the needs of both a public and a party hour imperatively demanded Governor Obstinate at the Nation's helm. He, Senator Hanway, being a patriot, was diligently working for the nomination and election of Governor Obstinate, and all who called him friend would do the same. Following this pronunciamento, Senator Hanway began laying personal pipes for four years away with pristine ardor.
Friday, the twenty-seventh of May, was dark and lowering, with a slow storm blackly gathering in the southwest. It was four in the afternoon when the Zulu Queen came up the river, and under quarter speed crept in and anchored within one thousand feet of the mouth of Storri's drain. Perhaps, of all the folk in Washington, no more than three remarked the advent of the Zulu Queen; one of these was Storri, one the San Reve, and one Inspector Val. Storri saw neither of the others; the San Reve saw only Storri; Inspector Val, whose trade was eyes, saw both Storri and the San Reve. Four of Steamboat Dan's men came into town the day before by rail, and for twelve hours prior to the advent of the Zulu Queen, and under the lead of Steamboat Dan, had been in the drain giving aid and comfort to Cracksman London Bill in his efforts to reduce the gold reserve.
When Storri observed that the Zulu Queen was safely a-swing on her rope at the very spot he had specified, he turned and moved rapidly away. The San Reve, who had seen what she came to see, was already upon her return journey to Grant Place, bearing in her bosom a heart desolate and heavy with no hope. The coming of the Zulu Queen had confirmed to her the treachery of Storri. Yes, she the San Reve could see it all! Storri might have quarreled with Mr. Harley; but the loving understanding between himself and Miss Harley was still complete!
Nor was the poor jealous San Reve wholly without a reason, as she beheld events, for her conclusion. Within the past few days, Storri had been several times to and fro in the vicinity of the Harley house. Only the afternoon before he had cautiously studied the premises in company with a couple of suspicious-looking characters, being indeed no other than Steamboat Dan and Benzine Bob. The San Reve kept secret pace with Storri in these reconnoiterings. But she made the mistake of construing preparations to abduct as arrangements to elope. As the San Reve read the portents, Storri planned to meet Miss Harley that very night; they would fly together, the Zulu Queen offering a sure means of baffling pursuit.
The San Reve, biased of her jealous fears, had foreseen in the message to Steamboat Dan some such end as this. It was all so plain and sure to the angry, heart-broken San Reve. The false Storri had done what he might to cover his intentions by daily lies as to how and when he, with the San Reve, should sail for France and Russia! Ah, yes; the San Reve saw through those lies! While she listened to his purring mendacities she must struggle to refrain from casting his untruths in his teeth. Bridle herself she did; but she watched and reflected and resolved the wrongful more. Now with the coming of the Zulu Queen, the one thing certain was that she, the despised San Reve, would be cast off, abandoned. Those love-lies of Storri were intended to blind her into foolish security; he did not wish the elopement designed by him and Miss Harley to encounter obstruction. Thus did the San Reve solve the problem: while Storri would be for misleading her, Miss Harley was hood-winking the Harleys. For a moment the San Reve thought of notifying the Harleys. Then in her desperation she put the impulse aside. Of what avail would be a call upon the Harleys? It might defer; it could not prevent. No, she must adopt the single course by which both her love and her vengeance would be made secure forever. She would take Storri from Miss Harley; and, taking him, she the San Reve would keep him for herself throughout eternity! The present life was the prey of separations, of lies, of loves grown cold; she, with Storri in her arms, would seek another!
At ten o'clock Steamboat Dan was to show a momentary light in the mouth of the drain. This would be the signal for the Zulu Queen to send her launch ashore and begin taking the gold aboard. Storri programmed his own appearance at the drain for sharp ten. As he left the water-front, following the appearance of the Zulu Queen, he cast his eye hopefully upward at the threatening clouds; a down-pouring storm would be the thing most prayed for.
Until it was time to start for the drain to oversee the transfer of the gold, Storri would remain with the San Reve. He was none too confident of the San Reve; of late she had been too silent, too sad, too much wrapped in thought. And this was the night of nights upon which Storri must be sure. In favor of his own security, Storri must know to a verity both the temper and the whereabouts of the San Reve.
Five minutes before Storri reached Grant Place, the rain fell in a deluge. The San Reve, more fortunately swift, was home in advance of the rain and came in bone-dry. When Storri arrived, his garments streaming water, she wore the look of one who had not been out of the house for an afternoon. Only, if Storri had observed the San Reve's eyes, and added their expression, so strangely reckless yet so resolved, to the set mouth and that marble pallor of her brow, the result might have sickened his assurance.
Having in mind his soaked condition, Storri called for whisky. The San Reve was good enough to pour him a stiff glass, which he drank raw with the harsh appetite of a Russian. There was the ghost of an odor of sleep about that whisky; but the sleep-specter did not appeal to Storri, who tossed off his drink and followed one dram with another, suspecting nothing. Five minutes later he was drowsing stertorously on a lounge.
The San Reve, white, and wild in a manner passive and still, had spoken no word; she attended Storri's wants in silence. When that sudden weariness came to claim him and he cast himself in slumber upon the couch, the San Reve, from where she stood statue-like in the center of the room, bent upon him her gray-green eyes. She stood thus for a space, then the slow tears began to stain her cheeks. She threw herself down beside Storri, kissed him and drew his head to her bosom, crying hopelessly.
Richard had been requested by Inspector Val to meet him at the south front of the Treasury Building at ten o'clock.
"Do you remember," asked Inspector Val, "how several weeks ago we visited the drain?"
Yes; Richard recalled it.
"Come with me to-night," said Inspector Val; "the drain shall explain the mystery of that muddy water, and why I said our man was hard at work."
When Richard and Inspector Val, water-proofed to the chins, reached the mouth of the drain the storm was at furious height. The rain descended in sheets; the lightning made flashing leaps from cloud to cloud and the ceaseless thunders were as a dozen batteries of big guns in fullest play. As Richard and Inspector Val came to a halt, they were joined by three men. Richard, aided by the lightning flashes, recognized Mr. Duff and Mr. England; the third, being Steamboat Dan, was strange to him.
"Is the Russian inside?" asked Inspector Val of Steamboat Dan.
"I don't know," returned Steamboat Dan. "I've been aboard the yacht since eight o'clock until twenty minutes ago. I came ashore in that skiff. Sure, he ought to be in the drain; they've been sending down the stuff for hours."
"I don't find any of it about?"
"I threw a crowbar across the stream one hundred yards up, and halted the procession. The plan, d'ye see, is for me, the coast being clear, to signal the launch to come ashore for its first cargo any time after ten—which is about now."
"We'll omit the launch," returned Inspector Val. "Go into the drain and give the boys the tip to skip. After that, it's up to all of you to look out for yourselves."
"Remember, Inspector," pleaded Steamboat Dan, "you gave your word that me an' Bill an' the gang ain't to be collared."
"Don't fear; the only one I'm after is the Russian. Jump sharp now, and give them the office to screw."
Steamboat Dan entered the drain while Inspector Val, Richard, Mr. Duff, and Mr. England withdrew to a little distance.
"Everybody goes free except the Russian," was Inspector Val's command to Mr. Duff and Mr. England; "he's to be nailed."
From the drain came booming the smothered report of a pistol.
"That's the signal," said Inspector Val; "the noise of a gun will travel miles in a tunnel. They'll be coming out now."
As he spoke, Steamboat Dan issued from the drain and fled like a shadow. A rattle of anchor chains was heard aboard the Zulu Queen; she also had taken fright.
"The others won't be here for a while," said Inspector Val. "They've got a good ways to come, and a pitch-dark drain isn't the Bowery."
Something like ten minutes passed; suddenly, cursing and stumbling and splashing, five men rushed from the drain's mouth and made off into the darkness.
"Close up now," cried Inspector Val; "our party should be hard on their heels."
Inspector Val was wrong; ten minutes, twenty minutes elapsed, and no one to emerge from the drain. Inspector Val, placing his two aids on guard, said that he and Richard would investigate. Bearing a dark lantern, he took the lead and Richard followed. About twenty rods up the drain, Inspector Val stumbled and all but pitched upon his face.
"Look out!" he cried, by way of warning.
The next moment Richard set his foot on something soft and yielding, which exploded with a great noise.
"One of those rubber propositions," explained Inspector Val.
By the light of the lamp, and as far up the drain as his eye would reach, Richard beheld a seemingly endless file of circular rubber air-cushions, mates of the one Inspector Val had brought him. On the six-inch depth of water which raced along the cushions were floating light as corks; in the center of each reposed a canvas sack of gold. As Steamboat Dan explained, this long line of argosies had been brought to a standstill by laying an iron bar across so as to detain the little rubber-rafts while the stream ran on. Inspector Val had tripped over this bar. Remove the detaining iron bar, and the released flotilla would sail downward to the mouth of the drain and deliver its yellow freight of gold to whomsoever waited to receive it.
Richard and Inspector Val continued up the drain, the latter wary and ready for Storri, whom he every moment hoped to meet. There appeared no Storri; the two explorers at last reached London Bill's tunnel, finding nothing during their march but a solid procession of richly freighted rubber rafts—three-quarters of a mile of gold!
"There's four millions of dollars between here and the river," said Inspector Val.
Richard and his guide paused where London Bill's tunnel opened into the drain. Flashing his lamp about, Inspector Val showed Richard where London Bill had built a platform on which to store the rubber rafts before inflating and launching them down-stream, each with its five-thousand-dollar cargo of gold.
"Did you ever see sweeter arrangements!" whispered Inspector Val, in an ecstasy of admiration.
Bidding Richard remain where he was, Inspector Val, revolver in one hand, dark-lantern in the other, bent low his head and disappeared in London Bill's tunnel. He was gone an age as it seemed to Richard. Then he reappeared, and soberly brushed the clay from his garments.
"No Storri," was the sententious remark of Inspector Val; "not a sign of him. But I've thought it out. Do you know why we don't find Storri? The reason is the best in the world; the man's dead."