"Who were they?"

    "They were and still are to France what Krupp is to Germany, what Mitsubichi is to Japan, what Anaconda is to the United States."

    "Where does the Societe-whatever you call it-fit in?"

    "They were the French financiers who hired Joshua Hays Brewster as their engineer-manager of exploration. They were the only ones with enough capital to pay nine men to vanish off the face of the earth."

    "But why? Where is the motive?"

    Young gestured helplessly. "I don't know." He leaned forward and his eyes seemed to burn. "But I do know that whatever the price, whatever the influence, it took my uncle and his eight-man crew to some unnamed hell outside the country."

    "Until the bodies are recovered, who's to say you're wrong."

    Young stared at him. "You are a courteous man, Mr. Donner. I thank you."

    "For what? A free lunch at the government's expense?"

    "For not laughing," Young said softly.

    Donner nodded and said nothing. The man across the table had just spliced one tiny strand of the frayed puzzle to the red-bearded bones in the Bednaya Mountain mine. There was nothing to laugh about, nothing to laugh about in the least.

15

    Seagram returned the farewell smile from the stewardess, stepped off the United jet, and prepared himself for the quarter-mile trip to the street entrance of the Los Angeles International Airport. He finally reached the front lobby, and unlike Donner, who had rented his car from No. 2, Seagram preferred dealing with No. 1 and signed out a Lincoln from Hertz. He turned onto Century Boulevard, and within a few blocks entered the on-ramp south to the San Diego Freeway. It was a cloudless day and the smog was surprisingly light, allowing a hazy view of the Sierra Madre mountains. He drove leisurely in the right-hand lane of the freeway at sixty miles an hour, while the mainstream of local traffic sped by the Lincoln doing seventy-five and eighty with routine indifference to the posted fifty-five miles an hour limit. He soon left the chemical refineries of Torrance and the oil derricks around Long Beach behind and entered the vastness of Orange County where the terrain suddenly flattened out and gave way to a great, unending sea of tract homes.

    It took him a little over an hour to reach the turn-off for Leisure World. It was an idyllic setting golf courses, swimming pools, stables, neatly manicured lawns and park areas, golden-tanned senior citizens on bicycles.

    He stopped at the main gate and an elderly guard in uniform checked him through and gave him directions to 261-B Calle Aragon. It was a picturesque little duplex tucked neatly on the slope of a hill overlooking an immaculate park. Seagram parked the Lincoln against the curb, walked through a small courtyard patio filled with rose bushes, and poked the doorbell. The door opened and his fears vanished; Adeline Hobart was definitely not the senile type.

    "Mr. Seagram?" The voice was light and cheerful.

    "Yes. Mrs. Hobart?"

    "Please come in." She extended her hand. The grip was as firm as a man's. "Goodness, nobody's called me that in over seventy years. When I received your long-distance call regarding Jake, I was so surprised I almost forgot to take my Geritol."

    Adeline was stout, but she carried her extra pounds easily. Her blue eyes seemed to laugh with every sentence and her face carried a warm, gentle look. She was everyone's idea of a sweet little old snow-haired lady.

    "You don't strike me as the Geritol type," he said.

    She patted his arm. "If that is meant as flattery, I'll buy it." She motioned him to a chair in a tastefully furnished living room. "Come and sit down. You will stay for lunch, won't you?"

    "I'd be honored, if it's no trouble."

    "Of course not. Bert is off chasing around the golf course, and I appreciate the company."

    Seagram looked up. "Bert?"

    "My husband."

    "But I was under the impression-"

    "I was still Jake Hobart's widow," she finished his sentence, smiling innocently. "The truth of the matter is, I became Mrs. Bertram Austin sixty-two years ago."

    "Does the Army know?"

    "Oh heavens, yes. 1 wrote letters to the War Department notifying them of my marital status a long time ago, but they simply sent polite, noncommittal replies and kept mailing the checks."

    "Even though you'd remarried?"

    Adeline shrugged. "I'm only human, Mr. Seagram. Why argue with the government. If they insist on sending money, who's to tell them they're crazy?"

    "A lucrative little arrangement."

    She nodded. "I won't deny it, particularly when you include the ten thousand dollars I received at Jake's death."

    Seagram leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. "The Army paid you a ten-thousand-dollar indemnity? Wasn't that a bit steep for 1912?"

    "You couldn't be half as surprised as I was then," she said. "Yes, that amount of money was a small fortune in those days."

    "Was there any explanation?"

    "None," she replied. "I can still see the check after all these years. All it said was `Widow's Payment' and it was made out to me. That's all there was to it."

    "Perhaps we can start at the beginning."

    "When I met Jake?"

    Seagram nodded.

    Her eyes looked beyond him for a few moments. "I met Jake during the terrible winter of 1910. It was in Leadville, Colorado, and I had just turned sixteen. My father was on a business trip to the mining fields to investigate possible investment in several claims, and since it was close to Christmas, and I had a few days vacation from school, he relented and took Mother and me along. The train barely made it into Leadville station when the worst blizzard in forty years struck the high country of Colorado. It lasted for two weeks, and believe me, it was no picnic, especially when you consider that the altitude of Leadville is over ten thousand feet."

    "It must have been quite an adventure for a sixteen-year-old girl."

    "It was. Dad paced the hotel lobby like a trapped bull while Mother just sat and worried, but I thought it was marvelous."

    "And Jake?"

    "One day, Mother and I were struggling across the street to the general store-an ordeal when you are lashed by fifty-mile-an-hour winds at twenty degrees below zero when out of nowhere this giant brute of a man picks each of us up under one arm and carries us through the snowdrifts and deposits us on the doorstep of the store, just as sassy as you please."

    "It was Jake?"

    "Yes," she said distantly, "it was Jake."

    "What did he look like?"

    "He was a large man, over six feet, barrel-chested. He'd worked in the mines in Wales when he was a boy. Anytime you saw a crowd of men a mile away, you could easily pick Jake out. He was the one with the bright red hair and heard who was always laughing."

    "Red hair and beard?"

    "Yes, he was quite proud of the fact that he stood out from the rest."

    "All the world loves a man who laughs."

    She smiled broadly. "It certainly wasn't love at first sight on my part, I can tell you. To me, Jake looked like a big uncouth bear. He was hardly the type to tickle a young girl's fancy."