‘How did he come here?’
‘By the coach this evening. They found him lying in the road by Jenkins’ Claim, and brought him on.’
‘And you don’t know who he is, nor anything about him?’
‘Nothing. He was quite unconscious when they picked him up, and has remained so ever since.’
The Doctor thrust his hands into his trousers-pockets, and stood regarding the unconscious heap of humanity before him with an expression of profound thought. He was puzzling out to himself what answers to make should the Barkeeper become inquisitive as to details, and clamour to know what was the particular ailment that made the stranger so curiously silent. The medical fraternity found practising in the Australian bush are not as a rule the pick of the profession.
‘Do you think there’s any hope for him?’ asked the Barkeeper, at last.
‘Difficult to say,’ was the diplomatic, but, so far as ‘Doctor’ Millett himself was personally concerned, most truthful reply. ‘If he has a good constitution he may pull through. Or,’ added the prudent Doctor, feeling the necessity of not committing himself to a one-sided opinion, ‘he may die tonight.’
‘Not very pleasant for me if he dies here,’ grumbled the Barkeeper, with a comprehensive glance round the dismal shanty, that served himself for living room and sleeping apartment, and the scattered miners of Black Rock Creek for their one centre of social entertainment.
The silent stranger by a convulsive shiver slipped the pillows from beneath him, so that his head fell with a bump upon the rude bench where he lay stretched. The Doctor raised him in his arms.
‘I’ll call at the hut as I pass,’ he said quietly, as he withdrew his arm from around the man’s waist, ‘and send the Inspector down. Meanwhile I’ll get you to take this to my place. My man will make it up for you. Get back as quickly as you can.’
He scribbled, while speaking, a prescription, and, tearing out the leaf from his pocket-book, held it out to the Barkeeper.
The man took it but stood hesitating.
‘Who’s to look after him?’ he asked, jerking his thumb in the direction of the sick man.
The Doctor pushed a couple of the heavy chairs against the bench, and arranged the pillows to slightly better advantage.
‘You’ll find him here when you return,’ he answered. ‘No possible change can take place in him.’
‘Yes, but there can in my bar,’ returned the other sulkily; ‘somebody will be walking in and helping himself.’
The Doctor laughed. ‘To your whiskey, Raynham! He won’t take a second dose. Beside, who’s likely to walk in? The boys are gone, and there aren’t many chance customers knocking about Black Rock Creek of a night, are there?’
The man seemed but half persuaded.
‘Well, you can never tell, and—’
‘Ah, well, it must be done,’ was the impatient interruption; ‘I wouldn’t ask you if I could go myself, but I can’t. Pat Joyce’s wife is dying the other side of the Creek and I must run over there. You can take the mare, I’ll walk. You’ll be back before I am if you’re quick.’
As the simplest way to end the argument, the Doctor picked up his hat and went out. The Barkeeper, left alone, stood thinking.
Suddenly his lips parted with an exclamation.
‘Why the devil didn’t I think of it before,’ he muttered; ‘no wonder he’s in such a hurry to have the police here.’
Taking the dirt-encrusted lantern from the shelf, he bent down above the prostrate form upon the bench; but at that moment the Doctor’s figure reappeared in the open doorway, and the Doctor’s voice cried angrily to him to make haste.
‘Damn him,’ growled the man; ‘I suppose he’ll watch till I’m off.’
He seized an old shawl, which he wrapped about his shoulders, for the night was cold, and plunged into the darkness.
It was well for man and beast that the Doctor’s mare knew every hole and boulder of the ill-laid road, for the Barkeeper rode hard through the black night.
‘Gentleman Jock,’ ex-financier, ex-miner, ex-jockey, ex-dead-beat, who now served the Doctor in the mixed capacity of medical assistant, groom, and cook, remarked upon the ill-concealed impatience with which he paced the verandah while the simple prescription of quinine and brandy, ventured upon by the bewildered Doctor, was being prepared, and was irritated by the same.
‘It won’t kill him, and it won’t cure him,’ he grunted as he rammed the cork down. ‘One would fancy you were a young woman with your baby sick for the first time in its life.’
‘I’ve took an interest in him,’ answered the Barkeeper, dryly, as, pocketing the bottle, he flung himself back into the saddle.
‘Well, I guess he ain’t worth breaking the mare’s neck over, whoever he may be, though your own mayn’t much matter,’ shouted Gentleman Jock after him, as in response to a vicious cut, the animal dashed down the steep incline. A long experience of both had given Gentleman Jock a higher opinion of horses than of men. He objected to the nobler animal being sacrificed to the exigencies of the less.
A hundred yards from his own door, the Barkeeper pulled up and dismounted. Throwing the bridle over his arm, he moved cautiously forward till close to the door of the hut, then paused and listened. No sound came from within. A feeble ray of light stole from the chink beneath the door, and struggled half-way across the road. The Barkeeper raised his head. The troubled panting of the horse, the whispering of the pines, were the only sounds that reached him. Fastening the mare, he raised the latch noiselessly, and peered in. A stranger watching him from the shadow of the pines beyond, would have taken him for a thief rather than for a man crossing his own threshold.
The sick man lay on the bench between the high-backed chairs and the wall. The Barkeeper could hear his steady breathing. It sounded easier and more regular. Closing the door behind him, he drew the bolt across softly, and, taking the lantern in his hand, crept up and passed its light backwards and forwards above the closed eyes.
The examination seemed to satisfy him, for, replacing the lantern on the table, he returned, and, moving the chairs out of his way, felt round the sick man’s waist for the leathern belt that during the last half hour had been ceaselessly pirouetting and twirling in devilish dances before his eager eyes.
As his hands touched it, however, he paused. Hastily crossing to the window he drew carefully the tattered curtains over every inch of pane, then resumed with feverish haste his task. The sick man lay heavily, and it was necessary to move him to draw the belt away. Once a smothered sound escaped his lips, as if, in spite of the unconsciousness of his body, some watchful corner of his brain were protesting against the robbery. The Barkeeper waited with the sweat upon his hands and face, expecting the white eyelids to open, but no movement followed, and with a little more manœuvring, the belt fell heavily to the floor and lay coiled about the Barkeeper’s feet.
He picked it up, and, taking it to the table, examined it by the dim light of the lantern. From every pocket as he opened it there poured forth gold. It made a glittering pile upon the rude table. The Barkeeper’s hands caressed it lovingly, lingeringly. The yellow light from the lantern close to his cheek showed a gaping mouth wreathed round with fatuous smiles. In his utterly bestial excitement the saliva trickled down unheeded from his mouth on to the table.
Suddenly from the shadows behind him arose a hoarse, croaking cry as of some inarticulate thing struggling for a voice. The coins in his hand fell with a rattle on the floor and rolled away, and the cry crept round him again freezing his face into terror.
Slowly he turned his head to see a figure with two claw-like hands stretched out against him, to hear a voice he thought at first came from the dead, crying, ‘Mine, mine.’
He remained spell-bound to his chair, and the figure tottered forward step by step, till with one out-thrust arm it touched his glittering heap.
The action roused the Barkeeper from his stupor. With a snarl as of an angry animal he flung himself upon the weak swaying thing. Seizing the shawl he had hastily unwrapped from his shoulders, he held it pressed against the sick man’s face, stifling the thin cries. Slowly he forced him back to the bench still holding the shawl tight pressed about his head, till the feeble struggles ceased and the long arms fell listless to the floor. Then the Barkeeper unwound the shawl and looked at the dead face.
To hide the belt and gold, to replace the body naturally upon the bench was his next care. This done, he drew back the curtains from the window, and opening the door leant idly against it waiting.
He had completed his labour none too soon, for as he threw away the match that lighted his cigar the sound of footsteps reached him, and the figures of the Doctor and the Inspector drew away from the gloom and became distinct.
The Barkeeper was the first to speak.
‘Dead,’ he said curtly, as the Doctor stepped into the framework of the door.
‘Dead! already?’
‘I found him dead when I got back; I thought ’t warn’t the thing to leave him.’
The Doctor made no reply, but passed straight over to where the dead man lay. The Inspector closed the door.
The Doctor seemed strangely interested in his case, and it was some minutes before he spoke. Then he said quietly,—
‘This man never died. He has been murdered.’
‘It’s a lie!’ cried the Barkeeper. ‘I tell you he was dead when I got back.’
‘I tell you,’ repeated the Doctor quietly, ‘he has been murdered – poisoned.’
He took a glass from the shelf above the dead man’s head – ‘Poisoned with henbane. His whole body stinks of it. Why, there’s enough left in the glass to have killed a dozen men.’
And the Barkeeper stood staring from the Doctor to the Inspector; and the Inspector, who was an officer of wide experience, said to himself, ‘This man knows nothing of it, anyhow.’