The 38th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK

by Chester S. Geier

  Stacey nodded thoughtfully. “As regards Devore, it’s clear enough how he got his information. He was one of a number of people who heard the news about the Golden Dream and the map that Dad gave out while delirious. We already know Devore must be the leader of the gang that is holding your father prisoner. Devore apparently forced your father to tell what happened to the map, learning it had been sent to us. Then Devore got our addresses, either from your father or from old letters which we had written.” Stacey puffed in silence a moment. “How long did you succeed in keeping Devore stalled off?”

  “I’m supposed to give him my decision about the map in the morning,” Norma answered.

  “I’d been hoping for more time than that,” Stacey said, in dismay. “The only way to beat Devore is to file a claim to the Golden Dream. That’s impossible without my half of the map, but Devore probably thinks a train finished me by now, and with enough time I could have flown to Grubstake, to find Chinook. He knows the location of the vein, and friends of his would have told me where he was hiding. Then I could have tried to find your father. He’s most likely being held prisoner somewhere near Grubstake.”

  Norma said slowly, “I could try to stall Devore off a while longer. The drawback is that he now has your half of the map and would refuse to wait. I couldn’t do anything that would endanger my father’s life.”

  Stacey stared morosely into space, gnawing at the;; of his pipe. The situation was hopeless. If only he hadn’t lost his portion of the map—Abruptly Stacey slapped his knee, face brightening.

  “I’ve got it!” he told Norma. “Listen. Devore wants your map half. There’s no way we can stall him off without risking the chance that your father will be killed. All right, we’ll give him what he wants—but not exactly. Devore doesn’t know what your half of the map looks like. We could give him a faked map—a map showing a false location for the Golden Dream—and he’d never know the difference. And that’s just what we’ll do! It’ll put your father out of danger for the time being, and before Devore finds out he’s been tricked, I’ll have found Chinook and filed a claim.”

  Norma was smiling eagerly, but in another moment she sobered. “The faked map will have to pass a close inspection. Devore is certain to compare it with your half.”

  “We’ll get around that,” Stacey said with assurance. “We’ll use paper and ink as nearly like that of the original as can possibly be found. And we’ll see that it’s properly aged by soiling and creasing.”

  Norma snapped her fingers. “There’s an all-night drugstore down the street. It has a large stationery department, but if we can’t find exactly what we want, the manager will get it for us. Or for me, rather.” Norma grinned wryly. “Just one of my many admirers.”

  “We’ll get started at once,” Stacey said. “When we’re finished with the map, I’ll check in at a hotel and get some sleep. In the morning I’ll take a plane to Juneau. From there, I’ll be able to get another to take me to Grubstake.”

  “You don’t seem to be including me in your plans,” Norma pointed out. “You’d better—because I’m going along.”

  Stacey objected, pointing out the dangers that lay ahead. But the girl remained adamant. Finally Stacey gave in. Somehow it wasn’t hard to do.

  CHAPTER III

  Morning sunlight was warm on Stacey’s face, as he stood watching the entrance to Norma Reddick’s apartment hotel from a deeply recessed doorway on the same side of the street, but a safe distance away. He puffed impatiently at his pipe and wondered how much longer it would be before Devore and Buck came out. Almost fifteen minutes had passed since the two had gone into the building.

  Stacey’s thoughts became worried. Could something have gone wrong? Had Devore discovered at the very outset that Norma’s map half had been faked?

  The possibility was one that Stacey couldn’t avoid, despite the fact that he and Norma had been able to secure materials closely similar to those used in the original map, and that Stacey had worked into the small hours of the morning over the imitation. It had taken longer than Stacey had expected. There had been no time for sleep afterward. Stacey had checked in at a hotel, but only long enough to take a cold shower and change his clothes. Then he’d had breakfast and made air reservations to Juneau. Restlessness and a nagging anxiety had made him decide to be present near Norma’s apartment hotel when Devore arrived with Buck to get Norma’s map half. He had been watching since the two appeared and entered the building.

  While waiting, Stacey had toyed with the idea of calling the police to arrest Devore and Buck, and even of jumping the two alone, when they emerged. He had realized, however, that he could do nothing while Devore held Warren Reddick in his power. To take any sort of action against Devore at this point would only doom Norma’s father. Besides, Stacey saw his big advantage lay in keeping himself out of the picture for the time being. As long as Devore thought him out of the way, he would be able to wage a campaign that would take Devore by surprise right on his home grounds, without running the risk that innocent persons would suffer.

  Peering from his doorway vantage point, Stacey stiffened as he saw two men leave the apartment hotel. There was no mistaking the pair. Devore and Buck.

  They seemed highly elated. Stacey heard Devore laugh. Then the two crossed the sidewalk and entered a car parked at the curb. The machine looked like one rented from a drive-yourself agency.

  The car pulled away from the curb and sped off in the opposite direction. Stacey watched it dwindle in the distance and finally disappear into an intersecting street. He felt certain that Devore wouldn’t return. Leaving the doorway, he strode toward the apartment hotel.

  Norma was busy packing when Stacey arrived. She grinned excitedly. “It worked like a charm!” she reported. “Devore swallowed that fake map hook, line, and sinker. He didn’t examine it very closely, evidently sure that I’d be too afraid to trick him.”

  “I was starting to get worried,” Stacey admitted. “He was up here so long that I thought he’d found out what we were up to.”

  Norma made a face. “Devore was giving me a song and dance about how worried he was over father, and how sorry he felt that the gang in Alaska should force me to give up the map this way. He insisted that he was father’s friend, and that nothing was too good for the daughter of a friend of his. He was so concerned about my future that he offered me a job.”

  “A job!” Stacey snorted. “Doing what? Cracking safes and cutting throats?”

  “Private secretary. It seems Devore operates a few mines around Grubstake himself. He named a salary too large for honorable intentions, and every time I refused, he raised it. Finally, though, he accepted the idea that I wasn’t interested in working for him at any price, and left.”

  Stacey was thoughtful. “If Devore was sincere about the job, that means your father doesn’t know Devore is responsible for his being kept prisoner. Thus when your father is released, Devore will be in the clear. He can file a claim to the Golden Dream, and nobody can prove anything. Without the map, neither we nor your father could tell if it was the Golden Dream or any one of a dozen still undiscovered veins of gold.”

  Norma resumed packing, while Stacey used the phone to send for a cab. When the girl had finished and readied herself for leaving, they talked while waiting for the cab to arrive. Typical small-talk that did much to relieve the nerve-gnawing tension which both felt.

  Stacey learned that Norma had been working as a fashion designer for a large exclusive Seattle dress shop. Almost shyly, she revealed her plans for opening a small shop of her own, to sell clothes which she had designed. Finding the conversational gambit in his hands at one point, Stacey told the girl that he had been taking a postgraduate course in chemistry at a university in Los Angeles, studies that had been interrupted by two years of war duty with a chemical warfare division in Europe.

  No time at all seemed to have elapsed, when the clerk
downstairs rang to notify that their cab was waiting. Stacey took the girl’s bags, and they left the room. He’d already had his own luggage sent to the airport.

  Stacey didn’t overlook the possibility that Devore and Buck, obviously on the way to Grubstake also, might take the same plane on which he and Norma had booked passage. At the airport, he gave the cab driver a bill, with orders to check the passenger list on the pretext that he was trying to locate a fare who, while enrooted to the airport earlier, had left a wallet in his cab. The driver was also to tour the terminal building looking for Devore and Buck on the basis of descriptions which Stacey supplied. Stacey realized that Devore and Buck might travel under false names.

  The cabbie found no trace of the two, however. Stacey remained cautious, nevertheless, until the plane bearing Norma and himself finally took off for Juneau.

  The trip was uneventful. Yet, to Stacey, it had all the glamor of a flight to the Moon. How much of this mood was due to Norma’s presence, he didn’t dare guess. The girl was intelligent, humorous, fascinating to talk to. He found that they had an astonishingly large number of outlooks and ideals in common.

  Stacey was startled when the stewardess announced that they were shortly to land in Juneau. It seemed impossible that the trip could have been made so soon.

  Immediately after landing, Stacey made inquiries at the air terminal about the next flight to Fairbanks. A plane was due to leave in twenty minutes. Stacey was elated. It meant that no time would be lost. He made the necessary arrangements for passage, and then, after a quick meal in a restaurant adjoining the terminal, he and Norma were once more in the air.

  At Fairbanks, Stacey found that a train on the Alaska Railroad would take them to Grubstake. The train was the last that day from Seward, and would arrive in two hours. Stacey didn’t mind the wait. With Norma time had little if any meaning, and he was certain that he had a more than sufficiently large lead on Devore and Buck.

  Stacey bought tickets, and then he and Norma took a seat in the station. They didn’t talk much. By this time, a depth and warmth of understanding between them had been reached that made words superfluous. Norma fell asleep, her head resting against Stacey’s shoulder. After a while, he put his arm around her. He thought of his pipe, but filling and lighting it would have required taking his arm away. He decided that the situation was sufficiently perfect as it was.

  The train arrived on time. Less than an hour later, Stacey and Norma were in Grubstake.

  A dilapidated flivver with the word taxi crudely painted on its sides was parked at the depot. The driver, an elderly man whose appearance was completely in keeping with the car, took Stacey and Norma to Grubstake’s only hotel. It was after midnight, and the drive showed the town dark and deserted. Stacey was grimly glad of that fact. His and Norma’s arrival couldn’t have been timed better, since it would draw hardly any notice.

  The hotel was a large frame building covered with asbestos shingles. Stacey and Norma registered under assumed names according to a prearranged plan. The clerk took them up a broad stairway, to the doors of their respective rooms. He was short and bald, with protuberant eyes that showed a strong curiosity.

  Stacey and Norma parted with a deliberate casualness that left the clerk plainly disappointed. Once in his room, Stacey lost no time preparing for bed. He’d had little if any sleep the past few days, and had been going along mainly on reserve energy. Sleep engulfed him like a tidal wave as soon as his head touched the pillow.

  * * * *

  The sound of someone knocking at his door awakened Stacey. Sunlight poured into the room from around the edges of the drawn window shade. He gazed about him uncomprehendingly for a moment, while the knocking came again.

  “Who is it?” he called out.

  “It’s me. Norma. Do you feel like getting up?”

  Stacey glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. He answered:

  “I’d better get up if I feel like it or not.”

  “I’ll meet you down in the dining room, then.”

  “Be right with you.”

  Stacey washed and dressed quickly, and went downstairs. The hotel dining room was small and pleasantly old-fashioned. He found Norma seated at a corner table. He had hardly sat down when a buxom waitress came to take his order.

  “Well, here we are,” Norma said with grim cheerfulness, when the waitress had gone. “Where do we start first?”

  “The most important thing to do in the beginning is to find Chinook Vervain,” Stacey responded. “Chinook knows the location of the Golden Dream, and with his help we can file a claim. Devore will be blocked off in that direction. Then we’ll try to find your father. Chinook knows the locality around Grubstake, and may have an idea about where your father is being kept.”

  “But how are you going to find Chinook?” Norma asked. “He’s supposed to be in hiding—and he really must be well hid, if Devore hadn’t been able to find him.”

  “Chinook has friends in Grubstake,” Stacey pointed out. “The obvious place to look for them is among the people who worked for your father and mine. The Stacey-Reddick Mining Company has an office here, in Grubstake.”

  Norma grinned with characteristic impishness. “Mastermind!” Then she sobered. “Gregg, it seems almost too easy. Suppose something goes wrong?”

  “I don’t see how anything can go wrong until Devore and Buck get here. And we have enough time.” Stacey put a confidence into his words that he didn’t entirely feel.

  Norma remained grave. Stacey made no further attempts at false light-heartedness. He saw that the intimate mood which they had shared the previous day was not to be recaptured. To both Grubstake had become synonymous with danger, and their presence in the town seemed to cast a shadow over their thoughts and emotions.

  The waitress returned, bringing Norma’s order along with Stacey’s. They ate in silence. A short time later they left the hotel. A pedestrian directed them to the offices of the Stacey-Reddick Mining Company. Grubstake was small, and they found that they could easily walk the distance.

  Their objective proved to be a small single-storied brick building of comparatively recent construction. Sight of it and the sign over the entrance acted as a catalyst upon them, releasing a long-pent excitement.

  Stacey caught Norma’s eager gaze and nodded. “This is it. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  They strode inside. Just within the entrance was a wooden railing beyond which a group of a dozen or so people sat at work behind desks. Their appearance made them the targets of a concerted barrage of curious stares—the longest and most intent of which seemed to be directed at Stacey. After a moment a young woman rose from one of the nearest desks and came forward.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to see whoever is in charge here,” Stacey said.

  “That will be superintendent Bill Haekstrom. Who shall I tell him is calling?”

  Stacey gave his name. The young woman’s face showed a look of surprise, though the answer didn’t seem entirely unexpected. She turned quickly and strode into one of a group of three offices, partitioned off from the rest of the room. Almost at once, she returned, opening a gate in the railing.

  “Mr. Haekstrom says he will be delighted to see you.”

  Haekstrom was a red-headed, burly man with broad Scandinavian features. He wrung Stacey’s hand with a delight that was almost tearful.

  “So you’re Gregg, Ben Stacey’s boy! I’d have known it a mile away. You’re a regular mirror image of your Dad. A regular chip off the old block!”

  Haekstrom greeted Norma with similar enthusiasm. He bustled about excitedly, closing the door, and settling his visitors in chairs. Finally he sat down on a corner of his desk, and his broad face turned solemn. He said slowly:

  “A lot of strange things have happened here within the last few weeks. Maybe you can explain some of them for me.
What I want to know most of all is what happened to Warren Reddick. He was laid up with a busted ankle, you know. Then he suddenly went away somewhere, without letting me know where he was going or why. Just left me a note, telling me to take charge of things until he got back.”

  “Warren Reddick was kidnapped,” Stacey said.

  Haekstrom stared incredulously. “But the note he left me? I know his handwriting like I know my own face. He wrote it, all right.”

  “Warren Reddick was undoubtedly forced to write that note,” Stacey explained. “But before I go any further, I want to check on something. You heard about my father finding the Golden Dream, and the map he made of its location?”

  Haekstrom nodded his bristling red shock. “Sure—and so has almost everybody else in Grubstake. Your Dad was sick, you know, and talked about the lode and the map before…before he died.”

  Stacey went on to tell about receiving half of the map from Chinook Vervain, and the attempt which had been made in Los Angeles to steal it. Then he detailed its loss in the encounter with Devore and Buck in Seattle, where he had gone to see Norma. He outlined Devore’s part in the affair, explaining what had actually happened to Reddick, and told of the trick which he and Norma had used to prevent Devore from obtaining Norma’s map half. Finally he related his and Norma’s purpose In coming to Grubstake.

  “Chinook knows the location of the Golden Dream, and he might know where Warren Reddick is being held,” Stacey told Haekstrom. “I came to you on the chance that you could tell me where Chinook is hiding out. If I can find Chinook, Devore is through.”

  Haekstrom smiled sadly, bitterly. “A note from Chinook reached me a little over a week ago. He wanted to see me, and told me where he was. A cabin up near Birch Creek. He said I shouldn’t let anybody else know, and to be careful. Well, when I got there, I found the cabin burned down. Investigating, I found bones among the ruins—hardly more than cinder and ash. Chinook Vervain is dead.”