They exchanged glances and head shakes.
“There’s just a chance,” Beaton said, “we might find something there.”
Drake asked, “How about flashlights? Do we have plenty? I only have one, and—”
“I carry extra batteries and an extra bulb for mine,” Beaton said. “Being out in the mountains at night as much as I am, I can’t afford to take chances... How about it, are we all going?”
Harley Raymand was the only one who hesitated; then, as he reached for the knob on the gasoline lantern, he smiled and said dryly, “It looks as though we’re all going.”
Chapter 16
The little group strung out along the mountain trail. Flashlights, sending forth beams of light, looked like some weird procession of fireflies twisting a tortuous way through the night.
Rodney Beaton in the lead said, “Here’s the place, Mr. Mason.”
Mason inspected the muddy stretch in the trail.
Beaton went on to state, “This peculiar red clay came from the inside of the tunnel. It was brought out here and dumped when the tunnel was being excavated. There’s a seepage of water that trickles down from the mouth of the tunnel. It keeps this patch of clay moist.”
“Can you tell anything about these tracks?” Mason asked.
“Not much. You can see my tracks and Miss Strague’s. Here are some deer tracks, and here’s where a coyote has crossed over, but there are a lot of older tracks in the trail. Tracks made prior to the time Miss Strague and I came over it.”
“Let’s take a look inside the tunnel,” Mason suggested.
They climbed a sharp incline to the mouth of the old tunnel.
“Know how deep this goes?” Mason asked.
“Only a couple of hundred feet,” Beaton said. “They drifted in along a vein, and then lost their vein.”
The inside of the tunnel was filled with musty, lifeless air. The smell of earth and rock had permeated the atmosphere.
“Gives me the creeps,” Myrna Payson said. “I never could stand the inside of a tunnel. If it’s all the same with you, I think I’ll wait outside.”
“I’ll keep you company,” Lola Strague said. “I feel somewhat the same about tunnels.”
Burt Strague hesitated for a moment as though trying to find some excuse to stay with them, but Lola said sharply, “Go on in, Burt. Stay with the men.”
Rodney Beaton, Burt Strague, Harley Raymand, Paul Drake and Perry Mason entered, walked to the far end of the tunnel. It was Rodney Beaton’s flashlight that showed the significant excavation at the end.
“Looks as though someone had been getting ready to bury something here,” Beaton said, indicating a shallow hole in the loose rock fragments which marked the end of the tunnel.
“Or,” Mason said, “as though something had been buried and then dug up again.”
Beaton became thoughtfully silent.
Drake glanced quickly at Perry Mason.
Mason swung his flashlight around the face of the tunnel. “Don’t see any shovel here,” he said.
All the flashlights explored the face of the tunnel.
“That’s right,” Burt Strague said, “there isn’t any shovel.”
“What’s more,” Mason pointed out, “this excavation wasn’t made with an ordinary shovel. It was made with a garden spade with a six-and-a-half- or seven-and-a-half-inch blade... You can see an imprint here of the whole blade.”
Beaton bent forward. “Yes,” he said, “and—”
Mason touched his shoulder. “I think,” he announced, “we’ll leave this bit of evidence just the way it is. Come on out — and let’s try to keep from touching anything.”
They walked silently out of the tunnel, explained the situation to Lola Strague and Myrna Payson.
Mason said, “I’d like to take a look at this lower trail that goes down by Beaton’s cabin... I take it that this mining tunnel is in Kern County.”
“Oh yes,” Beaton said. “It’s well over the line.”
“About how far?” Mason asked.
“Oh, I’d say a good half mile. Why? Would it make any difference?”
“It might,” Mason conceded enigmatically.
Beaton said, “I’d better lead the way from here on. I reset the camera that caught the picture of Burt Strague on the trail. And if you don’t mind, we’ll circle around when we come to that point.”
Beaton went first down the trail, walking with long swinging strides, moving with an easy rhythm that covered ground rapidly.
After almost three hundred yards of walking down a good trail, Beaton slowed his pace, said, “The camera’s right ahead. There it is.”
His flashlight played on a camera set on a tripod, a synchronized flashbulb attached to one side of the shutter.
“How is that tripped?” Mason asked.
“I use a small silk thread stretched across the trail,” Beaton said.
“And I blundered right through it,” Burt Strague observed.
“Yes, here are your tracks,” Raymand said, “—and you certainly were moving right along.”
He indicated the tracks of Burt Strague’s distinctive cowboy boots, tracks swinging along with the even regularity of a man hurrying along a mountain trail.
Burt Strague said impulsively, “I was worried about Sis... I guess I acted a little foolish tonight, Rod. Forgive me, will you?”
Beaton’s big hand shot out and clasped Burt Strague’s. “Forget it. Your sister’s rather a precious article, and I don’t blame you for wanting to keep an eye on her.”
Chapter 17
Swiftly moving developments today characterized the Jack Hardisty murder case as one of the most baffling that has ever confronted local authorities.
Late yesterday afternoon, it was pointed out by the sheriff’s office that the buried clock which Harley Raymand, an Army man invalided home, claims to have discovered near the scene of the murder, was set to what is known as sidereal, or star time.
Astronomers state that sidereal time is distinctly different from civil time, gaining a whole twenty-four hours during the course of a year. If, therefore, as now seems probable, the murderer of Jack Hardisty chose a moment for perpetrating his crime which would be under the most auspicious stellar influences, authorities feel they have a very definite clue.
The Bugle has commissioned one of the leading astrologers to cast the horoscope of Jack Hardisty. Jack Hardisty was born on July 3rd, which according to astrologists, makes him a ‘Cancer,’ and astrologists point out that persons born under the sign of Cancer are divided into two classes — the active and the passive. They are thin-skinned, hypersensitive, and suffer deeply from wrongs, real or fancied. They are at times irrational in their emotions, and subject to ill health.
With recent developments indicating that the crime may have been committed either in Kern County, or so near the border of Los Angeles and Kern Counties that either county may have jurisdiction, the district attorney of Kern County is launching an independent investigation...
Chapter 18