Free Nothing In Her Way by Charles Williams

corny telegram to Charlie’s address in Houston. “Congratulations to the lucky couple. May all your troubles be little ones.” That was the code for him to call his friend in New York, who’d wire Goodwin from there that the head of the Occidental Glass Company’s legal department, who was en route to the West Coast, would like to stop off in Wyecross and discuss a business matter.
    It was like shooting quail on the ground. Wednesday night Goodwin called me, full of excitement and almost sputtering. He’d received the wire from New York, all right, and then another from the lawyer himself, from Houston. He’d be in on the nine a.m. Westbound next day.
    “All right,” I said. “You’re a businessman. You know what to do when you hold a hand like that.”
    “Yes,” he said happily. “You bet I do.”
    I was looking out the window of the drugstore the next morning after the train came in and saw Goodwin go by with him. Bolton looked like the legal department of Fort Knox, in a camel’s-hair coat that probably cost as much as a small car.
    He had to stay all day, since there wasn’t another train until nine p.m. About nine-fifteen Goodwin called. He’d just got back from the station, seeing him off. “I did it,” he said, a little wildly.
    “Good for you,” I said.
    “He knew you’d told me, but there wasn’t anything he could do. He’d probably have killed you if he could have found you. I started him off at three hundred thousand, and he finally gave up at two-seventy-five.”
    “The deal already made?” I asked.
    “Not yet. They have to have a meeting of the board. But he says it’s almost certain to go through. They’ve got an option on it at that price, for ten days.”
    “Fine,” I said. “That’ll give you just about time enough to have your title searched. Then you’re in.”
    I put that in to help him along. He still hadn’t got it. He was going to, as soon as it soaked in, and as I said, it was poison. It could kill you if you had a bad heart. It wasn’t until the next afternoon around three that it finally got to him. He called me at the motel.
    “Reichert,” he said wildly, “can you get over here right away? Something terrible’s come up, and I’ve got to have some advice. I’m trying to get hold of my lawyer now, and maybe he’ll be here by the time you are.”
    “Sure,” I said. “I’ll be right over.”
    He’d remembered it at last. The land was his, all right, and the title was clear, but about five months ago he’d sold the oil rights to a lease speculator by the name of Wallace Caffery.
    The thing that made it bad was that the lease said “mineral rights.” And Wallace Caffery, of course, was Wolford Charles.

Seven
    It wasn’t as dumb as it looked, and actually he probably hadn’t forgotten it at all. It was just that it didn’t matter. Land was often sold without the mineral rights, which around here meant simply oil, as that was the only mineral they had. Occidental Glass just wanted the sand. And sand wasn’t a mineral. Was it? Was it?
    The lawyer was already there by the time I made it. They had a copy of the contract out, and Goodwin was slowly going crazy. The lawyer explained it to me.
    “I’d have to look it up before I could say definitely,” he told Goodwin, “but just offhand I’d say you haven’t got a chance.” He turned to me again. “What is sand, Reichert? Technically, I mean. Rock, isn’t it? Silicia—sil-something.
    “Silicon,” I said, praying Charlie’s coaching wouldn’t go back on me now. “Actually, it’s the oxide. Silicon dioxide is the correct name for it. Its nonorganic, of course. Physically, it’s nothing but small fragments of quartz.”
    The lawyer shook his head. “There goes your ball game. Quartz is mineral to anybody.”
    It was murder. Just a little matter of $275,000 thrown out the window for the miserable handful of chicken feed Caffery’d given him for the oil rights on land where there’d never