maybe I'm not; anyhow I've done what a dozen traps have tried and
failed, and I'll go on failing--until I help them: I've run you to
earth, Ned Ryan!"
"Ah! Well, tell me how."
"No, I heard a footstep just then; people are about."
"A chance passer," said Miles.
"You should have come with me. Walls are safe if you whisper; here there
are no walls."
"You are right. We have stuck to the most public part, though; follow me
through here."
They had been standing between two noble trees of the main avenue. This
avenue, as all the world knows, is composed of nothing but horse
chestnuts; but behind the front rank on either side are four lines of
limes, forming to right and left of the great artery four minor parallel
channels. Miles and his companion, turning inwards, crossed the soft
sward of the minor avenues, and emerged on the more or less broken
ground that expands southward to Hampton Wick. This tract is patched in
places with low bracken, and dotted in others with young trees. It is
streaked with converging paths--some worn by the heavy tread of men,
others by the light feet of the deer, but all soft and grassy, and no
more conspicuous than the delicate veins of a woman's hand.
They left the trees behind, and strode on heedlessly into the darkness.
Their shins split the dew from the ferns; startled fawns rose in front
of them and scampered swiftly out of sight, a momentary patch of grey
upon the purple night.
"This will suit you," said Miles, still striding aimlessly on. "It is a
good deal safer than houses here. Now for your story."
He was careful as they walked to keep a few inches in the rear of Pound,
who, for his part, never let his right hand stray from a certain sheath
that hung from the belt under his coat: the two men had preserved these
counter-precautions from the moment they quitted the lighted roads.
"It is soon told, though it makes me sweat to think of it--all but the
end, and that was so mighty neat the rest's of no account," Pound began,
with a low laugh. "Well, you turned me adrift, and I lived like a hunted
dingo for very near a year. If I'd dared to risk it, I'd have blabbed on
you quick enough; but there was no bait about Queen's evidence, and I
daren't let on a word else--you may thank the devil for that, not me!
Well, I had no money, but I got some work at the stations, though in
such mortal terror that I daren't stay long in one place, until at last
I got a shepherd's billet, with a hut where no one saw me from week's
end to week's end. There I was safe, but in hell! I daren't lay down o'
nights; when I did I couldn't sleep. I looked out o' the door twenty
times a night to see if they were coming for me. I saw frightful things,
and heard hellish sounds; I got the horrors without a drop o' liquor!
You did all this, Ned Ryan--you did it all!"
Inflamed by the memory of his torments, Pound raised his voice in rage
and hate that a single day had exalted from impotency to might. But rage
red-hot only aggravates the composure of a cool antagonist, and the
reply was cold as death:
"Blame yourself. If you had kept clean hands, you might have stuck to us
to the end; as it was, you would have swung the lot of us in another
month. No man can accuse me of spilling blood--nor poor Hickey either,
for that matter; but you--I could dangle you to-morrow! Remember that,
Jem Pound; and go on."
"I'll remember a bit more--you'll see!" returned Pound with a stifled
gasp. He was silent for the next minute; then added in the tone of one
who bides his time to laugh last and loudest: "Go on? Right! Well, then,
after a long time I showed my nose in a town, and no harm came of it."
"What town?"
"Townsville."
"Why Townsville?" Miles asked quickly.
"Your good lady was there; I knew she would give me--well, call it
assistance."
"That was clever of you," said Miles after a moment's silence, but his
calm utterance was less natural than before.
"I wanted a ship," Pound continued; "and could have got one too, through
being at sea before at odd times, if I'd dared loaf about the quay by
day. Well, one dark night I was casting my eyes over the Torres Straits
mail boat, when a big man rushed by me and crept on board like a cat. I
knew it was you that moment; I'd heard of your escape. You'd your swag
with you; the gold was in it--I knew it! What's the use of shaking your
head? Of course it was. Well, first I pushed forward to speak to you,
then I drew back. Why? Because just then you'd have thought no more of
knocking me on the head and watching me drown before your eyes than I'd
think of----"
"Committing another murder! By heaven, I wish I had had the chance!"
muttered Miles.
"Then, if I'd started the hue and cry, it would have meant killing the
golden goose--and most likely me with it. I thought of something better:
I saw you drop down into the hold--there was too much risk in showing
your money for a passage or trying for a fo'c'stle berth; the boat was
to sail at daylight. I rushed to your wife and told her; but her cottage
was three miles out of the town, worse luck to it! and when I got her to
the quay, you were under way and nearly out of sight--half-an-hour late
in sailing, and you'd have had a friend among the passengers!"
"And what then?"
"Why, then your wife was mad! I soothed her: she told me that she had
some money, and I told her if she gave me some of it I might still catch
you for her. I showed her how the mail from Sydney, by changing at
Brindisi, would land one in England before the Queensland boat. I knew
it was an off-chance whether you ever meant to reach England at all, or
whether you'd succeed if you tried; but," said Pound, lowering his voice
unaccountably, "I was keen to be quit of the country myself. Here was my
chance, and I took it; your wife shelled out, and I lost no time."
The man ceased speaking, and looked sharply about him. His eyes were
become thoroughly used to the darkness, so that he could see some
distance all round with accuracy and ease; but they were eyes no less
keen than quick; and so sure-sighted that one glance was at all times
enough for them, and corroboration by a second a thing unthought of.
They were walking, more slowly now, on a soft mossy path, and nearing a
small plantation, chiefly of pines and firs, half-a-mile from the
avenues. This path, as it approaches the trees, has beside it several
saplings shielded by tall triangular fences, which even in daylight
would afford very fair cover for a man's body. Miles and Pound had
passed close to half-a-dozen or more of these triangles.
"Well?" said Miles; for Pound remained silent.
"I am looking to see where you have brought me."
"I have brought you to the best place of all, this plantation," Miles
answered, leaving the path and picking his way over the uneven ground
until there were trees all round them. "Here we should be neither seen
nor heard if we stayed till daybreak. Are you going on?"
But Pound was not to be hurried until he had picked out a spot to his
liking still deeper in the plantation; far from shaking his sense of
security, the trees seemed to afford him unexpected satisfaction. The
place was dark and silent as the tomb, though the eastern wall of the
park was but three hundred yards distant. Looking towards this wall in
winter, a long, unbroken row of gaslights marks the road beyond; but in
summer the foliage of the lining trees only reveals a casual glimmer,
which adds by contrast to the solitude of this sombre, isolated,
apparently uncared-for coppice.
"I reached London just before you," resumed Pound, narrowly watching the
effect of every word. "I waited for your boat at the docks. There were
others waiting. I had to take care--they were detectives."
Miles uttered an ejaculation.
"I watched them go on board; I watched them come back--without you. They
were white with disappointment. Ned Ryan, those men would sell their
souls to lay hands on you now!"
"Go on!" said Miles between his teeth.
"Well, I got drinking with the crew, and found you'd fallen overboard
coming up Channel--so they thought; it happened in the night. But you've
swum swollen rivers, before my eyes, stronger than I ever see man swim
before or since, and I was suspicious. Ships get so near the land coming
up Channel. I went away and made sure you were alive, if I could find
you. At last, by good luck, I did find you."
"Where?"
"At the Exhibition. I took to loafing about the places you were sure to
go to, sooner or later, as a swell, thinking yourself safe as the Bank.
And that's where I found you--the swell all over, sure enough. You
stopped till the end, and that's how I lost you in the crowd going out;
but before that I got so close I heard what you were saying to your
swell friends: how you'd bring 'em again, if they liked; what you'd
missed that day, but must see then. So I knew where to wait about for
you. But you took your time about coming again. Every day I was waiting
and watching--and starving. A shilling a day to let me into the place;
a quid in reserve for when the time came; and pence for my meals. Do you
think a trifle'll pay for all that? When you did turn up again
yesterday, you may lay your life I never lost sight of you."
"I should have known you any time; why you went about in that rig----"
"I had no others. I heard fools whisper that I was a detective,
moreover, and that made me feel safe."
"You followed me down here yesterday, did you? Then why do nothing till
to-night?"
The fellow hesitated, and again peered rapidly into every corner of the
night.
"Why did you wait?" repeated Miles impatiently.
An evil grin overspread the countenance of Jem Pound. He seemed to be
dallying with his answer--rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue--as
though loth to part with the source of so much private satisfaction.
Miles perceived something of this, and, for the first time that night,
felt powerless to measure the extent of his danger. Up to this point he
had realised and calculated to a nicety the strength of the hold of this
man over him, and he had flattered himself that it was weak in
comparison with his own counter-grip; but now he suspected, nay felt,
the nearness of another and a stronger hand.
"Answer, man," he cried, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in his
voice, "before I force you! Why did you wait?"
"I went back," said Pound slowly, slipping his hand beneath his coat,
and comfortably grasping the haft of his sheath-knife, "to report
progress."
"To whom?"
"To--your wife!"
"What!"
"Your wife!"
"You are lying, my man," said Miles, with a forced laugh. "She never
came to England."
"She didn't, didn't she? Why, of course you ought to know best, even if
you don't; but if you asked me, I should say maybe she isn't a hundred
miles from you at this very instant!"
"Speak that lie again," cried Miles, his low voice now fairly quivering
with passion and terror, "and I strike you dead where you stand! She is
in Australia, and you know it!"
Jem Pound stepped two paces backward, and answered in a loud, harsh
tone:
"You fool! she is here!"
Miles stepped forward as if to carry out his threat; but even as he
moved he heard a rustle at his side, and felt a light hand laid on
his arm. He started, turned, and looked round. There, by his
side--poverty-stricken almost to rags, yet dark and comely as the
summer's night--stood the woman whom years ago he had made his wife!
A low voice full of tears whispered his name: "Ned, Ned!" and "Ned,
Ned!" again and again.
He made no answer, but stood like a granite pillar, staring at her. She
pressed his arm with one hand, and laid the other caressingly on his
breast; and as she stood thus, gazing up through a mist into his stern,
cold face, this topmost hand rested heavily upon him. To him it seemed
like lead; until suddenly--did it press a bruise or a wound, that such a
hideous spasm should cross his face? that he should shake off the woman
so savagely?
By the merest accident, the touch of one woman had conjured the vision
of another; he saw before him two, not one; two as opposite in their
impressions on the senses as the flower and the weed; as separate in
their associations as the angels of light and darkness.
Yet this poor woman, the wife, could only creep near him
again--forgetting her repulse, since he was calm the next moment--and
press his hand to her lips, so humbly that now he stood and bore it, and
repeat brokenly:
"I have found him! Oh, thank God! Now at last I have found him!"
While husband and wife stood thus, silenced--one by love, the other by
sensations of a very different kind--the third person watched them with
an expression which slowly changed from blank surprise to mortification
and dumb rage. At last he seemed unable to stand it any longer, for he
sprang forward and whispered hoarsely in the woman's ear:
"What are you doing? Are you mad? What are we here for? What have we
crossed the sea for? Get to work, you fool, or----"
"To work to bleed me, between you!" cried Ned Ryan, shaking himself
again clear of the woman. "By heaven, you shall find me a stone!"
Elizabeth Ryan turned and faced her ally, and waved him back with a
commanding gesture.
"No, Jem Pound," said she, in a voice as clear and true as a clarion,
"it is time to tell the truth: I did not come to England for that! O
Ned, Ned! I have used this man as my tool--can't you see?--to bring me
to you. Ned, my husband, I am by your side; have you no word of
welcome?"
She clung to him, with supplication in her white face and drooping,
nerveless figure; and Pound looked on speechless. So he had been fooled
by this smooth-tongued, fair-faced trash; and all his plans and schemes,
and hungry longings and golden expectations, were to crumble into dust
before treachery such as this! So, after all, he had been but a dupe--a
ladder to be used and kicked aside! A burning desire came over him to
plunge his knife into this false demon's heart, and end all.
But Ryan pushed back his wife a third time, gently but very firmly.
"Come, Liz," said he, coldly enough, yet with the edge off his voice and
manner, "don't give us any of this. This was all over between us long
ago. If it's money you want, name a sum; though I have little enough,
you shall have what I can spare, for I swear to you I got away with my
life and little else. But if it's sentiment, why, it's nonsense; and you
know that well enough."
Elizabeth Ryan stood as one stabbed, who must fall the moment the blade
is withdrawn from the wound; which office was promptly performed by one
who missed few opportunities.
"Why, of course!" exclaimed Pound, with affected sympathy with the wife
and indignation against the husband. "To be sure you see how the wind
lies, missis?"
"What do you mean?" cried Elizabeth Ryan fiercely.
"Can't you see?" pursued Pound in the same tone, adding a strong dash of
vulgar familiarity; "can't you see that you're out of the running, Liz,
my lass? You may be Mrs. Ryan, but Mrs. Ryan is a widow; there's no Ned
Ryan now. There's a Mr. Miles, an Australian gentleman, in his skin,
and, mark me, there'll be a Mrs.--"
He stopped, for Liz Ryan turned on him so fiercely that it looked as
though she was gathering herself to spring at his throat.
"You liar!" she shrieked. "Tell him, Ned! Give him the lie yourself!
Quickly--speak, or I shall go mad!"
Her husband uttered no sound.
"He can't, you see," sneered Pound. "Why, if you'd only come in with me
into the garden, you'd have seen the two together sweethearting in the
starlight!"
"If I had," said Mrs. Ryan, trembling violently, "I pity both. But no, I
don't believe it! O Ned! Ned! answer, unless you want to break my
heart!"
"Well, well, what does it matter?" put in Pound hastily, speaking to her
in a fatherly, protective tone, which hit the mark aimed at. "Liz, my
dear, you and I have been good friends all this time; then why not let
him go his ways?--after we've got our rights, I mean."
Ned Ryan glanced sharply from his wife to the man who had brought her
from Australia; and then he spoke:
"My good woman, why not be frank? What's the use of acting a part to
me? Anyway, it's a bit too thin this time. Only let me alone, and you
two can go on--as you are. Come now, I don't think I'm hard on you;
considering everything I might be a deal harder."
His wife sprang before him, her black eyes flashing, her whole frame
quivering.
"Edward Ryan, you shall answer for these foul, cruel words before Him
who knows them to be false. What do you think me, I wonder? That vile
thing there--can't you see how I have used him?--he has been the bridge
between me and you, yet you make him the barrier! Oh, you know me better
than that, Ned Ryan! You know me for the woman who sacrificed all for
you--who stood by you through thick and thin, and good and bad, while
you would let her--who would not have forsaken you for twenty
murders!--who loved you better than life--God help me!" cried the poor
woman, wildly, "for I love you still!"
She rose the next moment, and continued in a low, hard, changed voice:
"But love and hate lie close together; take care, and do not make me
hate you, for if you do I shall be pitiless as I have been pitiful,
cruel as I have been fond. I, who have been ready all these years to
shield you with my life--I shall be the first to betray you to the laws
you have cheated, if you turn my love to hate. Ned! Ned! stop and think
before it is too late!"
She pressed both hands upon her heart, as if to stay by main force its
tumultuous beating. Her limbs tottered beneath her. Her face was like
death. Her life's blood might have mingled with the torrent of her
eloquence!
"You are beside yourself," said her husband, who had listened like a
stone; "otherwise you would remember that tall talk never yet answered
with me. And yet--yet I am sorry for you--so poor, so ragged, so thin--"
His voice suddenly softened, and he felt with his hand in his pocket.
"See here! take these twenty pounds. It's a big lump of all I have; but
'twill buy you a new dress and some good food, and make you decent for a
bit, and if I had more to spare, upon my soul you should have it!"
Elizabeth Ryan snatched the notes from her husband's hand, crumpled them
savagely, and flung them at his feet; with a wild sweep of her arm she
tore off her bonnet, as though it nursed the fire within her brain, and
coils of dark, disordered hair fell down about her shoulders. For one
moment she stood glaring fixedly at her husband, and then fell heavily
to the ground.
"She has fainted," said Miles, not without pity, and bending over her.
"Bring her to, then lead her away. Take her back; she must not see me
again."
Pound knelt down, and quietly pocketed the crumpled notes; then he
raised the senseless head and fanned the ashy face, looking up meanwhile
and saying:
"Meet me here to-morrow night at ten; I will come alone."
"For the last time, then."
"I am agreeable; but it will rest with you."
Miles drew away into the shadows. He waited, and presently he heard a
faint, hollow, passionate voice calling his name:
"Ned Ryan! I will come back, Ned Ryan! Come back, never fear, and see
you--see you alone! And if you are as hard then--as hard and
cruel--Heaven help us both!--Heaven help us both!"
When Ned Ryan, alias Sundown, alias Miles, heard the footsteps fail in
the distance and die on the still night air, a rapid change came over
his face and bearing. Throughout the night he had lost his self-command
seldom; his nerve never. But now the pallor of a corpse made his
features ghastly, and a cold sweat burst forth in great beads upon his
forehead. His limbs trembled, and he staggered.
By a violent effort he steadied his brain and straightened his body. In
a few minutes he had well-nigh regained his normal calm. Then gradually
his chest expanded, and his air became that of one who has climbed
through desperate peril to the lofty heights and sweet breath of
freedom. Nay, as he stood there, gazing hopefully skyward, with the dim
light upon his strong handsome face, he might very well have been
mistaken for a good man filled with dauntless ambition, borne aloft on
the wings of noble yearning.
"After all, I am not lost!" The thoughts escaped in words from the
fulness of his soul. "No, I am safe; he dares not betray me; she will
not--because she loves me. Not another soul need ever know."
A new voice broke upon his ear:
"You are wrong; I know!"
His lowered gaze fell upon the motionless figure of Dick Edmonstone, who
was standing quietly in front of him.
XIV
QUITS
For the second time that night Miles felt instinctively for his
revolver, and for the second time in vain.
The younger man understood the movement.
"A shot would be heard in the road and at the lodge," said he quietly.
"You'll only hasten matters by shooting me."
At once Miles perceived his advantage; his adversary believed him to be
armed. Withdrawing his hand from the breast of his overcoat slowly, as
though relinquishing a weapon in the act of drawing it, he answered:
"I believe you are right. But you are a cool hand!"
"Perhaps."
"I have only seen one other as cool--under fire."
"Indeed?"
"A fact. But I'll tell you where you come out even stronger."
"Do."
"In playing the spy. There you shine!"
"Hardly," said Dick dryly, and this time he added a word or two: "or I
should have shown you up some time since."
The two men faced one another, fair and square, but their attitudes were
not aggressive. Miles leant back against a tree with folded arms, and
Dick stood with feet planted firmly and hands in his pockets. A combat
of coolness was beginning. The combatants were a man in whom this
quality was innate, and one who rose to it but rarely. In these
circumstances it is strange that the self-possession of Dick was real to
the core, whilst that of the imperturbable Miles was for once affected
and skin-deep.
"Will you tell me," said Miles, "what you have heard? You may very
possibly have drawn wrong inferences."
"I heard all," Dick answered.
"All is vague; why not be specific?"
"I heard that--well, that that woman was your wife."
Miles felt new hope within him. Suppose he had heard no more than that!
And he had not heard anything more--the thing was self-evident--or he
would not have spoken first of this--this circumstance which must be
confessed "unpleasant," but should be explained away in five minutes;
this--what more natural?--this consequence of an ancient peccadillo,
this bagatelle in comparison with what he might have learned.
"My dear sir, it is nothing but an infernal lie!" he cried with eager
confidence; "she never was anything of the kind. It is the old story: an
anthill of boyish folly, a mountain of blackguardly extortion. Can't you
see?"
"No, I can't," said Dick stolidly.
"Why, my good fellow, they have come over on purpose to bleed me--they
said so. It's as plain as a pikestaff."
"That may be true, so far as the man is concerned."
"Don't you see that the woman is his accomplice? But now a word with
you, my friend. These are my private affairs that you have had the
impudence----"
"That was not all I heard," said Dick coldly.
Danger again--in the moment of apparent security.
"What else did you hear, then?" asked Miles, in a voice that was deep
and faint at the same time.
"Who you are," replied Dick shortly. "Sundown the bushranger."
The words were pronounced with no particular emphasis; in fact, very
much as though both sobriquet and calling were household words, and
sufficiently familiar in all men's mouths. The bushranger heard them
without sign or sound. Dick waited patiently for him to speak; but he
waited long.
It was a strange interview between these two men, in the dead of this
summer's night, in the heart of this public park. They were rivals in
love; one had discovered the other to be not only an impostor, but a
notorious felon; and they had met before under circumstances the most
peculiar--a fact, however, of which only one of them was now aware. The
night was at the zenith of its soft and delicate sweetness. A gentle
breeze had arisen, and the tops of the slender firs were making circles
against the sky, like the mastheads of a ship becalmed; and the stars
were shining like a million pin-pricks in the purple cloak of light. At
last Miles spoke, asking with assumed indifference what Dick intended to
do.
"But let it pass; of course you will inform at once!"
"What else can I do?" demanded Dick, sternly.
Miles scrutinised his adversary attentively and speculated whether
there was the least chance of frightening such a man. Then he again
thrust his hand into the breast of his overcoat, and answered
reflectively:
"You can die--this minute--if I choose."