by Peter Corris
Perry laid one of his new cards on the counter. 'I wish a suite. For a week, perhaps longer.'
'A suite?'
'Your best suite.' Perry placed a gold sovereign on top of the card. 'No difficulty, I trust. Perhaps the manager … '
The Lancaster had a strict policy of not accommodating coloureds. But a prince was surely a different proposition, the receptionist thought. And there had been that Rajah somebody of someone or other … 'Yes, sir. Your highness. A suite. There is no difficulty.'
'Excellent. I will require a private bath, of course, and fresh flowers daily.'
'Flowers?'
Perry smiled and reached for the pen set. 'I will leave the choice to you.'
The receptionist presented the register. 'Suite two,' he said.
Perry frowned. 'It is inferior to suite one?'
'No, no, not at all. Exactly the same.'
'Good.' Perry signed with a flourish and snapped his fingers at the porter, who somehow freed sufficient fingers to take the key. He allowed the man to struggle up the stairs ahead of him, following languidly with his cane under his arm. Once installed in the well-appointed suite, Perry took a sheet of the hotel's elaborately letter-headed notepaper and wrote in a bold flowing hand: 'I am most desirous of an interview with a senior member of the firm. It would be convenient if I could call at 3 p.m. this day.' He signed and blotted the sheet, attached one of his cards to it with a pin, folded the sheet into a buff envelope bearing the hotel's crest and scrawled the name and address of the firm of solicitors across the front. He then rang for a messenger.
He handed the envelope and a shilling piece to the wide-eyed youth who answered the door. 'Wait for a reply.'
'Y … yes, sir.'
'Be off with you then, and tell them downstairs that I require a pot of coffee immediately.'
The messenger returned within the hour. Perry had enjoyed his coffee and, quite unnecessarily, had set one of his pairs of shoes outside the door for cleaning. He tendered sixpence this time and accepted the sealed envelope.
' "Mr Browne will be pleased to receive Prince Asawar at the time appointed",' Perry read aloud. 'And if he knew he was a mulatto bruiser and sharpshooter, he would be even more pleased to show him the door.'
Perry hired a dogcart and drove the short distance to Collins Street, leaving the vehicle in the care of a youth selling newspapers who was happy to earn an extra shilling for providing the service. He arrived outside the Collins Street offices at ten minutes past three. He allowed the door attendant to gape and then raised his cane in a manner not threatening but not friendly. The door was opened. Perry ascended and followed the signs to the solicitor's rooms.
He gazed around the heavy, oak-panelled outer office, put two fingers into his waistcoat pocket for the chamois case and produced a card. 'Prince Asias Asawar to see Mr Browne,' he said to the astonished clerk. 'I'm afraid I am a trifle late.'
27
On his long journey to Portland, Daniel Bracken lost the way several times, regaining it only by good luck and a desperate concentration on the directions Lincoln had drilled into him. Twice the horse had almost thrown him and he was an exhausted, bedraggled and mud-spattered object when he finally arrived in the coastal town. He sold the horse and the rifle, which he was thankful he had not had occasion to use, spent a night recovering in a quiet hotel, and caught the coach to Melbourne as arranged.
On the long, tiring ride he attempted to restore a sense of normalcy by reading several episodes of His Natural Life. He found Rufus Dawes' succession of painful experiences an adequate diversion from his own discomforts. By the second day of the journey, though still aching from the ride, he was restored to good spirits and engaged in amiable conversation with his fellow passengers. The knowledge that he was a rich man gave him a confidence he had never before experienced and, as he dozed through sections of the trip, he indulged in fantasies of the house he would have, the company he would keep and the pleasures that would be his. His bag, with the lumps of gold securely wrapped and fastened, rested safely in the luggage box of the coach.
A conversation between two of the passengers about bushrangers briefly alarmed him, but as the coach neared Geelong he began to feel secure. He spent two days there, seeing several of the firm's clients on somewhat thin pretexts and enjoying the comforts of one of the larger hotels. His pleasure was somewhat muted by anxiety about his treasure, which he relocated several times around his room, now under the bed, now locked in a cupboard. As he was eating breakfast on the morning he intended to take the train to Melbourne he experienced an excruciating pain in his troublesome tooth. He had been treating the ache with oil of cloves and patent medicine until he could see his own dentist, but this extremity required immediate action.
The Geelong dentist had great difficulty in extracting the tooth which was a large back molar with deep, twisted roots. Bracken suffered greatly and was advised to rest for a few days. Certainly, further travel was out of the question. He returned to the hotel, sent a telegram to Gladehill & Browne explaining the position and spent another two days with his gold. In his rather fevered and shaken state, he developed an obsession about it and took to having his meals in his room and watching his bag in case it suddenly developed legs and walked off. Overindulgence in the opium mixture—necessary because the tooth site was still painful—and brandy caused him to have a hectic dream in which he had to fight for the gold against Wesley Lincoln and hordes of black savages.
He awoke from this dream sweating and clawing at the bedclothes. Soon, however, he felt better. His gum was no longer tender to the touch and the pain had settled to a bearable level.
'Daniel, me boy,' he said, 'you'd best get a grip on yourself or this gold'll be the end of you.'
On arriving in Melbourne he went directly to Collins Street.
'Good morning, Mr Bracken,' the chief clerk said solicitously. 'I trust your tooth is better.'
The side of Bracken's face was still convincingly swollen. He touched it gingerly. 'It's gone, Henry, but by God it put up a struggle.'
The clerk shuddered. 'I don't think there's anything pressing for you to do today, sir. You might care to rest up for a time.'
'I will, I will, but I've a few things to attend to first.'
Bracken went into his office, closed the door and wedged a chair under the knob. Each senior member of the firm had a safe for the storing of important documents. Bracken unlocked his safe—a squat, steel construction with asbestos lining. It contained few documents and easily accommodated the gold. Only when he locked the door and restored his key ring to his pocket did Daniel Bracken feel completely secure in his possession. He sat at his desk, opened a few letters and ran his eye over the memos and messages that had accumulated in his absence. He absorbed nothing and had no interest in the words on the pieces of paper. At that moment, in his own mind, he ceased to be a lawyer and became a gentleman of leisure, a sportsman, a bon vivant and wit.
He took out a clean white handkerchief, folded it and held it to his face. Then he picked up his bag and went into the outer office. The clerk nodded understandingly and Bracken was making for the door when, announced by a dry cough, Sir Frederick Gladehill made one of his rare appearances.
'Ah, Bracken,' the old man croaked. 'Trust you're keeping your eye on New Zealand Prudential. I hear they're about to go under.'
Bracken had so neglected his regular duties in recent weeks that he had virtually no idea of what the senior member of the firm was talking about. He pressed the handkerchief against his mouth and mumbled.
'Mr Bracken has had a tooth extracted, Sir Frederick,' the head clerk explained. 'Very nasty it was.'
'Stuff and nonsense,' Gladehill said. 'Had all mine out years ago. Should be done at puberty. You've got some work ahead of you, Bracken, I fear.'
Bracken would have loved to have caved the old man's skull in with an inkwell, but he realised that he needed the protection of his membership of the firm, possibly for quite some time
to come. He mumbled again and pushed on to the door. He would soon have the pleasure, he calculated, of seeing a very discommoded William Browne coping with the knowledge that there was no longer any big money to be made out of Henry Fanshawe. In the cab he took to his rooms, Bracken reviewed all the events of the recent past and emerged satisfied. Wesley Lincoln would be seen by Fanshawe as the culprit and there was absolutely nothing the squatter could do about it.
More than once, since leaving the cave, Bracken had considered the honesty displayed by the American. He found it difficult to account for because, as no novice himself, he was sure that the theft of the nugget had not been Lincoln's first crime. Lincoln had been presented with many opportunities to defraud or deprive him, and had taken none of them. A mystery there, but a happy outcome. The perfect crime, by Jesus, Bracken thought. I may write a book about it—in thirty years' time.
Over the next few weeks Bracken only once yielded to the temptation to look at the gold. Mostly, he was content with the knowledge that it was a few feet away from him while he worked at his desk, and safe—a great deal safer than it had been when buried in a hole in a river bank. Unconsciously, he had developed a contempt for Henry Fanshawe and his assessment of his own abilities was constantly rising. He applied himself to his legal work only sufficiently to avoid adverse comment. On investigation, New Zealand Prudential had proved as sound as ever, and Sir Frederick Gladehill joined the growing list of those Bracken held in a measure of contempt.
For a time, he found the question of how to dispose of the gold a pleasant consideration. As a rough estimate, he calculated that his nuggets, as he was beginning to think of them, were worth approximately £5,000. It was a nice round figure, adjustable up or down according to things like the quality of the gold and the presence of impurities about which he knew nothing. Equally, he discovered that he knew nothing about the marketing of the mineral. In a sense, he was faced with Henry Fanshawe's dilemma—how to make a legitimate transaction with a commodity to which he had no legitimate claim. Furthermore, the gold now bore the marks of the saw and could not be passed off as a natural object.
Two possibilities presented themselves. First, to take the gold out of the colony, perhaps out of Australia altogether, and negotiate in, say, America or South Africa, where he would be at a comfortable remove from the source of the gold, could speak the language and assess the likely outcome. Second, to contrive an illegitimate, secret deal in Melbourne itself. As time went on, Bracken began to lose sleep over these alternatives. The first, perhaps, offered greater safety and larger returns. But it probably implied relocation, surrendering the social advantages he had already won in Melbourne. In addition, he retained his old fear of America, where, he gathered from his reading of newspapers, the Irish held political sway in some quarters and divisive Irish politics influenced the local scene. Irish memories, as Bracken well knew, particularly disaffected ones, were very long.
So, a local resolution then, even at the cost of a lower return. But how to contrive it? Bracken had no contacts in the local underworld and had a great reluctance to make any. His problem, he realised, was that he needed a go-between, someone to sound out gold smelters, jewellery manufacturers, counterfeiters perhaps. He needed someone he could trust, and there was no obvious candidate. From being a pleasant mental exercise, the problem of disposing of the gold became vexatious, with a feeling of urgency about it.
As he had done before when looking around for a firm to enter, Bracken began to drink in the taverns frequented by lawyers, clerks and court officials. This time, however, he scraped acquaintance with men practising in the criminal area. He drank more bad beer and spent more money than pleased him but eventually his choice of an accomplice fell on Malcolm Hunter, a clerk in the office of the barristers Bristow & Ronalds. Hunter was a convivial man, reading for the bar himself in a desultory way, but mainly occupied in ferreting out some witnesses, intimidating others and, if his stories were to be believed, manufacturing evidence.
'It's a great thrill, Daniel,' Hunter confided one night over the third post-dinner brandy, 'when the jury declares a man not guilty and you yourself know for a fact that he did it and would do it again, given half a chance.'
'What kind of a thrill exactly, Malcolm?' Bracken asked.
'No doubt it's different in your line of country, but the criminal law is a game. Just a game. If I had a shilling for every lie I've heard a policeman and a barrister tell, let alone the witnesses and accused, I'd be a rich man. It's theatre, that's what it is.'
'And you go in for a bit of … stage management.'
'Exactly.'
Bracken gave Hunter a cigar and ordered another round of drinks. They were sitting in the saloon bar of one of the sporting inns around Flemington, a place selected by Hunter, who thought of himself as a sportsman. He was certainly a gambler which had helped Bracken to decide in his favour. Bracken held a match to Hunter's Havana. 'Now look here, Malcolm, I've got a friend who's come into the possession of a considerable quantity of gold.'
Hunter puffed. 'Lucky chap.'
'Yes, but to be perfectly frank with you, it's not entirely above board.'
Hunter sipped his brandy. 'Can't say I've heard of any bullion robberies lately.'
'Quite so. Nothing like that at all. My friend is just an intermediary, but I am assured the gold is in the nature of treasure trove, shall we say … '
'Or salvage?'
'Precisely. The thing is, neither he nor I have any knowledge of how this gold might be translated into money. D'you follow me?'
'Because I splash around a bit in the dirty water of the criminal courts, you think that I might know someone who can help?'
'I wouldn't put it quite like that.'
Hunter added some water to what was left of his brandy. He found the conversation very interesting and didn't want to risk missing any of the hints and subtleties. He'd known that Bracken was cultivating him for a purpose, and now that it was coming out his curiosity and pressing debts made it imperative that he seize the right end of this stick of opportunity. 'It doesn't matter how you put it, Daniel. You're looking for discretion, secrecy in fact. Also fair terms. And you want to place yourself at a remove from the transaction.'
Bracken nodded.
'I believe I can help you. I assume you are acting on a commission basis?'
Another nod.
"What rate, may I ask?'
Bracken's mind raced. This was the difficult part, acknowledging and accepting that Lincoln's division of the gold was only the first of a series of divisions. 'Five per cent.'
'I will ask the same. Only fair. What do you estimate the value of the gold to be?'
Bracken shrugged and drew on his cigar. 'I have very little idea. Perhaps five thousand pounds. I believe it is in the form of a nugget, or nuggets. I haven't actually seen it myself, of course.'
'Of course. Well, I think the first step would be for you to get an exact weight and description and provide a sample.'
'A sample?'
'Mm—a scraping. Perhaps even a small particle of the whole.'
'I can manage that.'
'Can you trust the person you're dealing with, Daniel?'
'Yes.'
'Good. I suggest we meet in three days' time.' Hunter picked up a newspaper that was lying on a chair next to where he was sitting. 'I see "Black" Perry's in Melbourne, but he seems to have gone to ground.'
Bracken's relief that the business was under way was tempered by his sense of Hunter's sharpness and his evident experience. He knew he would have to keep his wits about him to carry the matter through successfully. He was anxious to be off and picked up his hat. But he did not want to antagonise Hunter. 'Who?'
Hunter folded the paper. 'John Perry. Damn fine man with the mauleys. A nigger, but something of a gentleman. I hope they flush him out. I'd love to see him in a good mill. Until Friday, Daniel.'
28
John Perry took off his pearl grey gloves as he entered William Bro
wne's office and thrust out his hand at the lawyer. Browne, astonished at the appearance of the man in front of him, performed the handshake unthinkingly.
'Good afternoon, Mr Browne. Thank you for seeing me at such short notice.'
'Er, not at all. Won't you sit down?'
Perry was already slapping the seat of the leather chair with his gloves. He seated himself gracefully, pulling up his trousers slightly to preserve the crease and crossing his ankles. 'A very fine office you have here. It has a feeling of tradition. I am a great one for tradition myself.'
'Indeed?' Browne sat behind his desk and nervously moved the sheet of hotel notepaper with Perry's card attached. He hooked on his spectacles and read the name aloud 'Prince Asias Asawar. I would have expected to read of your arrival in the newspapers.'
Perry smiled. 'I took great care that you should not. My business in this thriving and agreeable colony is—how shall I put it?—secret. Not for public consumption.'
'Is it, indeed?' Browne was beginning to recover his aplomb and make an appraisal of his visitor. Big chap. Nigger of some kind, but not very dark. Educated. Those clothes didn't come cheap. He took a cigar from the box on his desk and pushed the container towards Perry, who shook his head.
'No, I do not indulge. But please, do smoke. I do not find the aroma of a good cigar at all unpleasing.'
Browne felt more comfortable inside his cloud of smoke. 'How can I help you, sir?'
Perry examined the knob of his cane. 'Politically, my country is somewhat unstable as you may know. The newly installed emperor is struggling to modernise and bring certain primitive elements under control.'
None of this was known to Browne and it scarcely interested him. He had been much occupied of late in wondering why Henry Fanshawe had ceased to write to him and why his interest in reclassifying land in the Wilding area had apparently lapsed. Something had evidently gone amiss with his grand scheme and Browne was put out. He had opened contacts with politicians and others that now seemed to have no purpose other than to embarrass him. He forced himself to concentrate on what his exquisitely dressed visitor was saying.
