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CHAPTER 18

      A LITTLE before nine, after having breakfast at the DeLuxe, Rand drove up East Griggs to Hood's place.

      Noreen and Pritchard were waiting for him with more coffee. Pritchard was cheery: "I called Vandergaard at home this morning. We're gonna bring him the gold in a few minutes and he'll check it out."

      "I don't like that man," Noreen said. "He's such a stuffed shirt."

      "It doesn't matter what kind of shirt he is. All we want from him is a piece of paper saying that the gold is real," Pritchard said. After they finished the coffee, she wrapped the gold in a paper sack, and carried it to the Packard, and got in beside Pritchard. Rand followed them in the Chevy.

      Vandergaard's store was a block south of the theater on Main Street. When they pulled up, he was setting up the watches and diamond rings he had taken out of the window the night before. He was a strong-looking man, almost as big as Rand, but his handshake was limp, and his smile was empty and mechanical.

      He turned to Noreen and said unctuously, "I was sorry to learn about your husband. He spoke to our Rotary Club about the geology of this area few months ago. His loss will be felt."

      "Yes," Noreen said, scarcely looking at him. She placed the paper bag on the thick glass of the display case that served as the counter, and slid out both the bars.

      Vandergaard's eyes widened, but he was not a man to let precious metals flap him. "These are what you want me to test?"

      "Yes," Pritchard said.

      "I thought you'd be bringing in a ring or some other piece of jewelry." Vandergaard ran his fingers lightly over the stamped mark. He lifted a bar, then set it down carefully. "Are you planning to sell these?"

      Pritchard said, "No, damnit, we just want to make sure those things are solid one-hundred percent gold."

      "Oh, I doubt that," Vandergaard said smugly. "There are bound to be some impurities in it." He touched a rough place along the edge of one of the bars. "They were obviously sand cast. Where did you get them?"

      Noreen frowned. "Look, we just want you to test it. You told us you could."

      He nodded. "Of course. But this mark is very interesting." He lifted his pale eyes, enormous behind the thick glasses, and stared at Noreen. "Were they found around here?"

      She didn't answer. Pritchard said, "Hey, bucko, I'm the lawyer here, not you; I ask the questions. How soon are you going to be able to tell us if it's real gold?"

      "An hour or so. But I'll need to drill right through them. Okay?"

      "Do whatever it takes."

      "They certainly feel like gold. The weight is about right," Vandergaard said.

      "If this is real gold - and I'm dead sure it is - I'll want written proof," Pritchard said. "How much will it cost us?"

      Vandergaard's expression changed; he became a man suddenly forced to talk about distasteful money. "Five dollars."

      "That's too much for an hour's work," Noreen said.

      Vandergaard shrugged. "Take it to somebody in El Paso, then. I don't care. If I test it, and it's real gold, you'll get a paper from me certifying what it is, and people will know I'm staking my entire reputation on my word."

      Pritchard and Noreen exchanged glances.

      "Okay," Pritchard said. "We'll be back in an hour."

      Vandergaard nodded, then said seriously, "If it turns out that it's not gold, I'm going to come right out and say it."

      "Well Ross, if that's it, that's it," Pritchard said. There was the sound of the door opening behind them, and Noreen tried to cover the bars with the paper sack. It was José Navarette.

      "Don't bother to hide them," he said. "I saw them through the window." He slid the paper back and looked at the two gold bars and whistled. "Pretty, aren't they."

      To prevent anyone else from coming in, Vandergaard locked the door and turned around the sign in the window so it read "Closed" instead of "Open."

      Navarette lit a cigarette and blew twin streams of smoke from his nose. "After I went home last night, I got to thinking about this stuff. You're going to form a company and sell shares of stock to get money for an expedition to find the cave with the rest of the gold. That's why you want Ross here to say the gold is real, right?"

      "Spanish Gold?" Vandergaard asked. "There's a cave full of Spanish gold?"

      "Now you know," Pritchard said.

      Vandergaard picked up one of the bars and looked at it. "So Nick Hood found Spanish gold!"

      "Yeah," Pritchard said. "And he lost it."

      "Say, I'd like to get in on this," Vandergaard said.

      "Me too," Navarette said. "What's your smallest investment gonna be?"

      Pritchard and Noreen exchanged puzzled looks. "I don't know," the lawyer said. "Maybe five hundred, a thousand."

      "How about three hundred?" Navarette asked.

      "Maybe. We got a lot of thinking to do. I guess the more people we get, the lower the minimum investment will be . . . and the more people we'd get," Pritchard said. "Let's find out if it's real first. Then we'll pay a visit to Macky Collins at the Sun News. He'll want a piece of it . . . and so will a lot of other people."

      He turned to Noreen. "In the meantime, we'll hole up in my office with a pot of coffee and work this thing out."

      Noreen said, "All this would be so much easier if they hadn't stolen the rest of the damn gold. Then we could just sell it and use the money to find the cave ourselves."

      "It would have been even easier if they hadn't killed your husband," Navarette said.

      Noreen looked blank. Then she nodded. "Yeah, that, too."

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