Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [166]
Colette begged Mr. Brighton for some time by herself.
“Certainly, my dear,” said Brighton. “Samuels will need a few minutes to prepare the wire.”
Four stories below Wall Street, in a cavernous, unlit, dirt-floored chamber, two men worked an immense blast furnace. Their faces were blackened with soot; each wore a thick, heavy full-length leather apron. One stoked the furnace with large, heavy bars of gold. The other handled a set of iron molds into which flowed a stream of molten yellow metal coursing down a half-pipe from an aperture high up on the furnace. When a newly molded bar of gold was formed and ready, this man would throw it, using tongs, onto a mountain of such bars that filled the subterranean chamber in front of the furnace. Both men wore goggles; in the sparks and unnatural light thrown off by the furnace, their arms and foreheads shone with sweat.
About fifteen feet behind these workmen was a wall, and in this wall was a perfectly round hole, and from this hole came a sound that drew the workmen’s puzzled attention. It was a metallic sound, echoing and distant—a faraway clanging. The noise grew louder and louder and still louder until it reached a horrendous pitch and out from the hole shot a large iron disk. It was a manhole cover with jagged edges, and it hit the dirt floor of the chamber at a dangerous speed, rolling past the legs of the astonished smelters, disappearing under their worktable, and climbing the gold bar mountain almost to its pinnacle, at which point it turned round and rolled back down, rattling to rest at the workmen’s feet.
The two smelters removed their goggles. They stared down dumbfounded at the intrusive object, then looked at each other: a new sound was coming from the hole in the wall. This sound was not metallic. It was more like a tumbling, with the interspersed shouting of a human voice, and it too began quietly, distantly, only to grow nearer and louder and nearer still until Jimmy Littlemore shot feetfirst through the hole, followed immediately by Stratham Younger, the two men skidding and rolling in a jumble of arms and legs until they too lay at the smelters’ feet.
Littlemore looked up at the two workmen, spat the remains of a toothpick as well as some dirt from his lips, and said, “You’re under arrest.”
Younger, lying on his stomach, did not know to whom the detective had addressed his remark, but he added, “In the name of the law.”
Littlemore drew his gun from his shoulder holster and said, “Drop that thing”—this was a reference to the red-hot tongs—“and put your hands in the air.”
The speechless smelters complied at once.
Littlemore stood, pulled a set of handcuffs from his back pocket, and tossed them to Younger while keeping his gun trained on the two workmen. “Cuff one of these guys.”
“Which one?” asked Younger.
“I don’t care. The bigger one.”
The workman who had been feeding the furnace was the larger of the two. Younger handcuffed his wrists behind his back. Littlemore turned the other smelter around and pushed him forward a step.
“March, fellas,” said Littlemore, directing them around the furnace and toward the mountain of gold bricks. “Let’s see if this place leads where I think it—” he stopped, interrupting himself. “Did you hear that, Doc?”
“Hear what?”
Littlemore was looking at the mound of gold, which was about fifteen feet high. Suddenly, at the top of that little mountain, the heads of three men appeared, and next to each one a pistol. The one in the middle had scars