The Raffles Megapack

by E. W. Hornung

  “They’re in that clump,” replied Mr. Kentish. “And you can get them yourself, or send someone else for them, for I have carried them far enough.”

  “That be blowed for a yarn!” cried the driver, forgetting his benefits in the virtuous indignation of the moment.

  “I don’t wonder at your thinking it one,” returned the other, mildly; “for I never had such absolute luck in all my life!”

  And he went on to amplify his first lie like a man.

  But when the bags were really back in the coach, piled roof-high on those of the downward mail, then it was worse fun for Guy Kentish outside than even he had anticipated. Question followed question, compliment capped compliment, and a certain unsteady undercurrent of incredulity by no means lessened his embarrassment. Had he but told the truth, he felt he could have borne the praise, and indeed enjoyed it, for he had done far better than anybody was likely to suppose, and already it was irritating to have to keep that circumstance a secret. Yet one thing he was able to say from his soul before the coach drew up at the next stage.

  “You should have a spell here,” the driver had suggested, “and let me pick you up again on my way back. You’d soon lay hands on the bird himself, if you can put salt on his tail as you’ve done. And no one else can—we want a few more chums like you.”

  “I dare say!”

  And the new chum’s tone bore its own significance.

  “You don’t mean,” cried the driver, “to go and tell me you’ll hurry home after this?”

  “Only by the first steamer!” said Guy Kentish.

  And he kept that word as well.

  THE TAKING OF STINGAREE

  Stingaree had crossed the Murray, and all Victoria was agog with the news. It was not his first descent upon that Colony, nor likely to be his last, unless Sub-Inspector Kilbride and his mounted myrmidons did much better than they had done before. There is no stimulus, however, like a trembling reputation. Within four-and-twenty hours Kilbride himself was on the track of the invader, whose heels he had never seen, much less his face. And he rode alone.

  It was not merely his reputation that was at stake, though nothing could restore that more effectually than the single-handed capture of so notorious a desperado as Stingaree. The dashing officer was not unnaturally actuated by the sum of three hundred pounds now set upon the outlaw’s person, alive or dead. That would be a little windfall for one man, but not much to divide among five or six; on the other hand, and with all his faults, Sub-Inspector Kilbride had courage enough to furnish forth a squadron. He was a black-bearded, high-cheeked Irish-Australian, keen and over-eager to a disease, restless, irascible, but full of the fire and dash that make as dangerous an enemy as another good fighter need desire. And as a fine fighter in an infamous cause, Stingaree had his admirers even in Victoria, where the old tale of popular sympathy with a picturesque rascal was responsible for not the least of the Sub-Inspector’s difficulties. But even this struck Kilbride as yet another of those obstacles which were more easily surmounted alone than at the head of a talkative squad; and with that conviction he pushed his thoroughbred on and on through a whole cool night and three parts of an Australian summer’s day. Imagine, then, his disgust at the apparition of a mounted trooper galloping to meet him in the middle of the afternoon, and within a few miles of a former hiding-place of the bushranger, where the senior officer had strong hopes of finding and surprising him now.

  “Where the devil do you come from?” cried Kilbride, as the other rode up.

  “Jumping Creek,” was the crisp reply. “Stationed there.”

  “Then why don’t you stop there and do your duty?”

  “Stingaree!” said the laconic trooper.

  “What! Do you think you’re after him too?”

  “I am after him.”

  “So am I.”

  “Then you’re going in the wrong direction.”

  Kilbride flushed a warm brown from beard to helmet.

  “Do you know who you’re speaking to?” cried he. “I’m Sub-Inspector Kilbride, and this business is my business, and no other man’s in this Colony. You go back to your barracks, sir! I’m not going to have every damned fool in the force charging about the country on his own account.”

  The trooper was a dark, smart, dapper young fellow, of a type not easily browbeaten or subdued. And discipline is not the strong point of forces so irregular as the mounted police of a crescent colony. But nothing could have been more admirable than the manner in which this rebuke was received.

  “Very well, sir, if you wish it; but I can assure you that you are off the track of Stingaree.”

  “How do you know?” asked Kilbride, rudely; but he was beginning to look less black.

  “I happen to know the place. You would have some difficulty in finding it if you never were there before. I only stumbled across it by accident myself.”

  “Lately?”

  “One day last winter when I was out looking for some horses.”

  “And you kept it to yourself!”

  The trooper hung his head. “I knew we should have him across the river again,” he said. “It was only a question of time; and—well, sir, you can understand!”

  “You were keen on taking him yourself, were you?”

  “As keen as you are, Mr. Kilbride!” owned the younger man, raising bold eyes, and looking his superior fairly and squarely in the face.

  Kilbride returned the stare, and what he saw unsettled him. The other was wiry, trim, eminently alert; he had the masterful mouth and the dare-devil eye, and his horse seemed a part of himself. A more promising comrade at hot work was not to be desired: and the work would be hot if Stingaree had half a chance. After all, it was better for two to succeed than for one to fail. “Half the money and a whole skin!” said Kilbride to himself, and rapped out his decision with an oath.

  The trooper’s eyes lit with reckless mirth, and a soft cheer came from under his breath.

  “By the bye, what’s your name,” said Kilbride, “before we start?”

  “Bowen—Jack Bowen.”

  “Then I know all about you! Why on earth didn’t you tell me before? It was you who took that black fellow who murdered the shepherd on Woolshed Creek, wasn’t it?”

  The admission was made with due modesty.

  “Why, you’re the very man for me!” Kilbride cried. “You show the way, Jack, and I’ll make the going.”

  And off they went together at a canter, the slanting sun striking fire from their buttons and accoutrements, and lighting their sunburnt faces as it lit the red stems and the white that raced past them on either side. For a little they followed the path which Kilbride had taken on his way thither; then the trooper plunged into the thick bush on the left, and the game became follow-my-leader, in and out, out and in, through a maze of red stems and of white, where the pungent eucalyptus scent hung heavy as the sage-green, perpendicular leaves themselves: and so onward until the Sub-Inspector called a halt.

  “How far is it now, Bowen?”

  “Two or three miles, sir.”

  “Good! It’ll be light for another hour and a half. We’d better give the mokes a breather while we can. And there’d be no harm in two draws.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing, sir.”

  So their reins dangled while they cut up a pipeful of apparent shoe-leather apiece: and presently the dull blue smoke was curling and circling against the dull green foliage, producing subtle half-tint harmonies and momentary arabesques as the horses ambled neck and neck.

  “Native of this Colony?” puffed Kilbride.

  “Well, no—old country originally—but I’ve been out some years.”

  “That’s all right so long as you’re not a New South Welshman,” said Kilbride, with a chuckle. “I’ll be shot if I wouldn’t almost have turned you back if you had been!”

  “Victoria is to have all the credit, is she, sir?”

  “Anyhow they sha’n’t have any on the other side, or I’ll know
the reason!” the Victorian swore. “I—I—by Jove, I’d as lief lose my man again as let them have a hand in taking him!”

  “But why?”

  “Why? Do you live so near the border, and can you ask? Did you never hear a Sydney-side drover blowing about his blooming Colony? Haven’t you heard of Sydney Harbor till you’re sick? And then their papers!” criedKilbride, with columns in his tone. “But I’ll have the last laugh yet! I swore I would, and I will! I swore I’d take Stingaree—”

  “So I heard.”

  “Yes, they put it in their infernal papers! But it was true—take him I will!”

  “Or die in the attempt, eh?”

  “Or die and be damned to me!”

  All the bitterness of previous failure, indeed of notorious and much-criticized defeat, was in the Sub-Inspector’s tone; that of his subordinate, though light as air, had a touch of insolence which an outsider could not have failed—but Kilbride was too excited—to detect. The outsider might possibly have foreseen a rivalry which no longer entered Kilbride’s hot head.

  Meanwhile the country was changing even with their now leisurely advance. The timbered flats in the region of the river had merged into a gully which was rapidly developing into a gorge, with new luxuriant growths which added greatly to the density of the forest, suggesting its very heart. The almost neutral eucalyptian tint was splashed with the gay hues of many parrots, as though the gum-trees had burst into flower. The noise of running water stole gradually through the murmur of leaves. And suddenly an object in the grass struck the sight like a lantern flashed at dead of night: it proved to be an empty sardine tin pricked by a stray lance from the slanting sun.

  “We must be near,” whispered Kilbride.

  “We are there! You hear the creek? He has a gunyah there—that’s all. Shall we rush it on horseback or creep up on foot?”

  “You know the lie of the land, Bowen; which do you recommend?”

  “Rushing it.”

  “Then here goes.”

  In a few seconds they had leaped their horses into a tiny clearing on the banks of a creek as relatively minute. And the gunyah—a mere funnel of boughs and leaves, in which a man could lie at full length, but only sit upright at the funnel’s mouth—seemed as empty as the space on every hand. The only other sign of Stingaree was a hank of rope flung carelessly across the gunyah roof.

  “He may be watching us from among the trees,” muttered Kilbride, looking sharply about him. Bowen screwed up his eyes and followed suit.

  “I hardly think it, Mr. Kilbride.”

  “But it’s possible, and here we sit for him to pot us! Let’s dismount, whether or no.”

  They slid to the ground. The trooper found himself at the mouth of the gunyah.

  “What if he were in there after all!” said he.

  “He isn’t,” said Kilbride, stepping in front and stooping quickly. “But you might creep in, Jack, and see if he’s left any sign of life behind him.”

  The men were standing between the horses, their revolvers cocked. Bowen’s answer was to hand his weapon over to Kilbride and to creep into the gunyah on his hands and knees.

  “Here’s something or other,” his voice cried thickly from within. “It’s half buried. Wait a bit.”

  “As sharp as you can!”

  “All right; but it’s a box, and jolly heavy!”

  Kilbride peered nervously to right, left, and centre; then his eyes fell upon his companion wriggling back into the open, a shallow, oblong box in his arms, its polish dimmed and dusted with the mould, as though they had violated a grave.

  “Kick it open!” exclaimed Kilbride, excitedly.

  But there was no need for that; the box was not even locked; and the lifted lid revealed an inner one of glass, protecting a brass cylinder with steel bristles in uneven growth, and a long line of lilliputian hammers.

  “A musical-box!” said the staggered Sub-Inspector.

  “That’s it, sir. I remember hearing that he’d collared one on one of the stations he stuck up last time he was down here. It must have lain in the ground ever since. And it only shows how hard you must have pressed him, Mr. Kilbride!”

  “Yes! I headed him back across the Murray—I soon had him out o’ this!” rejoined the other in grim bravado. “Anything else in the gunyah?”

  “All he took that trip, I fancy, if we dig a bit. You never gave him time to roll his swag!”

  “I must have a look,” said Kilbride, his excitement fed by his reviving vanity.

  The other questioned whether it were worth while. This settled the Sub-Inspector.

  “There may be something to show where he’s gone,” that casuist suggested, “for I don’t believe he’s anywhere here.”

  “Shall I hold the shooters, sir?”

  “Thanks; and keep your eyes open, just in case. But it’s my opinion that the bird’s flown somewhere else, and it’s for us to find out where.”

  Kilbride then crept into the gunyah upon his hands and knees, and found it less dark than he had supposed, the light filtering freely through the leaves and branches. At the inner extremity he found a mildewed blanket, and the place where the musical-box had evidently lain a long time; but there, though he delved to the elbows in the loosened earth, his discoveries ended. Puzzled and annoyed, Kilbride was on the verge of cursing his subordinate, when all at once he was given fresh cause. The musical-box had burst into selections from The Pirates of Penzance.

  “What the deuce are you at?” shouted the irate officer.

  “Only seeing how it goes.”

  “Stop it at once, you fool! He may hear it!”

  “You said the bird had flown.”

  “You dare to argue with me? By thunder, you shall see!”

  But it was Sub-Inspector Kilbride who saw most. Backing precipitately out of the gunyah, he turned round before rising upright—and remained upon his knees after all. He was covered by two revolvers—one of them his own—and the face behind the barrels was the one with which the last hour had familiarized Kilbride. The only difference was the single eye-glass in the right eye. And the strains of the musical-box—so thin and tinkling in the open air—filled the pause.

  “What in blazes are you playing at?” laughed the luckless officer, feigning to treat the affair as a joke, even while the iron truth was entering his soul by inches.

  “Rise another inch without my leave and you may be in blazes to see!”

  “Look here, Bowen, what do you mean?”

  “Only that Stingaree happens to be at home after all, Mr. Kilbride.”

  The victim’s grin was no longer forced; the situation made for laughter, even if the laughter were hysterical; and for an instant it was given even to Kilbride to see the cruel humor of it. Then he realized all it meant to him—certain ruin or a sudden death—and the drops stood thick upon his skin.

  “What of Bowen?” he at length asked hoarsely. The idea of another victim came as some slight alleviation of his own grotesque case.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Stingaree.

  “Good!” said Kilbride. It was something that two of them should live to share the shame.

  “But wing him I did,” added the bushranger. “I couldn’t help myself. The beggar put a bullet through my hat; he did well only to get one back in the leg.”

  Kilbride longed to be winged and wounded in his turn, since blood alone could lessen his disgrace. On cooler reflection, however, it was obviously wiser to feign a surrender more abject than it might finally prove to have been.

  “Well,” said Kilbride, “you have the whip-hand over me this time, and I give you best. How long are you going to keep me on my knees?”

  “You can get up when you like,” replied Stingaree, “if you promise not to play the fool. So you were really going to take me this time, were you? I have really no desire to rub it in, but if I were you I should have kept that to myself until I’d done it. And you wanted to have me all to yourself? Well, you couldn’t pay me a higher com
pliment, but I’m going to pay you a high one in return. You really did make me run for it last time, and leave all sorts of things behind. So this time I mean to take them with me and leave you here instead. Nevertheless, you’re the only Victorian trap I have any respect for, Mr. Kilbride, or I shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to get you here.”

  Kilbride did not blanch, but he heard his apparent doom with a glittering eye, and was deaf for a little to The Pirates of Penzance.

  “Oh! I’m not going to harm a good man like you,” continued Stingaree, “unless you make me. Your friend Bowen made me, but I don’t promise to fire low every time, mark you! There’s another good man on the other side—Cairns by name—you know him, do you? He’ll kick up his heels when he hears of this; but they do no better in New South Wales, so don’t you let that worry you. To think you held both shooters at one stage of the game! I trusted you, and so you trusted me; if only you had known, eh? Hear that tune, and know what it is? It’s in your honor, Mr. Kilbride.”

  And Stingaree hummed the policemen’s chorus sotto voce; but before the end, with a swift remorse, induced by the dignity of Kilbride’s bearing in humiliating disaster, he swooped upon the insolent instrument and stopped its tinkle by touching the lever with one revolver-barrel while sedulously covering the Sub-Inspector with the other. The sudden cessation of the toy music, bringing back into undue prominence all the little bush noises which had filled the air before, brought home to Kilbride a position which he had subconsciously associated with those malevolent strains as something theatrical and unreal. He had known in his heart that it was real, without grasping the reality until now. He flung up his fists in sudden entreaty.

  “Put a bullet through me,” he cried, “if you’re a man!”

  Stingaree shook a decisive head.

  “Not if I can help it,” said he. “But I fear I shall have to tie you up.”

  “That’s slow death!”

  “It never has been yet, but you must take your chance. Get me that rope that’s slung over the gunyah. It’s got to be done.”