Deephouse: Further adventures involving the employees of a mid-level adventuring corporation. New to Deephouse? Start here.
<PREV
Durgin sat behind his desk, nervously playing with a letter opener. He had one interview left. If Deephouse had a mole, this had to be it. He glanced at the file again.
Welysa Gumpkin. A gnomish name if ever he’d seen one. Degrees in Mineralogy, Sedimentology, and something called Stratigraphy. A learned person. Not the type he’d expect to bring a black curse down upon Deephouse. But his last suspect.
No, not the last suspect.
It wasn’t lost on Durgin that Yeji had quietly exempted himself from scrutiny. He’d mentioned that Klyde and Blasé were not suspects—rightly—and then had suggested the current course of action: interview the staff wearing an amulet that detects falsehoods. A good trap. One Yeji had positioned and sidestepped.
A hesitant knock came from the hallway. The door was open.
“Come in.”
A long pause.
A female gnome cautiously stepped into view. She paused just inside the threshold, with the hesitancy of someone sticking their hand into water and preparing to quickly remove it should the water prove too hot. She was small even for gnomish standards, her skin the color of sandstone, her face darkly freckled. Most of her face was obscured by enormous glasses; the eyes beyond darted around the room, glanced briefly at Durgin, and flew away again.
Durgin quietly filed the nervousness, though he couldn’t make himself believe this person was their mole. “Please.” He gestured at the empty chair, even though she wasn’t looking at him. “Be seated.”
She didn’t move immediately, and then moved all at once, the anxious haste of someone who wanted to get something over and done with.
He waited for her to make eye contact.
She pushed the glasses up on her nose with one blunt finger. Fidgeted with the raggedy satchel slung crisscross on her body. Studied the surface of his desk. Did not look up.
“Welysa—thanks for coming.” He glanced at the file even though he already knew what it said. “It says here you’re a geologist? That’s rocks and stuff, yeah? What exactly do you do here?”
Her eyes shifted to him and held for the first time, a settling that lasted little longer than a blink. They were steady, the sort that studied hard things up close and drew meaning from them. Then her gaze drifted. “I analyze deposits and sediment to determine the likelihood of mineral lodes for digs: coal, gems, precious metals. At least, that’s what I did. I haven’t been in the field in two months. The last foreman forbid me from going on expeditions. So mostly I sit in my lab and study the same rocks I’ve been looking at for the last two months.”
Durgin noted the enthusiasm with which she answered. He could engage her with rocks, if nothing else. “Do you enjoy the work?”
She pushed the glasses up her nose. “Oh, yes, tremendously. Rocks are some of my very best friends.” She paused. “Most of them.” Another pause. “All of my friends are rocks.”
He hid a smile behind another glance down at the file he didn’t need to review. “Do you have any reason for wanting Sergeant Mountainfist dead?” He asked it lightly, expecting nothing, doing it just to check a box.
The slightest pause. “No.”
The amulet under his shirt flared to life, warming his chest.
Durgin looked up. Welysa Gumpkin, the studious gnome and lover of rocks, was their mole.
<PREV