What was the purpose of this storage?
The question was answered by a glance in a fresh direction. Adjoining the cutting stood an iron winch. It was a man-power winch, but it worked an elevated cable trolley communicating with a trestle work fifty yards away.
Moving swiftly on towards the trestle work the man searched its length. He peered up, far up the great hillside in the uncertain moonlight, seeking the limits of its trailing outline in that direction. But its ascent was gradual. It took the hill diagonally, and quickly lost itself round a bend in the narrow roadway which had been hewn out of the primordial forest.
The end of this work in the other direction was far down on the foreshore, stopping short of the water's edge by, perhaps, fifty yards. It terminated at what was obviously a great mound of "tailings."
The man moved down to this spot. As he paused by the mound, and gazed up, the trestle work stood above him more than twice his own height. Furthermore, here the skeleton work gave place to built-out platforms, the purpose of which was obvious. A moment later his powerful hands were gripping the massive stanchions, and he was clambering up to the platforms.
It was a simple enough task for a man of activity, and he swarmed up with the rapidity of some great cat. He stood on the topmost platform, and his gaze ran down the length of the structure.
"A sluice-box and—conduit," he muttered. Then in a tone of deep appreciation: "Gee, and it's fixed—good!"
He bent down over the sluice-box, and groped with his hands over the bottom of it. There was a trickle of water flowing gently in its depths. He searched with his fingers along the riffles. And that which he found there he carefully and laboriously collected, and drew up out of the water. He placed the collected deposit in a colored handkerchief, and again searched the riffles. He repeated the operation again and again. Then, with great care he twisted up the handkerchief and bestowed it in an inner pocket of his pea-jacket.
After that he sat himself upon the edge of the sluice-box for some thoughtful minutes, and his mind traveled back over many scenes and incidents. But it dwelt chiefly upon Jessie Mowbray and her dead father. And it struggled in a great effort to solve the riddle of the man's death.
But, in view of his discoveries, just now it was a riddle that suggested far too many answers. Furthermore, to his mind, none of them quite seemed to fit. There were two facts that stood out plainly in his mind. Here, here was the source of Allan's wealth, and this was the enterprise which in some way had contrived to leave Jessie Mowbray fatherless.