CHAPTER III
I was done! Given away! Sold by a woman!
There was nothing for it now. If I were to stand here gazing about, perhaps she would be gloating over my defeat from some friendly window, so I walked away, passing the house I had been watching, and scanning each window closely. No living thing was visible. I did not stop a second, did not hesitate, but went straight to the back of the house I had entered so unceremoniously a short time before. I walked in, feeling metaphorically like a whipped hound, with ears down and tail between his legs. The house was now as gloomy as I was. I groped my way to the front window, and looked across the street.
Just at that moment a flash of lightning leaped out, and fell like a flaming sword; then a peal of thunder tore the clouds, with a deafening crash, as if they were made of sheet-iron. The fiend incarnate, in the shape of the woman who had slipped through my fingers, stood at the door of the opposite house, with a simper on her mouth, as if butterine wouldn't melt in it.
I had a big oath ready, and it nearly hissed out on the hob, hot and strong; but, as I had been brought up on porridge and the Shorter Catechism, I did not give rein to profanity, so just pulled up in time to prevent a moral smash. Besides, an oath to be effective must have two or three witnesses.
I believe that—blank woman knew I was looking at her, for she simpered and smiled like one o'clock on Christmas Day. I only saw her for a second, but the sight burned into my brain. If there is ever a post mortem on me, the scar will be found. After the sudden flash the blackness of darkness swallowed up house, woman, and everything. I never saw night put up the shutters so early for the time of year.
"'Thunder-and-Lightning' has been warned," said a voice close to my left shoulder.
"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" I said under my breath. "Who's there?" I called in my loudest and boldest manner.
"Down," said the voice.
This was the watchword the Governor gave me. I had forgotten it. It seemed years since I heard it.
"Who speaks, and what is your news?" I said, feeling sure a friend was near.
"I am the Lieutenant-Governor. I came to tell you that 'Thunder-and-Lightning' has been warned, and that his movements are known. He is in Melbourne, but will shun the house as if it had the plague. The woman you saw just now is at the bottom of it all. I am afraid she has found out something."
I was never so much astonished in all my life. You might have knocked me down with a humming-bird's feather; but I quickly recovered possession of myself, and struck a match, which I held up in the face of the speaker. I did not know it. The match went out.
"Hold this dark-lantern for a moment, and look at me," said the man. "Now flash it on me."
He was the quintessence of conscientiousness. He had got some information, through an underground channel, and he had come in search of me. He had seen me when I ran after the woman, and had followed me cautiously. It was done in a masterly way, for I did not see a soul in the road. He was a born detective, which is the highest praise I could give. The Queen never had a better representative. Perhaps he tried to do too much. He wanted to bat, bowl, field, and keep wickets in every game. If he had been captain of a ship, he would have tried to do duty also as first, second, and third mate, steward, cook, carpenter, and able-bodied seaman.
When I had looked at him steadily for a minute, I dropped the lantern, and said, "I'm blowed!" The wind was taken out of my sails and no mistake! When I recovered myself a bit, I waited for His Excellency to speak, but he did not say a word. Feeling the silence awkward I spoke again.
"Has your Excellency anything further to say?"
There was no reply. I ventured to put out my hand to where he had been standing, and grasped a handful of air. I spoke again, and groped about, then held up the lantern. He wasn't in any of the rooms. He had gone as noiselessly as he had come. Chingahgook could not have vanished more silently. I was left to my own resources.
I wasn't going to stay any longer in this mouldy, rat-riddled, mouse-eaten house. I couldn't breathe or think, so I went into the open air, turned down the right-of-way, and into the street where the suspected house stood. As I passed it I flashed the lantern on the door, and saw a chalk mark like a streak of forked lightning. I perceived at a glance that this was a preconcerted sign for "Thunder-and-Lightning" to give the house a wide berth and vanish.
I thought I heard a laugh behind the window as I passed, but I suppose it was all imagination. The laugh was against me, of course. I was in no laughing mood. I went on, and hadn't reached the corner of the street, when I determined to have another look at the place. I had got half-way to it, when a moving mass of women's clothes passed me, and a voice came out of the bundle.
"Wallace, does your mother know you're out?"
This stung me to madness. I made a grab at the millinery, but it was gone. I heard a silvery laugh somewhere. It might have come from the middle of the road, an upstairs window, the top of a chimney, or other unlikely place, for anything I knew in the state of frenzy I was in. I made a dash down the road, but might as well have looked for a needle in a haystack. I found a big D—— between my teeth, but I swallowed the other three letters with a gulp, and cursed inwardly.
My mother didn't know I was out; but I did, and was sick of the business. I had been too confident. There was nothing more to be done that night, for the game had got wind of me somehow.
I slipped my baton up my sleeve, and turned to go home. The streets were deserted and dark, save for a faint patch of light under an oil-lamp, which flickered and glistened on the wet ground. In a short time I had left the houses behind, and walked across the open space between Collingwood and the gaol, striking into a narrow path which many feet had trodden hard; it wound here and there between pools of water. There was just width enough for two persons to walk abreast, and there was only sufficient light for me to see the grey strip of solid ground stretching in front. I had arrived a little to the west of the gaol walls, when the moon began to show herself in the rifts of the driving clouds.
A figure loomed up ahead of me, about a hundred feet away. It came nearer and nearer, when I saw it was a man. I prepared to go to the right so as to let him pass, when he suddenly presented a pistol at my head, and said, in a blood-red whisper, "Your money or your life!" I brought up my right hand, with the forefinger thrust out like the barrel of a pistol, while my other fingers were doubled up, and shouted, "I'll shoot you, you scoundrel!" At the same time I knocked the fellow's pistol-hand up with a rapid blow. A deafening report followed, and a ball grazed the top of my head. The moon shone out full on the man's face. He had blazing black eyes, a broken nose, and the scar of an old cut down his left cheek. As soon as he fired, he darted off with the speed of a deer at right angles to the path, and I heard him floundering in the water. I was in pursuit in a moment, although I thought my head was ploughed with the ball, and had got a top-dressing of bone dust, which would bring up a crop of troubles.
The moon withdrew herself. The landscape was a blank once more. I was to draw no prizes to-night apparently. The would-be murderer was swallowed up in the darkness. I went hither and thither searching for him, but soon found I had lost my bearings; so I retraced my steps as well as I could, till I struck La Trobe Street, then went to my lodgings, let myself in, and crept up to my room.
When I lit the candle a thought flashed into my brain with electric speed. I stood dazed; then brought my right hand down on the dressing-table with such terrific force as to ruin the whole box-and-dice in a moment; the legs snapped; there was a crash, and the looking-glass was smashed into a hundred pieces.
The man who fired at me was no other than "Thunder-and-Lightning." The Governor had described him exactly in the paper he had given me.
In another minute I was in the street, and running like a madman. Before midnight I had visited every police station in Melbourne, and had given a description of the man. At daylight fifty eyes were watching for him on the main exits from the town.