THE MAN FROM MELBOURNE

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 32, 3 November 1894, Page 13

THE MAN FROM MELBOURNE

By Mrs Henry E. Dndeney, Author of “ The Strange Will of Josiah Kitterby ,” “My Terrible Plight ,” su.”

[all rights reserved.]

CHAPTER I.

“ FIGHT AND FLIGHT. In the dingy room of a Melbourne lodging-house Roy Cunliffe sat, his head bowed, his hands pressed before his eyes. , , It was early dawn. The pale light that struggled through the half-drawn curtains revealed but faintly the commonplace furniture of the room. There were chairs and a sofa, upholstered in green rep ; a pier glass, the gilt frame wreathed with green tissue paper ; a round table, on whose green and black tablecloth were scattered half a dozen pink notes written in slipshod feminine hand. A bed had been improvised on the sofa ;an overcoat, lined with scarlet silk and narrowly bordered at the cuffs and collar with sable, had served as quilt ; the tumbled look of the remaining heterogenous and dingy bed clothes, suggested that the sleeper, whoever he was, had jumped up hastily. Stretched on the ground was Dick Blyth. Dissipation had left its mark on his handsome face, which was livid, and wore an expression of intense calm. Glowing scarlet in the deathly pallor, was an ugly gash across the temple. From this wound blood dripped slowly and made an ever-increasing patch on the square of coarse dugget which partially covered'the carpet. Sounds floated up from the/room beneath : a yawn, a shrill voice of rousing, the updrawing of a roller blind.

Eoj Cunliffe heard someone fumble with a latchkey at the street door, open it, shut it stealthily, and stumble upstairs. He lifted his head and stared wildly round, as if just roused from longstupor. The steps stopped on the' landing outside the door, hesitated, then died away into the room on the other side. He forced himself to look at, to touch the man on the floor. The listless hand fell from his; that awful look 'of peace was creeping more sternly across the face. Dead. He looked out of the unshuttered window, at the slim strip of sky and street across which the sun was beginning to flash. The bell of a church tinkled out a summons to early service. A. boy began to take down the shutters of the shop across the way. Mrs Tipping, the landlady, her down-at-heel shoes flapping at every step, was heard on her way upstairs to lay the fire and tidy the room. Boy rushed to the door and met her as she turned the handle. 1 1 —d’ve a friend sleeping her, Mrs. Tipping. I’ll ring when we are ready for you to come up.’ Mrs Tipping went downstairs, a rebellious mumble concerning the introduction of strangers keeping time with her scuffling feet.

Roy locked himself in and faced the situation He must fly—for his life. Dick Blyth was dead and he had murdered him. The drawer of the table near the sofa was open. The bottom of it was nearly covered with sovereigns, that blinked up yellow in the rapidly strengthening daylight ; a bundle of bank notes were spread in the corneiv He crammed and jingled notes and money into his trousers pocket. A couple of sovereigns rolled on the floor. He did not stay to hunt for them ; the loss of what in normal circumstances would have been income for the best part of the week was, in this moment of supreme danger and unusual wealth disregarded. He went towards the door, sweeping

up as he passed the table the pink letters. A sickly perfume breathed from them and clung about his fingers. He stumbled on his passage over Dick’s passive foot, and shuddered. He stole out noiselessly, changed the key from the ipner side of the door to the outer, turned it slid it from the keyhole and took it with him to his room over-head. Heie he hastily finished dressing, drew a Gladstone bag from under the bed, packed it to bursting, with a few garments hastily gathered together, swung himself into his overcoat, took his watch from under the pillow of his tumbled bed—in which was still the impress, hardly cold, of his body—and went down. His boots were new. At every creak they gave sweat broke out on his pallid and boyish young face. The door of his fellow-lodger, Charles Croker, stood open. He called out as he heard the tell-tale creak of new leather —

‘ls that you, Roy ? What the dickens are you astir so early for this morning ?’ He stood,' framed in the doorway as he spoke. A fresh faced, freckled young Scotchman, with curling hair approaching to red, high cheek bones, lantern ‘aws, and sham grey eyes. He had, as he would have put it, been ‘ making a night of it,’ and the making had not improved his personal appearance. A tall silkhat still stuckrakishly on one side of his head, an overcoat flecked with spots of scarcely dried mud was thrown back and showed a wide expanse of cnmpled shirt-front, from which one of the studs had dropped. ‘ 1 am just going to turn in,’ he said, kicking off his boots as a preliminary. ‘ X fancy the bank won t see me to-day. Such a spree after I left you and had played pretty at old Tom son’s party. W ent on to Russell s —he’s moved into new diggings, and gave a house warming. We kept it up till daybreak and then everybody saw everybody else home, and sang the chorus oi Kitty Preacher’s new song to keep ’em awake as they went. Nice little thing, Kitty ! How the deuce does that thing go ? Turn—turn —do - dum de-doo.’ He hummed in the hopeless monotone of that curious product, the person with no ear, then broke short with a call of surprise. ‘ Halloa ! Where are you off to P’ ‘ Home.’ ‘ To England ?’ ‘ Yes.’ ‘ Whew !’ whistled Charles Croker, with emphasis. ' ‘ This is a sudden move.’ ‘ Not at all. I’ve been thinking of it for a long time. Barclay’s are shaky, and the governer’s made a good thing of his business.’ ‘ I know all that, but to go off at a minute’s notice —takes the wind out of a fellow’s sails. Surely what happened at Scrivener’s ’ ‘ Well, that was enough to make me decide to drive at a desk no longer.’ ‘ It’s awkward,’ demurred Croker. His puffy face suddenly sobered; his keen eyes were scanning suspiciously Roy’s haggard face. ‘ I can’t afford to keep on these rooms alone.’

‘ That is easily settled.’ Roy pulled out a couple of his clinking sovereigns. ‘ These will square Mrs Tippings. And now,' old fellow, good-bye. I haven’t a moment to lose. The steamer sails from Sandridge at turn of the tide.,’

‘ Good-bye.’ Their hands, Croker’s burning hot, Cunliffe’s trembling and clammy, met. ‘ Sorry you’re off, old chap. Wish you’d given me longer notice ; we’ve pulled uncommonly well together. I say, Roy,’ he kept his hold on the clammy hand, ‘ there’s nothing wrong|? You haven’t been diddling the accounts of Barclay & Dobbins, or ’

A swift flush mounted to the pale misery of young Cunliffe’s face. ‘ Confound Barclay & Dobbins,’ he blurted out, ‘ I shall lose my boat.’ Less than an hour later Roy set sail from Sandridge on an outward

bound vessel, and was soon out of sight of Melbourne ; out of sound of its news. Croker did not turn in as he had intended. The sottish, vacuous expression fell from his face and left him alert and wide awake. He went back to his room, dropped into the nearest chair and relieved himself with a long drawn whistle. His eyes were fixed vacantly on the damp and dingy lea dripping which ran up the outer wall of the house opposite, but his brain was busy. ‘ Queer,' he soliloquised, remarkably so. Here is the youngster who performs overnight a remarkable feat—for him. Has it turned his head ? That about Barclay & Dobbins was, in my opinion, a clumsy lie. He goes off at a moment’s notice, not for a fortnight’s holiday to a place twenty miles off, but across the world—for good. And he takes with him a sole luggage, a Gladstone bag thick with flue, which it has caught up during the weeks it has spent under his bed. He never dusted it, he never goes to the trouble of brushing his hat. He walks off without his umbrella. I was quite right not to show much surprise, but nothing escaped me, not even his fidget to be off, his attempt to bolt by my door without speaking, or the start he gave when Mrs Tippings let fall a dish on the stone floor of the kitchen downstairs. There’s something shady about Roy and his sudden rush for home. What did he and Blyth get up to last night after I left them at the corner of Hastings Street ? It shall be my business to find out. There may be luck in it for me. Great Scot!’ His face grew haggard at Roy’s. ‘lf that affair at the bank leaks out, if ray suspicions are correct and that ferreteyed rascal knows more ’ He groaned ; then got on his feet. ‘ Its one of the things that won’t bare thinking about- I’m in a nasty corner. If I’d enough cash to take me out of the country ■’ He took off his hat and overcoat, dipped his head into a basin of cold water, and vigorously dried it, turned down and tumbled the sleek order of his bed to satisfy the Grundified scruples of his landlady, and went up to Roy’s room. Drawers stood open, collars cuffs and ties were heaped and strewn on the floor and dressing table ; an English letter stood unopened on the mantelshelf.

‘ And yet he was going home to his people,’ commented Croker sotto voice and he slipped it into his pocket. ‘ Suppose he thought that as he was going to see them so soon the letter was superfluous.’ Roy’s writing-desk stood open.

On the leather was a sheet of note paper, addressed, dated the night before, and beginning, £ My darling.’ That was all.

Croker lifted the flap of the desk. A few home letters, a bill or two, a bundle of photographs, were the contents. Two of the photographs were } of young and pretty girls. One was 1 a blonde in a dainty evening gown, | her fair head thrown back against the j dark richness of a leather panel, and a I trio of curling ostrich plumes, mounted } on a fan, held loosely in one little J hand. At the back of the card was j written one word, ‘ May.’ The other girl boasted a richer, coarser beauty. She was an actress. She had a tumble of black curls, and j a black hat with an upstanding | wreath of pink roses. By the roguish j glance of black eyes and the saucy ■ pout of full lips you almost heard the song she was singing. ‘ Didn’t know he was sweet on her !’ commented Croker, as he went downstairs.

He tried the sitting-room door, locked ; the key gone. . A vigorous kick and a strong’ push from the shoulder sent the jerry built affair swinging back on its broken hinges.

The first thing Croker saw was Dick Blyth on the floor, his head in a pool of blood, the glaring winter sun shining full on his death-like face.

‘ Good heavens ! ’ said the bank clerk, with sick as he stooped

down to lift the dark, dabbled head. As he did so, Dick, not dead, as weak Roy, madly flying 1 , supposed, opened languid eyes and gave a low moan of returning consciousness. CHAPTER 11. A SENSATION AT SCRIVENER’S. The evening before the events related in the preceding chapter took place, just as dusk was falling, two young men ran against each other at a street corner. ‘ Is that you, Roy ? ’ ‘ Croker ! We can walk home together.’ ‘ No, thanks. Come and dine at the Star with me. Had a run of luck last night —first time since I left England.’ Ten minutes later they were settled at a table in the Star, and Croker had munificently ordered a bottle of champagne in addition to the dinner. ‘ There is your friend, Dick Blyth,’ he said to Roy, as he tossed off the wine, and put down his glass with a smack of satisfaction. He nodded at an opposite table where sat a man frugally occupied with coffee, roll, and a stale Evening Herald. Dick came across. Roy introduced the two men with a touch of pride. He was a callow boy enough still to be proud of chumship with them both, proud of Charles Croker, fresh from England, and effecting a smart ‘ man about town ’ air ; proud of Blyth for his profession of journalist and entree as such to a Bohemia which seemed a land of glory the strange eyes of a simple commercial youth. Roy had come out from England as a mere lad, six years before. He was the son of a civil engineer, who had obtained for him a post with prospects —in the firm of his Antipodean correspondents, Messrs. Barclay & Dobbin, ship-brokers. Roy kept the post, he bad advanced to the position of book-keeper with the magnificent salary of £IBO. But the prospects were shadowy prospects still. ‘ Fancy we’ve met before,’ said Croker easily, as Blyth as easily dropped into a chair and accepted the hospitable offer of wine. ‘At the ‘Kettledrum.” ‘ You have the advantage of me’ ‘ We played a game of chess.’ Blyth looked up lazily at the flushed and assertive face of his new acquaintance. He had taken an. immediate and contemptuous dislike to this smart clerk. He was altogether too dapper and spruce for Bohemian Dick, who mentally voted him a snob—which from one man to another is merely an expression of intolerance. ‘We did, I remember now- —and that I won.’ ‘ You did. But we met again at Scrivener’s—last night. There I had the advantage. It was rouge et noir. You lost.’ ‘Do you know Scrivener’s !’ cried Dick with surprised energy, and a spice of cordiality in the query. 1 1 know it well. Have a cigar.’

Croker and Roy had finished their meal. The former pushed his case across to Blyth. Dick chose, lighted up, found the cigar good, and buried the hatchet—temporarily. ‘ What did you two fellows say to a couple of hours there to-night ?’ he inquired between his puffs, ‘ I’m game,’ returned Croker readily, ‘ though I shall have to leave in half an hour or so. Going to a dance—■ house of one of our directors (Croker was a bank clerk). Confounded nuisance.’ (He was enormously proud of his invitation, and had struck the card conspicuously in the frame of the sitting-room looking-glass, as Roy Cunliffe knew perfectly, and Dick Blyth shrewdly surmised). ‘But I mnst go, of course.’

‘You find that kind of function amuses you,’ drawled Dick. ‘ Evening clothes, expansive shirt front, and so on.’ He impudently flourished a big, ragged yellow handkerchief, ’ I’ve got over it like measles, a disorder one catches when young.’ ‘ Well if we are going, we may as well be off,’ said Croker briskly, with a flush of his fair face, a hurried taking

oi liis hat from the rack and the sullen ignoring of the journalist’s sneer. ‘ Rpy, : you will come, of course. It ■will be your introduction to a new society.’" • ‘But I wouldn’t get bitten with it,’ whispered Blyth, mentor-like. He wns fond of the simple lad. ‘lt’s like all other forms of distraction tobacco, drink, opium, and ballet girls—go too far, and you’re sure to come a cropper.’ Croker paid the bill, magnificently tipping the waiter a .shilling ; a piece of ostentacious freehandedness which drew from Dick the remark that millionaires and men over thirty generally made twopence their limit. The three sallied out into the street together. Croker swung along with defiant ease, rolling a cigarette, while his stick projected from under his arm in a manner that provoked the disparaging comment of elderly pedestrians anxious for their eyes. Blyth slouched with his hands in his pockets, his sleepy grey eyes, behind pince nez, taking in every detail of street, shops, and people. The usual luxury of champagne to temperate Roy had made him see faces and facts through a dazzling veil of optimism. They-went on, past Princess Park where night had gathered black in the trees, past a great hotel where irregular balconies were running the length of each storey and glittering _ with many lights, like so many chains of topaz swung across the white face of the building. Soon afterwards Blyth, as pioneer, turned up from the broad main street into one idiat "was a little broader tlian an alley. A dead wall, uitli a bristling top of jagged iron spikes to keep ofF intruders, formed a blank black boundary on one side ; on the other were mean, two-storied houses. These, from the number of brass plates and doorbells, and from the univeral lighting of upper and lower floors, were evidently let out in tenements. The houses were comparatively old —as old as houses could be in a city which 60 years ago was a site unbuilt on. After a while it wound, widened, and finally arched back into the respectability of a crescent. Here was a sprinkling of shops —a baker’s, a butcher’s, one full of old iron ; a taxidermist’s, boasting a row of stuffed birds, with a stringsuspended from one end of the window to the other, on which hung specimens of strange plumage with vivid colourino-; in the extreme background, yet conspicuous by its dread presence among birds, a huge white cat under a glass case, whose artificial eye gleamed in the light of a red lamp that hung over the doorway. Under this lamp Blyth, followed by the others, passed, a band of blood red sliding across the face of each before he passed into the gloom of the passage and tumbled down a short flight of greasy stairs. A faint whirr, a monotonous voice calling numbers were the only sounds. Blyth pushed open a door. They 11 went in: ‘ Roy, the only one to whom the scene was new, found himself in a lono-, low-pitched room, lighted brilliantly from the sides of the wall by unshaded gas burners. It was_ so lono- since the ceiling had seen whitewash that it had ceased to be smokepatched and simply merged into one richly toned brown. The walls were painted blue, but were black with friction of jostling shoulders at every an°-le, and defaced in their fairer portions by pencil calculations. Roy had preconceived notions of a o-ambling saloon. He had read of them as splendid palaces with frescoed cmlinss, marble pillars, gaily crashing band, and jewelled throng. That was in books and in Europe.

In real life at the Antipodes he found a scene so sordid that it partly pulled away the golden veil of enchantment champagne had drawn across his eyes. They stood, the new comers, at the doorway for a minute. Croker was the first to make a move. ‘ I’m going to try my luck,’ said he, and Roy followed. The tables were crowded. They

had to content themselves with watching the game at first. As Roy saw the throng of faces, the flashing eyes, the clutching hands of the winners, the desperate ‘ one more throw ’ of those who were almost cleaned out, he begun to understand dimly something of the tremendous passion of gambling. ‘ You bad far better come away,’ said cool-headed Blyth, touching his shoulder. ‘You’ve seen the place, the side of life,, and that’s enough for safety. Don’t begin to play ; you will not know when to leave off.’

‘You can’t always draw that line yourself,’ laughed Orok&r. ‘ I’ve seen

you drop ten pounds at a sitting.’ ‘I have, for my sins. Ten pounds is little enough for some men to lose; too much for me. I just brought Cunliffe on to-night; I like to watch the effect of a new experienc ; but I’m thinking of cutting Scrivener’s in future.’ ‘ So will I, when I have broken the bank. I shall do it before long. I’ve an infallible system.,’ returned Croker. ‘ Everyone has. However, luck seems with you to-night.’ ‘ It was last night, too.’ ‘ Then it will leave you tq-morrow,’ said a grave voice at his elbow. It was the voice of a woman in sober black, with a powdery roll of snow white hair rising from her lined forehead, and a pair of brown eyes which at forty kept burning with the light of nineteen. As the two men turned in surprise she glided away. ‘ I haven’t seen her before,’- said Croker, resenting with a frown her words of ill omen. ‘ Why do they let women in at all ?’ ‘ They are not fond of them,’ said Blyth with a shrug, ‘ but they do not turn them away if they come under the wing of a member.’ Cx-oker hardly heard him. He had seemed a chair and turned to the game. ‘ This does not look like a change of luck,’ he cried exultingly, as he px-eseutly swept off a row of gold pieces. ‘ This is not the third night,’ Blyth reminded him obligingly. ‘ Pooh! you and that women are cr-oakers.’ At this moment there was a move. The man next Oroker got up abruptly the onlookers make way for him, then closed in again, and in the diversion created, Cx-oker pulled young Cunliffe into the vacant chair. Blyth, with an unwilling shrug, moved off, fluttered from one table and group to the other in search of ‘ copy.’ Living from hand to mouth as he did, he adapted any str-ay remark or incident to penny a-lining.

He was recalled from, these aimful Sufferings by the steady turn of the human tide towards one table, and round which the throng of heads was already five deep. It was the table at which sat Chas. Croker and Roy. Feeling to a certain extent responsible for the latter, and with a fervent hope that he was not making a fool of himself, Dick presed towards the front with a little more energy than he was wont to display ordinarily. He was tall and losely hung, and so was able to peer over the heads of most of the people in front of him, and get a clear view of the table. He stood opposite to Croker, who caught his eye, and, with a despairing, significant gesture, thrust his hands deep into his trousers and brought out the pockets empty. Elyth then looked at Roy. A little mountain of notes and silver was at his elbow. He was the point of interest as he played on steadily, each time raking across his winnings with illassumed unconcern. The people that pressed behind and before Blyth held their breaths and pressed the closer when young Cunliffe plunged for the last time, and a moment later the cry went round that the bank was broken. To be Continued.