Disgusted as well as wet, Alec left the office. It was clear enough the officer gave no credence to his story, and thought it merely the hallucination of a drunken man. So he went home, and to bed, his mind filled with a darkening fear of this enemy—that mysterious and unknown—who thus boldly attacked him.
The letter was only too probably part of a plot to lure him to destruction. He had no clue to his enemy, who had failed this time, but was at full liberty to contrive some fresh scheme for his undoing. And the next time, luck might not be on his side.
Alec was brave enough in open fight, but this secret fear unmanned him. And Bertha’s abduction came to his mind—that mystery had never been explained. Had the drunken sailor and the bushy-whiskered man any connection? Was there a conspiracy to ruin or murder Bertha and himself? He feared so. And he turned the question over and over in his mind, and he could find only one hope for peace.
He would go in the morning to Soft Sam.
* * * * *
Alec found Soft Sam seated as usual in the Domain, with a crowd of wide-eyed juveniles about him, and apparently listening with breathless interest to a localized history of Jack the Giant Killer, with variations.
“So the young man said to the rich squatter, ‘I can drink as much of that whisky as you can.’ And the squatter laughed at a little chap like that swallowing oil of vitriol like the old soaker he was himself. So he called for glasses, and filled them. The squatter drank his, but Jack, after taking a sip, poured his all down his neck into his Crimean shirt, where it was soaked up.
“And they drank, and drank, and drank—till the squatter was dead on the floor, and young Jack jumps up, takes all his money, and rides away!”
This was Soft Sam’s somewhat abrupt conclusion, for he saw that Alec wished to speak to him. And as the children still hung about, with a manifest inclination to hear the next chapter, he dismissed them speedily with the present of sixpence, with which, without more ado, they departed for the nearest lolly-shop.
“It’s cheap at the price,” said Sam.