“But let it pass; of course you will inform at once!”
“What else can I do?” demanded Dick, sternly.
Miles scrutinised his adversary attentively and speculated whether there was the least chance of frightening such a man. Then he again thrust his hand into the breast of his overcoat, and answered reflectively:
“You can die — this minute — if I choose.”
Dick stood his ground without moving a muscle.
“Nonsense!” he said scornfully. “I have shown you that you can gain nothing by that.”
Miles muttered a curse, and scowled at the ground, without, however, withdrawing his hand.
“The case stands thus,” said Dick: “you have imposed on friends of mine, and I have found you — not a common humbug, as I thought all along — but quite a famous villain. Plainly speaking, a price is on your head.”
Miles did not speak.
“And your life is in my hands.”
Miles made no reply.
“The natural thing,” Dick continued, “would have been to crawl away, when I heard who you were, and call the police. You see I have not done that.”
Still not a word.
“Another, and perhaps fairer, way would be to give you a fair start from this spot and this minute, and not say a word for an hour or two, until people are about; the hare-and-hounds principle, in fact. But I don’t mean to do that either.”
Miles raised his eyes, and at last broke his silence.
“You are arbitrary,” he sneered. “May I ask what is the special quality of torture you have reserved for me? I am interested to know.”
“I shall name a condition,” replied Dick firmly— “a single condition — on which, so far as I am concerned, you may impose on the public until some one else unmasks you.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“You have not heard my condition. I am in earnest.”
“I wouldn’t believe you on oath!”
“And why?”
“Because you owe me a grudge,” said Miles, speaking rapidly— “because it is in your interest to see me go under.”
“My condition provides for all that.”
“Let me hear it, then.”
“First tell me how you came to know the Bristos.”
Miles gave Dick substantially the same story that he had already learned from Alice.
“Now listen to me,” said Dick. “Instead of squatter you were bushranger. You had been in England a day or two instead of a month or two, and you had set foot in Sussex only; instead of masquerading as a fisherman you wore your own sailor’s clothes, in which you swam ashore from your ship.”
“Well guessed!” said Miles ironically.
“A cleverer thing was never done,” Dick went on, his tone, for the moment, not wholly free from a trace of admiration. “Well, apart from that first set of lies, your first action in England was a good one. That is one claim on leniency. The account you have given me of it is quite true, for I heard the same thing from one whose lips, at least, are true!”
These last words forced their way out without his knowledge until he heard them.
“Ah!” said Miles.
An involuntary subdual of both voices might have been noticed here; it was but momentary, and it did not recur.
Dick Edmonstone took his hands from his pockets, drew nearer to Miles, slowly beat his left palm with his right fist, and said:
“My condition is simply this: you are to go near the Bristos no more.”
If this touched any delicate springs in the heart of Miles, their workings did not appear in his face. He made no immediate reply; when it came, there was a half-amused ring in his speech:
“You mean to drive a hard bargain.”
“I don’t call it hard.”
“All I possess is in that house. I cannot go far, as I stand; you might as well give me up at once.”
“I see,” said Dick musingly. “No; you are to have an excellent chance. I have no watch on me: have you? No? Well, it can’t be more than one now, or two at the latest, and they keep up these dances till dawn — or they used to. Then perhaps you had better go back to the house now. Button-hole the Colonel; tell him you have had a messenger down from town — from your agent. You can surely add a London agent to your Queensland station and your house in Sydney! Well, affairs have gone wrong on this station of yours — drought, floods — anything you like; you have received an important wire; you are advised, in fact, to start back to Queensland at once. At any rate, you must pack up your traps and leave Graysbrooke first thing in the morning. You are very sorry to be called back so suddenly — they are sorrier still to lose you; but Australia and England are so close now, you are sure to be over again some day — and all the rest of it; but you are never to go near them again. Do you agree?”
“What is the alternative?”
“Escape from here dressed like that if you can! You will breakfast in gaol. At best you will be hunted for a week or two, and then taken miserably — there is no bush in England; whereas I offer you freedom with one restriction.”
“I agree,” said Miles, hoarsely.
“Very good. If you keep your word, Sundown the bushranger is at the bottom of the sea, for all I know; if you break it, Sundown the bushranger is a lost man. Now let us leave this place.”
Dick led the way from the plantation, with his hands again deep in his pockets.
Miles followed, marvelling. Marvelling that he, who had terrorised half Australia, should be dictated to by this English whelp, and bear it meekly; wondering what it all meant. What, to begin with, was the meaning of this masterly plan for an honourable exit? which was, in fact, a continuation of his own falsehood. Why had not this young fellow — who had every reason to hate him, independently of to-night’s discovery — quietly brought the police and watched him taken in cold blood? There would have been nothing underhand in that; it was, in fact, the only treatment that any criminal at large would expect at the hands of the average member of society — if he fell into those hands. Then why had not this been done? What tie or obligation could possibly exist between this young Edmonstone and Sundown the Australian bushranger?
The night was at its darkest when they reached the avenue; so dark that they crossed into the middle of the broad straight road, where the way was clearest. Straight in front of them burned the lamps of the gateway, like two yellow eyes staring through a monstrous crape mask. They seemed to be walking in a valley between two long, regular ranges of black mountains with curved and undulating tops — only that the mountains wavered in outline, and murmured from their midst under the light touch of the sweet mild breeze.
They walked on in silence, and watched the deep purple fading slowly but surely before their eyes, and the lights ahead growing pale and sickly.
Miles gave expression to the thought that puzzled him most:
“For the life of me, I can’t make out why you are doing this” (he resented the bare notion of mercy, and showed it in his tone). “With you in my place and I in yours — —”
Dick stopped in his walk, and stopped Miles also.
“Is it possible you do not know me?”
“I have known you nearly a month,” Miles answered.
“Do you mean to say you don’t remember seeing me before — before this last month?”
“Certainly, when first I met you, I seemed to remember your voice; but from what I was told about you I made sure I was mistaken.”
“Didn’t they tell you that at one time, out there I was hawking?”
“No. Why, now—”
“Stop a bit,” said Dick, raising his hand. “Forget that you are here; forget you are in England. Instead of these chestnuts, you’re in the mallee scrub. The night is far darker than this night has ever been: the place is a wilderness. You are lying in wait for a hawker’s wagon. The hawkers drive up; you take them by surprise, and you’re three to two. They are at your mercy. The younger one is a new chum from Engla
nd — a mere boy. He has all the money of the concern in his pocket, and nothing to defend it with. He flings himself unarmed upon one of your gang, and, but for you, would be knifed for his pains. You save him by an inch; but you see what maddens him — you see he has the money. You take it from him. The money is all the world to him: he is mad: he wants to be killed outright. You only bind him to the wheel, taking from him all he has. So he thinks, and death is at his heart. But he finds that, instead of taking it all, you have left it all; you have been moved by compassion for the poor devil of a new chum! Well, first he cannot believe his eyes; then he is grateful; then senseless.”
Miles scanned the young man’s face in the breaking light. Yes, he remembered it now; it had worn this same passionate expression then. His own face reflected the aspect of the eastern sky; a ray was breaking in upon him, and shedding a new light on an old action, hidden away in a dark corner of his mind. A thing that had been a little thing until now seemed to expand in the sudden warmth of this new light. Miles felt an odd, unaccountable sensation, which, however, was not altogether outside his experience: he had felt it when he pulled Colonel Bristo from the sea, and in the moment of parting with his coat to a half-perishing tramp.
Dick continued:
“Stop a minute — hear the end. This new chum, fresh from ‘home,’ was successful. He made a fortune — of a sort. It might have been double what it is had he been in less of a hurry to get back to England.” Dick sighed. “Whatever it is, it was built on that hundred which you took and restored: that was its nucleus. And therefore — as well as because you saved his life — this new chum, when no longer one, never forgot Sundown the bushranger; he nursed a feeling of gratitude towards him which was profound if, as he had been assured, illogical. Only a few hours ago he said, ‘If he came within my power I should be inclined to give him a chance,’ or something like that.” Dick paused; then he added: “Now you know why you go free this morning.”
Miles made no immediate remark. Bitter disappointment and hungry yearning were for the moment written clearly on his handsome, reckless face. At last he said:
“You may not believe me, but when you came to me — down there on the lawn — that’s what I was swearing to myself; to begin afresh. And see what has come to me since then!” he added, with a harsh laugh.
“Just then,” returned Dick, frankly, “I should have liked nothing better than to have seen you run in. I followed you out with as good a hate as one man can feel towards another. You never thought of my following you out here? Nor did I think of coming so far; by the bye, the — your wife made it difficult for me; she was following too. Yes, I hated you sufficiently; and I had suspected you from the first — but not for what you are; when I heard Jem Pound say your name I was staggered, my brain went reeling, I could scarcely keep from crying out.”
“Did you recognise him?”
“Pound? No: I thought him a detective. He is a clever fellow.”
“He is the devil incarnate!”
They had passed through the gates into the road.
“Here we separate,” said Dick. “Go back to Graysbrooke the way you came, and pack your things. Is there any need to repeat—”
“None.”
“You understand that if you break it, all’s up with you?”
“I have accepted that.”
“Then we are quits!”
“I like your pluck — I liked it long ago,” said Miles, speaking suddenly, after staring at Dick for more than a minute in silence. “I was thinking of that new chum hawker awhile ago, before I knew you were he. You reminded me of him. And I ought to have known then; for I was never spoken to the same, before or since, except then and now. No one else ever bargained with Sundown! Well, a bargain it is. Here’s my hand on it.”
As he spoke, he shook Edmonstone by the hand with an air of good faith. Next moment, the two men were walking in opposite directions.
XV
THE MORNING AFTER
Dick reached Iris Lodge before the other two whom he had left at the ball. This was fortunate, not only because he had the latchkey in his pocket, but since it obviated crooked answers to awkward questions: they would, of course, suppose that he had gone straight home from the Bristos’.
He went quietly up to his room, changed his coat, and filled his pipe. In searching for matches on the dressing-table, however, he came across something which caused him to forget his pipe for the moment; a packet of letters in an elastic band, displaying immediately below the band a thin, folded collection of newspaper cuttings. They were the extracts Flint had given him, referring to the capture and subsequent escape of Sundown the bushranger. He had found no time to read them before going out, and now — well, now he would read them with added interest, that was all.
Yet he stood still with the papers in his hand, trying to realise all that he had seen, and heard, and said since midnight; trying not to separate in his mind the vaguely suspected rogue of yesterday and the notorious villain unmasked this morning; trying, on the other hand, to reconcile the Sundown of his remembrance — still more of his imagination — with the Miles of his acquaintance, to fuse two inconsistent ideas, to weld unsympathetic metals.
Standing thus, with all other sensations yielding to bewilderment, Dick was recalled to himself by hearing voices and footsteps below his window. Fanny and Maurice had returned; he must go down and let them in, and then — the cuttings!
“Why, how long have you been in?” was Fanny’s first question; she had too much tact to ask him why he had left.
“Oh, a long time,” Dick replied. “I didn’t feel quite all right,” he added, a shade nearer the truth; “but — but I thought it would only bother you.”
“How could you think that? If you had only told me,” said Fanny, with honest trouble in her voice, “you shouldn’t have come alone.”
“Then I’m glad I gave you the slip.” Dick manufactured a laugh. “But, indeed, I’m all right now — right as the mail, honour bright!”
“But why didn’t you go to bed when you got home?” his sister pursued.
“The key!” explained Maurice laconically, turning out the hall gas as he spoke.
They stole up-stairs in the pale chill light that fell in bars through the blind of the landing window.
Fanny laid her hand softly on Dick’s shoulder.
“It was wretched after you went,” she whispered sympathetically. “Do you know that — that—” timorously— “Alice went up-stairs and never came down again?”
“Did no one else disappear?” asked Dick, bending his head to read his sister’s eyes.
Fanny hung her head. Mr. Miles had been missed by all; but no one — except the Colonel — had remarked Dick’s absence in her hearing. When she had found Alice nearly fainting, and taken her to her maid, she had seen, indeed, that her friend was sorely distressed about something; but the friendship between them was not close enough for the seeking of confidences on either side; and, as the cause of so many sighs and tears, she had thought naturally, because she wished so to think, of her own brother. Now it seemed that perhaps, after all, Mr. Miles — whom she detested — had been the object of compassion. And Fanny had nothing to say.
“Good night,” said Dick, quietly kissing her.
The next moment she heard the key turn in his door.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, lit his pipe, and withdrew the cuttings from the indiarubber band. There was not much to read, after all; only three paragraphs, of which two were telegraphic, and consequently brief. In no case was either name or date of the newspaper attached; but in the short paragraphs Dick seemed to recognise the type of the “Australasian,” while there was internal evidence that the longer one emanated from a Queensland organ. After glancing rapidly at all three, he arranged them in an order that proved to be chronologically correct.
The first paragraph (telegraphic: headed “Brisbane, Friday,”) stated that, on the afternoon of the day before, the branch of the Australia
n Joint-Stock Bank at Mount Clarence had been entered by two bushrangers, one of whom declared that he was Sundown, the New South Wales outlaw. That after “bailing up” everybody in the establishment, and shutting up the bank — which, as it was then closing-time, was effected without raising the suspicions of the township — the bushrangers had ridden away, taking with them about five hundred ounces of gold and a considerable sum in cheques and notes. That, at two o’clock the following morning, the bushrangers had been captured asleep under a gunyah, twelve miles from Mount Clarence, “through the rare sagacity of Sergeant Dogherty,” and that Sundown’s mate, a man named Benjamin Hickey, had been subsequently shot dead by the police on attempting to escape. “The redoubtable Ned Ryan, alias Sundown,” the paragraph concluded, “gave no trouble on the way to Mount Clarence, whence he will be forwarded to Rockhampton without delay; but the gold has not yet been recovered, having evidently been ‘planted’ by the outlaws before camping for the night.”
Dick believed that he had seen this identical paragraph in the “Argus” of February 13th, the day on which the Hesper sailed from Hobson’s Bay.
The second cutting seemed to be part — perhaps the greater part — of an article from a Queensland pen, written in the first blush of triumph following the announcement of Sundown’s capture. From it Dick learned so much concerning Ned Ryan that had never before come to his knowledge, that it is here reproduced word for word:
“Edward Ryan, or ‘Sundown,’ is declared by our informant to be a man of pleasing countenance, about six feet three inches high and thirty-seven years of age. He is a native of Victoria, where his parents resided for many years. Some six years ago — being then a horse-dealer of questionable repute — he married the daughter of a well-to-do farmer in the Ovens district (Vic.). But for some time past — since, indeed, a short time after his outlawry — he is said to have ceased all communication with his wife. About four years and a half ago, a warrant was taken out against Edward Ryan for some roguery connected with a horse. He, however, managed to escape across the Murray into New South Wales. A few weeks later his career of desperate crime — which has now happily ended as above detailed — was commenced in the partnership of two kindred spirits. One of these, Benjamin Hickey, has met with a summary fate, but one strictly in accordance with his deserts, as already described. The third of the band, however, who is believed by the police to be a Tasmanian ‘old hand,’ lost sight of for many years, was turned adrift some time ago by Sundown, on account, it is said, of his extreme bloodthirstiness. This statement receives colour from the fact that Sundown, since his capture, has declared that neither he nor Hickey ever spilt blood with their own hands; so that if this is true, not only the murder of Youl, the storekeeper near Menindie, on the Darling — which crime rendered the name of Sundown infamous at the commencement — but the grievous wounding of Constable O’Flynn, two years later, may be freely ascribed to the murderous hand of the miscreant that is still at large. However this may be, we have, in Sundown, succeeded in running to earth a freebooter equal in daring, impudence, and cunning generalship to the most formidable of the highwaymen who were the terror of the sister colonies in the early days. The credit of this brilliant capture, however, rests entirely with this colony. Indeed, it is to be hoped that we shall hereafter be able to boast that it was reserved to the youngest colony to add the finishing touch to the extermination of the Australian bandit. And as the bushrangers had been but a few months in Queensland, whereas their depredations in the neighbouring colony extended over as many years, it will be seen that on the whole the exploit of our police compares not unfavourably with the New South Wales method of doing business.”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 223