Wools was not winning over the nonchuckling pair of Feds, he realized despondently. He moved on, taking them beyond the activity of the work zone until they followed a ramp down into a narrow, darkened tunnel lit by bare lightbulbs every fifty feet. Now that they were beyond most of the human works the scents of sweat and aftershave were reduced, so that the other smells stood out. Remo tried to place the smell that alarmed him. It was closer to human than he had first imagined, but still not quite a match.
There was another widening of the cavern where a huge air handler operated noisily, pulling in hot air from behind it, running it over a series of aluminum heat exchangers, and thrusting it back up the way they had come.
“See them pipes?” Wools pointed. “They’re miles long. They got stuff like antifreeze in there but it’s safer, in case of a spill. Goes all the way up to right near the surface, gets cooled down by the dirt, then comes through insulated pipes back down here for the coolness to get extracted and blown all over in the work zone. From here on it gets real hot”
Once beyond the air handler, the temperature rose quickly. When the sound of the giant fans dropped to a whisper, Wools stated, “Is 106 hot enough for you?” Chiun and Remo didn’t answer, and Wools gave them the once-over when they were under the glare of the next lightbulb. “Hey, how come you folks ain’t sweatin’?”
“We did a stint in Phoenix,” Remo explained.
“Oh.”
“This tunnel’s man-made.”
“Yeah?”
“You said it was an old gem mine?”
“Yeah, some good rubies came out of the Pit. That’s what the hired hands call this place. The Pit.”
“What kind of rubies?” Chiun asked.
“Red ones.”
“Of what quality?”
“Not many gemstones, if that’s what you’re asking. The mine was played out fifty years back. Nobody with any brains would be breaking in down here to get at our gems, if that’s what you were thinking.”
“Have you checked thoroughly?” Chiun persisted.
“Heh-heh. Yeah. For a while some of the grunts had a sort of contest going as a way of passing the time, about who could find the biggest gem. Then the contest became who could find any gem. Know what? Three months later one guy finds a piece of rock with one little crumbly ruby in it, worth less than it would cost to extract”
Chiun pursed his lips in disappointment, but his eyes scanned the walls as he walked.
“This is the Intersection.”
There was a small metal desk and a bored security guard who was watching them approach without much interest, an assault rifle over one shoulder.
“Here’s the purported crime scene,” Wools announced miserably.
“What, you mean the place with the yellow crime scene tape and the inch-deep puddle of dried blood?”
“Not a puddle so much—”
“It is like a catch basin at an abattoir,” Chiun noted. “There is the blood of just one man here.”
“He’s not getting his severance pay, I guarantee you that. Left without any notice whatsoever.”
“No man can survive after losing that quantity of blood. He is dead.”
“You’re exaggerating,” Wools insisted.
“Who put up the tape?” Remo asked.
“Kerker County sheriff.”
Remo turned on him. “Locals? You mean no other Feds have been notified?”
“Why would we bring in the Feds?” Wools asked, sweating even more than the heat called for. “This isn’t federal land or a government project. Sure, the federal government will be our best customer when we open this place up—”
“If you open this place up,” Remo said, walking away from the man.
“What’s that mean?”
“Where does this go?” Remo was standing at the mismatched boards nailed in place over Shaft C. Chiun was peering into the blackness at the end of the tunnel, where the dangling lightbulb scarcely reached.
“That’s an abandoned shaft,” Wools said. “Dangerous down there. Nobody’s been down there since a part of it collapsed in the 1930s.”
“I see,” Remo said. “So you don’t know what’s down there. You don’t know if there’s an access way to the surface, for example.”
“There’s not.”
Remo raised his eyebrows at Wools, who flinched. Remo kept his eyes on the little man until Wools’s skin was almost visibly crawling. “Okay, we don’t know.”
“And you didn’t try to find out because it would ruin the site,” Remo concluded.
“You got to understand, this is the deepest existing subterranean access on the continent! It was here or Nowhere! And there can’t be an access way that way. See for yourself—nobody’s come through those boards since Teddy Roosevelt was in office!”
“Until recently,” Remo said, snatching Wools by the collar and bringing his pasty face into close proximity of the wood planks. “Fresh damage to old rot. See it?”
“No, you can’t prove—”
“See it?” Remo asked, mashing Wools’s face against the plank.
“I thee it.”
Remo dropped Wools to the floor, relieving him of his flashlight in the process. “Your man got any glow sticks?”
The security guard was standing around looking worried, but he had wisely refrained from unslinging his automatic rifle.
