Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  “No, you may not.”

  “Right you are.”

  The steps retreated. Irralie breathed again. Then with her fingers she felt for a dwarf sheet of iron; most of them were as tall as herself, by some eighteen inches in width; but at last she found a short strip cut to fill a gap. It was between two and three feet in height, and it reached to the ground, where it was nailed to a horizontal slab of wood. Five bolts clamped it in all: one to the strip above and two at each side.

  Irralie tapped it gently about the centre.

  “Are you anywhere near this?”

  “Just behind!”

  “Then if I can unscrew five nuts you are a free man.”

  She went to work on the first. “Fold your handkerchief,” he whispered, “and work through that. There will be less fear of a noise.” For now, when it was wanted most, the school-room piano was still. And the night was darker than ever, an unmixed blessing when a ray of moonshine would have meant discovery. But Irralie felt her way and persevered. And at last a nut budged.

  “One!” whispered Irralie.

  “Loosen them all, but take none off yet.”

  The next moved readily; the third stuck; the fourth was the worst of all; and the fifth was just yielding when the prisoner whispered, “Stop!”

  “Hear it?” said George Young’s voice.

  “Not a sound! You’re becoming imaginative. You’d much better go to bed.”

  “Or for the police.”

  “Oh, perdition seize the police! I’ve a great mind not to have them called in at all!”

  “What?”

  “My good Young!” responded the other in his weariest drawl; “do not, for pity’s sake, scream at me like that! It’s confoundedly ill-bred. If you’re too dense to see my point, come back to the schoolroom and let me explain it where we sha’n’t ‘ be overheard by the person most interested.”

  The voices ceased.

  “He didn’t speak to me like that,” muttered the man in the iron-store.

  “He’s an affected beast!” whispered Irralie, prettily, as she set down the pincers and began taking off the nuts with her naked fingers.

  “Steady now, Miss Villiers. It may crack like thunder. Be prepared to run!” So slowly, however, did she bend the sheet down, and with so firm a hand — slipped gradually to the base — on either side, that the task was accomplished all but noiselessly. The prisoner was revealed hunched up within.

  “How have they bound you?”

  “The bad hand tight to my body; the other and both my feet to a plough or something.”

  “I haven’t a knife.”

  “And I lost mine the other day!”

  “But I have my fingers — and patience,” said Irralie, “if only there is time. Ah, thank Heaven for that!” The opening movement of the “Moonlight Sonata” had come suddenly to their ears, played in the distance with improved precision, and as much feeling as the permanent soft pedal and the school-room piano would permit.

  Irralie knelt with head and arms through the aperture, and began upon the knot that bound his hand. His breath was on her cheek, but she got it undone. The feet were less elaborately secured, and he was able to help with his liberated hand. In five minutes from the unscrewing of the last nut he was free to rise, and yet too stiff to stir.

  At last he managed it with the loss of more time; and more yet went in replacing the iron and lightly refixing three nuts. But on this he himself insisted, and Beethoven in the school-room still gave them warrant for delay.

  “The pines!” quavered Irralie, near hysterics now that her own part was played.

  “Come quick — come quick! The long way round to the stables — by the stock-yards — by the tents — you follow me!”

  Once through the wires — once well among the trees — they flew like birds, Irralie cutting deep and circling wide. It was terribly dark, but the girl knew every inch of the ground. They passed the broken column without a word. They skirted the tents so perilously that the snores of the occupants purred in their ears. Then once more through wires — Irralie held them apart for him — and so to the stables under cover of the night alone. But now there was neither moon nor star, nor as yet any sign of dawn in the inky sky.

  The stable had risen in front of them as from the ground; they could have touched it with their hands, and were about to turn a corner of the long, low, pine-log building, when Irralie seized her companion’s arm and stopped him dead.

  Voices were approaching from the other side.

  CHAPTER X

  IRRALIE’S DESERTS

  The voices were in dispute so warm that even the Englishman’s had lost something of its habitual drawling deliberation. But not until the speakers were inside the stable could the pair without catch a word. Then they heard everything through the cracks and crannies between log and log.

  “Look you hear, my good Young! This station is my property, and I don’t intend to have the police on the place at all.”

  “Very sorry, Mr. Fullarton; but Mr. Villiers is still manager of the station; and I gave him my word they should be sent for hours ago. If you object, wake up the boss and settle it with him.”

  “Of course, I won’t do that! But I do object; and I only wish you kept all your promises as well!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You promised me to be responsible for the iron-store and our friend inside.”

  “You kept saying he was so safe! You yourself asked me in to have a drink!”

  “Well, my good fellow, but if it comes to keeping one’s word! You should practise what you preach. No man can be in two places at once; you undertake to remain in one, yet you want to go gallivanting after the police!”

  “I can’t help it. The other young fools are not fit.”

  “What about me?”

  “You!” cried Young.

  “Why not, my friend? Now look you here: let us understand each other. I don’t want the police at all. I want to put that chap in a buggy and tool him over to the police, with two or three of us, well-armed, beside him. He would never be idiot enough to try anything on, and the whole thing would be done quietly without fuss. That’s my idea. I’ve said it till I’m sick of saying it; but no, you must have the police and a public fuss, and our own men jeering at us and cheering Stingaree! Very well, my fine friend; I know a stubborn man when I meet one, and I give in. But if anybody goes for the police it shall be myself; only I don’t come back till they’ve been and gone!”

  The listeners heard a match struck, and smelt tobacco; but see they could not, without searching for a cranny wider than its fellows; and not a muscle had they moved as yet.

  “You wouldn’t know the way,” they heard Young answer. “Which way did you come?”

  “I believe through a howling desert you call the horse-paddock.”

  “Well, when you get out of that you take the right-hand track; not the left — that takes you to the Seven-mile. Follow the track to the right till you strike the stock-route and telegraph posts. Five miles along the stock-route — this time to the left, mind — and you come to the township and the police-barracks. But you’d much better let me go!”

  “Not I, my good friend. I’ve heard a good deal of you young Australians; let me see one of you stick to his post! In ten minutes I shall be off; but I must first go and fetch my valise. Come along, Mr. Inexorable Young!”

  And they were gone; their voices dwindled and died; and Irralie was peering at her ruffianly companion with an admiration sanctioned and concealed by the night.

  “He was frightened to be left in charge of you!” she said. “He’s not the man I took him for, after all. But be quick — the horse! the horse!”

  They crept round to the stable-door, and found a piebald mare standing saddled in the stall.

  “Venus,” said Irralie, blowing out the match. “She shows, but she can go! Did you listen to those directions?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then for mercy’s sake don’t
follow them! Now, have we given them long enough? Mount in here; the stirrups might clink; they’ll see nothing, but they might hear!”

  “For the life of me I don’t know why you are doing this!”

  “Nor I.” She struck another match. “Mount! mount!” she cried in an agony. But the match only showed her a handsome, heedless face touched for once with tenderness and concern. The dark eyes melted into hers; she dropped the match and put it out with her foot.

  “If they take you again,” she whispered, “I shall die!”

  “They sha’n’t. I am going. If I could only tell you—”

  “Don’t try: go now: for my sake!”

  He was in the saddle. She caught up an armful of straw, and threw it on the ground to deaden the noise. He leant over the withers as she led the animal forth.

  “Promise me one thing,” he whispered, suddenly, “or I sha’n’t go at all!”

  “What!”

  “To let no one dream it was you — to go straight to your room and stop there till broad daylight!”

  “I promise — I promise.”

  “Lives may depend upon it! Good-by, then. God knows how I’ve deceived you! I never hope to be forgiven!”

  “Oh, go — go! You are breaking my heart!”

  She caught and wrung his extended hand, then flung it from her with a sudden gesture of despair. A touch with his heels, and he was gone at an amble; a greater pace would have increased sound and risk alike; and yet even the gentle rhythm of those unshod, ambling hoofs was like thunder in the ears of Irralie. Others must hear! She crushed her thumbs into her ears and stood like one demented. When she removed them the sound was fainter, and still there was no other. She waited, however, with hardly a breath until all was still but her own heart, and a locust in the pines. Then for a space her strength failed her, and she leaned heavily against the stable wall.

  But her brain was busy all the time, and her heart with that lawless rider over every inch of the well-known ground. Now they were at the horse-paddock gate; now galloping beyond in the teeth of their own wind. And so Irralie forgot for the moment the one injunction she had received, the one promise she had given. When at length she came back to herself, and her own peril involving his, she ran like a deer to the station; and very nearly into the arms of the last man she wanted to meet, who was stepping down from the veranda with his valise under his arm.

  “Er — Miss Villiers, I presume?” said he in his well-bred drawl; and a hat was taken off with a little flourish in the dark.

  Irralie had instinctively determined to disarm suspicion with civility, and, simultaneously, to delay to the last moment the discovery of the empty stable which would lead inevitably to that of the prisoner’s escape. She therefore said, graciously —

  “How do you know?”

  “It could be no one else. I have not had the privilege of seeing you before. And then, Miss Villiers, none but the very spirited would choose a night of alarms for a ramble in the small hours! And that I find to be your reputation.”

  “Indeed!” said Irralie. “I couldn’t sleep, that was all.”

  “So?”

  “I was listening to your delightful music!” said Irralie, who was charmed to find herself detaining him with such ease. He had actually sat down on the edge of the veranda, with the valise across his knees; but at this last speech he sprang to his feet.

  “You heard me?” he cried. “I am sorry, and yet glad! Sorry to have kept you awake — I had no idea anybody could hear — and yet delighted to think I should have such a listener. And you say you were delighted too! You appreciate! You have a soul for it! I am indeed glad that we have met, even at the eleventh hour! May I light a cigarette and talk a little music for five minutes?”

  “Do — please!” said Irralie, with perfectly sincere enthusiasm.

  “It is so refreshing to find anybody one can talk to up here! The piano, of course, was execrable, though not much worse than the thing you had to dance to; but it was in reasonably good tune, and one was glad to touch one again. I am going to send home for my Erard. Music one must have — especially in the desert — music and flowers. I mean to make this place one mass of geraniums! Geraniums and pansies and sweet-williams. I love those old crude flowers!”

  He struck a match, and Irralie snatched a straw from the skirts of her cloak. She saw the rings blazing on his fingers as the tobacco caught and burnt. To her disappointment, however, instead of continuing the conversation, he looked at his watch by the match-light, and professed surprise at the time. It was after three o’clock. Not another moment could he stay.

  “But where are you going?” asked the guilty Irralie.

  “To the township — for the police — entirely against what I believe to be my better judgment. I don’t intend to come back till they’re gone. I wonder, Miss Villiers, if you would come up to the stable and see me off?”

  Irralie hesitated in a tremor of nervous apprehensions; but decided to keep suspicion disarmed, and said, as best she could, “Certainly, if you wish it, Mr. Fullarton.” Her voice shook, however, and her knees trembled, as she followed him into the dark.

  “You sympathize with that poor beggar!” he startled her by saying as they walked.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “You weren’t at the supper-table. You were with him when he was taken. You seemed to like the fellow!”

  “I did,” said the girl, honestly; “and I do sympathize with him in a way. Ah, you have been brought up in England; you can’t understand. A bush girl might be sorry for a bushranger, but it would pass your comprehension altogether. It is only natural that it should.”

  “I am not so sure about that!”

  The girl had spoken earnestly. It was good merely to find herself saying something that she really felt. But at his tone she threw reserve to the winds, and caught him by the sleeve on the very threshold of the empty stable. If she could prevail upon him not to enter it at all!

  “Spare him!” she cried to that end. “Oh, Mr. Fullarton, obey your better judgment and don’t go for the police at all. Think what will happen. They may hang him — and he a young man — as young as yourself! Give him a chance to escape; spare him, as you hope to be spared!”

  The other, however, only laughed, and entering the stable struck a match. But without a sign of surprise he flashed it from the empty stall into Irralie’s white face.

  “Now, Miss Villiers!” said he, coldly, “what have you done with that horse?”

  “I?”

  She swayed where she stood, taken utterly, hopelessly, by surprise.

  “Yes, you!” he answered with subdued ferocity. “You had come from this when I met you just now. I saw the straw on your cloak. You have let out that horse — confess the truth!”

  His manner acted on Irralie like a tonic. “I deny your right to question me,” she answered, with spirit; “nothing else! Now let me pass.”

  But he had stooped and picked up something as the match burnt his fingers. And for hours after, as it seemed to Irralie, he stood and blocked her way in the dark silence of the tomb.

  “At least you do things thoroughly,” he said at last, with his insolent sneer. “You have let out not only the horse, but — Heaven knows how! — the man as well. He shed this bandage in the straw!”

  “Let me pass!” cried Irralie. “This instant — or I call for help!”

  The answer came with a crisp, metallic click:

  “Call at your peril! I should be sorry to inconvenience a lady of your spirit, but the slightest sound will compel me to put a bullet through your heart!”

  “Mr. Fullarton!” gasped the girl.

  “Not a bit of it,” he replied. “Between ourselves, they call me Stingaree!”

  CHAPTER XI

  THE REAL THING

  Irralie saw the whole truth in one blinding flash. And through all her terror there came an instant thrill of unutterable happiness. She loved and had delivered an innocent man; pure thankfulness
for his innocence was her first overwhelming emotion; her next — was different. But it was characteristic of Irralie’s case that even now she thought last of herself and the extremity she was in. To this, however, she was speedily recalled by the cool drawl of her villainoùs companion.

  “Well! I never saw anything fall so flat!” said he. “Still, it’s a matter for congratulation that you didn’t sing out. I should certainly have shot you dead!”

  “You dare not!”

  “Try me. I should then discover the open prison and my own crime! It would be very neat.”

  “You beast!” said Irralie.

  “Thank you. I am one. But it’s your own fault, Miss Villiers, if you force me to show my bestial side to you; I assure you I’ve no wish to do so. I want a horse. You took the one that was here, and you will very kindly help me to find another.”

  “Very well,” said Irralie, wondering whether Fullarton was yet half-way to the police-barracks. “We must go to the horse-paddock. You lead the way.”

  “No. I prefer to see you in front of me. And I shall need saddle and bridle, so you will be good enough to show me to the saddle-room. But please, my dear young lady, to remember that one cry—”

  “Oh, I’m not likely to forget that!” And Irralie led him out, and round the building to the saddle-room door, with a coolness that surprised herself. But she was still thinking more of the honest man who had flown than of the ruffian left behind to her cost. Was the one so very honest after all? She felt more hurt by his harmless dissimulation at the last than she had ever been by the gross fraud of which she had suspected him up to the end. Nor could she see any reason for it; forgetting how determined she had been not to hear from him a single word of self-defence; forgetting, also, how plainly she had shown him that determination. Even his ready flight for the police struck her in an unheroic light; and that view of him was the hardest of all to bear.

  The bushranger had struck matches and put a saddle over his arm. He now took down a side-saddle (Irralie’s own) and put it on top of the other, with a bridle to spare. This put an end to Irralie’s thoughts.