Clarke said, “I’ll have a cup of tea, Nell, and that’s all. You folks go ahead and eat, and I’ll talk while you’re eating.”
Della Street said, “I’m so hungry I could eat the enamel right off the plate. I hope you don’t mind an unladylike exhibition of hunger.”
“Why are you worried about not attending the meeting?” Mason pressed for an answer. “And what about the shooting?”
“The shooting is a mystery. Some prowler was in the yard. He shot twice at Miss Starler when she directed the beam of a flashlight toward him — the bullets struck the upper window, only about three inches apart, perhaps two feet above her head. The shots wakened me and I grabbed my old forty-five and ran out into the moonlight. He was down by the gate then. He took a shot at me, and I fired at the flash of his gun. Didn’t hit him, but must have come close. This morning I found where my bullet had struck the wall, right by the lower gate — a gate that’s always kept locked, by the way.”
“And the poisoning?” Mason asked.
“Someone put arsenic in the saltcellar Mrs. Bradisson and her son use. A prompt diagnosis enabled the doctor to pull them through. We have Velma Starler to thank for that.”
“All right,” Mason said with a smile. “Now we’ll come back to the original question. Why are you afraid not to attend that meeting?”
“Because... well, I... Mason, I’m going to tell you something I haven’t told any other living soul, although I think Salty Bowers suspects it.”
“Want me to leave?” Nell Sims asked.
“No. Stick around, Nell, I know I can trust you.”
“Go ahead,” Mason said, passing the rabbit to Della Street and then filling his own plate.
“Know anything about any of the famous lost mines of California?” Clarke asked.
“Only a little.”
“Ever hear of the Goler Placer Diggings?”
Mason, his mouth full of rabbit, shook his head.
“Lost mines,” Nell Sims interpolated. “Lots of ’em in the desert.”
Clarke put sugar in his tea, stirred the beverage, took a little blue paper-covered book from his coat pocket.
“What’s that?” Mason asked.
“The Miners’ Guide, compiled by Horace J. West. West collected a lot of information about the famous lost mines of California. This book was published in 1929. You’ll find there are several versions of the famous lost mines — some of them sound plausible, some of them won’t hold water. West went out and examined records, talked with old-time miners, compiled his history some twenty years ago, and made it as accurate as was possible.”
“All right,” Mason said. “What about the Goler Lost Mine?”
“Around 1886,” Clarke said, “if we take West’s account, three men who had been prospecting in the Panamint Range that borders Death Valley emerged from a pass in the Panamints and headed toward San Bernardino. These men were well mounted on good horses, had ample packs and ten-gallon water canteens. And they rode out into the desert filled with confidence.
“About the second day, there was a dispute as to the best way to go, and the dispute warmed up into a pretty good quarrel. Frank Goler, one of the party, thought they were heading too far to the south and west. He claimed they should keep on a more easterly course. After the quarrel, he pulled away from the others and headed pretty much east. No one knows what happened to the other two. They may have been lost in the desert. They may have come through to some destination. They may even have reached San Bernardino. So far as history is concerned, they just disappeared.”
Nell Sims said briefly, “Two men get along. Three fight.”
Della Street, her eyes shining with interest, paused in her eating, watching Banning Clarke. Perry Mason kept on eating rabbit.
“Want your tea now?” Nell Sims asked.
“Please,” Mason said.
As she poured tea into their cups, Banning Clarke went on, “By noon two days later, Goler, pretty well spent and badly frightened, reached some low hills that sprawled out exactly in his path. He crossed them, and on the far side discovered a canyon that actually had vegetation and a little stream of water — and he reached it just in time. He was almost delirious. He flung himself down on the bank of the stream and started drinking, soaking up the water in the shade cast by a big cottonwood that was directly behind him. While he was drinking, a little wind stirred the branches of the cottonwood and let a shaft of sunlight through that struck directly on something yellow in the stream just a few inches beyond Goler’s face.
“Goler finished drinking, plunged his arm into the stream and picked up the yellow object. It was a big gold nugget, weighing several ounces. There were quite a few more lying near it on a bedrock formation in the stream. Goler picked these nuggets up and shoved them inside his shirt.”
“I’d have got a sackful,” Nell Sims said.
“Struck it rich, eh?” Mason asked.
“Struck it rich all right,” Clarke said. “But until you’ve been out in the desert you haven’t any idea what you’re up against when you’re at the mercy of the bleak, barren waste. Goler had gold, but he couldn’t eat gold and he couldn’t drink gold. He was a long way from civilization. His horse was tired and hungry. He himself was weak from lack of food; and suddenly the realization dawned on him that his gold wasn’t worth anything whatever except in civilization. Out in the desert it was merely that much extra weight for Goler’s tired horse to pack. The several gold nuggets Goler had picked up would actually lessen his chances of getting through to civilization.
“With that realization, Goler had a touch of panic. He decided to compensate for the extra weight of gold by lessening his weight as much as possible. He unbelted his six-shooter, tossed it into the brush, and spurred his horse to action. As so frequently happens with people when they’re fatigued, he didn’t pay too much attention to his exact location. What’s more, he’d been lost — he was still lost — and that does strange things to a man’s mind.
“He rode on down this canyon, then came out to more level country and saw what apparently had been the place where a big lake had evaporated and left a smooth, dry plain. Then was when he began to take his bearings. He saw that Mt. San Antonio was just about due west — we call it Old Baldy now — and that was his first landmark. There was a little mining town at the foot of an arrowhead mountain in the general direction of that peak. Goler headed for that town.
“He reached Arrowhead, and fell sick. The nuggets rubbing inside his shirt had chafed his skin raw, the wounds had become infected. His resistance to infection was low, and he lay in bed for three weeks before he could even think of getting started back to locate his claim. Three weeks can be a long time when your mind keeps constantly dwelling on one subject. After a while, your memory begins to play tricks on you.”
“Certainly does,” Nell Sims said, throwing the comment over her shoulder as she took more rabbit from the oven.
Clarke went on. “Well, naturally, he didn’t go alone. A lot of prospectors trailed along behind, hoping to locate claims of their own in a new bonanza. The party straggled around the desert for quite some spell. Then the prospectors got disgusted and began to drift back. It was all too plain to them that Goler, somewhere, somehow, had lost his bearings, and was wandering blind.
“Goler himself came back after about a month, rested up, got more provisions and started out again. He never did get back to that canyon — couldn’t even locate the range of those hills.
“Now then, that’s pretty well authenticated history. Most of it is right here in West’s book. Some of it I’ve gleaned from other sources — about the gun, for instance. I learned that from finding a letter Goler wrote. It’s in a rare collection in a library in Pasadena.”