Australian Gothic. Marcus Clarke
his living by fishing, the produce of his line being of ready disposal within about ten miles of his hut.
On the evening of the day when the new proprietor had taken possession of the Moat, Connel was sitting in his old boat, making ready for a fishing excursion, when the familiar sound of oars caused him to raise his head. Another boat was coming in view from under a shaded bend of the river, and Connel at once recognised the rower as Richard Neilson.
“It is him, by Jupiter!” he muttered aloud, “and the devil’s to pay when he ventures to pass that spot after sundown.
“Yes, something is wrong, I see it in his hangdog face,” and the speaker bent his deep-set sharp eyes on the approaching boat.
Neilson truly rowed as a man ill at ease; every now and then he cast backward glances over his shoulder, and pulled so hard as if from pursuit that when he laid his skiff by the side of Connel’s the sweat was pouring from his face and dropping from his brawny arms.
“What the—is the matter?” asked Connel, as Neilson drew a great breath and began to wipe the damp from his face. “Are the bobbies after you?”
“Curse you, shut up, you and your bobbies!”
“Oh, not my bobbies if you please, Mister. I thank the Lord I have nothing to do with the police or laws, unless, indeed, it might be for keeping my mouth too close about other people’s business.”
“Keep it closer yet,—you! You’re paid for holding your tongue, ain’t you?”
“No. I’m not. I haven’t seen the colour of your money this month yet, Richard Neilson, and all the money you have wouldn’t pay me for your jaw, so I’ll take none of it. Who the mischief are you that you’re to come here and bounce a decent man that wouldn’t put his finger to murder if—”
“By—I’ll brain you if you don’t shut up!”
The man Neilson had stood up and seized one of the sculls. As he stood with it raised in a fierce threatening posture, and the whiteness of an awful rage in his distorted face, he was a fearful sight; but Connel Craig was not afraid of him. Before the oar was poised a revolver was presented at Neilson, and the fierce order rang out on the river—
“Down with that oar, or I’ll put a bullet through your treacherous brain!”
The oar was dropped as suddenly as it had been lifted, and Neilson fell to his seat with a groan.
“I am mad,” he said—“clean mad.”
“You never spoke a truer word, mate; but, mad or not mad, you shan’t murder me unawares. Ever since I knew of that job I’ve carried this day and night. But what is up? What put up your danger? And, above all things, what gave you courage to tempt the water when the shadows of night cross it?”
“Danger!” was the stern reply; “danger to me, and loss to you.”
“Loss to me? That’s comin’ home, Neilson, so you’d better tell me the why and the wherefore.”
“The Moat House is sold.”
“Sold is it? Well, I don’t see how that can affect either you or me.”
“You will know soon. The owner is in the house, and is going to live there. If I had had any warning, if that cursed town court had sent me proper notice, all would have been well; but the first I heard of it was the order for the key this day.”
“I suppose you’ve lost your billet, eh? Is that the trouble?”
“Fifty times worse, for I have lost all I sinned for—every piece of gold is in the house.”
“What of that? Nothing can be easier than to get it out.”
“That’s where you are mistaken; I can’t without your help in some way or other. I planted the gold in Malbraith’s room, and you know well that I daren’t go into that room except in daylight even to save my life.”
“You can go in by day then, surely?”
I thought so. I meant to have done it to-day, as I will tell you presently, but when I went up to the room it was locked. That confounded policeman is in it too, for he has knocked up an acquaintance with the new owner, and it is time for me to clear out, Connel”—the man spoke this ultimatum with a great sigh and a deep gloom on his dark bowed face “—not that I think he or any man has the least suspicion, but how do I know the hour that all may be revealed by themselves?”
“By the spirits you mean?”
“Yes, by the spirits of the dead.”
“Nonsense, I don’t believe in such trash! I wonder at you.”
“I do, for I have seen them—ugh!” and he trembled as with cold, though a warm air was rippling the water at his boat’s keel.
“But what has this all to do with me or my gains?” Connel Craig asked, with a keen look into his companion’s face. “It is nothing to me what you have done with your ill-gotten money; my part of the business is to take my share of it for keeping your secret; if I don’t get my share I don’t keep the secret, that is all.”
“And you would betray me after all the payments I have made you?”
“Betray you? I would have betrayed you when your accomplice was alive to share your punishment, if you had not forked out double, so as to have him under your own thumb; and you may believe I won’t think twice about it when you begin to talk about my losing over the bargain.”
“I thought that you would help me,” Neilson said, “as it is to your own benefit I thought you would try to get the money out for me.”
“Me! Me make a robber of myself to save you? No, thank you, I have kept myself free of the law as yet, and I mean to do the same while I hold out. And now I want to talk no more about this matter, but I won’t be hard on you, for I’ll give you a week to pay up in full. If you don’t, you know what will be the consequence.”
“Yes, I know,” replied the man Neilson; and his deep-set eyes blazed with rage as he answered, “I know you for the first time Connel Craig, and I see that it is with you my money or my life, eh?”
“Any way you like to put it, mate; you know well what I mean.”
“All right, it is as well that you have spoken out at last;” and Neilson resumed the sculls and pushed his boat into the river.
“There goes my murderer, if he can manage it,” muttered Craig, as he looked after the boat; “but he’s too big a coward to try it single-handed; he’ll bolt for it I guess, and so let him for all I care.”
And meanwhile Neilson rowed on his way down the river, along whose banks the shadows of tree and verdure were darkening more and more with each passing moment; but for once the man felt not his accustomed terror as he passed a spot from whence he could lift his eyes and see the old Moat tower looming dim in its surrounding of heavy forest land. He was in too fierce a rage to shudder as he passed one awful spot on the bank, or to fancy, as he had many a time done before, that a terrible white face gleamed at him among the surging sweep of his own oar. Fearful oaths were on his lips, and threats that would have made a hearer’s blood run cold were flung on the breeze that swept his hot face without cooling it any more than if it had been the plates of a furnace within which the fires of a great force were trying to expend themselves.
If one believes at any time in the ubiquitous power of the Evil One, surely it must be when occasions such as those to which my story has reached lay to the hands of evil-doers the most suitable tools to assist them in the working of an evil deed. The heart of Richard Neilson was boiling with impotent revenge, and his grip on the oars was as on his enemy’s throat, when a soft but peculiar whistle from the left bank of the river held his hands as he let the boat drift and looked eagerly shoreward. He saw no one, but some one saw his pause, and the whistle was repeated when the suspended oars dipped again into the water and the boat was propelled toward the sound.
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