The Daredevil Snared (The Adventurers Quartet Book 3) (35 page)

CHAPTER 19

They faced their first hurdle later that afternoon.

After Kate and Caleb joined the other captives about the fire pit, the short meal break had fled in a flurry of inquiries as to Caleb’s recovery, interspersed with quips and a certain amount of ribbing. Quieter, teasing and approving comments from the women had had Kate battling blushes. Yet overall, she’d sensed a resurgence of hope, carried on a fresh—renewed—wave of camaraderie that now buoyed the company.

The men had stepped in and taken a desperate step, but their plan had worked, and everyone had great hopes that the result would stretch the mining into September.

After the break ended, Caleb changed into another shirt and called at the cleaning hut. He found the ladies gathered about their long table, pretending to work while they gossiped. Judging by the bright eyes that fixed on him and the light blush in Kate’s cheeks, he was fairly sure as to the subject of said gossip; after asking after Muldoon and Dubois and being assured neither had put in an appearance there, he beat a hasty retreat.

He paused to speak with the children. What with all the rock being cleared from the mine, they were busy sorting, but he sensed a certain suppressed smugness. When he crouched beside them, raised his brows, and looked around encouragingly, one of the older girls whispered that they were hiding most of the rough diamonds in their stockpile and sending very few on to the pile still waiting to be cleaned outside the shed.

“Our pile’s nearly as big as the one in the mine now,” one of the boys proudly proclaimed.

“Excellent.” Caleb grinned. “Keep it up, but make sure none of the guards see.” He rose and saw Amy with a group of other children busily trudging back from the mine, lugging their baskets.

The little girl wore a cheery smile, and her red ribbon was tied firmly in her hair. On reaching the ore pile, she dropped her basket and hurried to him. She caught his hand in both of hers, squeezed, and stared solemnly into his face. “Are you really all right, Captain Caleb? Your head must still hurt.”

Caleb assured her that he was almost back to normal. As she was transparently none the worse for her ordeal, he grinned, freed his hand and tweaked her ribbon, then, laughing at her delighted squeal, he headed for the mine.

He strode into the dimness and found the men loitering and lounging in groups. Their tools were beside them, but no one was even pretending to work.

“The guards are too frightened to come in,” Quilley informed him. “Now the tunnel’s completely cleared, the children are just darting about, making a good show while we wait for his highness to come make his inspection.”

“His highness” was Dubois. Caleb had a vague memory of Dubois saying something about an inspection in the afternoon. With a nod, he walked on and turned into the second tunnel.

More men were propping up the walls there, relaxed and unconcerned; Caleb passed them with smiles and nods. Toward what was now the end of the tunnel, he saw Dixon, Hillsythe, Fanshawe, Hopkins, and Phillipe gathered in a group a short distance from the other men.

As he approached, Caleb scanned his fellow officers’ faces. He’d expected some degree of satisfaction, even a touch of jubilation, yet judging by their expressions, matters had somehow taken a turn for the worse.

Deciding it behooved him not to leap to conclusions, he joined the group. “What’s happened?”

The others glanced at each other, then they all looked at Dixon.

The engineer sighed. “We’d expected that clearing the upper level would take longer, but...” He gestured to the almost ridiculously neat stretch of tunnel.

“Once we got you out,” Hillsythe said, “the rest of the rubble turned out not to be as densely packed as we might have wished. We still have to re-excavate and rebrace the last third, but that won’t take more than a few days—and more pertinently, won’t interfere with the ongoing mining along the rest of this level.”

Looking down the tunnel, over and through the clutter of rubble clogging the section that was no longer roofed and braced to where the entrance to the lower level had been—and seeing a wall of densely packed large rocks—Caleb lightly shrugged. “At least the lower level is well and truly blocked. That was our primary objective. Anything else was to be a bonus.”

Dixon snorted. “Sadly, our bonus has turned out to be a new and potentially worse problem.” He waved at the remaining rock face the men were supposed to be mining. “Just look at it.”

Caleb obliged, but he wasn’t sure what to make of what he was seeing. The instant he’d walked into the tunnel, he’d known something had changed, but as the dimensions of even the tunnel floor had been altered—both by the collapse and by the consequent digging and clearing—he hadn’t yet reached the point of deciding if the changes had any practical implications.

He surveyed the long rock face; for his money, there appeared to be many more fractured diamonds embedded in the rock... Was that bad? He shifted his gaze to Dixon. “You’ll have to explain. I’m still not thinking all that clearly.”

Dixon drew in a breath, then laid one palm against the jagged rock. “The collapse sheared a section off this rock face. Along with the rubble, we’ve cleared dozens upon dozens of diamond-bearing rocks. And yes, we’ve hidden most, but still...” He paused, focusing on the rock face as if he could somehow see into and through it. Then his features hardened. “I think—I greatly fear—that we’re all too soon going to run through the pipe. The shearing thinned it, so effectively we’ve already removed more than half its depth. Soon—perhaps in as little as a week—we won’t have much of it left.” Dixon met Caleb’s eyes. “I know we’ve kept back stones to tide us through for a short time at least, but not only do I have reservations we’ll be able to string that out long enough, that tactic also relies on Dubois believing that we’re actually still mining.”

Caleb realized he’d spoken the truth regarding his mind not functioning all that well. Taking in Dixon’s words was hard enough; accepting the implications...he couldn’t seem to get his mind to believe.

He glanced at the others; at least he now understood their downcast, almost disillusioned demeanors.

Before he could think of what to say—of what tack to take, of whether there was any possible way forward—a warning relayed from the mine entrance had all the men moving. Hefting pickaxes and lifting shovels, they made a show of working.

“Damn.” Hillsythe met Caleb’s eyes. “We’d hoped that regardless of his statement last night, Dubois’s aversion would keep him out for another day or so.” He glanced at the rock face. “At least long enough for us to decide how to handle this.”

A stir at the entrance to the second tunnel proved to be caused by Dubois, Muldoon, and four heavily armed and sweating guards.

“Out!” Dubois gestured to all those mining.

The officers glanced at each other, then fell in at the rear of the column of men as they filed out.

But as they approached Dubois and Muldoon, Dubois waved them back. “Not you.” Strain was already apparent in the mercenary captain’s face, but it appeared he was determined to conquer—or at least ignore—his fear of being in the mine, let alone a mine that had recently partially collapsed.

Along with the other officers—the captives’ de facto leaders—Caleb stood back against the tunnel wall.

Once the men in the mining gangs had left, Muldoon walked into the tunnel, his footsteps echoing hollowly.

Dubois, they all noted, took up a stance barely inside the entrance. With his hands clasped behind his back, he stood and watched as Muldoon ventured down the tunnel.

This was the naval attaché’s first foray into the mine. Eyes wide, his expression fascinated, he eagerly looked here, there, everywhere. Taking in the corridor-like tunnel and the beams lining its roof, he said to no one in particular, “I must say, I’d always envisioned mining tunnels as far more cramped.”

Dubois looked at Dixon, and the engineer moved to Muldoon’s side.

“It’s because these are diamonds,” Dixon said, “and they can shatter if struck wrongly. So it’s imperative that the men mining have the space to swing their picks, not just with sufficient force but also with excellent aim.”

“Ah.” His gaze now on the rock face, Muldoon nodded. “I see.” He halted halfway down the tunnel and peered at the rock face.

Caleb shifted so he could see the man’s face; he caught the moment when Muldoon realized just what he was looking at.

“My God!” Muldoon’s tone turned reverent. “Are these...” He stretched out a hand and all but caressed a winking stone. Then he swallowed and looked at Dixon, then at Dubois. “These are the diamonds?”

Dubois nodded.

Dixon stated, “These are diamonds in the rough, as it were.”

Muldoon’s mouth had gone slack. He stepped back and swept his gaze along the rock face—the two-thirds of the pipe presently exposed. “But...there’s more than a king’s ransom—hell, there’s more than
ten
king’s ransoms here!”

Dixon hurried to explain, “The collapse sheared along the rock face and exposed more of it. That’s why there are so many diamonds visible.”

“But...that’s
excellent
!” Eyes ablaze with blatant avarice, Muldoon swung to face Dubois. “Fate has clearly smiled upon us. As I understand it, there’s now no impediment to getting these stones out and off to Amsterdam, and our backers, with all speed.” He paused, then rather challengingly asked, “Is there?”

For an instant, Dubois didn’t react, then he stated, “I believe that is so. However, what about the lower level?”

Before Dixon could cut in with predictions and suggestions that would significantly reduce the number of men mining, Muldoon waved. “Forget the lower level. There’s enough here, I tell you. And we only have so much time.”

Muldoon’s last sentence sent a chill down Caleb’s spine and, he was quite sure, those of all the other men. Quickly, he said, as if reminding Dixon, but in reality for all to hear, “I thought you said we would need to shore up the far end properly or mining along the last third will risk another collapse.”

Dixon picked up the lifeline without a blink. “Yes, that’s right.” He turned to Dubois.

Who coldly remarked, “With all the fresh supplies and timber we’ve already brought in, you should encounter no difficulties and no delays in making sure this tunnel—all of it—is properly shored up again.” Dubois shifted his gaze to Muldoon. “So other than with that caveat, the mining can proceed apace.”

“Excellent!” Muldoon had returned to eyeing the diamonds glinting like stars trapped in the darker rock. “I must say,” he murmured, again reaching out to stroke a glimmering stone, “that seeing all this is a huge relief. As you know, our backers have been growing increasingly restive and ever more demanding. They’ve been making loud and still-louder noises about needing to see evidence and so be convinced that the risks they’re taking will be as amply rewarded as we’ve promised they will be.”

Muldoon smiled and stepped back, then looked at Dubois. “A steady stream of strongboxes filled with diamonds getting into Amsterdam will appease them and, more, will shut them up.” Muldoon’s expression shifted to reflect a cynical coldness worthy of Dubois himself. “There’s nothing like a solid return to convince businessmen like our backers to leave their investments in place.”

And when the tunnel’s mined out?

Muldoon appeared oblivious to the impact the logical extension of his comments would have on the captives.

Dubois, however, saw matters more clearly. “And once all the diamonds from this level have been extracted, what then? Will these backers of yours want the lower level reopened?”

Muldoon frowned. He cast a glance down the tunnel at the rubble and rocks now blocking access to the lower level. “I really can’t say. I suspect that will depend on how they—the backers—are placed at the time.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “But given their recent flightiness....”

Muldoon drew in a breath, then turned and paced back up the tunnel. He beamed at Dubois. “But regardless of that, at the moment, everything is very definitely looking up.”

* * *

“Up is relative,” Fanshawe grumbled. “Up for him and his damned backers, maybe, but very definitely down for us.”

It was three hours later. The sun had set, and the captives had gathered about the fire pit for their evening meal. And if anything, in the matter of ensuring their survival, over the past hours, their prospects had got even bleaker.

Kate, Harriet, and the other women had reported that, after Muldoon’s eye-opening experience in the mine, he had hot-footed his way to the cleaning shed and pored over the cleaned stones in the strongbox. And at the end of the women’s day, he’d insisted on taking the box away with him into the barracks—doubtless to pore over each individual stone. “If he continues to do that,” Harriet had pointed out, “we’ll need to produce new stones every day at a believable pace. We won’t be able to hold nearly as much back.”

Worse, they’d overheard Muldoon telling Dubois to get in more strongboxes so they could send two or even three to the ships at a time.

“And we have another problem with Muldoon.” Phillipe met Caleb’s eyes. “He’s not in the least nervous about going into the mine. Even after the collapse, he was oblivious to any danger. He’s going to keep coming in and examining the rock face, which means we’ll have to keep removing diamonds from it at a reasonable rate—and he’s going to see when they run out.”

“The truth,” Fanshawe put in, “is that one of the critical factors that has allowed us to stretch things out this long is the guards’ dislike of going deep into the mine. That, and Dubois’s, Arsene’s, and Cripps’s aversion to going in at all, with them only venturing in when they’re forced to it. If it hadn’t been for that, we’d never have been able to pull off all the delaying tactics we have.”

“But now,” Phillipe said, “with Muldoon monitoring both the rock face and the stones going out in the strongbox, he’ll notice if we try to slow things down.”

The final blow fell when Dixon, Hillsythe, and Hopkins finally joined the circle. Earlier, the three had left Caleb, Phillipe, and Fanshawe to work with the carpenters over what timbers were needed to reshore up the last third of the tunnel and had gone to assess the stockpiles.