The message that the Inspector holds in his hand is from his fiancée of six months’ standing; and he smiles to himself as he thinks how lucky he is in having appropriated a girl who is clever enough to bend even the Commissioner of Police himself to her purposes.
There are numbers of odd matches arranged every year, and this is one of them. Neither Inspector Puttis nor Miss Mundella, to whom we shall introduce our readers presently, have ever pretended for an instant that either of them were “soft enough” (as the lady once expressed it) to be in love with the other. The one, a dark-haired girl of the Diana type of beauty, who could carry a room full of ordinary people to her wishes with a flash of her magnificent brown eyes and a word from her haughty, firm-set mouth; the other, a determined man, who had climbed through sheer hard work (work that few would care to undertake, and, thank God, still fewer to carry out) to a good position, and from which he meant to climb still higher.
“We can help each other to our mutual advantage, Mr. Puttis,” Miss Mundella had said, when the preliminaries of the arrangement between them were being discussed.
Although we shall introduce this young lady personally to our readers shortly, it is perhaps best to preface that ceremony by a few preliminary remarks.
Miss Mundella, since returning to Australia, some five years before the date of our story, after receiving a European education at London and Paris, has resided with her uncle, a Mr. Wilson Giles. Highly educated, and with the reputation of being a large heiress, Miss Mundella, at the time she left school, was a girl whose lot in life seemed to have been cast in pleasant places. But a change came o’er the spirit of her dream. Her bright châteaux d’Espagne were rudely broken up by the unforeseen ruin of her father, and his subsequent death. This gentleman—a member of an old Jewish family in England—was a successful squatter for some years in Queensland. Suddenly, to the surprise of his friends, and the indignant anger of his relations in the old country, he married a Christian lady. A complete rupture with his own people ensued; and he shortly afterwards became nominally a member of the Church to which his wife belonged. From this period ruin seemed to dog his steps; and finally, whilst his daughter was still in Europe, a series of bad seasons placed his name upon the list of bankrupts. Overcome with the weight of his afflictions, which were suddenly added to by the loss of his wife, Mr. Mundella paid the only debt left in his power to liquidate,—that of Nature. He left two children behind him, a son and a daughter; to the former we have already introduced our readers, in “mufti,” in Paddy’s Market.
A professional visit to the uncle’s station in Northern Queensland throws Inspector Puttis and Miss Mundella into each other’s company. The two individuals both find in the other those strongly ambitious views for the future that is their own bosom’s god. One meeting leads to others; and the arrival of Billy at the station with the deceased explorer’s letter gives Miss Mundella the opportunity of indulging in a scheme for placing herself, by means of her fiancé, in as enviable a position as that occupied by herself when she left school, as the wealthy young heiress.
But we have left our friends waiting for supper and the Inspector to finish his telegrams too long, and must hurry back. The well-drilled little man offers his arm to his fair cousin, and the pair lead the way to the next room.
Whilst the company are seating themselves the Inspector attracts his cousin’s attention, and whispers hurriedly,—
“Will you do me a favour?”
“Anything I can, Jack.”