The House Of Cain Read online

  “I am very happy to know that the law absolves her from that terrible crime,” he replied, with strange slowness of speech. “But I shall never forgive myself for half-believing she did it. I don’t think she will forgive me either.”

  “Oh, but Martin, she will!” Mary said earnestly. “She could never blame you for thinking as all of us but Monty thought in face of such evidence. She will certainly come as soon as she reads John Travers’s published confession.”

  * * * * *

  But the weeks went by and January went out in a grilling heat wave, which prostrated old Mrs. Montrose; but Austiline did not come, nor did they receive any news of her. Sir Victor, through his paper, offered a reward of five hundred pounds for news of her.

  Oakes and Johns, still on the trail of the gaol-breakers, were unflagging in their energies. But all to no purpose.

  CHAPTER X

  AN INVALID’S DREAM

  ONE day in mid-February the big man took Martin to the great eye specialist for the third time, and for the third time the specialist said he could do nothing––only hope. Severe shock or intense excitement might restore activity to the paralysed nerves. In the street again, after the interview, Monty told his brother the result.

  “Don’t worry, Monty,” the blind man said softly on their way to Princes Bridge. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t really matter. Nothing matters. God! I wish I were dead.”

  “Stop it, Martin!” the big man commanded, with sternness in his voice and mistiness in his eyes.

  And then suddenly the mistiness vanished from two blazing orbs; for across the road, on what is known as Cathedral Corner, he saw Bent Nose––Bent Nose, who on his release from detention as a suspected person had vanished from his usual haunts, and whose whereabouts had become as speculative as Austiline’s.

  Martin felt the big man’s hand tighten upon his arm, felt himself pulled violently to the left, felt his arms forcibly wound round a veranda-post.

  “Stay there! Don’t move till I come back,” he heard Monty snap. Infected by the bushman’s excitement, Martin clung to the steel post as a drowning seaman to a boat’s gunwale, somewhat bewildered by the roar of the traffic before him, the sound of hurrying feet, and the hum of voices behind him. A passing car splashed him with liquid mud. Every discordant sound he heard distinctly; hundreds of human voices, but never the one voice of the one woman whom he was thrilled with the hope that Monty would bring to him.

  As for Monty, he escaped several violent deaths in his wild dash across the road, heedless of the yells of drivers and an indignant policeman on traffic duty. Bent Nose saw him coming, looked about for an avenue of escape, saw none, and met the big man with a crooked smile.

  “Bent Nose, for a million!” Monty gasped.

  “Yaas, yous right,” the man drawled with a Fitzroy accent not unlike a native of East London. “Wot abart it?”

  “I’ve been looking for you for weeks, old son.”

  “I know that.”

  “Know it! Then why in hell didn’t you let yourself be found?”

  “I’ve ’ad enough barny over Mr. Martin’s little affair, wivout wantin’ any more.”

  “Now see here, Bent Nose,” Monty said earnestly. “You did my brother and a certain lady a wonderful good turn not so long ago, and my brother feels he owes you something for it.”

  “No, ’e don’t,” Bent Nose asserted emphatically.

  “I owed ’im more’n ever I thought I could pay back. But the chance came, and I took it. ’Im and ’is clinah and me is quits.”

  “Maybe, but you can still do another good turn, old lad,” Monty went on. “Knowing what was going to happen on a certain night before it did happen, you probably can tell me why a certain lady stops in smoke when she can come back without fear. You tell me where she is, and you’re on to a cool hundred quidlets. Get me?”

  “Yaas, I get you.” Bent Nose, gaunt and pale, regarded the big man stubbornly. “But I don’t want no ’undred quids, and I ain’t selling yous no information. I ain’t even giving yous no information at all.”

  Monty, seeing the look of fixed purpose in the small black eyes glaring at him almost fiercely, changed his tactics.

  “Don’t say that, Bent Nose,” he implored, feeling that he would like to pick up the man and shake him till he yelled out all he knew, which might be nothing or much. “Miss Thorpe means a devil of a lot to my blind brother. She doesn’t come to him, so it is up to me to know what’s keeping her.”

  “I’m dead sorry he lorst ’is sight, Mr. Sherwood, straight I am,” the man said seriously. “But I durn’t say nothing. I’ve been on the square for a year and a ’arf now. I’ve got a wife and baby boy to think of. I ’elped to get ’is clinah out of quod for what she and ’im done for me. We’re all quits. The blokes on that job don’t like me any better for turning honest. If I was to blow the gaff, all of ’em would just love to frame up a job to get me put away for years.”

  “You needn’t fear that,” said Monty. “Mr. Oakes, I’m sure, would see that everything was right.”

  “’E might and ’e mightn’t. Anyway I’m keepin’ mum.”

  Monty looked at him steadily. He played his last card carefully. Holding the man’s arm, he turned him round and pointed across the street to Martin, who with his arm encircling the veranda-post was facing the traffic, his white face tilted up in an attitude of listening, his sightless eyes wide and vacant. Said Monty:

  “When you were down and out, Bent Nose, that man over there lifted you up to the position of a decent man. He gave you a job which gained for you a home, a wife, and a baby. Bent Nose, I reckon it’s your deal.”

  “S’truth! By Gawd!” the gaunt man whispered as though to himself. Then suddenly he swung round and glared up at Monty. “Yous think I’m forgetting abart me job and me missus and me little boy, don’t yous? Well, I’m telling yous that it’s ’cos I don’t forget ’em that I’m afraid. Yous seem to think that gents in kid gloves pulled orf that raid. Yous think, don’t yer, they’re all Sunday School teachers? I tell yous where Miss Thorpe is; and wot’s going to ’appen to me missus and the kid? Yous don’t know. By Gawd, I do! I’m going to lie in a bleeding corfin.”

  “Not you! You’re going to live happily ever after.”

  “I don’t think! You promise on yer dying oath to look after me missus and kid for the rest o’ their lives, and I’ll chance a lump o’lead. Wot abart it?”

  Monty saw that Bent Nose was in terrible earnest. Involuntarily he experienced a thrill of admiration when he realized that to do his benefactor yet a further service this gutter-rat, this flotsam of humanity, who had tasted but one year of happiness in all his life, was prepared to suffer violent injury, perhaps death. Yet the big man’s voice was quite steady when he said:

  “I’m a man of my word, Bent Nose. Your wife and child shall be well provided for, if your late mates get you. And if they do get you, trust me, I’ll get them. Now, where is Miss Thorpe?”

  “She’s within a ’undred miles of Lake Moonba, in South Australia. Now let me go, damn yer!” And, wrenching himself free from the big man, he darted along the Yarra Embankment and dived into an alley near the Majestic Theatre.

  Monty gazed after him with a look on his face as near blank surprise as ever had been there. Lake Moonba in South Australia! Bent Nose might just as well have said the South Pole. It would have been as likely a locality as Lake Moonba in which to find Austiline Thorpe. When he rejoined Martin the blind man almost screamed with excitement:

  “Have you found her, Monty?” A fat man with gimlet eyes, evidently waiting for a tram, edged a little nearer to them.

  “Yes, or next to it––I’ve learned where she is to be found, old son,” Monty replied triumphantly.

  “Where? For heaven’s sake tell me where.”

  “She’s near Lake Moonba in South Australia.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Well up in the Northwest Corner. Come along! I see our tram coming.”<
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  Together they crossed the street, the fat man with the gimlet eyes watching them till they boarded a Prahan tram. Then he walked quickly to the nearest telegraph-office, where he wrote on a form which he handed to the clerk:

  “B.N. given location of A.T. to M.S. Abe.” This was addressed to “Smythe, 14, Wright Street, Adelaide.”

  There was little opportunity on the tram to converse about the momentous information dragged from a reluctant Bent Nose; and, when eventually they reached the house in the walled-in garden, Mary Webster hurried to meet them. Smiling bewitchingly at the big man, she said softly:

  “Tell me, Martin, what did the specialist say?”

  She saw his face cloud and hope fled from hers.

  “He said he was afraid he could do nothing for me,” Martin said quietly. “He thinks that some shock or great excitement might restore my sight.” “Oh, Martin!” Her voice held a little tremble which he detected. He said:

  “Don’t you grieve, Mary. If my hopes have been smashed in that direction, they have been raised in another. Monty saw and spoke with Hill.”

  “Bent Nose! Really?”

  Her grey eyes flashed to Monty, who was smiling.

  “Yes, really,” he echoed. “Let us go inside, and then I can tell you and your mother what poor old Bent Nose said. As Dr. Goodhart says, ‘Lead on, Mrs. Macduff!’“

  “Well, well, well!” was the old lady’s reception of the news. “Now, what is to be made of that?”

  “Well, it beats me,” confessed Monty, stirring his tea and passing Mary the cucumber sandwiches. “I know the country round about Lake Moonba better than the back of my hand, and reckon it’s the most God-forsaken part of the whole of South Australia.”

  “Aren’t there any townships there?” Martin asked.

  “It is what is called open country––that is, country unoccupied by either squatters or settlers,” Monty answered. “I travelled through it about six years ago with a mob of store cattle. There was a sort of house near Lake Moonba, built by a man who tried running cattle in open country. But he had been dead some time, and the house was falling down.”

  “What is the nearest place to it?” the old lady asked sharply.

  “Innaminka township, about sixty miles north.”

  “It seems a likely place for anyone to live at who wanted to escape the law. Is there a police barracks anywhere near?”

  “Barracks? Lord, no!” replied Monty, looking keenly at the old lady. “Say, what’s on your mind, Mrs. Montrose?”

  The invalid, sitting erect in her chair, a lace cap set on her snow-white hair, smiled at him sweetly, her small beady eyes sparkling. Her voice was firm and clear.

  “Nearly every day, for ten long years, Monty, I have sat in this chair with nothing to occupy me but reading a little and thinking much. I have had much food for thought these last five months.

  “My outlook on life has been moulded to a great extent by my dear husband, and my thoughts have been coloured by his. He was an explorer when he courted me and Chief Commissioner of Police soon after we were married. Even before the Commissionership came to him he was a great student of criminology. He used to say that if he committed a big crime he would not hide in the slums of a city, but in the very heart of the wilds.

  “To me it is very evident that the gang which rescued Austiline is an under-world organization directed by very clever men. What their motive was in rescuing her I cannot guess. It might have been on account of her wealth; but I doubt that, because the murderers Earle and Mallowing, and the murderesses Hogan and Jonas––who also have vanished without trace within the last two or three years––were quite poor people. I have a theory––and I have never yet seen it discussed in the papers or heard it mentioned by the wonderfully sagacious Mr. Oakes––that the disappearance of all these takers of human life––with others whose names I cannot recall now––is due to one and the same cause.”

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Montrose?” Martin asked.

  “I mean that I think the one organization has accounted for the disappearance of quite a number of murderers since the war,” came the silvery voice. “I am only an old, useless, invalid woman, but I dream my dreams.”

  The big man gazed at her across the table with parted lips, an expression akin to idolatry on his rugged face. Then, at a thought which flashed into his keen eyes, he smiled slowly. But what he said was not the thought.

  “You leave Oakes at the starting-post,” he said.

  “There is logic in your argument, Mrs. Montrose,” Martin said in his quick way. “But after Travers’s confession, which was broadcast, why should they keep her, if they don’t want her money for the service they rendered?”

  “Well, since she is proved not to be a murderess, they have no hold over her now, and probably they daren’t let her go, Martin.”

  “Good God! Do you think she is in danger?” the blind man exclaimed.

  “Hardly that,” the old lady said calmly. “But I certainly think Monty might go up where Bent Nose said and prospect about a little.”

  “I’ll go with him,” Martin said determinedly.

  “Martin! you couldn’t,” Mary put in.

  “Better stay with us, Martin. Leave it to Monty,” Mrs. Montrose advised. “In spite of our logic and Hill’s information, Monty may have a wild-goose chase.”

  “If Monty goes into that open country to search for my promised wife, I go with him. If he won’t take me, I’ll hire a couple of black trackers to take the place of my sight, and go without him.”

  The decision was announced without excitement, but with a determination that made itself felt. The women looked at Monty and he at them. They saw him answer their appeal with a slow shake of the head; and then, his eyes softening marvellously, he laid one hand affectionately on Martin’s shoulder, saying:

  “We’ll both go. We’ll leave to-morrow evening by the express for Adelaide, and then by rail to Broken Hill. From there we’ll take a car to Turrowangee, where in a good paddock are my camels. With them we’ll hike north to Yandama Station, west to Tilsha, and north again to Lake Moonba, where we’ll comb that blessed open country so fine that a jew-lizard won’t escape us.”

  Mother and daughter continued trying to dissuade the blind man from an adventure which both realized would be arduous even for a man of Monty’s stamina. It surprised them that Monty did not associate himself with their objections.

  Yet Monty had reasons, shrewd reasons. Pressed down by the double weight of blindness and the loss of a dear one, Martin Sherwood in those few months of summer had changed a very great deal. Hitherto always quiet and gentle, patient and exceedingly sympathetic, in spite of the crowded years spent in the editorial chair of The Daily Tribune, bursts of ungovernable temper, usually directed against his harsh fate, followed by days of morose silence, so changed him that his intimate friends greatly feared for his sanity.

  It was with thankfulness that Monty Sherwood welcomed the chance of action. Constant movement, hardship, and hope ever present of reaching a definite goal, would help Martin, he felt sure, to regain his mental balance. Should wise old Mrs. Montrose have guessed the truth concerning Austiline’s continued absence, then stirring times might be expected in the near future. And had not the specialist said that excitement might restore Martin’s sight?

  It was a night for the fairies when he and Mary walked slowly to the gate, while he told her of his hopes and his plans. The moon was full and the shadow cast by the almond tree was inky black. The creepers on the old stone wall held out appealing arms as though to stay them in their flower-scented paradise.

  “How long do you think you will be away, Monty?” Mary asked, trying hard to keep her voice steady.

  “Dunno, Mary,” he said softly. “You see, it will depend on quite a lot of things. It will be all of a fortnight before we strike ‘The Corner’ of New South Wales. We’ll jump off at Minter’s selection, where I will dispatch our last letters. After that it will depend on the
state of the water-holes, for one thing.”

  “But you will let us know directly you can what success you’ve had, won’t you? You see, Mother has grown quite attached to Martin, and she will worry ever so.”

  She was looking up at him while he stood with one hand on the gate-latch, trying hard to smother the ache in her heart and keep from her eyes that tell-tale light. The moon showed her slender yet matured figure clothed in white. It showed the pulse at the base of her throat beating wildly. And then Monty knew, and for the first time in his life trembled.

  “And you, I suppose, will not worry?” he asked with assumed carelessness.

  “Oh! but I shall, Monty,” she whispered.

  “For Martin or for me, Mary?”

  “For you both.”

  For a moment he looked steadily into her eyes.

  “Which one of us do you love, Mary?” he said.

  His voice was very gentle. She saw come into his blue eyes sudden resolution to have a simple question simply answered. She saw, too, that which she had almost given up hope of ever seeing. When she spoke her voice sounded like a sigh of wondrous content. Swaying ever so slightly towards him, she said:

  “Can’t you guess, Monty?”

  And then she was in his mighty arms.

  CHAPTER XI

  A LOVER OF CATS

  THE big man and Martin Sherwood did not leave Melbourne T unobserved. Martin escorted his blind brother to a seat in the railway-station, and left him whilst he went after tickets and sleeping-berths. The fat man with the gimlet eyes was behind Monty at the booking-office window, and booked also for Adelaide. It was without surprise that, on returning to Martin, Monty found him in conversation with Detective-Sergeant Oakes, who seemed to have a knack of turning up on any and every occasion, although it was a positive fact that he had stopped the shadowing of Monty. Nodding coolly to Oakes, he said.

  “What are you arresting Martin for?”