Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “There’s only one thing that troubles me,” the man was saying (though his twitching, restless face was an eternal sea of trouble and remorse), “and that is your poor old major. He has turned up trumps” (“I’m damned if he has,” muttered the major behind the leaves), “and it does seem a shame. I fear the other night you must have led him on.”

  “I did,” replied the woman, with a groan for which she received no credit. “I did — I could not help it. It grieves me to think of it; I am so ashamed; but, darling, it was for you!”

  “Was it indeed?” cried the major, striding into the room with sounding heels and jingling spurs; and he stood there twirling his moustache. The woman was first upon her feet. The man’s face sank into his hands.

  “It was,” she repeated boldly. “And oh, sir, even you will forgive me when I tell you all!”

  “Naturally,” sneered the other— “if I stopped to listen. But explanations I imagine would be somewhat superfluous after this. Here, you may have it,” he added, opening his hand and letting the crumpled ticket drop with an air of ineffable contempt. “I won’t condescend to put it back in my pocket, as you deserve; take it — and marry the man, for God’s sake, at the nearest church!”

  The woman laid a tender hand upon the bowed and bended head at which Thomas Blacker glanced in righteous scorn.

  “Marry him I cannot,” said she. “We have been married these fifteen years.”

  AFTER THE FACT

  I

  It is my good fortune to cherish a particularly vivid recollection of the town of Geelong. Others may have found the place so dull as to justify an echo of the cheap local sneer at its expense; to me those sloping parallels of low houses have still a common terminus in the bluest of all Australian waters; and I people the streets, whose very names I have forgotten, with faces of extraordinary kindness, imperishable while memory holds her seat. Even had it bored me, I for one should have good reason to love Geelong. It was my lot, however, not only to happen upon the town in a week of unique excitement, but, thanks to one of those chance meetings which are the veriest commonplace of outlandish travel, to have a finger in the pother. I arrived by the boat on a Monday afternoon, to find the streets crowded and peace disturbed by a sudden run on one of the banks. On the Wednesday, another bank, which had notoriously received much of the money withdrawn from the Barwon Banking Company, Limited, was in its turn the victim of a still uglier fate: the Geelong branch of the Intercolonial was entered in broad daylight by a man masked and armed to the beard, who stayed some ten minutes, and then walked into thin air with no less a sum than nineteen thousand and odd pounds in notes and gold.

  I was playing lawn-tennis with my then new friends when we heard the news; and it stopped our game. The bank manager’s wife, a friend of my friends, arrived with her daughter: the one incoherent, the other dumb, with horror and dismay. And I heard at first-hand a few broken, hysterical words from the white lips of the elderly lady, and noted the tearless trouble in the wide blue eyes of the girl, before it struck me to retire. The family had been at luncheon in the private part of the bank, and knew nothing of the affair until the junior clerk broke in upon them like a lunatic at large. He, too, had gone out for his lunch, and returned to find teller and cashier alike insensible, and the safe rifled. That was all I stayed to gather, save that the unhappy lady was agitated by a side issue far worse to her than the bank’s loss. There had been no bloodshed. The revolver kept beneath the counter had been used, but used in vain. It was not loaded. Her husband would be blamed, nay, discharged to a certainty in his old age. And I, too, walked down the street more absorbed in the picture of an elderly couple brought to ruin, and a blue-eyed girl gone for a governess, than in the immediate catastrophe.

  I found my way to the Intercolonial Bank; there was no need to ask it. A crowd clamoured at the doors, but these were shut for the day. And I learned no more than I already knew, save that the robber wore a black beard, and was declared by some to be a second Ned Kelly from the Strathbogie Ranges. Nor did I acquire more real information the rest of that day; nor hope for any when late at night I thought I recognised an old schoolfellow in the street.

  “Deedes major!” I cried without pausing to make certain; but I was certain enough when my man turned and favoured me with the stare of studied insolence which had made our house-master’s life a burden to him some ten years before that night. Among a thousand, although the dark eyes were sunken and devil-may-care, the full lips hidden by a moustache with grey hairs in it, and the pale face prematurely lined, I could have sworn to Deedes major then.

  “Don’t know you from Adam,” said he. “What do you want?”

  “We were at school together,” I explained. “I was your fag when you were captain of footer. To think of meeting you here!”

  “Do tell me your name,” he said wearily; and at that moment I recollected (what had quite escaped my memory) his ultimate expulsion; and I stood confounded by my maladroitness.

  “Bower,” said I, abashed.

  “The Beetle!” cried Deedes, not unkindly; a moment later he was shaking my hand and smiling on my confusion. “Hang school!” said he. “Where are you staying?”

  “Well,” said I, “I’m supposed to be staying with some people I brought a letter of introduction to; but they hadn’t a room for me, and insisted on getting me one outside; so that’s where I am.”

  “What’s their name?” said Deedes; when I told him, he nodded, but made no further comment, beyond inviting himself to my room for a chat. The proposal delighted me; indeed it caused me a positive thrill, which I can only attribute to an insensible return of the small boy’s proper attitude towards a distinguished senior. We were twenty-eight and twenty-four now, instead of eighteen and fourteen; yet, as we walked, only one of us was a man, and I was once more his fag. I felt quite proud when he accepted a cigarette from my case, prouder yet when he took my arm. The feeling stuck to me till we reached my room, when it suddenly collapsed. Deedes had asked me what I was doing. I had told him of my illness and my voyage, and had countered with his own question. He laughed contemptuously, sitting on the edge of my bed.

  “Clerk in a bank!” said he.

  “Not the Intercolonial?” I cried.

  “That’s it,” he answered, nodding.

  “Then you were there to-day! This is luck; I’ve been so awfully keen to know exactly what happened.”

  “I was not there,” replied Deedes. “I was having my lunch. I can only tell you what I saw when I got back. There was our cashier sprawled across the counter, and the teller in a heap behind it — both knocked on the head. And there was the empty safe, wide open, with the sun shining into it like a bull’s-eye lantern. No, I only wish I had been there: it’s such a chance as I shall never get again.”

  “You’d have shown fight?” said I, gazing at his long athletic limbs, and appreciating the force of his wish as I perceived in what threadbare rags they were imprisoned. “Yes, you’d have stood up to the chap, I know; I can see you doing it!”

  “There would have been nothing wonderful in that,” was his reply. “I should have had everything to gain and nothing to lose.”

  “Not your life?”

  “It’s less than nothing.”

  “Nonsense, Deedes,” said I, although or because I could see that it was not. “You don’t expect me to believe that!”

  “I don’t care what you believe, and it’s not the point,” he answered. “Give me another cigarette, Beetle; you were asking about the robbery; if you don’t mind, we’ll confine ourselves to that. I’m afraid old I’Anson will get the sack; he’s the manager, and responsible for the bank revolver being loaded. He swears it was; we all thought it was; but nobody had looked at it for weeks, and you see it wasn’t. Yes, that’s a rule in all banks in this country where sticking them up is a public industry. The yarn about Ned Kelly’s son? Don’t you believe it; nobody ever heard of him before. No, if you ask me, we must look a little nearer home for
the man who stuck up our bank this afternoon.”

  “Nearer home!” said I. “Then you think it was somebody who knew about the run upon the Barwon Banking Company and the payments into the Intercolonial?”

  “Obviously; somebody who knew all about it, and perhaps paid in a big lump himself. That would have been a gorgeous blind!” cried Deedes, kindling suddenly. “Beetle, old chap, I wish I’d thought of it myself — only it would have meant boning the capital too! I strongly suspect some of these respectable Geelongese and Barwonners of being at the bottom of the whole thing, though; they’re so respectable, Beetle, there’s bound to be villains among ‘em. By Jove!” he added, getting to his feet with a sinister light in his handsome, dissipated countenance, “I’ll go for the reward when they put it up! Four figures it can’t fall short of; that would be better than junior clerking for eighty pounds a year!” And he walked up and down my room laughing softly to himself.

  “I’ll join you,” cried I. “I’ll go in for love, or honour and glory, and you shall pocket the £ s. d.”

  “Rot!” said he curtly, yet almost with the word he had me by the shoulders, and was smiling queerly in my face. “Why not join me in the other thing?” he exclaimed. “You were well enough plucked at school!”

  “But what other thing?” said I.

  “Doing the trick,” he cried; “not finding out who did it!”

  “Deedes,” said I, “what the devil do you mean?”

  “Mean? What I say, my dear Beetle — every word of it! What’s the use of being honest? Look at me. Look at my shirt-cuffs, that I’ve got to trim every morning like my nails; look at my trousers, as I saw you looking at ‘em just now. Those bags at the knees are honesty; and honesty’s rapidly wearing them through on an office stool. I’m as poor as a rat in a drain: it’s all honesty, and I’ve had about enough of it. Think of the fellow who walked off with his fortune this morning, and then think of me. Wouldn’t you like to be in his shoes? No? My stars, you don’t know what it is to live, Beetle; honest idiots like us never do. But I’m going to turn it up. If one can play at that game, two can; why not three? Come on, Beetle; make a third, and we’ll rob another bank to-morrow!”

  “You’re joking,” said I, and this time I returned his smile. “Still, if I was going in for that sort of thing, Deedes, I don’t know who I’d rather have on my side than you.”

  His smile went out like a light.

  “Will you go in for it?” he cried. “I’m joking far less than you think. My life’s a sordid failure. I’m sick of it and ready for a fling. Will you come in?”

  “No,” I said. “I won’t.”

  And we looked each other steadily in the eyes, until he led me back to laughter with as much ease as he had lengthened my face.

  “All right, old Beetle!” said he. “I won’t chaff any more — not that it was all chaff by any means. I sometimes feel like that, and so would you in my place. Bunked from school! In disgrace at home! Sent out here to be got rid of, sent to blazes in cold blood! The things I’ve done for a living during these ten years — this is the most respectable, I can tell you that. It’s the respectability drives me mad.”

  His bitter voice, the lines upon his face, his grey hairs at twenty-eight (they were not confined to his moustache), all appealed to me with equal and irresistible force; my hand went out to him, and with it my heart.

  “I am so sorry, Deedes,” said I nervously. “If a fiver or two — yes, you must let me! For the sake of the old school!”

  He shook his head, and the blood rushed to mine. I burst into apologies, but he cut me short.

  “That’s all right, Beetle. It was well meant, and you’re a good chap. We’ll foregather to-morrow, if this enviable stroke leaves us a spare moment in the bank. Meanwhile good-night, and thanks all the same.”

  And he crept down the stairs at my request; for I was not in the position of an ordinary lodger; and having followed and closed the door noiselessly behind him, I returned as stealthily to my room. I did not wish my hospitable friends to know that I had used lodgings, placed at my disposal as their guest, as though I had engaged them on my own account. Theoretically I was under their roof, and had committed a breach in introducing a man at midnight and sitting up in conversation with him till all hours. Deedes, moreover, as I suspected from his manner when I mentioned them, was most probably no friend of my friends; indeed I had no clue to his reputation in the town, and should have been surprised to find it a good one. He had been a reckless boy at school; at the very least he was a reckless man. And other traits must have developed with his years; he had been expelled, for instance, for certain gallantries not criminal in themselves, but sufficiently demoralising at a public school; and, despite his clothes, I could have sworn those dark, unscrupulous eyes, and that sardonic, insolent, and yet attractive manner, had done due damage in Geelong.

  For there was a fascination in the man, incommunicable by another, and my despair as I write. He was a strong, selfish character, one in whom the end permitted any means; yet there was that in him for which it is harder to find a name, which attracted while it repelled, which enforced admiration in its own despite. At school he had been immensely popular and a bad influence: at once a bugbear and an idol from the respective points of view of masters and boys. My own view was still that of the boy. I could not help it; nor could I sleep for thinking of our singular rencontre and interview. I undressed, but shirked my pillow. I smoked my pipe; but it did me no good. Finally I threw up my window, and as I did so heard a sound that interested, and another that thrilled me. The first was a whistle blowing in the distance; the second, an answering whistle, which made me jump, for it came from beneath the very window at which I stood.

  I leaned out. A white helmet and a pair of white legs flashed under a lamp and were gone. My window was no impossible height from the ground, but I did not stay to measure it. With the whistles still in my ears I lowered myself from the sill, dropped into a flower-bed, and gave chase to the helmet and the legs, myself barefooted and in pyjamahs.

  I saw my policeman vanish round a corner. I was after him like a deer, and even as I ran the position amused me. Chasing the police! He could not hear my naked feet; I gained on him splendidly, and had my hand on his shoulder before he knew me to exist. His face, as he stopped and turned it, feeling for his pistol, I shall remember all my life.

  “All right,” I cried. “I’m not the man you’re after. Hurry up! I’m coming along to see the fun.”

  He swore in my teeth and rushed on. I followed in high excitement at his heels. All this time the first whistle was blowing through the night. We had reached the outskirts of the town, and were nearing the sound. At length, on turning a corner, we came upon another drill-trousered, pith-helmeted gentleman in the gateway of an empty house.

  “That’s about enough of us,” said he, pocketing his whistle. “I’ve got a man already on the lawn at the back. The house is empty, and he’s in it like a rat in a trap. But who’s this you’ve brought along with you, mate?”

  “A volunteer,” said I. “You won’t refuse to let me lend a hand if I get the chance?”

  “You’ll get your brains blown out,” replied the constable who had given the alarm, a sergeant as I saw now. “You’d best go home, though I won’t say but what we want all the men we can get. The town’s asleep — as usual. Can you face powder?”

  “I’ll see,” said I, laughing, for I scarcely suspected he was in earnest. “Who is it you’re after? Somebody very dangerous?”

  “The Intercolonial bank-robber,” replied the sergeant grimly. “What do you say now?”

  I said nothing at all. I know not what I had expected; but it was not this; and for the moment my own density concerned me as much as my fears.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said the sergeant, with an intolerable sneer. “You cut away and send a grown man along when you see one!”

  My reply need not be recorded; suffice it that a moment later one of the men, wh
o both carried firearms, had handed me his truncheon; and I was on my way to join the third constable on the lawn behind the house, while those two effected an entrance in front.

  II

  The third constable nearly shot me through the head at sight. The twinkle of his pistol caught my eye; I threw up my arms and declared myself a friend, not, as I believe, one second too soon. Never have I seen a man more pitiably excited than this brave fellow on the back lawn. Brave he was beyond all question; but cool he was not, and I fancy the combination must be rarer in real life than elsewhere. The man on the lawn stood over six feet in his boots, and every inch of him was shaking like a jelly. Yet if our quarry had chosen that moment to make a dash for it on this side, it would have gone hard with him, for my constable was suffering from nothing more discreditable than over-eagerness for the fray.

  Would that I could say as much for myself! Already I entirely regretted my absurd proceeding, and longed with all my heart to escape. It was out of the question. I had put my hand most officiously to the plough, but there it must stay; and as it was too late to reconsider my position, so there was now no sense in investigating the hare-brained impulse upon which I had acted. Yet I turned it over in my mind, standing there with my naked feet in the cold dew, and I deplored my conscious cowardice no less than my unthinking folly. One thing is certain, had I reckoned at all, it was without the bank-robber, whom his would-be imitator had put quite out of my head. And here they had him in this house! We saw their lanterns moving from room to room on the ground-floor; and I should be sorry to say which of us shivered most (from what different causes), the third constable or myself.

  I do not know how long we waited, but in a little the lanterns ceased to flit behind the panes. The men had evidently gone upstairs, and in the darkness we heard a sound as terrifying to me as it was evidently welcome to my companion. “At last!” said he, and crept up to the back door, open-armed. We had heard the stealthy drawing of bolts; but we were destined, one of us to disappointment, the other to inexpressible relief. The door opened, and it was the sergeant upon whom his subordinate would have pounced. He stood there, beckoning without a word; and so led us to a locked room next the kitchen. His mate had gone round the front way to watch the window; we were to force the door and carry the room by storm; and in it, declared the sergeant, we should find our man.