The Shadow of a Man

"We're all right," said Moya, sliding to the ground; "we stopped at a tank and a boundary-rider's hut, but not the Eureka boundary. I didn't get out the same way I got in, you see – I mean out of the Blind Man's Block."

"Blind Man's Block! Good God! have you been there? You're lucky to have got out at all!"

"It wasn't easy. I thought we should never strike a fence, and when we did I had to follow it for miles before there was a gate or a road. But the boundary-rider was very kind; he not only gave me the best meal I ever had in my life; he set me on the road to you."

Indeed the girl was glowing, though dusty and dishevelled from head to foot. Her splendid colouring had never been more radiant, nor had the bewildered sergeant ever looked upon such brilliant eyes. But it was a feverish brilliance, and a glance would have apprised the skilled observer of a brain in the balance between endurance and suspense.

"What on earth were you doing in Blind Man's Block?" asked Harkness, suspiciously.

"I'll tell you. I'll tell you something else as well! But first you must tell me something, Sergeant Harkness."

"I believe you know where he is," quoth the sergeant, softly.

"Do you know who he is?" cried Moya, coming finely to her point.

Harkness stared harder than ever.

"Well, I thought I did – until this afternoon."

"Who did you think it was?"

"Well, there's no harm in saying now. Rightly or wrongly, I only told Mr. Rigden at the time. But I always thought it was Captain Bovill, the old bushranger who escaped from Pentridge two or three weeks ago."

"Then you thought wrong," said Moya, boldly.

Nevertheless she held her breath.

"So it seems," growled the sergeant.

"Why does it seem so?"

It was a new voice crying, and one so tremulous that Harkness could scarcely recognise it as Miss Bethune's.

"I've heard officially – "

"What have you heard?"

"You see we were all informed of Bovill's escape."

"Go on! Go on!"

"So in the same way we've been advised of his death."

"His – death!"

"Steady, Miss Bethune! There – allow me. We'll get in out of the sun; he won't hear us at this end of the verandah. Here's a chair. That's the ticket! Now, just one moment."

He returned with something in a glass which Moya thought sickening. But it did her good. She ceased giggling and weeping by turns and both at once.

"So he's dead – he's dead! Have you told Mr. Rigden that?"

"No; I'm not seeing much of Mr. Rigden."

"I am glad. I will tell him myself, presently. You will let me, I suppose?"

"Surely, Miss Bethune. There's no earthly reason why he should be here, except his own obstinacy, if you'll excuse my saying so. He was remanded this morning; but Mr. Cross of Strathavon, who signed the warrant yesterday, and came over for the examination this forenoon, not only wanted to take bail, but offered to find it himself. Wanted to carry him off in his own buggy, he did! But Mr. Rigden said here he was, and here he'd stick until his fate was settled. Would you like to see him now?"

"Presently," repeated Moya. "I want to hear more; then I may have something to tell you. When and where did this death occur, and what made you so sure that it was the dead man who came to Eureka? You will understand my questions in a minute."

"Only I must answer them first," said the sergeant, smiling. "I am to give myself clean away, am I?"

"We must all do that sometimes, Sergeant Harkness. It will be my turn directly. Let us trust each other."

Harkness looked into her candid eyes, calmer and more steadfast for their recent tears, and his mind was made up.

"I'll trust you," he said; "you may do as you like about me. Perhaps you yourself have had the wish that's father to the thought, or rather the thought that comes of the wish and nothing else? Well, then, that's what's been the matter with me. The moment I heard of that old rascal's escape, like every other fellow in the force, I yearned to have the taking of him. Of course it wasn't on the cards, hundreds of miles up-country as we are here, besides being across the border; yet when they got clear away, and headed for the Murray, there was no saying where they might or might not cast up. Well, it seems they never reached the Murray at all; but last week down in Balranald I heard a rum yarn about a stowaway aboard one of the Echuca river-steamers; they never knew he was aboard until they heard him go overboard just the other side of Balranald. Then they thought it was one of themselves, until they mustered and found none missing; and then they all swore it was a log, except the man at the wheel who'd seen it; so I pretended to think with the rest – but you bet I didn't! I went down the river on the off-chance, but I never let on who I hoped it might be. And what with a swaggy whose swag had been stolen, and his description of the man who he swore had stolen it, I at last got on the tracks of the man I've lost. He was said to be an oldish man; that seemed good enough; they were both of them oldish men, the two that had escaped."

"The two!" cried Moya in high excitement. "The two! I keep forgetting there were two of them; you see you never said so when you came to the station."

"I wanted to keep it all to myself," confessed the crest-fallen sergeant. "I only told two living men who I thought it was that I was after. One was my sub – who guessed – and the other was Mr. Rigden."

"Were the two men who escaped anything like each other?"

"Well, they were both old lags from the Success, and both superior men at one time; old particulars who'd been chained together, as you might say, for years; and I suppose that sort of thing does beat a man down into a type. However, their friendship didn't go for much when they got outside; for Gipsy Marks murdered Captain Bovill as sure as emu's eggs are emu's eggs!"

"Murdered him!" gasped Moya; and her brain reeled to think of the hours she had spent with the murderer. But all was clear to her now, from the way in which Rigden had been imposed upon in the beginning, to the impostor's obstinate and terrified refusal to own himself as such to the very end.

"Yes, murdered him on the other side of the Murray; the body's only just been found; and meanwhile the murderer's slipped through my fingers," said the sergeant, sourly; "for if it wasn't poor old Bovill I was after, at all events it was Gipsy Marks."

Moya sprang to her feet.

"It was," she cried; "but he hasn't slipped through your fingers at all, unless he's dead. He wasn't when I left him two or three hours ago."

"When you left him?"

"Yes, I found him, and was with him all the morning."

"In Blind Man's Block – with that ruffian?"

"He took my horse and my water-bag, and left me there to die of thirst; but the dear horse turned the tables on him – poor wretch!"

"And you never told me!"

"I am trying to tell you now."

And he let her finish.

But she would not let him go.