The Gold-Stealers Part 25

'When you're asked many questions and want an answer, tell the truth.

Lies, my boy, are for fools and rogues--remember, fools and rogues.'

d.i.c.k set his lips and nodded; and the master, after regarding him curiously for a moment, actually patted his head--an uncommon exhibition of feeling on his part that caused the scholars to gape with wonderment.

When d.i.c.k reached his home he was astonished to find his mother seated in the front room with her handkerchief to her eyes, crying quite violently.

Opposite her sat the man in drab, swinging his hat between his knees and looking exactly as if he had just been awakened from a nap. The man walked to the door, locked it, and then resumed his seat.

'Now, my lad,' he said, 'attend to me. My name is Downy. I am a detective, and I have found you out.'

The admission was not a wise one; it blanched d.i.c.k's lips, but it closed them like a spring-trap.

'I have found you out,' continued the detective. 'He has been arrested.'

The detective emphasised the 'he,' and watched the effect. d.i.c.k stood before him, white and silent, his heart beating with quick blows, and his blood humming in his ears, 'Who? Who? Who?'

'The man who went down with you has been arrested, my lad, and now you must tell me the whole truth to save yourself. He says you hammered Harry Hardy on the head with an iron bar, and if you do not clear yourself I must take you to gaol.'

d.i.c.k answered nothing; his eyes never moved from the green bee on the wall even to glance at his mother sobbing in the corner.

'Come, come, come!' cried Downy impatiently, 'it's no good your denying that you were in the mine on Sunday night. You came home covered with slurry, marked with blood, and very frightened. Your mother admits that, and we have found your footprints in the clay of the Silver Stream drives at both levels. Besides, the man says you were there. Now, tell me this, and I will let you go free: who has the key of the grating over the mouth of the old Red Hand?'

'Oh! d.i.c.kie, my boy, my poor boy--why don't you answer?' sobbed Mrs.

Haddon.

The detective tried again, threatened, pleaded, and cajoled, and Mrs.

Haddon used all her motherly artifices; but not one word came from the boy's locked lips. d.i.c.k was possessed by a vivid hallucination; he seemed to be standing in the centre of a whirlwind. Downy and his mother were dim figures beyond, seen through the dust; and like shreds of paper whirled in the vortex, visions of Miss Chris's face, netted in fair hair, pa.s.sed swiftly before his eyes, and the expression on each face was beseeching and sorrowful. Nothing could have dragged the truth from him at that moment.

Downy stood up and hung over d.i.c.k, scratching his head in a despairing way.

I'm sorry, ma'am,' he said, 'but I'll have to take him.'

'He's s.h.i.+eldin' some villain,' moaned Mrs. Haddon.

The detective took the widow aside and whispered with her for a few minutes, with the result that she dried her eyes and was much consoled.

d.i.c.k was taken away in Manager Holden's trap and lodged in gaol at Yarraman; and when the news leaked out, as it did towards evening, Waddy had a new sensation, and quite the most startling one in its experience.

Before the women went to bed that night they had found d.i.c.k guilty of robbing the Silver Stream of thousands of ounces of gold and perpetrating a murderous a.s.sault on Harry Hardy. The news brought Joe Rogers and Ephraim s.h.i.+ne together at their secret meeting-place in the corner paddock--Rogers much disturbed and puzzled, s.h.i.+ne shaken almost out of his wits.

'I'm goin' to bolt, I tell you!' cried the searcher.

Rogers gripped him roughly.

'Bolt,' he said, 'an' you're doomed--done for. h.e.l.l! man, can't you see you'd be grabbed in less'n a day? With that mug an' that figure you'd be spotted whatever hole you crept into.'

'I know, I know; but it'll come anyhow--it'll come!

'Not so sure, unless you blab in one of these blitherin' fits. What does that kid know? Nothin'. He's found our gold, an' he's hid it away. He wants to keep it, an' you know what a stubborn devil he is. This is just a try on, an' they'll get nothin' out o' d.i.c.k Haddon. If they do they get the gold, an' we're all right if we don't play the fool.'

Rogers's reasoning was very good as far as it went; but the discovery of the boy's footprints in the drives had been kept a close secret, or even he might have admitted the wisdom of bolting without delay.

d.i.c.k spent a day and two nights in the cell at the watch-house in Yarraman. Public report at Waddy was to the effect that every influence short of torture had been used in the effort to induce him to divulge the truth, and not a word had he spoken. His mother and Mrs. Hardy and Harry had all visited him in the cell, and had failed to persuade him to open his lips. His callousness in the presence of his poor mother's distress was described in feeling terms as unworthy of the black and naked savage.

All this was much nearer the truth than speculation at Waddy was wont to be; and when d.i.c.k was restored to his home in the flesh on Sat.u.r.day at noon and permitted to run at large again without let or hindrance, Waddy was amazed and indignant, and Waddy's criticism of the methods of the police authorities was scathing in the extreme.

The boy was driven home by the sergeant, the same who had been commissioned to quell the Great Goat Riot.

'He's looking pulled down,' said the trooper, delivering him into his mother's arms. 'It's the confinement. Let him run about as usual, Mrs.

Haddon; let him have lots of fresh air, particularly night air, and he'll soon be all right. At night, Mrs. Haddon, the air is fresh and healthy.

Let him run about in the evenings, you know.'

Mrs. Haddon was very grateful for the advice and promised to act upon it. But d.i.c.k was a new boy; he remained in doors all Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, wandering about the house in an aimless manner, trying to read and failing, trying to divert himself in unusual ways and failing in everything. He presented all the symptoms of a guilty, conscience-stricken wretch; and his mother, who had been priming him with camomile surrept.i.tiously, began to lose confidence in that wonderful herb.

Meanwhile a very interesting stranger had made his appearance at Waddy; he was believed to be a drover, and he was on the spree and 'shouting'

with spontaneity and freedom. His horse, a fine upstanding bay, stood saddled and bridled under McMahon's shed at the Drovers' Arms by day and night. His behaviour in drink was original and erratic. He would fraternise with the man at the bar for a time, and then go roaming at large about the towns.h.i.+p in a desultory way, sleeping casually in all sorts of absurd places; but Waddy had a large experience in 'drunks' and made liberal allowances.

Miss Chris called in at Mrs. Haddon's home on evening shortly after tea.

She had not been to chapel, and was anxious about her father, who had absented himself from his duties as superintendent of late and whose behaviour had been most extraordinary when she called on him on two or three occasions during the week. She was afraid of fever, and sought advice from Mrs. Haddon, who unhesitatingly recommended camomile tea.

Then d.i.c.k's ailment was discussed and Chris, much concerned, went and sat by the boy, who cowered over his book, too full to answer her kind inquiries. She put an arm about him and talked with tender solicitude; she sympathised with him in his troubles, and was angry with all his enemies, more especially the police, whose folly amazed her. Here a large tear rolled down d.i.c.k's nose and splashed upon the open page, and when she pressed him to tell all he might know and not to suffer abuse and shame to s.h.i.+eld some wicked villain, he quite collapsed, and sat with his head sunk upon his arms, sobbing hysterically. This was so unlike the boy that Christina was quite amazed, and her eyes travelled anxiously to and from d.i.c.k's bowed head and his mother's distressed face. Then the women, to give him time to recover himself, sat together talking of other matters--Harry Hardy mainly--and d.i.c.k, ashamed of his tears, crept away to bury his effeminate sobs amongst the Cape broom in the garden.

d.i.c.k had not sat alone more than a minute when he heard a sharp whistle from the back. It was Jacker Mack's whistle and at first d.i.c.k did not respond, but sat mopping his tears with his sleeves. The whistle was repeated three or four times, and at length he determined to meet Jacker, thinking there might be some news about the reef in the Mount of Gold. He pa.s.sed out through the side gate, and along to the fowl-house at the corner, behind which he expected to find his mate sitting. But when he reached the corner a pair of strong arms s.n.a.t.c.hed him from the ground, and he was borne away at a rapid pace in the direction of Wilson's paddock. His face was crushed against the breast of the man who held him, in such a way that it was impossible for him to utter the slightest sound.

Across the flat in the shallow quarry he was thrown to the ground, and for a moment he caught a glimp of his captor in the darkness, a powerfully built man, wearing a viator cap that covered the whole of his face and head, with the exception of the eyes.

'Let one yelp out o' you an' I'll crush yer head with a rock!' whispered the man ferociously.

d.i.c.k was blindfolded and gagged, and his arms and legs were tied with rope, his enemy kneeling on him the while and hurting him badly in his brutal haste.

The boy was caught up again and thrown on the man's shoulder, and the journey was continued at a trot. He knew when the bush was reached, because here a fence had to be climbed. He tried to understand what this adventure might mean, but his thoughts were all confused and the gag made breathing so difficult that once or twice he feared he was going to die.

When at last the man stopped and d.i.c.k was dropped to the ground, they had travelled about a mile and a half into the bush. He heard the sound of timbers being moved, and presently was caught up again; after much fumbling and an oath or two from his companion the latter withdrew his support, and d.i.c.k felt himself to be dangling in the air from the rope that tied his limbs. Now the bandage was pulled from his eyes, and the boy, after staring about through the starlit night for a few moments, terrified and amazed, began to realise his position.

'Know where you are, me beauty?' asked the big man who stood before him, and who spoke as if with a pebble on his tongue.

d.i.c.k knew where he was. He was hanging over the open shaft of the Piper Mine, another of Waddy's abandoned claims, suspended from one of the skids by a stout rope.

'Look down,' commanded the man.

d.i.c.k obeyed and saw only the black yawning shaft. 'Know she's deep, don't yer? There's three hundred feet o' shaft below you there. That's the short road to h.e.l.l. Now look here.'

He flashed the bright blade of a large knife before the eyes of his prisoner; then, seating himself on a broken truck near the shaft he began deliberately to sharpen the knife on his boot. The operation was not in the least hurried--the man was desirous of making a deep impression.

'There,' he said at length, 'that's beautiful. Feel!' He cut the skin of d.i.c.k's nose with a touch of the keen edge. 'Now, listen here. I'm goin'

to take this bandage off yer mouth, 'cause I've a few perticular questions to ask an' you must answer 'em, but understand first that one little yell from you, an'--' He made a blood-curdling pretence of cutting at the rope above d.i.c.k's head. 'You'd go plug to the bottom an' be smashed to fifty bits!'

The man removed the gag and reseated himself on the old truck. As he talked he toyed with the ugly knife, making occasional pa.s.ses on the side of his left boot resting on his knee.

'Look here, young feller,' he said, 'if you tell me lies down you go, understand? D'ye believe me?' he asked with sudden ferocity.

'Yes,' whispered d.i.c.k.

'Well then listen, an' answer quick an' lively. Where's the bag of gold you stole outer that big tree beyond the Bed Hand?'