Complete Works of E W Hornung

by E. W. Hornung

  The stimulus was odious — the resolve heroic.

  And who knows how many heroes are no more heroically inspired?

  “Break in the door!” yelled this one, beside himself with excitement. “The first man comes in dead!”

  He had no idea how many men there were, for one did all the threatening, while the remnant egged him on in savage undertones which gave no clue to their number. The spokesman had a voice in accordance with the best bushranging traditions, as conned by Tahourdin with prophetic fascination. It might have been the voice of a gentleman, and was worthy of Captains Melville and Moonlite. Tahourdin actually thought of these worthies as he awaited their successors’ next move; but he need not have gone to Australia or to Australian criminals for what promptly followed. Some iron implement was hammered between door and door-post, just below the upper hinge. Tahourdin held up the candle, and saw to his horror that the hinge was rusty. He remembered once hearing, as a fact not generally known, that at their best hinges are more vulnerable points than bolts. And he suddenly recognised that he was beset not by bushrangers, who would have stuck him up in broad daylight, but by common cracksmen, come to break in and steal with no more gallantry than their fellow’-practitioners of South Kensington itself!

  “You bale up the men!” he roared in scorn. “You stick up a station! Why, you’re nothing but a gang of common or garden thieves!” And out rang the station bell once more, in a frenzied peal exactly worthy of the poor ringer, who was indeed half mad with fear and excitement, and sudden and ill-founded hope. Yet justification was to follow, for that very instant the hammering stopped, and in its stead a thunderous voice promised nameless tortures if the ringing went on.

  “That proves it!” shouted Tahourdin. “You never interfered with the men; but they’ll interfere with you; they’re not so drunk as all that! Do your worst to me, they’ll avenge me; and I’ll kill a couple of you first, and my bosses-”

  The high hysterical voice was drowned in a deafening assault upon the hinge itself. A splinter flew; the hinge had started; a few more blows sent it flying over Tahourdin’s head, with strips of wood adhering. This was the beginning of the end. The door itself kept its place a little longer, held wonderfully fast by lock, bolts, and remaining hinge; when this went, all went; but Tahourdin had gained some minutes’ grace. He was discovered crouching behind the counter, his head only showing above a rampart mounted with three double-barrelled guns, one of which was at his shoulder. And to the end his left hand tugged the bell-rope, the last clang exactly coinciding with the first shot.

  A couple of masked scoundrels had tumbled in over the ruin of the door, and it was upon the foremost of these that Tahourdin had emptied both barrels in his frenzy. The man clapped his hands to his face and went reeling back into the night His comrade meanwhile fired a revolver point-blank at Tahourdin, yet missed him, whereupon the defender discharged his second piece with the like result, having no time even to raise it from the counter. Never was worse shooting at such a range: four times in four seconds Tahourdin gave himself up for dead, and four times the flash was followed by no twinge of pain in any portion of his body. Not a word was spoken, but each time the masked man aimed deliberately, his eyes peering through round holes in the crape, and fixed steadily on Tahourdin, who returned their glare. It was all he could return; the wretch had seized the third pair of barrels, and held them firmly to one side. But Tahourdin had the stock with both hands, and when the revolver was empty he had another chance: for the one bad shot fled incontinent, followed without a moment’s hesitation by the other.

  Through the yard they rushed, and out and in among the pine trees, dark as it was, though indeed there was a lantern burning somewhere, and by its rays Tahourdin had one glittering glimpse of a horse’s trappings. But the light was too little and the pace too great for effective firing, and this time it was not to his discredit that neither charge found flesh. In another instant Tahourdin had clubbed his piece, and in yet another he had struck his man senseless from behind. Drunk with battle, the clubbed gun whirling round his head, the now unrecognisable Jackeroo danced round in nick of time to meet poetic justice in his turn. He saw absolutely nothing: there was a single crash, a strangled cry, and he lay upon his back with closed eyes and a convulsive chin — a dead man with a living jaw.

  He came to his full senses in Glover’s room. This was many hours afterwards. There had been an earlier but only partial return, when insensibility had merged into natural sleep, but Tahourdin had no recollection of it. He knew nothing until he awoke between the manager’s sheets. He was alone. It was evidently afternoon. He could not imagine what had happened; and this was the trouble when the manager entered somewhat later, though by that time he had recalled everything up to the moment of his eclipse.

  “So you were in time! You must have been! I knew you would be — didn’t I tell them so?”

  “Yes, I was in time,” said Glover, with dry kindliness; “but keep cool, old chap, or I shall have to clear out. I’m what we call a bush doctor, remember! And it was a deuce of a knock you got — poor old boy!” His voice was almost affectionate: he was feeling Tahourdin’s pulse; no woman could have done it more tenderly.

  “Where was I hit?” asked Tahourdin. “I can’t find a bandage anywhere.”

  “It was clean on the point,” said Glover, looking upon the stricken hero in sorrowful pride. “It wasn’t a bullet, though. I wouldn’t bother about it. You’ll knock yourself up if you do.”

  But his look had reminded Tahourdin that he was a hero, after all, and the recollection disturbed his simplicity of mind.

  “I did what I could,” he sighed, with self-conscious modesty.

  “You did magnificently!” cried Glover, enthusiastically. “We’re all most awfully proud of you. And — you’ve put ten notes in my pocket!”

  “How?”

  “I’m ashamed to tell you now.”

  “It’ll knock me up if you don’t,” whined Tahourdin, slily.

  “Well, then — after that row you had with Hutchy — do you remember the one I mean?”

  Tahourdin sighed.

  “I wish I didn’t!”

  “Well, after that we had an argument about you. They thought you hadn’t meant business. I swore you had. In the end we had a bet about it.”

  “You bet about me?”

  “On you, my boy! I backed you for five notes with each of them — to show your grit if you got a chance. And you have done it — my word! You’ve done what the three of us rolled together couldn’t have done better in your place.”

  Tahourdin did not speak. He merely thrust a sunburnt hand and the thinnest of wrists over the single sheet that covered him. Glover crushed it in sympathetic silence.

  “What happened after I was knocked out?” asked Tahourdin, at length.

  “Oh, the very deuce of a row. I’ll tell you about that to-morrow.”

  “But how many of them were there, and what happened to the two I tackled?”

  Glover seemed embarrassed.

  “Did I -kill one of them?” whispered the jackeroo.

  “No, no, you didn’t do that.”

  “What, then?”

  “I’d really rather tell you to-morrow! Upon my word, you’re not in a fit state tonight!”

  “But you’re keeping something from me! I sha’n’t rest until I know what it is. Were any lives lost?”

  “None.”

  “How many of them were there?”

  “Three or four.’’

  “Have you got them?”

  “Got them? My word!”

  “Then you ought to know whether it’s three or four. Never mind! I only hope you’re telling me the truth. What about that chap I shot? Will you swear he’s not dead or dying?”

  “Till I’m blue in the face. And I’ll tell you why. There was evidently something wrong with those cartridges; er — the fact is, we used to get our last jackeroo to load ‘em, and it’s quite clear to me now that he must have
put in double powder and no shot. Ha, ha! Nice sort of trick to play, wasn’t it?”

  “It was worse than me,” chuckled Tahourdin; “but I’m jolly grateful to him, I can tell you. Still, I must have half-blinded the chap.”

  “You did; and burnt off all his eyebrows and eyelashes; but hill be all right.”

  Tahourdin dismissed all qualms.

  “And what about the other one?”

  “Oh, he’ll be all right, too; he’s wearing a sort of skull-cap of sticking-plaster at present; but his head’s pretty thick, and it’ll mend.”

  Tahourdin said nothing. He felt very weak, and the glow that had come over him, from head to heels, was as a consuming fever. There were steps on the veranda outside.

  “So he’s awake, is he?” said the storekeeper’s voice. “May we come in?”

  “Not yet,” said Glover.

  “Yes, do!” cried Tahourdin.

  And they spoke in the same breath; but it was Tahourdin who raised his voice; and in marched the other two.

  For a full minute there was silence in the room: the appearance of one new-comer was only less extraordinary than that of the other. Tahourdin himself altered strangely as he lay and looked at them.

  “What’s the matter with you, Symes?” he asked, at length, and his voice was very low and hollow.

  “Oh, nothing,” squeaked the overseer; “only got no wool on the lids of my eyes, in the place where the wool ought to grow. And I’m more than half blind. A little accident, that’s all.”

  “And you, Hutchinson?”

  “Can’t you see? Got my head broke in the rumpus last night. And I’m hanged if it didn’t serve me right!”

  He had taken a forward step that did him honour, and was holding out his hand to the prostrate jackeroo. But Tahourdin did not see it He had turned a livid face towards the manager.

  “Get them to go,” he begged, in whispers; “you were quite right! I can only stand — one at a time.”

  When they were once more alone the manager was no longer seated on the bed. He was striding quickly up and down.

  “I won’t say I’m sorry,” he blurted out; “it isn’t strong enough. I’m simply sorrier than I ever was for anything in these back-blocks — there! And it was all my fault. Not that I began it. But I took it up. I was so jolly sure of you. And I wanted to make them the same.”

  There was a moment’s pause between the close-clipped sentences. Tahourdin took advantage of it. His voice was stronger.

  “Wait a bit,” he said. “Tell me where the fraud began.”

  “From the very start.”

  “The report about the bushrangers?”

  “There never were any.”

  “And you doctored those cartridges?”

  “With my own hands!”

  There was a longer pause.

  “And who was your spokesman? I didn’t recognise the voice.”

  “You wouldn’t; you’ve never met him. It was a young chap on Quandong whom we roped in at the races.”

  “And who knocked me out in the end?”

  The manager interrupted his walk to come to the bedside and show Tahourdin his knuckles. They were slightly grazed; he looked terribly ashamed of them.

  “My dear fellow, it was you or me for it then! I only wish it had been me — to go down. I deserved it; you didn’t; you’re the pluckiest little demon in New South Wales!”

  Tahourdin took the offending hand outstretched to him, but his face had wrinkled with sudden pain.

  “Oh, no, I’m not! It was a fraud — a fraud — a fraud!”

  And there was all but tragedy in his tone.

  “That makes no difference. It was just as plucky of you. It counts the same.”

  “No,” said Tahourdin; “it doesn’t count. It’s not the same. Oh, to think — it was only a fraud — after all!”

  He had closed his eyes very tight, but not tight enough. Glover turned away, but in a moment he was back.

  “Will you forgive us, Tahourdin?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.”

  “But there is — you know there is!”

  “Then it’s forgiven.”

  But he would not see the others. He wished to be alone: his wish was respected for the rest of that day. And the next, when Glover, who had merely visited him last thing at night, repeated his visit first thing in the morning, the jackeroo was gone!

  Of course it was his wounded vanity, and everything else that was paltry and egoistical: the little note confessed it in so many and hard words. But he had taken the liberty of borrowing the night-horse, and he believed that both it and he were just good enough to catch the coach. It was lucky he had received his Christmas remittance by the last mail; this would enable him to pay, among other things, for the borrowed beast’s keep at the roadside inn until sent for, and he trusted Glover wouldn’t mind his inclosing enough also to defray the further cost of forwarding his trunks to some Melbourne shipping agents whose name he gave. The jackeroo wound up with very simple and hearty thanks for all the manager’s kindness, with markedly friendly messages to the other two, but with the equally emphatic assurance that they would never see him on G-Block again.

  And they never did.

  THE LARRIKIN OF DIAMOND CREEK

  THE REVEREND CHARLES CARADOC was tramping in from Heidelberg: not the old-world German city, but that pleasant Melbourne suburb which was idyllic before it became a suburb at all. Then the line was only talked about, and you had to walk home if you missed the last ‘bus. Caradoc had missed it with his eyes open, and was revelling in the two hours’ penalty. Through the wintry starlight his face beamed pink with good-humour and enthusiasm; on the hard, undulating road his step was the tattoo of health and strength, of infinite confidence and complete youth.

  Yet there were younger men, and even curates, as there were thousands more prepossessing in appearance. Caradoc was eight-and-twenty, and he wore a moustache, which is seldom in its place upon a barrister, a jockey, a man-servant, or a clergyman. This moustache was reddish and of the horse-shoe order, but not heavy enough to hide the wearer’s good, but rather prominent, front teeth. Caradoc had also very good blue eyes, but these again were a little prominent; altogether you will picture him no Apollo. He had, however, a deep chin, a man’s mouth, and one of the kindliest, most ingenuous, least self-conscious expressions ever worn between a clerical collar and a soft felt hat.

  But he was a very new chum, having come out with Archdeacon Huntley, who had been home to England for a few months’ holiday after thirty years’ ministry in the colony. Greedy for honest work, and impatient of what went by that name in his country curacy, Caradoc had fallen in with the Archdeacon at a garden party, had confessed his discontent, and been promised his heart’s desire if he would come to Melbourne. He was getting it among the larrikins of Carlton and of Fitzroy; in the tide of riff-raff that flowed southward, with thickening scum, to the confines of Little Bourke Street itself.

  So his head and his hands were full; so his heart and his step were light; and the quick music of his youth and energy had drummed through Ivanhoe and Alphington, and was ringing down the hill to Diamond Creek, when that happened which stopped it for the moment and changed it for the night. Curiously enough, Caradoc was thinking of a story told him that afternoon by the driver of the omnibus, the story of a man shot dead by a notorious bushranger at this same Diamond Creek — when history flattered itself with a weak repetition: a weedy figure flew out from the shadows, and a revolver was presented at the curate’s head.

  “Bail up!” cried a nasal voice, hoarse with excitement.

  Caradoc stepped back, marking the lethal barrel. This was agreeably short, and the starlight scarcely shimmered in its rust; moreover, it was not covering him.

  “Bail up? What do you mean?”

  “Yer money or yer life!” came in the still older formula and still thicker voice.

  “My life,” said Caradoc, calmly, “if you can hit me from where you stand.�
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  “I will — my word!”

  “I don’t think your barrel’s long enough.” The muzzle was spinning in circles like a midge. The curate laughed as he stepped towards it.

  “I’ll come nearer. Now try.”

  And he fixed his good blue eyes on the hungry brown ones of a pitiful stripling, seen more clearly every instant in the starlight, and every instant a more painful exhibition of insufficient effrontery and oozing courage. The end was in keeping with the rest: instead of being fired, the pistol was flung at Caradoc’s head, whizzed over it, and went off like a squib as it clattered in the road behind him. When he rose from ducking, two bare feet flashing under the stars was all he could see of his assailant. He gave chase in his well-soled boots, and for a time the music was very fast; it rattled over the bridge across the creek, and up-hill indomitably on the other side; but towards the top it stopped suddenly, and turned into a duet of gasps.

  “Am I to hang on to you,” panted the curate, “or do you give in?”

  “Oh, Lord! I give yer best — I give yer best!”

  “Then we go back to Melbourne together. I can either twist your arm behind your back and force you along-”

  “Ow! ow!”

  “Or we can go arm-in-arm as though we were old friends. You prefer that, eh? Then come on!”

  They went on without a word. Gradually their hard breathing subsided, and the parson took out his handkerchief and mopped his face; the captive did much the same with the back of his sleeve, only it was his eyes that required most attention.

  “Whimpering at the thought of gaol,” mused Caradoc. “Let him whimper!”

  On the outskirts of the city he hailed a cab, pushed his prisoner into it, and told the man where to drive in a voice inaudible within; not until they stopped at Ins lodgings in Carlton did he hear that nasal voice again. “Where are you bringin’ me?”

  “Come out, and you’ll see.”

  Caradoc’s supper was laid in his room, for he had only gone to Heidelberg to deliver a letter of introduction, and had said positively that he would be back; but he had reckoned without his kind colonial host, and had fared sumptuously before leaving the farm. Yet he rubbed his hands at sight of the cold sliced mutton, the loaf and butter, the pickles, and the cheese.