Sure enough, there it was, the real black diamond stuff such as you shovel into the furnace—when you're lucky. I scaled off a piece and tested it with the lamp. And gradually I begun to revise my ideas of a coal mine. I'd always thought of it as a big cave sort of a place, with a lot of miners grouped around the sides pickin' away sociable. But here is nothing but a maze of little tunnels, criss-crossin' every which way, with nobody in sight except now and then, off in a dead-end, we'd get a glimpse of two or three kind of ghosty figures movin' about solemn. It's all so still, too. Except in places where we could hear the water roarin' there wasn't a sound. Only in one spot, off in what Llanders calls a chamber, we finds two men workin' a compressed air jack-hammer, drillin' holes.
"They'll be shooting a blast soon," says Llanders. "Want to wait?"
"No thanks," says I prompt. "Mr. Fiske is in a rush."
Maybe I missed something interestin', but with all that rock over my head I wasn't crazy to watch somebody monkey with dynamite. The jack-hammer crew gave us a line on where we might find Bruzinski, and I expect for a while there I led the way. After another ten-minute stroll, durin' which we dodged a string of coal cars being shunted down a grade, we comes across three miners chattin' quiet in a corner. One of 'em turns out to be the mine-boss.
"Hey, Joe!" says Llanders. "Somebody wants to see you."
At which Waddy pushes to the front. "Oh, I say, Bruzinski! Remember me, don't you?" he asks.
Joe looks him over casual and shakes his head.
"I'm Lieutenant Fiske, you know," says Waddy. "That is, I was."
"Well, I'll be damned!" says Joe earnest. "The Loot! What's up?"
"That ring I gave you in Belgium," goes on Waddy. "I—I hope you still have it?"