THE newspapers were good reading during the next few days. The Chief, perhaps to compensate himself a little for all the anxieties he had undergone, was most generous in his revelations and allowed a good deal of most interesting information to filter through into the press. And the press made the most of their opportunity.

The Advertiser on the Tuesday had quite a long leader on ‘The Mount Gambier Case,’ and worked in a fine dramatic story of all that happened in the affair. In impressive language it pictured up for its readers the story of the crime. The lonely homestead, and the two poor victims done to death; the hurried flight of the murderers, quick upon their dreadful deed; the little frightened face peering at them from the woodstack; the stealthy crossing to the Garden State; the coming of the wretches to Adelaide, and their undoubted expectation of resting secure in the beautiful city of the plains. Their great mistake. The sleuth hounds of the law upon their track; the clue of the passed banknotes; the murderers quarrelling between themselves; the shooting on the sandhills at Glenelg; the police silently drawing their nets through the city, and at last, the flash-light arrest on the Gawler racecourse. Finally, it spoke impassionately of the lesson all law-breakers would now learn. In other States they might, indeed, carry on their perilous careers indefinitely; elsewhere they might flout insolently the guardians of law and order, and jeer mockingly at all efforts to apprehend them. But here in South Australia, here in this beautiful city of culture and refinement, they would find they were in a very different position.

Once let them cross the border, once let them set their defiling feet on any part of this most favoured State and their days, nay, their very hours, were numbered. The police service of South Australia was the best in the world, and in Adelaide, above all, there would be short shift always for the breakers of the law.

The Register also made a distinctive feature of the case, and congratulated the City of Adelaide upon the superb services rendered to law and order by its police. But it also pointed out how such crimes as these were fostered and encouraged by the curse of political unrest. If only, it insisted, we had amongst us statesmen instead of politicians and if only the people would vote solidly against all demagogues and agitators, then in a land of happiness and contentment what chance would there be, it finally asked its readers, for any crime of violence such as this to lift up its head.

I wired to my cousin beyond Pimba that I should be coming up by the Thursday morning train.

The Chief, according to his promise, told me I was perfectly free to go where and when I liked now. They had all the evidence they required to hang the man a dozen times over, and nothing of my participation in any part of the affair need come out. The murderer was to be handed over to the Victorian authorities, for although the crime would always be referred to as the Mount Gambier murder, actually it had taken place about three miles over the border, in the State of Victoria itself.

Both the Chief and Inspector Kitson did their best to be exceedingly nice to me. The three of us had a little parting dinner at the South Australian Hotel, and in saying a final good-bye afterwards the Chief pressed a little packet in my hands.

“A little present for you, my boy,” he said smilingly, “a joint present from us both. The Inspector chose it this morning, and we’re both sure you’ll like it. It’s what you’ve been accustomed to probably, and our only hope is that you’ll find this one as useful in the future as maybe you have found others like it in the past. Don’t open it until you get home.”

When I undid the packet that night in my bedroom I found it contained a beautiful little .22 revolver.

I duly reached Pimba in the early hours of Friday and had a wearisome journey to my cousin’s station at Velvet Hills.

He had sent a two-horse buggy to meet me, and for five blistering hours we toiled through the bush, blessing the flies that buzzed round in millions. The driver was a taciturn, uncommunicative sort of fellow, and when I inquired after my cousin would only keep on telling me “the boss was bad.” He was so short in his answers that I gave up talking to him at last and for the most part the drive was conducted in silence.

But my own thoughts were entertaining enough. I wondered what good I was going to get by coming up all this way. It would be idle to pretend that I wasn’t hoping to benefit by my cousin’s position. He was, I knew, and on his own admission, too, a rich man. If I pleased him and we got on together it might alter my whole life again and bring Mary Vane nearer to me.

I realised fully the great gulf that lay between me and the girl who was always in my thoughts. I knew they were very rich people, and the set she moved in was the most reserved in South Australia. There was nothing of the snob about Sir Henry Vane, however. He was too fine a soldier for one thing, and of too virile a character, for another. But he belonged to a class that kept always very much to themselves. Acquaintances I knew he had without number, but friends, intimate friends, very few. He had come from the old country to settle in South Australia at the conclusion of the war, for the sake of the warmer climate, and lived in a beautiful place on the slope of the hills close to Mount Lofty.

Mary was his only daughter, and quite apart from her father’s position, her beauty would, I knew, bring her many suitors.

What chance did I have then, I thought to myself? I, unknown, friendless, and with only just over ￡200 in all the world! I laughed at my own presumption, and yet at the same time, somehow, I was quite certain it would all come right in the end, and one day I should have her for my own.

It was well into the afternoon when we arrived at Velvet Hills. My cousin was lying down, I was told, and I was led to the door of a darkened room.

“Come in, John, come in,” called out a voice that struck me at once as not being over friendly, and I pushed back the wire door and entered quickly to keep out the flies.

For a moment or two, after the glare of the bright sun, I could see nothing, and then the form of my cousin loomed up on a couch.

“So you’ve come, John,” he said querulously, in weak, shaky tones, “but I don’t know what you’ve come for. I really don’t know, either, why I asked you. I’m not a rich man, and it’s only ordinary wages I can offer you, just ordinary wages, mind. If the truth were known I’ve done very badly lately. I tell you I’m really a poor man; I’ve always got an overdraft at the bank; and I’m a very sick man, too, John, and not likely to get better, so the doctors say.”

I was too surprised to speak for a minute. His words fell like a blast of icy air upon all my hopes. What a welcome, I thought, and it was for this I had come all these weary miles. I had so buoyed myself up with the rosy prospect that I thought lay before me, that it was almost with a sob of disappointment I forced myself to reply.

“Why, cousin; what on earth’s the matter with you?”

“I was thrown from a horse over a year ago, and it’s injured my spine. ‘Caries of the vertebrae’ the doctors call it, and they say there’s no cure.”

“Oh, but there must be,” I said incredulously; “haven’t you been to a specialist?”

“Four of them,” he almost wailed; “in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. They all took their fees and told me the same tale: too near the spinal cord to operate. I must just lie and suffer till I ‘croak.’ But I suppose,” he added suspiciously, “you found out I was very bad before you troubled to come up here, didn’t you?”

“No,” I replied indignantly. “I never heard anything at all of you until I got your letter last week!”

“And then you came up at once, like one of the vultures,” he went on sneeringly. “Of course, you’re awfully hard up.”

I felt my temper rising, and with vexation and disappointment, was just in the mood to give him a good slating and tell him what I thought of him, but my eyes by now getting accustomed to the darkness of the room, I saw how desperately ill the man looked, and a great wave of pity drove all my anger from me. My cousin was not yet forty, I knew, and yet lying there on the couch he looked older even than sixty. His hair was almost white; his face was drawn and shrunken, and his eyes were deeply gone into his head. He was thin almost to emaciation, and the fingers of a bony hand that lay across the coverlet were almost like claws. He looked already like a dying man to me.

“No, Sidney,” I said quite gently in answer to his question, “I am not in any way hard up; I have more than two hundred pounds in my pocket now. I just came up because you asked me and if you don’t want me, I’m quite ready to go back tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, John, I was so rude to you,” he replied at once, in quieter and more even tones, “but I’m not myself today. It’s one of my bad days, and my head’s terrible. I’m glad you’ve come, and I’ve looked forward to seeing you. But I’m no company for anyone today. Go out to my manager, Stevenson, he’ll show you round and I’ll be better, maybe, tomorrow and can talk.”

I found the manager outside, and introduced myself to him. He was a pleasant-faced and slow speaking Yorkshireman, but I soon found after a few minutes’ conversation that with all his slowness he was a most capable man, and had all the business of the station at his fingers’ ends.

Before the evening meal he showed me round part of the station, and I was agreeably surprised to find no trace of the poverty my cousin had wailed about so recently.

I knew something about sheep stations, and as far as I could see everything looked prosperous and well. All the buildings were substantially built and the fencing was in an excellent state of repair. It required only half an eye to see that everything was well looked after.

Not far from home we came across a mob of fine sheep, and in reply to the question put me by the manager, I suggested there were about seven hundred there.

“Well, well,” he said approvingly, “I see you’ve seen a sheep station before. You’re nearly right, there should be seven hundred and twenty there.”

“And in splendid condition, too,” I went on enthusiastically. “It must be very gratifying to my cousin, for I understand he’s been in for a very unsatisfactory time lately.”

“How do you mean?” asked the manager, looking rather puzzled.

“Well, he told me this afternoon things were not going well with him up here.”

“Mr. Stratton,” said the Yorkshireman deliberately after a pause, “your cousin is a very sick man, and it is one of the peculiarities of his sickness that he often imagines things are very bad when they are exactly the opposite. Do you know,” he went on proudly, “we have over twenty-six thousand sheep on this station, and this year, for the third year in succession, everything has gone well with us. It couldn’t be better.”

My spirits began to rise. My cousin’s poverty and ill-luck were evidently only phases of his illness, but I felt desperately sorry for him and questioned the manager as to the life he led.

He told me my cousin was a very lonely man, no one coming to visit him except occasionally his brother-in-law, who lived on another sheep station about twenty miles north, and I gathered from the tone of his voice as he referred to the brother-in-law that he didn’t think much of him.

“I’m very glad you’ve come up, Mr. Stratton,” he concluded; “it’s no good shutting our eyes to the fact that the master will never get about much again, and there are those who would be pleased to walk behind his coffin tomorrow. It’s not for me to put you against anyone, but you’ll soon find out for yourself, and from the look of you I should think you’ll be able to hold your own.”

I did not see my cousin again that night, but next morning he was out in the sunshine and hobbling about with the aid of a stick.

He looked dreadfully ill, but he said he felt better, and hoped Stevenson had shown me round properly.

Apparently he had forgotten he had told me the previous evening that he was in bad circumstances, for now he was proud of his possessions and anxious for me to be impressed with the number of his sheep and the extent of his station.

The manager took me out all day and we rode a long way up the station. As I had surmised the previous afternoon, everything was in apple-pie order and I realised my cousin must be a very rich man.

Coming back near home we came upon a beautiful roan gelding, standing well over sixteen hands, in a little paddock by himself. I reined up to have a good look at him.

“What a magnificent animal,” I ejaculated. “What a glorious head and what magnificent hindquarters. What a leaper he’d make.”

“What a leaper he’d make?” grunted my guide, “what a leaper he is, more likely. You wait a moment and you shall see. That’s Rataplan.”

He dismounted, and going to the paddock side called to the animal. It trotted up at once and rubbed its nose against his hand.

“Now help me off with my saddle,” he said, “and Rataplan shall show you what sort of leaper he is without waiting for any making at all.”

He got over the fence and in a couple of minutes had transferred the saddle and bridle from his hack to the beautiful looking beast I had stopped to admire.

“Now you watch,” he called out as happy as a boy in his excitement. “I’ll put him to that fence over there — it’s six foot good and there’s not much run and the take-off’s bad.”

He wheeled round sharply, and put the gelding straight at a high fence about five and twenty yards away. The animal rose like a bird and there was plenty of daylight under him as he skimmed over the fence. Round they both came again and the fence was a second time taken, with the same apparently effortless ease.

“Let me have a go,” I said, slipping off my own beast and preparing to climb over into the paddock.

“No, Mr. John,” said the manager shaking his head, “I’m very sorry, but I mustn’t. The master would never forgive me if I did. It was Rataplan that gave him his injured spine, and he vowed no one shall ever ride him again except me. If the master dies Rataplan is to be shot. I’ve sworn to do it myself, and although I’d hate doing it, I’ll keep my oath.”

“How did he come to throw him?” I asked.

“It wasn’t Rataplan’s fault. A wild cat dashed up under his very nose. He reared up, and your cousin was thrown.”

“But what a sin,” I urged, “to shoot a beast like that. He looks beautifully bred.”

“Aye, for sure he is. His great-grandsire was Marvel who once beat the mighty Carbine. He’s only six years old, and we bred him ourselves. He’s by Inverary out of Maid of the Mist.”

“Never been raced?” I asked.

“No, the more’s the pity. He would have been if the master had been all right. I tell you, Mr. John, put a row of hurdles or a few fences before Rataplan and I don’t think, at two miles and upwards, there would be a horse in all Australia to beat him. He can stay for ever, and even after a good three miles hard spin he has always a terrific spurt up his sleeve. The only thing against him is he’s a slow beginner and takes a long time to get into his stride. But come, we mustn’t be late. The master’s awfully particular.”

My cousin was quite pleasant to me that evening, but every now and then he kept harping back to the question of his money.

“I tell you plainly I’ve nothing much to leave, John,” he said. “Only a few pounds, and when everything is settled up and a little bequest to the Adelaide Hospital and a little present to my brother-in-law, there will be precious little else to go to anyone.”

I told him bluntly two or three times that I could do without his money, and in any case he shouldn’t talk about dying. He might take a good turn for the better any time, I said, and, as for doctors, I knew something about them, and the best of them were often wrong.

He seemed to think there was something in what I said, but he shifted the conversation and went on to something else.

“By the way, John,” he said presently in a rather hesitating sort of way, “when you see Bob Henderson, my brother-in-law, you needn’t mention I wrote you to come up here. You’ll probably see him on Sunday, and just let him you think you came up on the chance. He’s a very good fellow, is Bob, but thinks I ought to have no company and be kept very quiet.”

I could see from the hesitating way in which he spoke that he was keeping back something, and not telling all the truth, but I pretended to notice nothing and just nodded my head, determining, however, to keep a sharp eye on the gentleman when he should ultimately appear.

On Sunday, sure enough, he turned up. I was out when he arrived, but, coming home just after noon and pausing on the verandah to flick some of the dust off my boots, I heard a strange voice coming from the direction of my cousin’s room.

“A blood sucker,” it was saying, “a blood sucker, Sid, as sure as you’re lying there. Depend upon it, he’s heard down Adelaide that you’re sick and he’s come up here on the chance of getting a poke in it if you don’t get better. I know his sort well enough.”

“No, Bob,” replied my cousin, I thought rather weakly, “it’s not all that. He’s got some money, I know, and he’s only come for a very short stay.”

“Well, mind he doesn’t upset you,” went on the other blusteringly; “you know you can’t stand any excitement.”

I turned back off the verandah and did a little walk round before appearing again at the house. This time I came in whistling loudly, so that there could be no mistake about their hearing my approach.

My cousin nervously introduced me to his brother-in-law, and even if I hadn’t heard what I had I should have instinctively taken a dislike to the man.

He was a big, broad, dark man with big shaggy eyebrows and a black beard. He looked a regular bully, and I don’t wonder my poor cousin, in his bad state of health, was afraid of him. I guessed his age about forty, and he scowled unpleasantly as we shook hands.

“I’m sure it’s very good of you to come up all this way,” he said in a half sneering tone, “it must have taken a great deal to tear you up from city life.”

Now I had made up my mind what to do. In the few minutes occupied by my walk round the house after I had first heard his evil suggestion to my cousin I had picked up my cue.

He would evidently try to pick a quarrel with me, I thought, and get me out away from Velvet Hills. And the reason was not difficult to find. He clearly regarded himself as my cousin’s heir and looked upon me now as an unexpected but probable rival. I understood also now why my cousin had asked me not to mention anything of the letter he had written to me at Adelaide. He was undoubtedly afraid of his brother-in-law, and, as I say, I didn’t wonder why. To a weak and ailing invalid this big, blustering, robust type of individual must have seemed a veritable tower of strength.

I determined I wouldn’t quarrel and if this big brute of a man was thinking he would gain his ends by cunning, well, I would meet cunning with cunning and we would see which was the better man.

So, when he coarsely suggested I must have had a very special reason for coming up I just smiled at him as amiably as I could, and said, quite friendly: “Oh, no, I don’t like cities at all. Besides I’m quite at home out back.”

“Ever seen sheep before?” he asked sarcastically.

“Rather,” I replied; “I was boundary rider for over eighteen months where they had nearly as many sheep as here.”

My answers seemed to double his apprehension and he screwed up his heavy, swarthy face in a most disagreeable manner. Evidently he thought if I understood sheep as I had just said I had, I should be not only a companion, but a help also to my cousin.

All that afternoon he tried his very utmost to put me in a temper, and at times was positively rude to me, openly to my face. But all along I pretended not to notice anything, and answered his sarcastic questions in the frankest and nicest way possible.

At first my poor cousin was obviously distressed at the rudeness of his brother-in-law, and evidently expected a burst of angry temper at any moment on my part. But after a while, seeing I was determined not to quarrel at any cost, he began, I thought, rather to enjoy the battle of words and in a timid sort of way was maliciously amused at his brother-in-law’s discomfiture.

At last the man took himself off, giving me the surliest of nods by way of a good-bye.

My cousin made no remark about anything that had happened that afternoon until just before going to bed, and then he said apologetically to me: “You mustn’t mind Bob Henderson; he’s got a funny way with him, but he’s very attached to me and naturally is rather jealous.”

I only replied, “Oh, it was rather funny, wasn’t it?”

I quickly fell into my place at Velvet Hills and very soon day upon day and week upon week succeeded one another in monotonous regularity.

My position with my cousin was hard to explain. For a long time he was very suspicious of me, and whenever he had one of his bad days on him kept harping to me about money matters. He kept on telling me how poor he was and over and over again kept rubbing it in that there would be no money at all he could leave me.

After about three months, however, his suspicions seemed to take a rest, and except for the Sunday afternoons when his brother-in-law invariably came over, I got quite to love the busy life at the station. I must have been a comfort, too, to my cousin, as well as a help, for after the evening meal was over we used sometimes to smoke and yarn together hour by hour.

But all the while his malady grew steadily worse, and there was no disguising the fact that he was gradually ‘going west.’ He suffered great pain at times and it made him intensely irritable and very hard to bear with. When these attacks were on him he couldn’t sleep without opiates, and yet the drugs made him so bad next day that we tried to keep them from him as much as possible.

The manager and I had often to sit up with him into the small hours of the morning, chatting and trying to make him keep his mind off his pain. Help came to us, however, in this direction in an unexpected manner.

One day, rummaging for something in the lumber room, I came across a really fine violin in a battered old shabby case that had not been unstrapped for years.

Now I am not by any means a bad musician, and up to the time of joining the colours the violin had been one of my pet hobbies.

In addition to a natural aptitude, in my poor father’s time, I had been taught by some of the best masters, and, at one time, had seriously thought of taking up music as a profession.

I took the violin in to my cousin, and asked him if I might try it. He was greatly surprised.

“You don’t play, do you?” he asked incredulously.

“Why not?” I said, laughing.

“Well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t, but you have never mentioned it to me. That violin case has not been opened for more than twenty years; it belonged to my brother, who died when I was quite a boy. Let’s hear what you can do. I like soft pieces.”

I gave him Gounod’s Serenade, and after watching me intently for the first few bars, he lay back and closed his eyes. As I say, I am not a bad musician, and the instrument in my hands was of as beautiful a tone as one could wish. I have a good memory, and although naturally very much out of practice, I could feel I was bringing out something of the imperishable beauty of a melody that can never die. When I had finished he didn’t speak, and I went on to Rubinstein in F, and then to Barcarolle.

It really touched me to see how he enjoyed it, and when I finally stopped for a rest and put down my bow, it was with a sob in my own throat that I realised he was crying.

We neither spoke for a few minutes, and then he said to me very gravely, “John, you’ve given me the greatest treat I’ve had for many a long day, and now,” smiling, “you shall play to me every night.”

After that night things seemed much easier with him, and whenever he was in pain I would play to him, sometimes for hours. However bad he was at first, it nearly always ended in his dropping off quietly to sleep.

I found heaps and heaps of old pieces of music, tied up in the lumber room, and there was no lack of variety in what I was able to play.

Naturally, under these circumstances, a kindlier feeling grew up between us, and I began to notice in many ways that my cousin’s manner was changing towards me. He stopped sneering at me, and even on his bad days, which unhappily became more and more frequent, ceased to keep on reminding me about his money.

One thing seemed to me rather funny. By unspoken and undiscussed arrangement, we neither of us by any chance ever referred to my violin-playing when Bob Henderson was present. My cousin was silent because he was afraid, and I was silent because it was part of my plan to thwart a man I had come to loathe and detest.

In these months I had thoroughly got to the bottom of Bob Henderson. He hadn’t the very slightest affection for my cousin, and was just waiting for him to die. He had some hold on him somehow and I always feared he was in the possession of a will made out in his favour.

I was no hypocrite, and never pretended to myself that I wasn’t interested as to how my cousin would leave his money. It was patent to everyone he couldn’t live long, and whether I got a penny or not I would have just loved to see his brother-in-law, the big, stout, blustering bully, left in the cart.

Every Sunday regularly he came over, and every Sunday regularly he looked me up and down contemptuously, and, I had no doubt whatever, cursed me in his own mind for being such a silly fool.

It was my plan always to efface myself when he came over, and never to give him the very slightest reason to believe I was quite as anxious as to the future as he was. And in the light of after events, I am sure he took it all in.

One night, after I had been playing the favourite pieces that he liked best, my cousin said suddenly:—

“John, would you like to have Rataplan?”

I was too astonished for a moment to reply, but he saw the delight in my face, and went on, “Well, you can have him if you like. I never really intended any one should ever have him again, but it seems to me childish now, and so I’ll give him to you. I’ll write you a letter tomorrow, saying he’s yours, so that if anything happens to me suddenly, you’ll know where you are.”

I thanked him gratefully, and he was genuinely pleased at my obvious delight.

Mr. Stevenson whistled when I told him the news next morning. “Good business, Mr. John,” he said, “the master’s coming to a better mind, and there’s no one I’d rather see across Rataplan than you.”

I lost no time in visiting the gelding. Friends we already were, and I had no difficulty at all in persuading him to let me put on saddle and bridle and get astride.

Oh, what a ride I had that morning! It lingers even now in my memory after many years, like the fragrance of some beautiful flower.

The gelding was a beautiful mover, and took everything in a gloriously long, even stride. At whatever pace he was going he always gave one the impression of a tremendous unused power in reserve. Even when I was putting him at the stiffest fences, it always seemed to me he had a few inches to spare; and as for his speed — well, once he was got well going, it was more of the five or six furlong variety than the steady two miles and a half.

When I got home my cousin was most interested to know how I had got on. I told him what I thought of the gelding and of the possibilities that in my estimation, at all events, lay before him. I said he was in my opinion good enough to run on any racecourse in the Commonwealth, even among the best of company.

My cousin only sighed deeply, and remarked that it would be strange if an animal that had brought bad disaster to one Stratton, should by any means be destined to bring good fortune to another.