The Gold-Stealers Part 28

Mr. Doon to come, an' the detective cove too, cause there's somethin'

else there--somethin' else p'tickler too.'

'Very well, we can go an' see McKnight an' Peterson, but they'll laugh at us.'

'When they laugh we'll show 'em this,' said d.i.c.k, producing a lump of quartz.

Harry took the stone in his hand; it was not larger than a hen's egg and of a dark colour, but studded thickly with clean gold, and as he gazed at it his pipe fell from his mouth and his eyes rounded. He pursed his lips to whistle his astonishment, and forgot to do it; he lifted his hand to scratch his head and it stuck half-way; he turned and turned the stone, stupid with surprise.

'By the holy, your fortune's made if there's much o' this!' he blurted at length.

'Think there's heaps of it,' said d.i.c.k coolly.

'When can we go to it?'

'When the detective cove comes, an' I've told him 'bout somethin'.'

'Somethin' good for us, d.i.c.k?' asked Harry anxiously.

d.i.c.k nodded his head slowly several times.

'Well, if this don't lick c.o.c.k-fighting. Have you told your mother?'

'No,' said d.i.c.k.

'Nothing about this either? How's that?'

'Oh,' said d.i.c.k with a man's superiority, 'she wouldn't understand. She don't know nothin' 'bout minin', you know.'

Harry looked down upon his young friend curiously for a moment.

'D'you know,' he said, 'you're a most amazing kind of a kid?'

'How?' asked d.i.c.k shortly.

'Why in the way you get mixed up in things.'

'Tain't my fault if things happen, is it?' asked the boy in an injured tone.

'S'pose it ain't,' replied Harry with a grin; 'but they all seem to come your way somehow. Look here--it can't matter now--tell me how you came to be in the Stream drive that night?'

d.i.c.k kicked up a tuft of gra.s.s, bored one heel into the soft turf, and answered nothing.

'Come on, old man, I won't turn dog.'

'I'm goin' to tell it to Detective Downy first. 'Twasn't nothin' much anyhow. I jes' went down.'

d.i.c.k would say nothing more. He found himself on the side of the law for the first time, and felt he owed a duty to Downy, whom he regarded as almost as great a man as Sam Sagacious. Downy had come to his rescue in an hour of dire peril, Downy had trusted him and taken him into his confidence to some extent, and he was determined to do the fair and square thing by the detective, at least so far as he could do so without interfering with his sacred obligation to handsome, unhappy Christina Shine.

The detective returned to the township in the afternoon to prosecute the search for Ephraim, of whom nothing had yet been heard. In the presence of his mother and Mrs. Hardy and Harry, d.i.c.k faced the officer to tell his story; but he found it hard to begin.

'Well, my lad,' said Downy, 'you're going to tell all you know?'

d.i.c.k nodded, abashed by his new importance.

'Out with it then. You were in that drive?'

'Yes.'

'You went down with Rogers and Shine?'

'I didn't.'

'Very well, my boy, how did you go?'

'Went by myself. Out of a drive what I know into the Red Hand workin's, an' down the Red Hand ladders.'

'But why? Go ahead--why?'

'To--to drag Harry out o' the water.'

There were three distinct gasps at this, and even the detective's eyelids went up a trifle.

'Go on, d.i.c.k.'

Now having started, d.i.c.k told his story in full. The incidents were not told consecutively, and he needed considerable cross-examining before the tale was properly fitted together and his audience of four had grasped the full details. Then Mrs. Hardy arose from her seat and moved towards him somewhat unsteadily; knelt by his side, took him in her arms softly and quietly, kissed him, and said in a very low voice:

'G.o.d bless you, Richard; G.o.d bless you, my brave boy.'

This, for some reason quite incomprehensible to the boy, caused a lump to swell in his breast and gave him an altogether uncalled-for inclination to blubber; but he swallowed it down with an effort, and then his mother hugged him in that billowy energetic way of hers. After which Harry took his hand and shook it for quite a long time without speaking a word. The detective alone was undemonstrative.

'Now,' said he, 'what about this gold? You hid it?'

'Yes. In our shaft.'

'Look here, Master d.i.c.k, why have you kept all this so quiet? Why did you go down that mine in stead of running for help? Come, there is something at the back of all this; out with it!

d.i.c.k's lips closed in a familiar way, and their colourlessness indicated a stubborn defiance of all argument and persuasion.

'Did you want to steal the gold yourself?'

'No,' cried the boy angrily.

'Then you were afraid of something. By heaven! I have it. You rip! 'twas you gave warning to Ephraim Shine. You deserve six months.'

'Shame!' murmured Mrs. Hardy.

''Tisn't fair!' expostulated d.i.c.k's mother. d.i.c.k's lips were closed again, and he stared defiantly at the detective.

'Well, well,' groaned Downy, 'this is the most extraordinary thing in boys that I have ever encountered, but he's a ma.s.s of grit--for good or bad, all grit. Shake hands, d.i.c.k.'