Armitage was very keen to know whether there had been any sensational finds on the Ridge during the year, and all about them. He wanted to know who had been getting good stuff, and said that he had bought Jun's stones in Sydney. The men exclaimed at that.
"I was surprised to hear," John Armitage said, "what happened to the other parcel. You don't mean to say you think Charley Heathfield----?"
"We ain't tried him yet," Watty remarked cautiously, "but the evidence is all against him."
Rouminof thrust himself forward, eager to tell his story. Realising the proud position he might have been in this night with the opal-buyer if he had had his opals, tears gathered in his eyes as he went over it all again.
Armitage listened intently.
"Well, of all the rotten luck!" he exclaimed, when Paul had finished.
"Have another whisky, Rouminof? But what I can't make out," he added, "is why, if he had the stones, Charley didn't come to me with them.... I didn't buy anything but Jun's stuff before I came up here ... and he just said it was half the find he was showing me. Nice bit of pattern in that big black piece, eh? If Charley had the stones, you'd think he'd 've come along to me, or got Jun, or somebody to come along for him...."
"I don't know about that." George Woods felt for his reasons. "He wouldn't want you--or anybody else to know he'd got them."
"That's right," Watty agreed.
"He's got them all right," Ted Cross declared. "You see, I seen him taking Rummy home that night--and he cleared out next morning."
"I guess you boys know best." John Armitage sipped his whisky thoughtfully. "But I'm mad to get the rest of the stones. Tell you the truth, the old man hasn't been too pleased with my buying lately ... and it would put him in no end of a good humour if I could take home with me another packet of gems like the one I got from Jun. Jun knew I was keen to get the stones ... and I can't help thinking ... if he knew they were about, he'd put me in the way of getting them ... or them in my way--somehow. You don't think ... anybody else could have been on the job, and ... put it over on Charley, say...."
His eyes went over the faces of the men lounging against the bar, or standing in groups about him. Michael was lifting his glass to drink, and, for the fraction of a second the opal-buyer's glance wavered on his face before it passed on.
"Not likely," George Woods said dryly.
Recognising the disfavour his suggestion raised, Armitage brushed it aside.
"I don't think so, of course," he said.
And although he did not speak to him, or even look at him closely again, John Armitage was thinking all the evening of the quiver, slight as the tremor of a moth's wing, on Michael's face, when that inquiry had been thrown out.
CHAPTER XI
Armitage was busy going over parcels of stone and bargaining with the men for the greater part of the next day. He was beginning to have more of Dawe Armitage's zest for the business; and, every time they met, Ridge men found him shrewder, keener. His manner was genial and easy-going with them; but there was a steel band in him somewhere, they were sure.
The old man had been bluff, and as hard as nails; but they understood him better than his son. John Armitage, they knew, was only perfunctorily interested opal-buying at first; he had gone into it to please the old man, but gradually the thing had taken hold of him. He was not yet, however, anything like as good a judge of opal, and his last buying on the Ridge had displeased his father considerably. John Armitage had bought several parcels of good-looking opal; but one stone, which had cost 50 in the rough, was not worth 5 when it was cut. A grain of sand, Dawe Armitage swore he could have seen a mile away, went through it, and it cracked on the wheel. A couple of parcels had brought double what had been paid for them; but several stones John had given a good price for were not worth half the amount, his father had said.
George Woods and Watty took John Armitage a couple of fine knobbies during the morning, and the Crosses had shown him a parcel containing two good green and blue stones with rippled lights; but they had more on the parcel than Armitage felt inclined to pay, remembering the stormy scene there had been with the old man over that last stone from Crosses'
mine which had cracked in the cutter's hands. Towards the end of the day Mr. Armitage came to the conclusion, having gone over the stones the men brought him, and having bought all he fancied, that there was very little black opal of first quality about. He was meditating the fact, leaning back in his chair in the sitting-room Newton had reserved for him to see the gougers in, some pieces of opal, his scales and microscope on the table before him, when Michael knocked.
Absorbed in his reflections, realising there would be little to show for the trouble and pains of his long journey, and reviewing a slowly germinating scheme and dream for the better output of opal from Fallen Star, John Armitage did not at first pay any attention to the knock.
He had been thinking a good deal of Michael in connection with that scheme. Michael, he knew, would be his chief opponent, if ever he tried putting it into effect. When he had outlined his idea and vaguely formed plans to his father, Dawe Armitage would have nothing to do with them.
He swept them aside uncompromisingly.
"You don't know what you're up against," he said. "There isn't a man on the Ridge wouldn't fight like a pole-cat if you tried it on 'em. Give 'em a word of it--and we quit partnership, see? They wouldn't stand for it--not for a second--and there'd be no more black opal for Armitage and Son, if they got any idea on the Ridge you'd that sort of notion at the back of your head."
But John Armitage refused to give up his idea. He went to it as a dog goes to a planted bone--gnawed and chewed over it, contemplatively.
He had made this trip to Fallen Star with little result, and he was sure a system of working the mines on scientific, up-to-date lines would ensure the production of more stone. He wanted to talk organisation and efficiency to men of the Ridge, to point out to them that organisation and efficiency were of first value in production, not realising Ridge men considered their methods both organised and efficient within their means and for their purposes.
Michael knocked again, and Armitage called:
"Come in!" When he saw who had come into the room, he rose and greeted Michael warmly.
"Oh, it's you, Michael!" he said, with a sense of guilt at the thoughts Michael had interrupted. "I wondered what on earth had become of you.
The old man gave me no end of messages, and there are a couple of magazines for you in my grip."
"Thank you, Mr. Armitage," Michael replied.
"Well, I hope you've got some good stuff," Armitage said.
Michael took the chair opposite to him on the other side of the table.
"I haven't got much," he said.
"I remember Newton told me you've been having rotten luck."
"It's looked up lately," Michael said, the flickering wisp of a smile in his eyes. "The boys say Rummy's a luck-bringer.... He's working with me now, and we've been getting some nice stone."
He took a small packet of opal from his pocket and put it on the table.
It was wrapped in newspaper. He unfastened the string, turned back the cotton-wool in which the pieces of opal were packed, and spread them out for Armitage to look at.
Armitage went over the stones. He put them, one by one, under his microscope, and held them to and from the light.
"That's a nice bit of colour, Michael," he said, admiring a small piece of grey potch with a black strain which flashed needling rays of green and gold. "A little bit more of that, and you'd be all right, eh?"
Michael nodded. "We're on a streak now," he said. "It ought to work out all right."
"I hope it will." Armitage held the piece of opal to the light and moved it slowly. "Rouminof's working with you now--and Potch, they tell me?"
Michael nodded.
"Pretty hard on him, Charley's getting away with his stones like that!"
John Armitage probed the quiet eyes of the man before him with a swift glance.
"You're right there, Mr. Armitage," Michael said. "Harder on Paul than it would have been on anybody else. He's got the fever pretty bad."
Armitage laughed, handling a stone thoughtfully.
"I gave Jun a hundred pounds for his big stone. I'd give the same for the other--if I could lay my hands on it, though the boys say it wasn't quite as big, but better pattern."
"That's right," Michael said.
Silence lay between them for a moment.