Outlaw and Lawmaker/Chapter 29
CHAPTER XXIX.
"LADY WAVERYNG'S DIAMONDS."
It was too true. The celebrated Waveryng diamonds were now in the possession of a gang of masked bandits, presumably Moonlight and his followers. The troopers and Benbolt, the black boy, had come back to tell the tale. Never was man of mettle and responsibility more crestfallen than the sergeant. He handed Lord Waveryng his bank note back again. "I don't deserve it, my lord, and you'll believe me when I say that I'd rather have had my leg cut off—I'd rather have lost my life than that this should have happened. But I'll get them—we'll have them back, my lady. Two of us went on to Goondi. The Government know of it by this time. All the telegraph wires in the colony are working—he can't escape. I'm off to the Gorge as soon as Lord Horace will put me on a fresh horse, to tell Captain Macpherson and the Colonial Secretary. The country shall be raised; the Luya shall be scoured. No, they sha'n't escape us this time, unless Moonlight is the devil incarnate, and that he must be to have known what we were carrying last night and to have taken us the way he did."
The sergeant's story was after all a simple one, though he was incoherent in its telling. He took some pride in recounting the diabolic ingenuity of the trap that had made it impossible for him to offer any resistance. Moonlight had surely known that not even the muzzle of a revolver would have intimidated him. The bushrangers had chosen their spot; it was in Monie's Gorge, half way to the Beantree—a mountain with a slice out of it—boulders of rock lining the track and only room on the track for horsemen in single file; and who would think of going round the rocks, which looked as if they were part of the precipice behind, and who could have suspected a scooped out hiding-place, as if it had been made on purpose for midnight robbers and black horses that had the devil in them as much as their masters? He was jogging along—his hand on his revolver—every sense alert, from description, when, lo! a lasso had been thrown—it might have been a looped stockwhip that had jerked him from his saddle, causing him to scrape the rock—the sergeant showed the traces of the abrasion, but apparently no other hurt. Simultaneously it appeared other lassoes had been thrown, and with unerring aim over two of his mates. The black boy's head was covered later. For himself, he remembered only the darting onward of his horse, leaving himself grounded, the apparition of a masked man on a coal black steed—Abatos of course—a pair of gleaming eyes upon him, a revolver at his forehead, and a sudden swift throwing over his face of a thick cloth, saturated with chloroform. He had felt his hands being pinioned, and then he remembered no more. When he had come to his senses he had found himself in the hollow of a boulder, with a narrow belt of young white gums between him and the precipice, the diamonds gone, the horses gone, and his companions, including the black boy Benbolt, like himself, securely tied, each to a gum tree. The robbery had happened not ten miles from Luya Dell. Every man of them had been chloroformed. The whole thing had been done almost without a word. Four assailants were declared to; there might have been more; one of the troopers was certain there were five. What had become of the horses no one knew. The men had lain gagged and bound for hours. It was a lonely road, and they might have been there now had not Benbolt managed, with the aid of his toes, to get himself free. He had untied the others, and they had walked to the Bean-tree, as being the nearest point of humanity. They had divided, as the sergeant had related—two going to Goondi to report, the rest, having got the Beantree settlers to provide them with horses, coming back to the Dell.
The matter was comical enough for laughter. Elsie did laugh hysterically, and was led away by Frank. Lord and Lady Waveryng were far too upset and indignant to see the ludicrous aspect of the affair. Lord Horace was wildly excited, and all for raising the district on the instant and chasing Moonlight to his lair.
There seemed nothing for him to do, however, at present, but to horse the troopers as speedily as possible, and go with them to Baròlin Gorge, to consult with Blake and Captain Macpherson. He came home late in the evening. It was Elsie who met him. She had wandered down to the Crossing in the moonlight, unable to control her impatience and anxiety. She and Ina were alone with the Waveryngs, for Frank, escorting Mrs. Allanby, had gone back to Tunimba. All day Elsie had gone about a pale ghost with frightened eyes, saying little, but starting at every sound and every footstep. She could not have defined in set form the fear that held her. All day the words she had heard at the corroboree the night before kept repeating themselves in her dazed brain. Had it been Sam Shehan who spoke? Was it Trant who had used the phrase "damned sentimentality?" And if it had not been Trant, what extraordinary coincidence that another should have employed it! And in any case, why should Trant have in the first instance said the words in relation to Blake, for that of course had been self-evident. Like balm came the thought of Trant's curious admiration for herself, and rivalry with Blake, and she remembered what Blake had said about leaving Australia and selling the Gorge. Was it not possible that he and Trant had had a difference on this point, that jealousy had inflamed Trant, and prompted the accusation of weak sentiment? It was a relief to her to dwell on this idea. She persuaded herself that it was fact.
She watched for Lord Horace from the cairn on which she had stood watching for Frank Hallett. Oh, what an immeasurable distance she seemed from that careless girlhood! All along the creek towards Baròlin there was a level tract with the mountains rising on either side, and closing in beyond, and she could see a long way off. She could see that there were two horsemen coming. One was Lord Horace. The other she knew was Blake. The girl's heart bounded with delight and dread. She should see him; she should speak to him; he had come on purpose; he had guessed of what she might be thinking. Oh! how could she ever dare to confess it—that he—her hero could even by the remote association of partnership with Trant be implicated in so sordid and mean a thing as a diamond robbery!
But no. At the bend of the creek, the two men pulled up. They said a few words, of which the murmur was only faintly wafted to Elsie; and then they parted, Lord Horace riding towards the Crossing, Blake turning on in the direction of the Bean-tree. And then a curious thing happened. He stopped dead short and whirled round, and in the bright moonlight Elsie, with quickened sight, could see his face turned towards where she stood on the pinnacle of the cairn. He had seen her in the moonlight, in her white dress, outlined against the dark gum-trees; he wished her to know that he had seen her, and that he was true to his resolution and would not come to disturb her again.
Elsie watched him ride away till the two forms of horse and rider were lost in the shadows and the night. She crept down from the cairn and stood on the top of the bank as Lord Horace shambled up.
"Elsie!" he cried. "What the dickens are you doin' here?"
"I wanted to know—have they done anything? Was that Mr. Blake with you?"
"Yes, he wouldn't come in—said he must get down to Leichardt's Town to work the official wires, I suppose. He wants to catch the coach from Goondi to-morrow morning. He's a queer fellow, Blake."
"Queer! Why do you say so?"
"Oh! I don't know. There were we all in the devil of an excitement. Macpherson raging, and wanting to organize a scouring party on the instant—all of us cursing and spluttering and vowing vengeance on Moonlight, and Blake as cool as a cucumber, all the time looking bored with the whole concern, and with a quiet dreamy way, as though his mind was in the clouds, or too full of the sale of the Gorge to bother about Moonlight."
"The sale of the Gorge! It was true, then?"
"True! Good Lord, why should it not have been true? The man was there—a meat-preserver in a small way—sells to the big establishments, and wants to go in for something in the breeding line. He and Trant were inspecting when we arrived."
"Mr. Trant was there?"
"Why, my dear Elsie, I think you must be loose of a shingle, as our Australians put it. Didn't you hear Trant say good-bye, and tell us he was going straight over to meet a butcher? Well, he did go straight over, and he did meet the butcher; anyhow the butcher and Trant were there, and had been right enough when Macpherson got over, three hours before me. Are you thinking that Trant stole the diamonds? It would be a convenient theory. And do you know that my first suspicions fell on Sam Shehan? But it won't hold water."
"Sam Shehan!" Elsie said, still in a dazed way. She seemed able only to repeat vaguely Lord Horace's words.
"Sam is a very bad hat, or was; as we all know. It was a fluke, Hallett tells me, that he didn't get seven years once for cattle stealing from Tunimba. It struck me as not at all unlikely that Sam Shehan may have given information to Moonlight. The informer must have been some one on the spot, for it was clear that Moonlight knew exactly how the diamonds were done up and carried, and the right man to tackle; he must have known, too, the exact hour at which they started. And what beats me is how it was done in the time; and how, supposing it was Sam Shehan, he could have got the news to Moonlight, been at the corroboree—for I saw him with my own eyes."
"Yes," said Elsie.
"And have started with Trant and the half-castes before ten. Trant swears he never left his side, and that they were on the run the first thing this morning, getting in some fats ready for the butcher. Of course the theory of Trant's implication does away with that alibi. But it's too absurd. Neither of the theories will work. Time's against it for one thing, and all the facts. The butcher was there; the fats were there—in the paddock—Sam Shehan and the two half-castes were there, and as far as I could see, not another soul about the place."
"Did you tell Mr. Trant of your suspicions of Sam Shehan?" Elsie asked.
"No, but I hinted 'em to Blake; and, by Jove, it was the only time he flared up; said he'd answer for Shehan with his life, offered to have him put under arrest if we liked; wanted the mere shadow of a suspicion cleared off him. Well, as I said, facts are facts—and Macpherson was the first to declare that we must look elsewhere. The other theory is that Moonlight is in with the Blacks, and was at the corroboree himself and heard us talking about the diamonds—what fools we were!—and got all the information he wanted. It was extraordinary quick work. Anyhow I think the diamonds are pretty safe. They can't dispose of 'em, and they wouldn't be likely to break them up at once. And there'll be such a hue and cry and raising of the country that Moonlight's hiding-place isn't likely to remain undiscovered for long. One thing we may be fairly sure of, that the lair is somewhere hereabouts; and Trant declares that if it is anywhere in the Luya Jack Nutty and Pompo, who know every inch of these parts, are sure to find it. That's something comforting for Em, at any rate."
Lady Waveryng, however, was not a woman to fret vainly over the inevitable. Lord Waveryng was far more of a "grizzle," as she termed it: and he did "grizzle" considerably over the diamonds, and worried the police and the Government of Leichardt's Land not a little in his anxiety for their recovery. The Government did their best, and Blake was as eager in his efforts to hunt down the robbers as Lord Waveryng could have wished, though he was heard to say that from such a Radical Government as that of Mr. Torbolton he could expect but little sympathy, and not much respect for locked up capital in the shape of diamond heirlooms.
Lord Waveryng went down to Leichardt's Town to interview himself the heads of the police department and to stir up the Government in his cause. He was the guest of Sir Michael Stukeley, who called together a special meeting of the Executive to confer on the question of capturing Moonlight. The aristocratic section of Leichardt's Town society was stirred to its core. The anti-ministerial newspapers were fierce in their denunciations of a supine administration which could allow not only meritorious colonists but illustrious visitors to be the prey of an outlaw, who with a band of not more than four men could hold at defiance the whole police force of the colony.
"When five ruffians can keep at bay battalions of police," wrote the Luya Sentinel, "what confidence can the inhabitants of Leichardt's Land feel in the present guardians of public order?" There were veiled allusions to Fenian proclivities on the part of the Hon. the Colonial Secretary, and a hint of possible sympathy with rebels, robbers, and insurgents against the law generally. "Why were not the robbers hunted to their den? Why was not the country scoured forthwith by police, by the military if necessary? Why were not black trackers put on the trail? Was it not fear, abject fear, on the part of the police officers, as well as the indifference of a Socialist Government, which stood in the way of such rigorous measures? So far it certainly appeared that as long as the bushrangers chose to keep in their hiding-place in the Ranges, there was small probability of the district being rid of its scourge. In no other district would such hiding-place be possible," and here the Luya Sentinel waxed enthusiastic over the mountain fastnesses, which were the barren pride of this unprofitable corner of Leichardt's Land. It would appear that the Luya had the monopoly of not only all that was picturesque in scenery, but all that was romantic in legend and superstition.
Captain Macpherson swore by all his gods that the taunts of the Luya Sentinel should be no longer deserved: and during the next three weeks the indignation of the local press became ridicule at the aimless wanderings of the chief of the police and his troopers among the gorges and ravines and scrubs of the Upper Luya, where upon one occasion they got hopelessly bushed, returning to Tunimba in a sorry condition, having staked a valuable horse in a fall over a concealed precipice, and broken the arm of one of the troopers. The Blacks' superstition also stood in the way of a thorough scouring of the heads of the river, for even the half-civilized trackers objected to venture into that mysterious region, haunted by Debil-debil and the spirit of the mighty Chief Baròlin. Besides, the bunya scrub and spinifex thickets were impenetrable alike to man and beast, and must be equally so to the bushrangers, Captain Macpherson argued. On this Baròlin expedition, Captain Macpherson made Bardlin Gorge the centre of operations, and the half-castes and Sam Shehan acted as pioneers. Dominic Trant also was zealous in the service, while the stockman's prodigies of bushmanship and indefatigable pushing through country that might have appalled the bravest rider, lulled all Lord Horace's vague suspicions. Not a trace or sign of Moonlight could be discovered; not a clue to prove that he had made for this direction after the robbery. The search round Baròlin was given up, and then a new theory, founded on private information supplied to Blake, as Colonial Secretary, by an anonymous correspondent, was started to the effect that Moonlight was in league with a Chinese gardener not far from the Bean-tree Crossing, and that the pine-apple field was the hiding-place of the diamonds. The gardener was found wrapped in an opium sleep and was sufficiently dazed to be impervious to interrogatories. There were one or two suspicious circumstances, however, the pine-apples were uprooted, the hut searched, the gardener put under arrest, and then it turned out that the trail was a false one, and the police were at sea once more.
Blake paid one or two hurried visits to the Luya, on business connected with the sale of the selection, he said, but he did not go near Elsie; Trant was away too—he went across the Border, presumably on the same business, taking Shehan with him. The sale was now given out as a fact, and Trant had announced his probable departure for Europe. Minnie Pryde declared that Elsie was responsible for the sudden sale of the selection, and the reason thereof was that neither of the partners would live there as neighbours to Mrs. Frank Hallett. But this of course was absurd, for there seemed no likelihood of Blake giving up his political life, and he was more likely to be brought into contact with Mrs. Frank Hallett in Leichardt's Town than on the Luya.