The Digger

Originally Aired: October 9, 1956

In Suspense #668, "The Digger," Carton tracks down Roger Fabian, a disgraced mining engineer known as "the Digger," to a squalid rooming house in the native quarter. Two years earlier, Fabian led thirty men into the Tabora mine during a cave-in, and only he made it back alive. Now drinking himself to death and haunted by nightmares of the men he left behind, Fabian has become a shadow of his former self. Carton brings him a job offer from Sandy McGregor: five thousand pounds to return to the very mine where the tragedy occurred. The mine has been reopened, and McGregor has found traces of a new vein. Despite his terror and the natives' taboo on the cursed mine, Fabian reluctantly agrees, seeing it as his last chance to escape his desperate circumstances.

The journey back to Tabora proves torturous for the alcoholic Fabian, but he arrives to find McGregor waiting with news of rich ore samples. As Fabian prepares to descend once again into the mine that destroyed his life and reputation, he must confront both the physical dangers below and the ghosts of thirty dead men who haunt his conscience.