“Why?” had been about the third question I asked when I started the investigation.
The answer was simple enough. Herbert Cryder was “broke.” One cannot go on forever playing practical jokes which involve such expenses as a pair of elephant tusks and the like indefinitely unless one is a multimillionare. And this our young friend was not. He had inherited about $150,000 from his father and apparently started out to spend it on a million dollar scale. Just before he vanished on the trip that preceded the gold mine story, he was known to be playing heavily in the market and the result had evidently been disastrous. He had admitted as much — talked about it quite openly, in fact — and the news was common gossip.
There was a further motive which Jedidiah explained to me at length and which sounded perfectly logical after I had induced him to talk. He did not want to tell me anything about it at first, saying it was purely a family matter.
It seemed that Cryder was in line for another fortune — a big one this time, amounting to about three-quarters of a million. This was the estate of a childless old uncle of whom he had once been the favorite but in whose “black book” his escapades had enrolled him time and again. If Cryder could tide matters over until the death of this uncle, Quinot demonstrated, and at the same time appear to have settled down as a solid business man, he would be fixed for life. It all sounded simple enough to me. The old uncle was apparently already on his death bed, with stocks of the Hectopus in his vaults, and all Cryder had to guard against was a speedy exposure.
II
To those of us who knew these facts it was plain that behind his laughing mask young Cryder was nothing less than a desperate adventurer, staking his wits and his nerve against time and fate in a game for the fortune of old Ezekiel Cryder.
It had been about a year, I learned, since Cryder had appeared at home in his Wild West outfit and mysteriously whispered about gold. At first his friends had merely laughed among themselves at what they called “Herb’s latest,” but finally Cryder had begun to scatter a few nuggets around as souvenir gifts in the form of scarf pins, cuff links and one thing and another, and he even tried to pay for a round of drinks out of a “poke” of gold dust. Raised quite a row, it seems, because they didn’t have gold scales at the cashier’s desk to weigh it, like they do in a new mining camp.
Pretty soon his friends were demanding to buy shares in the mine. Cryder had laughed at them, just like he laughed at me, but they kept at him and persuaded him — as they thought — to form a company and issue stock. He sold it cheap enough — ten dollars for a $100 share — but apparently he had sold quite a lot — nobody knew then just how much.
He had pretended that he wanted to keep it a close corporation — so that he could have full control himself, he said — and wouldn’t sell to anyone except close friends and relatives. Old Ezekiel bought quite a block and even Jedidiah bought some. He had an honest young lawyer as “general counsel,” and almost at the start declared a dividend of ten per cent.
The stock certificates were beautifully engraved and the prospectus was a work of art. I read it through three times before I discovered that it was all generalities and that nowhere in it was the mine definitely located. It was some place that the book described as the “El Dorado of the Munificent West,” and that’s no place to buy a railroad ticket to.
It was after the dividend that he hired Garrity and the ten extra stenographers and opened the mahogany offices. Several of his friends got pinched in the market about that time and sold their stock to strangers. These began calling for information and reports and things, and young Cryder did not laugh as much as he used to, folks said. Something was really worrying him. In another week Jedidiah Quinot, among others, became suspicious and he would have carried the tale to old Ezekiel had not the physicians forbidden him to see the sick man. As a result of this, he had appealed to the Department and I was put on the case.
Of course I could have gone straight to Cryder, showed my credentials and demanded his books, the location of the mine and all the rest of the information I wanted, but Cryder was supposedly a citizen of some importance in that community — no common crook — and besides that there kept buzzing in the back of my mind a lingering suspicion of Jedidiah Quinot, the chief complainant in the case. While he seemed to be all broken up over the matter, nevertheless I had found out that in case old Ezekiel Cryder disinherited his nephew, his fortune would go to Quinot’s son.
So, instead of declaring myself to Herbert Cryder, I called on his “general manager,” Mr. Richard Garrity. Dick was not exactly pleased to see me when I ran across him in the lobby of his hotel, but he was quite willing to renew our acquaintance and talk at length. Garrity had been wondering for some time why I did not send him to the penitentiary and seemed to think it was because I had use for him outside. The fact was I did not have the evidence but he thought I had and I was willing to let him hold that belief. It certainly helped in this case.
“Where’s the mine?” echoed Garrity in response to my first pointed question. “There isn’t any mine. I don’t sabe the game myself and I don’t ask too many questions but I know that. Why, I wrote that prospectus myself and it’s a dandy, if I do say it. I’m drawing down good money as a coach for the young man because he’s never even seen a gold mine. Outside of that he don’t need any help from me. Why, Guernsey, this Cryder is such a magnificent liar that he makes me ashamed of myself. Sometimes when he’s talking for effect I can just see that old Hectopus mine, with men shoveling out gold, big mountains all around and the thriving city that’s springing up there in the wilderness. Honest, it is a pretty picture that forms while he’s talking.”
“But the samples,” I asked. “Where does he get his samples — his nuggets and gold dust, and so on?”
“Oh, those things,” Garrity answered with a laugh. “Why, he bought those nugget pins and cuff buttons in Seattle. They’re quite common out there — made out of Alaskan gold. I bought the gold dust right here in town, and to make it look proper I sent West for some black sand that the gold is usually found in a placer diggings. That’s easy enough to find but there isn’t usually more than a trace of gold in it. All I did was mix some dust and small nuggets in with the sand and we had the raw product ‘fresh from the Hectopus,’ as Cryder says.
“It’s been funny, Guernsey,” he concluded. “It’s been good fun and good pay too, but I suppose it’s all over now. Say, isn’t there any chance to save the young fellow from going to the pen? He’s a helluva good scout.”
Garrity really seemed to be in earnest about this end of the matter and I was puzzled. Sentiment was a new quality in Dick.
“But why did he do it?” I asked. “What’s behind it all?”
“Broke, they say,” said Garrity. “But damned if I know really what it is all about. He seems to have plenty of money. That dividend was his own idea, and he paid out over $10,000 in cash on it without turning a hair. For a guy who’s broke, he’s about the nerviest gambler I’ve ever struck because we did not need to pay that dividend a-tall. ‘I just want to show them how good this mine really is,’ he says to me, with a twinkle in his eye. And all I could do was just set there and stare at him with my mouth open.
“Why, if this was my deal, Guernsey, and I had this guy for a ‘dummy’ president, I could clean up a hundred thousand here in a month and beat it for Russia or Bones Airs or some place where even you couldn’t get me. But this Cryder fellow — why, he seems to get all het up every time anybody tries to buy some stock and spends more time telling the suckers he’s already landed what a great mine it is, than he does figuring out where the money for the next dividend is coming from.”