The North Shore Mystery
Date: 2022-03-29T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Detective and mystery stories; Australia -- Fiction; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction; Sydney (N.S.W.) -- Fiction

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Title: The North Shore Mystery

Author: Henry Fletcher

Release date: March 29, 2022 [eBook #67735]

Language: English

Credits: This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NORTH SHORE MYSTERY ***

This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler

THE NORTH SHORE
MYSTERY

BY
HENRY FLETCHER

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LIMITED
PATERNOSTER SQUARE

1899

CONTENTS

CHAP.

PAGE

I.

THE CRIME

1

II.

THE MISFORTUNES OF A B.A. OF LONDON UNIVERSITY

8

III.

MRS. HOBBS

13

IV.

THE BOARDING-HOUSE AND BOARDERS

18

V.

CONSTABLE HOBBS DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

32

VI.

MRS. BOOTH COMMITTED FOR TRIAL

46

VII.

LOOKING BACKWARD-WINDSOR

64

VIII.

THE TWO LOVERS

71

IX.

HUEY AND ALEC

80

X.

THE GOLDEN BAR

92

XI.

HOW TO START IN BUSINESS

97

XII.

ALEC AND HUEY START BUSINESS

106

XIII.

THE HAWKESBURY HANDICAP

116

XIV.

THE TRIAL

124

XV.

THE PARRAMATTA RIVER

134

XVI.

THE WEIGHTS FOR THE SYDNEY CUP

141

XVII.

THE RELIGIOUS JOCKEY

147

XVIII.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE RACE

156

XIX.

THE SYDNEY CUP

166

XX.

A PROPOSAL

173

XXI.

THE ABDUCTION

180

XXII.

IN THE GARDENS

197

XXIII.

THE LOVERS

205

XXIV.

THE CONSPIRACY

213

XXV.

THE HEART UNION

225

XXVI.

UP TO DATE AGAIN-DARLINGHURST GAOL

231

XXVII.

MR. HOBBS AT TEA

236

XXVIII.

SOFT SAM

243

XXIX.

HOW MASTER HOBBS GOT HIS BALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR’S YARD

251

XXX

THE ‘SOUTHERN CROSS’

259

CHAPTER I
THE CRIME

On August 15, 188–, the public of Sydney were aroused to unusual excitement by the following announcement in the Evening Times of that date—

“A NORTH SHORE MYSTERY.

CRIME OR SUICIDE?

SUDDEN AND UNEXPLAINED DEATH OF A
WELL-KNOWN SPORTSMAN.
STABBED TO DEATH IN HIS BED.

HOW WAS IT DONE?

“The usual quiet of North Shore was this morning rudely dispelled by the alarming rumour that a crime of an unusual kind had been committed in the house of Mrs. Delfosse, Lavender Bay.

“An inquiry proved the report only too well founded.

“Mrs. Delfosse, it may be stated, is a widow lady of the highest respectability, who keeps a boarding establishment of the better kind in a stylish mansion near the Lavender Bay steps.  Amongst her boarders was, till this morning, the well-known sportsman, Alexander Booth, more widely known under his nom de guerre as ‘Newmarket.’

“Mr. Booth was married, and shared with his wife a spacious bedroom on the second floor, the window of which has a fine harbour view.  At seven o’clock this morning the other inmates of the house were aroused and startled by a succession of loud shrieks coming from this chamber.  In haste they rushed to the landing, but in response to calls and knocking on the door there was no reply.  The room was as quiet as the grave.

“The door was locked on the inside.  It was decided without hesitation to burst it open.  This being done, the spectators were horrified to find the senseless form of Mrs. Booth stretched on the floor, and in the bed itself the lifeless corpse of Mr. Booth.  Further examination showed the death of this gentleman to be no natural event.  The body was resting on the chest and arms, and between the shoulder-blades was buried what appears to be a thin knife or dagger.  The doctor and police were immediately sent for, and Mrs. Booth removed to another room.  Here after a time she recovered from what proved to be a swoon, but it was only to return again very quickly to the same state.  At the time of writing she is somewhat recovered.

“MRS. BOOTH’S STATEMENT.

“Her statement of the event is very brief, and only adds to the strange surroundings of the case—Her husband and herself retired to rest on the Sunday night at their usual hour, she herself locking and bolting the door, as was her custom.  She slept well, and was only awakened by a feeling of coldness close to her; she turned and looked at her husband, he was stiff and rigid, the features a waxen pallor and the eyes wide open, staring at her with a frightful horror in them.  She sprang from the bed, she screamed, she screamed again; she remembers no more.

“THE SCENE OF THE CRIME.

“Sergeant Burrel was quickly on the scene, and made a careful inspection of the premises and the room itself.  It did not require the opinions of a medical expert to convince the ordinary layman that death in this case was not self-inflicted.  Apart from the absence of any motive for self-destruction, the blow was such as no man could possibly give to himself.

“The room, as has been stated, is on the second floor, and its one window is protected by upright iron bars five inches apart, indicating that some former tenant had used it as a nursery.  There is only the one door to the room, and the chimney, which was carefully inspected, would not allow a passage through its registered grate to an animal larger than a cat.  The window itself was found to be shut and fastened inside by the ordinary catch.

“The police are very reticent, but so far no arrest has been made.  The inquest will be held to-morrow, when the medical evidence and more details may be disclosed.  In the meantime the house is surrounded by crowds of the curious, particularly in the right-of-way in the rear of the premises, from which the window of the room can be seen.

“Great sympathy was expressed at Tattersall’s this morning by Mr. Booth’s fellow metallicians on the news of the sad event reaching the club.  No member of the fraternity was more highly respected than the late Alexander Booth, and his death will be a great loss to Sydney sportsmen.”

“ANOTHER CRIME.

THE MYSTERY DEEPENS.

THE CITY OFFICE OF ALEXANDER BOOTH
BROKEN OPEN AND ROBBED.

“Before going to press news reaches us that the mystery surrounding the sudden death of Alexander Booth is heightened by the statement of his clerk, David Israel, that on going to the office at the usual hour this morning he found the door ajar, and on further examination in the office, the safe itself open, and bare of all contents, save the books of the firm.  He states that his first impression was that his master had arrived before him, and had opened the premises and safe, and was probably somewhere near at hand; but as minutes passed by and no one appeared, he became alarmed.  He then locked the place up, and went at once to his master’s private residence, Lavender Bay, only to learn the sad details of his sudden death.

“An important statement made by this witness is that only Mr. Booth had a key to his office safe, which he securely locked on Saturday afternoon.  As the safe does not appear to have been tampered with in any way, its unlocking adds to the strange peculiarities surrounding this case.

“David Israel does not know the exact amount of money missing, but estimates it at two or three hundred pounds only.  ‘If,’ said he, ‘this had occurred a month ago, the loss would have been very different, as up to that time Mr. Booth made no secret of the fact that he had a large amount—thirty or forty thousand pounds—in securities, locked up in what he considered a burglar and fireproof safe.  But the late notorious robberies in the city seemed to have weakened his confidence, for only three weeks ago he transferred the whole of his valuables to the safe keeping of the Bank of New South Wales.’”

The extra special edition of the Evening Times of the same date had the following additional item—

“On learning the details of the office robbery we at once dispatched a reporter to the scene of the crime in Lavender Bay.  It will be noted that, according to the statement of David Israel, there was only one key to the city safe, and that was in the possession of his master.  If this key was missing, then a motive for what may now be safely called a crime is forthcoming.

“The police authorities had already made a careful inventory of the dead man’s personal effects, and amongst these, taken from the trousers pocket, was a small flat key, said by Mrs. Booth to be, without doubt, that of her husband’s safe.

“So far as the public is concerned, this safety of the key, the abstraction of which was so naturally anticipated by our reporter, makes the mystery still deeper, and banishes what would at first appear to be the motive for at least part of the crime, and the connecting link between the murder on North Shore and the robbery in town.

“Despite the reticence of the police, it is plain to all that they are as puzzled as the public in general to form an acceptable theory as to how the crime was committed.”

CHAPTER II
THE MISFORTUNES OF A B.A. OF LONDON UNIVERSITY

It was Sunday night, or rather in the early darkness of the small hours of Monday morning, that Police-Constable Hobbs wended his slow and deliberate way down the vista of Walker Street.  Why the force are trained to step with a measured tread, which proclaims their personality minutes before their arrival, is one of those questions only to be answered by the benevolent supposition that Authority is anxious to warn Criminality that it is coming!

The constable had a dejected air, he put no energy into the trying of doors and windows, and even the sight of a drunk going by short tacks up Junction Street did not restore his animation.

“Never get a chance!” he muttered to himself; “never get a chance.  In the force three years and only a common constable and a B.A. of London University, too!  What’s the use of education, anyway?  Now, if I was only ignorant enough I might be a Member of Parliament, or perhaps a Minister of the Crown.  But to spend years of time and bags of money to end as a policeman is enough to make a man sick.  If I was only a sergeant now it would not be so bad.  But on the Shore ability has no show, never a burglary worth speaking of, and as for a good murder such a thing is unheard of.  I really don’t know what possesses the people.  If it was not for a few old reliable drunks that I can always run in in case of need, I should have got the sack for incompetency long ago.  Over in Sydney, how different!  Hardly a night but some chap has a turn, and not a paltry drunk with nothing in his pockets either.”

By this time the speaker had arrived at the top of that long flight of steps that runs down the steep hill at the foot of Walker Street to the wharf at Lavender Bay.  Here he paused a while, and his talk to himself took a new turn.

“Shall I or shan’t I have a smoke?  It is an hour before I have to meet the Sergeant.  Shall I waste it in a profitless round of deserted streets and lanes, or have a quiet whiff in the bushes there?  I will put the motion to the meeting, as our chairman used to say.  Decidedly I think the ‘ayes’ have it.  Then here’s for a smoke.”

Saying this he drew a short black pipe from some hidden pocket, charged it with tobacco, and descending the steps a short distance, turned into the bushes on his left.  He was just about to strike a light when the figure of a man started up before him and rushed forward.

Without hesitation the policeman took up the chase thus offered.  It was too dark to see very clearly, but the fugitive appeared to be a young active man carrying a bag.  Now such a character does not go tearing around a quiet suburb like North Shore at four o’clock in the morning with an honest motive.  So at least thought P.-C.  Hobbs, and he shouted “Stop!” and went at his best handicap speed to overtake the fugitive.  But this person, far from stopping or losing in the race, had now turned some corner of stone or bush, and when the constable came out in the open ground beyond the bushes he found his prey had fled.

Not a sound, not a sign.  The earth might have closed on him.

More disconsolate than ever, Hobbs retraced his steps.

“Just my luck—the same old luck!  The only kind of a chance I have had for a month, and it slips through my fingers.”

Going not far from the steps he sat concealed in the bushes, and puffed his pipe.  And it seemed to him as he gazed through the fumes of Black Jack, that his previous view of things had been pessimistic—his turn would come some day.  North Shore could not for ever remain so ferociously virtuous.  A time might come when theft, even, perhaps, a good murder might occur on his beat.  And then people would learn that it was not for nothing that he had qualified as B.A. at London University.

The dusky light and cold air of dawn now made our philosopher consider the time come to proceed on his round.  Already fish-buyers and news-vendors were descending the steps to proceed by the first boat.  The steamer was at the wharf puffing out steam as Hobbs looked down on her from the steps.

But stay!  Who is that who rushes out from the bushes next the baths and dives at full speed down the slope?

It is THE MAN WITH THE BAG!

Like a flash our policeman again starts in pursuit.  This time he says to himself, “The man is mine!”

Vain hope!  Even as he rushes into the waiting-room the ferry-boat has cast off and left the wharf.  He sees the man with the bag make a desperate leap over a yawning chasm of green sea and white foam, and land safely on the deck.  And when he arrives it is only to be greeted by the derisive jeers of the little crowd of passengers.

Slowly he returns up the steps.  Shall he report the matter to the Sergeant?  It might gain him credit, and the information might prove of use.  On the other hand, the Sergeant might want to know what he wanted at that part of his beat at that particular time.  And the question would be awkward.

This is how it came about that the police records are bare of any mention of the vain chase by P.-C.  Hobbs of a suspicious character carrying a bag.

CHAPTER III
MRS. HOBBS

It was the custom of Mr. Hobbs when he had been on night duty to sleep till twelve noon on the following day, when he would awaken with a punctuality at the dinner hour which would shame the fidelity of an alarm clock.  What was his surprise then to have his slumbers rudely disturbed at ten o’clock by the high-pitched voice of Mrs. Hobbs.

“What’s the matter, Bell?”

“Wake up, you!  Here’s news!  Who’d have thought it!  Why half the Shore might be murdered for all you care!”

“What’s that about murdering?”

“Why, the baker boy just told me that at Mrs. Delfosse’s, down on the Point, three of the boarders, if not more, were murdered in their beds last night.  The whole neighbourhood is there, and there is such a crowd you can hardly get by.  And that is your beat, too—I should just like to know where you were last night?  I’ll be bound packed away in some corner, smoking.  You need not shake your head.  I know you.  Neither use nor ornament.  Whatever the Government sees in you to pay you wages I can’t think.”

“Now, do keep quiet, Bell, and let a fellow have a show.  You have got hold of some cock-and-bull story that will melt down in the end to a broken window or a drunken man beating his wife, or some such foolery.”

“No such thing!  You just dress and pack off to the station.  You may be wanted, and how can you get a chance to show your ability if you are out of the way?  A clever man like you only a common constable!  I say it’s a disgrace.  You should speak up, and put yourself forward.”

* * * * *

Two hours later Mr. Hobbs returned.

“You were partly right for a wonder, Bell.  One man has been murdered, and a very strange case it is, too.”

And then he told in detail to his wife those events that have been related.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Hobbs.  “What shall we have next?  And you call that a mystery?  Why it is as plain as the nose on your face.  The woman killed him, of course!  Who else could have done it?  That fainting or swooning is all moonshine.  Why I could faint twenty times a day if I wanted to.  I know that Mrs. Booth—knew her before she was married.  A barmaid in a sixpenny bar.  That will tell you what she is.  Why I would not trust the life of a cat to one of those creatures.  Faint, indeed!  It wants a fool of a man to be taken in by that sort of humbug.”

“That’s just what Detective Dobell says; he’s got the case in hand.  Sent for him to Sydney.  As though we were all fools here.  Just my luck again!  He seems to think there is no doubt about it, and that all the trouble will be to hunt up the corroborative evidence against her.”

“Is that Dobell, the Sydney detective, that took your last chance from you?”

“Yes, that’s the man.”

“Then, in my opinion, he’s a fool!  If he said it was the woman did it, then you can make up your mind he is wrong.  Is it likely, now, that a woman that wanted to kill her husband, would get a dagger and stab him in his sleep?  Suppose I wanted to kill you now, should I go about it like that?  No indeed!  I should buy some ‘Rough on Rats,’ or something of that kind, and put it in your tea.  That is our way.  It is only women on the stage that use knives or daggers.  You take my advice, and pay no attention at all to what that Dobell says.  That woman no more committed that deed than I did myself.”

“But you were positive only five minutes ago that she had!”

“I said no such thing, and if you were not the most aggravating man in the world you would not dare to say so.  That is always your way.  Trying to make out I contradict myself, when you are too daft to know what to say.  If you would only take my advice for once you would—”

“What?”

“Just do a bit of detective work on the quiet.  This affair will make a great noise, and the man who finds out the riddle will not be that thick-head Dobell, take my word for it.  While all these wiseacres are busy over the woman, you just take another track.  Hunt up their history, hers and his.  You say that there was no robbery.  If so, what was it done for?  Who would his death benefit?  Trust a woman’s judgment.  I’d back her to find more out about a case in five minutes than one of you tall muddle-heads in a week.”

“It’s all very well to talk, Bell.  If it comes to that I give you best.  But how should a woman who has never been out of Sydney in her life understand these things?  Now, I have had the advantage of a University education in the metropolis of the world—a B.A. of London.”

“Well, Mr. B.A., if you are so clever just go into the back yard and chop some wood for the stove if you expect to have your tea.”

The B.A. went, and as he chopped he inwardly resolved that the advice of his wife was good; that much might be gained and nothing lost by following it.  Of a truth, that Dobell did hold his nose a trifle too high—a man who could not construe a page of Latin to save his life.

“Are you going to do what I say about that case?” screamed out Mrs. Hobbs from the kitchen.

Mr. Hobbs’ only reply as he took in an armful of billets was to mutter—

“Bell, you’re a fool?”

* * * * *

On resuming duty some hours later, Mr. Hobbs found himself detailed for the special service of watching Mrs. Booth.

CHAPTER IV
THE BOARDING-HOUSE AND BOARDERS

Mrs. Delfosse had “seen better days.” How it is that the profession of boarding-house keeping is for ever associated with a vista of past splendours history recordeth not.  Other people hide past grandeur in the oblivion of silence, or shroud their social degeneracy even from their nearest friends.  But the boarding-house keeper trumpets her past Arabian opulence from every vantage place her limited surroundings afford.

The house occupied by Mrs. Delfosse was one of a terrace.  Not a mean lath-and-plaster, run-up-while-you-wait structure, but a fine substantial building that had, of course, ruined the innocent contractor who erected it.  This house itself had, according to Mrs. Delfosse, been the scene of her former life of luxurious ease, in fact, until that fatal date when the late Captain Delfosse sailed on his last trip to America.  There were some brutes who inwardly congratulated the luck of the Captain in never coming back, but the lady was inconsolable.

As usual in such cases, in the course of time she advertised for a few select boarders.  What “select” meant was never explained, except it might mean that the tariff and accommodation were above the average.

There were five boarders—two city men on the first floor, Mr. and Mrs. Booth on the second floor back, and Professor Norris (an old friend of Mrs. Booth) on the second floor front.

The Booths, by the way, were only counted as temporary lodgers, as they had a fine house of their own in course of erection at Neutral Bay, and were merely waiting its completion to move.

When P.-C.  Hobbs came on duty in plain clothes and relieved his brother officer on watch in front of Mrs. Delfosse’s boarding-house, he was just in time to overhear that lady recounting her griefs to a little gentleman whose outward egress she barred with her ample form in the front doorway.

“What shall I do, doctor?  I am ruined, entirely ruined!  To think of people coming and getting murdered in a house of mine, and me been here these fifteen years!  It’s not as though they were permanents!  And I who have always been so respected!  Oh, little did my poor dear captain think I should ever come to this?  The first floors have gone, and two better boarders no one could wish for; not paltry city clerks, but merchants, real merchants, and paid like the bank.  And they left at once, never thinking of me.  No one thinks of me.  No one has a thought for a poor widow, left without resources.  I call it shameful.  There ought to be a law to prevent it.  And who do you think will come and take rooms in a house where a man has been murdered?  If it was only a suicide now, it would not be so bad.  I have known persons in the best of families make away with themselves.  But I’m ruined, ruined!  I shall come to starve on the streets, I’m sure!”

The little doctor, who was fidgeting to get away, here interposed—

“Why not leave this house and take another?”

“I have thought of that; but look at the expense, and how would I get other rooms to fit the carpets, and stairs to suit the matting, let alone all the blinds and rollers?  Now, just look at that oilcloth—”

As Mrs. Delfosse turned to point out the article mentioned, the doctor saw an opening, darted through, and was yards up the street before the lady could draw breath.

“Just like all the others.  All for self; all for his own business.  Not a thought for me.  No one thinks of me.”

During this time, in the sitting-room of the same house, another interview was taking place.  A middle-aged gentleman, with a strong resemblance to Shakespeare, in a nineteenth century coat and trousers, and long waving hair, was seated.  This was Professor Norris.  Why “Professor,” was never very clear, except it might be the long hair.

A young woman, tall, well-shaped, if you exclude her pinched-in waist, a complexion of strawberries and cream, blue eyes to match her fair hair, a nose of no particular merit, lips blood red, and a set of white teeth—if they were all real—as perfect and regular as the artificial article.  There was the general plumpness and freshness about this young lady that the French term Beauty de Diable, and a sparkle in her eyes at times that would set on fire, not chips, as other sparks do, but masculine hearts.

This was Mrs. Booth—Bertha Booth.

She was raging up and down the room, her eyes red with crying, and she moaned and sobbed as she walked—

“I wish I were dead!  I do.  Oh, Alec; poor, dear Alec.  It is horrible! horrible!  I know I shall go mad.  If I sit still even for a minute, I can feel the cold thing touching me again.  Oh, why did I get married?  We were very happy before, Professor!  Or why did I not marry you, as you wanted me to?  I am sure no one would have wanted to kill you.  And the way he looked!  I’m sure I shall never forget the face—it haunts me.  And we had a few words yesterday, and we never had time even to make it up.  And who did it—and how was it done?  Tell me, Professor.  I’m sure you must know—you know so many things.  Don’t shake your head.  I am certain you are keeping something back.  But I will know!  I ought to know!  I’m his wife!  And why am I not killed too?  I wish I had been; it would have saved me hours of misery, for I shall die of it.  I know I shall die of it.”

“Try to be calm, Bertha; be a brave woman.  Time will heal all, reveal all; and remember that to-morrow there will be the inquest, and you will have to attend.”

“I can’t go.  I’m not fit to go.  It is too much.  How can they expect me, who am nearly out of my mind with this horror, to go to their dreadful inquest?”

“But try and bear up, my dear.  I will be with you.  You will not be alone.”

“And I have no dress to wear,” Bertha murmured.

“No dress!  Why you have heaps of dresses.”

“No black dress.  But there, you are a man, or you would know at once I cannot go out in public till I have my weeds.”

“If that is the trouble, you can easily order all you want from Sydney.”

“But ready made!  You know how I hate the shop costumes.  You can always see what they are.  Madame Beaumont shall make it; I really believe she is the only woman who can make a dress in Sydney.  And she takes two days.”

“Really, my dear Bertha, you must be mad.  Do you think they will adjourn the inquest two days for you to have a dress made?”

“I don’t care.  They can kill me if they like.  I wish I was dead.”

“I shall go to Farmer’s, and tell them to send over some costumes for you to choose.”

“I won’t look at them.”

He stood up to go.  He had half crossed the room when she called him back softly—

“Pro?”—and she put her arms round his neck and kissed him.  “Tell them I must have a waistcoat body.”

At this moment there was a knock on the door.  Bertha hastily turned to a mirror to arrange her hair, before saying “Come in.”

The new arrival was a young man, well but loudly dressed, clean shaved, and well groomed.  He entered quietly, respectfully.

“As an old friend, hearing the sad news, I called to see if I could be of any use in what must be a most trying time.”

“Oh, Huey, is that you?  Sit down, sit down.  I’m nearly mad.  Thank you for calling.  You can go, Pro, and mind you remember.”

The Professor nodded to the visitor and left the room.

“Is it true, Bertha—Mrs. Booth, I should say—all this I read in the evening paper?” said the visitor as he drew nearer to that lady on the door closing.

“What the papers say, I don’t know, but they cannot say what is more horrible, more dreadful, than the truth!”

And then Bertha, at great length, with interjected sobs and disjointed fragments of narrative, related the tragedy of the morning.

Huey, or, to give him his name in full, Hubert Gosper, listened sympathetically, wondering perhaps somewhat, how, after such a shock, she had power to bring her mind to even an inconsequential narrative.

“What do you think of it?” she asked him.  “The Professor will say nothing, but look awfully wise, like a magpie on a fence.  How was it done—how could it be done?  Could Alec have done it himself?  He never told me his affairs.  Do you know if he was troubled about them?  It’s the uncertainty that’s so dreadful.  People that did not know us might even think I had something to do with it.”

“You will pardon me, I hope, what I am going to say, and do not jump at a conclusion at once.  But I, who know you both, am inclined to think you had something to do with it.”

“What!  I?”

“Now don’t take fright in that way.  According to what you say, the room is only to be entered by the door, and you locked and bolted that; so there remains only two possibilities—either that Alec, by some unheard-of means, stabbed himself, or that you did the deed.”

“But that is monstrous!”

“Of course, but the point has to be considered.  There is still another supposition.  You might have opened the door to a third person, and afterwards reclosed it.”

“Why, that is as bad as the other!”

“In the ordinary way, yes.  But it chanced that I have just been reading some experiments in hypnotism, by which strange results are sometimes obtained by one mind unconsciously over another.  You, I believe, in former times were often mesmerized, and, it occurred to me at once, would readily yield to the evil desires, unknowingly, of some designing scoundrel.  In such a case, I say again, you may have had something to do with your husband’s death.”

“But who could do such a thing?  Besides, I know no designing scoundrel.  Your guess is worse than nothing at all.  It is foolishness.”

Nevertheless, the face of Mrs. Booth underwent a great change.  She was evidently “put darkly in doubt,” and though she spoke in bold confidence, her companion clearly saw his shot had told.

“But what you say is unnatural—horrible!  All the mesmerists or hypnotists in the world cannot make a wife kill her husband and not know it.  And as for what is in the newspapers, they are made up of a pack of lies, and you ought to know it as well as anybody, for did you not use to work on one?”

“It may be so.  I may be wrong.  Only you wanted to know a possible way that this thing might have happened, and I gave the only explanation that occurred to me.  Now tell me, what do you think?”

But poor Bertha could not tell.  She had no theory.  Her mind was off on a new chase, weaving all the possibilities out of this new idea which she had openly scorned.  It was with almost a vacant air she bade Mr. Gosper good-bye, and as the door closed she sank down on the floor, moaning.

The cup of her affliction was running over.

“The scoundrel!  Yet he would not dare.  It cannot be true!  Old Pro!  I can never believe it!  And yet—and yet!”

* * * * *

As Mr. Gosper was crossing Circular Quay on his return journey he met the Professor, who was coming back from his errand.

“Have a wine, old man?”

“Thank you, I seldom take anything, and I am anxious to be back to Bertha.”

“Oh, she’s first-rate—‘as well as can be expected,’ as the reports have it.  Come along.  It will cheer you up.”

With evident reluctance the Professor consented, and the two entered the private bar of the Paragon, Huey leading the way to a quiet corner, and with glasses before them, started the conversation.

“This affair looks bad, Professor.”

“How so?”

“I mean for our mutual friend, Mrs. Booth.”

“Yes; her husband’s death will be a sad loss to her.”

“Oh, that is not what I am thinking of.  Husbands are plenty enough for a woman with her money and beauty.  It’s her connection with the affair that troubles me.”

“In what way?”

“Why, don’t you see, man?  The law will demand an explanation, and perhaps a victim, and the law that can only see as far as the end of its nose will reason, ‘Here is a room securely locked up with two persons in it.  One of these persons is found dead by a wound not self-inflicted.  Inference, the other person must have done it.’”

“Good God!  You don’t think they will dare to accuse her?”

“Think!  It is no thinking matter.  Sydney is saying nothing else.  On the ferry-boat, as elsewhere, they were talking of nothing but that, and the wonder was why Mrs. Booth was not already arrested.”

“But this is monstrous!  You know it’s monstrous, Mr. Gosper.  The very shock of such a charge might endanger Bertha’s reason, or even her life!”

“That may be true; but how will you prevent it?  What is your own private opinion on the mystery?  Surely you have formed one?”

“No, I have not.  What you term the popular verdict is, of course, out of the question with me, who know her so well; but I have thought out no theory yet that will fit the case.  I can recall no incident, in fact or fiction, of this description.  Poe’s History of the Rue Morgue is the nearest in point I can call to mind.  But then there was an open window.”

“That was the story of an ourang-outang climbing a waterspout to an open window and throwing one woman out, pushing the other up a chimney, and then escaping, was it not?”

“Yes; something of that kind.  But even, as is sometimes maintained, if Fiction is only a prelude to Fact, the barred and fastened window in this case close that explanation.”

“Well, if you must go,” said Huey, for the Professor was rising, “remember to send for me at any time, if I can help either you or Mrs. Booth.”

Not admitting it even to himself, a dreadful fear had pricked the heart of the Professor.  That Bertha could do such a deed was impossible, and yet women were strange creatures.  Who could pretend to have sounded to the innermost depths of even one?  And he would stake his life yes, his life—on her innocence.  But even if it was so, and he braced his mind to face that awful contingency, he would not desert her.  “A moment of passion—who is accountable for it?  And, say what you will, that Alec was little better than a brute.  It was in one sense a good riddance.” At all hazards he would stick to her, and, above all, if she was accused he would fight her battle.  It is not the innocent who want friends; it is the guilty.  And, guilty or innocent, he would stand by her.

So the thoughts chased through his mind as the ferry-boat crossed Sydney Harbour in the moonlight of a bright summer’s night.  He did not heed the scene, familiar to him, of the grey indented shore, dotted with white house fronts and clothed with sombre foliage, or the jutting headlands, softening their dark outlines till in the distant background South Head was a soft grey that melted into the sky, and its turning light shone on the lapping water like a radiance.  He did not heed the mirrored lights of Sydney Cove, or the small craft that, with half-drawn sail, drifted like shadows on the shining water.  He did not heed the talk of the crowded boat, nor, passing M‘Mahon’s Point wharf, did he hear a scream, as from a distance, and a rush of eager feet to the stern of the vessel.

CHAPTER V
CONSTABLE HOBBS DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

Constable Hobbs, on duty outside Mrs. Delfosse’s, had for a long time nothing to break the monotony of his watch.  He allowed the Professor to pass, knowing him well.  Mr. Gosper puzzled him.  He concluded at once he was not a resident of the Shore; he certainly did not know him as such, yet he had a kind of inward conviction he had seen him before, but where, he could not call to mind.  But the thought did not trouble him.  He met, every day, people he had met before, without being able, or caring for that matter, to locate the time and place.

It had been some time dark when the meditations of a quiet smoke were interrupted by the opening of the front door, and the coming out of a lady.

“It is her; what the dickens is she up to!”

It was indeed Bertha.  Bertha, hysterical, nearly mad.  To be in the house was no longer endurable, she was stifled, choked.  The suggestion of Huey had grown in her mind till her reason seemed to forsake her.  A hundred fancies that she could not brush aside rose up as threatening witnesses.

“The Professor had always wanted to marry her, that was certain; so who but he could desire the death of Alec?  Who but he could control her will, unknown to her?  He must have made her open the door.”

So her mind ran on.  She left the house, and walked down the road, heedless where she went, and the precautions of Mr. Hobbs to be unobserved in his following was so much skill thrown away.  He noted that she walked unsteadily, and, with his varied experience in “drunks,” the suggestion of partial intoxication occurred to him.  To his credit, he put the thought aside as only worthy of an ignorant member of the force.

Evidently, he said to himself, she is going somewhere of importance, or she would hardly go at night, and by herself such a day as this has been for her.  No doubt I shall now gain a clue.

“Cheer up, old man,” he said to himself; “‘there is a tide in the affairs of man,’ etc.  Now is your chance; this is the first good case you have had a hand in.  The ladder of promotion is before you.  Climb!”

Bertha by this time had descended the steep path that leads to M‘Mahon’s Point wharf.

“The devil!” said Hobbs.  “It seems she means to go to Sydney.  What if she is really guilty, and means to give us the slip?  I will close up.”

Once, twice, three times Bertha paced the wharf, her eyes bent on the water with a hungry longing.

She made a step forward.

“Be careful!” sang out the warning voice of the constable.

But, with a wild cry, Bertha threw up her arms and plunged down.  There was a splash, a few bubbles, and a little whirl in the waves as constable Hobbs rushed forward.

“Well, I’m damned!  Just my luck!” he exclaimed, as he threw off his coat and hat, and with a wild sweep of his arms dived into the harbour.

* * * * *

The Evening Times, of August 16, contained the following double-headed paragraph in its middle page—

“FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE NORTH SHORE MYSTERY.

THE PLOT THICKENS.

ATTEMPTED SUICIDE OF MRS. BOOTH, AND
GALLANT RESCUE BY ONE OF THE
POLICE FORCE.

PORTRAIT AND BIOGRAPHY OF THE HERO,
POLICE-CONSTABLE HOBBS.

“Never perhaps in the history of the colony has a crime claimed such universal interest, and aroused such general curiosity, as the so-called North Shore mystery.  On train, boat, or ’bus, or wherever men are gathered together, it forms the sole and engrossing topic of conversation.  Nearly every man one meets considers himself a born detective, and has a solution of the mystery at his fingers’ ends.  Unfortunately, however, hardly two of three solutions agree, either as to the personality of the criminal or the method of the crime.

“An unexpected development was added to the already complicated skein by the attempted suicide last night of Mrs. Booth.  It appears, from reports received, that Police-Constable Hobbs had been stationed on duty by the authorities to watch the house of Mrs. Delfosse, the scene of the crime, his orders being to note the doings of the inmates.  That this precaution was a wise one was shown by the sequel.

“Late in the evening, after a gentleman, a stranger to the constable, had called at the house and again departed, the constable’s attention was aroused by the front door opening, and Mrs. Booth, with her outdoor garments on, leaving the house and walking towards Blue’s Point.  Needless to say, the constable followed in her wake.  According to his statement, her movements struck him as being, to say the least, very strange.  Her walk was unsteady and erratic, and his first impression was that she was intoxicated; but, being a man of more than average intelligence, he soon scouted this idea, and came to the more natural conclusion that the poor lady, as was very natural, was suffering from strong excitement.

“After some hesitation Mrs. Booth took the path leading to the ferry at M‘Mahon’s Point, and Police-Constable Hobbs at once concluded that her intention was to take the incoming boat with the object of going to Sydney or Milson’s Point.  What was his astonishment to see her step forward on the wharf, and with what looked like a determined plunge, jump into the water.  Without a moment’s hesitation the constable ran forward, and, rapidly divesting himself of his hat and heavy tunic, jumped in after her.  So quick was he that Mrs. Booth had barely come to the surface ere her form was grasped, and fortunately the ferry steamer was close at hand to provide a rope.  By this time, however, Mr. Hobbs had already landed on the wharf, neither he nor Mrs. Booth being much the worse for their immersion.  Mrs. Booth was promptly removed to her house, where she remains under surveillance.

“The numerous witnesses to this act of gallantry were unanimous in their chorus of praise of the pluck shown by the hero, and we are enabled by the kindness of Mrs. Hobbs to furnish the following short account of her husband—Police-Constable Hobbs is a native of Bethnal Green, London, England.  He has always been noted for courage and resolution, this being the third life he has saved from drowning.  He is, moreover, a man of education, being a B.A. of London University, and qualified by his mental attainments for a far higher position than that at present held by him.  It is one of the anomalies of Colonial life, that some of our best men have to commence life in such subordinate positions as that held by Police-Constable Hobbs.  As a swimmer he is no mean exponent, having been for three years previous to leaving the old country champion and captain of the Serpentine Swimming Club; as an athlete he had few equals, either at quoits or the more active game of rounders.  We certainly think the attention of the authorities should be drawn—more particularly the Royal Humane Society—to the meritorious conduct of this officer.  True courage and ability such as his call for more than the usual perfunctory meed of thanks.

“As to the crime itself, we have no further development to make public.  Speculation is rife, and the police, as usual, are said to ‘have a clue.’  If so, they preserve a most frigid reticence on the point.  During the day the rear and front of the house have been surrounded by the customary gaping crowd, and it has been found necessary to detail an additional constable to preserve order in the neighbourhood.  The inquest, which was to have been held to-day, has been postponed until to-morrow to allow of the more perfect recovery of Mrs. Booth.”

* * * * *

In consideration of his immersion in the harbour, P.-C.  Hobbs was allowed a day off from his duties, and he readily seized the opportunity to pursue his investigations as to the origin of the crime.

The view of his wife, that the murder was not a woman’s murder, strongly influenced him.  He was further impressed in Mrs. Booth’s favour by the fact that popular opinion, backed by Detective Dobell, generally condemned her.  Popular opinion, said Mr. Hobbs to himself, is an ass.  It sees no further than the end of its nose.  Because the door was locked and bolted, then, forsooth, the woman must be guilty.  But would a guilty person have so locked and bolted the door?  Would they not rather have left it open so as to admit others to suspicion, and not fastened it, and suspicion too, on themselves?  For the crime was premeditated, the knife was not a common one, and must have been procured on purpose by some person versed in anatomy.  It was, in fact, more of a skewer than a knife, such a skewer as is used in ham and beef shops to join together the pieces of brisket.

That door unfastened would have meant the inclusion of the whole household in the range of doubt—a sharing of the burden of suspicion that would be comparatively light to bear.  Of course, it was true that even the cleverest criminals often committed the greatest blunders, and such might be the case in the present instance.  But was it not more reasonable to suppose that the criminal had himself refastened the door; the lock was a common one, and worked easily; a pair of pliers to grasp it, with the help of a skeleton key, would have both unlocked and locked it from the outside.  Then there was the bolt.  Certainly that was a puzzle, but one that could be solved must be solved.

At any rate, he would go to Sydney and interview these boarders; and David Israel, the clerk, his statement required sifting.  It was a curious accident if these two crimes were not in some way connected.  He found the first address in his pocket-book—

SCHNIDER BROTHERS,
Clarence Street,

Wholesale Importers of Jewellery and
Fancy Goods.

A few minutes’ walk took him to Clarence Street, and in answer to his inquiry he was promptly ushered into a back office, where two fair gentlemen were seated at a huge desk.

“Are you the Messrs. Schnider?”

“Ve are,” said the elder, promptly turning round.  “Vat can we have ze pleasure of doing for you?”

“I am in the Police Department,” replied Mr. Hobbs, handing over his card, “and I have called for such information as you can give relative to the crime committed at your lodgings.”

“Ah!  Dat vas vat I say to my brothers.  Ve shall have some policemans round to ask us shoost nothings at all.”

“Did you know much of Mr. and Mrs. Booth?”

“No; ve knows very little.  Ve sees them zometimes at dinner; ve speak to them English—ve love the language—but they not speak much to us, and they speak the English very padly.  They do not understand what you call the idiom, so we get tired.  Ve speak not much to them; ve fear to speak like them.  Ah, Sydney is bad for the English language.  Not like in Shermany; there they speak her particularly.  I hear no good speaking in zis country.  They learn the English like some parrots, not like in Shermany, vere ve learn at school.  It is much shame to you.”

“Did you notice if Mr. and Mrs. Booth were friendly together?  Did they have disputes?  Was she a good wife?

“Not so good vife as we have in Shermany.  There the frau, she stop home all ze day, do all ze work of ze home, and ze good man, when he have dinner, go to the beer garden and drink twenty, thirty bock, and when he come home a little bit what you call tipsy, the good frau she help him to bed, and not say one little word.  Not like as here, vere the vife goes out to valk about half ze day.  It was bad, very bad!”

“I am sorry to interrupt you, but what I wish to know is not about Germany, but about this business of the murder.  Have you any reason to think Mrs. Booth had any ill-feeling towards her husband?”

“Ve know nothings, shoost nothings at all about zese peoples.  They speak, I tell you, the English very padly, not like as in Shermany.”

“Damn Shermany,” said P.-C.  Hobbs to himself, as he promptly bowed himself out.  “They are either a pair of fools or a pair of rogues, trying to bluff me with gammon.”

But he did not escape so quickly as he expected.  After a hurried consultation together, one of the partners stepped forward.

“Do not go for a little minute.  This, I tink, is the first time zat you see our store.  We always like to make some little present to our new friends.  Come zis vay.  Come zis vay.” And the German led the way to the back premises, where on numerous shelves a host of packets and cardboard boxes were stored, having for the most part fastened on the outside a sample of the goods within.  With much preliminary graciousness the merchant went to a small box and produced a common wooden pipe, worth, perhaps, twopence, and, presenting it to Mr. Hobbs, he said—

“You will keep that, my friend.  It is vat you call ze keepsake.  That is vone good pipe—vone very good pipe; same as they smoke in Shermany.  If you will show zat pipe to your friends it shall do us some good in the pisiness!”

Pocketing the present, the constable made his way out.

“Now for the third man, the acknowledged friend of Mrs. Booth—Professor Norris, Park Street, is the address, I think.  Yes, it is Park Street.”

The shop was easily found, a small narrow-windowed place with this sign written in large letters across the front—

PROFESSOR NORRIS, SCIENTIFIC
FOOTIST.

The Past, The Present, The Future.

Characters Delineated by the Marvellous Science—The
Discovery of Professor Norris—The Secret of Life Long
Hidden Under Foot Now First Revealed.  Phrenology,
Physiognomy, and Palmistry Entirely Superseded by
the Up-to-date Science, Footology.

“Man, Know Your Feet.”

Do not Waste Your Old Boots, but Send One Along
with Five Shillings in Stamps for Full Character Chart.

The greater part of this window was occupied by a mammoth foot in plaster of Paris, and P.-C.  Hobbs regarded it curiously.  A large bump, like a bunion, on the big toe, was marked, “Mount of Venus.” A zigzag track down the instep, looking like the plan of the river Murray, as seen on maps, was designated, “Line of Life.”

“What humbug will they be up to next?” exclaimed Hobbs, as he regarded this curiosity.

In answer to his inquiry the attendant at the counter informed him that the Professor had not arrived that day, and had sent a message saying he should not come till the next morning.

“An important engagement, no doubt,” added the speaker.  “The Professor is often summoned to attend some of the highest families.”

“To read their feet?”

“Of course.  You see, it’s all the rage now.  The foot, unlike the hand, is not distorted by work and hard wear.  Being used solely to tread with, it retains all Nature’s revelations in their pristine purity.  Fortunes are constantly made by those who are wise enough to consult the future in their feet, and in love and matrimony none should be without their guidance.  Shall I make an appointment with you to meet the Professor—your feet appear to be really interesting?  The Professor loves his work, and I am sure he would be pleased to see you.”

“No, thank you, young man.  I called on other matters.  Perhaps I can find your master at his private address.  Good-day.”

CHAPTER VI
MRS. BOOTH COMMITTED FOR TRIAL

After his day’s round, Mr. Hobbs returned home to his tea.  For this meal he was glad to see a plate of pink prawns on the table.  If he had one weakness of the epicure, it was in the direction of prawns, and Mrs. Hobbs, when in a specially good humour, was wont to indulge him.  This happened with her perhaps the more rarely, as her husband was wont on these occasions, while praising the quality of the prawns, which he rated as being nearly equal to Gravesend shrimps, to inveigh against Colonial provisions generally.

“The meat was not equal to English meat—not the flavour—the vegetables were tasteless, and the fruit lacking in juice.”

These remarks on the products of her native land made Mrs. Hobbs mad and restive.

“If everything was so good in England, why in the name of fortune did you leave it?”

“I wish I had not, and that’s the truth,” Mr. Hobbs would reply.

“And I wish so too!” would retort his good lady.

Then would follow a domestic squall, during which Mrs. Hobbs launched forth in voluble Anglo-Saxon on the worthlessness of men in general, and this one in particular.

In the meantime her husband leisurely ate up the prawns.

This night was an exception.  The meal passed without the customary equinoctial, and Mrs. Hobbs got her fair share of the shrimps.

“I can tell you what it is, Tom, if you go jumping in the water again with your uniform clothes on, and expect me to wash them and get them decent, you are very much mistaken; somebody else may do them, I won’t.  Such a job, with all the nasty salt water in them.  If that brazen-faced hussy wants to drown herself let her.  Good riddance, I say, to bad rubbish.  If it had been me, now, you would not have been so quick, I’ll be bound.”

“Now, draw it mild, Bell!  It was you that were taking her part only last night.”

“How dare you say that, you aggravating man!  Did I not say at once that it was she that killed her husband, and now are not my words proved true?  Has not her guilty conscience driven her to try and drown herself?  Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

“Don’t be so hasty; it proves nothing of the sort.  You will admit that if she is the criminal, she must be a most daring and cold-blooded one.  Now, daring criminals, particularly women criminals, are hardly ever known to display remorse of any kind.  The mind of an innocent woman is only too likely to be upset by such a day as that passed by Mrs. Booth, but a criminal having expected it would remain quite unmoved.”

“So you still think she is innocent?”

“I am more convinced than ever.”

“And what have you done to-day?”

“To commence at the beginning—I thought the matter well over last night.  You will remember that the doctor said the knife entering the back near the spine, between the ribs, pierced the heart, and caused instantaneous death; but violent muscular movements of the limbs and body were likely to have occurred for some moments afterwards, and the stab could not have been self-inflicted.  I felt by no means sure of that.  It seemed unlikely, certainly; but any solution of this problem must be an unlikely one, and this appeared at least as feasible and plausible as any.  Then I tried to imagine how Mr. Booth could have carried out his purpose.  The knife, as you know, had no proper handle, but only the thin pointed haft.  Suppose he had stuck it in his bed, raised himself, and fallen backwards on the point, and then, in his pain, turned over—this would account for his position?”

“Why, of course, that’s it, Tom!  It’s as plain as possible!  Why, you have got more sense than I gave you credit for!”

“But that is not it, Bell.  I have carefully examined the bed and the sheet he was lying on, and there is no perforation, such as the haft must have made.  Giving up this idea, I had to find another solution.  If Mrs. Booth was not the criminal, but some third party, who was that criminal likely to be?  Clearly some one resident in the house; this was the more likely.  They would be on the spot, and be acquainted with all the small details necessary to execute such a deed undetected.  At the same time, it must not be overlooked that a person capable of entering, undisturbed, one locked room, might, perhaps, just as easily have entered a locked-up house.

“I considered the inmates in this order—There was Mrs. Delfosse, the landlady.  She is a respectable lady, and known on the Shore for years.  In regard to her, the crime could bring no conceivable benefit.  Mr. Booth was almost a stranger to her, and his tragic death is likely to prove a serious loss, so I rule her out of the possibles.  Next there is the servant girl.  Here I thought there might be a clue.  These betting men are mostly a fast lot; perhaps Booth had been tampering with her.  But Eliza Smith is a quiet, decent girl, engaged to be married to a carpenter, and when she assured me Mr. Booth had not spoken half-a-dozen times to her in his life, I believed her.  So I ruled her out.  Then there are the other boarders—the two Germans, the brothers Schnider, on the first floor.  I said to myself, ‘These foreign fellows are often the kind of men to fancy other men’s wives, and to take strange means to gratify their fancy.’

“Acting on this idea, I called on these gentlemen in town.  They seem to be in a good way of business, fine warehouse, clerks, and all the rest of it; but the men themselves are a pair of ugly yellow devils, with big fat noses.  Supposing Mrs. Booth to be a party to an intrigue with one of them, to say the least she has very bad taste.  But then I reflected that women are very capricious.”

“Not more than men, I’m sure!”

“And, though the late Mr. Booth was at least in appearance worth half-a-dozen of these German sauerkrauts, yet we have the memorable example of Hamlet’s mother, that ugliness itself is sometimes an attraction to feminine taste.”

“Who was that Mrs. Hamlet?  Did she live on the Shore?  I never heard of her.”

“No, she is a character in a play.”

“Written by a man, I suppose?”

“Yes; William Shakespeare.”

“That explains it.  I knew it would take a man to write foolery like that!  And what did those Germans tell you?”

“I could get nothing out of them.  They talked like two idiots, so I left them in disgust.  But, coming home, and thinking the matter over in my mind, I began to doubt if they had not been acting a part with me to try perhaps to throw me off the scent.  Is it likely now, that two dunderheads such as they pretended to be, could successfully carry on a Sydney wholesale business?  They tell me, and I have no doubt it’s true, that it takes a man to be as sharp as a razor for that kind of work.  And later, when crossing the ferry, I met one of the clerks I had seen in the office, I took the opportunity to pump him in a quiet way about his bosses, and he was not slow to talk.

“‘Are they fond of women!’ said the clerk.  ‘Just terrors!  I believe it’s all they think about, and they think no small beer of themselves.  Why, there’s Jacob, that’s the eldest, to hear him you would think all the girls in Sydney were running after him, and the married women, too.  Even this Mrs. Booth they are talking about so much now, he has often said she had made a dead set at him, wanted him to spark her about, and I don’t know what.’

“‘And did he?’ I asked.

“‘Not that I know of.  He never told us that.  But then he is such a terrible liar I never believe a word he says.’

“Here we arrived at Milson’s Point, and the clerk left me, but what he had said caused me to think more seriously of these Germans, particularly the elder one, Jacob.  As you said yourself, Bell, the knife is not a woman’s weapon, and more than that, with the exception of a few sailors who carry a sheath knife, it is not an Englishman’s weapon.  With many foreigners, on the other hand, it is their common mode of attack.  Here we have a man stabbed in a house, probably by an inmate of that house.  Two of these residents are foreigners, and one of them has an avowed passion for the wife of the murdered man.  What is more likely than that he should be the criminal?”

“Of course, Tom, it’s as clear as daylight; it’s that Jacob!  That’s the man!”

“Not so fast, Bell, not so fast.  How did he open and close the locked and bolted door?”

“Why? why! she must have done it for him!”

“Then she is as guilty as he is, and we had decided she was innocent!  Besides, how does this explain the robbery of Mr. Booth’s safe in Sydney?  For, in spite of the newspapers, I am convinced there is some connection between the two events.  Reviewing the evidence carefully, I think with the Germans it is so far a case of suspicion only.  Another boarder was Professor Norris.  He, you will remember, was the first to break open the door and enter the room.  And mark this, he is an old friend of Mrs. Booth.  I went to his shop in Park Street, where he appears to carry on a fortune-telling or character-reading business.  As I expected, he was not there; but I found him at Mrs. Delfosse’s.  He talked very freely, and I must admit seemed very straightforward in all he said.  He may be a bit eccentric in his opinions, but I am bound to say appears as little like a murderer as any man I ever met.  This is what he said, in answer to my questions—He had known Mrs. Booth about four years, when he first employed her to assist him in his lectures on phrenology and clairvoyance, which he gave in various towns of the colony.  He finally gave up this work, because Mrs. Booth, who was a Miss Summerhayes at that time, got tired of the business, and preferred a life in Sydney.  Here she took a place as barmaid, and after a time, against his advice, married the late Mr. Booth.  Their married life, he said, was fairly happy, so far as it had gone; nevertheless, he still believes the match was an unsuitable one, and that later on it would have led to dissensions and misery.  He is fairly convinced that Mrs. Booth had no hand in her husband’s death.  She was still, he said, very fond of him.  He could think of no enemy who could desire, or would have benefited in any way by Booth’s death; but he expressed the opinion that all men connected with horse-racing are more or less rogues, and Mr. Booth’s acquaintances were all of that class.

“I asked concerning Mrs. Booth’s relations to the German boarders.  He said they were on no more than just speaking terms.  They met sometimes at meals, but Mrs. Booth had often told him that she did not like their manners.  ‘They ate their food like hogs,’ that was her expression.  So that latterly she had done no more than nod to them.  The Professor felt positive they had had no hand in the crime.

“‘Who has then?’ I asked.  ‘Whom do you suspect?’ He said, ‘I have no suspicions.  I have thought of nothing else for the last two days, day and night, and I cannot even form a theory, even a stupid theory, as to either how the crime was done, or who did it.  I am pretty well acquainted, by reading, with the history of mysterious crimes, but this, so far as I know, is without a parallel.  If I did not know Bertha—that is Mrs. Booth—so well, I should incline to the view that she must have had a hand in it; but I can assure you positively, that I would rather believe it was I myself did it say when I was asleep than that she ever dreamed of such a thing.  I know her so well.  She would not harm a fly, and the sight of blood at any time would make her faint right away.  No, decidedly no, it was not Bertha, and who it was I cannot imagine.’

“With this I left him.  The man may be a skilful liar, but I think not.  It is not the action of a criminal to try and avert suspicion from others—the Germans, for instance.  In Mrs. Booth’s case it might be understood.  It is not the action of the criminal to leave no theory to explain his crime.  So that I am inclined to believe the Professor, and rule him out, and for that matter, accepting his evidence, rule out Jacob Schnider.”

“But who is there left, Tom?” chimed in Mrs. Hobbs.  “If the people in the house are not to be suspected, and the man did not kill himself, it must have been some one outside.”

“So I think.  This is why I called at Mr. Booth’s Sydney office and interviewed his clerk.  This young man’s story, as published, ran so pat I did not half like the look of it.  In the first place, supposing him to be guilty, his story is such as a specious scoundrel would invent.  The fact that three weeks ago he knew that thousands of pounds worth of securities were in the safe, while at the date of the robbery there was only a few hundreds in cash, looks a plausible enough suggestion till you come to examine it.

“What were these securities?  Were they inscribed stock, mortgage deeds, or bonds?  If so, however valuable to the owner they might have been, they would be quite useless to a thief.  Cash, on the other hand, is useful to anybody, and there is nothing to show that the cash in the safe at this particular time was not as large as it had ever been.  On the other hand, supposing David Israel to be the criminal, or cognisant of the crime, it is hard to understand why an apparently useless murder of great danger and difficulty was added to the comparatively easy crime of theft.  Certainly the safe must have been opened by a strange key.  Why, having the key, should the robber trouble himself about the life of Mr. Booth?  Clearly, if there was any connection between the two crimes there must have been some other motive besides that of robbery.

“These were the thoughts in my mind when I questioned the clerk.  He is a glib young man, very dapper in his dress, very voluble in talk, and this is what he said in answer to my questions—He was still carrying on the business, not opening any fresh accounts, but simply paying and receiving cash as it became due.  In this he was acting according to instructions from Mrs. Booth, who desired that all her husband’s engagements should be honourably met.  He had been in the employ of the late Mr. Booth for the past six months, his duty being to keep all the accounts and the books, Mr. Booth being a poor scholar.  The business had been very profitable, no doubt of that, and, besides, his master had had a great run of luck.  He could not remember such a run of ‘skinners’ as Booth had had lately.  I asked him what a skinner was.

“He said it was a day that was bad for the public; when they were skinned, in fact.  As he kept all the accounts, I asked him if he could tell me more exactly by referring to them, how much money had been left in the safe on Saturday.  Israel seemed to me to hesitate a little; perhaps it was only my fancy, for he very quickly gave me a total—£374 10s.

“‘This is larger,’ I suggested, ‘than the amount that you first stated.’

“‘Yes, it is,’ he said; ‘but I then spoke hurriedly, without reference to the accounts.’

“‘Was it usual,’ I asked, ‘to have so much loose money?’

“‘Oh, yes,’ he answered, very sharply, ‘we often had a couple of hundred; but Saturday was a busy day, and there might have been a little extra.’

“‘As a matter of fact,’ I inquired, ‘is not this the first time in your experience that such a large sum in cash has been locked up in the safe?’

“‘Perhaps it is,’ he said.

“‘Is it not a fact, Mr. Israel’—and here I made a shot at a venture, an inspiration of the moment ‘that Mr. Booth was about to dispense with your services?’

“‘No such thing!’ he exclaimed; but his sallow face turned red, then very pale.  ‘No such thing; he might have growled a bit, he did occasionally when “lively”; but he did not mean what he said.’

“‘He did give you notice then?’

“‘In a sort of way; but it was not serious, and he was half tight at the time.’

“‘And when would this notice expire?’

“‘The end of this week.  But it was not serious, I tell you.  I took no notice of it.  As a matter of fact, Mr. Booth could not understood his own books, and knew he could not do without me.’

“At this point I turned the conversation, and asked him did he know if his master had any enemies, or any persons who would benefit by his death.  Israel answered readily enough.

“No, he did not know any particular person; but a big betting man was likely enough to have bad blood with some people; and, as regards his death, that might no doubt lead to the scratching of all his horses in training by his widow; and of course those who had backed them would lose, and the chances of other horses in the race be so much the better.

“This was a new clue to me, and, bidding good-day to Mr. Israel, I came home.  Carefully considering the evidence of this clerk, it appears to me the most important of all.  In the first place, on his own statement there was ample motive for a robbery of the safe.  And not only was there a motive, but he was the only person likely to know that such a large sum was locked up.  Next, we have his own assertion that there was £374.  But how much more may there have been, unentered by him in those books, over which he had full control?  And this notice of dismissal that he was under which he now treats so easily—may, very likely, have been of serious consequence to him.  And why was this notice given?  Certainly a man in Booth’s position, ignorant of accounts, much of whose business was done on ‘the nod,’ and required an expert to recognize all his varied customers, would be very slow to dismiss a confidential clerk.  Probably the cause was something serious—perhaps criminal?  At any rate, it looks shady.  If there was a spirit of revenge in this man we have a motive for his master’s death; but if we add to this the possibility, as he himself suggested, of a betting-book being so arranged as to gain largely by Mr. Booth’s death, we have a second and still stronger motive.”

“Well, I will say, Tom,” said Mrs. Hobbs, “you have more sense than I gave you credit for.  You should arrest that Jew boy at once.  I should not hesitate a minute.”

“Easy, my dear, easy.  Remember you were equally persistent just now, first that Booth killed himself, then that Jacob Schnider did it.”

“I said nothing of the sort.  It was you, you thick-headed numbskull!  But there, that’s just like you, trying to put your own mistakes on my shoulders!  Why, no one with a grain of sense could hesitate for a minute.  I had my doubts from the first about that clerk!”

“Well, old woman, let us suppose it is the clerk, or some one helping him.  How do you account for his passing through two locked and bolted doors, and re-passing, leaving them fastened behind him?  That he should be able to open the doors is understandable, but that he should have troubled to relock and rebolt them after himself is incredible.  The man who robbed the shop locked neither safe nor door, though the motive in that case would have been quite as strong and the job much easier, for in this case the locking was from the outside.”

“Then the murderer did not open the doors at all!”

“So I was inclined to think.  But there are only two other possible entrances to the room—a chimney a cat could hardly crawl down, and a window fastened inside, barred without, and thirty-three feet from the ground.”

“Well, I don’t care what you say!  That Israel did it, right enough!  I never saw a man so aggravating as you are.  You no sooner find the man that did it than you try and prove he didn’t!”

* * * * *

It was the evening of the next day.  Mr. Hobbs had returned to his tea.

“Well, Tom!” said his wife; “how did the inquest go?  Anything fresh?”

“Nothing fresh, Bell.  Nothing I have not told you.  Dobell, as I expected, has found out nothing.  He is in a bit of a fix I can see plainly enough.  He expected to find corroborative evidence against Mrs. Booth, but, so far, he has failed.”

“Then the jury acquitted her?”

“On the contrary; they committed her for wilful murder, and by this time she is in Darlinghurst.  But that was only what was to be expected.  A coroner’s jury have not got a judge to direct them.  Their verdict is only tentative.  With the evidence before them they did right.”

“And how did the poor woman take it?”

“You never saw any one look more astounded.  She stared round the room as though she was looking at a ghost, and then swooned right away, with a loud shriek.  The Professor was there to hold her up, and I could see him turn pale and tremble like a leaf.  He told me himself that the shock of this affair is likely to send the poor girl out of her mind, and it is easy to see he is very much attached to her.”

“Poor dear creature, what she must suffer!  You must help her, Tom.  Now set your wits to work.  I know you can if you like.”

“I will do my best, Bell; and if brains and ability, though I say it that should not, can solve the North Shore mystery, I will solve it!”

CHAPTER VII
LOOKING BACKWARD-WINDSOR

Three years earlier than the incidents related in the preceding chapters, the walls and fences of that moribund and derelict country town, Windsor, were ornamented by a series of posters that proclaimed the early appearance of the renowned Professor Norris, mesmerist, phrenologist, and magnetic healer; also the gifted clairvoyant, Bertha Summerhayes, reader of the past and future.  And then followed numerous details of the wonders and signs common to such entertainments, the bill concluding with this parting advice—“Man, know thyself!”

Why men generally are invited to make the acquaintance of the very second-rate article referred to was not stated.  Or, having found what an unmitigated fool that person generally is, what he was to do in the matter was also a blank.

Windsor took the posters very quietly.  Nothing but a circus or a Hawkesbury flood will stimulate the languid circulation of a native of its mud flats.  Professor Norris and his assistant, who had arrived at Mrs. Brown’s family hotel that morning, had returned from a round of inspection, and met in their sitting-room to compare notes.

“What do you think of the town, my dear?  Is it not a fine, quaint old place?”

“I don’t know about being quaint, it is old enough.  Why, half of the buildings seem to be empty, and the other half public houses?  Whatever do the people do for a living?”

“Perhaps they drink in each other’s bars,” said the Professor simply.

“And do you know what Mrs. Brown asked me?  She said we must pay each day’s hotel charges in advance!”

“It must be her large organ of Caution.  This is very unusual.”

“So I told her, but she explained that shows had so often failed to make expenses in this ‘quaint’ old town of yours, that continued losses had forced them to make this stipulation.  Nevertheless, she was kind enough to add that she would give something towards the subscription to pay our fare to Sydney when the time came.”

“That was her large organ of Benevolence, and very kind of her.”

“But what a place!  I am sure I thought being a professional was something nice, that at any rate people would respect me; but it seems we are looked upon as little better than tramps.  For my part I’m sick of it.  Windsor is the last straw.  Once catch me in Sydney again, and a team of bullocks shall not drag me out of it!”

“You are too impressionable, my dear.  Remember our educational mission.  It is not only for our own personal ends we travel, but more especially to awaken in men a more enlightened interest in those mesmeric and electric powers that invest them.  Think of the cause, my dear, think of our mission.”

“Fiddlesticks for your mission!  The ‘Cause’ will not clothe us, and feed us, and pay the Mrs. Browns their bills.”

“Now, don’t fret; we may have a good house to-night, our bills are really posted everywhere.”

“Of course they are; they are on the doors of all the empty houses.”

“And who can tell how many heads I may have?  I have remarked some really interesting subjects in this place.  The temperaments are largely lymphatic.  I saw the largest alimentativeness standing at an hotel door that I have ever seen.”

The Professor, having got on his favourite theme, would have gone on indefinitely, had not a servant come to the door to announce the visit of a gentleman from the newspaper.

“Show him up by all means,” said the Professor.  “It is always wise to stand well with the Press, and besides, he may want his character read.  It would be a most excellent advertisement for us, most excellent.”

The gentleman from the newspaper was coming up the stairs with an aggressive step.  As general utility in the office he had been dispatched to demand immediate cash payment of the printing bill, and he felt no hesitation in undertaking the task.  He had been told to stand no humbug, and he meant to act up to instructions.  Hubert Gosper was a tall, lank youth, with the Colonial looseness of limb, like wheels on an old axle that want screwing up; a narrow face, regular features, the eyes small and set back, as Australian eyes are wont to be, with the accompanying lines in the forehead, and contraction of the eyebrows, due to the glare of light.  As he entered the room with careless confidence the Professor bowed to him, but before he could commence his abrupt demand, his eye caught the face of Bertha Summerhayes.

And she smiled at him graciously, and from her eyes came a fire that flashed through him, seared him in some way, making him, as it were, from that moment, and instantly, in some sort, another man.  For the nonce he was almost dumb, and stumbled and stammered disconnected words.

The Professor in pity came to his assistance.  “Ah; no doubt you wish to have your character read?  I shall do so with the greatest pleasure.  Of course, members of the Press are on my free list.  Take a chair.”

Hubert, or Huey, as he was commonly called, mechanically obeyed.

“Really, a most remarkable head!” exclaimed the Professor, after his fingers had passed once or twice through the hair of the sitter.  “Most remarkable?  I find you have intellectual gifts, which, if properly cultivated, might make a first-class novelist or playwright.  A wealth of language and imagery that promises the eloquence of a great orator.  In the perceptive organs you have that analytical faculty that is required by the legal mind, and, should inclination lead you to mathematics, or the exact sciences, you have all the organs required, of the most ample development.  On the side of morals, I find strict integrity and lofty veneration.  The Church would in you gain an ornament and a bright light.  Of what are—perhaps unfairly—termed the selfish organs, your share is a wise and proper balance, and the animal only such as is required to give the requisite energy and stimulant to the whole.  I say, without hesitation, that to such an endowment of intelligence as you possess no path in life, however eminent, is closed.  You may be a statesman, a prelate, a poet, artist, or engineer, and I would even venture so far as to say you might in time, by diligent study and observation, be a phrenologist.”

“Be a what?” exclaimed Huey, as though some insect had stung him.

“A phrenologist, my dear sir; one of the noblest careers open to our poor, frail humanity.”

“How much a week do they get?”

“If you mean how much in paltry coin is their share, the returns, I admit, are somewhat scant, but the wealth of gratitude from honest hearts made happier, and the noble exaltation in the spread of science and truth are illimitable.”

“I’m afraid the terms won’t suit!”

“Reflect, my dear friend.  This day a path opens before you.  Be my pupil; such talent as yours lies buried—let it burst forth and bloom.”

Huey’s eyes by this time had again wandered to Bertha, who sat apart, and the feeling was strong within him that he must see again and talk with this girl.  This proposal of the Professor’s, though idiotic from his own point of view, would form an excuse for further visits.

So when they parted a little later, without one word being said of the printing account, it was understood that Huey was to think the matter over and call again.

CHAPTER VIII
THE TWO LOVERS

An empty wood dray was going up the main street, Windsor, a young man seated on the side rail, carelessly resting after bringing in a second load of firewood from Pitt Town Common.

He was well-proportioned, muscular and hard with work, and black tanned by the sun.

Professor Norris, had he given an honest chart of this man’s character, would have found little for exultant rapture; and, on the other hand, little to condemn.  A mind uncultivated, stunted by hard physical labour, he sat in his dray with a stolid, bovine content, for he had dined heartily on his midday meal of damper, corned beef, and a billy of black tea.

So he jolted on his road, as happy for the time being as a hungry cow in a lucerne paddock; but looking up his eye caught sight of a newly-pasted bill on a wall, and he pulled up his horse to read it.  Seeing an acquaintance and old school-fellow close by, be hailed him—

“Hullo, Huey! what’s all this about on this bill?  Mesmerism and clairvoyance!  What sort of fake is that?  Is there any circus in it, or horses?”

“No, Alec,” replied Huey; “it’s a man that feels your bumps and tells you, you are an awfully clever fellow, and a girl that reads you your fortune, and all kinds of things besides.”

“Oh, that sort of rot!  I thought it might have been something worth seeing.”

“The show’s not up to much, but the girl’s a ripper—the prettiest girl in the world, I do believe!  Straight wire, and no joke!”

“Is it worth a bob now, to go and see her?”

Little thinking how much hung on his answer, little knowing to how large a degree that answer would shape his own life and that of others, Huey answered—

“Pay a bob!  Why, it’s worth a quid, man, and cheap at the price!”

* * * * *

On his second visit to the Professor, Huey got on speaking terms with Bertha, and that young lady, instinctively seeing, or feeling, the conquest she had made, added more gracious smiles and still more gracious words to ensnare her victim.  And yet there was a certain haughtiness and reserve about her that repelled familiarity, and perhaps added to her charm.

“It must be very nice for you,” said Huey at this interview, “to be travelling about the country, seeing all the different towns and people; not confined, a poor creature like myself, to one dull little place.”

“So I thought,” replied Bertha, “when the Professor persuaded me to make this journey with him, but I am heartily tired of it.  Out of Sydney you are buried, fairly buried, and what is there to see but the same old bush and the same old stupid people wherever you go.  It is all very well for the Professor; he finds wonderful ‘subjects,’ as he calls them, everywhere.  I don’t know how many possible Shakespeares and Miltons he has not discovered.  To hear him, you would think the bush was just running over with talent.  He says it is only accident that brings great men to the front, and that for one that is known, hundreds are lost to themselves and everybody else.  Now what is the good, I want to know, of being as clever as clever can be, if you have to waste it all on wallabies and cockatoos?”

And here it seemed to Huey that Bertha’s words had a personal address, that she already felt an interest in him, and, in this indirect way, was summoning him to a new life.

“But what is a fellow to do—one of those clever men you speak of, I mean?  How is he to get out of the rut?  What is the good of being clever, anyway?  Like the Professor, for instance.  He is not very rich, I suppose?”

“Oh, poor old Pro!  Rich?—no!  And never will be.  His one desire is to spread what he calls the ‘Light of Modern Research’; but it’s my belief that people don’t want his ‘Light,’ or anybody else’s.  Every one thinks himself so clever, you know.  And when you try and prove to them they are just ignorant and stupid, they don’t like it.”

“And what do you think of it all, Miss Summerhayes?”

“I am afraid I am one of the stupid, ignorant people!  I just want to be like everybody else—no better, no worse.  Only let me be where there is somebody—some life.  This is my last appearance on the platform.  Once in Sydney, there I stop.  Dear old Sydney!  I had no idea what a delightful place it was till I had spent twelve months amongst gum-trees, post-and-rail fences, and bark huts.”

“And where do you live in Sydney?” Huey asked, but before the answer came the Professor burst into the room.

“I have found it out, my dear.  Really it’s the most simple thing in the world as plain as the nose on your face, so to speak and no one has ever seen it before.  It’s a scientific discovery of the highest importance, and will rank with the laws of gravity and natural selection.  Really the law is self-evident.”

“What law, Pro?  What are you excited about?”

“You know, my dear, I have often told you that, valuable as phrenology is as a guide to character, it yet only tells a man’s possibilities, not what a man is.  This must be looked for in other directions, and I have always held that physiognomy was the clue.  But although we all acknowledge that character is shown by the face, no one has yet pointed out the simple rule by which we are all, even a little child, more or less guided.  Now, that rule I have just thought out, and I venture to predict it will revolutionize our social organization.”

“Well, what is the rule?  Tell us, Pro, quickly, or you will have found out something else and forgotten all about it.”

“The rule, my dear, is this—That where those changes, that take place in the face of every person to express the varied emotions, are found as a permanent part of the face when in repose, then that person has that emotion in a correspondingly high degree, and it follows that as the character is changeable, so is the face.  One is an exact index of the other.  Let me illustrate.  You yourself, who have large love of admiration, an organ becoming and proper of your sex, have the mouth depressed between the nose and chin.  Now, when you smile, as you are now doing, the corners of the mouth are drawn back, as it were, giving to any mouth a slight appearance of what, to you, is a permanent feature.  And when a person is resolute or determined, is it not a fact, Mr. Gosper, that the teeth are clenched and the jaw projected?  Are not these also the signs of resolution and determination?  And so on, all through.  I could multiply instances indefinitely, but one has only to stand before a mirror, and like an actor, express the different sentiments, to learn the whole key to physiognomy in a few minutes.”

“But what do you mean to do about it, Pro?” inquired Bertha, smiling incredulously.

“When we get back to Sydney I will write a book.  I am inclined to think you are right as to the want of sympathetic appreciation of the public for lectures.  Literature is the teacher of to-day.  To literature I will turn my energies.”

Huey, who was in no ways interested in the “new law,” here found means to escape, and with a smile of adieu from Bertha that haunted him for many days to come, descended the stairs, and as he descended there seemed to be a light going out of his life.

She would leave the next morning; how much that meant he commenced to realize.  The flames of a new hope, brightened in her presence, flickered and dimmed as he left her.  With the descending stairs the hope grew smaller and smaller, and once descended, seemed to go right out.

What could he, odd man in a country printing office, hope to offer?  Even George Street, that up to this time had appeared a right and proper kind of thoroughfare for a country town, now looked mean and squalid, and Windsor itself a grave for youth and energy.  He could not stand it.  He felt sure he could not stand it.  Better far to starve in a city than vegetate amidst the Hawkesbury flats, animate and inanimate.

And joined with this thought was a passionate resolve to see Bertha Summerhayes again, to strive for her, to fight for her if need be, but to possess her at any cost.

* * * * *

On Pitt Town Common, the following morning, Alexander Booth was having an inward experience, not unlike that of his chum, Huey.  He had been twice to the lecture, and though not mesmerized by the Professor, he was affected in a most strange manner by his fair assistant.

He had not spoken to her, he had only seen her as one of a small audience, yet she already filled his thoughts in a way that was engrossing and irresistible, almost painful.  It was as though his mind had been a clean slate and she the first to write on it, not in part, but over the whole surface.

So it came about that the logs would not split that day; they might have been tough or fuzzy, or crossed in the grain.  He had never found his judgment so mistaken as to how a tree would run.  Then he took to cursing the logs, the wedges, and the maul, then by progression to damn the common, the life he was leading, and himself for a fool for following it.  He who was used to whistle at his work, like a magpie on a stump, never piped a note, and though the sun glared down through the shadeless forest of box and ironbark on the brown grass and dusty track, it seemed to him a dark cloud was in the sky.

Going into Windsor at last, he flogged the horse in a way unusual to him, and seeing Huey in George Street, hailed him with a sense of relief.

“I’m full up, Huey.”

“Full of what?”

“Full of this dog’s life, of slogging all day for a mere nothing.  I’m going to give it best and clear.”

“So am I.  I told the boss this morning this would be my last week; I’m off for Sydney.  Windsor may be good enough for old men to die in, but for a young man who wants to live Sydney’s the place.”

“Then I’ll go with you, I’m blest if I don’t.  I’ll tell the old man to-night.  Young George is big enough now to do my work, and if the old man does not like it he can just do the other thing.”

So the bargain was concluded, and the two young men, each turned to discontent by a pretty face, decided to explore the unknown, and plunge in the maelstrom of Sydney life.

CHAPTER IX
HUEY AND ALEC

The two lads had been to Sydney before as holiday visitors, but to actually live there, to depend for their future on what the city might offer, was a new, and at first, delightful experience.  Huey did not own to himself that he was following in Bertha’s footsteps.  He satisfied his mind that he was only acting from the wise desire to better his prospects and enlarge his opportunities.  As the time came that saw them at last alighting on Redfern platform, his ambition had soared into wild dreams of what the metropolis might hold out.  Why should he not be sub-editor of one of the important dailies?  Or editor, perhaps, of some minor paper?  What the Professor had said about his capabilities was, no doubt, exaggerated; but he felt there was a substratum of truth.  Once let him get his foot on the ladder, as high of course as possible to start with, and he felt all the power to climb to the top.  Parliament and the Ministerial bench all shone before him in a dim vista of future greatness.  He had perhaps too much common-sense to take those dreams quite seriously, yet there was pleasure in the nursing of them and Youth and Hope sat by to fool him.

Alec, in his own more stolid, matter-of-fact way, had his dreams too.  A well-paid billet, with little to do but drive about in a buggy and have unlimited drinks at the wayside pubs, was nearly his ideal, if put in words.  He was not brought to Sydney in a hope to renew the sight of Bertha; he did not know she had gone there; for Huey, with an instinctive jealousy, had not told him.

The sight of this girl had acted on him as a species of revelation that the good things of life were not confined to a timber-getter on Pitt Town Common.  That in fact much that was desirable, this girl, for instance, was, for a firewood-getter, hopelessly cut off.  So he had thrown down his tools, careless of his father’s displeasure, and taken the train with Huey.

To an arrival from the country George Street, Sydney, is an everlasting wonder and delight.  The throng of passengers and vehicles all rushing along, the multitude of strange faces, and smartly dressed shop-windows, causes him to wander up and down, with mouth half open and staring eyes, devouring, as it were, the scene before him.  Huey and Alec were not quite new chums to the city, and passed successfully the numerous door men on Brickfield Hill, who, perhaps attracted by their tanned faces, or the country clothes, or some other sign that their dog-like instinct finds in the Bushman, solicited their patronage on terms the most pressing.

It was only after their second day, when they had first made inquiries in the direction of their hopes, that those hopes became more shadowy and indistinct.

Huey found no possible opening for a sub-editor who was not qualified by previous experience in the same kind of work.

Alec, who had pitched on the occupation of brewer’s traveller as his ideal, at least to commence with, found on the most casual inquiry that not only experience, but influence, was required to secure the billet.  He was, however, consoled for the loss, for a time, by a visit he paid casually to a horse sale-yard, where the heavy gold watch-chain and imposing air of the auctioneer took his fancy.  He would be a horse salesman at all costs.  He invited an habitué of the yard to take a drink, hoping to get some useful information.

He did.

“You understand horses—perhaps you know a good beast when you see one?”

“I should think I did; and a bad one, too.”

“That’s just it; you know the bad points about a horse.  Now, an auctioneer doesn’t; he just sees in every animal ‘The finest beast that ever came into this yard!’  And you think, I suppose, he just has to stand there and take bids, and knock it down to the highest bidder?”

“Well, I should think so.”

“You are a soft one, and no mistake.  Where did you come from?  Damper must be cheap in your part.  Why, you mug, the auctioneer just bids himself, and keeps her going if he sees a mug about, and then runs him as far as he thinks he will go before he knocks him down.  Now, could you run a mug and not be caught ‘on the rocks’?”

Alec had to own to himself that at present that prospect was closed to him.

On the third day, ambition having cooled, they tried for more humble posts, Huey as reporter and Alec as ’bus driver, but here also they found the door closed on them.

By the end of the week their ardour had so cooled that Huey was hunting round job offices for a place as printer’s devil, and Alec found the dignity of driving a tip-dray one to be desired.  But they found even in these humble walks those more qualified than themselves before them.  So they spent a great part of the day walking about the Domain or sitting on the seats, resting after their tramps for work.  They did not tell each other much of their experience after the first day or so.  Their day’s fortune on a re-meeting was all summed up in the mutual ejaculation—

“No luck!”

“No luck!”

Taken up with their own cares, the two friends had, these last few days, paid little heed to those about them, yet more than once they had noticed a rather stout old gentleman, clean-shaved, white-haired, with a babyish, chubby face, like a cherubim gone to seed, with a pair of big blue eyes that looked wonderingly about.  There was generally a cluster of children about him, whom he incited to foot races, long jumps, and other sports, he himself seeming more gay and childish than all the rest.  One morning two of these small boys began fighting, and, to the surprise of the young men, the old gentleman, far from interfering, was urging them on, with eager instructions as to how to hold their fists and strike their blows.  Huey went forward to interfere.  Alec, for his part, thought the sport rather interesting than otherwise.  But the old gentleman pulled Huey up by exclaiming—

“Let the young roosters have it out; it makes them game!  Watch the little fellow—he is trying the La Blanche I taught him yesterday!”

The bigger boy now retreated, howling, with a bleeding nose, but the old gentleman sent a threepenny-piece after him by another boy, and in like manner rewarded the victor.  The children then left in a bee-line for the main entrance gate, probably, as the old gentleman suggested, “To blue their swag.”

So it came about that they all fell talking together, and in course of conversation the old gentleman learned some of the young men’s experiences.

“So you have come to Sydney to make your fortunes, my boys?  Nothing like it; I admire pluck.  But how are you going about it?  Making fortunes wants understanding, like everything else.  You want to know the ropes, and if you don’t get on the right track soon, you waste all your time, and perhaps never find it at all.”

“Well, can you tell us the ropes?” interjected Alec.

“That is as it may be.  I don’t give all my experience away to the first comer just for the asking.  Let us hear what your ideas are of making a fortune first.”

“Well,” said Huey, “I believe in getting into some firm, the bigger the better, and by steady industry and making myself useful, working my way up to the highest position—early to bed, early to rise, a penny saved is a penny got, and all that sort of thing.”

“No good,” was the laconic comment of the old gentleman.  “Those sentiments might have been all right a hundred years ago, but they are not up to date.  Honest Integrity, when he has been in a firm long enough, say all the best years of his life, gets promoted by getting the sack, because his salary looks too big, and they can get a younger man to do his work for half the money.  As for the ‘early to bed’ racket, I never knew any one but labourers and poor devils who could not help it that stuck to that game.  And the ‘penny saved’ is no better; you have not got the value of that penny till you have eaten it, or spent it in some other pleasing fashion.  A penny saved and put of course, in a bank that goes bung is a mug’s game.  Why, all this kind of foolishness you are talking is the ruin of hundreds of promising lads; and it’s just unlearning it all and reading it the other way about that is called experience.”

“But you don’t mean to say,” urged Huey, “that honesty is not the best policy?”

“Oh, no,” said the old gentleman, “honesty is a good line, particularly for a cashier or a trustee.  Be as honest as the day, you gain confidence; and then sooner or later you can clear to America with a good swag.  Yes, honesty is a paying game, properly conducted.”

Hubert smiled aside to Alec.  The old gentleman was either wrong in his head or was trying to take a rise out of them.

“I don’t suppose you know who I am,” continued the old gentleman.  “I am called Soft Sam, or Old Sam, and I have put more successful men on the right track than any other man in Sydney.  Men as green as you are, some of them; now owning houses there” (pointing to Macquarie Street) “and stores there” (pointing to Circular Quay).

“And do all the chaps you help do well?” inquired Alec.

“No, they don’t; and I’ll tell you why.  After getting along all right with the start I give them they get so cocky, they think they are too clever to come to me again, and sooner or later they make a hash of it.  There are several of them over there” (jerking his thumb towards Darlinghurst); “but it’s all their own foolishness, and thinking they could run before they could walk.  But this is dry work talking; let us go and have a wet.”

They went towards the gate, the young men wondering what kind of a man this Soft Sam might be.  Presently the old man spoke again—

“Bless me!” and he clapped his hands in both his pockets.  “I have not got a copper on me!”

“Ah, now we are coming to it,” thought Huey; “he will want to borrow money.”

But Soft Sam did nothing of the kind.

“Come along, boys, it’s all right.  I’ll meet one of my lads before we have gone far.”

Even as he spoke a flash sulky, with a fast-trotting pony, driven by a superfine young swell, was dashing past.  Old Sam put up his hand, and the vehicle stopped.  He stepped forward, and this is what the young men heard—

“Give us a quid, Johnny.”

“A fiver if you like, Sam.”

“No, a quid will do.”

A pocket-book was brought out, the paper handed over, and with a mutual nod the sulky disappeared round the corner.

“A friend of yours?” inquired Huey.

“One of my pupils.”

“Then you are a kind of professor?”

“Well, I never went in for any fine name like that.  I just show the ropes to young fellows as I think will benefit, and when I want a pound I just ask the first one handy.”

“But I suppose you will have a lot of money of your own?”

“Not a penny in the world.  What do I want money for?  It is all very well for young fellows like you, but I would not be bothered with more than I can put in my waistcoat pocket.  I tried it once, but mates were always borrowing it, or worrying me to give or lend it, so I got clear of the lot, and a good job too.”

Soft Sam was now accosted by a man who crossed the street to speak to him, and Alec heard him whisper—

“Lend us a quid, Sam; I’ve got a mug!”

As though it was a matter of course, the hand of the old man went to his pocket, and the note so recently put there changed hands once more.  With this the stranger hurried away and joined another.

“Now you see what it is to have money,” said Old Sam.  “Now, that Jackson is no better than a fool, and I will wager he is trying to work the confidence trick on that new chum he is with.  I told him times enough it is not in his line, but he is one of the clever ones, thinks he knows everything.”

The party had turned into George Street.  Soft Sam pulled up before a draper’s window, flaming with posters, announcing “A Great Fire Sale.”

“My idea,” he said, pointing to the placards.  “A month ago, Smallway was nearly a broker.  He came to me.  I told him to make a fire in his back-yard, call out the Brigade, and give a reporter a fiver to make half a column of it.  Since then he has been coining money.”

“How is that?” said Huey.  “I don’t see where the profit comes in.”

“Damaged goods, of course.  The public will pay fifty per cent. more for smoky, soiled calico than they will for new.  Why, he has got one man and three boys dipping rolls of goods in dirty water in the back-yard all the time.  It is a little gold-mine while it lasts.  I may as well go in and get a quid off him as any one else.”

So saying, the old man stepped into the shop, which was crammed with eager buyers, and in a little time sallied forth with a note in his hand.

“Would not give me less than a fiver.  Said he owed me a hundred times as much.  Now, that’s the sort of man I like—a man who knows where his success comes from, and does not gammon it is all his own cleverness.  Come along, lads, and I’ll show you the finest sight and the finest girl in Sydney.  Here we are; they call it the Golden Bar.”

CHAPTER X
THE GOLDEN BAR

The door swung behind them, and truly the young men were fairly dazzled.  A spacious room, walled with mirrors, with pillars and panelling, fretwork and tracery, all of burnished gold—even the frescoed ceiling had a gilt cornice—the furniture, the ornate bar, and fairy-like shelves, all were gilt.

And the light that streamed in from the oriel roof was rose-coloured, and gave a halo of glory to the whole.

And behind the bar were three fair maidens, and behind them again the usual range of bottles and decanters.

Only for this familiar sight the lads would have taken the place for the dwelling of some genii or millionaire.

Soft Sam smiled as he saw their astonishment.  It pleased him.

“Nice little crib to smoke a pipe, eh?  What will you take?  A bottle of Foster, my dear, and never believe me again if you are not the prettiest girl in the town!  Yes, I call you the Queen of Sydney.”

The barmaid tossed her head contemptuously, served the drinks, and was about to turn away, when her eyes caught those of Huey.

“An old acquaintance!  How are you?  Come to stop in Sydney?”

And Bertha, for it was Bertha, glorified by the latest fashion in dress and coiffure—Bertha, morocco-bound and gilt-edged—smiled at him, bending her head on one side and looking slantwise with her eyes.

Huey drank in her smile like dew from Heaven; drank it in with a species of intoxication.  He answered in words he was ashamed of, so halting and stumbling.  Then the three sat down.

“Isn’t she a clinker?” said Sam.

“My word!” added Alec.

Huey said nothing.

“I’ll go and have a word with her,” said Alec, and, rising, he went to the bar, and started a conversation with Bertha.

Huey watched them, expecting with certainty that Bertha would receive the clumsy compliments and remarks of Alec with indifference, if not disgust.  What was his surprise to see her answer graciously, and, could he believe his eyes, smile on Alec, with that same soul-devouring smile that she had bestowed on himself.  He felt in a moment a great hatred for Alec, and he felt as though this old chum of his had basely robbed him of some dear treasure, and had any one noted Huey’s eyes at that moment, they would have seen a flash of hell-fire from them.

The moment passed,—it was all in a moment, but a bitterness remained, even though as Huey sat there he saw this smile bestowed not on one only, but half-a-dozen other favoured customers.

“Well, boys,” said Soft Sam, “you can stop and see the gals.  I’m off.  You know where to find me.  So long.”

* * * * *

They had had tea at their coffee palace—Huey and Alec.

Huey said he would go upstairs and read.  Alec said he would stroll down to Paddy’s Market.  But no sooner had Alec gone out than Huey put down his paper, went out in the street, and made a straight line for the Golden Bar.  He turned the corner and was about to enter, when he came nearly full-butt on Alec.

There was no explanation.  They knew they had lied to each other, and they felt, not ashamed of themselves, but sore that the other should know.  They entered together and drank together, and played dominoes to pass the time, while they watched each other and Bertha behind the bar, and she smiled on both of them when they came for drinks, with a uniform sweetness.

And the lads drank love and hate as they sat together, and though they spoke in the usual friendly tone, they knew the old friendliness and mutual confidence was buried for ever.

Where they sat the two young men could hear most of what Bertha said to the numerous customers that came to her.  Amongst these was a small crowd of flash young men, full of loud talk and coarse jokes.  One of them, leaning on the bar, looked up at Bertha—

“I tell you what it is, my dear.  Say the word, and I’ll marry you.”

Bertha turned on him contemptuously—

“Marry you?  You must think I want a husband badly.  And what have you to marry on?”

“A few thousands.”

“What is that?  The man that speaks to me must have twenty thousand to begin with.”

The whole conversation was doubtless a thoughtless jest on both sides, but one pair of ears at least did not take it so.  Alec sealed the words in his memory.  And the first question he asked Soft Sam when they met him next day was—

“How can I make twenty thousand pounds?”

CHAPTER XI
HOW TO START IN BUSINESS

“That’s a pretty tidy sum,” said the old man; “not that the amount makes much difference while you are about it.  It is just as easy to make twenty thousand pounds as twenty thousand pence, if you are on the right track.  Now, I have been turning you two young chaps over in my mind, and the question is, what are you fit for that has got money in it?  I should judge you,” turning to Alec, “to have a good loud voice!”

Without a word Alec stood up and gave a coo-ee like a steam whistle, a screech that could have been heard across the water at North Shore, and woke up the Domain sleepers like the sound of the last trump.

“That will do,” said the old man.  “What a pair of bellows you must have!  Now, the first thing you must do is to start in business.”

“But that will require capital, whatever we choose,” observed Huey.

“That is where you make the mistake, my lad.  When a man starts in business with capital, the chances are ten to one he loses it.  If a chap’s smart enough for business, he’s smart enough to start without capital.  Now, money is made to be lost by the mug and picked up by the man of talent.”

“Then if no money is wanted, how do you start?”

“On credit, my lad, and the more you owe to the right people the safer you are.  Who will help you when you are hard pushed?  Your friend?  Not a bit of it.  Your creditors!  Who will push your business, bring you customers, put you in the way of a good deal?  Your creditors.  No man ever failed for debt.  It was for not owing enough!  Why, half Sydney firms would be wound up to-morrow but for their wise foresight in owing too much.  The creditors dare not face the loss, so they keep them going.  As for the squatters in the country, from what I hear there is not one in a score could pay ten shillings in the pound, and they are as jolly as sand-boys and as happy as kings.  Does the price of wool trouble them?  Not much!”

“And is it wise to pay nobody?”

“No, that is a fool’s game!  A small creditor is a small enemy, while a big creditor is a big friend.  It’s the same with appropriating.  Never take a few paltry pounds, you may get seven years.  It is just as simple to start a rotten company and scoop thousands—just as easy and no risk; only fools can’t see it.  And who gets in quod?  The little fishes or the big ones?  Why, the little fishes all the time?  Why, the law is a net made so delicate that all the big sharks can break through; the only question is, will you be a man eaten or a man-eater?

“It’s all the foolishness and humbug we are taught while we are boys that spoils life for most men.  They start out at a game they don’t understand, with the certainty they do.  Mind you, I’m not saying things are not pretty well as they are, for if there were no mugs where would our turn come in?”

Huey felt at first a certain revolt and repugnance to the doctrines of Soft Sam, but little by little the feeling wore off.  The calm certainty of the speaker, the evidence he had of the success of his plans, all told with force.  How could he argue against success; he, who so far felt himself a failure?  A thought came into his mind how One was in old time taken to a pinnacle of the Temple, and the kingdoms of the world shown to him—“All these will I give you if you will bow down and worship me.”

But he put the recollection aside as not suited to the affairs of practical life.

Alec, on his side, received all these new maxims like new milk.

To him they were as the keys of Heaven—self-evident propositions that he wondered had never struck him before.

“Well, what had we better start?”

“I think book-making would do to begin with,” said Sam, “you have got a good voice and plenty of muscle,” turning to Alec.  “I think that’s about your dart.”

“But I know nothing of the business,” replied Alec, despondingly.

“There you go again!  Did you think I expected you did?  That’s another foolishness folks have got in their head, that you have to understand a thing before you try it.  Does the clever miner know where the gold is when he sinks a shaft?  Not a bit of it.  Does the old hand that knows all the points strike it rich?  Not a bit of it.  It’s the mug that comes along and does not know pyrites from peas-pudding that hits the patch!  I suppose you know a horse from a cow?”

“I should say so!” said Alec.

“Then that’s all you want to know to be a bookmaker.  Directly you begin to know one horse from another you commence to be too clever; you are inclined to back your fancy on your own hook, and it’s very soon all up with you.”

“But don’t you have to make a book?  Is there not some science or skill in taking the proper bets, or hedging, or something of that kind?”

“There is nothing in it that a baby can’t learn in five minutes.  You back the field against the public all the time, and the public all finish by losing their money; you always finish by getting it.”

“But bow much shall I make?  Shall I get £20,000?”

“No, I don’t say you will.  I only said this was to commence with.  You might make a thousand a year.  Will that suit till I can put you on a lay for the other?”

Would it suit?  A lad who had been earning so far a few shillings a week with the life of a working bullock!  Would it suit?  Was honey sweet in the mouth; was pleasure better than pain?  Alec just closed with the offer right away, and had to get up and shake hands with Soft Sam on the strength of it.

“But I must warn you,” continued Sam, “that it is not all beer and skittles.  It will be awkward if the favourites win the first few races, because you will have to cut and run, and your business is as good as done for in that line for the future.  But there is no good meeting trouble half-way.  I’ll see you launched when the game is pretty right.  All the same, it is as well to be prepared for a belting.”

“I’m ready,” said Alec.  “I can stand hard knocks with anybody.”

Huey had said nothing to all this.  The possibility of being hunted as a blackleg was not tempting to him, so he turned a look on Soft Sam, which the old gentleman seemed to understand.

“I suppose now the hard knocks and the clearing racket are hardly in your line?”

“I can’t say they are,” answered Huey.

“So I thought.  You want a gentlemanly occupation, without risk, no trouble to speak of, and bags full of profit?”

“That’s just about my complaint.”

“Then here’s the very thing?  You must start as a turf prophet.  You have been on a newspaper and can string words together, and that is what is wanted.”

“But I know no more about horses or who is likely to win than Cook’s statue over there.”

“No more does any other turf prophet.  Do you think that even if they knew one certainty they would not go and pawn their shirts, make their pile, and retire to private life?  Do you think these men are what they call philanthropists, who sell turf knowledge, equal to bank-notes, to the first comers, at five bob a head?  Of course the public does—that Al copper-fastened fool, the public.  You will have to learn the ‘pitch’—that’s easy.  Always refer to the ‘stable,’ what the stable says, what the stable think.  And when your tip loses, as it generally will, ‘Very sorry I could not tell you sooner.  But at the last moment the stable decided to run him stiff.  Could not get the money on.  Ring was afraid of him.  So they are saving him.  Will be a dead bird for sure the next handicap, and I shall have the straight wire, you make no error.’  That’s about the total of it; of course you will vary it a bit, just for variety, ‘The stable has been forestalled; the owner is saving him for the Cup, and the stable did not know till the last moment.  The jockey was got at.’  Or, supposing it’s a mare, then it was ‘one of her off days.’  The fact is, the game is too simple for a smart man.  To an old fisherman it is like catching yellowtail.”

“But five shillings a tip won’t bring in much, I should think, unless the yellowtail you speak of are very numerous,” objected Huey.

“The five bobs, as you say, do not amount to much; hardly pay the advertising.  The profit is another branch of the business.  It stands to reason that the mugs who go to turf prophets are about the muggiest of mugs there are.  This is what makes the business such a soft thing.  Suppose a race is coming off with eleven horses entered and five of them possible winners; then to five different mugs you give five different ‘extra special’ tips, in consideration of which you are to stand in free for half the winnings.  One mug wins and shares, and swears by you ever after, or at least till you have cleaned him out.  As for the others, you smooth them down as per usual—horse could have done it easy, his time at private trials was seconds under, but stable was not on the job!”

“It seems to me that this kind of thing is what is called swindling?”

“You can call it that if you like,” said Soft Sam, smiling.  “Most people call it business, and very good business too.  There is only one thing you have to get to make a start.”

“And what is that?” asked Huey, with a tone of misgiving, as he remembered the diminished state of his finances.

“A name.  The mugs like a good name.  Let me think,” and the old gentleman paused.  “Fred Archer was called the ‘Tinman,’ that will do as well as another, and it sounds ’cute.  Now come along, lads, let’s make a start.  We must have a fresh rig-out to begin with.”

With this the old man led the way, and in a few minutes conducted the young men to the interior of a tailoring establishment much patronized by the fancy.  At the suggestion of Soft Sam an order was left for a complete outfit of the latest fashion in sporting garments.  No payment was asked for; the presence of the old gentleman appearing to smooth all difficulties.

On leaving the shop Soft Sam said—

“You can pay them when you are in funds.  The price will be pretty stiff, but after this they will always serve you on the same terms; and remember this, and paste it in your hat: If you have only one friend in the world let him be a tailor.”

CHAPTER XII
ALEC AND HUEY START BUSINESS

The next week saw Alec fairly started on a Randwick tram, with an assistant recommended as clerk by Old Sam.  As his pouch was devoid of any money but small silver, he had been provided by the provident old gentleman with a twenty pound note, good enough to look at, but not readily changeable at any bank.  With this he was to bluff inquirers for their money if the first race went against him.

“No man,” said Old Sam, “will bustle you for his money if you ask him to change twenty quid.  In the first place, it is not likely he has got change, and even if he has, he will be extra soft if he would care to do it on Randwick flat.”

The note, however, was not wanted, and was duly handed back.  The day had been skilfully chosen.  Alec returned to the Coffee Palace as proud as a hen with a new clutch, with £47 10s. in his pocket.  This with childish pride he displayed to Huey.

“Better than wood-cutting, sonny!”

That week all the newspapers that would insert the advertisement on credit contained the following—

“THE TINMAN,

Pronounced by all the prince of turf prophets.  The only man in the Colonies that gave three straight-out winners for the last Caulfield meeting; five firsts and two seconds for Randwick, and a record for the year never approached in turf history.  We have as good as ever for future events.

“Try the Tinman; Tinman, the turf guide.  Tinman is not lucky; Tinman acts on information.  Agents all over the Colonies.  Tinman is a moral.  Why throw your money away on stiff ’uns when you can get the office for a crown, straight as a wire, from the Tinman.

Box ABC, G.P.O.”

The fruit of this “rot,” as Huey denominated the above par that he had inserted at the old man’s directions, astounded him.  Letters with money rained on him—in small amounts, it is true; still it rained, and the shower was received as manna from Heaven.

* * * * *

During all these days, and long after prosperity had come to them, the two young men were nightly frequenters of the Golden Bar—partly to see the girl they were now both madly in love with, and partly to watch each other.

What was maddening to Huey was that he could make no claim to any special preference shown to himself.  Bertha always received him pleasantly, and seemed to appreciate him and understand his point of view, as no other girl he had ever met had done; but the mischief of it was, that her manner to many other persons, Alec, for example, was equally gracious.  Particularly to Alec, who was always full of small talk, arrant nonsense for the most part, that Huey disdained, even as he watched with jealous eyes the success of his rival.

Unfortunately for Huey, he was endowed with an imagination, and he saw Bertha not only as she was, a pretty, emotional, pleasure-loving girl, but also as an exalted personage, gifted with all those virtues and talents that formed his mute ideal.  And to see her pandering in a public bar to the coarse jokes of fools was to him a mental torture.  He did not for a moment doubt that they two were far superior to all about them, and as he recognized her superiority, so he felt in all justice she should recognize his.

Alec, on the contrary, had no imagination at all worth speaking of.  To him Bertha was a fine girl, or, as he had learned to express it, “A damned fine girl;” and he said it and thought it in the same tone, as though he were speaking of a horse of great merit or a prize cow.  His talk with her, and, for that matter, with every one else, was always on what Theosophists term the “material plane.” And if she responded freely it was perhaps because women of her nature have the art to appear sympathetic to every one they desire to please.

Between the two young men the person of Bertha was never mentioned; but there was a silent acknowledgment of rivalry, a silent determination on each side to have the prize, and a certainty with each that no hope was possible without a big bank balance.

“If I only had twenty thousand pounds I’d marry you to-morrow,” cried out Alec, in a half-jesting, half-serious tone to Bertha.

“If!” was all Bertha replied, as she smiled.

And Huey sat by and listened and ground his teeth, as he also wished that he had the like sum.  But he did not blurt out his wishes in a coarse way like Alec—“Curse him!”

The first use Alec made of his freshly acquired income was to buy a rich bracelet and present it to Bertha.  This she declined, but consented to go for a drive with him on the following Sunday.

Huey, for his part, put his savings in the bank as a nest-egg towards the twenty thousand pounds—not that he did not think a few thousands less than that amount would be sufficient.

On the following Sunday Huey was seated near to Lady Macquarie’s chair, talking to Soft Sam, when he was astounded to see amongst the traps and buggies doing the round Alec and Bertha in a sulky side by side.  Alec gave a wave with his whip hand as he flashed past, but it was only Soft Sam that responded.

“That young fellow seems to be making the pace pretty hot,” said Sam.

“I knew the girl first,” was all Huey could answer.

“Then why didn’t you stick to her, man?  A filly is always such an uncertain kind of animal.  You want to yard and brand them on the jump, so to speak, when you have made up your mind to run them in.  No man understands women till he has no further use of the information.  There is not one in a hundred of them is any good till they are thoroughly broken in, and whether they are worth the trouble I very much doubt.  Did you ever tell the girl you wanted her?”

“No,” said Huey.

“Then why don’t you if you think that way?  Any girl is to be had for the asking if you go the right way about it.  Praise them up; you can’t put it on too thick.  Keep at ’em all the time, and be as deaf as a post to all they say that does not suit you.  And don’t you go away thinking this girl is different to other girls; that is where I have seen smarter chaps than you make the mistake.  All girls are alike, as alike as two peas.  Of course they vary outside, and have different styles with them, but the bed-rock, so to speak, is the same all the time.  But if you take my advice, which I know you won’t—young fellows never do—you will just leave the girls alone for a year or two.  They spoil more men for business, and get more of them into trouble, than anything else.”

And then the old man launched forth into reminiscences of all the promising men he had known go to the dogs after petticoats.  But Huey did not attend, his mind was agitating wilds plans of what he should say and what he should do when he next met Alec and Bertha.

And the day for him was a horror, the park a desolation, and through the yellow of his eyes the whole world out of joint.

* * * * *

The two barmaids at the Golden Bar were taking things easily.  It was a dull hour of the day for business, and Bertha’s turn off.  They were pretty girls, these two barmaids, Sarah Jones (nom de guerre, Ruby), and Maria Simpson (nom de guerre, Florence), and they were well, even richly dressed, and, for their work, well-mannered.

For the Golden Bar was no common public-house or speculation in immorality, but a commercial undertaking for providing the best of everything in the best way at the best prices.  And to choose the three prettiest barmaids he could find was part of the proprietor’s project.

Ruby was languidly polishing a glass that did not want it, on the off chance that the Boss should come in and find her doing nothing.  Florence was similarly occupied.

“I’m getting about tired of this place,” said Ruby.

“So am I,” yawned Florence.

“It was not so bad before Bertha came; one could have a bit of fun and get a few presents.  But she is downright mean.  She grabs everybody.”

“That’s it.  She grabs everybody, and what they see in her I can’t think.  With her snub nose and fish eyes, and the airs she gives herself, one would fancy she was really what some of the chaps call her, ‘the Queen of Sydney.’  Now, there is that old squatter from Way-back, I had him as safe as possible till this creature came.”

“I know you had, dear, and I saw that same man offer her this morning a diamond ring worth fifty pounds if it was worth a penny.  And she would not even take it.”

“I wish he would try me, I’d take it fast enough.  But that is the way with that sly minx.  She will not take things herself, and prevents others.  Who is she, to put on airs?  I suppose she is holding out to make a big haul.”

“I tell you what I think,” exclaimed Florence; “we are just wasting ourselves here, taking my lady’s leavings!  We might as well be two old scarecrows for all the chance we get!  And the way she makes up is something scandalous!  Why, I’m sure half her figure comes away when she strips.  A little powder, I don’t say, or a pull-back, but when it comes to getting inside a dressmaker’s dummy and walking about with that, I say it’s a fraud!”

“But men are so stupid.  They just run after her because she looks at them out of her eyes with the look of a dying cat!  Look at those two young sporting fellows that come here every night.  Any one can see they are gone soft on her, and she had the cheek to go out driving with one of them yesterday.”

“You don’t say!”

“As bold as you please—that one they call Alec.”

“Well, I never!”

The talk was interrupted by the entrance of Bertha.

“Good-evening, my dear,” said Ruby; “how nicely your hair is arranged to-day.  I wish you’d show me the way, there’s a love!”

Florrie came forward, also to inspect, and kissed Bertha as a darling to make her promise to teach the secret of the new coiffure.

“You are in luck, Bertha, going out for buggy rides.  Not that that young Alec is much of a catch.  I should look for something better if I were you.”

“My troubles!” said Bertha.

Soon the bar began to fill, and Alec came in with his shadow, Huey.  Bertha greeted them both with a friendly nod, but the first opportunity Huey came to the bar and spoke to her some low angry words.  His eyes fairly blazed.  But Bertha merely tossed her head.

“I can mind my own business, and you had best mind yours.  Thank you all the same, Mr. Gosper!”

Then Huey retired to a corner and sulked, while Bertha smiled on his rival and other customers with her uniform blandness.

If Soft Sam had been at his side he would have urged Huey to start a desperate flirtation with either Ruby or Florrie, and to have ignored Bertha for the time as one dead.  But Huey had no cunning in maiden wiles and maiden fence, and was hit, palpably hit, at the first parade.  But as days passed the cloud blew over, blew over so far that later on Huey himself drove Bertha down to Botany.

And so, in the mutual rivalry, honours were easy.

CHAPTER XIII
THE HAWKESBURY HANDICAP

The races at Clarendon caused quite a flutter of excitement in the adjacent town of Windsor.  As many as three men and a dog might be seen all at one time in its main street, for some of the visitors stop over-night in the town.

Old Sam and the two young men were of this number, and as after the day’s sport was over time hung heavily on their hands, it was natural they should sally out in quest of amusement—Alec and Huey to see old chums and gather a harvest of outspoken admiration for their talent and pluck, and Old Sam to cruise about in what appeared an aimless manner from hotel to store, to shoeing forge, and to wherever men congregated and he could hear and listen.

Some words casually spoken by a blacksmith appeared to interest him, for he sought out a bill referred to on a neighbouring hoarding, and having read it carefully, at once crossed over to a livery stable and ordered a trap to drive him to Dr. Glenlivet’s place.  They were not long going to the house, which had auctioneer’s bills on the outside walls, and Old Sam briskly entered, and found many others at various parts of the house and grounds inspecting the place.

The caretaker inquired if there was anything in particular he wished to see, but the old gentleman shook his head.

“Just come to have a look round.”

A look round he did, from top to bottom of the house, as though he had thought of buying the lot, and it was only in a casual way that he strolled out to the stable and glanced at a mare in the stall.

“A rare fine horse that,” said the coachman.

“A vicious-looking brute?” replied Soft Sam; but a careful observer might have noted a look of satisfaction in his eyes as he returned to his trap, and to town.

That night when he met the young men his first words were, “I’ve found it for you at last, lads!”

“Found what?” they exclaimed together.

“The twenty thousand apiece you wanted—or have you changed your mind?”

The young men had not changed their minds, so drawing them into a private room, and carefully closing the door, he said—

“You must buy a mare that is to be sold to-morrow; it’s a Dr. Glenlivet’s horse, and there is a sale at his place.  She is a thoroughbred from Hobartville; the doctor bought her for a sulky, like a fool, for she is a vicious brute, if ever I saw one, and smashed up his trap the first time of asking.  Anyhow, she will go cheap, I think.  She’s got a bad name hereabouts, and you must buy her.”

“But what for?”

“What for?  Why, to win the Sydney Cup, or the Melbourne Cup for that matter.  I have seen a worse-looking animal do it.  She’s got the blood, and the cut of a clinker.”

The two sporting men assented at once, their confidence in Soft Sam’s judgment being unlimited, and it was agreed and understood that the two young men should jointly buy the mare, and have her trained and raced as the old man should direct.

When they met again the next night Alec gleefully told the old gentleman—

“I’ve bought the mare—got her for twenty quid; there was only one bid against me!”

“And what shall we do with her now?” said Huey.

“We?” interposed Alec.  “Who said it was our horse?  Did I not buy her and pay for her?”

“But you know it was agreed we should go shares!”

“Shares be blowed!  What’s the good of half a horse to anybody?  I bought her and paid for her.  If you want a horse, buy one yourself!”

“You are a liar and a fraud!”

The response from Alec was a quick blow from the shoulder that knocked Huey down.  Quickly jumping to his feet again, he rushed at Alec.  It was a short smart fight, the old man sitting quietly by smoking and enjoying the mill, and no one at hand to interfere.  It was finished by a knock-out blow from Alec that sent Huey dazed and stupid to the ground.

“Very well done!” said the old man.  “With a little science you’d do inside the ropes.  Now, you’d better shake hands and make it up.”

“I’m willing,” said Alec, holding out his hand with a patronizing smile.

“I’ll see you damned first!” was all Huey said, as he rose slowly to his feet with a look of concentrated hatred in his eyes.  “It’s your turn now, but, mark you, mine will come!”

The old man expressed no surprise at the rupture, perhaps he had foreseen it.  He would take no side in the quarrel.  He knew that the struggle for a woman was at the bottom of the feud, and the dispute about the mare a mere spark that had lit a hidden train of animosity.

He advised Alec what to do with the horse.  He was to run him at small meetings, and not to win even then more than he was obliged.  To avoid suspicion he was even to run her in the first Cup Meeting itself as a stiff ’un unless the weights were lighter than could be hoped for.

“Get her trained away in the bush where none of the sports will notice her, and if I am not mistaken she will do the trick for you.”

Huey also came to Old Sam for sympathy and advice, and while the old man was not willing to say anything more of Alec than that he was a fool to fall out with an old pal, he was willing enough to help Huey.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, lad.  There are more horses than one in this district.  Windsor and Richmond are the cradle of the Australian turf, there are more good ones, of the right sort, knocking about here than in any other place in the Colonies.  If your mind’s set on having a flutter I’ll spend a day or two looking round and see what I can do for you.”

It was a week later that Huey received a telegram to go to Windsor, and from there to Wilberforce, to meet Soft Sam.  He went at once; and was taken straight away to see a black horse grazing in a paddock.

“He’s not as cheap as the other,” said Soft Sam, “and I can’t say I’m quite so sweet on him; but then he’s a horse, and say what you like, a horse carries money better than a filly.  He has never been raced.  I heard on the quiet that the owner believes he is not sound, and he thinks I am a softy who knows no better.  But take my tip, that horse is as sound as a bell.”

So another bargain was made, another horse changed owners, only the matter was kept quiet, not even Alec hearing that Huey had a horse in training.

There was no pretence of outside civility between the two young men now.  Bertha heard part of the story from both parties, but with neither would she take sides; only from that time forward she declined to drive out with either of them.

Alec was fast coming to the front in the business he had chosen, and was already talking of being proposed for Tattersall’s; but while his income rose, so did his spending.  He had no thought of saving money, bit by bit, to make his pile.  It must be done by some great coup, that was his only plan.

Huey also prospered, but his takings were never very great, and of this the larger part was put aside; for, despite the assurance of Soft Sam that the number of mugs was unlimited, Huey felt the time would come when they must run short.

The first time Alec entered the mare he had to name her, and as Bertha she ran almost last in a selling race at Rosehill; not quite last though, for there was a black horse behind her named, a queer name Alec thought, The Vengeance, and entered in a name new to the turf.

For it was Huey’s horse, and he had chosen a friend at Richmond as nominal owner.

And in the months that went by these two horses often met again, and once at Warwick Farm in a Birthday Handicap, in which the field was so moderate or so “stiff” that Bertha’s jockey, in spite of the order that she was only out for an airing, could not keep her back, she pushed to the front and made a dead heat of it with The Vengeance, who was being pulled hard at the post, and nearly got disqualified in consequence.

On the whole, the two young owners were highly satisfied with their investments.  They knew from repeated trials that their animals were pounds and pounds better than the cattle they allowed week after week to beat them.  At the same time, Sam warned them that there were several others, at the same game as themselves, all entered to get the weight lowered, all waiting for the one event of their lives, when their true form should be publicly shown—and their value as racers gone for ever.

Alec already counted his great coup as good as accomplished; if not this season, then certainly the next.  The Sydney Cup should be his, and with it the hand of Bertha Summerhayes.

Huey heard him boast so one day to Soft Sam, and glared at him viciously as he walked away, muttering to himself—

“No, you traitor and bully!  The Cup is not yours yet, nor Bertha either!  The Vengeance is mine, and at any cost he shall be truly named?”

CHAPTER XIV
THE TRIAL

Huey Gosper talked bravely to himself, but he was well aware that, however closely he might have gauged the capabilities of The Vengeance, he had as yet never seen the mare Bertha in proper form, and ridden with the order, “Go for it.”

This uncertainty might upset all his plans.  The truth of the matter he must know, and know he would.

Then his imagination began to evolve scheme after scheme to accomplish his object.  He knew where the horse was quartered, over at Wigway’s, near the Pitt Town Common—an old acquaintance of Alec, and well-known to himself too, for had he not as a boy often gone over there in the season to pick oranges and play cricket with the young Wigways?

Clearly he could not go himself, or at any rate in his present personality, poking about the place.  They would know him in a minute, and be on their guard with the mare.  Alec would hear of his visit at once, and smell a rat.  But who could he trust?  He knew no one fit, and to be confided in, and then he remembered one of Soft Sam’s sayings—

“A man who takes pals in a job takes witnesses against him.  What you can’t do on your own hook don’t do at all.”

And the possibility of disguising himself occurred to him.  Truly, he knew nothing of that kind of thing, but there were people that did, and it should not take much skill to deceive the “cockatoos” out at Nelson.

This was the motive that sent Huey to a theatrical costumier, well-known in the profession, who readily undertook to make such an entire change in his customer that he would not even recognize himself.

And Huey, as he surveyed the result of this promise in the mirror, was more than satisfied.

* * * * *

Near an old slab cottage adjacent to the Pitt Town Common, Farmer Wigway was drawing rails.  His movements were deliberate—deliberate as though he had an assurance that eternity was before him, and he had to put in time.  He was well seconded in this endeavour by his team of bullocks, who stopped to ruminate on the vanities of life or some cognate reflection at every step.

Farmer Wigway swore at the oxen in a fatherly way to wake them up occasionally to mundane affairs, and the procession moved on.

The noise of wheels made by a light trap could be heard coming along the ridge, and at once Farmer Wigway stopped to listen.  Not that he was a very curious man, but buggies were rare in that part of the Common.  None of the neighbours owned one, and the stopping to speculate as to who it might be “put in more time,” and so the end of life was served.

The sound of a trotting horse and light running wheels came nearer and nearer, along the ridge, through the ironbarks, then turned off down the spur into the box-tree flat that led to Farmer Wigway’s.  On it came, and before Mr. Wigway had had half the necessary time to study the new development in all its bearings and possibilities, a buggy, driven by a middle-aged man with bushy whiskers, who had a lad seated by his side, pulled up before him.

“Is this the track to Catti Creek?”

“That depends,” answered Wigway, after giving the matter due consideration, “what part of the Creek you want.”

“I’m trying to hunt up some forfeited selections out that way.  They tell me at the Lands Office there are several of them.”

“So there are, and much good may they do you!  The country is very rough.  I should leave that trap behind if I was you, and if you like, one of my boys shall go and show you the way.”

The stranger seemed to fall in with this proposal readily, for, leaving the lad and trap at the house, he soon set off under the guidance of young Mick Wigway.  But, strange to say, though they had a map of the parish, and Mick knew every nook and corner of it, it was sundown before they got back, and the gentleman with the bushy whiskers had not seen half what he wanted to see.

He found no difficulty in arranging to stop the night, and that evening was given up to ’possum shooting, in which the stranger professed an almost childish delight.

“It appears to me,” said Farmer Wigway, as they trudged under the moonlit gum trees, “that I have seen you before, Mr. —?”

“Amos Clark;” interrupted the stranger.

“Well, Mr. Clark, somehow your face and voice are kind of familiar, yet I swear I never heard that name before.  Yet, come to think of it, it takes heaps of people to make a world, and there’s lots of them must be like lots of others.  Now, there’s that old cow of mine; old Jack Higgins, of Box Hill, has got the very spit of her, and if it wasn’t for the brand I’d swear the two beasts were the same animal!”

Mr. Amos Clark was up early the next morning, and seemed in no pressing hurry to start off on his land quest.  Besides, Mick was not ready.  He had to exercise a mare carefully locked up in a loose-box near the stable before he could start.

The old man and the bigger boys had gone off to work, so Mr. Clark and his young companion were alone in the yard with Mick while he saddled up.  Nothing was more natural than that Mr. Clark should fall to criticizing the animal, and approach to pat it.  But he was quickly warned by Mick to stand clear.

“She’s got the brute of a temper with strangers,” he said; “kicks all round.  Father and I are the only ones in the place that dare come near her.”

“What’s the good of her, then?  What do you keep her for—a vicious brute like that?”

“Oh, she’s not ours.  A sporting cove down in Sydney owns her—Alec Booth, perhaps you’ve heard of him?  He thinks a lot of her, and she can travel, my word!”

“Travel!” said Mr. Clark, with apparent contempt.  “Travel!  Why, my buggy horse would give her a length and a beating any day.”

“What will you bet?” cried young Mick, thoughtlessly.

“I’ll bet you a crown!” said Mr. Clark, who had carefully considered that that amount would be about the limit of the lad’s purse.

“Done!” cried Mick, forgetting, in the eagerness of sport and possible gain, the injunction of his father to secrecy, and, above all, as to over-riding the mare.

Quietly, and with dispatch, a fresh saddle was brought out, strapped on the black horse, and the lad who accompanied Mr. Clark put in the saddle.  The two lads were so nearly of a weight that only a lucky chance or careful foresight could have paired them so equally.

The slip-rails were lowered, and at an easy pace the two riders, with Mr. Clark at their side, took their way to an open stretch of common ground.

Arrived there, Mick was for a race of once round the imaginary course.  He feared now, even with that, he should sweat the mare and get into trouble.  But the stranger insisted with scornful banter on three times round, which a critical observer might have noted would be as near as possible the distance of the Sydney Cup course.

But Mick knew nothing of this.  He was easily over-persuaded.  The chance of making a crown did not come every day, and he was sure of the race, so the horses stood in line.  Mr. Clark was to be starter and judge, and an old dead stringy-bark the winning-post.

At the word Go, they went off to a level start, the black horse making the running.  Clearly this was to be no cantering match, with a sprint at the finish.  To the surprise of Mick, he had to send the mare along at a fast gallop to keep within a length of the black horse.

Once round, both horses sweating, the riders sitting quietly at their work, the black horse led by half a length; but Mr. Clark saw that the mare was only stopped from rushing to the front by the tight rein of young Mick, who evidently knew something of his business, and was not going to burst his mount thus early.

Twice round, the same order.

The third round was entered on; the pace, fast enough already, warmed up half-way home, and the lad on the black horse, as though following instructions, began to draw the whip, and his mount shot to the front like a bullet from a gun, leaving for a moment the mare by herself, but it was only for a moment.  Mick gave her her head, and she came away like a bird.  No whip for her!  Mick knew full well that the only rider that had ever tried her with it had had his collar-bone broken.

The mare closed up rapidly.  At the distance they were side by side again, the whip on the black horse going like a flail.

It was a touch-and-go, both horses were all out, there did not seem to be a pin to choose between them; and if the mare won by half a length, it might have been noted by a critical looker-on that the rider of the black horse had ceased work just as the post was neared.

Mick was proud of his victory, but overwhelmed with apprehension at the distressed and sweaty condition of the mare.

“I shall catch it if the old man sees her again to-day!” he exclaimed, as he pocketed his two half-crowns.

“You had best groom her down, and walk her about quietly,” said Amos Clark.  “She’ll be as right as rain in an hour or two.”

Mr. Clark suddenly remembered that he had an engagement in Sydney that evening that must be kept, so that really he should not have time that day to go land-hunting and catch the down train.  So retiring to the house he hastily took his leave of Mrs. Wigway and Mick, and jumping in the sulky, was quickly lost to sight on the track through the box flat.

* * * * *

Mr. Clark, as he drove quietly towards Richmond and the stable of his own horse, had much matter for reflection, so that he hardly said a word to his young companion all the way.

Clearly they were a match-pair for speed as nearly as one could choose.  The mare was not in full training, it was true; neither was the black horse, and it was a fair inference that what would improve one would improve the other.  His lad said he might have won by a head, and he believed he might, but what was that to stake fortune and the only girl in the world on?  He might win, of course, always provided they had the same weight; and then, again, a mare was likely to get a better show with the handicapper.  Still, he might win.

But then again he might lose; there was no kind of certainty.  And he quite agreed with Soft Sam, that it was only mugs that trusted to chance at racing.

No, a chance it should not be.  He swore to himself that by hook or by crook, when the great event arrived, the danger of The Vengeance being beaten should not come from the mare Bertha.  But how to prevent it?

A dark thought crossed his mind, and not only crossed, but stopped and dwelt there till it had assumed a definite form and shape, and with an inward putting away of all the remonstrance of his better feeling, he resolved—

“I will do it; all’s fair with a scoundrel like him.”

CHAPTER XV
THE PARRAMATTA RIVER

Ruby and Florence, of the Golden Bar, were as pleased as a dog who has found a bone when they overheard Bertha promise a middle-aged, benevolent-looking gentleman, who was a casual frequenter of the house, to go out with him the next day in a boat on the Parramatta River.  The next day was Bertha’s day off.

“Well, I never!  As though she could not find some one better than that to spark her about!  She has got a funny taste, certainly!  Some of the boys will be surprised to hear of it!” said Ruby.

“Why, I believe he is only a poor devil of a phrenologist; keeps an office in a back street near George Street—a sort of crank, that has not got a pound to bless himself with!” added Florrie.

“Is that what he is?  I thought he was not up to much.  Always a small English beer, and never shouts for a soul.  What Bertha can see in him I can’t tell.  Now you mark my words, with all her cleverness and airs and graces, she will go and make a fool of herself with some poor wretch who has to work for his living!”

And so the two went on, licking this little bone of scandal from all possible points.

On the next day a small rowing boat was well off Cockatoo Island before the lug-sail that had so far been hoisted was taken down, and Professor Norris took up the sculls, Bertha, the old companion of his travels, steering in the stern.

“And how is your book getting on, Pro—the book that was to do so much?”

“I had to send it to London; there is not demand enough out here, they told me, for that kind of work, to make its publication profitable.  I dare say they are right, so I sent it on to London; but that takes time, and I have had no answer yet.”

“I’m afraid you will never be a rich man, Pro.”

“I’m not afraid, I’m sure of it, unless an unforeseen accident should put it in my way.  I will not pay the price.  And he who will not pay cannot expect to have.”

“What price do you mean?”

“I will not sell my soul for the wealth of this life.  Hard work will not get it, industry will not get it—nothing but the subjection of the whole mind and intelligence to money-grubbing, to besting your competitors, to out-lying your fellow-liars, to taking every advantage that the credulity or ignorance of your fellow-creatures may give you, and a remorseless selfishness—that is the price for the lottery ticket of life, which even then has more blanks than prizes.”

“And do you always mean to be poor, then?” said Bertha, not much surprised at the Professor’s statement, for she had heard him in the same strain before.

“Yes, poverty in cash will be mine, and I am coming day by day to think more and more that it is better so.  The truth is not to be learned or kept in a mind from which the howling wolf of necessity is not present to sound for ever the cry of anguish, pain, and affliction.  Not from a spring mattress but the hard ground man rises with his eyes widely opened to the true realities of life.  But it is not about myself I wish to speak, but you, Bertha.  You have had your wish.  You are in Sydney, surrounded day after day by a crowd of admirers.  Is it what your fancy painted it?”

“No, Pro, I can’t say it is.  I am getting sick of it, in spite of the fine dresses and the fine place.  I always feel ashamed of myself when you come in the bar.  Other men are not like you.  Oh, how I wish I was rich!”

“And what then, Bertha?”

“Why the Golden Bar might take care of itself.  I would travel to Europe and see London and Paris—above all, Paris!  It’s all very well for you, a man who has seen all you care to see, to not mind being poor, but with a woman it is different.  A new suit does not trouble you.  If you look an old fright nobody notices it; and even if you live in a pokey little house you do not have to clean it, cook the meals in it, and do your own washing in the dirty little back yard.  The world is full of beautiful things, nice things, and I want to have my share.  What is the good of being so virtuous in a hurry?  Why be too good, and better than other people?  It makes you look peculiar and odd, and they don’t like it.  If the world’s all wrong, then I will be wrong too; at any rate, I shall have plenty of company.  Of course there’s a medium in all things.  I don’t say it’s right to do what is wicked to get money.  Still money will do so much, smooth so much, that it seems to me just foolishness to say I don’t want it.”

The boat glided on over the rippling water, past the low shores of Drummoyne, past the terraced hills of Hunter’s Hill, with its houses half hidden by creepers, its lawns overshadowed by the green foliaged garden trees, on, till the wide stretch of water came that led to The Brothers.

An Italian sky overhead, a warm lusciousness in the air, and with it all only the splash of the green water against the rocky banks, and the measured beat of the sculls in the rowlocks, as they kept a gentle time.

The Professor spoke again—

“I know I cannot make you see as I see, my dear.  Perhaps it is best.  We have all to learn the use of our own eyes, and no strange spectacles will help us.  Yet there are things which I think you can see, and one is the degradation of a great number of the frequenters of the Golden Bar.  I have not been often, or stopped long, for the sight and sound of most of these men was repulsive to me.  Hear what they say, what they talk about, think about.  Is it not betting? or perhaps sharping, for what other name will describe the effort to obtain what you have not earned?  And their faces, in spite of their fine clothes, show their lives—the puffy cheek of wrong living, the thick, drooping eyelids of sensuality and cunning, the projecting faces that look out from their shirt collars like an animal waiting to spring on its prey.

“All these and fifty other signs are stamped on the crowd.  And it is not as if they were always so.  They were, no doubt, as other men till they associated themselves together to hunt with the devil.  I noticed particularly that young fellow, Gosper, we first saw in Windsor, and I had a talk with him yesterday.  A few months only have changed the man.  There is a talent fit for the highest work cast in the mud.  With no aim now but self-interest, self-gratification, to get money, to circumvent fools—that is, his fellow-creatures-to outsharp the sharper.  He could not understand, as I wish you to do, that Innocence itself cannot mix with muck and remain unspotted.

“We are, and more particularly a woman, largely formed by those about us.  Every low word and brutal jest in that place makes its record on you, even though it only dulls your sense of decency.  You learn to respect yourself less.  Is it not so, Bertha?”

Bertha had tears in her eyes.

“You are right, Pro, you are always right.  I will leave the horrid place at once, or at least very shortly, for I have to give three months’ notice.  I have felt what you said lots of times, though I never thought out just what it was.  They are a low lot, and that’s the truth—the men that come to the bar.  They say things there before me they would not dare to say to their sisters, and that shows what they really think of me in spite of all their compliments.  Yes, Pro, I’ll give notice to-night, and if the worst comes to the worst we can go on the road again.”

CHAPTER XVI
THE WEIGHTS FOR THE SYDNEY CUP

When the weights were published for the Sydney Cup, Alec Booth rushed with the paper at full tilt to Soft Sam—

“What do you think of it?  Is it good enough?  Look, she’s almost at the bottom of the list!”

Soft Sam was in no hurry to answer.  He read over the names of the horses nominated carefully, paused awhile, and then said—

“It’s as good as you could hope.  You must accept, of course, and you may send her for it when you know better what you have to run against.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Sam.  She’s pounds better than anything on the list.”

“Of the horses you know, yes; but you don’t suppose you are the only owner who has nursed his mount?  There may be half-a-dozen in that list as good as Bertha, and as lightly weighted.  She’s no horse of a century, remember; only a second-rater, and only valuable while she is thought to be a third or fourth-rater.  Take it easy, my lad, and don’t put the money in your pocket till the cheque is cashed.”

Alec’s enthusiasm was considerably damped by these reflections; but he was confident all the same, and anxiously waited to know the acceptances.

More leisurely in his movements, Huey also called on the old man for his opinion as to his own prospects, for it was a curious feature of the quarrel of these two young men, that both confided in Soft Sam, and to both he was equally impartial—keeping the secrets of each from the other, and declining to join either party in the feud.

“The Vengeance is well treated—the same weight as Bertha—and it should, bar accidents, be a match for the pair of them; and you are a couple of fools, I say so again, as I said before, to cut each other’s throats.  You’ll end by making a mess of it, the pair of you.  Why not save The Vengeance for another race—there are plenty of them—and not give him away on the off-chance of being first, when later on you might make a certainty of it?  And I tell you what’s more, if she wasn’t a mare I’d back Bertha to beat your black horse any three times out of five.  He is a good ’un, I allow; but, mark my words, she’s a fair demon if she takes the fancy to come in first.  Don’t be a fool; think it over.  Money’s the thing; damn sentiment!”

Huey said he would think it over, but after he had gone the old man shook his head.

“A lot of thinking he’ll do; he has made up his mind, I can see, and he means to run The Vengeance to spite Alec.  Fool, fool!  I thought he had a better head.  But there, what can you expect when there is a woman in the case?  Another pair of good men gone wrong.  Really, there is no encouragement for a man of experience to teach these chaps; even when they hold the cards they throw the game away.  Oh, if I could only find a young fellow without sentiment or this conscientious humbug, what I could make of him!”

* * * * *

When the acceptances were out, the problem as to who ought to win the Sydney Cup was much simplified to Alec.  The names of a number of horses he was doubtful about were missing.  The top weights he held safe; what they could do was well known.  It was only amongst outsiders like his own horse that he feared dangerous opposition.  One of these was The Vengeance, but he held that horse cheap by having seen it often run in races with Bertha, and never show any form worth speaking of.  But there were two or three others he must inquire about before he gave the word Go!

He did inquire, and with pretty satisfactory result, but he could get no definite encouragement from Soft Sam.  The old man had no doubt The Vengeance in his mind, and while he would not have dreamt of giving Huey away, he yet urged Alec not to make too sure, and at any rate to back Bertha for a place.  But the young man was now full of confidence, and once he had got his money on, made no secret amongst his intimates that Bertha was to be “on the job.” Huey was quick to hear of it, and he smiled a bitter smile, like a man who tasted in advance his enemies’ discomfiture.

* * * * *

Jack Vandy’s stable at Randwick was not a fashionable stable.  It did not turn out winners by the score, or make an occasional sweep of the board at a big meeting; but if an impartial critic had examined the material Old Jack had had to deal with in his time, and the results, the verdict would not have been unfavourable.

A small trainer cannot choose his horses, and if a lot of dunderheads like to buy scrubbers, and send them to him to train, he can hardly afford to send them away, yet the subsequent failure of these beasts to do any good for themselves or owners helps to spoil the reputation of the trainer.  Yet, as we have said, when good fortune had given him a good thing he had made the best of it.

And no horse could be better wound up to time than when Jack Vandy turned the key.  This was the man recommended by Soft Sam when Alec inquired for a Sydney trainer, and to him, after due arrangement, Bertha was transferred.  He looked her over critically, had her cantered up and down to watch her stride, and then turned to Alec, rubbing his hands.

“She’ll do!”

“What for?”

“Anything you like if you give me the time.  She’s a clinker, or I am getting blind.  It’s a real pleasure to train a horse like that now, after the blessed lot of cab hacks I get brought here.  You’d hardly believe it, but I have men come here and want me to train horses you would be ashamed to put in a hearse at a funeral.  And then they wonder they don’t win, and take the horse away to another trainer till they are full up, and then say we are all a lot of sharks.”

“I want her ready for the Cup,” said Alec.  “At the weight I think she may do.”

“The time is short, but I will do my best.”

“Do you think she will be fit?”

“Make your mind easy.”

This is how it came about that Huey read in the Referee that Alexander Booth’s filly Bertha was now under the care of the well-known trainer John Vandy, of Randwick.

CHAPTER XVII
THE RELIGIOUS JOCKEY

One afternoon the middle-aged man with bushy whiskers emerged from Huey’s lodgings, and walking to Elizabeth Street, took the tram to Randwick.  And he was about that horsey suburb that night and several following nights, frequenting bars and billiard-rooms, listening to the talk, and being taken down at pool as a new chum.

The ears of the bushy-whiskered man were always quick to catch any reference to the Vandy stable, and one night from a groom in a garrulous state of drunkenness, and at the trumpery cost of supplying him with beer, he gained a most minute list of all and every particular of that racing interior.  It was a tedious job to a casual listener, this long rambling statement of the hostler, and he would not answer leading questions, but dilated at length about horses at the stable who years ago had lost races they should have won, because his advice was not followed, and won races they might very well have lost, owing to a quiet tip given by him to the boss.

But the bushy-whiskered man was not impatient.  He listened to it all, with an occasional interjection, and when at eleven o’clock the landlord turned them out, he started to walk back to Sydney, disdaining a conveyance, for he had much to think about, and the walk helped him.

“This John Vandy seems to be a straight goer,” said the bushy-whiskered man to himself, as he strode along, “and as proud as a peacock of his new charge.  He hopes to make a pot out of her himself, so it’s hardly worth bothering with him.  And he is too careful, curse him, to make it worth while fixing it up with a stable hand.  He or his son feed and groom the mare themselves, and she is always under lock and key when not at exercise.  Added to which, she is a vile-tempered brute for a stranger to go near at any time, so I must look in another direction.  The light weight will not give them much choice in the way of a jockey.  Only a lad can ride at that, and, of course, it will be a lad that Vandy knows and has employed before.  He would not be likely to trust this great coup to a stranger if one he knew was to his hand.  Proceeding so far, I have only to refer to the horses racing from this stable at or about this weight, and if I find one name more often mentioned than another I’ve got the article sought for.”

Next morning Huey was busy looking up the racing records in a file of the Referee.  The search appeared to give him satisfaction, for he metaphorically patted himself on the back as he muttered, “Jack Butt’s the lad, not a doubt of it.  Let me only find him and have five minutes’ plain English on the quiet, and the trick is done.”

Another interview by the bushy-whiskered man who, needless to say, was Huey himself with the beer-imbibing groom at Randwick, and he learned all he sought about Jack Butt.

“Yes, Jack Butt was in the stable—one of the boss’s apprentices—a stuck-up prig of a fellow—no good at the work at all, but was the best light-weight they had, so got a mount now and then—a lad with no spunk in him, a regular milksop, going to Sunday-school and all that kind of cat-lap.  Why, I heard him ask Old Jack to-day for a day off to-morrow, so that he could go to one of these religious picnics they hold down the harbour.”

“And did the boss let him go?”

“Let him go?  Of course he did.  He thinks a lot of that lad, which is more than I do.  Them white-livered chickens don’t agree with me.”

* * * * *

The committee of the Sons and Daughters of the Holy Brotherhood had chartered that commodious ferry steamer the Lord Nelson for an excursion to Middle Harbour, and the Sons and Daughters were invited to combine a day’s sea-air and virtue for the modest sum of eighteenpence.

When Huey stepped on board this craft at Circular Quay, arrayed in his bushy whiskers, a long black coat and white tie, he found the steamer crammed.  Evidently the Sons and Daughters had rolled up in strong force, and brought their parents with them.  And each and every one was decorated with a pink rosette, as though, having assumed a virtue, they wished to put a brand on it, so that the error should not be fallen into by the unregenerate of classing them with common people.

Amidst this concourse it took Huey some little time to find what he sought, but a pale young man, very thin and lanky, met his eye, seated in the bow.  Huey turned his steps thither, and by a little bit of manoeuvring managed to place himself as though by chance next to the lad.

Jack Butt was the first to speak—

“Isn’t this beautiful, sir?  To see all these Holy Brothers and Sisters coming out to enjoy themselves?  I think everybody ought to be a Holy Brother, don’t you?”

Huey did.  He even went so far as to buy a pink rosette of an obliging female close at hand and pin it on his coat, amidst general approval.

“I wish I could always be with the Brothers,” continued Butt, when they were well out in mid-harbour.  “I am in a hateful business.”

“What is that?” asked Huey.

“My father bound me to a horse-trainer, and I’m a jockey; but my time is nearly up, and I want to leave it.  So does mother want me; but what am I to do?  Even if I tried to stop at my business I am growing too fast, and shall soon be too heavy, though I starve myself.”

“That is very sad,” responded Huey.  “And what would you like to be?”

“Oh!  I should like to go into the ministry; it’s such a beautiful life!  No work to do, and eat as much as you like!  There is nothing like it!  I often wonder, don’t you, sir, that everybody isn’t a parson.  So respectable and comfortable a life.  But there’s the expense.”

“What expense?” said Huey, his eyes sparkling in spite of him.

“One has to go to college and study, and do nothing for two or three years but learn out of books, and that wants money, you know, sir.”

“How much?”

“Perhaps two or three hundred pounds; I don’t know exactly.”

“But don’t you earn money at your trade.  I thought jockeys were well paid.”

“The fees, you mean?  They are good enough.  Only you see that as I am still serving my time, Mr. Vandy takes all the fees, and I only get my wages.”

“That is a shame,” said Huey.

“Yes, it’s very wrong; very unchristian, I often think.”

“Did you not say your master’s name was Vandy?”

“Yes.

“Jack Vandy, of Randwick, the trainer?”

“Yes, that’s his name, and where he lives.”

“And you have a mare in the stable named Bertha entered for the Sydney Cup?”

“Yes, we have; a vicious, bad-tempered brute, and I know, for I have to ride her every day.”

“That’s very singular,” mused Huey aloud.  “I was only thinking of that mare this morning, and what a pity it would be if she should win.”

“Why a pity, sir?”

“Why, don’t you know her owner is a bookmaker?  Alec Booth he is called, and he is not only that, which is bad enough, but he is an outrageous Freethinker, and has promised all his winnings in this race to build them a new hall.”

“How dreadful!  Has he really?”

Allowing a little time for the full gravity of this statement to duly soak into the young man, Huey continued—

“I am not a very rich man myself, but I would rather lose £200 than this should take place.  Think of the hundreds of poor souls who may be lost for ever!”

“Two hundred pounds!” repeated Butt slowly, “two hundred pounds!  Would you really?”

“If I was sure it would serve a good cause, I would do so cheerfully.”

“Do you think my joining the ministry would be a good cause?”

“Nothing could be more worthy, and I take such an interest in your pious wish, that I will go further.  If Bertha should happen to lose the Cup, which, of course, she is likely to, with so many horses running, I shall be so pleased that I will give you that £200, and, perhaps, a little more, if required for your studies.  For I love to help young men, Christian young men, of course.”

Jack Butt surveyed his companion with a certain doubt.  Though not a smart lad, he had not been several years at Randwick for nothing.  This was very much like an offer to pull the horse, and that would be wicked.  But he reflected, would it not be more wicked to aid this Freethinker in his horrible design?  Had he not frequently pulled horses by the order of his master, and might he not pull one for such a good cause as his own entrance into the ministry?  His mother would be so pleased, and he could eat what he liked.  But a cautious scruple of prudence occurred to him.

“Would you mind putting that in writing, sir?  Of course, as a Holy Brother, I trust you, but while it’s not in writing I can hardly believe it.”

“I will do more than that,” said Huey.  “I will give you a post-dated cheque—that is, a cheque dated for payment after the race, and should the horse lose you can cash it, and should it win it might be stopped.  At any rate, I could not do so much for you, but depend on me, I shall always take an interest in you.  There are too few young men with your good sense.”

CHAPTER XVIII
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE RACE

The Golden Bar looked brighter, more burnished, more glorified than usual.  The gilt mouldings and inlaid work on the walls shone with added splendour.  The yellow statuettes beamed down from their brackets like old-time graven images, and on every hand vast mirrors of bevelled glass reflected and re-reflected the well-dressed habitués, the bar and shelves of sparkling bottles and gleaming decanters, and, above all, the graceful and trim forms of those twin goddesses of this spiritual fount, Ruby and Florrie.

As drinks were for the nonce only casually called for, and Bertha was away at tea, the moment was a precious one.  They could have a nice long talk.

“Did you hear the news, Ruby?”

“No; is it about the Cup?”

“Oh, bother the Cup!  I hear about it till I’m sick.  No; Bertha is going to leave here.”

“You don’t say?”

“But she is.  I heard the boss say so.  This is her last week.”

“Well, I never!  Who’d have thought it?  What is she up to?  Going to marry that old squatter, I’ll bet sixpence.  Anyhow, it’s a good riddance.”

“And so say I, the mean thing!  We shall be comfortable again when she has gone!”

At this moment if the girls had not been so busy talking they would have noticed the entrance of Bertha, who stood in a little recess before a mirror adjusting her hair.  What was wrong with her hair no masculine mind could ever have divined; it looked as neat and trim as a coiffure by the best artist could look, yet it took Bertha at least ten minutes to re-arrange certain tresses to her satisfaction.

“The bar has never been the same since she came,” continued Florrie.  “If the men were not such fools they would see through her airs and her graces, for I’m sure her looks are no better than other peoples!” And Florrie tossed her head significantly.

“And the way she carries on is just scandalous.  Old men, young men, it’s all the same to her, with her simpering look and Chinaman’s eyes!  I would not throw myself at a man like that if he was the only one left in the world.  What I say is, that for a girl that respects herself there is a limit.”

“That’s it, Ruby, there’s a limit; and girls that put on the dying duck style to anybody and everybody ought to be shot.”

“I wonder who she is off with now; for sure enough she is not going to leave here for nothing.  One of those young sporting fellows she drives out with I should not wonder.”

“Or that old squatter who is rolling in money; that is about her dart!”

“Now I would not be surprised if it was that old shabby Professor she goes out with sometimes.  Although she looks so clever she is no better than a fool.”

“Well, I wish the Professor, or whoever it is, joy of his bargain.  And the boss has got no more sense than the others; he pretends her going will be a big loss to him, and offered to raise her wages; but she would not stop at any price, she said.”

“Then it’s the squatter right enough.  Of course she would not stop if she had caught him.  Men with ten thousand a year are not picked up in Sydney every day.”

Bertha, who had been a silent listener to this conversation, now came forward, and was received by her two helpmates with sweet smiles of amiability.

“How nice you look to-night, dear.  Is it true you are leaving us?” asked Ruby.

“Yes,” said Bertha, “I’m afraid I must leave you.  That old squatter does bother me so to go and see his station on the Barcoo that I am really tired of refusing.”

“So it is the squatter?” inquired Florrie.

“Oh, I don’t say that.  There are those two young sporting men.  I think one of those might be better, don’t you?”

“It’s a matter of taste, of course,” replied Florrie.  “The squatter would make you a real lady, while those sporting fellows never come to much.”

“Well, I don’t know,” said Bertha.  “I fancy somehow that money does not always make a ‘real lady,’ as you call her.”

“What does then?” inquired Ruby and Florrie, with astonishment.

“Sugar and spice and all that’s nice—that’s what real ladies are made of!” said Bertha, laughing.

“Now do be a love,” whispered Ruby, “and tell me who it is, and I will not whisper it to a soul.”

“Well, promise to be as silent as the grave.”

Ruby nodded.

“If I don’t change my mind, the shabby old Professor!”

“What do you choose that old fright for?”

“Perhaps because he is the only one that did not ask me!”

* * * * *

The evening began to wear on, and the bar to fill with an ever-increasing crowd.  The drinks were called for more and more frequently, and a mingled buzz of conversation and cigar smoke filled the air.  The one subject of conversation was to-morrow’s Cup, and the merits of the competing horses.  The name of Revolver was in every mouth, bookmakers and backers.  A few spoke of Bertha, and a voice here and there championed an outsider; but the vast majority of the public had gone solid for Revolver.  In the words of one, “He was a moral,” and his performances were counted up, what he had done, what he had beaten; and if public form was to be relied on, then without doubt Revolver was one of the best of good things.

Books and pencils came out, and wagers were booked, and all the time drinks, plenty of drinks, and the toast was ever the same, “To Revolver, good luck to him.”

If whisky-laden prayer is attended to by the geni that presides over sport, and the incense of tobacco is grateful to him, then the hopes of to-morrow were assured.

As time went on, a species of delirium possessed this crowd.  From talking they had got to shouting; from modest doubt of assertion to positive assurance.  Some were florid and blatant, others jolly and hilarious, and when news arrived from the stable, Revolver’s stable, of course, that all was well, a perfect roar of satisfaction went up.

The news necessitated more drinks, and still more, the cigars were now puffed by many a happy smoker, oblivious of their being unlit, and all this time the weary barmaids served and smiled, served and smiled, with a smile so automatic it might have been worked by a string.

The hero of the hour, next to Revolver, was his owner, known to Ruby and Florrie as the “Squatter.” He was in strong evidence in the bar to-night.  Many the questions he answered, many the drinks he shouted, and it was always champagne, or so the bottle was labelled, and the sparkling liquid flowed down many a brazen throat in a vain effort to quench the unappeasable drought.

Alec Booth was there, beaming with hope and assurance, the centre of a little coterie that listened with silent contempt to his confident prediction of Bertha’s winning.  But they found their tongues when he offered to “shout,” and assured him that if any man knew a horse he was the man.

“A real sportsman, and no mistake.”

Amidst this excitement there was one man who said little or nothing, but watched from the corner of the room all that was going forward with a derisive smile on his face, Huey Gosper.

“What fools!” he seemed to be saying to himself, “to talk of public form, of private trials, and all that kind of rubbish, as though that had anything to do with who was going to win!  Why, if merit counted in horse-racing, how could a smart man live?”

The Squatter was getting minute by minute more joyous.  The glassy shining light of alcohol shone from his eyes.  He was mellow, unctuous, benevolent.  All men were his brothers, more particularly this crowd of wolves and lambs; and all women were his sisters, all excepting one fair maid, and for her he felt more than a brother’s regard.

“I’ll tell you what it is, my dear,” he said, leaning over the bar and addressing Bertha, “I’ll tell you what it is.  To-morrow night in this bar you shall drink Revolver’s health out of the Sydney Cup, and what’s more, I’ll make you a present of it.  Now, mark my words, and what I say I stick to.  To-morrow night the Cup shall be yours.”

Bertha laughed at the offer, but graciously, neither assenting or dissenting.  In any case, it was useless to argue with a man who had drunk three bottles of champagne.  Presently the Squatter subsided.  He wanted to sleep on the floor; “sleep at the feet of beauty,” he murmured, but his friends hurried him to a cab, and that night he was no more seen.

With less demonstration Alec approached the bar, and seizing a moment when Bertha was not busy, said to her—

“Don’t you mind that old fool, Bertha.  I’ve got Revolver’s measure.  Your namesake can make a common hack of him.  Don’t you put a penny on Revolver.  Bertha’s as right as rain, and bar accidents she’s bound to win.  But you shall have the Cup to-morrow all the same.  As that old fool says, you shall drink the winner’s health, but the name will not be Revolver, for Bertha will come in first.”

Huey had heard some of this talk; heard with an inward chuckle of derision, and the smile of amused thanks had not passed from Bertha’s face before he too had edged his way to the front, and speaking very low, so that only she could hear, he said—

“Pay no attention, Miss Summerhayes, to all this foolishness.  Revolver and Bertha are very good horses, no doubt, but there are plenty better, and one of them for certain will be running to-morrow.  Neither the Squatter nor Alec Booth will win the Cup, for there is another who means to defeat them both, and have the pleasure of presenting you with the Sydney Cup.”

“And who is this kind person?” inquired Bertha.

“Your very humble servant,” replied Huey.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Gosper, for your kind intentions, but all this talk is not serious.  There is many a slip between the Sydney Cup and the lip.  I hope you may all win, if it be possible; and if you all lose I shall think of you all just the same.”

“But I am serious.  To-morrow night it is I that will bring you the Sydney Cup.”

“We shall see, we shall see,” laughed Bertha, incredulously.  “It is nearly to-morrow now, and closing time.  So good-night to you.”

“Decidedly,” said Bertha, as she hurried, tired, to bed, “to-morrow I bid fair to own the Sydney Cup.  Do I care who wins—the Squatter, Alec, or Huey Gosper?  Do I care?” And she paused as she asked herself the question again.  “No, I don’t care a silver sixpence!  What good will the money do them?  It will go as it came.  And if some win others lose, and all the pleasure of the one must be paid by the pains of the many.  Decidedly, old Pro is right; it is a dirty business, this horse-racing, as bad for a man as a bar is for a woman, and I’m glad I’m going to leave it all.  And to think of Ruby and Florrie talking of me like that!  It shows what they are, and what I should come to, no doubt, if I stopped here.  Oh, why can we not live honestly and comfortably in this world without having to meet such a lot of horrid people?”

So she rambled in her thoughts till sleep came to rest her weariness.  And over the silent city no sound could be heard but the hasty rumble of some night hansom as it sped over wood-blocked roads, laden with midnight travellers.

CHAPTER XIX
THE SYDNEY CUP

Cup Day was one of unbroken sunshine and brightness, one of those days, so frequent in Sydney, when only to breathe and respire is a pleasure and a joy.

At an early hour the trams and ’buses were loaded with sightseers bound for Randwick.  A stranger might regret, at the sight of these orderly and well-dressed groups, the absence of that abandon and camaraderie between rich and poor that is so distinctive of a great racing carnival in conservative England.

For all outward sign to the contrary, this demure throng might be going to attend a prayer-meeting; not even a “drunk” to relieve their intense respectability.  At Randwick itself, the same decorum.  The spieler and the sharper were there, it is true, but in subdued, unpoetic form—the fear of the “copman” in their eyes and movements.  Law and Order presided over all.  Now, Law and Order, however admirable in themselves as abstract entities, are, for the being overflowing with pent-up animal spirits, profoundly dull.

* * * * *

In the vast crowd that filled the grandstand it would have been difficult to detect Huey Gosper; but there he was in a sheltered corner, quiet, sardonic, and watchful of all.

His eyes were everywhere, and particularly did their glance follow the big check suit worn by Alec Booth as this individual, uneasy and excited, wandered from place to place, from paddock to lawn, from lawn to stand, in fretful uneasiness.

* * * * *

The following account is taken from the Evening Times—

“The preliminary events of the day caused little excitement.  All minds were eager for the big event.  The favourite, Revolver, hardened, if anything, in the betting, as the eventful moment drew nigh, and his name was buzzed about on every hand; but the second string of the public, the mare Bertha, was not lacking in friends.  Seven to one was readily snapped up by the backers of the filly, and a whole lot of outsiders had a small following.  But as far as the bulk of public money was concerned, the race was reduced to a match between Revolver and Bertha.

“At the very last moment there was a hasty rush on The Vengeance, a colt never before mentioned prominently in the betting.

“At last they faced the starter.  One, two, three breaks away, and then the almost perfect silence was dissipated by a great roar from the crowd as the flag flashed down to a magnificent start.

“They are off!

“Up the straight it is hard to separate them.  They are a moving mass of colour and horseflesh.  Passing the stand Country Boy, taking advantage of his light impost, shows the way, but not for long.  At the tan crossing Isabel shot to the front, and already the field is beginning to spread out.  The favourite, going easily, can be seen well in the van, with Bertha and The Vengeance in close attendance.  At Oxenham’s Isabel came back to her field, and here Bertha shot to the front.  She was pulling hard and fighting for her head with her jockey.  In the end he seemed powerless to restrain her, for she came away like a shot from a gun, leaving her field standing.  There was a great shout from the ring—‘Bertha’s beat!’  ‘She’s bolted!’  ‘Twenty to one Bertha!’  ‘Forty to one Bertha!’  But there were no takers.

“In the meantime the field was creeping up.  Opposite the stand fifty yards separated Isabel (now second in command) from Bertha, Revolver, at her girths, third, and Country Boy fourth, the rest of the field in a pack.  The pace so far was a cracker, and at the rising ground already quenched the hopes of the backers of most of the outsiders, who tailed off like a procession.  At the five-furlong post Bertha still led, and at the half-mile the struggle commenced in earnest.  Isabel here melted away, and was seen no more in the front division.  Country Boy once again flattered his admirers, and led a gallant, stern chase after the errant Bertha.  Here Double Dutchman came out from the ruck, and showed the way to a whole host so far considered his betters.  At the half-furlong the whip was drawn on Revolver, who, responding gamely, drew up to within a length of Bertha.  A cry went up, ‘The favourite wins!’ but it died away, as did the horse named, in the next hundred yards.

“Now the supporters of Bertha found voice, and there were loud cries of her name.  At the home turn Double Dutchman came on like an express, but Bertha still led, though evidently nearly done.  At the half-distance a new champion appeared on the scene, as though fallen from the clouds.  The black colt, The Vengeance, coming with a wet sail, passed everything on the course like so many mile-stones.  In the straight he fairly caught the flagging Bertha, and there was a roar from Israel as though they had just sighted the Promised Land.

“But the race was not yet over, the sound of a competitor seemed to wake Bertha up, for with a new fire the plucky filly disputed the way inch by inch.  It was now easy to see that her jockey had no part in her efforts, and was quite outmastered by her.

“On The Vengeance the whip was falling like a flail, and from the stand it was impossible to pick the leader as they passed the post.  But a great shout of relief went up when Bertha’s number appeared on the board, and it was known she had won by a head.

“It may be truly said such a Cup race was never run before, for the winning jockey now admits that early from the start he lost all control of his mount.  She is notoriously bad-tempered, so that whip and spurs are never used with her; but of her thorough gameness there is now no question.

“The surprise of the meeting was the running of The Vengeance.  His display of form is a revelation, and it is to be inferred a most unwelcome one for somebody’s apple-cart.”

* * * * *

The result being known, Alec Booth was fairly delirious with joy.  The whole earth was Heaven to him now and for evermore.  All and everybody must drink his health, and the mare’s health, and in champagne of the best, and he was surrounded by a throng eager to praise and congratulate him.

Never in his life before, never in his life again, would Alec feel the fierce joy of that moment.  He had dared all, tossed up Ruin against Fortune, and Fortune had come down right side up.  And he swelled with pride as he thought how he, an ignorant country lad, had bested the smart Australian turfites at their own game.

No thought at this moment of Soft Sam, not one; it was he, Alec Booth, who had planned, designed, and carried out all.

But a far different man was creeping away on the outskirts of that crowd.  Huey Gosper had the face of a suicide.  With an execration on his lips he left the course.  So nearly to have won, and yet lost?  And he had made so sure of it.  Who could have foreseen that that brute of a Bertha would have run her own race, despite all the pulling jockeys in the world?  And now the true form of The Vengeance was given away.  He might as well be shot for all the use of him.  It was as Soft Sam had said, Bertha was a bit the best of the pair.  Why had he not followed the old man, and not been a fool?  But he must take his gruel like a man, he told himself that, and there were other means open for a man of brains and resolution.

Alec had not married Bertha yet, and Alec, curse him, would have to fight once again to win her.  If he had only Soft Sam to help him it could be managed, but there was no hope there, for Soft Sam, as he knew, would take no side in the quarrel.  Sam, he remembered, had wanted to know that Sunday on the Domain why he had not asked Bertha to marry him.  He would take the advice.  She might say Yes; then all would be well.  Alec might keep his cup, and good luck to him.

So he schemed and hoped and feared, wandering about, a bitter, blighted man.

CHAPTER XX
A PROPOSAL

It was the day following the great race.  Huey, who was seeking an interview with Bertha, had come to the Botanic Gardens.  He knew it was her afternoon of liberty, and that was her favourite walk.  So he strolled about waiting and hoping a good hour before the expected time.

Perhaps there are no such gardens in the world.  A horseshoe bay, perhaps half-a-mile across; its shore terraced and shut in by slight rising hills, whose slopes are turfed with verdure, and dotted here and there with tropical foliage, flower-beds of many patterns, sweet-smelling shrubs, and bowers of rattans and giant grasses.  Paths wind about in surprising curves, and lead to sequestered summer-houses and lovers’ seats that invite to wooing, even though the voice of the cooing doves were hushed that call aloud from every grove.  And when the mind wearies of the green foliage, the bright-hued flowers, and landscape of ever-varied plants, there is the sea.  Farm Cove the bay is called.  Trim yachts are anchored there, the warships of the nations lie at friendly anchorage, and from time to time over the blue water the music of their bands is wafted, or the shrill pipe of the boatswain’s whistle.  Clean, dainty ships that bask there in the bright sunshine on the lazy tide, as though peace on earth and sea was decreed for evermore.  And beyond the men-of-war, and across the wide stretch of harbour, there are the blue-grey shores of Neutral and Mosman Bays, the rugged heights of Cremorne and Bradley, all dotted with embowered villas, half-hidden cottages, and covered with a haze like a bloom.

And over all a cloudless sky, pale-blue and distant, with an unveiled sun that shines down its vivid light on land and sea.  It is such a view as fairyland might offer, and the artist with his crude pigments and paints abandon in despair as hopeless of depiction.

No wonder that Bertha came there from week to week, arrayed in her best, all smiling and sweet.  She did only as the wild birds do, who find no safer haven than this oasis of Paradise in the city’s midst.

Huey Gosper looked again and again at the watch he carried, and at last his waiting was rewarded.  He could see her plainly, all unconscious of his presence, coming towards him.  With a look of unconcern he went to meet her, and so it came about that presently they were pacing side by side.

“I am very sorry,” said Huey, “that it was not I who brought you the Cup last night.  My horse lost it by a head, and I counted on it as a certainty.”

“Oh, don’t speak any more of it.  I am utterly tired with the Cup and the talk about it.  I am sorry for you that you have lost, and all the others whose money has gone.  Perhaps they will be wiser next time.”

“I know you value these things very lightly, Miss Summerhayes.  You are not like other girls, taking all that glitters and glares for the real metal, and, poor as I am, I make bold to speak to you as I have never spoken to woman before.  From my first seeing you at Windsor—do you remember the time?—I have been mad for love of you.  If I came to Sydney it was to follow you; if I have striven to make money at a detestable calling it was for you.  And if I strove and planned for months and months to win yesterday’s race, you were the prize always in my thoughts that the horse was to win.  I know I am not worthy of you; no man is.  I am full of faults, yet it maddens me to see you slaving in that golden hell, with two trollops unworthy to lace your shoes.  I would like you to lead a different life, for I am sure your present place must be hateful to you.  I would do anything, everything if you would only say the word, and be my wife.  Bertha, will you marry me?”

Bertha had listened silently.  His words could not have been quite unexpected; her woman’s eyes must have learned his secret many a long day since.  Yet she hesitated, perhaps to frame her words, perhaps to frame her mind.  Huey, of all her suitors, had much to commend him to her.  He had great intelligence, and to her judgment he was a clever man.  If he had not wealth, neither was he poor, and he had youth and good looks on his side.

But then, on the other hand, she had seen a look glower from his eyes at times like the glance of a fiend, a hard, merciless gleam that froze all tenderness or thoughts of tenderness.  So she might have reasoned, if women so placed were apt to take a mental inventory and figure out a character balance-sheet.  But doubtless she did nothing of the kind as she fidgeted with her sunshade, and stepped tranquilly along.  It was not her reason but her heart that must answer, and instinctively she paused for its response.  At last she spoke; Huey Gosper all silent in hopeful expectation.

“What a pretty boat!” pointing to an 18-footer with coloured sails that skimmed across the bay.

“Yes, it is pretty,” said Huey absently; “but you have not answered me.”

“Oh, about getting married!” replied Bertha, as though the question had slipped her memory.  “I don’t want to get married—at least, not yet,” correcting herself.  “It seems to make one so old all at once, this getting married; don’t you think so?”

“I do not say now, at once, or next week; but promise me, give me your word, and let there be a bond between us, and we will marry when you like; so only that you are mine, all else may be as you wish.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Gosper; it is very kind of you to think so highly of me.  I am not worth it, I am sure; but, really and truly, I do not wish to be engaged.  It is so easy to lose your freedom that never comes again.  Don’t think me hard-hearted.  I feel more, much more than I can say; but my freedom is yet dear to me.”

Had Huey been a patient man, or one versed in feminine ways, he might have taken this neutral reply as one of good augury, and left the further pressing of his suit till time and patience had overcome her maiden wilfulness.  But Huey was combustible, suspicious, jealous.  The fierce, bad light shone from his eyes as he answered—

“You are mocking me.  It is because I am poor, because I have no grand home to offer you; and you are thinking of Alec Booth and his thousands.”

“That is not fair of you, Mr. Gosper,” retorted Bertha sharply.  “You have no right to say such things.  I am my own mistress, to do as I like; and a jealous, spiteful man shall never be my friend!”

With that she turned about with the sweep and step of a tragedy queen, and so left him.  Huey was half sorry he had so spoken, and even yet had he followed her and pleaded pardon, his crime of jealousy might have been forgiven; for Bertha was one of those who, even while they resent, feel the covert flattery of jealous accusation.  But he did not stir, but stood there angry and raging, cursing his fate, cursing his fortune; and, above all, cursing Alec Booth.  Without doubt Alec was his happy rival, that brainless trickster, that vain, boasting bully had scored again; and he, Huey, was to lose all—money, race, wife, all were taken from him.

“No!  It shall not be!” he declared to himself.  “While I live I will struggle—I will fight!  She is rightfully mine.  I saw her first, loved her first, and she is foolish and dazzled by his winnings.  But out of defeat I will learn success, fairly if possible; then, if not, in such a way as may be necessary,” he added darkly.

And he turned on his heel and walked moodily away.

CHAPTER XXI
THE ABDUCTION

A day later.  It was ten o’clock at night.  Bertha was busy serving the crowd of customers with drinks, when a lad came into the bar and asked for Miss Summerhayes.  Bertha spoke to him.  He said a gentleman outside wished to speak to her on a matter of great importance.  Without hesitation Bertha took her hat and went to the door.  Here she was accosted by a bushy-whiskered man, who demanded in a gruff voice if she was Miss Summerhayes?

“Yes, to be sure.  But what’s the matter?”

“A Mr. Norris sent me for you.  He is very ill, and must see you at once.  Look, I have a cab; there is no time to lose, hurry in!”

Before she had time to think Bertha was in the vehicle, and it was plunging off at a rapid rate.  Bertha was full of questions, and her interrogations came so quickly one after the other that for a time her companion had an excuse for not replying.

“What is the matter with him?  What has happened to dear old Pro?  He seemed all right yesterday.  I never remember his being sick before.”

“It’s what they call a stroke,” the bushy-whiskered man replied gruffly.

“Oh, dear!  Oh, dear!” sighed Bertha hysterically.  “Tell the man to drive fast!  But where is he going?  This is Oxford Street—not the way to Church Hill.  I tell you he has made a mistake!  Stop!” And Bertha tried to lift the little door in the roof of the cab above her head.

“That’s all right,” said her companion; “we’ll be there in a few minutes.  The Professor was at a friend’s house up at Darlinghurst.”

For the time Bertha’s suspicions, now aroused, were silenced, but soon the horse, who was travelling at great speed, arrived at Darlinghurst, and without turning off the main road, continued his course to Paddington.

“We have passed Darlinghurst.  You are deceiving me!  Stop the cab, or I will cry out!”

“It’s all right, I tell you!  Just keep quiet for a few minutes.”

But Bertha, fairly alarmed, and noting some passers-by at hand, stood up in the cab and sang out—

“Help!  Help!  He—”

The third cry was stifled, for a silk muffler was placed round her head, an odour, strange and unfamiliar, gradually stupefied her senses, and caused her to sink unresistingly on the cushions of the vehicle.  The passers-by, alarmed by the cry, had paused a minute, but hearing nothing more, and the cab speeding on, had resumed their walk.

A policeman standing apathetically at a street corner was startled into activity by the furious approach of the hansom.  It was clearly a case for a summons, so he rushed into the roadway waving his arms, and cried—

“Stop!  Stop!”

But the driver, instead of stopping, cleverly dodged him and his attempt to seize the rein.  The horse dashed by, and the enraged constable, who was no mean sprinter, started in pursuit.  At least he would find the number.

But the light from the first lamp they passed lit up the back of the cab only to show him the number was hidden.

On sped the cab, with no impediment, for the road at this time of night was clear and deserted.

The policeman to his surprise was fast losing ground, for he was ignorant that the black horse he was pursuing was within a head the winner of the Sydney Cup.  On sped the cab, now unpursued, through Paddington, past Woollabra, past the Tea Gardens, and on, on into the darkness, where lamps and houses were few, and scrub lined the road; on till the sound of the ocean beating the high cliffs of Coogee and Bondi was audible in a monotonous roar.

Inside the cab the man with bushy whiskers had removed the muffler, and gazed with a look of gloating reverence on the pale and corpse-like features of Bertha.

“Did I give her too much chloroform?” he said to himself, as he felt her pulse.  His look of anxiety passed away.  There was still a feeble beat.

“Mine at last!” he cried, with an accent almost of worship, as he raised the lifeless hand to his lips.

“Mine, now and for ever!”

* * * * *

When the night passed and the following morning without bringing news of Bertha, surprise and astonishment began to trouble her friends and employer at the Golden Bar.  A message was sent to Professor Norris, who was known to be her friend, but he knew nothing, and he returned with the messenger, his mind filled with dread and dismay.

To Ruby and Florrie the mine of speculation and scandal thus opened up was a veritable God-send.  Every caller as he came in was posted up in all the latest particulars.  One of the first to be so informed was Alec Booth, and it met him like a knock-down blow.  He was, however, soon on his mental feet again, and sifting, by examination, the list of crude rumours with which the two barmaids inundated him, he learned successively, first, that it was a lad (a well-known habitué of the side walk) who had called Bertha out.  Next, having found the lad, he heard from him that on the evening before a bushy-whiskered man had driven up in a cab, and giving him a shilling, had told him to go in the Golden Bar and tell a Miss Summerhayes that she was wanted.  The lady had come to the door as requested, and after some words with the bushy-whiskered man, which the lad did not overhear, they both got in the cab and drove rapidly away.

This was all the information Alec could gather.  Neither a description of the cab or cabman, nor the number of the same was to be had.  A hansom in a main Sydney thoroughfare is too common a sight to attract even passing attention.  Doubtless if Alec had been endowed with half the imagination of a French detective he would have found his clue ample for the prosecution of an immediate chase.  But imagination was distinctly not his forte.  He could weave no theory, spin no web of conjecture; only in a vague and ill-defined way he told himself that Bertha’s disappearance was not natural, and probably not voluntary.  She was certainly not the sort of girl to elope at a minute’s notice, and even Alec, slight student as he was of feminine human nature, felt that she was above all not the girl to thus abandon her wardrobe.

Mixed with these feelings, that Bertha had met with foul play, were a host of jealous doubts.  Of her own accord she had stepped into this cab.  Why had she done so?  Passion boiled up in the man, and he raged impotently.  At last his mind received an inspiration.

“Why not go to Soft Sam?”

He acted on the thought at once, and in a few minutes found himself in the Domain at the old gentleman’s accustomed seat.

As Alec approached a group of children he heard the familiar voice calling out amongst them—

“Now, knuckle down properly; don’t fudge.”

It was Sam teaching his pupils the mysteries of marbles, and Alec had to wait some few minutes while a chubby youngster of six was inducted into the mysteries of holding his blood-alley in the most scientific and approved method.

“Well, my lad,” said Soft Sam at last, “what’s the trouble?”

Then Alec told him all he knew of Bertha’s disappearance; how eager he was to seek her out, and how helpless he felt himself to do so.

“More trouble about that girl!  Why can’t you leave them alone?  Mark my words, you’ll come a cropper over them before you are done.  But there, what’s the use of talking, the pairing season is death to common-sense.”

“But where has she gone, Sam?  Where shall I find her?”

“That depends on who has done the job.  He may be a tradesman, in which case you may as well say ‘good-bye’; or only a botch of an amateur, in which event you have a very good show.  Advertise in this evening’s paper for the cabman.  Offer ten pounds reward and no questions asked, and you will probably get an answer.”

“But suppose the man has been squared, is it likely he will give himself for a sum like that?”

“That depends, as I said at first, who put up the job.  Let us suppose it was a mug’s plant.  He would probably give the cabby a fiver for the night’s work, and he is not the average cabman if he would not tell where he drove to for a tenner, particularly if you undertake to ask nothing else, and keep the cops out of the affair.”

Alec jumped at the suggestion at once, and he was just in time to get the following notice in the second edition of the Evening Times—

TEN POUNDS REWARD.—If the cabman who drove a lady and gentleman from the Golden Bar last evening will call on Alexander Booth, King Street, he will receive the above.  No foolish questions asked.

Alec went to his office and waited there impatiently for further developments.  About six o’clock a seedy-looking man sidled into the office and asked for Mr. Booth.  He was shown into the inner room, and Alec, at the first glance, felt that something was coming.

“Are you the cove wot advertised?”

“That’s me,” said Alec.  “Are you the cabman I want?”

“No, I’m not the bloke; but I think I could find him, or what you want to know, if it was worth my while.”

“Do you know where he drove his cab last night?”

“Perhaps.  Is that all you want to know?”

“That’s all.  I’ll give a fiver down, and another fiver when you take me to the house.  And I want no other questions answered.”

“That’s the kind of talk!  You can ante up the blunt, and we will start right away.”

Eagerly Alec Booth counted out five notes to the man, and then together they left the office, and jumping into a cab at the door, drove rapidly towards the eastern suburb.

It was a long, silent drive.  Alec, as he had promised, asked no questions, and the man by his side volunteered no remark, except from time to time to give the requisite notice to the driver.

Up Oxford Street, along the Old South Head Road, mile after mile, past Paddington, Woollabra, the Tea Gardens, and then out in the scrub towards the sea to the open stretch of desolate ground round about Bondi.  The houses were getting fewer, and at last at a signal the cab pulled up.

“Here we are, boss.  That’s the crib there across the paddock,” and the man pointed to a little cottage a few rods away, and standing back from the road.  “Now you can brass up.”

A doubt crossed Alec’s mind.  It might be “a have.” But he resolved to chance it.  Ten pounds would neither make him nor break him; so paying the guide, who quickly walked off, he bade the cabman to wait for him, vaulted over the fence, and strode towards the house that had been pointed out.

The place appeared to be unoccupied, yet there was not the usual notice, “This House to Let,” in the window.  The front gate was fastened, but was easily stepped over.  There were blinds to the windows of the front rooms, but otherwise from an outside view they appeared to be empty.

Alec knocked at the door, a loud resounding knock.

There was no answer, no sound of movement within.

He tried the door.  It was a common two-inch, fastened by a common lock.  Without thought of possible consequences, in case his information was unreliable, Alec put his shoulder to the door, and putting forth his great strength, was pleased to find the staple give way.

An empty passage, an empty house, quiet, desolate.  Yet stay!  One of the four doors before him was fastened.  He turned the handle.  It was also locked.  Impatient, eagerly he shouted out—

“Bertha! are you there?”

* * * * *

The day following the abduction was one of nervous excitement to Huey Gosper.  He called in at the Golden Bar, and feigned a very natural astonishment at the great piece of news Ruby had for him.  He quite supported her opinion that “The Squatter” must be at the bottom of it.  “The Squatter” was evidently “gone” on her; he was the possessor of untold wealth.  What more likely than that he had used the power of his money to serve his own ends.

So spoke Ruby, and her tone was neither one of great commiseration for Bertha, or great condemnation to her supposed abductor.  Perhaps the prospect of being carried off under these conditions did not appear so terrible to her.

Huey wandered about the town restlessly.  He took an unaccustomed number of drinks, but they failed to act as a sedative.  He answered a large number of letters addressed to “The Tinman,” but if his correspondents were pleased with the tips he sent on this occasion they were mortals easily satisfied.  One question was ever uppermost in his mind, “What should he do next?” His plan, while yet in perspective, had appeared simple enough.  Disguised he would cage her, and later, in his own proper person, he would come to her rescue with a tale of how he had discovered that Alec Booth was her abductor.  In this way he hoped to gain the gratitude of Bertha, and the overthrow of his enemy.

He would go the following morning.  It would look suspicious to go too soon.  This was his plan, and he had only to wait quietly; but quiet he could not be.

How was Bertha getting on in that lonely house?  Could he trust the cabman?  Was there some fault in his plan, some weak point in the tale he meant to tell?  So his mind dwelt and doubted.  It was about six o’clock in the evening that, carelessly turning over the evening paper, he came to the following—

TEN POUNDS REWARD.—If the cabman who drove a lady and gentleman from the Golden Bar last evening will call on Alexander Booth, King Street, he will receive the above.  No foolish questions asked.

“My God!” cried Huey, “I have no time to lose!  That devil will be on my track.  Why did I trust the cabman?  Why did I not follow Soft Sam’s advice, always to work alone?  Never mind, there is time yet.  To-night or to-morrow morning, what does it matter, I will take some tools and be off.”

In five minutes a bundle already prepared was in his hand, and he was seated in a cab, speeding rapidly to the eastern suburbs.  He was nearly at his destination when he signalled the driver to stop.  Getting out he bade him wait.  Proceeding on foot he came to the solitary cottage.  Avoiding the front entrance, he walked along the side fence, climbed it, and approached a window covered on the outside with venetian shutters.

“Are you there, Bertha?” he whispered, poking a stick through the shutters and tapping the glass.

No answer.

“Are you there, Bertha?” he cried, still louder.

Still no response.  With a cloud of anxiety on his face he hastily took a short crowbar from his bundle, prized open the shutters, prized open the window, and stepped in.  With one glance he had eyed every nook and corner of the room.

It was empty.

“Damnation!” cried Huey, as he passed through the open door into the hall, where the front entrance itself was open to the world.  “The bird has flown, and the sooner I disappear the better.”

Three minutes later he was in the cab again, raging with disappointed hopes, full of doubt as to what had happened.  Had the cabman “split”?  Had Alec, with that cursed luck of his, foiled him again?  Or had Bertha, more ingenious than he had thought her, and despising the written warning he had left, effected her own deliverance.  Clearly he had failed, but while he had life and liberty he would try again, and Bertha should be his—yes, she should be his, or he would swing for her!

* * * * *

When Alec Booth called the name of Bertha at the inner door, he was gladdened to hear the sound of feet on the floor, and a welcome voice cry—“Alec!  Is that you, Alec?  Save me!”

With one strong drive from his shoulder the door burst in, and there, standing with tear-stained face and imploring eyes, in the midst of a daintily-furnished room, was Bertha Summerhayes.

“At last!  Thank God!” exclaimed Alec.  “How did you get here?”

She almost fell into his arms.  Her eyes lighted up with joy, and her bosom heaved with emotion.

“Oh, take me away from this!  Take me away!  It feels to me like a tomb!”

And Alec noted as he looked about that the room must have been in semi-darkness before the opening of the door, for the lattice shutters of the window were closed.

“Have you anything to take?” inquired Alec, as Bertha almost pushed him forward in her eagerness to hasten away.

“No, there is nothing.  Yet, stay a moment, there is that paper on the table; take that, it may be of use; it may help to explain.  But come, do come!  I shall faint if I stop in this place a minute longer!”

Alec picked up and placed in his pocket a written paper that lay on the table, and, careless of further concern about the house, quickly left it with Bertha on his arm, and it was not till they were seated side by side in the cab that Miss Summerhayes seemed to draw her breath freely.

As the cab bowled along, they were too busy with mutual congratulations to remark, on another road parallel to their own, a second cab hastening in the direction from which they had just come.  Without recognition these two cabs passed each other not four hundred feet away, the riders in each having their eyes closed to that which would have interested them so much.

It was in disjointed fragments that Bertha related her experience, and, pieced together, Alec found it came to this—

She was enticed into the cab by a bushy-whiskered man, who said he had been sent to take her to Mr. Norris, who was seriously ill.  The cab, she remembered, came up Oxford Street, when she pointed out that they were going in the wrong direction.  The man then told her that Mr. Norris was at a friend’s house at Darlinghurst, but very soon the cab passed that place, and then she called out and wanted to stop the cab or summon assistance.  After that she could remember nothing till she came to her senses, feeling very sick and faint, in the room where Alec had found her.

Looking about in the half-darkened room she found a written paper on the table, the same that Alec had in his pocket.  Alec took it out and read as follows—

“Miss Summerhayes is warned for her own safety to make no effort to escape or noise of any kind, as it will only force those who watch her to do again what was done in the cab.  On these conditions no harm shall happen to you.—A Friend.”

“Reading that made you keep quiet, I suppose,” said Alec.

“Yes,” said Bertha.  “I did not want to be smothered again, and I was terrified almost to death, sitting there alone all day, not knowing what was to happen next.  Perhaps they were going to murder me, or throw me over the cliffs, for I could hear the noise of the surf.  But noise in the house I heard none, till you came and broke open the door.  How did you find me out?”

Then Alec gave his account, how he had gone to Soft Sam, and acting on his advice, had advertised for the cabman, how a man had replied, and in spite of his assertion to the contrary, most likely the cabman himself.  The rest Bertha knew.

“How can I ever thank you enough, Mr. Booth?” said Bertha, as she stepped once more on the pavement fronting the Golden Bar.  “How can I ever thank you enough for your kindness and courage?”

“Give me this hand to keep and take care of,” replied Alec with a sudden burst of emotional fervour, “and no scoundrel in the future shall dare to touch you!”

Bertha did not answer him as she stepped lightly to the doorway; then, half turning her head, she threw him one word as she disappeared.

“Perhaps!”

CHAPTER XXII
IN THE GARDENS

It was Sunday morning.  Bertha, with her old friend the Professor by her side, was walking in the Botanic Gardens.  For the third or fourth time she had re-told the tale of her abduction, for a third or fourth time they had speculated as to who the author of the outrage could be, and as to the identity of the bushy-whiskered man.

“Has Mr. Booth been to the cottage again?” asked the Professor.

“Yes, he went back at once, but it was empty, all but the one furnished room I was in, and no one was there.  He inquired of the neighbours, and found that the place had been empty and to let for some time, and it was only a few days ago the board was taken down.  Then he went to the house agent.  This agent said that a bushy-whiskered man, giving the name of Brown, had taken the place and paid a month’s rent in advance.  The furniture he happened to know, for it was part of his business to keep his eyes on new tenants, was obtained on the time-payment system.  He told Alec—or, rather, Mr. Booth—the shop.  The furniture man had seen this Mr. Brown, who had paid him a deposit on one room of furniture.  He could say no more than that he was a middle-aged, bushy-whiskered man.”

“And has no more been found out?”

“No, nothing else.  Alec wanted to put it in the hands of the police, but I would not have it.  I would rather die than have to go in a police-court.”

“And so the villain is to escape?”

“Well, he did not do me much harm after all, Pro, and he will get his desserts some day.  All bad people do.”

“That is a very consoling theory for injured people who can obtain no redress, but I am afraid experience hardly warrants it.  The stage villain may walk to the scaffold during five acts, but the every-day scoundrel is more often carried to Parliament by a carriage and pair.  Have you no suspicion in your own mind as to who it was?”

“The girls in the bar think it was an old gentleman we call the Squatter.  He certainly asked me to marry him, and offered me several rich presents at different times; but I hardly think he was the kind of man to have planned an outrage of this kind.  It is strange, though, that he has not been seen in Sydney since the day I was taken away.  But there, I am weary to death of talking on the subject!  Let us speak of something else, Pro.  I have left that horrible bar for ever, and I have some news for you.  Now guess what it is?”

“You have found a new and wonderful dressmaker!”

“You horrid thing, as though I cared twopence about dress!”

“Then it is a new admirer who has told you that you are the prettiest girl in Sydney, and you have believed him.”

“That is really cruel of you, Pro?  As though I cared what people said.  You do not deserve to be told anything!”

“I will give up guessing then.  Tell me what it is.”

“Alec—that is, Mr. Booth—has asked me to marry him.”

“And you have consented?”

“Not exactly.  I thought I would ask you first.  I hardly know what to do.”

“Do you love the man?”

“He is brave, and strong, and kind.  And then it was so good of him to come and rescue me from that horrid place.  I really think he loves me, yet he is not just the sort of man I have fancied in my mind.  But somehow I am afraid this ideal man of mine will never come along; perhaps he would not have me if he did come.  And then Alec loves me, and he is very nice when he likes—and I don’t know what to do or what to say!”

“You have not mentioned another of his advantages, Bertha.  I hear that since he won the Cup he is quite a wealthy man.”

“Now you want to scold me.  You think I like him for his money.  But I am sure a man is no worse because he has means of his own.  Why, the Squatter was ten times as rich as Alec, and I never even looked at him.  It is not fair to expect every one to be poor like you, Pro, and I am sure it is better for those to have it who will enjoy it than rusty old misers who hoard it up.”

“And about the horse-racing, Bertha.  I thought you hated all connected with it?”

“Oh, Alec has promised to give up betting altogether.  He says the consultation, or sweep as they call it, pays better.  There is no risk, and he means to go in for that.”

“And you find this Mr. Booth a man after your own mind—not the ideal, as you said, but an every-day representative you will be willing to live with till death do you part?”

“I have thought it over, Pro.  Of course Alec is not clever.  He has read next to nothing, and can talk of very little outside his business, but all the same he might be pleasanter to have about a house than some one who was very clever.  I fancy these clever people are not very nice to live with, particularly if you are not so clever as they are.”

“But then, Mr. Booth is not like you in any respect, either in taste or ideas?”

“That is one of the reasons that makes me think we might do very well together.  Two people who were much alike would soon be tired of one another, don’t you think so?”

“I think, my dear Bertha, you first made up your mind, and then found all these fine reasons to support you afterwards.  You ask my advice, but what you really want is my approval.  I give you, instead, my congratulations.  The wife of a poor man you might have been, as you know, any time these two years, but I saw clearly that in such case you would always have been regretting that fortune which you might have had.  Now you are marrying a man of money.  I hope it will turn out as you wish, that the gold will gild your future; but, as in a marriage of poverty I clearly foresaw on your part a life of regrets, so in this other union I have the same misgiving.”

“Then what am I to do, Pro?  Shall I remain single?”

“No, my dear, by no means.  For a girl above all it is better that she should marry if she can wisely do so.  I cannot give you my wisdom, no one can.  Wisdom can be bought only by experience.  There is no other price.  So marry, my dear; be happy while you can, and remember if troubles and trials come that they are your life lessons, to be met bravely, not as evils, but as disguised friends.”

“You ought to have been a parson, Pro,” said Bertha, with tears in her eyes.  “You are always so serious.  Now, tell me honestly, don’t you think Alec is a fine-looking man?”

* * * * *

Alec Booth was not the man to hide his good fortune.  All his friends, more particularly those at the Golden Bar, were soon acquainted with the news of his proposed marriage to Bertha Summerhayes.

Ruby wished him joy, and hoped very kindly he would not be deceived in the object of his affections.  And when he inquired what she meant, replied—

“Oh, nothing!  Of course, Bertha is an angel—a little chipped, perhaps.  It’s about time she settled down, and, like a wise girl, she knows it.”

Florrie was diffuse—

“How kind of you to marry her!  You must be a real good sort, Mr. Booth!  There’s not many men would have your pluck, if what they say is true!”

“What do they say?” inquired Alec hotly.

“Oh, you have heard nothing?  You dear, simple man!  Then I’m sure I shall not be the one to tell tales out of school.  Besides, it may not be true; people do tell such lies.  And Bertha’s not a bad sort, though she does hold her head up.  You just shut your eyes and do as she tells you, like a good boy!”

Alec, never fluent of speech, did not know how to reply to his tormentor.  He knew their ways too well to take them altogether seriously; but the poison of their malice left a sting behind.  His only defence was a hearty “Ha! ha! ha!”

The unanswerable reply of a small head with a big stomach.

* * * * *

In his turn Huey Gosper was not slow to hear the news, and Ruby even gave him the details of “the lark,” as she called it, they had had with Alec.

“And he just was mad when we rubbed it into his angelic Bertha!  You should have seen how red he got in the face!  Why, the fool is fairly crazy about her!  It would only serve him right to play a trick or two on him—the conceited fool!”

A gleam of malicious joy shone in Huey’s eyes as though a sudden unholy hope had sprung up.  He whispered words to Ruby and she to him, and by their pantomime it might be understood that a plot, mutually agreed on, was arranged.

“You’ll keep your word?” interrogated Huey as he left.

“Like a book, Mr. Gosper!  Never you fear!  I’m not the girl to back out!”

And as he passed into the street Huey’s melancholy face bore the first smile it had worn for many days.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE LOVERS

Bertha had chosen her favourite Botanic Gardens for the scene of her courtship, and it was there that her daily meetings with Alec took place.  She found, perhaps, in the surroundings, a little compensation for that want of poetic feeling that even her partiality had to admit on the part of her lover.

On his side, from either the association with Bertha, or that mind-awakening which not infrequently arises with the amorous sentiment, he often surprised himself by quite original observations.

Bertha noted this change in him with the hope of the sanguine woman who trusts to mould her husband in the way that good husbands should go.  If she could only wean him from those hateful horses, that was her dream.

They were walking side by side.  She would not take the arm he offered.

“It was too countrified!” she said, and he submitted.

“How beautiful the lawns look to-day, Alec?”

“Yes; first-class feed for a cow,” said Alec, gazing about critically.

“And the trees—do you notice what lovely foliage they have?”

“I don’t know much about foliage, and that’s a fact, Bertha; but as for trees, I reckon I know a good one when I see it, and I looked the whole lot over the other day, and I’ll take my oath there’s not a good free splitter in the lot!  A lot of knotty, cross-grained wretches!  They are only fit for mill-wood, if they are fit for that!”

Bertha sighed softly to herself.

“I should so like to travel, would not you, Alec?  To go to other countries and see something of the world?”

“That’s just my idea.  Let’s go to the next Melbourne Cup.  We can do the thing tip-top, and have a grand old time!”

“Oh, bother the Melbourne Cup, Alec!  You are always thinking of races.  They say there is nothing worth noticing in Melbourne after you have seen Sydney, except it may be the bad smells.  And their races are just like ours, so they won’t be much of a treat.”

“How you do talk, Bertha.  Why, Melbourne is the finest city in Australia.”

“I was thinking of other countries—France and England, for instance.”

“What’s the good of our going to England?  Isn’t Australia the finest country in the world, and the people ahead of all the others?  Look at our fighting men, our rowing men, our cricketers.  Why, we can beat them all, hands down.  Australia’s good enough for me, any day.”

“But think of Paris.  You have heard of Paris—wonderful, beautiful Paris.”

“You mean the place where the plaster comes from?”

“Yes, and hundreds of things beside.  It is the city of delight, with miles of wonderful shops, arcades and picture-galleries, and crowds of the most elegantly dressed people in the world.  I believe if I could only see Paris I should be willing to die.”

“You had better see Australia and live,” replied Alec, stumbling on an epigram unconsciously.

“And there is a wonderful garden there, miles long, called the Bois de Boulogne; and now I remember that they have a celebrated horse-race there called the Paris Grand Prize, and all the great people in Europe go to see it.”

“That might be worth looking at,” said Alec, doubtfully; “if those Frenchmen only knew how to ride.”

“And think of the hundreds of ladies all beautifully dressed; not a rag-tag and bob-tail like we have here, but real ladies, with real costumes, every one a study and a delight.  Oh, I should like to see it.”

“I don’t believe it’s better than Randwick.”

“Alec, don’t talk like that.  It is like some one swearing in a church.”

“That’s all right, Bertha.  Don’t you mind me.  Of course I know nothing about all these fine things.  Australia is good enough for me, but if you want to see these dirty Frenchmen and their painted women, why we will take a trip there some day.”

“That’s so good of you,” said Bertha, squeezing his hand, and giving him a look that filtered through his being with a wild deliciousness.  “Only take me to Paris, and then I will come and stay in Australia for ever and ever.”

“And when shall we get married, Bertha?” inquired Alec, thinking the moment a propitious one.  “When is the day to be?”

“What do you want to be in such a hurry for?  Are we not very nice as we are?  I am sure it is beautiful to walk in the Gardens every day.”

“I don’t say no, Bertha; but I am always afraid some one will run off with you again, and next time I might not be able to find you.”

“I am very careful, Alec, now.  I never go out after dark, and as for going in a cab, I believe I shall always hate the sight of them.”

“You had better make sure; marry me and done with it.”

“There you go again.  I never heard of any one so impatient.  This is the best time in our lives, if we only knew it.  We are young and free, no cares, no troubles.  Let us live and enjoy as we are for a little while.  And a girl’s youth goes away so quickly.  I wonder, Alec, if you will think as much of me when I am old and ugly?”

“You ugly?” said Alec derisively.

“Well, not perhaps quite ugly, but you know well enough that here in Australia girls fade very quickly.  I dread to think what I shall be like in ten years’ time—all wrinkles and grey hairs, with no more figure than a post, no doubt.  Oh!  I want to keep young always, always, and never get old at all.  Don’t you, Alec?”

“I can’t say I ever thought much about it.  If a three-year-old would always remain a three-year-old it would be a great chuck-in, no doubt-that is, if they did not raise the weight.  But I guess there is not much show of getting the soft side of the handicapper.  We all have to carry weight-for-age.”

“I really wish, Alec, you could talk a little time without bringing in your everlasting horse-racing.  There are other things in the world besides horses.”

“So there are, Bertha,” said Alec soothingly; “there are cattle and sheep.  But, you see, they are not in my line.”

“You’re a goose,” replied Bertha, laughing, “and I half believe you are making fun of me all the time.  Where did you go yesterday afternoon?”

“I have been house-hunting.  It seems the proper thing, when I am engaged to a girl like you, to find a home to please her, and I wanted to give you a surprise.”

“You choose a house!” with a tone that made Alec feel two inches shorter.  “What should a man know about a house?”

“So I concluded, and I decided that you had best please yourself.  Where would you like to live?  I was thinking of Randwick—a nice stylish place.”

“What, live away from the harbour—the sea—with nothing to look at but houses and sand-hills?  That would be horrible!”

“Where then, my dear?  Choose your own place; it’s all the same to me.”

“I have always dreamt of one of those cottages with wide verandahs near the harbour, with a water frontage, a little house for a boat, and green lawns and gardens right down to the water.  That would be lovely!”

“I never thought of that.  But they are very awkward to drive to, generally, those sort of places.  But I was at Bob Simmons’s place the other day—it’s just the kind of house you would like and we had some fine sport with the dogs killing rats down on the rocks.  One old rat was real game, and no mistake!”

“But there are not rats everywhere all round the harbour,” said Bertha, with much concern.

“Just swarms with them!  That’s the best of it!  A fellow could always find a bit of amusement.  It’s as good as bandicooting, any day.”

“I think I would rather not be quite so close to the water, then.  I hate rats, and I don’t like seeing anything killed.  We will go and look for a house together.”

“All right, let’s go to-morrow.”

“Yes, or the next day.  To-morrow I have got to have a dress tried on.”

And then the two lovers talked for half-an-hour as to the relative importance of the new dress and the new house, and which it was most important to give the first attention.

Needless to relate, the dress carried the day.

CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONSPIRACY

Alec Booth was at his office looking over his letters that were handed to him by his clerk.  He was not a quick reader, and a still slower writer, so his clerk was not only a convenience, but a necessity.  One of these letters arrested his attention; it did not refer, like the others, to horse-racing, it bore no address and no proper signature.  He read slowly—

“If Mr. Booth is wise he will watch his lady-love more carefully.  Like a fool, he believed her story of being forcibly taken away in a cab.  She was only too willing, if the truth was known, and if the Squatter did not come to terms it was because he backed out at the last moment.  Even now she is meeting him, and if Mr. Booth only likes to be on the right-hand side of Circular Quay at half-past eleven to-night, and keep hidden near the last ship towards the point, he will see her with his own eyes.

“A Well-Wisher.”

His first impulse was to destroy the letter as a venomous thing, but the doubt in his mind, once aroused by Ruby and Florrie, came to him again.  He did not doubt Bertha—no!  Ten thousand times no!  But it would be so easy to put this slander to the test.

Bertha out at half-past eleven on Circular Quay!  Bertha, who never went out after dark!  It was absurd!  Yet men, smarter men perhaps than himself, had been made fools of before to-day.

Did this explain the reason for Bertha’s hanging back when he asked her to name the marriage day?  Was she only making a convenience of him in case the other man refused to toe the mark?  It was damnable!  But it was a lie—a wicked, cursed lie, and he would pay no attention to it.

But his mind could not leave the subject all that day, and eleven o’clock at night found him walking nervously and excitedly towards the meeting-place mentioned in the letter.

The last boat moored to the Quay was a sailing vessel, whose decks appeared deserted.  Perhaps the crew were on shore or asleep in their bunks.  Not even a watchman was visible.

On the wharf a few feet from the edge a pile of casks were stacked.  Across the roadway rose the high façade of prison-like wool warehouses.  The electric light that now makes this quarter of Sydney one of the best illuminated had not been installed at this date, and the yellow gas-jets visible here and there did little to lighten the darkness of the night.

Alec for a time looked about curiously, then paced up and down, assuring himself the while that he was a fool for his pains, and would have been far better off at that time of night seated at his club playing nap.  Then he remembered the directions he had received, “to keep hidden.” Now, the only place convenient for concealment was to stand behind the heap of casks, close to the edge of the Quay.  The simplest observation gave this assurance, and no doubt the writer of the letter had this place in her mind.

This thought did not occur to Alec.  He was told to hide, and he hid, quite unsuspicious that by doing so he was standing in an appointed place.

There were no immediate passers-by; a few forms could be heard and seen at a distance moving about, but that part of the Quay was for the time deserted.

Presently he heard the voice of a man singing, and coming towards him, and the words rang out on the night air with wonderful distinctness—

“I’m off to Charlestown early in the morning,
I’m off to Charlestown before the break of day;
To give my respects to all the pretty yellow girls,
I’m off to Charlestown before the break of day!”

“Evidently a sailor half tanked,” thought Alec, as he watched the man with peaked cap and pilot coat, half reel, half walk up the Quay.  The progress forward of the singer was more like tacking against a head-wind than a plain, straight-away course.  He zig-zagged first over to the wool warehouses, then across to the water’s edge, and each time Alec expected him to tumble over, but he always seemed to “wear ship” just in time, singing the while as though he were the happiest fellow in all the world.

By accident or design one of these tacks brought the drunken sailor just to the corner of the heap of casks behind which Alec stood hidden.

He pulled up short before turning again, and, seeing Alec, called out—

“Hullo, mate! can you give us a match?”

Alec, not from meanness, but to get rid of the man’s presence, told him he had not got one.

“I say, mate, give us a match, there’s a good fellow”—and the sailor put his hand on Alec’s shoulder.

At that moment a woman’s form could be seen approaching from the distance, clad in a light costume.  She might, for all that light revealed, be Bertha in a walking-dress.

Instinctively Alec turned away his eyes to look at the newcomer, and then the drunken sailor, like one who had waited for a signal at the moment Alec turned his head, pulled out a bag that had been hidden beneath his coat, clapped it over the face and round the neck of Alec, where a spring appeared to hold it fast, and then, with a rush and a push, sent his victim over the Quay into the dark water of the harbour.

There was no cry, but a half-stifled shout; no noise but the single splash, for the body sank like a stone.

The sailor stood calmly gazing down on the water for some minutes.  Not a ripple, not a break in the wavelets to show that the victim had risen again.

“I thought that would fix him,” the sailor said to himself.  “He never could swim, and he will find it a little late to learn now.” With that he started singing his song again, retracing his steps.  When he reached the lady in the light dress he went up to her, and speaking without any affectation of drunkenness—

“It’s no good, Ruby; he has not come.  I suppose he was too fly to be taken in by that letter of yours.”

“Well, I’m glad of it, Huey.  It might have got me into a row, and the pig is not worth it.  What shall we do now?”

“I will take you to the dance, as I promised.”

* * * * *

Alec, on falling into the water, went quickly enough to the bottom, and nearly as quickly rose to the surface.  He waved his arms frantically, nearly stifled and choked as he was by the covering on his head.  When he came to the surface again it was, fortunately for him, not in the open harbour, but amidst the piles on which the roadway of the Quay was built—his hands in their wild struggle caught one of the slimy cross-timbers, and to this he clung in desperation.

He knew by the feel that his head was out of water, and the bag about his head was not so tight but it allowed him to take breath.

Getting firm hold of his support with one hand, he used the other in an effort to withdraw the bag.  He tried and tried again, and, at last, aided by his strong arm, that had been developed by years of axe-work in the bush, by a final wrench, and a partial skinning of his ears, he pulled it off.  And then, to his lasting regret, he cast it from him.

He quickly understood where he was, and it was the work of a few minutes to draw himself up on the slanting beam and seat himself on its slippery surface.

For the moment he felt secure.  But what was he to do next?  If he shouted for help that devil above him might be waiting with pistol and knife to finish his work.

It was very uncomfortable there, soaking wet in a damp seat, in silent darkness, with only a glimpse of the harbour through the piles, but he reflected that he was probably safe from further attack if he kept quiet.  So he decided to sit still and wait for the morning light, if no other assistance should come.

His vigil, however, was not so long; not an hour and a half had passed when a ship’s boat, laden probably with some belated captain, approached quite close to him.  He sang out—

“Boat ahoy!”

The rowers stopped.  Alec called again, and on his saying he had fallen in the harbour and wanted to land, they very cheerfully backed their craft up to the piles, and with some difficulty Alec managed to jump aboard, and in a few strokes was landed at the steps.

Alec Booth could see the spot where he had stood behind the casks, but as he anticipated, no sailor, either drunk or sober, was to be seen there now.  He felt a satisfaction in throwing off the numbness of his limbs by a smart walk, and his first place of call was the office of the Water Police.

The officer in charge took down his statement with provoking calm.  One might have fancied that the throwing of citizens off Circular Quay was a matter of hourly familiarity to him.

“And you say this man put a spring bag over your head?  Where is it?”

“I threw it away in the water,” said Alec.

“Ah!  Were you robbed?”

Alec felt in his pockets.  His watch, his purse and pocket-book were all safe, but of course wet.

“Ah!” said the policeman again.  “You say this sailor who assaulted you appeared to be drunk?”

“Yes, he acted like it as he came towards me.”

“Are you quite sure you were sober yourself?”

“Sober as a judge!”

“Did you have anything to drink to-night?”

“I may have had two or three whiskies-and-sodas.”

“Ah!” said the constable again, and this time in a tone so provoking that Alec, in spite of the majesty of his uniform, felt inclined to kick him.

“We will inquire into the matter, sir, and for the future I should advise you to keep away from the Circular Quay when you have taken two or three whiskies.”

Disgusted as well as wet, Alec left the office.  It was clear enough the officer gave no credence to his story, and thought it merely the hallucination of a drunken man.  So he went home, and to bed, his mind filled with a darkening fear of this enemy—that mysterious and unknown—who thus boldly attacked him.

The letter was only too probably part of a plot to lure him to destruction.  He had no clue to his enemy, who had failed this time, but was at full liberty to contrive some fresh scheme for his undoing.  And the next time, luck might not be on his side.

Alec was brave enough in open fight, but this secret fear unmanned him.  And Bertha’s abduction came to his mind—that mystery had never been explained.  Had the drunken sailor and the bushy-whiskered man any connection?  Was there a conspiracy to ruin or murder Bertha and himself?  He feared so.  And he turned the question over and over in his mind, and he could find only one hope for peace.

He would go in the morning to Soft Sam.

* * * * *

Alec found Soft Sam seated as usual in the Domain, with a crowd of wide-eyed juveniles about him, and apparently listening with breathless interest to a localized history of Jack the Giant Killer, with variations.

“So the young man said to the rich squatter, ‘I can drink as much of that whisky as you can.’  And the squatter laughed at a little chap like that swallowing oil of vitriol like the old soaker he was himself.  So he called for glasses, and filled them.  The squatter drank his, but Jack, after taking a sip, poured his all down his neck into his Crimean shirt, where it was soaked up.

“And they drank, and drank, and drank—till the squatter was dead on the floor, and young Jack jumps up, takes all his money, and rides away!”

This was Soft Sam’s somewhat abrupt conclusion, for he saw that Alec wished to speak to him.  And as the children still hung about, with a manifest inclination to hear the next chapter, he dismissed them speedily with the present of sixpence, with which, without more ado, they departed for the nearest lolly-shop.

“It’s cheap at the price,” said Sam.

“What’s cheap?”

“Why, happiness.  I’ve made them there kids as happy as sandboys with sixpence.  It seems to me they have often got a lot more sense that way than when they grow up.”

“I’m in a bother again, Sam.”

“I thought as much.  You can most of you find me out when trouble comes along.  What’s the matter this time?”

And then Alec told the history of the previous night.

“It’s the girl again,” said Sam, after he had patiently listened to Alec.  “I told you she would breed mischief.  You are young and foolish like the rest of them, and take no notice.”

“You don’t mean to say that Bertha caused me to be thrown in the harbour?”

“Of course I don’t!  But some one who is after her did the trick right enough.  And a very nice little job it was, too.  He must be a fellow of talent.  And it was only a fluke it did not come off.  He must be a real smart bloke, and no mistake.  If he tries it on again I would not care to insure your life.  Very neat, very neat; and not a trace to track him by.  Really, I give him credit.  I could not have done better myself!”

“He’s a clever scoundrel, there’s no doubt; but the question is, ‘What am I to do?’ Am I to sit quiet till he makes another shot?”

“Why can’t you leave the girls alone?  I tell you they will ruin you sooner or later.  Or, if you must mix yourself up, why not marry this Bertha right away, and done with it?  While she’s single there will always be strays browsing round after her.  Put the hobbles on, man, and get her broken in to double harness, and if this attentive friend of yours is only half as smart as he appears to be, he will quit.”

“Thank you, Sam?  That’s just my own idea, and I’ll put the matter to Bertha straight—that it’s either get married at once or one of us missing.  And she’s not the girl I take her for if she refuses.”

CHAPTER XXV
THE HEART UNION

“Now, Bertha, say the word, and let us be married at once.  I have told you what Soft Sam has said.  You know our position.  At any moment this scoundrel may do us a mischief.”

“And what if he does, I’m not afraid; and I am surprised at you, a strong man, fearing a coward who is afraid to show himself!”

“That is just it, Bertha!  If he would only show himself.  I am afraid of no man alive; but a crawling wretch who springs on you unawares, I fear him as I would a death adder in the dark.”

“What can he do?  He has not hurt either of us yet.”

“I suppose you think your cab drive was a pleasure trip?”

“Well, after all, Alec, there was not much harm done, was there?  I was awfully frightened and all that kind of thing, but it was all right when you came.”

“You will drive me mad, Bertha!  I believe you try to provoke me on purpose!  Will you, or won’t you, marry me now?”

“When is now?”

“Say to-morrow!”

“Impossible!”

“Why impossible?”

“In the first place, I must get my dress ready, and then there are the bridesmaids.  Who would be bridesmaids at a day’s notice?”

“Oh, bother the bridesmaids.  We don’t want any bridesmaids.  Let them rip!”

“If I don’t have bridesmaids I won’t be married.  A marriage without bridesmaids!  Who ever heard of such a thing!  I don’t believe it would be a proper marriage at all!”

“Oh, yes, it would—as safe as the bank!”

“Safe or no safe, I’ll be married properly or not at all.”

“Perhaps you would rather be carried off in a cab?”

“Well, your marriage would be nearly as bad!  Go and write our name in a book, the same as you do at a picture-gallery, and a man in a light suit says, ‘Three-and-sixpence, please.  You are married.  Next!’  You can bury me that way if you like to but marry me, never!”

“Say your own time then; only pray be reasonable, Bertha.  I am fearful for myself, I own, but I am doubly fearful for you.  Every time I see you I fear it may be the last.”

“I suppose I must give in; you men are so impatient!  Let us say this day month.  That is the very, very earliest.”

“A month, Bertha!  Why not say twelve at once?”

“I will say twelve if you like.  That would be much better, only I thought you were in such a hurry.”

“I should like to swear to myself for a few minutes, Bertha, if you would kindly walk on a little way ahead.”

“What you can see to be so cross about I can’t make out.  You have everything your own way.  You ask me to marry you in twelve months, and I agree to it.  What more can you want?”

“You are trying to take a rise out of me—I can see clear enough.  But be a little reasonable, Bertha.  Say three days, four days—in fact, say just how long it takes these blessed bridesmaids to get themselves groomed and in proper training for the job!”

“Now you are more reasonable, Alec.  We might—mind, I am not sure—we might get ready in a fortnight.”

With this promise Alec had to be satisfied, or make the best of it.  He had succeeded in knocking fifty per cent. off the first estimate, and was correspondingly elated.  Perhaps he would not have been quite so pleased with himself had he known that for more than a week past Bertha’s bridal dress had been completed, that the bridesmaids were long ago chosen, and their arrangements made; that even the church and officiating minister had been selected, and, as a matter of fact, the marriage could have been solemnized with all those rights dear to the heart of womankind two days from date.

Alec did not know this, and he was contented.

* * * * *

A fortnight later the Sydney Evening Times had the following paragraph in its column of social news—

“St. Clement’s Church, Church Hill, Sydney, was yesterday the scene of a very pretty wedding, the occasion being the marriage of Miss Bertha Summerhayes, a popular Sydney belle, and Mr. Alexander Booth, the well-known sportsman, and owner of the winner of the last Sydney Cup.  The church had been very prettily decorated by the friends of the bride, wreaths of waratah and rock lilies being used with great effect.  A miniature avenue of tree ferns led from the gateway to the church entrance, and wild flowers were not only used in the profuse decoration, but were also scattered as a carpet for the happy pair.  The bride was married from the residence of her old friend Professor Norris, the eminent and well-known specialist in character reading.

“Punctually at half-past two the entrancing sound of the march from Tannhäuser on the organ announced the arrival of the carriages with the bridal party.  The bride was attired in a lovely gown of green peau-de-soie, with berthe of old Brussels bone-point lace also cream in tint, the corsage adorned with orange flowers.

“She carried an exquisite bouquet of white lilies and maiden-hair ferns, and over all fell a soft tulle veil in graceful folds to the ground.  A magnificent diamond bracelet, the gift of the bridegroom, was her only jewel.  Miss Ruby Jones, a friend of the bride, was maid of honour, and wore a toilette of old gold silk, with gloves and shoes to match; she wore a richly-chased gold bangle, a present from the bridegroom, and also carried a bouquet of lilies and ferns.  Miss Florrie Simpson, the second bridesmaid, was likewise attired in old gold silk, and she carried a duplicate bangle and bouquet.  The whole effect of colour was a delicious harmony of cream and gold.

“Mr. Booth was attended by Mr. Jenkins, the well-known and popular host of the Golden Bar.  After the ceremony, which was performed by the Rev. A. A. Softword, the bridal party left the church to the strains of the grand march of Mendelssohn, ably played by that eminent organist, Mr. Treadfast, and adjourned to the residence of Mr. Norris.  Here a sumptuous breakfast was prepared, and the house made a little fairyland with palms and tropical foliage.

“After the health of the bride and bridegroom had been duly honoured, Mr. and Mrs. Booth left amidst a shower of rice and rose-leaves on their tour through the Blue Mountain district.  The bride wore a fashionable Newmarket walking gown, tailor made, of a light fawn tint, with sunshade and hat en suite.  The presents were costly and too numerous to give in detail.  One exception must be made in favour of a wonderful and rare piece of art, a stirrup-cup in chased gold and enamel, of Viennese workmanship, a present to the bridal pair from the members of the A.J.C.”

CHAPTER XXVI
UP TO DATE AGAIN-DARLINGHURST GAOL

After the magisterial decision Bertha was removed to Darlinghurst Gaol.  Her appearance at the Police Court was merely formal, and she was there committed to take her trial at the ensuing Quarter Sessions.  Bail was not allowed, and only the daily visit of Professor Norris broke the monotony of the following days.

The best legal talent available had been secured on her behalf, and the most skilled Sydney detective was employed, and money was used unsparingly to unravel the mystery in her defence; but no progress had been made.  On the other hand, the prosecution, who were no less busy in seeking for corroborative evidence, were utterly at fault.  Her past history had been raked up, all her acquaintances interrogated for a clue that would indicate a secret intrigue on her part, or a previous lapse in her morals; but her record stood the test well.  The chatter of her old companions in the Golden Bar, when sifted by experts, was found to be mere slander.

Detective Dobell began to feel uneasy.  It was contrary to all his experience that a murderess, such as Mrs. Booth appeared to be, should, up to the commission of the crime, have led a blameless life.  He had taken it for granted that inquiry would have shown the hidden motive for the deed.  Motive there must have been.  For no one, not a lunatic, would commit a crime of this nature without reason.  And Dobell felt that the evidence, though strong, was not strong enough.  The robbery at the office was, to say the least, a curious coincidence, but by no possible means could he connect Mrs. Booth with it; and that left a loophole for doubt.  She had ample funds also at her own disposal, as was proved by the bank account that Mr. Booth on his marriage had opened for her.

Dobell was troubled; he felt his reputation in some sense at stake.  He was at fault, and he had felt so sure.

The Professor was surprised at the comparative calm with which Bertha endured her imprisonment.  After the first shock, the first horror, her outward demeanour became quiet, almost confident.  It is true her lawyer had bade her be of good heart, that the evidence, so far as known and unsupported, was, at best, only one of strong suspicion, and what no jury would convict on.  But prisoners’ lawyers are professedly sanguine, and the Professor hardly expected such consolation to have so influenced Bertha’s emotional nature.

“Is there anything new, Pro?” Bertha inquired one morning, when the Professor made his usual morning visit.

“No, my dear; nothing.  No clue, no trace can be found.  What are these heaps of letters about that you have been looking at?”

Bertha had nearly the old smile on her face as she replied—

“Offers of marriage, Pro!  The Golden Bar was bad enough.  I used to get some sort of a proposal at least once a week; but here in Darlinghurst I am fairly deluged.  Every man in the colony seems to want to marry me!  Just look at some of their letters.  Some of them don’t even pretend they think me innocent?  I suppose if one of these men should be on the jury it will be ‘Hang or Marry!’  Really it is horrible!  What can they take me for?  One husband hardly cold from a dreadful death, and they insult me with their infamous propositions.  Do you know, Pro, if it was not for the hope that one of these letters might have some reference to the crime and the author of it I would not open another.”

“You are hopeful, then, Bertha?”

“For myself I am not troubled a bit.  I am even surprised at myself.  I seem to be a looker-on, as one looks at a play, and the whole thing a dream.  I pinch myself at times; I cannot be sure I am awake.  And then I have a kind of certainty that in some way the truth will come out.  I was thinking only last night that there is a man who could help us if he would.  Will you go to him?”

“Who is he?”

“He is an old friend of poor Alec’s, who was always singing his praises, and said he could do anything, find out anything if he only liked.  You remember when I was carried off in the cab?  Well, Alec went to him, and he told Alec how to find me.  He is the man to help us, I feel certain.”

“What is his name, and where does he live?  I will go at once.”

“He is called Soft Sam.  Very likely that is not his real name, and you will learn where to find him at the Golden Bar.  Get Ruby and Florrie to ask some of the customers.  They will know who, and you will soon find out.”

CHAPTER XXVII
MR. HOBBS AT TEA

Those who had only seen P.-C.  Hobbs in his official uniform would hardly have recognized the spruce and well-dressed gentleman, as he turned into the side entrance of his house to tea.

“My word!  What a toff!” was his wife’s greeting.

But Tom smiled amiably, and produced from his tail-pocket a paper bag with a quart of his favourite prawns, which he proceeded to empty on to a plate on the table.

“Just like your extravagance, I’m sure!  However I am going to make ends meet while you are squandering all your money on that rubbish I don’t know.”

“Only sixpence, Bell, and he gave me good measure.”

“That’s just like you!  Only sixpence!  But where is the money to come from, I should like to know?  Any one would think we had a fortune by the way you go on.”

This was the way Mrs. Hobbs relieved her feelings when her pre-emptive right to be sole Chancellor of the Exchequer was infringed upon.  Tom did not answer; he was already seated, decapitating in a masterly manner the pink fish.

“And where have you been?” continued Mrs. Hobbs, pouring out the tea.  “One would think you had been to see some fancy girl.”

“And so I have, Bell,” said Tom, as calmly as possible.

“And you dare to come home and tell me to my face, you vagabond!”

“Take it easy, old girl!  All in the way of business.  You know my inquiries about Israel were a frost, so I determined to-day to try a fresh line.  I would look up Mrs. Booth’s antecedents, and with this object I called at the Golden Bar, and did a bit of a mash with a barmaid there they call Ruby.”

“And you had the impudence to go talking to one of those brazen-faced painted hussies?  I thought better of you, Tom.”

“In the way of business, my dear, I would talk to anybody.  And she’s not half a bad sort,” said Hobbs provokingly, as his wife sniffed.  “She as good as said she would meet me on Sunday if I would take her out for a drive.”

“And I suppose you are going to?”

“Well, I did think of it; but perhaps it is hardly necessary.  She has told me pretty well all she knows about Mrs. Booth’s history.”

“And what did that amount to?”

“If you will listen quietly for a minute I will tell you.  Mrs. Booth, while she was serving at the bar, appears to have been a regular rage amongst the men that frequent it; she had untold offers of marriage—one from one of the wealthiest men in Australia, a man they call the Squatter, the owner of Revolver, the favourite for the Cup.  There were also two young fellows who came together from the Hawkesbury district, and were both sporting men.  One of these young men was Alexander Booth, her future husband, the other Huey, probably Hubert Gosper.  They were both, so Ruby said, mad after this Miss Summerhayes, and for a long time that young lady did not show any special preference.  But after Alec won the Cup, and made a small fortune, she married him, which seemed to Ruby very sensible on her part.

“But before this marriage two strange incidents occurred which were never made public in the press or the police courts.  The first was the abduction of Miss Summerhayes from the very door of the Golden Bar one night at ten o’clock, and her forcible taking away in a hansom cab by a man with bushy whiskers.  He appears to have drugged her with chloroform to keep her quiet, and taken her to a lonely house at Bondi, for it was there that Mr. Booth found her the following day, locked up, but unharmed.  Inquiries were made by Mr. Booth, but the culprits were never traced, and Miss Summerhayes opposed all application to the police.  This affair was generally supposed to have been promoted by the man they call the Squatter, but it is pretty clear there was no proof of any kind except that he was fond of the girl, and money was no object to him.

“The next strange event was connected with Mr. Booth.  According to his statement at the time, he was talking to an apparently drunken sailor on Circular Quay at half-past eleven one night, and was suddenly bonneted with a bag over his head that closed with a spring opening, and pushed over into the water, and he would have been most certainly drowned had he not fortunately risen to the surface amidst the piles of the quay, and there held himself up till a boat chanced to pass and come to his assistance.  Booth never found the drunken sailor again.  He made a complaint to the police, but they appear to have thought the whole story the fabrication of the mind of a man who had drunk too much and had incautiously fallen in the water.”

“And how do all these histories help you, Tom?” inquired his wife.

“In this way.  I think I have found my clue at last.”

“It was about time.”

Constable Hobbs continued his statement to his wife and his prawn-eating simultaneously—

“You will notice that now I have found the jealous lover, the man I have been looking for all this time.  And that was the only motive that seemed to me sufficient to account for the crime.  I have, in fact, found two lovers; but, in spite of Ruby and the rest, I rule out the man they call the Squatter.  He is wealthy and fond, no doubt; but he is a man well known, he has been a member of Parliament, and is about as dull and stupid as he is rich.

“Now the man I am after must be a smart, clever man, and the second lover, this Huey Gosper, seems to fill the bill very well.  It is quite likely he was the bushy-whiskered man himself, for no disguise is more simple than to put a lot of false hair on your face.  He may also have been the drunken sailor.  If this crime ever occurred as told by Mr. Booth, it was no ordinary assault by a waterside thief, for, according to his statement, he was not robbed.

“You will notice that these two attempts were so cleverly contrived that, although they failed, their author was never discovered.  There was originality of invention in both attempts, and does not this crime on the North Shore look to be in the same handwriting, to have originated in the same mind, to have been executed by the same hand?”

“You have found it out at last!” cried Mrs. Hobbs, with enthusiasm.

“On the contrary, Bell, I have found out nothing.  So far, I only suppose.  And Suppose never hanged a man yet; or, at least, he should not have done so.  What I have done is to find a man and a motive.  Here is a man who, in the hearing of several, had sworn to marry the girl, and who, if he was the author of the undiscovered crimes I have told you of, was quite capable of the third.

“But I am still in the dark as to how he could have committed it.  Anyhow, it is the first hopeful sign I have got for days of labour, and on the strength of it, Bell, I bought the prawns.  I must pat myself on the back sometimes.”

CHAPTER XXVIII
SOFT SAM

Professor Norris had not long to wait in the Golden Bar before an habitué was found who gave him directions how to find Soft Sam.

“You go in the Domain—now’s just about his time—and on a seat near the cricket-ground you will find a white-haired old man acting the goat with a lot of kids.  That’s him.”

The directions impressed the Professor as somewhat singular, but such as they were he followed them, and, sure enough, he found just the group that had been described.  He paused in astonishment for a few minutes to watch the old gentleman, who was apparently instructing two juveniles in knickerbockers the preliminaries in the noble art of self-defence.

“That is surprising,” said the Professor to himself, “the finest bump of benevolence I ever saw and teaching boys to fight!”

“I have come,” said the Professor, introducing himself, “on behalf of Mrs. Booth, the widow of a late friend of yours.  She wishes you to help her in her present difficulty, that you have no doubt heard of.”

“Oh, yes, I heard about it,” nodded Sam.

“She wishes you to help her discover the author of the crime.”

“Then she has sent to the wrong party.  As pretty a job as ever I heard of!  A real artist that man, whoever he was; and I’m not the one to give him away.  Not me!  Go to the detectives, the men who are paid for that kind of work.”

“I should have told you that with Mrs. Booth money is simply no object in this case.  She would willingly give a thousand pounds to have the truth discovered.  Why, she’s committed for trial for the crime herself!”

“I don’t want her money—a great deal of good may it do her, or any one else!  If I help her it will be to get her out of a mess, not to get somebody else in.”

“Do as you will; only, if you can, come to the help of the poor girl.  She says that her late husband always used to speak of your ability in the most enthusiastic way.”

“And it’s a pity for him he had not thought well enough of it to follow my advice, and he would be alive and well at this moment.  I told him time after time that running after this woman would bring him no luck; but, like all the young ’uns, he would not listen—would have his own way, go his own road, and now all my trouble on him is thrown away.  It’s enough to make a man disgusted with human nature.  In a couple of years I would have made him king of the Australian turf.

“I made him what he was—out of mud, as you may say—but he must go like all the rest.  Thought he was clever enough to hold his own bat.  Now, as to this affair, tell me all you know about it first.  But wait a minute, have you got sixpence on you?” said Soft Sam, after vainly searching all his pockets.

The Professor quickly produced a shilling, which Soft Sam, handing to one of the children who still hung about, said—

“Now, the first of you that gets to the gate is to spend it.”

With a shout and a scuffle the whole mob disappeared.

The Professor then related at length all the particulars of the crime known to him.

“And on the strength of that evidence,” said the old man, when Mr. Norris had finished, “they arrested Mrs. Booth—the Queen of Sydney they used to call her at the bar.  The dunderheads!  Why, I would not trust them to catch a rat for me.  You say the room of the crime remains untouched, just as it was?  Let us go over and see it.”

An hour later, under the guidance of Police-Constable Hobbs, who had the key and charge of the room, the two gentlemen entered the home of Mrs. Delfosse.

Mr. Hobbs eyed the newcomer curiously.  Who was he, and why had he come under the guidance of the Professor?  Perhaps some expert detective brought from Melbourne or one of the other colonies.

To a casual observer, Soft Sam would have seemed to pass into the house, up the stairs, and into the fatal room without so much as a glance about him.  But Mr. Hobbs was not deceived in this way.  He noted the quick eyes of the old man, saw, examined, took in everything.  Only a moment he paused at the door of the room, and then passed in as though it was of no further interest.  This surprised the policeman, who had examined and wondered at that door for hours as the seat of the hidden mystery.

The old man crossed to the fire-place, gave a pressure with his hand to the register grate, then stepped to the window, looked out, glanced at the catch, and said almost impulsively—

“It’s as plain as kiss your hand.”

“What is?” interjected P.-C.  Hobbs imprudently.

“That the police force are a lot of mokes,” continued the old man, turning about; and in another tone, “We may as well go back, Professor.”

“What, already?  You have hardly seen the place!”

“I’ve seen enough.  Come along!”

Soft Sam would say no more till they were out of the house and seated in the ferry, on the way to Sydney.

“You say the bedstead has not been shifted?”

“No; nothing has been moved.”

“Then your mystery is so simple, a child could see through it!  Any one but a regular detective or a duffer should be able to find it out in five minutes.  He was only a clever amateur after all who did the job.”

“How do you know?”

“Why, he has left his track.”

“Then how was it done?”

“That I do not feel at liberty to tell you—at least, just yet.  I must see Mrs. Booth and have an understanding with her.  She is a girl of sense, as far as girls go.  For, mind you, as I said at first, I am not going to be dragged in to give evidence in any police-court proceedings.  None of their tomfoolery for me!  If I tell Mrs. Booth how she can clear herself, I expect her only to act when, and as I tell her.”

* * * * *

At Darlinghurst Soft Sam expressed the wish to speak privately with Bertha, and the Professor had to wait impatiently till the interview was over.

Coming out, Soft Sam only nodded to him on his way to the gate, and any one who had noted the old man’s face as he walked down Oxford Street would have seen his usual serene smile was gone—he was troubled.

Crossing Hyde Park he hailed a man on an adjoining footway.

“Heigh, there, Huey!”

Huey Gosper, for that was the gentleman called, seeing who it was addressed him, came forward at once over the turf.

“Is it a fiver you want, Sam?” he said, putting his hand to his pocket, and remembering the old gentleman’s peculiar way.

“No, boy; I wish that was all the trouble.  The fact is, I was just going to hunt you up.  I have something of importance to tell you.  Now, mind this, don’t laugh, and think it’s not serious.”

“Well, what’s the matter?” said Huey, easily.

“The matter, my boy, is this—that the climate of Sydney for the next year or two is likely to be very unhealthy for you.  You have got a complaint that nothing can cure but the air of South America, and the medicine must be taken at once.”

“But what are you driving at, Sam?” said Huey, turning pale.  “Yours is a big order.”

“Now, don’t act the goat with me, Huey.  You have always found me your friend, and if you have made a mess it’s because you would not take my advice.  And when I tell you that after breathing the air of North Shore at three in the morning, it is necessary for your health to try Valparaiso, you should understand I mean what I say.”

And, saying no more, the old man moved on, gloomy and thoughtful.

“Both of them mugs!  All the world are mugs.  I am a fool to try and train any of them,” he said to himself.

When the Professor entered Bertha’s cell after her interview with Soft Sam he found her quite radiant.

“I know all about it now, Pro; or rather, I know how it was done; for Sam will not tell me who it was, though I believe he knows.”

“And how was it done?  I am just dying to know!”

“You must wait a little bit yet, Pro.  Sam made me swear not to tell a soul till he gave me leave, or he would have told me nothing.  So, of course, I must keep my word.  But be assured, Professor, my troubles now are nearly over.  In a few days at most I go out a free woman.  Did I not tell you that Soft Sam was a clever old man?”

“Clever at villainy, it seems, Bertha!  All the same, we must be thankful to him.”

CHAPTER XXIX
HOW MASTER HOBBS GOT HIS BALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR’S YARD

When Constable Hobbs had seen his visitors safely out of the house he returned to the room of the crime full of thought.

It was apparent to him that this strange old man had read the secret and method of the murder at a glance.  Not two minutes had he been in the room, and the tone of his involuntary exclamation announced that he had solved the riddle.

How had he done it?  What magic was there in this old man’s vision that was lacking in his own?  He had marked in his mind every movement, every glance of Soft Sam—the door that had hardly arrested his slow walk into the room, the fire-place he had only touched, and finally, the window where the exclamation had taken place.

What was there so noticeable about the window to excite the old man?  He went towards it, and looked it over carefully.  Four squares of glass, two in each sash, secured by a common window-fastener, that was now closed, as Police-Constable Hobbs had always seen it.

He opened the window, and scrutinized it carefully.

What were these two small lines that cut the paint of the lower bar of the upper sash, immediately under the fastener?

He looked at them carefully.  At the edges the cuts were deeper.  They were such marks as are seen on the tops of corks of lemonade bottles.  And the marks were recent.

“That’s it!” cried Hobbs, joyfully.  “That’s what he saw!  What a fool I was never to have opened the window!  They are hardly to be seen when it is closed.”

But his triumph was only for a moment.  These marks may have explained everything to the old man; they were so far silent to Constable Hobbs.  He had, however, found a clue, and he started to think to put this and that together.

The window had, so far, never entered his calculations; there were so many objections to be overcome in that direction.  Nevertheless, putting them aside, he devoted all his thought to the window and its lock.  Drawing out his pocket-knife, he found it was an easy job to press back the little brass bar when it was open.  He remembered doing the same trick as a boy, when he happened to be locked out of his own home.  But with the knife he found it quite impossible to shut the lock again from the outside.

Descending to the kitchen of the house he procured a piece of very fine wire, and, having borrowed a ladder, mounted to the window from the outside.  He had previously again closed the window.  He now readily opened it as before, with his knife pushed up between the junction of the two sashes and pressed sideways.  Raising the lower sash and bending his wire in the form of a loop, he was able with a little dexterity to pass it over the knob of the catch; holding the two ends of the wire in one hand he drew down the lower sash, and then by a sideway pull easily pulled the little brass bar out again.

The window was shut and locked.  He had only to loosen one end of the wire to withdraw the whole and place it in his pocket.

Descending the ladder and mounting to the room, he again opened the window and examined the two marks.  Yes, there could be no doubt on the matter.  The two marks were deeper and plainer than ever.  His own wire had fitted the grooves left by a previous one.

He felt happy and proud of himself.  At any rate, he had beaten the much-vaunted Dobell so far.  So pleased was he at that moment, that if some peripatetic hawker had at that time cried out “prawns” for sale in the street, he would have lavishly treated himself to a pint, in spite of Bell and all her lessons in domestic economy.

But this rash ardour soon cooled, and no demand was made on his tendency to extravagance.  He was not out of the wood yet, not by a long way, he told himself, as he surveyed the iron bars and the thirty feet fall to the ground.

“Supposing a man got to the window, how could he get through?”

He tried each iron bar.  They were all solidly soldered into the stone window-sill.  Look at them as he would, they baffled him.  Even a child could not squeeze through.  And then again, a ladder must have been used to mount to the window.  The one he had just used himself he had borrowed from a painter who was at work on a house close by.  But he remembered that the morning after the murder, with the possible idea in his mind that the murderer had got into the room from the chimney, he had searched the neighbourhood for some distance round, and had found no privately-owned ladder long enough, and no painters using ladders.  It was a common burglar’s trick to enter houses this way, so he had looked, and carefully looked, but he had found no sign of ladder, or even marks of where a ladder must have stood if it had been used.

His mind was in a turmoil.  He thought and thought, but could see no way out.  At last, in despair, he went home to tea, and relieved his mind by telling his discovery and his troubles to his wife.  He had another matter on his mind that worried him also.  At the Golden Bar, which he had visited more than once, he had had pointed out to him the person of Huey Gosper, and the man’s aspect had struck him as familiar, but for the life of him he could not bring to mind in what way or under what conditions he had seen him before.

Mrs. Hobbs was rejoiced at her husband’s news.

“Didn’t I say so, Tom, you would find it out?  I always had my doubts about that window, though you were so positive!  Why did you not look before?”

“Why indeed!” echoed Tom.  “Why don’t we do fifty things that are plain enough to us after we have lost the opportunity?”

“And you can’t understand how the murderer got through the iron bars on the window?”

“No, that’s what puzzles me most of all.”

“Perhaps he did not get through at all.”

“Don’t be a fool, Bell!”

“Drat that boy!” interjected Mrs. Hobbs.  “He has got a new ball, and won’t come in to his tea.  Here, Harry!  Come here!”

But Harry did not answer, and did not come.  So his mother went to the back door to call him.  But she did not call him, but paused in a kind of wonderment on the doorstep.  Presently she shouted—

“Come here, Tom!”

Languidly, and with true official deliberation, Mr. Hobbs came to her side.

“Well, what’s the matter, Bell?”

“Look at that boy, Tom.  His ball has fallen in the next yard.  He cannot squeeze through the fence or climb over it, but he is getting the ball all the same.”

“So I see.  He has got your clothes-prop through the palings and is dragging the ball towards him.  That’s nothing.  I used to steal apples that way when I was a boy.”

“But does not that explain what you were talking about?”

“What!  You think the murder might have been committed with a clothes-prop?”

“No, I don’t say anything of the kind.  But it might have been somehow in the same way.”

“Bell, you’re mad!  Wash up the tea-things, that’s more in your line.  I’ll have a smoke.”

Hobbs sat and puffed the blue clouds, and so deep was he lost in thought that his lips puffed mechanically long after his pipe had gone out.

This idea of Bell’s was filtering into his mind.  At first regarding it as absurd, he gradually came to think it possible, then probable; finally, he was morally certain there was a basis of truth in it.  But not a word of his revulsion of feeling did he let fall to Mrs. Hobbs.  In fact, he was quite convinced from that time forth that the idea was all his own.

“Burning!  Burning!” he said to himself, with reference to an old game of hide-and-seek that he was wont to play in his boyhood, this being the cry of the fellow players when the seeker was near the object sought.

Burning!  Burning!  He felt he was touching the key to the mystery at last.

An hour might have passed, when he jumped up with a loud exclamation—

“I remember!  I remember!”

“What do you remember?” inquired Mrs. Hobbs, coming in hurriedly from the kitchen.

“I remember where I have seen this Huey Gosper before!  He is the man I saw on the night of the murder, chased in the scrub, and followed down Lavender Bay steps to the boat!  That’s the man!  I will swear to him!”

“Will you arrest him?”

“I will apply for a warrant to-morrow!  There is no hurry.  He thinks himself quite safe!”

CHAPTER XXX
THE ‘SOUTHERN CROSS’

When Soft Sam left him in Hyde Park, Huey Gosper stood for a time stock still, as still and moveless as the monument of Captain Cook close at hand.

What should he do?  Give up all, and fly like a child in a moment of panic?  Was it not the action of a fool?  And his plans so well laid, too!  He was certain nothing could be traced to him.  Had he not worked a lone hand—no accomplice to split on him?  No; he would stop and brave it out.  And then he should lose Bertha!  Was life worth having without her after he had risked so much for her sake?  Yes, he would stop.

But then, again, Soft Sam had always been right—right even when he (Huey) had felt most confident.  Was he not right over the Sydney Cup?  Had he not said that of The Vengeance and Bertha, Bertha was a trifle the better horse?  And had not Sam made Alec’s fortune for him, and would he not have made one equally as good for himself—he, Huey Gosper, if he had only followed the old man’s advice?

And now it was no question of money.  It was liberty, life, that was at stake, and Soft Sam said go.  Clearly the old man knew all; what was there he did not know?  And perhaps he knew that others knew, or suspected, and so his warnings.  It was good of the old chap, but just like him.  Yes, he had better go.  When the old man gave the word it was no time to linger.  He had said “At once.” He would stand not on the order of his going, but go.

Hurriedly Huey walked to his lodgings, and packed up his most portable valuables in a small hand-bag.  His money he put in a belt round his waist.  Most of his money was, to his regret, in New South Wales bank-notes.  What would be the good of them in a foreign country?  He went down to the wharves and shipping offices, and inquired as carelessly as possible what ships were starting.

There was no boat going from Sydney to South America, but one would leave in about a week from Newcastle.  There was a ship out in the stream that would sail that night for Batavia, and a schooner the following day for the South Sea Islands.

Huey did not half care for going to the Dutch Colony; the South Seas seemed to him a more inviting spot.  Amidst those thousands of islands it would surely not be difficult for him to hide his trail, as good, or perhaps better, than South America.

He decided on the schooner, which he found was called the Southern Cross.  This would also give him time in the morning to change his notes into gold.

* * * * *

Together with another officer, and armed with a warrant, Constable Hobbs proceeded the following morning to the residence of Huey Gosper, but he was not at home, had not slept there that night, the landlady said.  Nevertheless, Hobbs entered his room, which was all turned over and littered about.  There was every outward sign of a hasty departure—clothing, books, and toilet articles littered about in a disorder not even to be excused in a bachelor’s department.

“The bird has flown?” muttered Hobbs.  “Just my luck!”

Hastily they proceeded to overhaul the various articles left behind.  A small portmanteau attracted the constable’s attention, and on opening it, was found to contain a bundle of fine rope, which, being unfolded, revealed itself as a rope ladder with two claw hooks at one end.

“That’s the trick, was it?” said Mr. Hobbs, contemplatively; “but how the dickens did he fix it?  Those hooks would hang nicely on the iron bars of the window, but how did he get them there, and getting them there, take them down?”

The answer was not long in coming.  In the corner of the room stood, what looked like a Malacca walking-cane.  On careful examination it was found to be an article that is sold at Japanese stores as a telescope fishing-rod.  The last, or weakest, joint had been removed, and two implements were found in the pocket of an old coat hanging on the door that fitted in the hole intended for the last joint.  One was simply a T-shaped piece of iron, with its upper points bent upwards.  This Hobbs saw in a moment would readily hook on and unhook the ladder.

The other tool was not so simple—a lump of lead, weighing perhaps four or five pounds.  It also had a staple to fit the rod top.  It was in shape oblong and round, and in the centre of its smallest end was a diamond-shaped opening, big enough for a pea to drop in.  With a long needle Hobbs measured the depth of this opening; it was four inches.  To Constable Hobbs it stood revealed as a leaden handle without a blade.

“Here,” said he, speaking unintelligibly to his companion, “is my boy’s clothes-prop.  With a narrow knife fixed in such a weapon, one could, with a little practice, easily stab a man ten feet away, particularly if that man was asleep.  But it would be far more difficult to withdraw the blade; the weight of the lead from a good drop would drive it in, but there would be little power to withdraw it.

“So the blade fitted the handle loosely, and came away when it had done its work.

“All that is clear to me now—this that the old man saw with a single glance of his eye from a scratch in the paint!  We have the evidence.  Now for the man!  Fortunately you cannot leave Australia by express train, and if he is ashore I will have him.”

Constable Hobbs’s first care was to go to the quays and shipping offices.  Here he learned that a ship had sailed the previous evening for Batavia, besides several inter-colonial steamers.

“If he has had a good scare, as he seems to have had, he will try to go as far off as possible, likely enough he is on his way to the East Indies in the ship that sailed last night.”

And Hobbs felt his spirits sink with disappointment.  To have got so far and to be beaten in the last step of his progress was humiliating, disgusting.  He gained a little more hope, when he was told at the office that the Batavia ship had taken no passengers.  If Gosper had gone by her it must have been as a stowaway.

Hobbs did not think this probable.  A man with a pocketful of money would hardly resort to such means of escape.

At the last moment he learned, in answer to a chance inquiry, that a schooner had cleared that morning for the South Sea Islands, but they could not say if she had sailed.

Full of a fresh-born hope, Hobbs went to the telegraph office and wired the signalling office at South Head—

“Has schooner Southern Cross passed outwards?”

In a few minutes answer came—“Southern Cross anchored in Watson’s Bay, awaiting change in wind.”

* * * * *

Half-an-hour later Hobbs, on board the police steam launch, was proceeding rapidly down the harbour.

Would they never get there?  The launch seemed to him to crawl.  Past Cremorne, past Bradley’s Head, past the islands that dotted the blue lake with their olive-green foliage and ruddy sandstone rocks, past Rose Bay with its long-stretched fringe of silver sand, and then out into full view of Watson’s Bay, nestled in snug security under the mighty cliffs of South Head.

Yes?  The Southern Cross was still at anchor, resting like a lifeless thing upon the water.  A pair of anxious eyes watched the approach of the launch from its deck.  And, as the little steamer curved round and drew alongside, and a policeman from its bows hastily climbed on to the deck of the schooner, a loud splash was heard on the further side of the boat.

Hobbs was just in time to see the man he wanted disappear with a dive off the bulwarks.  Without a moment’s hesitation he doffed his coat and helmet, and with a rush and a spring he too was in the water.

The constable quickly came to the surface, but the watchers on the schooner could see no sign of Huey Gosper.  Twenty pair of eyes at least scanned the surface of the sea in every direction, but no re-appearance was visible.  Hobbs vainly called for directions; a lowered boat vainly rowed to and fro.  No sign of the man but his floating hat was to be found.

That he had dived a quarter of a mile to the shore and climbed up the rocks unperceived was hardly credible.

Hobbs felt sure he was not far off.  Perhaps in diving he had struck a rock and got stunned.  Even then he should have floated.

With the courage of despair, Hobbs dived and dived again where Huey had disappeared.  With the skill of a pearl diver he felt over the bottom, or as near the bottom as he could reach.  Finally he came to the surface panting, waving his hand for help.

The boat came, and strong arms soon lifted on to the schooner’s deck the senseless form of Hubert Gosper.  Striking a rock appeared to have stunned him, and a heavy belt of gold around his waist kept him from floating.

“Just my luck!” cried Hobbs, with a melancholy growl, as he shook the water off himself like a shaggy Newfoundland dog.  “Just my luck!”

“But you’ve got him after all,” said his companion.

“Got him!” replied Hobbs sarcastically.  “What’s the good of a dead criminal to a live policeman?”

* * * * *

The following day Bertha left Darlinghurst triumphantly on the arm of Professor Norris, who had come to meet her.  The Crown abandoned her prosecution, and Soft Sam, having removed the embargo on his revelations, Bertha was free to relate those particulars of the crime that had so far remained a mystery.

“Soft Sam saw how it was done at once, Pro,” Bertha said.  “After getting to the window and killing my husband in the way Hobbs suggested, he must have hooked Alec’s trousers off the chair where he had left them, taken the key out of the pocket, got an impression in wax, replaced the trousers, closed the window, gone home, filed out a duplicate key, and then robbed the office safe.  Who would ever have thought it of him?  He was passionate, I know, and dreadfully jealous.  Do you remember the wonderful character you gave him, Pro, when you examined his head at Windsor?”

“And I stick to my character even now,” said the Professor.  “A great criminal or a great man!  What is the difference?  The circumstances of his environment, an accident of life, a disappointed love, or a baulked ambition.  We have all the potential power for the greatest good or the greatest evil if circumstances so will it, and the greater the brain the greater the power.  The Demon of Avarice destroyed Hubert Gosper as surely as it is destroying thousands of hopeful lives every day.  It first demoralized, then brutalized him.  But he paid the penalty, as every one must inevitably pay.

“You cannot rob your brother of silver without at the same time robbing your own mind of gold.  There is no usury like it.  Thou shalt not steal from yourself your honour, your self-respect, your love of your fellow-man; for in that moment the light of true guidance shall go from you, and all shall be darkness.”

“Pro, you ought to have been a parson, with a beautiful long black coat, a white fence round your neck, and a shovel hat.  Then I could have come and ‘sat under’ you—that is what they call it, I think—and made slippers and smoking-caps for you.”

“The truth cannot be sold, my dear, or dispensed day by day like butcher’s meat.  They who hawk salvation for pay are bartering their own souls.  But let that pass.  Now you are free, what are you going to do for Police-Constable Hobbs?  I hear he is to be promoted to sergeant.”

“I will give him five hundred pounds to buy a house of his own.  Do you think that will do?”

“I thought you would do no less, my dear.  Mr. Hobbs, when he hears it, will be the happiest man in the police force.”

* * * * *

Twelve months later Bertha startled the Professor by a resolution she seemed suddenly to have arrived at.

“I have been thinking, Pro.”

“What about, my dear?  A new bonnet?”

“Now don’t be a quiz!  It’s not in your line, as the theatrical people say.  You are more suited for the ‘heavy’ business.  I have decided to go to Paris.  You know how I love to get you to talk about that place.  And now I mean to see it for myself.  I have heaps of money, which, as you will not help me to spend it, I must try and do myself.”

“And are you going alone?”

“That depends.  I had thought”—looking slyly at the Professor—“that you might like the trip yourself.”

“Then I must marry you,” replied the Professor.

“Would that be so very dreadful?”

“You know I am yours, Bertha, to do what you will with.  That which a man may do with honour for the woman he loves, that will I do for you now and ever more.”

* * * * *

Amongst its departing list of passengers by the following Messageries Maritime mail steamer Marseilles, en route for Paris, the Evening Times announced the names of Professor and Mrs. Norris.

THE END

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Table of Contents

- THE NORTH SHORE MYSTERY

- CONTENTS

- CHAPTER I THE CRIME

- “A NORTH SHORE MYSTERY.

- “MRS. BOOTH’S STATEMENT.

- “THE SCENE OF THE CRIME.

- “ANOTHER CRIME.

- CHAPTER II THE MISFORTUNES OF A B.A. OF LONDON UNIVERSITY

- CHAPTER III MRS. HOBBS

- CHAPTER IV THE BOARDING-HOUSE AND BOARDERS

- CHAPTER V CONSTABLE HOBBS DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

- “FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS IN THE NORTH SHORE MYSTERY.

- CHAPTER VI MRS. BOOTH COMMITTED FOR TRIAL
- CHAPTER VII LOOKING BACKWARD-WINDSOR
- CHAPTER VIII THE TWO LOVERS
- CHAPTER IX HUEY AND ALEC
- CHAPTER X THE GOLDEN BAR
- CHAPTER XI HOW TO START IN BUSINESS
- CHAPTER XII ALEC AND HUEY START BUSINESS
- CHAPTER XIII THE HAWKESBURY HANDICAP
- CHAPTER XIV THE TRIAL
- CHAPTER XV THE PARRAMATTA RIVER
- CHAPTER XVI THE WEIGHTS FOR THE SYDNEY CUP
- CHAPTER XVII THE RELIGIOUS JOCKEY
- CHAPTER XVIII THE NIGHT BEFORE THE RACE
- CHAPTER XIX THE SYDNEY CUP
- CHAPTER XX A PROPOSAL
- CHAPTER XXI THE ABDUCTION
- CHAPTER XXII IN THE GARDENS
- CHAPTER XXIII THE LOVERS
- CHAPTER XXIV THE CONSPIRACY
- CHAPTER XXV THE HEART UNION

- CHAPTER XXVI UP TO DATE AGAIN-DARLINGHURST GAOL

- CHAPTER XXVII MR. HOBBS AT TEA

- CHAPTER XXVIII SOFT SAM

- CHAPTER XXIX HOW MASTER HOBBS GOT HIS BALL FROM A NEIGHBOUR’S YARD

- CHAPTER XXX THE ‘SOUTHERN CROSS’

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE