Kitabı oku: «Some Persons Unknown», sayfa 6
AFTER THE FACT
I
It is my good fortune to cherish a particularly vivid recollection of the town of Geelong. Others may have found the place so dull as to justify an echo of the cheap local sneer at its expense; to me those sloping parallels of low houses have still a common terminus in the bluest of all Australian waters; and I people the streets, whose very names I have forgotten, with faces of extraordinary kindness, imperishable while memory holds her seat. Even had it bored me, I for one should have good reason to love Geelong. It was my lot, however, not only to happen upon the town in a week of unique excitement, but, thanks to one of those chance meetings which are the veriest commonplace of outlandish travel, to have a finger in the pother. I arrived by the boat on a Monday afternoon, to find the streets crowded and peace disturbed by a sudden run on one of the banks. On the Wednesday, another bank, which had notoriously received much of the money withdrawn from the Barwon Banking Company, Limited, was in its turn the victim of a still uglier fate: the Geelong branch of the Intercolonial was entered in broad daylight by a man masked and armed to the beard, who stayed some ten minutes, and then walked into thin air with no less a sum than nineteen thousand and odd pounds in notes and gold.
I was playing lawn-tennis with my then new friends when we heard the news; and it stopped our game. The bank manager's wife, a friend of my friends, arrived with her daughter: the one incoherent, the other dumb, with horror and dismay. And I heard at first-hand a few broken, hysterical words from the white lips of the elderly lady, and noted the tearless trouble in the wide blue eyes of the girl, before it struck me to retire. The family had been at luncheon in the private part of the bank, and knew nothing of the affair until the junior clerk broke in upon them like a lunatic at large. He, too, had gone out for his lunch, and returned to find teller and cashier alike insensible, and the safe rifled. That was all I stayed to gather, save that the unhappy lady was agitated by a side issue far worse to her than the bank's loss. There had been no bloodshed. The revolver kept beneath the counter had been used, but used in vain. It was not loaded. Her husband would be blamed, nay, discharged to a certainty in his old age. And I, too, walked down the street more absorbed in the picture of an elderly couple brought to ruin, and a blue-eyed girl gone for a governess, than in the immediate catastrophe.
I found my way to the Intercolonial Bank; there was no need to ask it. A crowd clamoured at the doors, but these were shut for the day. And I learned no more than I already knew, save that the robber wore a black beard, and was declared by some to be a second Ned Kelly from the Strathbogie Ranges. Nor did I acquire more real information the rest of that day; nor hope for any when late at night I thought I recognised an old schoolfellow in the street.
"Deedes major!" I cried without pausing to make certain; but I was certain enough when my man turned and favoured me with the stare of studied insolence which had made our house-master's life a burden to him some ten years before that night. Among a thousand, although the dark eyes were sunken and devil-may-care, the full lips hidden by a moustache with grey hairs in it, and the pale face prematurely lined, I could have sworn to Deedes major then.
"Don't know you from Adam," said he. "What do you want?"
"We were at school together," I explained. "I was your fag when you were captain of footer. To think of meeting you here!"
"Do tell me your name," he said wearily; and at that moment I recollected (what had quite escaped my memory) his ultimate expulsion; and I stood confounded by my maladroitness.
"Bower," said I, abashed.
"The Beetle!" cried Deedes, not unkindly; a moment later he was shaking my hand and smiling on my confusion. "Hang school!" said he. "Where are you staying?"
"Well," said I, "I'm supposed to be staying with some people I brought a letter of introduction to; but they hadn't a room for me, and insisted on getting me one outside; so that's where I am."
"What's their name?" said Deedes; when I told him, he nodded, but made no further comment, beyond inviting himself to my room for a chat. The proposal delighted me; indeed it caused me a positive thrill, which I can only attribute to an insensible return of the small boy's proper attitude towards a distinguished senior. We were twenty-eight and twenty-four now, instead of eighteen and fourteen; yet, as we walked, only one of us was a man, and I was once more his fag. I felt quite proud when he accepted a cigarette from my case, prouder yet when he took my arm. The feeling stuck to me till we reached my room, when it suddenly collapsed. Deedes had asked me what I was doing. I had told him of my illness and my voyage, and had countered with his own question. He laughed contemptuously, sitting on the edge of my bed.
"Clerk in a bank!" said he.
"Not the Intercolonial?" I cried.
"That's it," he answered, nodding.
"Then you were there to-day! This is luck; I've been so awfully keen to know exactly what happened."
"I was not there," replied Deedes. "I was having my lunch. I can only tell you what I saw when I got back. There was our cashier sprawled across the counter, and the teller in a heap behind it – both knocked on the head. And there was the empty safe, wide open, with the sun shining into it like a bull's-eye lantern. No, I only wish I had been there: it's such a chance as I shall never get again."
"You'd have shown fight?" said I, gazing at his long athletic limbs, and appreciating the force of his wish as I perceived in what threadbare rags they were imprisoned. "Yes, you'd have stood up to the chap, I know; I can see you doing it!"
"There would have been nothing wonderful in that," was his reply. "I should have had everything to gain and nothing to lose."
"Not your life?"
"It's less than nothing."
"Nonsense, Deedes," said I, although or because I could see that it was not. "You don't expect me to believe that!"
"I don't care what you believe, and it's not the point," he answered. "Give me another cigarette, Beetle; you were asking about the robbery; if you don't mind, we'll confine ourselves to that. I'm afraid old I'Anson will get the sack; he's the manager, and responsible for the bank revolver being loaded. He swears it was; we all thought it was; but nobody had looked at it for weeks, and you see it wasn't. Yes, that's a rule in all banks in this country where sticking them up is a public industry. The yarn about Ned Kelly's son? Don't you believe it; nobody ever heard of him before. No, if you ask me, we must look a little nearer home for the man who stuck up our bank this afternoon."
"Nearer home!" said I. "Then you think it was somebody who knew about the run upon the Barwon Banking Company and the payments into the Intercolonial?"
"Obviously; somebody who knew all about it, and perhaps paid in a big lump himself. That would have been a gorgeous blind!" cried Deedes, kindling suddenly. "Beetle, old chap, I wish I'd thought of it myself – only it would have meant boning the capital too! I strongly suspect some of these respectable Geelongese and Barwonners of being at the bottom of the whole thing, though; they're so respectable, Beetle, there's bound to be villains among 'em. By Jove!" he added, getting to his feet with a sinister light in his handsome, dissipated countenance, "I'll go for the reward when they put it up! Four figures it can't fall short of; that would be better than junior clerking for eighty pounds a year!" And he walked up and down my room laughing softly to himself.
"I'll join you," cried I. "I'll go in for love, or honour and glory, and you shall pocket the £ s. d."
"Rot!" said he curtly, yet almost with the word he had me by the shoulders, and was smiling queerly in my face. "Why not join me in the other thing?" he exclaimed. "You were well enough plucked at school!"
"But what other thing?" said I.
"Doing the trick," he cried; "not finding out who did it!"
"Deedes," said I, "what the devil do you mean?"
"Mean? What I say, my dear Beetle – every word of it! What's the use of being honest? Look at me. Look at my shirt-cuffs, that I've got to trim every morning like my nails; look at my trousers, as I saw you looking at 'em just now. Those bags at the knees are honesty; and honesty's rapidly wearing them through on an office stool. I'm as poor as a rat in a drain: it's all honesty, and I've had about enough of it. Think of the fellow who walked off with his fortune this morning, and then think of me. Wouldn't you like to be in his shoes? No? My stars, you don't know what it is to live, Beetle; honest idiots like us never do. But I'm going to turn it up. If one can play at that game, two can; why not three? Come on, Beetle; make a third, and we'll rob another bank to-morrow!"
"You're joking," said I, and this time I returned his smile. "Still, if I was going in for that sort of thing, Deedes, I don't know who I'd rather have on my side than you."
His smile went out like a light.
"Will you go in for it?" he cried. "I'm joking far less than you think. My life's a sordid failure. I'm sick of it and ready for a fling. Will you come in?"
"No," I said. "I won't."
And we looked each other steadily in the eyes, until he led me back to laughter with as much ease as he had lengthened my face.
"All right, old Beetle!" said he. "I won't chaff any more – not that it was all chaff by any means. I sometimes feel like that, and so would you in my place. Bunked from school! In disgrace at home! Sent out here to be got rid of, sent to blazes in cold blood! The things I've done for a living during these ten years – this is the most respectable, I can tell you that. It's the respectability drives me mad."
His bitter voice, the lines upon his face, his grey hairs at twenty-eight (they were not confined to his moustache), all appealed to me with equal and irresistible force; my hand went out to him, and with it my heart.
"I am so sorry, Deedes," said I nervously. "If a fiver or two – yes, you must let me! For the sake of the old school!"
He shook his head, and the blood rushed to mine. I burst into apologies, but he cut me short.
"That's all right, Beetle. It was well meant, and you're a good chap. We'll foregather to-morrow, if this enviable stroke leaves us a spare moment in the bank. Meanwhile good-night, and thanks all the same."
And he crept down the stairs at my request; for I was not in the position of an ordinary lodger; and having followed and closed the door noiselessly behind him, I returned as stealthily to my room. I did not wish my hospitable friends to know that I had used lodgings, placed at my disposal as their guest, as though I had engaged them on my own account. Theoretically I was under their roof, and had committed a breach in introducing a man at midnight and sitting up in conversation with him till all hours. Deedes, moreover, as I suspected from his manner when I mentioned them, was most probably no friend of my friends; indeed I had no clue to his reputation in the town, and should have been surprised to find it a good one. He had been a reckless boy at school; at the very least he was a reckless man. And other traits must have developed with his years; he had been expelled, for instance, for certain gallantries not criminal in themselves, but sufficiently demoralising at a public school; and, despite his clothes, I could have sworn those dark, unscrupulous eyes, and that sardonic, insolent, and yet attractive manner, had done due damage in Geelong.
For there was a fascination in the man, incommunicable by another, and my despair as I write. He was a strong, selfish character, one in whom the end permitted any means; yet there was that in him for which it is harder to find a name, which attracted while it repelled, which enforced admiration in its own despite. At school he had been immensely popular and a bad influence: at once a bugbear and an idol from the respective points of view of masters and boys. My own view was still that of the boy. I could not help it; nor could I sleep for thinking of our singular rencontre and interview. I undressed, but shirked my pillow. I smoked my pipe; but it did me no good. Finally I threw up my window, and as I did so heard a sound that interested, and another that thrilled me. The first was a whistle blowing in the distance; the second, an answering whistle, which made me jump, for it came from beneath the very window at which I stood.
I leaned out. A white helmet and a pair of white legs flashed under a lamp and were gone. My window was no impossible height from the ground, but I did not stay to measure it. With the whistles still in my ears I lowered myself from the sill, dropped into a flower-bed, and gave chase to the helmet and the legs, myself barefooted and in pyjamahs.
I saw my policeman vanish round a corner. I was after him like a deer, and even as I ran the position amused me. Chasing the police! He could not hear my naked feet; I gained on him splendidly, and had my hand on his shoulder before he knew me to exist. His face, as he stopped and turned it, feeling for his pistol, I shall remember all my life.
"All right," I cried. "I'm not the man you're after. Hurry up! I'm coming along to see the fun."
He swore in my teeth and rushed on. I followed in high excitement at his heels. All this time the first whistle was blowing through the night. We had reached the outskirts of the town, and were nearing the sound. At length, on turning a corner, we came upon another drill-trousered, pith-helmeted gentleman in the gateway of an empty house.
"That's about enough of us," said he, pocketing his whistle. "I've got a man already on the lawn at the back. The house is empty, and he's in it like a rat in a trap. But who's this you've brought along with you, mate?"
"A volunteer," said I. "You won't refuse to let me lend a hand if I get the chance?"
"You'll get your brains blown out," replied the constable who had given the alarm, a sergeant as I saw now. "You'd best go home, though I won't say but what we want all the men we can get. The town's asleep – as usual. Can you face powder?"
"I'll see," said I, laughing, for I scarcely suspected he was in earnest. "Who is it you're after? Somebody very dangerous?"
"The Intercolonial bank-robber," replied the sergeant grimly. "What do you say now?"
I said nothing at all. I know not what I had expected; but it was not this; and for the moment my own density concerned me as much as my fears.
"Oh, that's all right," said the sergeant, with an intolerable sneer. "You cut away and send a grown man along when you see one!"
My reply need not be recorded; suffice it that a moment later one of the men, who both carried firearms, had handed me his truncheon; and I was on my way to join the third constable on the lawn behind the house, while those two effected an entrance in front.
II
The third constable nearly shot me through the head at sight. The twinkle of his pistol caught my eye; I threw up my arms and declared myself a friend, not, as I believe, one second too soon. Never have I seen a man more pitiably excited than this brave fellow on the back lawn. Brave he was beyond all question; but cool he was not, and I fancy the combination must be rarer in real life than elsewhere. The man on the lawn stood over six feet in his boots, and every inch of him was shaking like a jelly. Yet if our quarry had chosen that moment to make a dash for it on this side, it would have gone hard with him, for my constable was suffering from nothing more discreditable than over-eagerness for the fray.
Would that I could say as much for myself! Already I entirely regretted my absurd proceeding, and longed with all my heart to escape. It was out of the question. I had put my hand most officiously to the plough, but there it must stay; and as it was too late to reconsider my position, so there was now no sense in investigating the hare-brained impulse upon which I had acted. Yet I turned it over in my mind, standing there with my naked feet in the cold dew, and I deplored my conscious cowardice no less than my unthinking folly. One thing is certain, had I reckoned at all, it was without the bank-robber, whom his would-be imitator had put quite out of my head. And here they had him in this house! We saw their lanterns moving from room to room on the ground-floor; and I should be sorry to say which of us shivered most (from what different causes), the third constable or myself.
I do not know how long we waited, but in a little the lanterns ceased to flit behind the panes. The men had evidently gone upstairs, and in the darkness we heard a sound as terrifying to me as it was evidently welcome to my companion. "At last!" said he, and crept up to the back door, open-armed. We had heard the stealthy drawing of bolts; but we were destined, one of us to disappointment, the other to inexpressible relief. The door opened, and it was the sergeant upon whom his subordinate would have pounced. He stood there, beckoning without a word; and so led us to a locked room next the kitchen. His mate had gone round the front way to watch the window; we were to force the door and carry the room by storm; and in it, declared the sergeant, we should find our man.
We did not; and again I breathed. The room was not only empty; the window was fastened on the inside; and an accumulation of the loose fittings of the house, evidently for sale to the incoming tenant, seemed to explain the locked door. At least I said so, and the explanation was received better than it deserved. We now proceeded, all four of us (abandoning system in our unsuccess), to search the cellar; but our man was not there, and I began to tell myself he was not in the house at all. Thus, as my companions lost their heads and rushed to the attics as one man, I found mine and elected to remain below. The room we had broken into was the one I chose to wait in; for I had explored no other, and wherever else he might be, the robber was not here. Judge then of my feelings when I heard him moving under my feet. Horror glued me where I stood, unable to call out, unable to move; my eyes fast as my feet to the floor, watching a board that moved in the dim light of a candle-end found and lit by one of the constables at our first inspection. The board moved upward; a grimy face appeared through the aperture; it was that of my old schoolfellow, Deedes major.
"For God's sake, Beetle, help me out of this!" he whispered.
"Deedes!" I could only murmur; and again, "Deedes!"
"Yes, yes," said he impatiently. "Think of the old school – and tell me where they are. Are they gone?"
"Only upstairs. What on earth's at the bottom of this, Deedes?" I asked him sternly.
"A mistake – a rotten mistake!" said he. "They gave chase to me shortly after I left you. I got in here, but the one chap daren't follow me alone, and I ripped up this floor and got under while he was whistling away outside. I spotted a loose board by treading on it, and that bit of luck's just saved my bacon."
"Has it? I'm not so sure," said I, walking to the door and listening. "What do they want you for?"
"Would you believe it? For sticking up the bank – when I was out at my lunch! Did you ever hear such rot?"
"I don't know; if you're an innocent man, why not behave like one? Why hide – they're coming down!" I broke off, hearing them. "Stop where you are! You can never get out in time!"
In the candle-light his face gleamed very pale between the blotches of dust and dirt; but I fancied it brightened at my involuntary solicitude.
"You will help me?" he whispered eagerly. "For the sake of the good old school," he wheedled, playing still upon the soft spot I had discovered to him earlier in the night. It was a soft spot still. I remembered him in the fifteen and the eleven; then overcame the memory, and saw him for what he was now.
"Hush!" said I from the door. "I want to listen."
"Where are they now?"
"Looking on the next landing."
"Then now's my time!"
"Not it," said I, putting my back against the door.
He rose waist-high through the floor, his dark eyes blazing, his right hand thrust within his coat; and I knew what was in the hand I could not see.
"Pot away!" I jeered. "You haven't done murder yet. You daren't do it now!"
"I dare do anything," he growled. "But you – you'll never go and give a chap away, Beetle?"
"You'll give yourself away if you don't get under that this instant. They're coming down, man! Stop where you are, and I'll see you later; try to get out of it, and I promise you you're a gone coon!"
He disappeared without a word, and I ran out to salute my comrades in the hall.
"Well," cried I, "what luck?"
"None at all," replied the sergeant angrily. "I could have sworn it was this house, but I suppose we must try the next. How we've missed him is more than I can fathom!"
A slaty sky denoted imminent dawn as we emerged from the house; the chill of dawn was in the air, and there was I in nothing but pyjamahs. One of the constables remarked upon my condition, and the sergeant (good man) made me a pathetic speech of thanks, and recommended me my bed. If they needed further assistance they could get it next door, but he was afraid his man had made a longer flight than that. And indeed when I returned to the spot, in my clothes, an hour later, there was no sign of the police in the road; and I was enabled to slip into the empty house unobserved.
I got in through an open window, broken near the hasp, by which the fugitive himself had first effected an entry. In the early morning light the place looked different and very dirty; and as I entered the room with the burst door, I thought it also very still. I tore up the loose boards, and uttered an exclamation which resounded horribly in the desolation. Deedes was gone. I poked my head below the level of the floor, but there was no sign of him underneath. As I raised myself, however, a step just sounded on the threshold, and there he stood in his socks, smiling, with a revolver in his hand.
For one instant I doubted his intention; the next, the weapon dropped into his pocket, and his smile broadened as though he had read my fear.
"No fear, Beetle," said he; "it's not for you. I couldn't be sure it was you, that was all. So you're as good as your word! I hardly expected you so soon – if at all!"
"Do you remember my word?" said I meaningly, for his coolness irritated me beyond measure. His very face and hands he had contrived to cleanse at some of the taps. He might have been in bed all night and neglected nothing but his chin and his hair. And this was the man of whom a whole colony would talk this morning, for whom a whole colony would hunt all day.
"Your word?" said Deedes. "You promised to help me."
"I didn't. I said I'd see you again. If I help you it will be on very definite terms."
"Half-profits, eh? Well, I'm agreeable, and glad you haven't forgotten our conversation of last night."
"And I'm glad," I retorted, "to see you make no more bones about your guilt. Where's the money? I want the lot."
"You're greedy, Beetle!"
"Confound you!" I cried, "do you think I want to compromise myself by being found here with you? For two pins I'll leave you to get out of this as best you can. You heard me? I want that twenty thousand pounds. I want it to pay back into the bank. Then I'll do what I can, but not until."
I saw his dark eyes blazing as they had blazed in the candle-light. He was between me and the door, and I knew that for any gain to him I never should have left that room alive. At least I believed so then; I believe it still; but at that moment his manner changed. He gave in to me, and yet maintained a coolness and a courage in his peril, a dignity in his defeat, which more than fascinated me. They made me his slave. I could have screened him all day for the pure æsthetic joy of contemplating those fearless, dare-devil eyes and hearing that cynical voice of unaffected ease. But the money I insisted on having.
"That's all very well," said he; "but I haven't got it here. I planted it."
"Tell me where."
"I can't; I could never make it plain; it's not an obvious place at all. Still I accept your terms. Bring me a change of clothes to-night – I daren't face daylight – and I give you my word you shall have the stuff to take back to the bank. I've made a bungle of it; thought of it for weeks, and bungled it after all! It was that Barwon business tempted me. I wasn't ready, but couldn't resist the big haul. All I want now is to get out of it with a whole skin. And by Jove! I see the way. You go to old I'Anson with the money, and get him to say he'll see me. Then I'll tell him it was all a practical joke – done for a bet – anything you like – and if the thing don't altogether blow over, well, I'll get off lighter than I deserve. The old chap will stand by me at all events; he's got his reasons."
I refrained from asking what they were. I fancied I knew, and hoped I did not. But Deedes demanded more than a silent consent to his plans.
"Look here: are you on, Beetle, or are you not?"
"Can I trust you?"
"I give you my word upon it; till yesterday it was the word of an honest man."
"You want a rig-out as different as possible from what you have on?"
"Yes, and some whiskers or something if you can possibly get hold of any. Your friends are great on theatricals. Ask to look at their props."
"You'll pay back every penny, and plead a practical joke?"
"My dear chap, it's my only chance. I see no other way out of it, Beetle. I'm fairly cornered; only help me to pay back before I'm caught, and at least I'll get off light."
"Very well," said I. "On those conditions I will help you. Where were you when I came in?"
"In the cellar; it's safer and also more comfortable than under the floor."
"Then I advise you to go back there, for I'm off. If I'm found here we shall be run in together."
He detained me, however, a moment more. It was to put a letter in my hand, a stout missive addressed in pencil to myself.
"You see I've been busy while you were gone," he said, in a tone quite shy for him. "Read that after your breakfast. It may make you think less ill of me. And, for the love of Heaven, deliver the enclosures!"
I undertook to do so; my interest, however, was as yet confined to the outer envelope, a clean piece of stationery, never used before.
"Upon my word," said I, "you have come prepared. No doubt you have provisions too?"
Deedes produced a packet and a flask. "Sandwiches and whisky," said he, "in case of need!"
I looked hard at him; it may have been my imagination, but for once I thought he changed colour.
"Deedes," said I, "you're a cold-blooded, calculating villain; but I confess I can't help admiring you."
"And trusting me about to-night?" he added, with some little anxiety.
"I wouldn't trust you a bit," I replied, "if it weren't to your own interest to do everything you've said you'll do. Luckily it is. There's a hue and cry for you in this town. Every hole and corner will be watched but the bank. You can't hope to get away; and by far your wisest plan is the one you've hit upon, to return the money and throw yourself on your manager's mercy."
"It is," he answered, with his foot upon the cellar stairs; "and you bet old I'Anson won't make it harder than necessary for me. It's a clever idea. I should never have thought of it but for you. Old man, I'm grateful; it's more than I deserve!"
And I left him with my hand aching from a grip as warm as that of any honest man; and what was stranger yet, the incredible impression of a catch in my villain's voice. Here, however, I felt I must be mistaken, but my thoughts were speedily distracted from the anomaly. I had a milkman to dodge as I made my escape from the garden of the empty house. And half-way down the road I met none other than the poor discomfited sergeant of the night.
"Been having another look at the house," said I, with the frankness that disarms suspicion.
"See anything fresh?"
"Nothing."
"You wouldn't. I don't believe the beggar was in the house two minutes. Still I thought I'd like to have a squint myself by daylight; and there'll be little damages to repair where we come in. So long, mister; you done your best; it wasn't your fault."
He was gone. I looked after him with my heart in my mouth. I watched him to the gate. Would he come forth alone – or alive? I saw the last of the sergeant – and fled.
