The La Chance Mine Mystery

by Susan Morrow Jones

It was Macartney—our capable, hard-working superintendent—for whom Paulette had mistaken me in the dark, that first night I came home to La Chance and the dream girl, who was no nearer me now than she was then; Macartney from whom she had sealed the boxes of gold, to prevent him substituting others and sending me off to Caraquet with worthless dummies; Macartney I had heard her tell herself she could not trust; Macartney who had put that wolf dope—that there was no longer any doubt he had brought from Skunk's Misery—in my wagon; Macartney who had had that boulder stuck in the road to smash my pole, by the same men who were posted by the corduroy road through the swamp to cut me off there if the wolves and the broken wagon failed; and Macartney who had been balked by a girl I had left at La Chance to fight him alone now!

The thing seemed to jump at me from six places at once, now that I knew enough to see it was there at all. But what sickened me at my own utter blindness was not the nerve of the man, but just the risk he had let Paulette run on the Caraquet road, and—old Thompson! For Thompson had never sent Macartney to La Chance, and Macartney had had him murdered in cold blood!

If my eyes fogged as I stared at the dead man's two of hearts, it was only half with fury. Old Thompson had been decent, harmless, happy with his unintelligent work and his sad solitaire,—and he had been through seven hells before he wrote what I read now:

"Wilbraham—Stretton—pray God one of you saw all I could put inside envelope of last letter Macartney forced me to write. I never sent him to La Chance. I never saw the man till he waylaid me between Halfway and Caraquet, and brought me here. Do not know where it is, am prisoner underground. Wrote you two letters to save my miserable life; know now I have not saved it. Your lives—gold—everything—in danger too. For any sake get Macartney before he gets you. No use to look for me. Tried to warn you inside envelope, but suppose was no use. Good-by. Take care, take care! There was a boy Macartney sent off with my horse; was kind; said he would come back. When he does, takes this to you——He has not come. Been brought up into lean-to, am gagged, feel death near. Forgive treachery—life was dear—get Macar——"

But the scrawl broke off in a long pencil line, where death had jerked Thompson's elbow, and his card had fallen from his hand.

I sat on the floor and saw the thing. Macartney, hidden in Skunk's Misery, making plans to get openly and with decent excuse to La Chance, had fallen on Thompson and used him. And for Thompson, writing lying letters in Skunk's Misery in fear of the death that had come to him in the end, there had been no rescue. His scribbled envelope, even if Dudley or I had understood it, had come too late. The boy who took his horse to Billy—whoever he was—had never come back. Thompson had not even had time, in the end, to slip his written-over card into the cased pack I had found in his almost empty pockets, before Macartney's men—for of course Macartney himself had never been near the place since he got his wolf dope there and left it for good—had taken him off and made away with him. Once his last letter was written and posted under cover from Caraquet to be reposted to Dudley from Montreal by some unknown hand, Macartney had no more use for Thompson, and a screen against betrayal on two sides: either by his own men, or that chance finding of Thompson's body that had actually happened; for Thompson's own letter would clear his murderer.

As for Thompson's envelope! It's an easy enough thing to do if you just slip your pencil inside an envelope and write blindly, but it made me sick to think of poor old Thompson scrawling in the inside of his envelope, furiously, furtively, while the ink of his neat copperplate dried on the outside, and Macartney likely stood by poring over the actual letter, wondering if there was any flaw in it that could show out and damn him. And the desperate scrawl in the envelope had been no good, thanks to the fool brain and tongue of myself, Nicky Stretton! It had done more to warn Macartney than either Dudley or me, since if Thompson had written in the reverse of the envelope he was also likely to have written on anything that would take a pencil.

It was no wonder Macartney had stood stunned over that envelope, till Dudley and I believed him heartsick for his friend, for it must have been then that he remembered Thompson's cards,—that I guessed the old man had just sat and played with, day in and day out, while he was a prisoner and about to die. Thompson could have written on them; and Macartney must have feared it, or he never would have stolen them from Billy Jones. I hoped grimly that he had been good and worried before he got his chance to do it and set his mind at ease. And at ease it must have been, for he had actually known nothing about the cards; he could only have taken them on chance, from sheer terror, and found them harmless. He had probably never even noticed one was missing—and whatever Thompson had not been wise about he had been wise when he took out a deuce, and not one of the four aces the most casual eye must miss—or he would never have let me have them, contemptuously, as one lets a child play with a knife without a blade.

Only I was not so sure this particular knife had no blade,—for Macartney!

He knew nothing of the desperate scrawl on the bottom flap of that envelope that his own hasty grab had jerked off and left in my fist; nothing of the deuce of hearts that made its crazy inscription pitifully sane to me now; and nothing in particular about me, Nicky Stretton. But when I came to think of all I knew about Macartney, that was no remarkable consolation; for—except his never noticing that the bottom flap of Thompson's envelope was missing, and taking it for granted it had been blank like the top one—he had made a fool of me all along the line!