mineralogy.
He knew rocks you and I never heard of, and most times he knew them by
sight. Almost all of the Belt boys are college grads--you've got to know
what you're looking for out here and what it looks like when you've
found it--but Karpin has practically all of them beat. He's _sharp_."

* * *

"Sounds like a good team," I said.

"I guess that's why they stayed together so long," he said. "They
complemented each other." He leaned forward, the inevitable prelude to a
confidential remark. "I'll tell you something off the record, Mister,"
he said. "Those two were smarter than they knew. Their partnership was
never legalized, it was never anything more than a piece of paper. And
there's a bunch of fellas around here mighty unhappy about that today.
Jafe McCann is the one who handled all the money matters, like I said.
He's got IOU's all over town."

"And they can't collect from Karpin?"

He nodded. "Jafe McCann died just a bit too soon. He was sharp and
cheap, but he was honest. If he'd lived, he would have repaid all his
debts, I'm sure of it. And if this strike they made is as good as I
hear, he would have been able to repay them with no trouble at all."

I nodded, somewhat impatiently. I had the feeling by now that I was
talking to a man who was one of those who had a Jafe McCann IOU in his
pocket. "How long has it been since you've seen Karpin?" I asked him,
wondering what Karpin's attitude and expression was now that his partner
was dead.

"Oh, Lord, not for a couple of months," he said. "Not since they went
out together the last time and made that strike."

"Didn't Karpin come in to make his claim?"

"Not here. Over to Chemisant City. That was the nearest M&R to the
strike."

"Oh." That was a pity. I would have liked to have known if there had
been a change of any kind in Karpin since his partner's death. "I'll
tell you what the situation is," I said, with a false air of
truthfulness. "We have some misgivings about McCann's death. Not
suspicions, exactly, just misgivings. The timing is what bothers us."

"You mean, because it happened just after the strike?"

"That's it," I answered frankly.

He shook his head. "I wouldn't get too excited about that, if I were
you," he said. "It wouldn't be the first time it's happened. A man makes
the big strike after all, and he gets so excited he forgets himself for
a minute and gets careless. And you only have to be careless once out
here.