Читать книгу The Shadow of Larose - Arthur Gask - Страница 4

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LOOKING back in after days, I have often wondered why I so instantly determined to follow the man in the light suit. The other wretch I had seen was in every way as culpable and from all I knew would have been just as easy or just as difficult to follow. But I turned to the light suit man as a matter of course, perhaps subconsciously because it was he whom I had seen give the absolutely fatal blows, or perhaps again simply because I thought that, by reason of his light suit, he would be the easier of the two to pick out among the mallee scrub.

At any rate, after him I went at full pelt, and so enraged was I, that the heavy blanket roll upon my shoulders felt as light as a feather, and no burden at all. I ran bent down so that he should not see me if he should turn round, and I held my little rifle on the ready for anything that might happen.

I don't think, however, that I had any very clear idea as to what exactly I was going to do, but I had seen the wretch I was following participate in a brutal murder, and every instinct of good citizenship in me was insisting that he should not get away unpunished.

I soon picked him out among the scrub, for even at some hundreds of yards distance the light suit was conspicuous, and I gained upon him fast. I did not, however, run in a direct line behind him, but a good 50 yards to one side, for I was expecting him at any moment to turn round and look back.

And this was exactly what he did do when he had run, I should say, about half a mile. He almost stopped and then slewed his head round for a rapid glance behind.

But he did not catch sight of me, I was quite confident, for I had thrown myself down instantly with the first turning of his head, and I did not get up again until he was running on.

Then, about a hundred yards further in front of him, I noticed that the scrub was beginning to get very thin and soon, to my consternation, I saw it was about to disappear altogether, and give way to open salt-bush country beyond. The salt-bush grows only to about a foot in height, and in between the mallee bushes I could not glimpse it, stretching for mile upon mile towards the foot of the far distant mountain range.

How on earth then could I approach the man unawares, I asked myself, once he had left the scrub and was in the open, and I quickened my pace in my dismay.

Then suddenly I lost sight of him altogether, and for the moment I believed he must have thrown himself down to rest. But there was no sign of him on the ground anywhere, and I could see everywhere to the farthest bush.

I slackened my pace, however, at once, and approached warily to where he had seemed to disappear, just where the bushes ended, and I quickly realised that it was well I had done so, too.

Without any warning the ground broke suddenly to a little hollow, a sort of little cup that the winds had scooped among the sand, and there, all on an instant, and not ten paces away from me, I came upon the man.

He was leaning against a low bank, and with an expression of rapt attention upon his face was going over a thickish wad of banknotes that he was holding in his hand. A discarded wallet and some loose papers lay upon the sands at his feet.

He had not heard my approach, for the sound of my footstep had been deadened in the sand, and for a good half-minute at least I stood watching him.

He was not by any means a bad-looking fellow, for he had a good profile and a strong, determined face. He was quite well dressed, too.

Suddenly, then, something attracted his attention—I may have moved, or perhaps he heard me breathe—and he jerked his head round sharply and saw me standing there.

He sprang like lightning to his feet and then stood staring at me as if I were an apparition from the grave. His face was white as death, his eyes bulged, and his mouth was opened wide.

Then covertly he flashed his eyes behind me and to right and left, as if he were searching to see if I were there alone, and then a moment later his face became more composed and took on a cunning look.

He crushed up the notes he was holding, and with a sly, furtive movement thrust them into one of the side pockets of his coat.

"No good," I cut in sharply, and I spoke hoarsely from a dry mouth. "I saw where you got them from. I was watching you both from the scrub." The anger rose into my voice. "You murdered that man."

Just for the instant fear seemed to grip over him again, and then the ghost of a mocking smile crossed into his face. His eyes closed to narrow slits, so that their expression could not be seen.

He had weighed me up, I thought grimly, and was satisfied on which side the scales would turn.

But if he had been busy calculating, so had I, and I was making no mistake as to who was the stronger man.

In a rough and tumble fight the wretch would be my conqueror every time. He was about my own height, but he was much more muscular and sinewy, and looked hard as nails. Besides, I should be terribly handicapped by the blanket knapsack on my shoulder, which by now had become as if a ton in weight.

So I stepped back a pace, and with the safety catch slipped, held my rifle straight before me breast high.

Perhaps then we waited thirty seconds—it might have been less and it might have been more, and then I made the first move, and I calculated too, that I made it only just in time.

I saw the man in front of me was getting ready, and was gathering himself in for a rush. His lips had closed right together, his shoulders had sunk a little, his head was poised like a runner before a race, his hands—but then I pressed my trigger finger and a .22 long rifle bullet crumpled him up.

I was no fool with a rifle, and had meant to take him directly over the heart, but my hands were shaking, and instead I sent the bullet high, and it struck him over the left temple. Instantly the blood spurted down his face.

He flung his hands up to his head and staggered like a drunken man. Then with a jerk he crashed backwards and dropped a quivering mass upon the sands.

His hands clawed faintly, and he moaned just once or twice. Then his head lolled sideways, his mouth fell open wide, and he lay quite still.

Breathing painfully and leaden-footed I stepped forward and stood over him. My mind seemed numb, and I did not take in yet what I had done. The preceding moments had been so full of horrors that I felt now like some sleeper in a dreadful dream.

"Here is another man." I said to myself as if it had nothing to do with me, "and he is dead and bloody like that other one. What a mess he's in."

Then suddenly the reek of burnt cordite rose into my nostrils, and it came to my understanding that the smell was clinging round the rifle in my hands. For a moment I stared blankly at the weapon and then—like a wave my fit of dreaming passed and my mind was clear again.

Too horribly clear, and I drew in my breath with a big sob. Oh! what a madman I had been!

I had mixed myself up in a ghastly murder and with my own hands, too, I had taken life. Taken life with no witnesses present, either to prove that my action had been absolutely necessary and right.

What an interfering fool to follow the man at all! My proper course would have been to have waited by the car until help came, and then to have left the whole matter to the police. It was no business of mine to mete out punishment to the murderers, and besides, who would know that I was now speaking the truth? By my stupid interference I had involved myself, at best, in a lot of unpleasant investigations by the police and at worst—to perhaps having actually to undergo punishment for having taken the law into my own hands as I had. In any case, it would not look too well to many that I had shot down an unarmed man, as I should have to admit, without giving him a chance.

Oh, yes, I had been a fool, I had—Suddenly then my eyes fell upon something lying just near the body upon the sand. I looked carelessly and then—with startled interest. It was a banknote I saw, and one moreover, for 100 pounds. I stared at it incredibly for a moment and then stifling a cry, I stooped down and picked it up.

Yes, it was for 100 pounds, and—the thought seared through me like a red-hot iron—it was only one of a bundle that I had seen the dead man stuff into his pocket.

Without waiting a second and with no consideration now for any dangers I might have incurred, I flung myself down upon my knees to search for the other notes, and so great was my excitement, that with no repugnance at all, I turned over the body to get at the pocket in the coat. In my eager haste I got blood upon my clothing, but quite unheeding that I pulled out the wad and then jumping to my feet again proceeded to breathlessly count it.

Two hundred—three—four—five—a thousand—fifteen hundred—nearly two thousand in hundreds, fifties, twenties and quite a lot of tens. And many of them could be safely passed, too, for from their appearance they had been in circulation quite a long time, and there was no sequence either in their numbers.

It was only a rough tally that I made, but the sum of about 2,000 pounds leapt into my mind.

Two thousand! Why, it was a fortune, and it was mine if I could only get away with it.

Like a hunted animal I crouched down, and then like a man who was in deadly peril I peered round fearfully on every side. Even as the wretch I had just killed had stared behind me into the mallee scrub to see if I had come alone, so I started now with the same fearing and crime-haunted eyes.

Yes, crime-haunted, for the possession of these few slips of rustling paper, following upon the mental stress I had just passed through, had completely upset the balance of my mind, and I was now a criminal, too, though it might be in a minor and less dreadful degree than that of the blood-soaked creature lying at my feet.

I had no thought any longer for the murdered man in the car, no thought for the man I had just killed; my entire obsession now was to retain my spoil and get away with it quickly.

I had all the elation of a victorious beast of prey.

I looked round on every side. No, I was watched by no human eyes. I was alone in that lonely place. The mallee scrub lay like a dark screen behind me and before me, across the far-flung salt bush plain, not a living creature moved.

I thrust the notes into my pocket and thought quickly.

I must put as many miles as possible between me and the scene of all these happenings. No one must ever know that I had been near the spot. I must make for the uninhabited mountain range, and remain in hiding there for a few days. Then, I would return again to civilisation from quite a different direction, and no one would ever be able to link me up with anything that had occurred on the Port Augusta-Port Lincoln track.

But I had a hard trek before me. The mountain range was at least fifty miles distant, and there would be the matter of getting water on the way. I knew, however, that all the country was sheep country. I was sure of that because of the gates and fences that I had had to open and close in coming from Port Augusta, and I, of course, realised that where sheep wandered necessary provision for water had always to be made. Also, I remembered seeing on the maps that I had hurriedly gone over in the Public Library the previous evening several dams marked in the stretch below the Flinders Ranges.

All these things flashed through my mind in a few seconds, and then tightening my blanket roll upon my shoulders, and with no further thought for the man I had killed, at a slow ambling run I set off across the saltbush.

It was then nearly 5 o'clock, and I reckoned I had three hours of daylight before me. Good, then when night fell I should be 15 miles away. Then I would rest until the moon rose, and later cover another 15 miles before the dawn. It would be safer to sleep by day and travel by night. In thirty-six hours I would be in the heart of the range.

I strode forward with great confidence, but before even I had gone a bare half-mile the uneasy feeling came to me that undoubtedly I had been too sanguine in my expectation as to the progress I should make.

To begin with, the going was heavy, and I very soon had to slow down to a walk. It was no light labor travelling over the saltbush, for I had to pick my way with every step. Then the wind rose suddenly, a hot north wind like the blast from a furnace door, and it swept up the sand like a thousand pin pricks against my face. It almost blinded me, and I had to lower my head to make any progress at all.

But for two hours I kept doggedly on, and then, to my great relief, the wind dropped as suddenly as it had risen, and I was able to look about again.

Close near I saw a small windmill working a bore, and feeding the water into a large trough round which a mob of sheep were gathered. There were also about a dozen horses not far away.

It was a great find, and thankfully drinking the remaining water that I had been husbanding in my flask, I filled both that and my water bag again.

Carrying the full water bag would, I knew, add to my discomfort, but it would, at any rate, ensure me a safe journey to the mountain range. So I swung it over my rifle, and with the latter upon my shoulder, started to continue on my way.

Then suddenly it struck me that as the horses seemed very tame and not at all disturbed by my presence among them, with a little care I might get hold of one and borrow him for a few hours.

So I picked out a serviceable-looking bay, and taking an apple from my knapsack approached him with it, on my open hand. He was quite willing to consider the unexpected luxury, and catching him by the mane I was soon upon his back and pressing him into my service. I understood horses well, having in my early days spent many happy holidays upon the station of an uncle beyond Broken Hill.

The horse was a comfortable mover, and we were soon ambling along quietly at about four miles an hour. It takes a good animal to keep at that pace for any length of time, but I was hoping I should be able to get twenty more miles out of him before I let him go to return home.

An hour later and it rapidly grew dark, but there were the faint stars to guide me and I pushed on.

Now I think, under normal circumstances, I should greatly have enjoyed the ride, except that, with no saddle under me, I was soon experiencing anything but the comforts of a feather bed.

The wind had completely died down, and the night was pleasantly warm. I was in a world of my very own, and the peace and stillness of it all began to soothe my jangling nerves. I was no longer in the dreadful surroundings of violence and sudden death—no longer struggling painfully across the never ending sands—no longer with my back bent double under a heavy load. Instead, comparatively speaking, I was at ease and all my plans were going well.

But soon my thoughts began to trouble me and insist that, with all my good fortune in getting away with the bank notes, and with all the rosy prospect of safety that the future seemed to hold for me, I was now nothing but a thief and a fugitive from the law.

It was no good my telling myself that I had not really stolen the money, and that it was mine by right, as the spoil of conquest from a man who, already a murderer, would have undoubtedly murdered me.

I didn't believe it for a minute, and with every yard I travelled now I wished I had left the wretched notes alone.

But, alas, it was too late to turn back and put myself right. The car with its ghastly occupant might have been found hours ago, and the telephone wires might be humming now in every direction for a look-out to be kept for any strange and wandering men.

But I was safe, I kept on comforting myself, and there was nothing but the possession of the bank notes to connect me in any way with the crime. I had only to thrust them in a few inches under the desert sand and then—even if all the police in South Australia were upon my heels, I should be as far removed from suspicion as any man in another crime.

That they would never discover the wretch I had shot I was sure. To the desolate spot where he lay, no one might come for many years, and in a week or less he would have been picked clean by the crows. The first wind, too, might cover him up. Ah, the very dust storm that I had just been through might have filled his grave, and the best black-tracker would be at fault, a yard from the car.

The black-trackers! I had never thought of them.

My heart thumped unpleasantly, and then—in all my dejection I chuckled to myself. Why, that dust storm was a mighty throw of Fate on my behalf! In two minutes there would have been no tracks of anyone to follow and the car wheels even, would be resting in a stretch of virgin sand.

So on I jogged in alternate fits of elation and depression.

Two hours after midnight and I felt the beast under me begin to flag. Even at the easy pace we had been progressing he could not go on for ever, and I myself was now sick and giddy with fatigue.

I rolled or indeed almost fell off his back, so stiff and sore was I, and then giving him another apple and piece of bread, I turned his head home-wards, and with a smart smack upon his flank sent him on his way.

He would get back all right I was sure, but so strange are our moods, that at the moment, sending him off, without at least a mouthful of the water in my bag, seemed to be my basest action of the day.

I had been riding for nearly seven hours, and at a dead reckoning had covered about 26 miles. Those, with the six miles I calculated I had walked before I came to the dam, would add up to 32. Well, it was good travelling, and the next night would see me in the range, sure enough.

Spreading out my ground sheet I rolled into my blanket, and tried to get some sleep, but I was too tired or too worried, and it was not until dawn was rising that I fell even into a fitful dose. Then, I was awake again before 7 o'clock, and sitting up eagerly to take note of where I was.

I was surrounded still on every side by the eternal salt bush, but it heartened me a lot to see that the mountains were much nearer, indeed so close was one big fellow, that I felt almost certain that I must have under-estimated my progress during the night, and might be nearer 40 miles than 30 from the Port Augusta track.

I turned to my supplies to get something to eat, and then realised for the first time, so full had my mind been of other things, that the food question was going to be an anxious one.

I had really been carrying only emergency rations for my entire supplies comprised a small tin of salmon, some dried milk, a packet of sugar, a cake of chocolate, a little tea, about a third of a loaf of bread and two apples.

Well, I told myself, I wouldn't worry until I had to. I was deadly with my little rifle, and the first rabbit I spotted would meet with instant death.

I chose the salmon for my breakfast, and recklessly cleared up the whole tin. I felt much better somehow, now that I had the sun before me once again.

After breakfast I did up my knapsack, and feeling sure that I was now far enough away from my beaten track not to encounter anybody, proceeded confidently upon my journey. My only danger now, was the chance meeting with a boundary rider from some adjacent sheep station, but the holdings there would be pretty large, I thought, and I did not worry over much.

On one side of me there was no township for over twelve hundred miles, until well into Western Australia, and on the other none, until one reached the gulf. Once in the Flinders Range, however, I should again be much nearer Port Augusta, and it would lie then only a day's journey below me.

I tramped on steadily at a slow and even pace, but all the time my thoughts were racing hard.

Had anyone yet come upon the car, I wondered, or was it lying just as I had left it sixteen hours ago? But what a shock it would be for the person who found it first, and what would he do then when he saw the murdered man?

Would he race off to Port Augusta or would he take the nearer journey to Whyalla, to inform the police? Ah, Whyalla! I could feel my face pucker up into a frown—now what had become of the other murderer whom I had seen turn off in the direction of the Whyalla track? And now I came to think about it, where was the man I had shot making for? He was, I felt sure, heading for the township of Iron Knob. Well, what was he going to do there? Had he got his home in that place, and was he going to slip into it unnoticed, and was that why he had taken charge of the notes for safety?

I shook my head in perplexity. Looking back on everything, it seemed to me that the murder, like my own lapse, had been purely one of chance. It had not been a premeditated crime and had only happened because the car had broken down where it did.

So the murderers had had to make their plans at a minute's notice, and they had gone widely separate ways, perhaps because they knew that two passengers had been seen in the car of the murdered man and therefore it was two men together that would be searched for directly the fact of the murder had become known. And then who was the murdered man, and how was it he had come to be carrying so much money about him on such a lonely track?

I thought on and on about the murder in all its bearings until I came at last to considering what exactly the police would do when they found the body. How would the detectives start off on looking for clues? Would they commence by searching among the mallee scrub in the vicinity? Would they—oh, hell! there was my motor cycle there!

A fit of dreadful nausea seized me—I felt as if I were going to suffocate. I stopped dead in my tracks and sank down upon the sands.

Why, what had I forgotten all this time? What had my addled brain not taken in?

My motor cycle was within a hundred and fifty yards of the murdered man and the derelict car. It was plain for the first person to see who went into the scrub, and it had both its number plates on. The police would find out that its owner was Teddy Binks, and then in no longer time than it would take to wire to and receive back a reply from Darwin, they would be hot-foot upon my track.

Of course they would be on to me instantly, for directly all the facts of the murder were made known the tradesmen on the lorry that had passed me would report at once that they had seen a man upon a motor cycle almost at the exact spot where the murder had been committed and within a minute of the same time too, when they had passed the car.

I spent a terrible half-hour when there first came to me a realisation of all these things, and then something seemed suddenly to stiffen in me, and I pulled myself together again.

Well, if I was in for it—I was, but I would not anyhow crumple up and take the most hopeless view of everything straight away. It was quite possible that no one, after all, would ever search the scrub near the car. On the face of it, they would not expect the murderer to be hanging round the place of his crime, and if they suspected the motor cyclist, then the last thing they would think of would be that he had forsaken his machine to flee away on foot. How on earth would they possibly guess that it had broken down?

So I tried hard to comfort myself, but in spite of it all, at the back of my mind, there lurked the black spectre of a dreadful fear.

Anyhow, I told myself, my flight was going to be in deadly earnest now, and I must be well into the range when night fell. So I tightened my blanket roll yet again, and set off bravely at a swinging pace.

Now I remember very little of that final effort to reach the mountains, except that it was like a nightmare of a most horrible kind. I know, however, that I walked without halting a single moment, for over six hours, and that I was in great mental and physical distress the whole time.

I was not fit to undertake such a trying journey, even if my mind had been at rest. I had come straight from my sedentary occupation at the bank, and my muscles were not tuned up to any arduous work. Then I had had practically no sleep for two nights, and I was almost worn out before I started.

But fear urged me on, a black fear gripping at my heart and making my mouth drier even than from the pangs of thirst. So I felt only in a nightmare sort of way, the dreadful aching of my sodden limbs, the terrible galling of the knapsack upon my shoulders, and the blistering of the sun upon my neck and hands.

It was really that my mental sufferings were so great that I was in consequence numb and forgetful to my physical ones.

I reached the mountain range in mid-afternoon, and climbing painfully to an elevated plateau strewn all around with big black rocks, threw myself in absolute exhaustion upon the ground.

And then for a time I forgot everything. Body and mind I was dead to the world. Murderers and assassins might have hovered over me, policemen and detectives might have come and gone, death adders, even, might have crawled beside me, and I should not have cared.

Towards sunset, however, I revived a little, and with aching arms tipped up my water bag for a long drink, then I ate a piece of chocolate and finally propped myself up against a rock and stared sullenly across the plain below.

There was the gulf not very far away; there in the far distance was some little township by the waterside; and there, like a winding ribbon stretched the Adelaide track.

Night however, fell very soon, and then my teeth began to chatter with the cold, so I wrapped my blanket round me and with my arm only for a pillow, composed myself for sleep.

But sleep was long in coming, and then it was fitful only, and full of dreadful dreams. A dozen times I woke during the night, and a dozen times my memory scourged my mind. The man I had seen murdered and the wretch I had killed myself were never far from me, and I was thankful when morning came at last.

But morning brought no comfort, and so still and sore was I that I could hardly move. I felt weak and ill, and scarcely able to stand. I ate the remainder of my chocolate and my two apples, and drank more of my water, which I realised was now getting perilously low.

All day I lay about, dozing and waking, but with no refreshment from my rest. My mind had become more active again and my thoughts were harrowing ones all the time. I was down and out. I was absolutely at the end of my tether, and there was no hope left.

No matter who was after me, I could hide no longer in the mountains. On the morrow I must crawl down as best I could and get food somewhere, and then, I supposed, if I were being looked for, I should be taken, and that would be the end of all.

But I would not be caught, I thought, with the notes upon me, at any rate. So I tied them tightly up in my pocket handkerchief, and limping painfully to about a hundred yards away, thrust the bundle deeply into a crevice between two big rocks.