By the winds and currents, and mayhap, in nautical phrase, by the “act of God” also, the boat in which Jean Petit and his three convict companions had escaped from New Caledonia was carried south.
She drifted down outside the Great Barrier, was blown off the land to the eastward of Sandy Cape, and blown back again towards Point Danger.
Jean Petit, alone, and grown strangely like a wild beast, looked out and across with bloodshot eyes one morning and saw a hazy blue line at the far western verge. A fair wind filled the tattered sail. Hour by hour the line grew up and up like a bank of cloud, with uneven summits—up and up out of the desolate, silent ocean.
The solitary convict gazed at this bank of cloud with eager, fascinated eyes.
Often enough during the awful past weeks he had watched in the same way, only to see the bank change shape and disappear as the sun grew stronger.
But this time the vision became every hour moredefinite and real. At last he uttered a deep growl of satisfaction, which was his nearest approach to a prayer, and a shudder of relief, of thanksgiving passed through his lean frame.
Petit presented an illustration of the possibilities which underlie the smooth, well-fed exterior of civilised humanity.
His hair fell down in matted skeins about his bony shoulders; his beard almost covered his chest, and below its ragged edges his ribs stood out one by one like the ribs of a corpse which has dried in the sun until the tightened skin shows the outline of the skeleton beneath. His lips fell back, and showed his yellow fangs.
The nails of his hands and feet were as long as eagles’ claws. He was burnt copper-colour by the sun, and against the dark background of his skin stood numerous significant sores.
The land which this horrid corpse-like figure regarded out of hollow eyes was that portion of New South Wales which lies to the north’ard of Woogoolga—a land alternating along the immediate coast, between hardwood forests and scrubby sand-hills.
All day long the emaciated convict watched eagerly. Before nightfall he was close enough to discern steep beaches on which the rollers broke in white anger, and dark spray-wet headlands glistening under their bath of seas.
The sun, with banners of scarlet and gold, sailed out through the gates of the west, lending the white rollers a faint pink blush—the sea answering to the wooing of her departing lover.
Snipe called along the edge of the sands, littered with brown sea-weed, shells, pumice, and sponges.
Across a bank of thin fleecy cloud went a moving line of black swans, going inland to the fresh water lagoons. They flew with their long necks stretched forward, and as they passed over his head the man in the boat could see the white on their wings and the scarlet of their beaks. The swans were followed by a mob of black duck and teal.
Petit noticed that all these birds followed a certain direction, and studying closely he observed a break in the surf where a narrow channel ran inland, to broaden out again in a great spread of creeks and lagoons.
A red rock showed conspicuously at the mouth of the channel, and keeping this to the port side of the boat, he came about and let the insetting tide take him through.
The keel grated on the sand, and Petit rose up gaunt and unsteady in the starlight and crawled ashore.
The escaped convict discovered that the rocks on the foreshore were covered with oysters, and he fed. Refreshed, he crossed the beach in search of fresh water. After walking some time he found it trickling from a rock—clear and cold.
And again Jean Petit growled in thanksgiving, and throwing himself full length on his back like a drought-stricken beast, he let the little rill trickle into his mouth, overflow his lips, and moisten his chest.
At last, with a deep-heaved sigh, he rolled awayfrom the spring and with his head resting on the green damp moss, fell asleep.
In the morning Petit woke with the young sun on his face.
He rose, and with his hand shading his eyes, looked up and down. As far as his eye could reach there were no signs of human habitation; no evidences of life. He had landed upon a lonely and unsettled part of the North Coast.
Hunger was still strong in him. He moved his cramped limbs in the direction of the beach.
When he reached his landing place of the previous night he found the boat gone! The tide had carried it out. He could see it drifting on the swell of the deep Pacific, just beyond the edge of the breakers.
It was as well, he told himself, inasmuch as he had intended to stave her in and sink her. The boat was a piece of evidence which he was not anxious to leave behind him.
In a few hours no doubt it would be washed by the incoming tide against the rocks and smashed to pieces.
As a matter of fact, the boat was, by a little series of coincidences, in which the ocean sometimes indulges, carried round into the mouth of the Clarence River to fall at last into the hands of Tom Pagdin. She was first picked up by a fisherman near the Heads. He sold her to a dealer, who had a little trade steamer running up one of the creeks. She had broken adrift one night from the stern of the steamer, and the tide brought her into the Broadstream, where a farmer found her with her nose stuck in the mud next morning.
The farmer, in hope of a reward, in turn, had hidden her in the reeds, and it was there Tom Pagdin found her. He surmised that she was a stray boat, unhitched her, took her further up the stream one evening, and planted her again in the reeds of the opposite bank.
Jean Petit presented a peculiar appearance as he slunk across the sand in his rags, and disappeared in the bush.
The bush has seen many strange characters, of comedy and tragedy; has witnessed in her solitudes many ludicrous and awful things, but none, perhaps, more ludicrously awful than the hairy figure in streaming rags, which stalked slowly along, like a bedraggled bird of prey, beneath the shade of honeysuckle and gum.
For three days this beast-man, whom the clean sea had spewed up on the land, went northward.
He made himself a lair under the rocks, or in the thick bushes at night, and fed upon roots and berries, now and then descending the sandy hills to the sea for shellfish and oysters.
Gradually those livid sores which had corroded his flesh as verdigris corrodes copper, began to disappear.
Hans Holterman had run away from his ship in Hobson’s Bay to the goldfields in the time of the gold fever. He had, like many more, followed the Yellow Butterfly for years across mountain and gully and plain, till at last the growing stiffness in his joints told him that it was time to think of old age.
So Hans, who had never been a practical man, went prospecting for a selection as he went prospectingfor gold—in the further places,—and at last pegged out his land.
It was not particularly good land, although heavily timbered; but Hans believed it would grow vines, and he remembered the days, before he ran away to sea, when, with his German brothers and sisters, he had worked amidst his father’s grape vines by the banks of beloved Rhine.
So Hans set to the growing of vines, without thought of market.
It was not till the fourth or fifth year, when all his capital was gone, that he realised he was thirty miles from a town.
But a vigneron he had decided to become, and a vigneron he must remain.
He had cleared and fenced and planted a twelve-acre block with Isabella vines, which, being phylloxera-and-odium-proof, are certain to crop. But the Isabella was not yet a popular grape in this country, and Holterman’s Isabella proved a drug even on the local market, which was not fastidious. After five years the grapes flourished, and bore marvelously—soil, climate, and position being all eminently favourable. Each latter vintage Hans added fresh barrels to the row of stained casks in the outroom which served as a cellar.
His wine-press was a home-made box, tin-lined, with a long sapling for a lever. He tied bags of stone to the sapling to get pressure, and drained off the purple juice in a kerosene-tin bucket.
Hans Holterman soon discovered that his wine waspractically unsaleable, and this took the heart out of him.
He retired within himself, living in solitude, and worst of all—consuming his own stock.
He drank a jug of wine when he rose, a jug at breakfast, a jug before going to work, and thereafter throughout the day and night jugs at frequent intervals.
Sometimes on Sunday afternoons would ride up to Holterman’s door bushmen from the neighbourhood, and these in return for unlimited quantities of new wine, supplied in opposition to the Licensing Act, they would leave him a little silver.
This was practically Hans Holterman’s sole medium of existence. The few shillings which he received from casual drinkers bought him flour, and occasionally meat. The man who can buy flour and meat can live on the land.
One evening at dusk, a ragged figure crept out of the shadow of the forest and listened.
The eyes of Jean Petit, like those of a glittering tiger cat, peered intently through a crack in the slabs of Holterman’s wine-room.
The escapee saw in the twilight a stout figure mounted upon an empty soap-box.
This figure held in one hand a jug. As the hand moved in response to the man’s words, a dark liquid, looking like blood, splashed from the jug. It was the blood of Holterman’s vines.
Holterman was holding forth to an imaginary audience on the corrupt state of the Government.
The speech was given in English and German. A marvellous speech, full of strange thoughts, but lost for lack of an audience.
Excepting an opossum, which came down the chimney, and sat gravely on the kitchen mantlepiece, opposite the wine-room door each evening, Hans the orator was usually without listeners.
While he babbled, Jean Petit—eye and ear alternately to the crack in the slabs—listened attentively. It was weeks since he had heard the speech of man,and the sounds seemed to throw him into a grim reverie.
The speech within the hut was strangely like the last talk of the men who had been with him in the boat.
Petit, wise in experience, smiled fiendishly as he realised how matters stood with the man inside. The lower stars began to appear like live diamonds set in the dark leaves of the gums. The skeletons of ring-barked trees stood up in spectral silence against a background of darkened sky.
Hans talked on and on. Much of his madness was about his treasure, the money he had hidden in the tea tin in the kitchen chimney.
At last Petit drew his knife from its sheath, and looked at the edge in the starlight. Then he slipped off his shoes and began to creep stealthily round to the kitchen door. When the man in the wine-room stopped to take breath or to refresh himself, Petit would stop also, his eye to a crack in the wall. His breath came and went noiselessly like an animal of the bush. He created no more disturbance than a panther creeping through the forest on the trail of a prey.
The door creaked a little, but Holterman took no notice. A dark figure skulked across the doorway, and, hidden in the cover of the wall, moved towards the open fireplace. But Holterman observed it not.
The shadow of the escapee drifted darkly across the uneven floor. Once, through an opening in the slabs, the light of a star flashed brightly for a second upon a naked blade, as if a fire-fly had gone by.
The hand of the prowler went up, and began to feelupon the adzed-slab which formed the chimney shelf.
It crept along inch by inch until suddenly it encountered fur and claws.
The ’possum jumped frantically from the shelf. Jean Petit, taken by surprise, swore aloud as the tea tin fell upon the floor with a clattering noise, and the German leaped from the soap-box into the middle of the kitchen floor.
Hans was a powerful man, and the madness which worked in him with the wine gave him additional strength. He clutched the invader by the throat with both hands. Petit was thrown backwards upon the floor, partially stunned. But the next moment, feeling the tightening grip of strong hands on his neck, his strength and savagery came back to him in a wild, combative rush. The knife had fallen from his grasp. He put out his hands instinctively, and grasped his opponent also by the throat.
He stuck his knees into the German’s ribs and squeezed with all the strength of his lower limbs, at the same time using the power of his backbone and thighs in an endeavour to turn over upon his adversary.
They writhed and struggled like pythons close-locked in a combat to the death.
It was a question merely of time and endurance—one maniac against another; fighting to kill in silence—a duel with the hands.
Which would be choked first?
Jean Petit’s fingers were embedded in the German’s neck like talons.
The Death of the German.Tom Pagdin, Pirate.Page 124.
The Death of the German.
Tom Pagdin, Pirate.Page 124.
Holterman’s hands clasped Petit’s throat like a compressing band of steel.
The Frenchman gasped. He had not the staying powers of the Teuton. In a few seconds more he would be overcome. They had overturned a stool in the struggle. The legs were broken out, and rolled under Holterman’s elbow as they fought. Holterman, feeling the resistance of his foe lessening, and being not too clear of thought, released his hold and picked up one of these to beat out the other’s brains.
But before he could deal the blow, Petit was on his feet again, knife in hand.
As the German lifted his arm to strike, the blade went home to the hilt in his neck.
He fell like a beast at the stroke of an axe, and with a horrid growl of satisfaction Petit finished the business by cutting his victim’s throat.
There was silence.… Presently the murderer crept to the door and looked out cautiously.
He heard no sound except the night noises of the bush, and already the escapee was familiar with many of these.
He found water for his hands—and the knife. Upon the latter he bestowed great attention. Before replacing it in its sheath he lifted it to his lips and reverently kissed the blade! The soul of Jean Petit was not absolutely without gratitude.
Petit moved quickly, silently back to the hut. The figure, lying face down upon the floor, had not stirred in the least.
A pool, which would in daylight have glowed angrilyred, was slowly spreading around it, darkening the slabs of the floor as if someone had overturned a bottle of ink.
Jean Petit studied the position narrowly. He first of all picked up the tin and removed the lid.
There was certainly some money inside rolled up in a rag. Petit undid the rag, using his teeth to loosen the knots, and turned out a handful of pence. Again a curse of disappointment escaped him.
He glared angrily at the figure on the floor.
Hans Holterman had deceived him!
He had gone to the trouble of killing a man for less than three shillings in coppers!
For this he had nearly lost his own life. From which it may be seen that it is unwise to place credence in words of those who have dwelt too long in the bush—alone.
The convict moved about the house searching and thinking as he went. Near the dead man’s bunk, on the packing case which had served him as a dressing-table, lay a razor. Petit put this in his pocket; but a second later an idea came to him, and, going out, he stooped down by the body, with the razor open in his hand, dabbling the blade.
The reason of this was not made apparent until may days later, when the body of Hans Holterman was found with a blood stained razor in its hand, and the coronial inquiry resulted in a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind.
Petit cold-bloodedly lit a match and found a candle-end, and surveyed the scene without a shudder.
The light danced up and down the walls, throwing fantastic shadows as the murderer set to work.
Having emptied the pence into his pocket, he replaced the tea-tin on the mantel-shelf, mended the broken stool, and removed all trace of the struggle.
He neglected no detail, even to sweeping of the floor, lest any evidence of trampling feet should remain in the dust.
It was nearly midnight before Petit loped off into the bush with a bundle over his shoulder.
He strode forward without once looking back. As he turned northward, heavy drops of rain began to pelter down from a passing thundercloud, which had suddenly obscured the stars, and a ghastly grin of appreciation crossed his face when a livid flash of lightning reddened his path.
The elements were with him.
Before an hour a violent rainstorm had washed out all tracks, and the Tiger of Paris curled up in the shelter of an overhanging rock, slept as calmly untroubled by remorse as any other beast of prey.
Tom Pagdin admitted afterwards that when he looked through the lantana on the island, he wished he had borne with paternal corrections, and never gone pirating.
Dave, who was in front, actuated by kindred sentiments, tried to push past Tom; but the latter was ahead of him, and broke for the boat first.
They raced through the lantana, scratching their hands and faces and tearing their clothes as they went.
Their craft was aground in the black mud among the mangroves, and when they tried to shove her off they found the task beyond their strength.
Tom hurriedly led the way into a thick patch of jungle, and they crawled under a low clump of young stinging trees, where it would be almost impossible for a full-grown man to reach them, and held a whispered consultation.
“It’s him,” said Dave.
“Yes,” agreed Tom, “there ain’t no doubt of it.”
“Do you think he seen us?” asked the second pirate.
“No;” replied Tom, “I don’t think so; he had his ugly mouth open like he waz asleep.”
“What’s to do?” asked Dave.
“Dunno, ’less we leave everything an’ swim ashore. Then we might get ketched with sharks, and if we wasn’t ketched with sharks, we’d most likely be ketched be the traps.”
“I wouldn’t sleep ’ere a night,” cried Dave, “with that cove on the island, not for anything.”
“I’d rather sleep on a jumper ant’s nest,” agreed Tom. “The only thing we got to do is keep quiet, an’ wait till the tide rises. Then we’ll shove the boat off quietly and go further down the river.”
Having decided on this plan, they felt more comfortable. After a while Tom even got courage enough to sneak back to where he had dropped his swag.
He returned to report that the black-bearded man was still sleeping. Tom said he looked more awful and wicked than ever.
They munched some food quietly, and feeling almost secure in the heart of the thicket wherein they had crawled, Nature asserted herself, and they both fell asleep.
It was past noon when Tom started up and woke his mate.
“The tide’s up,” he whispered. “We better run the risk of bein’ seen from the shore in the boat than stay ’ere and be killed by a cold-blooded murderer like that.”
They crept through the scrub and lantana as quietly as they could.
Tom took a good look round, and announced that the coast was clear. The water was well up astern, and they began to push at the bow of the boat to launch her.
“Give ’er one more shove!” cried Tom, in a glad voice, “an’ we’re clear.”
Just then each boy felt a strong hand on his shoulder.
The convict had crept up behind them.
Slowly, dreading what they knew they were going to see, each turned his head.
They met the inquiring gaze of Jean Petit. His face was adorned by a grin which was intended to be amiable, but Tom and Dave felt that they had never witnessed anything more hideous.
“Ah, ha!” cried Jean Petit, in his own peculiar English, “what are you doing here, my children?”
“N—n—nothink, s—ir.” spluttered Tom, vainly trying to wriggle out of his captor’s clutch.
Now, when an Australian boy uses the word “sir” he is certainly afraid.
“Aha!” cried Petit, in a rasping voice.
“N—n—nothink!” repeated Dave, wriggling in such a way as to create the impression that he really did not mean to. “No, sir, n—nothink. We only just landed ’ere.”
Tom gave his mate a look of gratitude.
“Yes,” he cried, “we only jist landed. You let—let us go an’ we’ll go right away at once.”
But Petit was thoughtfully studying the boat.
“Does zat boat belong wiz you?” he asked.
“N—no,” replied Tom, in anguished tones, “we jist borryed ’er to come acrost to the island after wild figs.”
“Borree,” repeated the escapee, “borree? I not understand.”
“Yes,” repeated Tom, “we jist borryed—took the loan of ’er, like—meanin’ to give her back again.”
“Ah!” said Petit, “you vat he call shake, steal it, eh?”
“No,” cried Tom; “we’re honest, we are! Dead honest. Neither of us never shook nothink in our lives—leastwise, not that we knowed of.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Petit, “vat is your name?”
“My name’s Jack Stevenson. This cove’s name is Bill Stevenson. He’s my cousin.”
Tom gave Dave another look to impress this fact on his memory.
“I’ll tell you how it is, without any lies,” he volunteered, in a tone of utter confidence. “We borryed this boat off Bill’s father yesterday to come up the river a piece fishin,’ an’ we stayed out too late, an’ was caught in a fog. This mornin’ we started back, an’ we jist pulled in ’ere to look for figs—that’s a solemn fact. We ain’t been ’ere more than a half a hour at the outside. You kin ask ’im!”
Petit examined the boys, the boat, and the surroundings. He saw that they were telling lies.
His natural instinct told him also that they were terribly frightened, and his criminal method of reasoningput it down to the fact that they had committed some offence against the law.
It occurred to Petit’s mind that the boys might be useful to him. His grasp tightened on their shoulders till Tom winced with pain and Dave cried out.
Then, holding them firmly in front of him, he put his face up to them and said, in a terrible voice: “Eet is so; you have stolen zis boat!”
They were silent.
“For which,” he continued, “you air both liable to be put in ze prison!”
Jean Petit hissed the word “prison.”
“Suppose,” he continued, “I gif word to ze po-lice—”
When the escapee came to “police” he snarled viciously. “Vat zen?”
Neither youth ventured to speak.
“I tell to you—you go to chail!”
Petit put dreadful emphasis on the gaol.
“Oui—to chail. Zere you will be treat mos’ ill; you vill rot an’ starve an’ die! You will starve an’ rot an’ die.”
“But, non,” resumed Petit, after allowing the picture time to soak in, “I vill not gif you to chail. You air too young, too tendaire; I vill keep you viz ME! Sacre!” he ejaculated, shaking them both violently, “I shall be fazzair and mozzair vis you.”
This prospective parentage did not seem to fill either Tom or Dave with gratitude and joy. Two more wretched-looking children of adoption it would be difficult to see anywhere.
“Bud,” concluded Petit, “if you do not obey me vis all thinks——”
He threw them from him and drew his knife.
“Oh,” sobbed Tom, “No, don’t! Don’t kill us. I’ll do anythink you want me to. Anythink as long as you don’t stick that knife into me.”
Dave shut his eyes and shuddered. Speech was beyond him.
George Chard had been transferred from the red desert of Gilgargery to the Rivers. The bank for which he laboured was one of the institutions of the country. Its clients lay chiefly among the Western pastoralists. The bulk of its business was done on mortgages.
When George entered the service of the bank, through the influence of his uncle, Tobias Chard, his prospects had appeared in the colours of the dawn; now they were set in more of a winter-grey perspective.
Tobias Chard was the proprietor of an immense run in the nor’-west. His younger brother, George’s father, having no business instinct, and a depraved taste for water-colour, was a clerk in the Crown Lands Office. He was blessed with a family of five girls and a boy. Tobias, the bachelor, declared that his brother had been improvident in all things.
It was impossible to give young George a profession, so the uncle was persuaded to use hisinfluence—ungraciously—with the Bulk and Bullion, Limited, to secure his nephew a junior appointment.
As the balance of Tobias Chard was great, and his herd and flocks numerous, this was a mere matter of an interview with the directors.
Next week Chard, junior, received a note from the Board to say that his application for service had been favourably considered.
He entered upon his duties at the copying press with a strong determination to work himself up to the position of city manager.
His chances were not too remote, inasmuch as that he had Uncle Tobias’s big account behind him.
Nothing in this world will help an ambitious young man along in a bank like the influence of a solid banking account.
But three consecutive droughts struck Uncle Tobias, and he mortgaged.
That was the beginning of a rapid end. The Lord sent him a rot among his sheep. The devil followed with a law suit. The homestead was burnt out. Misfortune followed misfortune, and Tobias, being no Job, lost patience, and died of a sudden stroke of paralysis.
Everything remained in the hands of the bank. The stoop-shouldered brother in the Lands Office got nothing. The patient little, white haired old-young woman, for whom George would have laid down his life at any moment, got nothing. None of the five girls, nor George, received a shilling.
And the property turned out to be one of the worst speculations in which the bank had put money.
If George had had any station experience he might have been sent up to look after things, and having some sort of personal or family interest in the matter he might have recovered on the bank’s bad investment; but as he had no experience on the run, the B. and B., Ltd., transferred a man from one of their foreclosures on the South Australian Border to act as manager. This man had no organising faculties; he was, moreover, out of his latitude, and the property began to rapidly represent a dead yearly loss to the B. and B. These things did not improve the prospects of George Chard.
In some indefinite way he was connected in responsibility with Uncle Tobias, who it was felt at headquarters, had deceived the Board of Directors.
The Directors did not know that Tobias’s run, with proper handling, might be made to pay twenty or thirty per cent. But the lesson had been pretty clearly taught in New South Wales and Queensland during past years that financial institutions cannot conduct stations from a metropolitan head office. Nor is it good for either institution or the country that they should make the attempt.
As George Chard grew in years and knowledge, he learned that merit is most frequently its own reward. He saw his juniors the sons of rich men or of men who had rich relatives, promoted over his head. He was sent out relieving in the far back country in summer time.
His father died, leaving the mother and five girls mainly dependent on him. The girls were good girls,and they wanted to sell up the home, representing all the Chard assets, and to leave the country town, where they had spent so many tranquil years, and go to Sydney and earn a living.
But George had been in the head office in Sydney for six months before the demise of Uncle Tobias, and he knew what making a living in Sydney meant for girls like his sisters.
So he existed cheaply, and sent the balance of his cheque home every month—to keep the house going. He applied for a removal to the country town where his people were, but there was no vacancy. The chief grocer’s son was in the bank and as he showed decided proclivities to the waste and loose-living of cities, his people wanted to keep him under personal surveillance. The grocer had an account in the bank. The transfer of his son against the family wishes meant a transfer of the family accounts, which were large. The manager stated these facts to the Board, and the Board intimated to George Chard that his application for removal had been taken into consideration, and the Board could not see its way clear to comply with his request.
George allowed a decent interval of two years to elapse, and respectfully applied for a rise in salary.
The Board was pleased to graciously consider his request, added £10 a year to his salary, and sent him up north to a small branch under an acting-manager who was known throughout the B. and B., Limited, as a “pig.”
George Chard, leaning over a ledger in his box ofan office by the river bank, the galvanised roof above him crackling under the awful heat, considered the general injustice of things with a sore heart.
But when the pig was more hoggish than usual, he forced up before his mind a picture. It was a homely enough picture of a cottage with a pepper-tree growing in front and a grapevine trailing over the porch, and it was a long way off, but it steadied him.
Now the average bank clerk in the average country town is an insipid animal who plays tennis and says “Haw!”
As a rule he belongs to the “inner set,” in which revolve a dozen or so of social suns, very much dazzled by their own individual and mutual splendour.
The bank clerk is regarded as a catch by country young ladies, and as his commercial training stands him in good stead, he frequently manages to matrimonially annex a good banking account.
The minor bank official, whose wife can transfer a big account at pleasure, is a greater man than the major bank official whose wife like the little pig in the nursery rhyme, “got none.” The Pig’s wife under whom George had been sent to serve was lean and yellow and rich, in her own right, and in the right and light of a tribe of money makers with whom she was related and connected by marriage, which comes to the same thing.
The Pig’s wife’s people werethepeople of the place; in fact, the place pretty well belonged to the people of the wife of the Pig.
Hence the Pig, in spite of his delinquencies, was adesirable manager for that branch on the Bulk and Bullion.
Now, the Pig’s wife had several lean, yellow sisters, and a host of yellow-lean cousins of the feminine gender, and George Chard, who accepted social evenings as a painful duty, and loathed tennis, found himself tangled in the meshes of a family cobweb, wherein the spider in the multiplex personality of the Pig’s people by marriage threatened to extract the substance from him.
In such a situation, to succeed, a man must be either a born diplomatist or a born fool—George Chard was neither. For preference he ought to have been a fool. A fool who could ape city fashions, talk idiocies, and affect the manners of a cheesemonger who has unexpectedly won a Tattersall’s Sweep (which is the manner of the little shoddy aristocrats of country villages), would have been accepted as a social Pygmalion, before whom the plaster Galateas might decently become flesh and blood at the first invocation. Nineteen out of every twenty bank clerks would have fitted such a position naturally, but George belonged to the twentieth section, which is rare and unpopular—unpopular because rare.
Inside the office the Pig, of his general nature, made life bitter, and outside, the Pig’s people did their best in the same direction.
It was a negative relief when Number One set of Wharfdale Society finally decided that George Chard should be “cut” altogether.
Number Two Set would have accepted him with open arms, but as Number Two Set was only a shade lessobjectionable and vulgar than Number One Set, George elected to spend his Saturday afternoons fishing.
So he chummed with the Postmaster, who was unmarried, and reported to be an Athiest, or something equally awful, and they grew wise together on the matter of dragon flies and crickets and cockroaches, and other occult bait.
In the intellectual desert of Wharfdale, Dan Creyton, the Postmaster, was to George Chard the only oasis—Dan Creyton and his sister Nora.
Dan Creyton represented three generations of native-born Australians.
His grandfather had grown corn on the Hawkesbury in the old convict days; his father had been a farmer on the Hunter, and had left Dan and his sister a little property equally divided.
With a hundred and fifty pounds a year each in rent and interest, and another hundred and twenty-five from the Government, Nora found no difficulty in keeping house for her brother, and saving money. The Creytons came of good stock, and because of the Breed, which can be transplanted to any climate without degeneration, and which carries its mark on the mouth and the hands, Dan was a gentleman and Nora a lady. And there will be ladies and gentlemen—of Nature and the Breed—just as there will be cads and she-snobs to the end of all time.
Dan Creyton was a reader. Poor George had found little time for the ennobling education of literature, but he recognised the superior intellect, and regarded Dan as his elder friend.
Creyton had watched the play of life in its local relation to George with an amused interest, and when the Meanness-of-Small-Things was sitting on the stool beside the young man one day at the bank, and George was regarding it out of hollow, hopeless eyes, Dan Creyton dropped in and shook hands with him without saying anything.
Thereafter George Chard was Dan Creyton’s friend for weal or for woe.
After all, life and death are small matters.
It is the other things which count—love and hate, and the sunlight down the water.
Nora Creyton, with the warm sympathetic blood of the Celt in her veins; Nora Creyton, with the high, white forehead and the red lips and lustrous eyes, soon became the sunlight of George Chard’s life.
Nora Creyton was a sensible girl. She knew that the prospects of George Chard, bank clerk, with a mother and five sisters dependent on him, were not worthy of serious consideration from a matrimonial point of view. She knew that and a lot more, but she could no more help her heart beating ridiculously fast on occasions, or her cheeks reddening or her eyes sparkling than she could help her breath.
George did not see these things, or, if he had, the last thought that would have entered his mind would be the presumption that his presence accounted for them.
And George and Nora might have gone on for ever caring for one another in secret but for an accident, which will be detailed in another chapter.
George Chard slept on the bank premises. The keys of the bank safes were kept by the manager during the day, but when he left the office for his private residence they remained in the custody of his junior. George made it a particular rule to see that his superior officer opened the safe in the morning.
The manager’s carelessness was a continual source of uneasiness to the young man, who had been brought up in the strict commercial school, where carelessness is down as the cardinal sin.
During banking hours the keys were sometimes left in the safe, sometimes hung upon the wall, and more often carried about loose in the manager’s pocket.
It happened one day, previous to the opening of the story, that while his assistant was absent from the office, a particular friend of the manager’s came in and invited him across the road for a drink.
The manager had been having a night, consequently the suggestion of a whisky and soda came at the right moment.
Without waiting to put on his coat, he stepped across the road with his friend.
As he passed into the bar parlour a little squat man, with a cast in his eye, entered the bank. He had not been long in the town, but he was full of religious zeal, and was always addressing the townspeople in order to save their souls.
He was standing with his back to the counter, devoutly whistling a hymn, when the manager re-entered.
The little man explained that the Lord had moved him to come and ask a small subscription towards his religious crusade. He was doing the Lord’s work, and the smallest remuneration from the Devil would be most thankfully received.
The manager donated a shilling, and the crusader, after piously promising that the shilling would be put to his dear brother’s credit in Heaven, picked up the hymn where he had left it and went out. His squint eye was elevated towards the insulators on the telegraph posts as he walked along the street, and a light of satisfaction gleamed therein. He might have been thanking Heaven for some fresh mercy or thinking out a scheme for wireless telegraphy.
Whatever his thoughts were, he carried in one hand a piece of wax, and on the wax was the newly-made impression of a key.
About a week later, George Chard in Assam silk and helmet paused at the door of the office. Although it had thundered and stormed up the river the night previously, it was a suffocating morning. The mercuryat Wharfdale stood already at ninety in the shade, and the vapoury atmosphere seemed to take all the energy out of one’s body.
George looked across to the islands in the river and hungered for the shade of their jungles, where the day might be worn through in comparative coolness.
A boat put out from the bank upstream, and he recognised Nora Creyton in a white frock and sun-bonnet rowing gently towards the point of the furthest island, whereon, as George knew well enough, she was used to spend many a hot forenoon under the fig trees with a book for company. George sighed drearily and entered the bank.
The manager came down and unlocked the safe.
Then occurred the crisis of the young man’s life.
Five hundred pounds in sovereigns laid upon the floor of the safe the night previously by the manager in the presence of his assistant, were no longer there!
The canvas bags containing the money had disappeared. Yet the door of the safe had certainly been locked.
The manager’s face expressed blank astonishment, anger, incredibility.
George Chard’s face was pale and anxious.
This was a serious matter. The manager’s influence might avert the anger of the directors from his own head, but would not it descend upon George?
Might he not be held responsible? He had slept upon the premises that night, as usual, and during that night the money must certainly have been removed.
These ideas flashed through his mind instantly, butthe thought that he might be directly accused of dishonesty had not yet occurred to him.
At first the two men had refused to credit their senses. They hurriedly unlocked the other safe, pulled out the ledgers, opened the drawers, counted their petty cash, which had not apparently been touched, and in a sort of forlorn hope checked their previous day’s figures.
The money was undoubtedly gone.
The manager sank into a chair and wiped his forehead with a trembling, nervous hand.
George went round the room, examined the fastenings of the windows, turned and re-turned the key in the lock of the outside door leading into the street.
“Whoever has done it,” he cried, “must have come in by the front way. They could not get through the back without me hearing them.”
“Let us see if there are any signs of footprints,” said the manager, going to the door.
The rain had obliterated Jean Petit’s tracks. He had come and gone like a cat in the darkness, opening both the outer doors and the safe noiselessly with his skeleton keys while George Chard slept soundly in the next room.
His accomplice had waited under the shadow of the river bank half a mile up stream, and the boat had taken them quietly away with the gold.
“If anybody came in,” mused the manager, presently, “they must have come in by the outside door.”
“If!” repeated George. “There can be no doubt about it!”
But the word had brought him a strange thrill of apprehension.
Good God! Was it possible?
He endeavoured to catch the manager’s eye.
“What do you mean by saying if?” he demanded suddenly.
The eye—it was always inclined to be shifty and uncertain under a direct look—remained averted.
“Nothing,” replied the manager, “only this is a very serious matter for——” he hesitated, and added, “for both of us?”
“Someone got in with a false key,” exclaimed George, positively, “unless——”
He stopped.
An idea had come to him.
“Unless what?” asked the manager.
It was his turn to look at George.
“Unless,” said George, injudiciously, “someone got in with the key of the door.”
“And opened the safe?” said the manager.
“With the key of the safe,” added George, meeting him square in the face.
The man was not guilty, as far as the direct robbery was concerned; but there were many little acts of carelessness which he would prefer should not come to the ears of the directors. He had the favour of the Inspector certainly, but a bank robbery is a bank robbery, and the fact remained that five hundred pounds had been removed from a safe of which he held the key, and the safe showed no signs of violence. ButGeorge Chard had also had possession of the key at different times.
And the manager resolved inwardly that if suspicion fell on anyone, it would not be upon him. In his heart he probably believed that his subordinate was innocent, but in his heart he was also a coward.
“It is a deuce of a mess,” he observed presently, in a friendly tone, “but we must stick together.”
“Yes,” replied George, abstractedly.
“Our evidence,” the manager went on, watching the young man narrowly, “will have to tally.”
“What evidence?” asked poor George, whose mind was in a whirl.
“Any evidence we may have to give! There is bound to be an inquiry.”
“I will tell the truth,” cried the other. “I can do neither more nor less than that.”
The manager reflected. The telling of the truth meant possibly the telling of those certain acts of carelessness of which he was at that moment painfully conscious.
“That’s right!” he replied, amiably; “we must both tell the truth.”
So after some further thought, he went over to the telegraph office and wired:—