On the morning of the fifteenth, in the last week of summer, the people of Nome awoke to find themselves assaulted by one of the greatest storms of the decade, indeed, five or six decades, as a tremendous wind howled out of Siberia. At dawn it measured forty-seven miles an hour; at eight o'clock it stood at fifty-nine on the anemometer; and then it began to gust up into the seventies and eighties.
Great waves pounded the unprotected shore, sucking rail huts and tents into the sea.
Relentlessly, the waves ate away the shore until they lashed at houses and shops two hundred yards inland, and water came up to the steps of the new R&R warehouses.
By nightfall a quarter of Nome's houses were destroyed, and for three terrible days the storm raged. A minister, gathering his flock, read passages from Revelation proving that God had come to Nome to scourge the Antichrist, and the men with chloroform swabs looked only to their own safety.
Tom Venn spent the three stormbound days with Missy and Matt, talking over strategy for dealing with the detective and whatever problems he would present. They were a mournful crew, and as squalls swept in from the sea, they anticipated the typhoon of troubles which would soon engulf them. But then Murphy, with his healthy peasant doubt, began to bring some sanity into the discussion.
'Wait a minute! What do you really know about this Mr. Reed? You don't even know who he is.'
'He asked about me. More than once, I think.'
'You don't even know whether he's an insurance man like he said or a detective like you said. Or maybe neither.'
'He was looking into things, personal things.'
'You don't know whether he's from Denver or Chicago. Or again, maybe neither.'
'What are you suggesting?' Missy asked, for in her time with Matt she had learned to trust his common sense.
'That we wait till this damned storm dies down and your Mr. Reed can come ashore and explain himself. In the meantime, it does no good to get ourselves all worked up over things we don't know.'
This was such sober counsel that Missy and Tom stopped lacerating themselves, and while the storm increased in its fury, their fears subsided; the apprehensive pair could not escape their sense of doom but they could maneuver it onto a plateau where it could be managed. And in this waiting period while the storm raged, Tom offered various reflections: 'I owe so much to you two, I want to see you happy. I want you to work with me at R&R. Judge Grant and Hoxey will have to leave here soon, or as Matt says, someone is likely to shoot them. Then Missy will be free and we can work together. Matt, why don't you marry her?' and Matt revealed to Tom what he had long ago told Missy: 'I have a wife in Ireland.' He said this so flatly and with such finality that comment was uninvited, and for some time the three sat, listening to the howling of the wind as it rose in fury to match the pounding rain.
'There'll be a lot of houses go down this morning,' Tom said, 'and when we rebuild, I'd like to see wider streets. Make this city something to be proud of.'
Matt said: 'Go careful, Tom. Men like you wanted better government and you got Judge Grant.'
'I don't think Nome can stay a big city. When the Senator sails, if it's ever able to unload, our committee has more than four hundred miners who want to sail with it. But they haven't a dime.'
'What will you do?'
'Our committee will give each one a blue ticket. Free fare south. And I'll bet four hundred others will be paying their own fare to sleep on deck, just to get out of here.'
'What will they do in Seattle?'
'Some'll mix in, most'll move on. Drift until they find work, and start over again.
If a city is big enough, it can absorb men with no money. A small place like Nome can't.'
'Nome's pretty big,' Missy said. 'Biggest city in Alaska.'
Tom listened to the storm as it reached its howling peak, and he said: 'I had a vision last night, I guess you'd call it that. Couldn't get to sleep worrying about the detective...'
'You're not sure he is a detective,' Matt said again.
'And I saw Alaska as a huge ship, much bigger than the Senator lying out there, and it survived this storm only because it was firmly anchored. This gold rush has to die down, and when it does I think we must do everything possible to strengthen our lifeline to Seattle. As it goes, we go.'
But Missy said: 'I'm not so sure. Any good that comes to Alaska, will come from Alaska.'
On the evening of the seventeenth when the storm began to abate, Tom and Matt walked through the heavy rain to survey the damage, and were aghast at the large number of houses destroyed, the small number of tents left standing. Nome, with no protection of any kind against the Bering Sea, would have been erased from the map had it not been for the persistence of the miners who were prepared to rebuild their city of gold.
'What we must have, sooner or later,' Tom said, 'is a sea wall to give us protection against such storms.'
As they walked in the fading light they were joined by several businessmen, some of whose establishments had been completely washed away. Others found two feet of water in their stores, and only the better of the sixty-odd saloons were in any condition to reopen.
'The rain did some good,' one of the men said. 'At least the Golden Gate Hotel didn't burn again.'
It was when they came to the beach, to any part of its wild twenty-six-mile extent, that they appreciated the tremendous power of this storm, because not a single piece of gold-dredging equipment was visible. The little box sluices and the huge machines that gobbled up the sand and wrestled it for gold were gone, every one of them. The beach had been swept clean, without leaving a vestige of the great gold rush, and when one of the town's clergymen joined the group, he could not refrain from saying:
'Look for yourselves, men. It's as if God had grown tired of our excesses and had wiped the slate clean. There's your gold rush."
'No,' a miner said. 'Out there's your gold rush, the men waiting on that ship to come ashore. Two days from now, the beach'll be covered with men the way a piece of venison gets covered with ants.'
'I agree with you, Reverend,' another miner said, 'but I reach a contrary conclusion.
I think God sent the storm, but He did it to rearrange the placer rights. And to move in a fresh cargo of gold. I can hardly wait to get started again.' And as he spoke two older men, dragging behind them some monstrous contraption, came down to the beach, picked a spot where gold had once been abundant, and resumed dredging the sand for gold.
But the lasting image as the historic storm of September 1900 subsided was the large steamer Senator far offshore riding the turbulent waves and waiting to discharge the next influx of gold seekers. It held also a Mr. Reed, who was more impatient to get ashore than any of the would-be miners.
IF HE HAD BEEN VISIBLY RESTIVE AT SEA, HE BECAME almost unnoticeable ashore. Registering at the undamaged Golden Gate Hotel as Mr.
Frank Reed, Denver, Colorado, he spent three days familiarizing himself with the lay of Nome, where its original claims had been along the streams and how the men who came swarming back to the beaches like flies established their rights to this stretch of sand or that. He visited the main stores to see what they were selling and tested the beer at several saloons, where he said nothing but did listen. He was appalled, as any sensible man would be, when he saw the way Nome handled its sewage, and he ate only sparingly those first days.
On his fourth day in town he began visiting the so-called leaders, and his questions were so diverse and unrevealing that three older men went to the Golden Gate asking to talk with him, and on the way they encountered Tom Venn and took him along.
'Mr. Reed, your activities have perplexed us.'
'You're no more perplexed than I am.'
'Who are you?'
The stranger considered this for some moments and his whole inclination was to reveal himself to these honest, worried men, but since long experience had warned him against being premature, he temporized: 'Gentlemen, I'm not at liberty to answer your questions yet, but believe
me, I come meaning no embarrassment to men like you.' He knew they deserved to know more, so taking a document from his inside pocket, he said: 'You're Mr. Kennedy. I was told you were a man of honor. I came here to see you.' He read off two other names with similar comment, and then he turned to Tom: 'I don't believe I know you.'
'You didn't come for me?' Tom blurted out in tremendous relief.
'I didn't come for anybody.'
'I'm Tom Venn. Ross & Raglan.'
'Well, well!' Mr. Reed cried, evidencing a surprise which he could not mask. 'I had no idea you'd be so young. You're the man I wanted to see first.'
Tom felt his knees shake and his mouth go dry, but he had agreed with Missy that he would brave this thing out: 'What did you want to see me about?' and now Mr. Reed simply had to disclose part of his hand: 'The Concannon case.'
'Oh!' Tom sighed so heavily that if Mr. Reed had come to look into a major bank robbery, he would have had to judge by that sigh that Tom was the thief.
'You signed Mr. Concannon's death certificate, did you not?'
'Yes. We have no coroner, you know.'
'I know.'
'So they asked some of us ... I think Mr. Kennedy here signed it too.'
'That's right,' Mr. Reed said. 'His name was on the document. Now let's sit down, gentlemen, and you tell me what you know about the Concannon case.'
He was like a ferret, dissecting even the most remote details of what had been a normal accident at sea when ships rolled and booms snapped: 'The Alacrity was an R&R ship, was it not?'
'A small one,' Venn said, 'built for the Skagway run but diverted when the great rush to the beaches began.'
'Isn't it rather strange that an employee of the company that owns a ship involved in a fatal accident should authenticate the death warrant?'
'At first I didn't even know he died on our Alacrity. I was just called in to sign the papers. Somebody had to, or Mrs. Concannon wouldn't get her insurance.'
'Yes, the people in Denver explained that.'
'Then you're not from the insurance company?'
'No. They alerted the authorities that something odd might have happened in the Concannon case, and it seemed to fit a pattern.'
'What fitted a pattern?' an older man asked, and Mr. Reed smiled: 'That's a penetrating question, sir, and it deserves an answer. But I can't give you one yet. I will repeat, I'm not here to inquire about any of you. We've had only the finest reports about you men. Now let's break up, and the less you say about this the better. I know you'll want to discuss it among yourselves, but please, please don't talk about it in public.'
Then, as the men were about to leave, he added: 'Anything else you can tell me about the Concannon case, well, I'd appreciate hearing it.'
'Mr. Reed,' Tom said firmly. 'It could not have been murder.'
'Of that I'm sure,' Mr. Reed said.
ON THE FIFTH DAY AFTER THE STORM MR. REED summoned that first group of leaders to the Golden Gate along with eight or nine others, including all the clergymen in town, and when they were settled he stood before them.
'Gentlemen, you've been very patient and I appreciate it.
You have every right to know who I am and what I'm here for. My name is Harold Snyder.
I'm a federal marshal from the California District, and I'm here to take action in the fraudulent conversion of property belonging to miners who had perfectly legal claims on Anvil Creek."Before his listeners could even gasp, he rasped out orders like a spitting machine gun: 'I want the fullest details of what happened to claims Five, Six and Seven Above.
And I should like to meet tomorrow with Lars Skjellerup, citizen of Norway, and with Mikkel Sana, citizen of Lapland. What nation would that be a part of?'
'Could be Norway, Sweden, Finland, or maybe even a tip of Russia.'
'And the Siberian known as Arkikov, no first name.' Then followed a barrage of instructions:
'Get me a plat of Anvil Creek. All papers relating to titles. A timetable of the various meetings. And a complete list of miners who attended the first two meetings.'
He ended with a statement which electrified the businessmen: 'Before this session convened I stationed three of your members, including one clergyman, to watch every move that Judge Grant and Marvin Hoxey make. These watchers will not allow them to burn any papers.' With that, he dismissed the meeting:
The next day the original claimants to Five, Six and Seven Above arrived, and when the doors were closed he conducted as minute an investigation as possible, using maps, diagrams, calendars for dates and lists of earlier testimony to nail down the frightful miscarriages of justice which officials in San Francisco had begun to suspect.
At the end of two days he had unequivocal evidence against the two thieves which convinced him but which, he was afraid, would not count for much in a court of law, and apparently Judge Grant and Hoxey knew this, for they continued to operate as usual, with the latter placing aboard the Senator a huge shipment of gold to go south to his account.
'The problem,' Mr. Snyder warned the committee, 'is that what these two rascals have done is almost impossible to prove to a jury. You men know better than anyone else that Judge Grant has been faithless to his oath as a judge, because it was your property he stole. But how do you prove it in court? You know that Hoxey stole your leases, but how are you going to prove it? Juries don't care much for paper rights. However, if we could nail them in the Concannon case ...'
'What is the Concannon case?'
'We think they bilked a widow of her just insurance. The Denver people smelled a rat, but the rascals covered their tracks. We have nothing to go on, but if we could put a defenseless widow on the stand ...' He stopped. 'Dammit, doesn't anybody know anything about that case?'
It was then that it occurred to Tom Venn that Missy could know something about Concannon.
'I can't be sure, Mr. Snyder,' Tom said, 'but I think Missy Peckham might.'
'Bring her here. Now.'
So Tom ran first to his store, where he grabbed Matt Murphy: 'Go to Judge Grant she mustn't see me and fetch Missy.'
'Here?'
'No, the Golden Gate.'
When Matt reached Judge Grant's office he was stopped by the three guards watching the place: 'You can't go in there.'
'Mr. Snyder wants Missy.'
'Judge Grant won't let her go.'
'I'm going to count three, and then I'm damn well going in and get her.'
Missy was delivered, and when she and Tom and Matt sat with Mr. Snyder, the questioning was blunt.
'What do you know about the Concannon case?'
'Not suicide, not murder,' Missy said. 'Insurance policy. Judge Grant and Mr. Hoxey stole a lot of it.'
'How do you know that?'
'I just know.'
'Damn it all, everybody says "I just know" and nobody knows anything that can be used before a jury.'
'Well, I do know,' Missy said stubbornly.
'How do you know?' Mr. Snyder stormed.
'Because I wrote it all down.'
Mr. Snyder, feeling life flow back into the veins of his case, forced himself to ask in a low voice: 'You kept notes?'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'Because after one week on the job I knew these two men were up to no good.'
'Two men?'
'Yes. I typed all of Mr. Hoxey's letters.'
Silence, then very cautiously Mr. Snyder asked: 'You took notes on Hoxey's dealings too?'
'I did.'
'And where are those notes?'
Now came a very long silence, for Missy was recalling Skagway when Soapy Smith's men dressed like clergymen to defraud, and like mail carriers to steal, and like freight forwarders to gain possession of goods which they never shipped. In those ugly days every man was suspect, and she could even see Blacktooth Otto scurrying like a rat up to the scene of that terrible avalanche to steal the packs of the dead. Like one of Soapy Smith's henchmen, Mr. Snyder could be an imposter brought to Nome by Judge Grant
and Hoxey to ferret out and destroy any evidence against them. She would confide nothing further to this unknown man.
'Where are your notes?' Mr. Snyder repeated.
Missy was mute.
'Tell him,' Matt said, and his plea was so insistent that she turned in anguish to Tom and blurted out: 'It's just like Skagway. How can we know who he really is? How can we trust him? How do we know he isn't working for Hoxey?'
It was a cry that both Tom and Mr. Snyder understood, for when a society allows total chaos, it engenders total suspicion, and the normal processes by which any society is held on a steady keel trust, dedication, reliability, penalty for wrongdoing corrode, and things begin to fall apart, for the props are gone.
Patiently, forthright Harold Snyder, no longer a mysterious Mr. Reed, produced his credentials for Missy to finger and digest. He was indeed a federal marshal; he did have orders from the federal court in San Francisco to inquire into the malfeasance of a judge in Nome, and he did have the power to arrest. But still Missy was unconvinced:
'Soapy's men had documents. Soapy printed them himself.' Looking in turn at each of the three men, she asked: 'How can I really know?'
'Missy,' Tom said. 'Remember what Sergeant Kirby told you when Superintendent Steele wanted to protect your money? "If you can't trust Superintendent Steele, you can't trust anybody."Same situation.'
She saw that it was, that at some point in any crisis you simply had to trust someone, and she indicated that she would surrender her notebook, and with that, all the fight went out of this sturdy little woman. Too much had hit her in the face in too short a time, and she let her head fall heavily to the table and covered it with her arms.
Matt and Tom left her there, and after a hurried trip to the cabin, returned with the notebook, which Matt placed on the table unopened.
'Is this the famous book, Missy?'