Maurice found his favourable expectations of Sydney fully realized. His
notable escape from death at Macquarie Harbour, his alliance with the
daughter of so respected a colonist as Major Vickers, and his reputation
as a convict disciplinarian rendered him a man of note. He received a
vacant magistracy, and became even more noted for hardness of heart and
artfulness of prison knowledge than before. The convict population spoke
of him as “that ---- Frere,” and registered vows of vengeance against
him, which he laughed--in his bluffness--to scorn.
One anecdote concerning the method by which he shepherded his flock will
suffice to show his character and his value. It was his custom to visit
the prison-yard at Hyde Park Barracks twice a week. Visitors to convicts
were, of course, armed, and the two pistol-butts that peeped from
Frere's waistcoat attracted many a longing eye. How easy would it be for
some fellow to pluck one forth and shatter the smiling, hateful face of
the noted disciplinarian! Frere, however, brave to rashness, never would
bestow his weapons more safely, but lounged through the yard with his
hands in the pockets of his shooting-coat, and the deadly butts ready to
the hand of anyone bold enough to take them.
One day a man named Kavanagh, a captured absconder, who had openly sworn
in the dock the death of the magistrate, walked quickly up to him as he
was passing through the yard, and snatched a pistol from his belt. The
yard caught its breath, and the attendant warder, hearing the click of
the lock, instinctively turned his head away, so that he might not be
blinded by the flash. But Kavanagh did not fire. At the instant when
his hand was on the pistol, he looked up and met the magnetic glance of
Frere's imperious eyes. An effort, and the spell would have been broken.
A twitch of the finger, and his enemy would have fallen dead. There was
an instant when that twitch of the finger could have been given, but
Kavanagh let that instant pass. The dauntless eye fascinated him. He
played with the pistol nervously, while all remained stupefied. Frere
stood, without withdrawing his hands from the pockets into which they
were plunged.
“That's a fine pistol, Jack,” he said at last.
Kavanagh, down whose white face the sweat was pouring, burst into a
hideous laugh of relieved terror, and thrust the weapon, cocked as it
was, back again into the magistrate's belt.
Frere slowly drew one hand from his pocket, took the cocked pistol and
levelled it at his recent assailant. “That's the best chance you'll ever
get, Jack,” said he.
Kavanagh fell on his knees. “For God's sake, Captain Frere!” Frere
looked down on the trembling wretch, and then uncocked the pistol, with
a laugh of ferocious contempt. “Get up, you dog,” he said. “It takes a
better man than you to best me. Bring him up in the morning, Hawkins,
and we'll give him five-and-twenty.”
As he went out--so great is the admiration for Power--the poor devils in
the yard cheered him.
One of the first things that this useful officer did upon his arrival
in Sydney was to inquire for Sarah Purfoy. To his astonishment, he
discovered that she was the proprietor of large export warehouses in
Pitt-street, owned a neat cottage on one of the points of land which
jutted into the bay, and was reputed to possess a banking account of no
inconsiderable magnitude. He in vain applied his brains to solve this
mystery. His cast-off mistress had not been rich when she left Van
Diemen's Land--at least, so she had assured him, and appearances bore
out her assurance. How had she accumulated this sudden wealth? Above
all, why had she thus invested it? He made inquiries at the banks, but
was snubbed for his pains. Sydney banks in those days did some queer
business. Mrs. Purfoy had come to them “fully accredited,” said the
manager with a smile.
“But where did she get the money?” asked the magistrate. “I am
suspicious of these sudden fortunes. The woman was a notorious character
in Hobart Town, and when she left hadn't a penny.”
“My dear Captain Frere,” said the acute banker--his father had been one
of the builders of the “Rum Hospital”--“it is not the custom of our bank
to make inquiries into the previous history of its customers. The bills
were good, you may depend, or we should not have honoured them. Good
morning!”
“The bills!” Frere saw but one explanation. Sarah had received the
proceeds of some of Rex's rogueries. Rex's letter to his father and
the mention of the sum of money “in the old house in Blue Anchor Yard”
flashed across his memory. Perhaps Sarah had got the money from the
receiver and appropriated it. But why invest it in an oil and tallow
warehouse? He had always been suspicious of the woman, because he had
never understood her, and his suspicions redoubled. Convinced that there
was some plot hatching, he determined to use all the advantages that his
position gave him to discover the secret and bring it to light. The name
of the man to whom Rex's letters had been addressed was “Blicks”.
He would find out if any of the convicts under his care had heard of
Blicks. Prosecuting his inquiries in the proper direction, he soon
obtained a reply. Blicks was a London receiver of stolen goods, known to
at least a dozen of the black sheep of the Sydney fold. He was reputed
to be enormously wealthy, had often been tried, but never convicted.
Frere was thus not much nearer enlightenment than before, and
an incident occurred a few months afterwards which increased his
bewilderment He had not been long established in his magistracy, when
Blunt came to claim payment for the voyage of Sarah Purfoy. “There's
that schooner going begging, one may say, sir,” said Blunt, when the
office door was shut.
“What schooner?”
“The Franklin.”
Now the Franklin was a vessel of three hundred and twenty tons which
plied between Norfolk Island and Sydney, as the Osprey had plied in the
old days between Macquarie Harbour and Hobart Town. “I am afraid that is
rather stiff, Blunt,” said Frere. “That's one of the best billets going,
you know. I doubt if I have enough interest to get it for you. Besides,”
he added, eyeing the sailor critically, “you are getting oldish for that
sort of thing, ain't you?”
Phineas Blunt stretched his arms wide, and opened his mouth, full of
sound white teeth. “I am good for twenty years more yet, sir,” he said.
“My father was trading to the Indies at seventy-five years of age. I'm
hearty enough, thank God; for, barring a drop of rum now and then, I've
no vices to speak of. However, I ain't in a hurry, Captain, for a month
or so; only I thought I'd jog your memory a bit, d ye see.”
“Oh, you're not in a hurry; where are you going then?”
“Well,” said Blunt, shifting on his seat, uneasy under Frere's
convict-disciplined eye, “I've got a job on hand.”
“Glad of it, I'm sure. What sort of a job?”
“A job of whaling,” said Blunt, more uneasy than before.
“Oh, that's it, is it? Your old line of business. And who employs you
now?” There was no suspicion in the tone, and had Blunt chosen to evade
the question, he might have done so without difficulty, but he replied
as one who had anticipated such questioning, and had been advised how to
answer it.
“Mrs. Purfoy.”
“What!” cried Frere, scarcely able to believe his ears.
“She's got a couple of ships now, Captain, and she made me skipper of
one of 'em. We look for beshdellamare [beche-de-la-mer], and take a turn
at harpooning sometimes.”
Frere stared at Blunt, who stared at the window. There was--so the
instinct of the magistrate told him--some strange project afoot. Yet
that common sense which so often misleads us, urged that it was quite
natural Sarah should employ whaling vessels to increase her trade.
Granted that there was nothing wrong about her obtaining the business,
there was nothing strange about her owning a couple of whaling
vessels. There were people in Sydney, of no better origin, who owned
half-a-dozen. “Oh,” said he. “And when do you start?”
“I'm expecting to get the word every day,” returned Blunt, apparently
relieved, “and I thought I'd just come and see you first, in case of
anything falling in.” Frere played with a pen-knife on the table in
silence for a while, allowing it to fall through his fingers with a
series of sharp clicks, and then he said, “Where does she get the money
from?”
“Blest if I know!” said Blunt, in unaffected simplicity. “That's beyond
me. She says she saved it. But that's all my eye, you know.”
“You don't know anything about it, then?” cried Frere, suddenly fierce.
“No, not I.”
“Because, if there's any game on, she'd better take care,” he cried,
relapsing, in his excitement, into the convict vernacular. “She knows
me. Tell her that I've got my eyes on her. Let her remember her bargain.
If she runs any rigs on me, let her take care.” In his suspicious wrath
he so savagely and unwarily struck downwards with the open pen-knife
that it shut upon his fingers, and cut him to the bone.
“I'll tell her,” said Blunt, wiping his brow. “I'm sure she wouldn't
go to sell you. But I'll look in when I come back, sir.” When he got
outside he drew a long breath. “By the Lord Harry, but it's a ticklish
game to play,” he said to himself, with a lively recollection of the
dreaded Frere's vehemence; “and there's only one woman in the world I'd
be fool enough to play it for.”
Maurice Frere, oppressed with suspicions, ordered his horse that
afternoon, and rode down to see the cottage which the owner of “Purfoy
Stores” had purchased. He found it a low white building, situated four
miles from the city, at the extreme end of a tongue of land which ran
into the deep waters of the harbour. A garden carefully cultivated,
stood between the roadway and the house, and in this garden he saw a man
digging.
“Does Mrs. Purfoy live here?” he asked, pushing open one of the iron
gates.
The man replied in the affirmative, staring at the visitor with some
suspicion.
“Is she at home?”
“No.”
“You are sure?”
“If you don't believe me, ask at the house,” was the reply, given in the
uncourteous tone of a free man.
Frere pushed his horse through the gate, and walked up the broad and
well-kept carriage drive. A man-servant in livery, answering his ring,
told him that Mrs. Purfoy had gone to town, and then shut the door in
his face. Frere, more astonished than ever at these outward and visible
signs of independence, paused, indignant, feeling half inclined to enter
despite opposition. As he looked through the break of the trees, he saw
the masts of a brig lying at anchor off the extremity of the point on
which the house was built, and understood that the cottage commanded
communication by water as well as by land. Could there be a special
motive in choosing such a situation, or was it mere chance? He was
uneasy, but strove to dismiss his alarm.
Sarah had kept faith with him so far. She had entered upon a new and
more reputable life, and why should he seek to imagine evil where
perhaps no evil was? Blunt was evidently honest. Women like Sarah
Purfoy often emerged into a condition of comparative riches and domestic
virtue. It was likely that, after all, some wealthy merchant was
the real owner of the house and garden, pleasure yacht, and tallow
warehouse, and that he had no cause for fear.
The experienced convict disciplinarian did not rate the ability of John
Rex high enough.
From the instant the convict had heard his sentence of life banishment,
he had determined upon escaping, and had brought all the powers of his
acute and unscrupulous intellect to the consideration of the best method
of achieving his purpose. His first care was to procure money. This he
thought to do by writing to Blick, but when informed by Meekin of the
fate of his letter, he adopted the--to him--less pleasant alternative of
procuring it through Sarah Purfoy.
It was peculiar to the man's hard and ungrateful nature that, despite
the attachment of the woman who had followed him to his place of
durance, and had made it the object of her life to set him free, he had
cherished for her no affection. It was her beauty that had attracted
him, when, as Mr. Lionel Crofton, he swaggered in the night-society
of London. Her talents and her devotion were secondary
considerations--useful to him as attributes of a creature he owned, but
not to be thought of when his fancy wearied of its choice. During the
twelve years which had passed since his rashness had delivered him into
the hands of the law at the house of Green, the coiner, he had been
oppressed with no regrets for her fate. He had, indeed, seen and
suffered so much that the old life had been put away from him. When, on
his return, he heard that Sarah Purfoy was still in Hobart Town, he was
glad, for he knew that he had an ally who would do her utmost to help
him--she had shown that on board the Malabar. But he was also sorry, for
he remembered that the price she would demand for her services was his
affection, and that had cooled long ago. However, he would make use of
her. There might be a way to discard her if she proved troublesome.
His pretended piety had accomplished the end he had assumed it for.
Despite Frere's exposure of his cryptograph, he had won the confidence
of Meekin; and into that worthy creature's ear he poured a strange and
sad story. He was the son, he said, of a clergyman of the Church of
England, whose real name, such was his reverence for the cloth, should
never pass his lips. He was transported for a forgery which he did not
commit. Sarah Purfoy was his wife--his erring, lost and yet loved
wife. She, an innocent and trusting girl, had determined--strong in the
remembrance of that promise she had made at the altar--to follow her
husband to his place of doom, and had hired herself as lady's-maid to
Mrs. Vickers. Alas! fever prostrated that husband on a bed of sickness,
and Maurice Frere, the profligate and the villain, had taken advantage
of the wife's unprotected state to ruin her! Rex darkly hinted how
the seducer made his power over the sick and helpless husband a weapon
against the virtue of the wife and so terrified poor Meekin that, had it
not “happened so long ago”, he would have thought it necessary to look
with some disfavour upon the boisterous son-in-law of Major Vickers.
“I bear him no ill-will, sir,” said Rex. “I did at first. There was a
time when I could have killed him, but when I had him in my power, I--as
you know--forbore to strike. No, sir, I could not commit murder!”
“Very proper,” says Meekin, “very proper indeed.” “God will punish him
in His own way, and His own time,” continued Rex. “My great sorrow is
for the poor woman. She is in Sydney, I have heard, living respectably,
sir; and my heart bleeds for her.” Here Rex heaved a sigh that would
have made his fortune on the boards.
“My poor fellow,” said Meekin. “Do you know where she is?”
“I do, sir.”
“You might write to her.”
John Rex appeared to hesitate, to struggle with himself, and finally to
take a deep resolve. “No, Mr. Meekin, I will not write.”
“Why not?”
“You know the orders, sir--the Commandant reads all the letters sent.
Could I write to my poor Sarah what other eyes were to read?” and he
watched the parson slyly.
“N--no, you could not,” said Meekin, at last.
“It is true, sir,” said Rex, letting his head sink on his breast. The
next day, Meekin, blushing with the consciousness that what he was about
to do was wrong, said to his penitent, “If you will promise to write
nothing that the Commandant might not see, Rex, I will send your letter
to your wife.”
“Heaven bless you, sir,”. said Rex, and took two days to compose an
epistle which should tell Sarah Purfoy how to act. The letter was
a model of composition in one way. It stated everything clearly and
succinctly. Not a detail that could assist was omitted--not a line that
could embarrass was suffered to remain. John Rex's scheme of six months'
deliberation was set down in the clearest possible manner. He brought
his letter unsealed to Meekin. Meekin looked at it with an interest that
was half suspicion. “Have I your word that there is nothing in this that
might not be read by the Commandant?”
John Rex was a bold man, but at the sight of the deadly thing fluttering
open in the clergyman's hand, his knees knocked together. Strong in his
knowledge of human nature, however, he pursued his desperate plan.
“Read it, sir,” he said turning away his face reproachfully. “You are a
gentleman. I can trust you.”
“No, Rex,” said Meekin, walking loftily into the pitfall; “I do not read
private letters.” It was sealed, and John Rex felt as if somebody had
withdrawn a match from a powder barrel.
In a month Mr. Meekin received a letter, beautifully written, from
“Sarah Rex”, stating briefly that she had heard of his goodness, that
the enclosed letter was for her husband, and that if it was against the
rules to give it him, she begged it might be returned to her unread. Of
course Meekin gave it to Rex, who next morning handed to Meekin a most
touching pious production, begging him to read it. Meekin did so, and
any suspicions he may have had were at once disarmed. He was ignorant of
the fact that the pious letter contained a private one intended for John
Rex only, which letter John Rex thought so highly of, that, having read
it twice through most attentively, he ate it.
The plan of escape was after all a simple one. Sarah Purfoy was to
obtain from Blicks the moneys he held in trust, and to embark the sum
thus obtained in any business which would suffer her to keep a vessel
hovering round the southern coast of Van Diemen's Land without exciting
suspicion. The escape was to be made in the winter months, if possible,
in June or July. The watchful vessel was to be commanded by some
trustworthy person, who was to frequently land on the south-eastern
side, and keep a look-out for any extraordinary appearance along the
coast. Rex himself must be left to run the gauntlet of the dogs and
guards unaided. “This seems a desperate scheme,” wrote Rex, “but it
is not so wild as it looks. I have thought over a dozen others, and
rejected them all. This is the only way. Consider it well. I have my own
plan for escape, which is easy if rescue be at hand. All depends upon
placing a trustworthy man in charge of the vessel. You ought to know
a dozen such. I will wait eighteen months to give you time to make all
arrangements.” The eighteen months had now nearly passed over, and
the time for the desperate attempt drew near. Faithful to his cruel
philosophy, John Rex had provided scape-goats, who, by their vicarious
agonies, should assist him to his salvation.
He had discovered that of the twenty men in his gang eight had already
determined on an effort for freedom. The names of these eight were
Gabbett, Vetch, Bodenham, Cornelius, Greenhill, Sanders, called the
“Moocher”, Cox, and Travers. The leading spirits were Vetch and Gabbett,
who, with profound reverence, requested the “Dandy” to join. John Rex,
ever suspicious, and feeling repelled by the giant's strange eagerness,
at first refused, but by degrees allowed himself to appear to be
drawn into the scheme. He would urge these men to their fate, and take
advantage of the excitement attendant on their absence to effect his
own escape. “While all the island is looking for these eight boobies, I
shall have a good chance to slip away unmissed.” He wished, however, to
have a companion. Some strong man, who, if pressed hard, would turn
and keep the pursuers at bay, would be useful without doubt; and this
comrade-victim he sought in Rufus Dawes.
Beginning, as we have seen, from a purely selfish motive, to urge his
fellow-prisoner to abscond with him, John Rex gradually found himself
attracted into something like friendliness by the sternness with which
his overtures were repelled. Always a keen student of human nature,
the scoundrel saw beneath the roughness with which it had pleased the
unfortunate man to shroud his agony, how faithful a friend and how
ardent and undaunted a spirit was concealed. There was, moreover, a
mystery about Rufus Dawes which Rex, the reader of hearts, longed to
fathom.
“Have you no friends whom you would wish to see?” he asked, one evening,
when Rufus Dawes had proved more than usually deaf to his arguments.
“No,” said Dawes gloomily. “My friends are all dead to me.”
“What, all?” asked the other. “Most men have some one whom they wish to
see.”
Rufus Dawes laughed a slow, heavy laugh. “I am better here.”
“Then are you content to live this dog's life?”
“Enough, enough,” said Dawes. “I am resolved.”
“Pooh! Pluck up a spirit,” cried Rex. “It can't fail. I've been thinking
of it for eighteen months, and it can't fail.”
“Who are going?” asked the other, his eyes fixed on the ground. John Rex
enumerated the eight, and Dawes raised his head. “I won't go. I have
had two trials at it; I don't want another. I would advise you not to
attempt it either.”
“Why not?”
“Gabbett bolted twice before,” said Rufus Dawes, shuddering at the
remembrance of the ghastly object he had seen in the sunlit glen at
Hell's Gates. “Others went with him, but each time he returned alone.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rex, struck by the tone of his companion.
“What became of the others?”
“Died, I suppose,” said the Dandy, with a forced laugh.
“Yes; but how? They were all without food. How came the surviving
monster to live six weeks?”
John Rex grew a shade paler, and did not reply. He recollected the
sanguinary legend that pertained to Gabbett's rescue. But he did not
intend to make the journey in his company, so, after all, he had no
cause for fear. “Come with me then,” he said, at length. “We will try
our luck together.”
“No. I have resolved. I stay here.”
“And leave your innocence unproved.”
“How can I prove it?” cried Rufus Dawes, roughly impatient. “There are
crimes committed which are never brought to light, and this is one of
them.”
“Well,” said Rex, rising, as if weary of the discussion, “have it your
own way, then. You know best. The private detective game is hard work.
I, myself, have gone on a wild-goose chase before now. There's a mystery
about a certain ship-builder's son which took me four months to unravel,
and then I lost the thread.”
“A ship-builder's son! Who was he?”
John Rex paused in wonderment at the eager interest with which the
question was put, and then hastened to take advantage of this new
opening for conversation. “A queer story. A well-known character in my
time--Sir Richard Devine. A miserly old curmudgeon, with a scapegrace
son.”
Rufus Dawes bit his lips to avoid showing his emotion. This was the
second time that the name of his dead father had been spoken in his
hearing. “I think I remember something of him,” he said, with a voice
that sounded strangely calm in his own ears.
“A curious story,” said Rex, plunging into past memories. “Amongst other
matters, I dabbled a little in the Private Inquiry line of business, and
the old man came to me. He had a son who had gone abroad--a wild young
dog, by all accounts--and he wanted particulars of him.”
“Did you get them?”
“To a certain extent. I hunted him through Paris into Brussels, from
Brussels to Antwerp, from Antwerp back to Paris. I lost him there.
A miserable end to a long and expensive search. I got nothing but
a portmanteau with a lot of letters from his mother. I sent the
particulars to the ship-builder, and by all accounts the news killed
him, for he died not long after.”
“And the son?”
“Came to the queerest end of all. The old man had left him his
fortune--a large one, I believe--but he'd left Europe, it seems, for
India, and was lost in the Hydaspes. Frere was his cousin.”
“Ah!”
“By Gad, it annoys me when I think of it,” continued Rex, feeling,
by force of memory, once more the adventurer of fashion. “With the
resources I had, too. Oh, a miserable failure! The days and nights I've
spent walking about looking for Richard Devine, and never catching
a glimpse of him. The old man gave me his son's portrait, with full
particulars of his early life, and I suppose I carried that ivory
gimcrack in my breast for nearly three months, pulling it out to refresh
my memory every half-hour. By Gad, if the young gentleman was
anything like his picture, I could have sworn to him if I'd met him in
Timbuctoo.”
“Do you think you'd know him again?” asked Rufus Dawes in a low voice,
turning away his head.
There may have been something in the attitude in which the speaker had
put himself that awakened memory, or perhaps the subdued eagerness of
the tone, contrasting so strangely with the comparative inconsequence of
the theme, that caused John Rex's brain to perform one of those feats
of automatic synthesis at which we afterwards wonder. The profligate
son--the likeness to the portrait--the mystery of Dawes's life! These
were the links of a galvanic chain. He closed the circuit, and a vivid
flash revealed to him--THE MAN.
Warder Troke, coming up, put his hand on Rex's shoulder. “Dawes,” he
said, “you're wanted at the yard”; and then, seeing his mistake, added
with a grin, “Curse you two; you're so much alike one can't tell t'other
from which.”
Rufus Dawes walked off moodily; but John Rex's evil face turned pale,
and a strange hope made his heart leap. “Gad, Troke's right; we are
alike. I'll not press him to escape any more.”