Читать книгу The Emu's Head - Carlton Dawe - Страница 3

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Mr. George Vincent, whom we have already had the pleasure of introducing, though under anything but conventional circumstances, was the only son of Mr. Samuel Horatio Vincent, a gentleman who at one time owned a considerable reputation as an architect in the city of Melbourne; but like too many gentlemen who enjoy fair reputations, Mr. Vincent was inclined to presume, and for such presumption he was fated to pay dearly. As a cat may be killed with care—and we believe no one will attempt to dispute this statement—so may a man’s reputation perish by indulgence. Being a person of illimitable ideas, which he ever strove to indulge to the top of their bent, Mr. Vincent soon found that the consequences attached to such large notions were like the notions themselves—infinite. A fine house in South Yarra, in which he entertained royally, horses, carriages, servants,—all these needed money. It was the same old story. Mr. Vincent got the money and the Jews his property. It was rather a come-down for this estimable family, but luckily, before the final catastrophe, the two daughters married fairly well, so that there were only husband and wife, with the boy George, then a lad of seventeen, to provide for. From South Yarra these three migrated to the wilds of Prahran, and though Master George experienced much sorrow in leaving the grammar school for an office, he was yet old enough to know that there was no gainsaying necessity.

Mr. Vincent, however, instead of regarding his fall as the dire calamity his friends insisted upon making it, looked upon it as a positive godsend, one of those blessings which come in the guise of curses, for it relieved him of innumerable embarrassments, and allowed him to dabble in matters more congenial to his tastes. As he had lost through speculation, while neglecting his own trade, to speculation he turned, resolved to win back fame and fortune or—or go bankrupt again if he could get the chance. Consequently he promoted banks, building societies, mining companies, irrigation schemes—in fact, there was no company of any importance in which Mr. Samuel Horatio Vincent had not his little finger. People quite believed that he was well on the way to fortune once more—for there is no way of making a fortune equal to that of handling other people’s money—but before that belief was wholly realised, Mr. Samuel Horatio Vincent gave up the ghost. Indeed, when they came to reckon up his personalty, his sole fortune consisted of one hundred and seventy-five pounds. Nevertheless, the good man had built up a considerable reputation, and if his premature demise did not quite paralyse the money market, it was known to affect several tradesmen in the neighbourhood of Prahran.

George was in his twenty-third year when his father died, and when we meet him, five years after, he was still in the same dingy office, slaving away for a stipend of three pounds a week, which, as far as he could see, was likely to remain at that figure for some time to come; for his master, Mr. Bash, was one of those good people who always think more of the spiritual than the material welfare of a man. Perhaps he might one day rise to three pounds ten; perhaps again he might recede. When man depends for subsistence on the caprices of his fellow man, he must live in constant terror of the worst. Whenever he approached Mr. Bash on the subject of a rise, that good man seized the opportunity of delivering a homily on the follies of youth and the evil of luxurious living, and when the young man somewhat flippantly replied that he should like to have the chance of living luxuriously, Mr. Bash answered, with a look of horror, that it would profit him nothing if he gained the whole world, and lost his everlasting soul.

And so he went back to his desk, and wondered if he were doomed to pass the rest of his life in this deadly dull routine. Was he for ever to be shut in by four walls, taking stock and casting up accounts? Never! And he chewed his pen till his teeth ached. But the grim walls still surrounded him, and the ponderous ledgers grinned at him as they sat on their dingy shelves. “Ha, ha,” they seemed to say, “you belong to us, you belong to us. You may fret and you may fume, but escape us you never shall.” Intolerable! Better be a counter-jumper at once. One may have to measure calico all one’s life, truly, but it must be a pleasure to measure calico for some people. And when your customer is young and chatty, and she turns up those pretty eyes of hers and asks you how much a yard, do you not feel your fingers tremble so that you cut her off a good three inches too much? Believe me, my brothers, there is something extremely fascinating in the life of a counter-jumper. At least, so George Vincent thought. To him there was something fascinating in everything but clerkship, for such a business gives a man no chance. A counter-jumper may save up till he purchases a little shop of his own; then see how handy a wife comes in. But what use can the poor clerk make of his better half? Not that George contemplated matrimony—oh, dear no! Though once he had crossed Brander’s Ferry with a young girl whose beauty had impressed him not a little. He had thought much of her soft eyes and fair face, more, in fact, than he would admit even to himself; and when, some three weeks after, he met her on the public crossing, he thought she was an old friend and raised his hat, but she, blushing vividly, hurried on with averted face. That was the last George saw of his divinity, and though for a long time after, whenever he thought of matrimony, he used to conjure up those sweet eyes and that fair face, he had now almost forgotten the lady’s existence.

Sometimes he used to think he would not mind grinding away at his desk if there were only something to hope for; but the eternal getting up and going to business, summer and winter, in rain or shine, with no hope of improvement or advancement, nothing to which he might look forward in all the years that were to come—this, this was the thing which angered him beyond endurance. Could any life be worse than that of clerkship? Was it a fit occupation for a full-grown, able-bodied man; a man who had ambition and hopes, and whose hands used to itch for something weightier than a pen? He sighed for the vanished Ballarats and the warlike stockades. He would have welcomed any change, from gold-digging to fighting. And yet he could not see how he was to avoid that fatal pen, those grinning ledgers. He grew peevish, irritable, almost misanthropic; and it is certain he developed a turn for sarcasm and cynicism which was not becoming in one so young. He had no friends, that is no intimates, and though people liked him well enough, they always sneered at his imaginary grievances, which, coming to his knowledge, was never known to sweeten his disposition. And thus he lived, and thus he thought, and in this frame of mind was he when that adventure befell him which opens this chronicle.

As he left the police quarters he made hurriedly for his hotel (having long since tired of boarding houses), pressing his hand every now and again to his pocket to feel if the murdered man’s gift were still there. It is true he was all aglow to know what that pocket-book contained, and yet, as became one who had gained a reputation for cynicism, he slackened his pace at different intervals with an exclamation of annoyance, for in spite of himself his heart and legs would run away with him. It was now about three o’clock in the morning. The rain had ceased falling, and the broken clouds scampered like mad things across the face of a sickly moon. Here and there he beheld a crouching figure slink away in the darkness, and a policeman at the corner bade him a cheery goodnight, but beyond that the city lay as quiet as a dead thing. At the corner of Bourke and Russell Streets he stood for a moment at the coffee-stall to imbibe a cup of that warm, if somewhat thick, liquid, which masquerades as the berry of Mocha, for he was thoroughly wet and cold. He did not imagine, though, that the little man who came up and ordered a similar drink had followed him every step from the police barracks. The coffee finished, Vincent hurried on to his hotel, which he entered by means of a latch-key, closing the door behind him. The little man before mentioned watched this proceeding from the other side of the street, and then, apparently satisfied, returned whence he had come.

Vincent had, in the meantime, clambered to his room, and though absolutely burning to know what the dead man’s book contained, he yet withdrew it leisurely from his pocket and carefully began to undress. This proceeding he almost dawdled over, wet as he was, for he was of a curious temperament and really loved to sting his impatience. But it is in the nature of things that they shall end, so, notwithstanding his obstruction, the feat of undressing was at length accomplished, and, seizing the book, he jumped into bed. Placing his candle on the table beside him, he began to examine the curiosity from the outside. It was a pocket-book without leaves—one of those little flat receptacles which fold over like a book, in which men carry their cards, letters, or bank-notes if they have any. It was rather old and dilapidated, though it had once been of blue satin embroidered with a spray of flowers; but what colour it might now be called, or what flowers the embroidery was supposed to represent, no man might say. It was encircled with a piece of dirty string, and this, with much precision, Mr. Vincent untied. Then he calmly scrutinised the twine till his impatience almost choked him, and he was at length constrained to open the book itself, the inside of which was of frayed red silk, and in one corner bore the two letters W. J.

The first article he extracted was an old newspaper account of the death of Ben Hall, with these words underlined, perhaps by W. J.’s own hand. “Hall’s last exploit will be too fresh in the minds of our readers to need recapitulation, but it is a singular thing that none of his gang should have known what became of the vast treasure he took from the Mount Marong Escort.”

Mr. Vincent pricked up his ears as he read these words, and sitting up in bed began to show a little more interest in the little old pocket-book. Paper after paper he turned out, but they proved of no consequence, being scraps of Ben Hall’s doings, three or four mysteriously worded advertisements which had evidently been inserted in the agony column of some newspaper, a letter from “your pal Jim,” and an old telegram addressed to one Williams, which contained three words, the meaning of which was quite beyond Mr. George Vincent’s comprehension. This was all. It must be confessed, a feeling of the most acute disappointment took hold of him. He uttered something very like an oath and crushed the little book in his hand, preparatory to hurling it into the grate. As he did so, however, he thought he felt some paper crumble beneath his hands, and carefully straightening out the little article again, he found this thought to be perfectly correct. In a moment he had torn the lining asunder, and there, sure enough, was a piece of soiled yellow paper. With something very like a thrill of expectation, though he would not have owned to it, he cautiously unfolded the crumpled curiosity. It was stained with age, dirty with finger-marks, and sadly frayed at the edges; indeed, its whole form bore eloquent testimony to having weathered many a stormy period. Yet it was none of these things which riveted his attention. He saw the following curious arrangement of letters:

This, to be sure, looked a very formidable thing, and for the moment he thought he had stumbled upon some ancient writing; but, quickly catching the first idea, he, with the aid of a pencil and a piece of paper, soon had, as it were, the letters on their feet. Then he read them over, first one way and then the other, full twenty times. He formed words easily enough, and thought he had the answer in his head quite half-a-dozen times; but the words were so disjointed that he could make neither head nor tail of them. Yet he firmly believed that he had stumbled on a cipher which, the key once being found, would enable him to bid a long adieu to goose quills and grinning ledgers. He, moreover, had no doubt that it referred to the plant of Hall’s—perhaps this very Mount Marong Escort—and he understood now the terror and anger of the dying man, who, knowing its value was yet unable to realise it. For years, no doubt, he had carried this scrap of paper about with him, puzzling over its contents, yet afraid to take anyone into his confidence. A fortune in his hands, perhaps, and he knew it. Construct those forty-two letters into the proper words, and he might have the secret which would make him rich for life. Yet he had failed to do so, and that paper which he had guarded with his life had at last been the means of his death; for that it was to secure this writing Flash Jim had murdered him, Vincent doubted not.

As the young fellow lay back on his pillow thinking it all out, he pictured Hall and his gang sticking up the Mount Marong Escort, which he knew had been a rich prize; and then that wily one, who so soon after met a violent end, stealing away and burying the greater part of the treasure against a rainy day. And he thought again of the letters, and the good news they might tell if he could only put them together; and he took up the small piece of paper for the twenty-first time, intending to re-peruse it, when his candle suddenly spluttered and went out. For a long time he lay staring up into the darkness, picturing it with imaginary scenes from the life of the late lamented Mr. Benjamin Hall: and even when he fell asleep, he dreamt all night of letters in cipher and the Mount Marong Escort.