“However, there was one other snag. A little more prospecting showed that aside from the business of busting up the stream, your operations were going to be dangerously close to the Circle Y — in fact, some of the richest deposits were across their border. So the Circle Y had to be taken over. Of course it had to be done in a phony way — they mustn’t know about the cinnabar, partly because you didn’t want to have to pay that much more for the place, but most importantly because nobody at all must know that there’s cinnabar here and a mine ready to produce. That’s why you had to murder Frank Morland not long ago, and one of our cowboys tonight — because they could have seen you moving machinery and asked questions or talked about it.”
“Murder is a very unpleasant word, Mr Templar,” said Julius, and suddenly in his lisping way he was almost jovial. “Why not call it... er... liquidation of enemy agents to prevent vital information?”
“I prefer calling it murder,” said the Saint, no less amiably. “It’s such a help to clear thinking. Murder to conceal grand larceny.”
The black scowl darkened over Valmon’s rigid smile.
“What larceny?”
“Larceny of a large quantity of quicksilver from the people of the United States.” The Saint smiled. “I made a check of your title in the County Records Office this afternoon. I found that when this ranch was first homesteaded, the Government specifically excluded certain mineral rights from the patent granted. The same on the Circle Y. Mercury was just one of the mineral rights reserved by Uncle Sam.”
“I am learning to admire your thoroughness more and more every moment,” said Julius ingratiatingly, but for the first time there was the faintest strain in the smooth surface of his indulgent superiority.
Simon Templar caught it without an outward sign, but his pulses moved into a sharper tempo of tentative delight. This might have been it — the break that he had been waiting for, the first hint of a crevice into which a wedge might be driven that might split the trap wide open. He pressed at it with the nerveless restraint of a master cutter attacking a priceless diamond.
“It was just routine,” he said modestly. “But you certainly have stirred yourselves into a pot of soup, haven’t you? You go around murdering people — and you might have gotten by with it once, but tonight was too often: I was able to prove that tonight’s job wasn’t an accident, and that throws doubt on Frank Morland’s accident, and all the boys are going to remember it and talk about it. You’re trying to start up an illegal mine, and they’re going to talk about that too—”
“You told them about that?”