Rick Boyer: Billingsgate Shoal

No good. I could not detect the signs of disturbed masonry anywhere. But this Kincaid was a clever old guy. He did everything in style. He spared no pains, or costs. I knew that by his house and his company headquarters. He was a sharpie, was old Kincaid. Perhaps he'd been laying treasure away for years and years, and finally decided to construct some secret vault before disappearing. And he would enter the place on the eve of his departure, and take the stuff aboard his refitted boat, seal it in down near the keel, and slide aways to Queen's Beach, "Where Paradise Begins…"

"It's in there, Joey. I tell you it's in there. It's just very cleverly concealed."

Joe opened his pocket knife and began picking and pecking inside the flue.

"Hey hey hey, look at this, Charlie. This corner mortar is peeling off like rubber cement."

The jackknife blade scooped away the old mortar along both back seams of the brick flue. Then we realized that it wasn't mortar; it was simply caulking compound-probably applied with a gun and smoothed down with a fingertip-covered with wood ashes to make it appear old. Joe worked quickly. In less than a minute both seams were clear; the back wall of the brick flue was free of the side walls by an eighth of an inch. I rapped hard on the back wall, which was two feet across. It didn't sound hollow; it was gen-u-wine brick. Joe shoved at it, tried to slide it. No go. It was solid. Joe hunched down in front of the hole and took his chin in his hand. `

"Sombitch Charlie. She doesn't wanna budge."

"There's gotta be a gizrno… a lever or-"

"Yeah I know what you mean. Let's get back to looking."

So we scoured the place again from top to bottom. Nothing. Yet we'd found some fake mortar; that was enough to keep us at it. So we trudged around the furnace and all its pipes; we examined the floor and all the walls. Clean as a whistle. We were just about to give up for a second time when Joe noticed the small hole in the masonry right behind the furnace. It was only as big in diameter as the base of my thumb. It was low in the wall, about two feet from the floor. It was just about invisible. But it was the only thing in the to wall that wasn't perfect. I shined the flashlight beam into the hole. I had a lot of trouble peeking in because it was so small. About six inches inside a brass nut shined back at me. The curious thing was, it was three-sided. It was an equilateral triangle. I stepped back and looked at the hole again. Its outer edges were worn and rounded. It was whitewashed the same shade of white as the remainder of the foundation wall. Yet inside it was a shiny brass bolt head of strange configuration. I'll be damned, I thought.

The innocuous-looking hole in the wall was ten feet from the ash door.

"Naw, it couldn't be-" said Joe.

"Oh yes it could. Thing is, where the hell is the gizmo used to turn the nut? Perhaps old Walter carried it with him. If that's the case we'll never-"

"No! No he wouldn't. Don't you see? The head's triangular. How many triangular bolt-heads have you ever seen in your lifetime?"

"None.".

"Right. So the gizmo, as you call it, has got to arouse suspicion. It's in fact more of a key than a lever since it's shaped uniquely. Doc, he wouldn't tote it around. He wouldn't want to lose it; he wouldn't want it seen."

"You're absolutely right. And he wouldn't hide it anywhere near the hole either, would he?"

"No!"

"Then let's follow the example of Poe's Purloined Letter: Do you remember where the missing letter was hidden?"

"Can't say as I've ever read the story."

"It was hidden in the most inconspicuous place: with a bunch of other letters. So where do we look for this tool?"

Walter Kincaid's workshop was very big, as one would expect of a millionaire engineer. There were drill presses, lathes, joiners, jigsaws, a drafting board, tap and die sets-the works. We rummaged through a whole passel of exotic micrometers, gauges, metal rules, combination squares, and just about everything that places like Woodcrafters and Brookstone's sell. We looked through exotic hardwood tool chests lined with green felt that held tools from Sweden and Germany. We looked through drawers and racks of lowly screwdrivers and nailpullers.

Nothing.

And then Joe saw a rack of carefully labeled cigar boxes that lined a high shelf. One of these was labeled "Miscellaneous Bits."

He took this down. Of the twenty or so metal drills and bits inside, one had a curious head. It was a round terminus as thick as my thumb, with a triangular socket at its end. My pulse revved up like a jackhammer. The base of the bit was the standard four-sided tapered shank that fits into an old-fashioned crank brace. I grabbed the brace from its place on the pegboard, inserted the strange bit,` and tightened the chuck. Then we made our way back to the furnace room. I inserted the crank contraption into the hole. The socket thunked home perfectly.

"Does it?" asked Joe.

"Like the proverbial hand garment."

I turned the brace; it wouldn't budge. Then I reversed the crank, and heard a slow regular grinding deep in the wall. Joe ran over to the ash door and shined the flashlight in; I kept grinding away, like a storekeeper cranking in an awning.

"Son… of… a.. bitch. It's moving!"

I joined him and peered inside. The brick back of the flue was half an inch to the right. A narrow fissure was now visible along the left side. Darkness, the darkness of space, lay beyond.

"Walter Kincaid, you genius you-"

"The guy was an engineer, yes?"

"Uh huh, and it shows too. He was an expert at locks. I think he also realized that concealment and secrecy are far stronger security than the thickest bank-vault doors."

"Sure. If you don't know where the money is, how can you get it?"

Joe took a turn at the crank. I supposed it was a rack and pinion design, in which a geared-down wheel with teeth moved a straight piece of steel with matching teeth; There were probably ball bearings or smooth metal wheels to help move along the slab of genuine brick, which would weigh a few hundred pounds. It worked slick as a whistle, and showed the inventiveness and determination of Kincaid, No wonder the guy was loaded. He was smart, cagey, and worked like a dog. He had probably designed the set-up, machined and fabricated most of it himself or at the Wheel-Lock factory, and installed it alone, perhaps in the space of three or four grueling days of long labor during one of Laura's rendezvous with Schilling.

As Joe turned the crank I watched the fissure widen. For every eight turns of the crank the slab opened another inch. The bricks had been mounted in a steel frame set on big steel dolly wheels. I shined the light through a circular concrete tunnel a yard long and saw the glint of gold eight feet away.

Now I knew how Howard Carter must have felt when they broke the seals of the last chamber in Tutankhamen's tomb, and entering, he saw the gold sarcophagus still in place. "Howdja like to retire, Joe?" I said laughing.

We spent only about twenty minutes in the small concrete cubicle fashioned from the shell of the septic tank. A description of the treasure trove wouldn't do it justice. The most spectacular part of it was twenty-two gold ingots. Kincaid had lined them up like miniature loaves of bread on a clean pine, board. I hefted one of the li'l critters. It weighed ten kilograms, and felt like it. It was stamped with an embossed seal of the double eagle of Austria on the bottom. What was it worth?

"Dunno, Charlie. Let's see, gold's going for about seven hundred dollars an ounce, that's, uh, over eleven thousand dollars a pound, and these things weigh twenty-two pounds each-"

"Each one's worth almost a quarter of a million dollars."

"Doc, I feel dizzy."