“Do I understand there’s a writ out?” asked Moonlight, serious, judicial, intensely solemn. “This must be put a stop to instantly. Imagine our virtuous friend in gaol.”
“Anyway, joking apart, the men I have brought know all about it,” said Scarlett. “You’ve got till to-morrow morning to make tracks, Benjamin.”
The goldsmith coughed, and stood up in the full blaze of the fire-light. “I confess to nothing,” he said. “My strong point hasn’t been my piety, I own to that. I’m not much of a hot gospeller. I can’t call to mind any works of unusual virtue perpetrated by me in unthinking moments. I’ll go even so far as this: I’ll acknowledge there are times when, if I let myself off the chain, I’d astonish all Timber Town; for there lurks somewhere inside my anatomy a demon which, let loose, would turn the town into a little hell, but, gentlemen, believe me, he is bound hand and foot, he’s in durance vile. I’m no saint, but I’m no forger or counterfeiter, or animal of that sort—not yet. I have notions sometimes that I’d make a first-class burglar, if I gave my mind thoroughly to the business: I’d go to work in a scientific way; I’d do the business in a workmanlike fashion. I’ve got a strong leaning towards the trade, and yet I never burgled once, I who take a pleasure in investigating locks and latches and all the hundred-and-one contraptions used against thieves. But what is Timber Town?—a trap. The man who goes housebreaking in a little tin-pot place like that deserves to be caught. No, it is too isolated, too solitary, too difficult of egress to foreign parts, is Timber Town. The idea is preposterous, foolish, untenable—excellent word, untenable—and as for forging, the thing is so ridiculous that it isn’t worth confuting. But what’s this about robbing mails? What mails?”
“The incoming English mail,” said Scarlett. “Someone went through the bags before they were delivered.”
“Ah!” said Benjamin, “we must look for the motive in the perpetration of such a crime as that. We’ll grant that the robbery took place—we’ll make that concession. But what was the motive? The thief would expect one of two things—either to enhance his wealth, or to obtain valuable information. Who does the cap fit? Personally, I am as poor as a crow but for this gold: as regards information, all the secrets of the citizens of Timber Town do not interest me—I have no use for scandal—and as I have no rivals in my calling, mere trade secrets have no charm for me. The police are chuckle-heads.” Tresco buried his face in his pannikin, and then re-lit his pipe.
“Very good argyment,” commented the hirsute Prospector, “very clear and convincin’, but the police aren’t open to argyment—they act on instinct.”
“Armed with a writ, a policeman is like a small boy with a shotgun,” remarked Moonlight—“he must let it off. I don’t say you’re guilty, Tresco, but I say the minions of the Law will have you in their clutches if you don’t make yourself scarce.”
“An’ just as I was accumulating the one little pile of my life,” murmured Benjamin. “Sometimes I think the gods show incompetence in the execution of their duty; sometimes I think there ain’t no gods at all, but only a big, blind Influence that blunders on through Creation, trampling promiscuous on small fry like me.” He pulled at his pipe contemplatively. “Decamp, is it? Obscure my fairy-like proportions from the common gaze? But who’s to look after my interests here? What’s to become of my half of the gold yet ungot?”
“Can’t you trust a mate?” said Bill. “Ain’t I acted square so far? What are you gettin’ at? I’ll work the claim to its last ounce, and then I’ll go whacks, same as if you’d bin here all the time. Then you can leave the country. Till then I’ll put you away in a hiding-place where all the traps in the blanky country”—Bill had worked on Australian fields, and showed it in his speech—“won’t find you, not if they search for years.”
Scarlett rose. He had put on his garments, now dry and warm. “So-long, Benjamin,” he said. “You may be the biggest criminal unhung, for all I know, but you have one thing in your favour: if you robbed those mails it must have been for the benefit of another man.”