MRS. BURKE'S PRESENTIMENT
Waroona Downs was fifteen miles from Waroona township by the road, and
ten as the crow flies, the intrusion of a rocky and precipitous range
making it impossible to take the shorter and more direct route. One had
perforce to use the road, and the road turned and twisted where the
level plains were broken by the range, passing, at one stage, through a
narrow gorge hemmed in by steep, rock-strewn heights, on which a growth
of stunted gums flourished sufficiently to hide the jagged boulders from
the road below.
Half-way through the gorge a stream, having its source in a series of
springs hidden among the tumbled rocks, swept across the track in a
shallow ford. The road dipped to it on both sides, the constant flow of
water having stripped away the soil and left a barrier of naked rock
which dammed back the stream to form a wide pool sheltered among the
hills and fringed by a more luxurious growth of vegetation than clothed
the heights above.
The last gleam of the setting sun shed a ruddy tinge on the topmost
branches of the trees as Durham reached where the road dipped to the
stream. The subdued light in the pass made the distances elusive and
turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was
full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the
rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, the silence was
unbroken.
Durham reined in his horse and sat loosely in his saddle as his glance
swept over the tangled masses of undergrowth, the tumbled boulders
peeping here and there from amid the shadows, the precipitous sides of
the pass, and the broken ruggedness of the ground beyond. But it was not
an appreciation of the picturesque, nor a recognition of the poetry in
landscape which held him. He saw in the place only such a spot as the
men concerned in the robbery of the bank would select for hiding their
booty. Within that maze of rock and tree and mountain, how many nooks
there must be to serve the purpose.
Had he been occupied only with the matter of the robbery, he would have
started there and then to satisfy himself whether his surmise was
correct, and whether the missing thousands were not lying perhaps a few
yards away, hidden among the undergrowth and boulders. But there was
more than the robbery in his mind; it was not alone to make inquiries on
the subject that he had ridden away on a journey Brennan could have
accomplished equally well. There was a much more personal note in the
affair.
Durham was in love, and with a woman he had only met once, and of whom
he knew nothing more than her name.
Travelling one day by coach, he had, for a fellow-passenger, a woman. A
dozen signs showed him that she was a new arrival in the country, unused
to colonial ways, unversed in colonial methods. It was natural for him,
at such places as they stopped for meals, to extend to her a share of
the attention his official position secured for him. It was also natural
for him to drift into conversation with her.
The companion of his coaching experience was named Burke--Nora
Burke--she had told him. Nora Burke was one of the victims of the bank
robbery, and, apparently, the last person who had had anything to say to
the vanished bank manager. It was more to ascertain whether the heroine
of the coach journey were the same as the owner of Waroona Downs, than
to learn what Eustace had or had not said, that Durham determined to
ride out to the station.
Even as his glance wandered over the picturesque scene before him, he
was impatient to press on--five miles had yet to be covered before he
reached Waroona Downs. He pulled the bridle with a jerk and rode
steadily until he was clear of the range. Then he put his horse at a
gallop and kept the pace till he saw the gleam of a light from the
window of a house set back from the road. In the dusk he could not make
out all the detail of the place, but Brennan told him the homestead was
the first house he would come to after clearing the range.
He swung on to the side track leading to the house. As he came up to it
he saw the figure of a woman silhouetted against the light.
"Is this Mrs. Burke's?" he called out.
"And if it is, what might you want?"
His heart leaped as he heard the answer--despite the sharp ring, sharp
almost to harshness, he recognised the voice. It was that of the
companion of his coach journey.
A low verandah, about three feet from the ground, ran along the front of
the house. It was on the verandah the woman stood. Durham sprang from
the saddle, slipped his bridle over a post, and stepped up the short
flight of stairs.
The woman had drawn back into the shadow beyond the window. As he
advanced, the light from the lamp within fell upon him, revealing to her
the uniform he wore.
With a soft, melodious laugh she came forward.
"Why didn't you say you were a trooper?" she said. "I thought----"
"I am Sub-Inspector Durham," he said quickly.
"Oh, indeed," she replied.
She met his glance without a suggestion of recognition in her own.
"I have ridden out to ask you one or two questions in regard to the
robbery at the bank, of which I understand you have heard," he said.
"Ask me questions? And pray what have I to do with the robbery, save
that I am an unfortunate victim of the dishonesty of men you and the
rest of the police ought to be chasing at this very moment? Ask me
questions? It's me who has need to ask them of you. Where are my stolen
papers? Where----"
"If you will give me your assistance by answering the few questions I
wish to ask you, I have no doubt that your papers, and all the rest of
the stolen property, will very soon be recovered," Durham said. "I
understand you saw Mr. Eustace this forenoon. Will you tell me----"
"Ask Mr. Eustace himself," she retorted. "He can tell you what I said."
She stood in front of him, with her hands hanging down hidden in the
folds of her dress.
"I will not detain you long. I have been travelling since early to-day
and have to ride back to the township to-night."
"Travelling all day? Sure you must be tired!" she exclaimed. "Come
inside and rest--this affair has so upset me I'm forgetting that Irish
hospitality ought to be the first rule for Irish folk wherever they may
happen to be. Come in, come in."
She led the way into the room where the lamp was burning. As she stepped
in through the long open window Durham saw she was carrying a heavy
revolver in the half-hidden hand.
"You were evidently prepared for emergencies," he said.
She laughed as she laid the weapon on the table.
"After what happened to-day, Mr. Durham, I'm all nerves. When I heard
you riding to the house I was frightened lest it should be some more of
the scoundrels coming to see what else they could rob from me. You see,
I'm all alone here except for poor old Patsy Malone--he's just a poor
half-witted fool who was with my husband and my husband's father before
him, and he thinks, poor old creature, that wherever I go he has to go
too. I had to bring him out here with me to save the scandal he would
have made. Sure, he's harmless enough anywhere, but what could he do if
some of those thieving scoundrels rode up here and robbed me of the last
few papers and things those bank rascals have not yet had the chance of
stealing? But sit down, Mr. Durham, sit down. I'll tell the old fool to
get you some tea--a cup won't harm you after your long ride. And maybe
you'll take just a bit of something? You'll be hungry."
She was out of the room before Durham could answer, but he heard her
calling for her ancient retainer and giving him instructions with the
same volubility that she had shown when speaking to him.
"It won't be a minute, Mr. Durham. Luckily the fire was still in, for
Patsy was only finished washing the dishes scarcely five minutes ago.
And what is the news from the township? Have they caught the robbers
yet? Or do you think they have very far to look for them if they really
want the man who did it? Now there's a foolish thing for me to say! I
forgot. Of course, it's yourself that has come up to catch him. You'll
forgive me, Mr. Durham, but I can assure you I never had so great a
shock to my nerves as I had to-day. What's to become of me now that all
those documents are gone? You see, when I came away my solicitor in
Dublin--you see, he was my husband's solicitor and his father's
solicitor before him, so, as you may judge, he is an old man, though
not so old as old Patsy out there--but, as I was saying, he said----"
She commenced speaking as she entered the room, continued as she walked
to the table and sat down, and appeared to Durham as though she were
going on indefinitely.
"Will you pardon me one moment," he said. "I left my horse at----"
"Of course, of course," she cried, starting up. "Sure the poor beast
will be tired, too, and hungry. Wait, wait, Mr. Durham, I'll send old
Patsy----"
"Oh, no, don't trouble. I'll just take the saddle off and turn him into
the yard. It's Brennan's horse and had a feed before we started."
He was out on the verandah before she could leave the room.
When he returned, Mrs. Burke was watching a bent and decrepit-looking
old man laying the cloth. He gave a furtive glance at Durham as he
entered the room.
"Go on with your work, Patsy, go on, and don't dawdle. Don't I tell you
Mr. Durham is both tired and hungry? Never mind looking at folk. Go on
now."
Patsy mumbled an inaudible reply as he stooped over the table.
"You must bear with him, Mr. Durham," she said as soon as the old man
had left the room. "He's been so long with the Burke family he feels
he's entitled to know everyone who comes into the place. You see what a
fragile old creature he is--and he's all I've got in the place if some
of those scoundrels come and attack us."
She jumped out of her seat and paced from one end of the room to the
other.
"Sure I was a fool," she exclaimed. "I ought to have asked Brennan to
come out. He's half Irish, leastways he's Irish born in Australia, and
he'd have understood."
"I don't think you need be afraid, Mrs. Burke," Durham said quietly.
"You're not likely to be troubled."
"Oh, you don't know. You're a great strong man and able to fight a dozen
maybe. But a lonely woman--haven't they got my papers, and won't they
think that there's a lot more in the house and money too, maybe, and
jewels? And what is there to keep them from robbing the place and
burning it down over our heads, with only that poor old fool out there
and a poor weak woman like myself to face?"
He looked at her as she paced to and fro, her handsome figure moving
with the grace of a Delilah and her wonderful eyes flashing a greater
eloquence than her tongue, as her glance from time to time caught his.
"You need not be afraid," he repeated. "Those responsible for the
robbery of the bank will not be anxious to appear anywhere in public for
some time."
She stood in the centre of the room where the full glare of the lamp
fell upon her.
"Oh, I don't know," she said, "I don't know. I would not trust them.
Besides----"
"Besides what?"
"Well, I was thinking that nobody knows who they are for certain, and
what difference would it make to them, or to any of us, if they rode
down the main street of Waroona under the very noses of yourself and all
the troopers in Australia?"
"That is scarcely likely, Mrs. Burke."
"I don't know," she repeated. "You don't know who they are, or you would
have them inside the walls of the lock-up. Now tell me, have you any
idea?"
"I cannot tell you that, Mrs. Burke. What I can tell you is to put out
of your mind entirely any fear that they will pay you a visit."
She shook her head and resumed her walk to and fro.
"Suppose they come?" she exclaimed, halting at the table opposite to
him. "Suppose they come at dead of night? I might be murdered in my bed
while I was asleep and only know it when I woke up to find myself
killed."
Durham laughed.
"It's true, and you know it, Mr. Durham. Sure I never was so shaken and
nervous as I am to-night! Could you send Brennan out when you return to
the township?"
"I am afraid that is impossible," he said.
"But why? Sure the fellow has nothing to do but sleep, and he may as
well sleep here as in his own quarters."
"He is on duty to-night."
"On duty? Now that the bank's robbed, I suppose he's guarding it? The
horse is stolen, so you lock the door of the empty stable, Mr. Durham;
but where there's a chance of another horse being stolen you let it look
after itself as best it may. And that's what you call doing your duty
and earning the money we poor unfortunate taxpayers have to provide for
you!"
"I am afraid I cannot discuss that matter with you, Mrs. Burke," he said
coldly.
"No!" she retorted hotly. "No, you can't. All you can do is to put the
only constable in the place to guard an empty bank----"
"There is a reason why Brennan should remain in the township to-night.
It is therefore quite impossible for him to come out here--as well as
being unnecessary."
She flounced round and resumed her rapid striding until old Patsy
appeared with the tea.
"Make haste, now, Patsy, make haste!" she exclaimed. "Sure you are the
slowest old fool ever set on the earth to delay and keep people
waiting."
The old man, mumbling to himself, set the meal and left the room.
"Now, Mr. Durham, just make yourself at home with such scant hospitality
as I can show you. If it was in Ireland, sure I'd give you a meal worth
the eating, but here, with me not knowing whether I'm to own this place
or not, and without a soul about it save useless old Patsy to do a
hand's turn, you'll understand it's only a poor pot-luck sort of spread
at the best I can offer. But such as it is, it is offered with a free
heart, though you are going to leave me to be murdered by the scoundrels
whenever they like to come."
"You will laugh at your fears to-morrow," Durham said as he drew up to
the table.
"They are not fears, Mr. Durham. You don't know; you're not Irish, and
so don't understand, but Brennan would. It's not fear. It's what we term
presentiment. Not all the Irish have it, but only some of them. It's my
misfortune to be one of them. I have it. Sure I was tortured the whole
of last night, what with anxiety and sleeplessness and worry, and all
through that wretched bank affair. It was presentiment. I tried to laugh
myself out of it, but as soon as I got into the township this very
morning, what did I hear? Of course, you know. Well, now I have just the
same feeling that to-night there's to be more dirty work by those
thieving scoundrels, and it's here they're coming this time, here--and
I'm to be left to their mercy, just one poor weak, defenceless woman and
an old half-witted fool of a man. It makes me just----"
She left her sentence uncompleted as she turned away, with a break in
her voice, and stood by the open window leading out on to the verandah.
As Durham glanced at her he saw her shoulders heave and her hands
convulsively clasp.
Through the chill of her forgetfulness the love impulse surged.
"If you are really so distressed about the matter," he said quickly, "if
you really fear you will be attacked to-night, I will stay here till the
morning."
With a magnificent gesture she faced round from the window and came
swiftly towards him, her eyes sparkling, her lips wreathed in a happy
smile.
"Oh, what a weight of care you have taken from my mind!" she cried. "I
can rest now in peace and comfort without thinking that every moment may
be my last on earth."
"But if they come they may kill me. What then?" Durham asked, with a
smile which had more than amusement in it.
She flashed her brilliant glance at him, raising her eyes quickly to his
and drooping them slowly behind the shelter of the dark, heavy lashes.
"No," she said softly. "You are too brave a man--they will not dare to
come while you are here."
"And so your presentiment passes into thin air?" he said.
"It's relieved," she said. "Maybe I'm too timid--that affair has upset
me so much. Now tell me, do you really think you know who the thieves
are?"
She sat down at the table opposite to him and leaned her chin on her
hands, her loose sleeves falling away from her arms and revealing, to
the best advantage, their rounded whiteness. Into her eyes there came
the flicker of a challenge, the sparkle of mischief which gave a new
character to her face, a different expression to all he had hitherto
seen. There was flippant raillery in her voice as she repeated her
question.
"Do you really think you will find out who the thieves are?" she
exclaimed.
"One I already know," he replied, fixing his eyes on her as his square
jaws set firm in his effort to refrain from allowing his features to
relax into the smile which was hovering so near.
For a moment the lines round her eyes hardened, and the sparkle became a
flash before it melted again as a rippling laugh came from her lips.
"How terribly stern you look!" she cried in a mocking voice. "Do you
ever think of anything but your work, Mr. Durham?"
"Not when I have anything at all difficult on hand," he replied.
"Then this does puzzle you?"
"It has its difficulties; but, for all that, it is a problem I shall
solve."
Again the rippling laugh rang through the room.
"Why, of course! Was there ever a case the police had in hand where they
did not have a clue at the very beginning?"
"Several," he answered. "A clever, resourceful criminal, Mrs. Burke,
always has the advantage. Where they fail ultimately is in becoming too
sure of themselves and too forgetful of the network of snares laid to
entrap them and always waiting to trip them."
"I suppose that is so," she said slowly. "I suppose that is so. Poor
things--I can't help pitying them, Mr. Durham. One never knows what lies
behind their wickedness--what it was which first sent them rolling down
the slope that ends--often--on the gallows."
She shuddered as she spoke, averting her face from him.
"This is a dismal subject," he exclaimed. "Let us change it. Will you
answer the questions I want to ask you about the bank affair?"
"Ask them. Oh! ask the wretched things and let me get it over. Sure I
begin to hate the mention of it," she exclaimed as she shrugged her
shoulders impatiently.
Without apparently heeding her objection, he asked her to say whether
anyone was in the passage as she passed from the dining-room to the
entrance of the bank.
"Of course there was. Didn't I tell Brennan at once?" she said.
"Who was it?"
"His wife."
"Brennan's?"
"Brennan's! No! The bank manager's; she was just outside the
door--listening, I'll be bound."
"You are sure of that?"
"Sure that she was listening? Well, isn't she a woman? What else would
she be doing?"
"That is all I want to ask you," he said quietly.
She looked at him wonderingly.
"All?" she asked. "You rode out from Waroona merely to ask me that bit
of a question?"
He nodded.
"Well, then," she exclaimed, "if that's how you're going to catch the
thieves it's good-bye to my papers."
The eyes which met his told of anger and indignation.
"You expected a rigid cross-examination?" he asked, with a smile.
"I expected questions which would have some bearing on the affair," she
retorted.
"Your experience in this sort of thing is somewhat limited, Mrs. Burke.
A tangled skein is unravelled by following a mere thread, not by tearing
at the entire mass. I have hold of a thread, and I am following it."
"And where will it lead you?"
"Where? It does not matter where so long as the tangle is made
straight."
"While my papers and my----"
"You need not be uneasy," he interrupted. "They are just as safe as
though you held them in your hand."
"Safe for those who stole them," she retorted, with a short, satirical
laugh.
"Safe for you," he answered. "You have not been long enough in the
country to realise how complete a system of detection we have here. I
have never felt more certain of securing both the culprits and the
stolen property than I am in this case."
Again she gave a short, satirical laugh.
"Oh, yes," she said. "Of course. You know exactly where the thieves are
and where they have hidden what was taken and also where they are
hiding. You can put your hands on them whenever you like. One does not
need to come to Australia to hear that sort of romance, Mr. Durham; I
hoped rather that one would not hear it in Australia, but you police are
as capable at blundering and bungling and bluffing here as elsewhere."
"I am neither bungling nor bluffing," he answered quietly.
"You are doing both," she replied warmly. "What are you doing here now?
Why have you come bothering me with ridiculous questions? What can I
tell you more than the bank people themselves? Or is it that you think I
am the thief? Why don't you say at once you suspect me--old Patsy and
myself? Sure it would be in keeping with the rest of it--wasting your
time and mine by coming out to ask who was in the passage when I left
the dining-room! What has that to do with my loss? Do you think I care
whether Mrs. Eustace heard what I told her husband? I'd say it to her
face if she likes, just as I said it to his. I told him he ought to be
arrested, and I say so to you. I'd arrest him and his wife and his
assistant and his servant--everyone in the place if I had my way."
He was watching the light flashing in her eyes, watching and admiring.
The full rich tones of her voice vibrated with the heat of her words,
her bosom rose and fell as in her indignation wave after wave of
expression swept across her face, each one intensifying the charm she
had for him.
"I suppose you include me in your list of suspects," she blurted out as
he did not speak. "Why don't you say so at once? Your questions
certainly suggest it."
"Do they?" he asked, with a smile which irritated her.
"Yes, they do. What else do they suggest? It would be quite in keeping
with the rest of the business--you riding out here to ask me pointless
questions while the people most likely to have been concerned in the
robbery are left alone. They are known, I suppose you will say, where I
am a stranger, someone you have never seen before----"
"You are wrong," he interrupted, still smiling; "I have seen you
before."
Her eyes concentrated on his with keen intensity.
"When? Where?" she asked sharply.
"We were fellow-passengers by a coach four or five months back. You have
forgotten me, but I"--now that the personal note had been struck, the
note he wished so much to sound and yet shrank from, he was almost
carried away by it; by an effort he checked himself, and instead of
telling her all that the meeting had meant for him, he added, "I rarely
forget a face when I have once seen it."
She flashed a swift glance at him, reading in his eyes, in his face, in
his attitude, the confirmation of what she knew from the tone of his
voice.
"But you--you do not--remember me," he said slowly as she did not
reply. He saw the glance, saw the fleeting questioning light in her
eyes, and with the fatuity bred of love-blindness, misread it.
"I do remember--distinctly," she answered softly. "I recognised you as
you came on to the verandah. I thought it was you who had forgotten--or
did not wish to remember."
As she spoke the last words softly, demurely, she raised her eyes to his
and looked steadily at him with no sign on her face of her recent
indignation.
"I not wish to remember? I not wish to remember you?" he exclaimed in a
ringing tone. "Why--it was because I have never ceased to remember that
I came here to-night. Your name was mentioned at Waroona--it was the
only clue you gave me when we parted, the only clue I had to follow when
I tried to find you, tried to trace you every day since then. I have
never ceased to seek for you, never ceased to think of you, nor to
remember the day I met you. Had you not been here to-night, had I found
it was someone else with a similar name, I should not have forgotten
you--I shall never do that--never."
She sat back in her chair, her eyes downcast, a slight frown puckering
her brows. He saw the frown as she spoke and it checked his words, but
he continued to watch her steadily, noting the graceful, yet seemingly
unstudied way in which the wavy mass of her luxuriant hair was coiled on
her head, the clear whiteness of her skin, the heavy fringe of her
drooping lashes. Even as he watched she raised her eyes to his.
For one brief moment she allowed them to rest, filled with an
earnestness and depth of softness that made his pulses leap again.
Impulsively he stretched out his hand to her across the table.
She lowered her glance, and a faint smile flickered round her lips.
"I must away," she said softly, as she arose. "You will need a good
night's rest after your long and wearying ride."
He pushed away his chair, as he started abruptly to his feet. The warmth
of his impulse went cold.
"I shall start with the dawn or before it," he said, keeping his eyes
averted from the glamour of her face. "I have a riding-cloak. I will
take this hammock-chair on to the verandah. Don't let me disturb you."
"But you cannot go in the morning without a bite," she replied.
"I shall require nothing," he said brusquely. "I shall be away before
you are awake. I am merely staying to set your mind at rest on the
question of the house being visited and robbed. Don't let me disturb
you--or detain you."
She bent her head slowly and gracefully.
"As you will," she replied in a gentle voice. "Good night, Mr. Durham."
Without waiting for a reply she turned and went from the room, closing
the door quietly after her.
He stood where she had left him, staring fixedly at the closed door.
"I was a fool to come, a greater fool to speak," he muttered savagely.
"What satisfaction is there in knowing who she is, when----"
He swung round petulantly, diving his hand into his pocket for a pipe.
When it was filled and lighted, he dragged his chair out on to the
verandah, lowered the lamp flame to a glimmer, pushed-to the window, and
lay back in the chair, blowing furious clouds of smoke out upon the
night and staring, with unseeing eyes, into the dark.
But always before him there floated the vision of the speaking grey-blue
eyes looking at him from the shelter of their dark-fringed lashes;
always in his brain he heard the gentle melody of her voice as she had
last spoken to him, and always there came to taunt and goad him the
jarring memory of the half-mocking way in which she had pushed back upon
himself the frank revelation he had made. But though it jarred, it had
no power to lessen the fascination she exercised over him. Despite her
rebuff, despite the seeming hopelessness of his infatuation, it held
him. The more he tried to force it back, the stronger it grew; the
greater, the more beautiful and more lovable did Mrs. Burke appear to
be.
The jarring note passed from his memory. Under the soothing quiet of the
night and the stillness of the bush, looming dark and mysterious against
the sky, scarcely less sombre with only the light of the stars to
illumine it, his fancy was filled with the image he had carried in his
mind for so many months. The weariness of an arduous day added its
softening influence, and he drifted out upon the sea of dreams and
thence into a deep slumber, while yet his pipe was unfinished.