Chapter 58 - The Floor Beneath the Hearth
In the great library adjacent to the ballroom stood a massive fieldstone fireplace that stretched all the way to the vaulted ceiling. It was built from dark river stone hauled from the Pigeon River gorge eighty years earlier.
Ellis carried a pry bar and a surveyor's level from the truck.
"According to Sanford's journal," I said, consulting the yellowed pages of the 1954 diary, "the keystone above the firebox isn't decorative. It’s an anchor."
Ellis climbed onto the hearth ledge and inspected the heavy, dark stone set dead-center above the mantle. He wiped away years of soot with the sleeve of his flannel shirt. A faint, weathered carving emerged beneath the grime: a crosscut saw crossing an oak leaf—the identical symbol on Sanford's dispatch case.
"There’s a seam here," Ellis muttered, tracing the mortar line with the tip of his knife. "The mortar isn't lime and sand. It’s painted lead."
He wedged the pry bar into the lower edge of the keystone. With a sharp grunt of exertion, he levered the stone outward.
The heavy block slipped forward on iron rails, revealing a hollow vault recessed four feet into the chimney breast.
Inside, resting on a bed of dry cedar shavings, sat a long wooden coffer bound in forged iron bands.
I reached in and helped Ellis lift the coffer down to the library table. It weighed at least forty pounds.
"The Ottawa treaties," I whispered, lifting the unlocked lid.
Inside lay three thick rolls of calfskin vellum, preserved perfectly by the dryness of the chimney stone. Beside them were dozens of faded bank notes, tax receipts from the Great Depression, and the original, unadulterated survey plats of the Pigeon River Valley.
"Look at this, Abigail," Ellis pointed to the bottom of the first plat.
There, in faded blue ink from 1928, was the signature of Raymond's father, selling the entire northern basin to Sanford Vance for the sum of ten dollars and the promise to protect the old growth forest from commercial clear-cutting.
Raymond’s entire claim to the family empire had been built upon a forged contract created thirty years later. He had never owned a single square foot of the land he had strip-mined and mortgaged.
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"This is the end of it," Ellis said, a quiet sense of triumph in his voice. "This destroys every legal defense Harlan Cross could ever mount."
At that moment, the telephone on the library desk let out a piercing, startling ring.
