Chapter VI: A Smooth Game

On Wednesday afternoon a prosperous-looking gentleman, of apparently about fifty years of age, entered the private offices of Cruse & Cupell, on Twenty-Third Street.

“Mr. Cruse?” he asked, halting at a desk.

“Mr. Cruse is out,” answered a man at the desk. “I’m Mr. Cupell.”

“My card.”

The caller handed over a bit of pasteboard bearing the name, “Mr. Jefferson Jones.”

“I’m from Albany,” went on Mr. Jones, “and I have run down to be present at the assay of the Royal Ophir ore.”

“Ah,” murmured Mr. Cupell. “Won’t you sit down, Mr. Jones? There’s a paper at your elbow. I expect Mr. Bates and the other gentlemen at any moment.”

Jefferson Jones took the chair and the paper.

In a few minutes the expert entered with three other gentlemen, the expert carrying a small bag, bound with a cord and sealed in half a dozen different places.

Cupell welcomed the party, and then presented Jefferson Jones.

Jones did not pay much attention to the Boston men, nor to Bates, the expert, but he gave more than casual attention to Mr. Horace Montgomery.

“Why do you wish to see this assay, Mr. Jones?” asked Montgomery.

“Merely to satisfy myself as to the value of the Royal Ophir mine.”

“With a view to investing?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“I don’t think there will be any chance for you. The Royal Ophir, I am satisfied, is a good thing, and myself and these other two gentlemen want it all to ourselves.”

A slight smile wreathed about the lips of Jefferson Jones.

“I suppose you won’t object to letting me see the assay made?” he asked.

“Certainly not; only don’t deceive yourself with false hopes, that’s all.”

Bates, the expert, here interjected a few remarks.

“This is the Royal Ophir ore, gentlemen,” said he. “I took a fair sample from the main vein of the mine, sacked and sealed it on the spot, and the sample was not out of my hands until deposited in the bank, from which we just took it.

“I will take an oath that it has not been tampered with in any way. On the result of this assay I assure you that you can spend one million, or ten millions, and be perfectly confident that you are going into the deal with your eyes open.

“There, Mr. Cupell.” The expert handed the sack to the assayer. “It is understood that we are all to be present during the assaying.”

“That is my understanding,” said Cupell. “This way, gentlemen.”

He opened a door leading into one of the workrooms.

A dark-faced young man of twenty or thereabouts, wearing a white apron and smoking a cigarette, was busying himself about the room.

On an iron slab Cupell opened the ore sack and emptied the pieces of ore out on the slab for general inspection.

Jefferson Jones, Montgomery and the two Boston men began to look at the samples.

“I don’t think you ought to touch this rock, gentlemen,” said Cupell.

Examination of the ore was instantly stopped.

“I don’t think any of us would put ‘salt’ into this proposition,” said Montgomery.

But, even as he spoke, he cast a suspicious look at Jones, of Albany.

Jones looked innocent enough.

Humming to himself and holding his hands behind him, he was giving his attention to the strange instruments arranged around the room.

Suddenly he asked if there was any drinking water about the place.

Cupell told him he would find a water cooler in the office.

Jones sauntered into the office, took a drink, and then passed into the hall.

“Here, Chick,” he said to somebody who was waiting there, “take this to Clarkson, around the corner on Sixth Avenue, and have him rush the assay through.”

“Sure.”

“Then wait for me downstairs.”

“I’ll be there.”

Nick--for, of course, “Jones” was none other than the detective--gave his assistant two small pieces of Royal Ophir ore.

Chick went away, and Nick returned to the workroom, drying his lips on a handkerchief.

The ore was being put through a small crusher by the young man who wore the apron and was smoking the cigarette.

Cupell watched every move of the young man with eagle-eyed vigilance.

“That’s fine enough, Gillman,” said Cupell; “now use your muller.”

The “muller” was a heavy, iron roller that worked on the slab.

Gillman took the crushed ore, held it on the slab, and then went over it again and again with the roller.

This part of the operation took some time, and Gillman smoked three cigarettes.

Nick noticed that he never removed a cigarette from his mouth, after once lighting it, until it was smoked almost to the gold tip.

When the ashes accumulated, he gave his head a shake and they fell into the ore he was crushing.

“You’ll smoke yourself to death, Gillman,” said Cupell.

“I expect so,” was the lugubrious answer. “I’ve formed the habit, though, and I can’t break myself.”

“I haven’t any patience with a cigarette smoker,” said one of the Boston men, with a shudder.

“Give me a cigar, every time,” said the other Boston man.

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Nick; “I enjoy a cigarette now and then myself. If Gillman would oblige me with one, I believe I’d keep him company.”

“Certainly,” answered Gillman, readily enough.

Taking the cigarette box from his pocket, he handed it to Nick.

Nick took one of the “paper pipes,” lighted it, and returned the box.

A moment later the detective sat down, a little way from the group around the muller-board.

When ready to knock the ashes from the cigarette, he brought out a silver match case, emptied it of matches, and carefully deposited the ashes inside.

When he had finished the cigarette, Gillman was “quartering down” the sample.

The powdered ore was then mixed with fluxes, put into little, earthenware dishes, and shoved into a furnace.

When the dishes were drawn from the furnace, there was a drop of bullion in each one.

This drop was put into a glass parting flask with nitric acid, the flask was heated, and the gold in the drop of bullion was separated from the other metals.

All that then remained was to weigh it.

This was done on a pair of scales so finely adjusted that they would weigh a pencil mark on a scrap of paper.

In two hours’ time Cupell had signed the assay certificates, and Montgomery and the Boston men were wildly jubilant.

The assay ran nine hundred and sixty dollars to the ton!