I got to Paris right enough, and there I changed some of my gold, and for a few days I imagined I’d shaken them off, and began to think of settling down for a bit of rest. I needed it by that time, for I was looking more like a ghost than a man. You’ve never had the police after you, I suppose? Well, you needn’t look offended, I didn’t mean any harm. If ever you had you’d know that it wastes a man away like a sheep with the rot.
I went to the opera one night and took a box, for I was very flush. I was coming out between the acts when I met a fellow lounging along in the passage. The light fell on his face, and I saw that it was the mud-pilot that had boarded us in the Thames. His beard was gone, but I recognized the man at a glance, for I’ve a good memory for faces.
I tell you, Doctor, I felt desperate for a moment. I could have knifed him if we had been alone, but he knew me well enough never to give me the chance. It was more than I could stand any longer, so I went right up to him and drew him aside, where we’d be free from all the loungers and theatre-goers.
“How long are you going to keep it up?” I asked him.
He seemed a bit flustered for a moment, but then he saw there was no use beating about the bush, so he answered straight:
“Until you go back to Australia,” he said.
“Don’t you know,” I said, “that I have served the Government and got a free pardon?”
He grinned all over his ugly face when I said this.
“We know all about you, Maloney,” he answered. “If you want a quiet life, just you go back where you came from. If you stay here, you’re a marked man; and when you are found tripping it’ll be a lifer for you, at the least. Free trade’s a fine thing, but the market’s too full of men like you for us to need to import any!”
It seemed to me that there was something in what he said, though he had a nasty way of putting it. For some days back I’d been feeling a sort of homesick. The ways of the people weren’t my ways. They stared at me at the street; and if I dropped into a bar, they’d stop talking and edge away a bit, as if I was a wild beast. I’d sooner have had a pint of old Stringybark, too, than a bucketful of their rotgut liquors. There was too much damned propriety. What was the use of having money if you couldn’t dress as you liked, nor bust it properly? There was no sympathy for a man if he shot about a little when he was half-over. I’ve seen a man dropped at Nelson many a time with less row than they’d make over a broken window-pane. The thing was slow, and I was sick of it.