Chapter III Judge Simmons
“A gentleman to see you, sir,” said the footman as he approached Mr. Field with a salver on which lay a solitary visiting card.
“Eh, what? A visitor, did you say?” said his master. “What’s his name, Jenkins?”
“It’s written there, sir,” replied the footman. “He said you wouldn’t know him, but he would be glad if you could see him for a few moments on business.”
“Judge Simmons,” read out Mr. Field, as he took up the card. “Sounds as if he came from America.”
“So he does, sir, if you can go by his accent,” answered Jenkins.
“Don’t like Yankees, though I’ve spent so much of my life among them,” murmured Mr. Field under his breath. “What can this fellow want, coming bothering me here?” he added in a slightly louder tone.
“I don’t know, sir, I didn’t happen to enquire,” replied the footman.
“Don’t be impertinent, Jenkins,” said Mr. Field looking up sharply. He lived in continual dread that his servants were making fun of him behind his back, and Jenkins’ tone was suspiciously polite. “Of course it’s not your place to question my visitors, and you’d pretty soon find yourself in hot water if you did.”
“Judge Simmons is a better specimen of a gentleman than old Field,” was the footman’s conclusion as he piloted the visitor into the library, “and I fancy he knows a thing or two by the look of him. I shouldn’t like to be faced by him if there was anything shady I wanted to hide. His eyes seem to go right through you, as if he could count your very bones.”
Certainly the tall spare figure that crossed the room to shake hands with Mr. Field was a good example of the typical well-bred American. Clean-shaven, with a firm jaw, and quick, piercing eyes, he gave one the impression at once of a strong man, alert and observant, with a sense of humour tempering the sternness of the mouth.
“I must apologize,” he said, “for intruding upon you in this manner, but I shall be grateful if you will allow me to speak to you on a matter of rather urgent business.”
Mr. Field motioned him to a chair, and replied that he would be pleased to assist him if it was in his power to do so.
“Well,” continued the stranger, “the fact is this. I have a young friend over in Mexico, who is rather too fond of embarking on commercial enterprises of a decidedly risky and precarious nature, and as I am in a way his adviser, I feel a certain amount of responsibility when he asks my opinion about things. He has just written, saying he has the option of purchasing some land in which rumour says that silver maybe found, and he wants to know what I think about it. It is quite out of your beat, Mr. Field, as I know your mines are in California, so I felt it would not be trespassing on your preserves if I asked you to be kind enough to answer a few questions in a friendly way as to the risks of such a speculation, knowing what an authority you are upon the subject. I am staying with Lord Monfort, and, hearing that you resided so near, I ventured to make myself known to you, hoping that my nationality would perhaps appeal to you, seeing you have lived so long in my country.”
Mr. Field’s features, which at first had been decidedly forbidding, relaxed at the mention of the earl. Aloof though he held himself from the ordinary run of mankind, it was his secret ambition to mix with that society into which, except for his great wealth, he could never hope to obtain entrance. To know that he had been the subject of conversation at Lanthorne Abbey was as nectar to his aspiring soul.
“I shall be glad to do what I can for you,” he said urbanely, “if you will kindly give me some particulars as to locality and the like.”
After about half an hour’s conference Judge Simmons rose to go.
“You will stay to lunch, won’t you?” urged Mr. Field. “It’s getting on towards one o’clock, and I shall be pleased to welcome you, if you will be content with merely the company of myself and my little boy.”
“I’ve only once been down your way,” remarked Judge Simmons as they were seated at table, “and that was some years ago, before you had made that corner of the world a household word. Everyone knows the Good Hope silver mine and its apparently exhaustless resources, but I wish I could locate it better in my own mind. I don’t seem able to fit it in with what I remember of the place. I went with a nice young fellow named Barker who was prospecting then in those parts, and he staked out a claim somewhere thereabouts. I recollect he called it Wild Goat Gully. I’ve quite lost sight of him since, and have never been up there again, but I fancy he didn’t strike it rich, or we should have heard of it before now.”
“I was told that he went completely to the dogs, and was at last drowned when crossing one of the big rivers,” replied Mr. Field. “He certainly made nothing out of his Gully, so far as I heard, and the very name he gave it has died out.”
“One peculiarity about it struck me much at the time,” remarked the judge. “There was a high precipice bounding it on one side, with a great orange streak right across it as if it had been daubed on with a brush. Some geological freak, I suppose.”
“Why, how funny!” exclaimed Julius, who had been sitting silently listening to the conversation. “That’s just like the Good Hope cliff. It looks exactly as if some enormous giant had thrown his pot of yellow paint at the rock.”
“Strange,” said the judge, glancing up at Mr. Field, “I heard there wasn’t another formation like it in the whole country.”
“What nonsense!” ejaculated Mr. Field testily. “I’ve explored every part of the district for miles round, and know every inch of it well, and I could show you half a dozen valleys where there were similar rocks, any one of which might be Wild Goat Gully.”
“I don’t think there are, father,” chimed in Julius, “for I asked old Joe the trapper, who has lived there all his life, and he told me just the same as Judge Simmons. He said it was ‘unique,’ and I remember when I asked you what that was, you said it meant there wasn’t another like it in the world.”
“If you contradict me in this way, Julius, you may just leave the room,” said his father in an angry tone. “I won’t have lies told at my table, even by my own son. Do you hear me, Julius? Be off with you this instant, or I’ll give you a thrashing that you won’t soon forget.”
“It’s quite true, father,” stoutly asserted the boy. “You know you’ve often said to me that no one could equal the Good Hope mine any more than they could match the yellow splash on its cliff.”
A box on the ears was Mr. Field’s only reply, as he grasped the lad by the arm and hustled him out of the door.
“I am sorry, sir,” he said when he returned to the table, “but I am ashamed to say my boy has developed a terrible faculty for telling the most deliberate untruths, and I have to do my best to check him. He seems to take a perfect delight in inventing stories without a shadow of foundation, and in sticking to them at all costs.”
“I believe the child’s version was the right one,” said Judge Simmons to himself as he motored back to Lanthorne Abbey. “Why should Field be so anxious to demonstrate that orange streaks were such very ordinary things?”
Suddenly he sat up and gave a low exclamation.
“What if he wished to prove to me that Good Hope mine could not possibly be the same as Wild Goat Gully? That’s a question which opens out some interesting answers. I guess I’ll make some enquiries when I get back to California again.”