“You did. It’s Murtrie; a mining engineer who has been doing a sort of weigh-master’s stunt at the Molly Baldwin mine. Died pretty suddenly last night, they say.”
“Large man?” queried the Government chemist, half-absently; and Maxwell looked up quickly.
“Beefy rather than big, yes. How could you tell?”
Sprague waved his cigar as if the question were childish and the answer obvious. “It took a dozen of them, more or less, to put him into the express-car.”
Maxwell turned back to his desk. “Metallic casket, probably,” he suggested. “They had our agent wire Brewster for the best that could be had. Said they were going to ship the body to some little town in Kentucky. They’re a rather queer lot.”
“Who?—the Kentuckians?”
“No; the Molly Baldwin outfit. The mine was opened by a syndicate of New York people four years ago, and after the New Yorkers had put two or three hundred thousand into it without taking anything out, they gave up in disgust. Then a couple of young fellows from Cripple Creek came along and leased the property. There was a crooked deal somewhere, for the young fellows began to take out pay—big pay—right from the start. Then the New York people wanted to ‘renig’ on the lease, and dragged the thing into the courts.”
“And the courts said no?”
“The courts straddled. I didn’t follow the fight in detail, but the final decision was that the lessees were to keep all they could take out each month up to a certain amount. If they exceeded that amount, the excess was to be shared equally with the New Yorkers.”
“Lots of room for shenanigan in that,” was the big man’s passing comment. “Unless these young Cripple Creekers are more honest than the average, they’ll stand a good bit of watching, you’d say.”