“That’s right,” Jarnstrom agreed impassively. “He’s starting to work for us next week.”
Garret said, “Not unless you drill a deeper shaft than any you have now.”
“No?” The smelterman blinked again.
“He’s dead. So I can’t find out from him whether he was grabbing off those steel rails for your company, or not.”
Jarnstrom scratched his thin nose with a bony forefinger. “For us? Why? What would we do with them? We’ve got a pile of scrap out in the crusher room now — bits the electro-magnet picks out of ore on the conveyor belt. What would we want of more junk like that?”
Well, I’ve got you started talking, anyway, Garret thought. This question of old iron seems to be a sensitive spot. Maybe if I prod a little—
“You’re using a lot of scrap here now, aren’t you?”
“Not that I know of.” Nels’ voice was pitched a little higher.
Loomis began to swivel his chair from left to right in short, squeaky arcs. “I said you’d have to get a search warrant before you went through our plant, Mr. Garret, but I’ve changed my mind. Nels will show you around now, if you care to go along. Then you can see everything we’re doing.” He seemed pleased with his own suggestion.
Jarnstrom remonstrated with his superior. “I’m pretty busy with those repairs on the roasting furnace, Mr. Loomis.”
“Won’t take you long,” Loomis said smoothly, “to show Mr. Garret all he wants to see.”
“I don’t guarantee that,” Garret said. “But I’ll give it a quick once-over for a starter.”
Jarnstrom waited until they were out of the office building before he asked, “Any place special you wanted to inspect?”
“Want to see it all,” Garret answered.
They climbed steadily up the slope of the great hill, past the roaring converters, the ladle-cars teeming with molten metal, the reverberating furnaces with their spouting incandescence, the roasting shells tended by a Frankenstein monster in asbestos armor.
Garret managed to keep a few steps behind Jarnstrom, and to gauge the gaunt man’s movements the way a child plays the game of Hot and Cold. It was the same idea, Garret decided. Only it would be very hard to tell when he was getting warm. Because, if he judged the smelterman right, Jarnstrom was being very cagy about giving himself away.
It was in the flotation mill that the bony man made his false step. They had passed the long row of giant, canvas-covered drums revolving in the tanks bubbling with pine oil. To their left, a door opened into a shed. The smelterman ignored it, and moved on toward the crusher building. Garret paused at the open door, as if to inspect the shed.
Jarnstrom strode along steadily, glanced over his shoulder. Garret wasn’t looking toward the shed; he was watching the smelterman. Hastily the smelterman turned away. A bit too hastily, Gar-rat thought.
“What’s in the shed here, Jarnstrom?”
“Nothing but old machine parts. Pieces that got broke. Waiting to be welded.”
A few segments of drum-gears and stirrer-blades were sticking out from beneath stretched tarpaulins. Garret moved into the shed toward them. Jarnstrom didn’t follow, suggesting that the stuff under that canvas wasn’t worth looking at. Quickly Garret lifted a corner of one of the tarpaulins. The broken machine parts were there, all right. Also a score of tons of old auto bodies, rusty chains, once-galvanized roofing. And a dozen brown-crusted steel rails!
Garret dropped the canvas and moved swiftly back toward the mill. Jarnstrom was calling him from somewhere out of sight around the corner of the shed door.
“Telephone for you, Mr. Garret.”
The instrument was in a little alcove between two of the flotation tanks. The smelterman indicated the up-ended receiver; displayed his lack of interest by walking away as the detective said, “Garret talking.”
“This is Shirley Brann.”
“Well, well!” He hadn’t expected to hear from her, yet somehow he was not surprised. “How’d you know I was here at Consolidated?”
“Ken called in; he told me.” She sounded contrite. “I hadn’t meant to let you know I was going to look up that Yault accident, but I did, to satisfy my own concern about it. And you were right. The report certainly sounds queer.”
“Don’t tell me, let me guess.” She had trusted him enough to look up the records, at any rate. And she was fair enough to admit there might be something whacky about the accident. “Would Jig Darcy have been on the spot when that so-called cave-in occurred?”
“How’d you know that?”
“I didn’t know, pure guesswork. Not too hard, though. Darcy tried to put me out of the way because I was trying to find out something about stolen copper. It’s not unreasonable to suppose he might have been mixed up in the death of another guy who happened to learn something about the same business. Darcy could get around the mine anywhere he wanted to, being in charge of shoring up the shafts. He would know how to knock out a few timbers so as to make it look like a cave-in, too.”
“If you’re that smart” — there was admiration in her tone — “perhaps you’ve figured out that someone notified the hospital Harve Yault’s death wasn’t an accident.”
“No. The hospital authorities told me no one had been to see him there.”
“They were right. She didn’t actually call at the hospital. She phoned, asking them if Yault had regained consciousness. When they said he hadn’t, she swore a blue streak and accused them of concealing an attack on him.”
“Who is ‘she’?”
“They don’t know.”
“This is where I came in then.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “I did a little digging, as you suggested.”
“Hit pay dirt?”
“Hard to say. But in Yault’s pension compensation papers, I found the name of a girl.”
“Ah!”
“The queerest name you ever heard in your life!”
“What?”
“Millie Hippo!”
“Can’t be a name, must be a description. Who is the lady?”
“I’m not sure,” Shirley laughed, “but from her address, I’d say she’s not my idea of a lady.”
“What’s the address?”
“The Big Red Rooster. It’s kind of a... well, a cheap joint.”
“Looks like one. Where are Yault’s papers?”
“I... I have them, but I’m not supposed to let anyone see—”
“Don’t fall down on me now, when you’re so close to making a score — Shirley.”
There was a little pause. “What do you want me to do?”
“Bring the records to me.”
“At Consolidated? They wouldn’t let me in the office!”
“No. To the Big Red Rooster.”
“Oh, I couldn’t go—”
“Right, pronto! No time to waste!”
“All right.” Her voice was faint on the wire. “I’ll be there.”
He hung up. Jarnstrom was a dozen yards down the mill, bending over something on the floor. Garret went toward him.
There was a sudden singing as of strong wind through telegraph wires. Garret looked up. A yard-wide length of leather belting slipped off its pulley on one of the revolving tank drums. The loosened loop snaked toward Garret like a mad boa-constrictor.
He flung himself sidewise and crashed into a guard screen. The deadly loop twisted toward him. He dropped to the floor. Hard leather, traveling at a mile a minute, slapped savagely against his head. It sent him rolling over and over on the floor, half stunned. But the next instant it had jerked away, kinked into a monstrous knot, and was flailing violently at a window yards distant. Glass shattered. Men yelled frantically. Someone pulled a lever, and the belt ceased its terrible threshing.