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THE MAN FROM MELBOURNE

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

[all eights reserved.] CHAPTER XIII. BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA. May was standing; on the platform at London Bridge Station talking to Bee, who was settled in the third class compartment of a train. ‘ If, is too bad of Roy, I wanted so much to introduce you. ‘ I wanted to see him. Some special Providence keeps us apart.’ Bee laughed, then looked down, indolently contemptuous at her dowdy gown of dust-coloured tweed, with its tight skirt, plain jacket bodice, and prim row of little buttons. 4 Don’t I look a guy P’ ‘You do,’ assented May, with the delicious candour of a bosom friend. ‘ But confess I adapt myself to the character of humble companion very well ! When Mrs Pugsby engaged me to live with her, read, write, sing, shop and mend for her for forty pounds a year she hinted that she required me to look with disfavour on frivolities of costume rich us, silk petticoats, and so on. I do not wish to make her my enemy at the very start, by laying any claim to good looks. She is sixty —if a day and vain, by inference. So I put away my pretty artistic frocks, brushed my hair smooth and got Miss Snaggs, our village dressmaker, to knock me up this gown and three others equally hideous. I hope Mrs Pugsby will be pleased.’ May sighed sympathetically. ‘ How different things might have been !’ she said. ‘lf only your father had lived and your lover —’ ‘Had no,t played me false,’ completed Bee, coolly. ‘ Every one thinks that, though few have the courage to say it. But I know —and believe in him still.’ A rapid banging of doors, a shrill whistle, the quick wave of the guard’s green flag, a quicker kiss of farewell between the two girls, and the train slid froni the platform into the tunnel. May stuffed the little black-bordered handkerchief she had been waving, into her muff and turned to find Roy at her side. ‘ I’m awfully sorry,’ he panted, short of breath from his rush across the station. ‘ I was unavoidably delayed. Afraid your friend has gem ß -’ ‘ That is oh vious.’ May’s flaxen head gave a little angry toss. l lt is too bad. I had set my heart on your meeting Bee. She selected a train purposely to suic your convenience. Whenever there is a chance of your seeing her my best friend you happen to keep, or g-et kept, out of the way. It has happened so often.’ ‘lhad set my heart on meetingher.’ Roy’s tone seemed earnest and full of penitent regret, even though his face wore an expression of intense relief. ‘ Prom your description she must he a most charming girl. However, better luck next time.’ He drew May’s hand through his arm and patted it with a little fond, gesture, which made peace between ■the two at once. They started to go home. Halfway across London Bridge, a young man who bad been standing with his face to the river and his arms folded on the stone parapet, turned sharply at the sound of May’s voice. There was a momentary block on the pavement. Roy and "May were standing still so close to the stranger that the hem of her gown floated out to his foot. His hollow eyes fixed on her fresh pink face and black garments, fben turned slowly to tbe man on whose arm she hung, and whose irreproachable mourning and deep hatband seemed to tell of a common loss and a near relationship between the two.

Roy’s next words told it. They were in answer to her plea for a beggar who had shuffled after them. ‘My dear little tender-hearted sister, your face is a mark for every mendicant—it is so pitiful. I began to wish we had taken a hansom across tbe bridge, as I at first suggested.’ They moved ,0m As they moved, the young man gave a jerky forward step and caughk May’s hand. She wheeled round, startled to find a wild, unshaven face close to her own. The man was tall, gaunt, ragged. What had once been a decent diagonal coat was shiny and green now, drawn up close to the chin and pinned in Maces where the buttons had dropped off or the moulds had dropped out, leaving only a bag of stuff. His boots were plastered with mud, one was gashed across tbe top. His hat was broken at the brim. All this she saw, with a woman’s quickness at catching detail, in tbe second when his hand was clutching at hers, and she felt its fever through her glove. Her blue eyes met his—blue too and blazing with what seemed madness. The bristly chin, the grimy grey of the unwashed skin, the hollow cheeks, spotted with red, the great protuberant cheek bones, tbe parched blackness of lips that were swelled and cracking, all formed for her a vivid flashing picture of sick misery. She saw and yet with a strange blindness she did not recognise. Roy turned at her startled cry. ‘What is it p Another beggar.’ Then bis face changed; his air of jaunty confidence left him for a moment.

It all took place so rapidly. The stranger’s step forward and clutch at May’s hand, the words which poured from him in an incoherent torrent and were drowned by the traffic, Roy’s bloodless face and angry strike with his cane across the man’s bony knuckles, bis hailing of a hansom, bustling- of May into it, bis swingdown by her side, and shout up to the driver where to g-o. Hot one of the men panting across the bridge, their every muscle and whole soul bent on tbe catching of a suburban train, noted the little incident, nor dreamed that in this chance meeting of three were the elements of tragedy. Roy banged tbe doors. ■ Drive on,’ he cried, impatiently. May’s face was drifted white. The madman, as she fully believed him to be, had sprung forward with a cry, and was hanging on to the shafts. ‘ Drive on,’ roared Roy. The congested traffic rolled on, the driver sharply whipped up his horse. The man in the road caught the reins, and as the hansom jerked on was thrown down, the back of bis head striking against the rough rim of the kerb. One member of tbe crowd that closed in picked him up and held him as he swayed dizzily, and stared with a stupid and momentary lack of comprehension at the curious faces. When he could stand alone, he asked eagerly where the hansom was. ‘ Half -way down King William Street,’ some one volunteered. Then a policeman roughly broke up tbe knot. The young man gave himself a little shake, glared round with sulky defiant eyes, and walked off. But a shoeblack, who had witnessed the whole scene, kept him in sight and presently spoke to him. ‘ Say, governor, ’ere’s somethin, as might be useful. She dropped it out of er pocket when she pulled out ’er ’andkercher.’ He thrust it into the man’s hand a crumbled envelope, directed to j Miss May Cuuliffe, Sloane Mansions, Chelsea. That same evening Roy Cunliffe, pacing by the river alone in the twilight, thought of the scene on the bridge. ‘ Thank God,’ he soliloquised,’ I gave him the slip. I must put Pratt on the scent to-morrow.’ A figure which had shadowed him for some distance now darted in front of him. A pair of eyes burned in a wasted face, hands grappled fiercely

at his throat, a familiar voice hissed in his ear ; ‘ You villain !’ He shook himself free. As the man moved to close with him again, he raised his stick menacingly. ‘ Be careful ’ he said in a voice of low warning, ‘ or I will give you in charge—for murder.’ ‘ Charles Croker,’ cried the other, fiercely disregarding the threat, ‘ do you remember our last meeting ?’ ‘ I am not likely to forget, either our farewell or the discovery I made after your flight. Upon my soul, you are a brave man to cross my path. I could hang you to-morrow, if I chose.’ ‘ Then Dick Blyth is really dead !’ The real Boy Cunliffe’s voice was broken, his face was drawn by a terrible anxiety. ‘ And I am a murderer !’ ‘Precisely. You must have known it all along.’ ‘ I have sometimes hoped since that it was all a mistake : that I took too hasty a flight—■’ ‘ Upon my word it was hardly hasty enough,’ cried Croker, genially knocking down this last hope of Roy’s. ‘ The police were on your track an hour after your flight. You are, as you frankly admit, a murderer.’ ‘ I may be,’ returned young Cunliffe, recovering spirit, ‘ but I wall take the risk of arrest. I heard and saw enough on the bridge to-day to gather that you are imposing yourself on my father as his son. He shall know the truth to-night.’ ‘ Your deductions on the bridge were pretty correct,’ said Croker complacently, ‘ but one thing escaped your observation. This.’ He pointed to the hig’h cloth band around his hat. Roy’s eyes followed his finger. He remembered May’s gown, heavy with crape : the dull black of her little bonnet. ‘ Gcod heavens ! Is my father dead P’ ‘ He died some months ag’o. Believing me to be liis son, he left me a son’s fortune and the office of guardian to May. I hope by now you see how really useless it is for you to attempt to assert yourself.’ Royr grasped the awful fact —that his father was dead, and had died duped by the scoundrel. With a quick movement of passion he threw his arms round Croker, rage for the moment lending- him abnormal strength, and pushed him back close against the stone parapet. The embankment was now quite dark, the long- stretch of pavement deserted, the soft splash of the tide and the steady advancing tramp of a heavilybooted foot the only sou'nd. Croker’s quick ear caught the last. ‘Do you hear P Do you see,’ he hissed. A burly form was coming towards them. Roy’s arms dropped from Croker to his side, he turned sharply round as a policeman paced by. ‘ I thought you had not pluck enough enough for that,’ sneered Croker, when they were alone again. He looked contemptously at Roy’s white face, not knowing that his own was whiter ‘ It needs courage above the average to contemplate hanging with coolness. And you’ll certainly swing for Blyth, if they catch you.’ ‘ They cannot hang me. I was deeply injured and provoked.’ ‘ Got any witnesses ? ’ asked Croker, briskly. ‘ Don’t you forget that. I canid give valuable evidence to the prosecution. I found the body, I know your relations with Blyth and Kitty ’ ‘Pull me down and yon also fall yourself,’ cried Roy, defiantly. ‘ True—but not to such depths as you.’ ‘ I must save my sister—even at the risk of my own neck.’ ‘ Your sister is in no danger. Nothing will shake her trust in me. She loves me. Ask yourself, which of us she is likely to believe to be of her blood P I, whom her father accepted as his son, or you, a tramp in appearance, a madman in her opinion, after the scene this afternoon. She will shrink to me for protection from you

She would not ask for proofs. If she did —where are they ? ’ Roy groaned. He had none. In his hasty flight from Melbourne he had taken nothing but bare necessities. Croker had six months start of him, his father had died, he supposed, in the conviction that Croker was his son. Tet how could he have believed P Surely he must have failed to trace any resemblance. Croker and he were not alike. ‘My father must have seen that you were an impostor at the first glance,’ he cried. ‘ Doubtless—had he seen at all. Buthe was blind.’ ‘ Blind !’ ‘By a gas explosion. Your sister had not seen you since childhood and thanks to your aesthetic objection to photographs —one of poor Blyth’s cranks—she had not the slightest idea of your appearance. Any blonde young man mig-fit have done as I did. She accepted me with engaging confidence. They led a quiet life, in consequence of youi father’s shattered health ; old friends who knew you had died or drifted; relatives were few and far away. 1 was well posted up in family anecdotes. How little you thought when you used to twaddle about home affairs and folks that I should turn the information to such judicious use. ‘ After you left Melbourne that morning, I went straight up to your room. There was an unopened letter on the shelf—l suppose the landlady put it there in the evening when she went up to turn down the bed. In your hurry to be off, you did not notice it. It was from your father, telling you, in- view of the shakiness of Barclay & Dobbin and his own improved position, to come home. Passage money was enclosed : I annexed it—it was highly improbable that you would turn up to claim it, and it was essential, for I’easons which do not concern you, ihat I should get out of Australia without delay.

‘ I took your few personal trifles with me, more with a view of raising’ cash on them if necessary—l was hard up —than of utilising’ them in a grand coup. It was not till I got to England and heard of your father’s blindness, that the scheme occurred to me.’

Roy was listening - to this candid statement with a helpless, hopeless look in his eyes. He saw that even if he risked his freedom by declaring himself. May would not believe in him. In the highly improbable event of her doing so, and consequently repudiating Oroker, what would happen P Croker would denounce him to the police as Blyth’s murderer. He would be tried, sentenced —to death or penal servitude. May’s fortune would be saved, but her whole future would be shadowed by association with a convict. Croker, watching him narrowly, read his thoughts. ‘ You see, on reflection, how hopeless 3 r our case is. lam perfectly safe. If you forced me to fly, it would not be empty-handed. I have absolute control over May’s fortune and my own yours by courtesy. I was also left junior partner in the engineering business. I sold oat —for a handsome sum, which I paid into a private account opened in ray own name. You see how frank I am ; how ready to give you every detail. Please yourself how to act. Announce yourself to the world as Roy Cunliffe. If you are believed you do me no great* material barm ; you simply bring down death upon yourself, shame on your sister.’ Roy’s face was stony. There was nothing, he thought despairingly, to do but submit. He was neither mentally nor physically at his best ; he could see no way out of the coil Croker had wound round him. ‘ Don’t be cut up, old fellow,’ said Croker, with the easy magnanimity of the man who wins. ‘ I am ready to help you —if you’ll 4 be reasonable. You look ill. Have you been hard up ?’ ‘ I’ve been starving,’ said Roy, with a fierce lightening of his dull eye.

‘ What became of the mo ney you won at cards ?’ |£‘Gone, long ago. I worked my way over, I’ve been hiding, tramping, ■doing odd jobs always under an assumed name, ever since Dick He broke off with a sharp cough. As he brought the handkerchief from his mouth, Croker shuddered to see a dark wet stain of blood. He pressed four sovereigns into Boy’s chill hand. The pinched face and shrunken body of his old chum struck some note of pity, even in him. ‘Take these ; they will keep you going for the present.’ Roy shrunk back, hesitated, and took them. Croker had conquered.

CHAPTER XYI. THE SUBJUGATION OP AMOS PRATT. Xext morning Croker started immediately after breakfast for Bloomsbury, where Pratt had established himself in Great Green Street, which is near Bedford Row. He rented the top floor of the gloomy old house, which floor he dignified by the name of ‘ chambers. ’ He lived in clover. He was sole resident tenant, the other floors being let out in offices. The housekeeper, who occupied the basement, in company with a husband seldom seen, and a brood of dirty children, in perpetual evidence, spoke of him as a civil-spoken free-handed gent. He was a ‘ real gent her opinion, since he ‘ toiled not, neither did he spin.’ He lay in bed half the day. In the evenings he frequented music halls or hung across the bar of a public-house. Sometimes he would ‘ make a night of it. On these occasions two or three of his boom companions would up the sombre old street with him, and establish him on his own doorstep, about three o’clock in the morning. _ On the morning of Croker’s visit he sat in all the glory _ of a flaming dressing gown, a smoking cap, with a tinsel tassel, and a pair of beaded slippers, sleepily blinking at his partner. There was a general unshaven, unwashed look about him, a weak watering of the bloodshot a twitch of the grimy hands, which spoke very eloquently of the bad effect of money without work on the exconvict. As a matter of fact, Pratt was rarely sober. ‘ What’s up now ?’ he asked sulkily, going to the window to jerk the blind and-'shut out the sunlight. ‘ You ’aven't gave me such a precious early call for nothing, I’ll go bail.’ ‘ Everything’s up.’ Croker glared in his confederate’s sodden face. Boy Cunlitfe’s come home. He must be kept of the way. I frightened him last night, but it won’t last. He’s safe to see it’s all a plant —that if th authortties were after him, as I swore they were, they would arrest me at once, believing me to be Roy Cunliffe, the murderer of Blyth. He could blow the whole concern in half an hour. I’m always putting my foot in it with his sister. I don’t knew the family historj . I won’t go and see the relations. The old mar knew the truth —it killed him. The doctor suspects.’ ‘ Let him,’advised Pratt, oracularly. * The game’s up. Lay your hands on all the swag you can and bolt. ‘ You did"not take that aspect of the case six months ago,’ sneered Croker. ‘ You bounced enough then, and said that if Cunliffe came home, you could easly tackle him. Well the time’s come for tackling.’ ‘ I ain’t so sure of that.’ Pratt’s little eyes fixed werdefiantly on the face of the younger man, ‘ In my opinion the job’s done, unless you’re playin’ a deeper game on the sly, in which case I ain’t with yer. I did say'l’d tackle him, but sayin’s one thing and doin’s another. Perhaps I wanted to keep your pecker up ; you was precious chicken-hearted about the business at first. Clear out. That’s my verdict. The old bloke’s dead. You’ve had the fingering of his money, and have lined your nest pretty comfortably, I’ll bet. Walk !’ ‘ And be arrested for fraud 1 Coward ! We can pull through yet, if you only clear your head and do as I tell you. Let there be an end to this. Croker seized a tumbler which stood

on the table, and emptied the gin and water it held into the ashes in the fender.

‘ Look ’ere,’ protested Pratt, feebly, tearful at the wanton waste of good liquor involved in this unusual action. ‘ This won’t do, you’re cornin’ the masterful over me in this way. Who put you up to the little game ? Who kept dark over that other affair, when a word from him would have had you lagged ? Just tell me that and keep O O y • •• j a civil tongue in your head. ‘ I haven’t forgotten, but the position is altered. You put me up to the Cunliffe business, true, but I’ve it, and shall keep on working it to our mutual benefit mutual, you understand, only so long as you do as I tell you. Six months you had the whip hand, now it is my turn. Take care what you are about. I could leave England to-morrow, independent for life.’ ‘ Then why don’t you do it ?’ Croker scowled. ‘ That is not your concern. What I meant to add was that I could leave England, and it would take a sharper man than you to find me.’ ‘ But what’s the use of hanging on?’ persisted Pratt, ignoring the last disagreeable possibility, and making a last desperate effort to regain lost leadership. ‘ The old un’s dead, the money’s yours, the gill a blessed millstone round your neck.’ ‘ Perhaps it is better we should understand each other,’ said Croker with a dangerous evenness. ‘ I do not want advice but obedience.’ ‘ Look ’ere, you’re cornin’ it a bit too strong,’ remonstrated the overwrought Pratt. ‘You’re a turning, so to speak, agin the bosom as warmed yer.’ ‘ Drop that,’ cried Croker, with a disgusted strike of his heel on the carpet, ‘ and let us. come to the point. Will you do what I want or will you not ?’ Their eyes met, Croker’s boldly masterful with a boldness he really did not feel, Pratt’s ferret - like and sullen under their inflamed lids. ‘ You ain’t told me what you want yet,’ he said at last. And Croker indulged in a silent chuckle of victory as he returned. ‘ It’s been settled along that if Cunliffe came home you would tackle him. For what other reason have I kept you in idleness all these months?’ With rapid clearness he described Roy and told Pratt of an appointment he had made with him on Chelsea Bridge for that evening. ‘ You must keep it,’ he wound up. ‘ I don’t want to meet the fellow again.’ ‘ But what am I to do with him ?’ asked Pratt, helplessly. ‘Keep a tight hold on him. Worm yourself into his confidence, watch his movements, get to know his very thoughts if you can. Never let him out of your sight.’ ‘ Anything else ?’ Pratt’s sarcasm was pronounced. ‘ You don’t ask a fellow to do much for his bread and cheese, do you ?’ ‘ You can take the job or leave it,’ Croker replied. ‘ I’ve got to take it,’ admitted the elder villain. ‘ But it’s cruel hard at my time of life. You’re not actin’ fair by the pal as made your fortin’.’ He showed symptoms of snivelling. He was completely quelled. ‘ Well, I must be off.’ Croker brushed his hat on his sleeve. ‘ I suppose you’ll bring him here - ’ ‘ Lord Pratt saw his pleasures slipping from him, saw an end to many a pleasant tippling acquaintance he had formed across the bar of various public houses in that dingy, free and easy quarter of London. ‘ He’ll be an awful lodger. To turn gaoler at my time of life ! But he won’t stand it, mind you. ’Taint human natur. He’ll break out. He’ll give me the slip. There’s only one way of keeping him quiet.’ His voice dropped, his eyes fixed on Croker meaningly, he caught at the lapel of his irreproachable coat. ‘ Blest if it don’t seem the easiest of the lot. I could manage him safe and easy. Who’d be the wiser— ’ The last word was cast back in his throat; his teeth met with a snap as Croker, slipping one long hand

between collar and flesh, shook him violently, then threw him from him. Pratt caught at a chair-back, steadied himself and stepped forward with an unstudied and vigorous curse. The two stood looking at each other for a minute or so, Croker livid with rage and horror, dull red from his sandy hair to his thick neck, and with a very ugly look in his little eyes over which the ragged brows were scowling. ‘You de/il!’ The younger man looked down with loathing at the brutish face. ‘ Not that ! I will have no partin murder.’ Who spoke of murder ?’ ‘ You meant it.’ Croker recovered somewhat from the shock of the man’s deadly hint to keep close to the door as though to avoid contact with a greater, more candid villain than himself. Keep him safe, treat him well, or by Heaven, it will go hard with you.’ As Croker’s retreating feet clattered down the bare wooden stairs, Pratt shook a grimy fist towards the door through which his partner had just passed. ‘You fight shy of murder, would you ?’ he snarled. ‘ You —who killed old Cunliffe as sure as if you’d stuck a knife in his gizzard! Ah, well!’ His hand dropped peacefully to the big outer pocket of the dressing gown in which was a tobacco pouch. ‘ I suppose I shall have to put up with it.’ He mixed himself another glass of gin and water, now he was once more master of his own domain, and drank it off thoughtfully. To pur up with it, up with it as is,’ he murmured, ‘as long needs be. But,’ with a sudden briskness as the bottle tilted again towards the tumbler and the spirit splashed in, ‘it do stick in a chap’s throat, that it do, to be under, the thumb of a young whipper snapper like that, a fellow as I’ve made, too. Why, he’d be doin, his time for that banking business in Melbourne if it hadn’t been for me. They’d be glad enough to get hold of him now, if they could. Biowed if I don’t give ’em the tip if he comes any more of his hankypanky tricks. And who was it found out about them Cunliffes ? He went back to reminiscence as he dipped his nose into the glass and brought it out again perceptibly deepened in tone. ‘Me ! The blind gent, the pretty young gal, the brother, as was my old friend to Croker, skulking away fr< M home because of that Blyth business ! Didn’t I put two and two together, figure it all out, tip my gentleman the wink and set him up for life so to speak ? And he comes here and orders me about as if I was a bloomin’ kid.’ The turning of the tables was a shock to him. His grievance grew as the gin sunk down in the bottle. But the total sum of his remuneration was that Croker ‘stumped up ’andsome ’ and had better be obeyed. On arriving at which decision, he plunged his head into cold water and lifted it out sobered, dressed himself with unusual care, and going downstairs bawled down to the kitchen tosummon the housekeeper, with whom he made some arrangements concerning the hire and make-up of an extra bed. This done he turned out of Great Green Street on his way towards the river. (To be Continued.)

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/SOCR18941222.2.44

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 39, 22 December 1894, Page 19

Word count
Tapeke kupu
4,504

THE MAN FROM MELBOURNE Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 39, 22 December 1894, Page 19

THE MAN FROM MELBOURNE Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 39, 22 December 1894, Page 19

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