Robert Welles Ritchie

“ Somewhere in the cindered heart of John Blake a little spark of humor flickered up. Perhaps even just a touch of humanity livened that spark. How far a few dollars invested in a junk clothing shop would go in dressing a stage for an old play boy out of an elevator.
Before Gold City was reached Blake undertook final rehearsal of the genteel fraud he hoped to perpetrate. “Now remember, Pete, you are Mr, Hewes of New York, who’s hiring me to make a report on old Lewis’ mine. Nobody from New York would look like you, but you look like what Lewis would expect to come out of New York. ”

“ Yet one cannot fall thirty feet down a mine shaft and still remain undisputed master of one’s destiny. Limitations entail.
So Lady Fate sought and found her orphan child and, veiling prankish eyes with her sleeve, began to work on him. Came to Peter’s elevator, resting on the ground floor, one John Blake, mining engineer and scout for the greatest metals syndicate in America. A nice gentle trader in mining prospects, this John Blake, with the kind heart of a shark and all the scruples of a whale swallowing a kindergarten class of weakfish. ”

“ If a New York capitalist in a silk hat and Prince Albert possessed any circus virtue in the eyes of Brigham City, then a worried New York capitalist would be all the more distinguished.
He tried out his double barrelled swank on the hotel lobby just at the dinner rush hour when all the agile dollar chasers of the boom town were trooping to the dining room. Came to him the hotel manager, who thought he knew a big fish when he saw one. “Nothing wrong with your service, Mr. Hewes?” ”

“ He, Peter Hewes, one-time prospector and connoisseur of salted mines, farer through waste places, child of the sun, to be sitting on a dinky stool and saying, “Going up—going down,” from eight to six! ”

“ Perhaps Blake felt keen regret that the subterfuge centering about the exalted Pete Hewes was to yield nothing but a barren report. He was not a man given to killing fleas with a pile-driver,
A dusty ride through sagebrush in a livery rig brought the three to the fenced and padlocked Sadie Queen. Old Lewis was trembling with suppressed excitement when he let them through the gate of the stockade. Once again he complained that he’d been too hasty in accepting an option on a million dollar basis.
“Why, gents,” he whined, “I got the straightest tunnel in all Nevada. Openin’ up is all done. ”

“ A million dollars, an’ no expert sets his foot in my tunnel ’thout I gets first a hundred thousand, cash money in hand for an option.”
“A hundred thousand’s a lot of money to be packin’ ’round, Mr. Lewis,” Pete ventured at the cue to his rôle, then stole a side glance at Blake and read encouragement—and command. Then he threw in the bit about the difficulty in getting his yacht across the mountains to Nevada.
Blake interrupted. “I need not tell you my principal is a very rich man. But men of his class invest their surplus in sound securities, you understand. ”