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the money withdrawn from the Barwon Banking Company, Limited, was in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, who 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.