Tommy shook his head. The man stepped aside and Tommy entered the house. Inside, he shot a quick glance around. There seemed to be only one room to the place, for a bed was in one corner, a gasoline stove in another and beside it a refrigerator. A clean, bare table stood in the middle of the room and at one side of the room was another on which reposed what seemed to be an exceedingly large radio set. Food was cooking on the gasoline stove.
The old man followed Tommy into the room and closed the door, locking the dog outside.
“Sit down, pardner,” he said. “I imagine you’re hungry.”
“I’m starving.”
“You won’t be long, ’cause that stew’s been ready for the last ten minutes. I just didn’t feel like eating before. By the way, my name’s Coggeshall. I’m the caretaker here.”
“Caretaker?”
“Yes. This is the Four Square Gold Mine, you know.”
Tommy blinked. “I didn’t see any mine.”
The caretaker chuckled. “ ’Course not. It’s a hole in the ground — a shaft running into the side of the mountain. But if it were daylight you’d see the powerhouse and the other buildings, off to the right. The mine hasn’t been in operation since ’42, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Government shut down all gold mines during the war and the Four Square hasn’t reopened yet.”
“Not worth while, eh?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. There’s a million and a half come out of this mine. But it takes money to dig out gold and I guess the Four Square stockholders haven’t kicked through with enough assessment money to start operations again. Meanwhile, I’m looking after things.”
“You’re here all alone?”
“And how! You’re the first person’s been up here in five months!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Coggeshall bustled off to the stove, examined his stew and shut off the flame under it. He got dishes from a cupboard and set the table. Tommy, meanwhile, seated himself on a straight-backed chair and watched the caretaker.
Finally the food was on the table and Coggeshall brought up a stool. “Shall we eat?” he asked.
Tommy threw his briefcase onto Coggeshall’s bed and pulled up his chair. Coggeshall handed him the bowl of stew. “Help yourself. I’m not hungry myself. Don’t move around enough to work up an appetite. Bet you haven’t eaten all day.”
“I haven’t,” said Tommy and helped himself to a generous portion of the stew.
He ate it while Coggeshall toyed with one-fourth the amount and then urged Tommy to eat what was left in the bowl. When they were finished eating, the caretaker filled a pipe and pushed back his chair.
“Seven-thirty,” he said. “Time for my chess game.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t play the game.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean with you.” Coggeshall pointed his pipestem at the radio. “I play with a sheepherder up in Montana, every Saturday night... that’s a short wave radio.”
“An amateur sending and receiving set?”
Coggeshall nodded. “A rather good one, too. I built it myself, when I first came up here in ’42. Don’t know what I’d have done without it.” He tapped his chest. “The old ticker’s bad, you know. That’s why I’ve taken this job up here. No work, no excitement.” He smiled. “Only the radio — and that’s excitement enough.”
Tommy stared at the radio set. “Do you listen to commercial broadcasts with that set?”
“Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, I had the seven o’clock news on when Beowulf started barking at you.” He puffed rapidly on his pipe for a moment, then took it from his mouth. “You’re Tommy Dancer I imagine.”
“Who?” Tommy asked, shocked.
“Tommy Dancer. There was quite a lot about you on the radio. Your description... the briefcase. You’ve got the money in there, I suppose.”
Tommy took Kraft’s revolver from his pocket. Coggeshall looked at it and shook his head. “You won’t need that — not here. I’ve got six months to live, perhaps a year, if I don’t have any excitement. My wants are all supplied and a thousand dollars reward money doesn’t interest me. Nor, for that matter, does what you have in that briefcase.”
“Yet you listened pretty carefully to what they said on the radio about — about me.”
“Oh, yes. You see, they told about your encounter with the police down at Palmdale.” Coggeshall gave Tommy an odd expression. “You know, of course, that Palmdale is the nearest town to this place.”
“No,” said Tommy, “I hadn’t known. How far is it from here?”
“Eight miles.”
“Eight miles!” cried Tommy. “I must have driven fifty.”
“In a roundabout sort of way, no doubt. The side roads in these hills are deceptive. I understand you had trouble with the water pump at Littleneck, so you probably abandoned the car somewhere.”
Tommy nodded. He got up and walked to the radio.
“Is there any news on at seven-thirty?”
“Why, yes, I imagine so, although it’s almost ten minutes past the half hour now and they’re probably through with, ah, the news about you. They’ve been talking about you at the beginning of the newscasts.” He cleared his throat. “Is there anything special you wanted to know?”
“I want to know how much they know.”
“Quite a lot. You left a trail of silver dollars in Los Angeles and you bought a Buick car. You stopped at the scene of an accident near Palmdale and the police became suspicious and tried to question you. You got away from them and—”
“That’s enough,” snapped Tommy. He scowled at the radio. “They’re positive I killed Earl Faraday?”
“...And a man named Willis Trent!”
Gasping, Tommy whirled. “Trent! He’s dead?”
“The Los Angeles police found his body in the Hollywood Hills.”
“And they think I killed him?”
“They, ah, seem quite certain about it.”
Tommy looked steadily into the elderly caretaker’s eyes. “What do you think?”
“I’m not a policeman.”
“I wish you had a telephone,” said Tommy. “I’d let you know who killed Faraday — and Trent.”
“You want to call the police?”
“No, I want to call the murderer... a man named Paul deCamp.”
“Oh, the man whose money...” Coggeshall’s eyes went to the briefcase on the bed. He frowned. “If you think calling him on the phone would help you in any way, I might be able to put through a call...”
“How? I don’t see any phone here.”
“There isn’t, but I think I could put through a phone call with the radio.”
“How?”
“By contacting an amateur in Los Angeles who has a telephone hookup.”
Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “You call someone on this radio who has a phone and he connects his phone to the radio, is that the idea?”
“Yes. He would get your party on the phone and you could carry on a conversation with him. The only bad feature is that it would not be a private conversation.”
“I don’t care about that, because any amateur listening in, wouldn’t know where the call came from.”
“Oh, but they would. You see, it’s necessary to give your call letters — and there’s your kilocycle band, of course.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Tommy. “I know a little about amateur radio, from the army, but I’m not an expert. You broadcast on a certain wave length and the party you contact broadcasts on his wave length. But what’s to prevent you from going off your wave length...?”
“Because that would be illegal...” Coggeshall, looking at Tommy’s face, suddenly bit his lip. “I see what you mean.”