E Hornung - At Large

The stars blinked high overhead, and the stars deep down in the tranquil water answered them. The voice of the weir seemed nearer and louder. A gentle breeze stirred the line of poplars by the river's brink in the meadow, and fanned the temples of the motionless man at their feet. A bat passed close over him, lightly touching his hair with its wing. Miles did not stir.

Slowly—as it were, limb by limb—he was freeing himself from the grip of the hideous past. At last, with a sudden gesture, he flung back his head, and his eyes gazed upward to the zenith. It was an awful gaze: a vision of honour and happiness beyond a narrow neck of crime—a glimpse of heaven across the gulf of hell.

His tongue articulated the word that had trembled on his lips before: now it embodied a fixed resolve—"To-morrow! to-morrow!"

Mr. Miles became suddenly aware that his name was being spoken somewhere in the distance by a voice he knew—young Edmonstone's. A moment later the speaker was with him, and had added:

"There is someone who wants to speak to you, standing outside the gate."

There was a gleam of triumph in the younger man's eyes that shot out from the misery of his face like lightning from a cloud, throwing that misery into stronger relief. Miles noted this swift gleam, and it struck terror into his heart—at this moment, more than terror. He was as a general who, on the eve of the brilliant stroke that is to leave him conqueror, hears the alarm sounded in his own rearguard. He stared Dick up and down for some moments. When he spoke, it was—to the ear—with perfect coolness:

"Thanks. I half-expected something of the kind; but it is an infernal nuisance to-night. I must get a coat and hat, for I may have to go up to town at once." And he strode away.

Dick watched him out of sight, admiring more than anything he had seen in this man his readiness and resource at this moment. He would have liked to follow Miles, and keep him within reach or sight; but those were not his directions. Instead, he crossed the bridge, at once bore to the left, and crept into the shrubbery. Keeping close to the wall, without stirring a single leaf, he gained a spot within ten paces of the gate, whence he could command most of the drive and a fair slice of the road. In a minute Miles approached at a swinging walk. He passed close to Dick, and so through the gate. At that moment a man emerged from the shadows at the other side of the road; it was the man Dick had discovered in the shrubbery, though he had seen him before—in the Settler's Hut!

The two men were now but a few paces apart; with little more than a yard between them, they stopped. A low chuckle escaped one of them; but without another sound they turned—passed slowly down the road, side by side, and so out of sight.

Dick gasped: it was so very unlike his preconceived notions of arrest!

XIII

IN BUSHEY PARK

"SO boss, you know me?"

"I have not forgotten you, you scoundrel!"

Such was the interchange of greetings between the man from the Exhibition and Mr. Miles, the Australian. They had halted at a lamp-post some distance down the road, and stood facing each other in the gaslight.

"That's right. I'm glad you don't forget old mates," said the stout, round-shouldered man. "That's one good thing, anyway; but it's a bad'un to go calling them names first set-off, especially when——"

"Look here," interrupted Miles, with an admirable imitation of his ordinary tone; "I haven't much time to give you, my man. How the deuce did you get here? And what the deuce do you want with me?"

"Oh, so you're in a hurry, are you?" sneered the man. "And you want to get back to the music, and the wine, and the women, do you?"

"Listen!" said Miles smoothly; "do you hear that step in the distance? It's coming nearer; it's the policeman, for certain; and if you don't get your business stated and done with before he reaches us, I'll give you in charge. Nothing simpler: I know the men on this beat, and they know me."

"Not so well as I do, I reckon!" returned the other dryly, and with the quiet insolence of confident security. "And so you're the fine gentleman now, are you?"

"If you like—and for all you can prove to the contrary."

"The Australian gentleman on a trip home, eh? Good; very good! And your name is Miles!"

"It's worth your neck to make it anything else?"

The other thrust forward his face, and the beady eyes glittered with a malignant fire. "You don't lose much time about coming to threats, mate," he snarled. "P'r'aps it'ud be better if you waited a bit; p'r'aps I'm harder to funk than you think! Because I dare prove to the contrary, and I dare give you your right name. Have you forgotten it? Then I'll remind you; and your friend the bobby shall hear too, now he's come so close. How's this, then?—Edward Ryan, otherwise Ned the Ranger; otherwise—and known all over the world, this is—otherwise—"

Miles stopped him with a rapid, fierce gesture, at the same time quietly sliding his left hand within his overcoat. He felt for his revolver. It was not there. He recalled the circumstance which had compelled him to lay it aside. It seemed like Fate: for months that weapon had never been beyond the reach of his hand; now, for the first time, he required it, and was crippled for want of it. He recovered his composure in a moment, but not before his discomfiture had been noticed, and its cause shrewdly guessed. Laying a heavy hand on the other's broad, rounded shoulder, he said simply and impressively:

"Hush!"

"Then let's move on."

"Where?"

"Where we can talk."

The man pointed across the road to a broad opening directly opposite the lamp-post. It was the beginning of another road; the spot where they stood was indeed the junction of the cross and down-stroke of a capital letter T, of which the cross was the road that ran parallel with the river.

"Very well," said Miles, with suspicious alacrity; "but I must go back first to make some excuse, or they will be sending after me."

"Then, while you are gone, I shall confide in your friend the policeman."

Miles uttered a curse, and led the way across the road and straight on. There were no lamps in the road they entered now—no houses, no lights of any kind—but on the right a tall hedge, and on the left trim posts and rails, with fields beyond. They walked on for some minutes in silence, which was at length broken by Miles's unwelcome visitor.

"It's no sort o' use you being in a hurry," said he. "I've found you out; why not make the best of it?"

"What am I to do for you?" asked Miles, as smoothly as though the man by his side were an ordinary highway beggar.

"You'll see in good time. Sorry I've put you to inconvenience, but if you weren't passing for what you ain't you wouldn't feel it so; so you see, Ned Ryan, playing the gent has its drawbacks. Now, after me having crossed the whole blessed world to speak to you, it would be roughish if you refused me your best ear; now wouldn't it?"

"You have just landed, then?" said Miles; and added, after a pause, "I hoped you were dead."

"Thanks," returned the other, in the tone of coarse irony that he had employed from the beginning. "Being one as returns good for evil, I don't mind saying I was never so glad as when I clapped eyes on you yesterday—alive and safe."

"Yesterday! Where?"

"Never mind where. But I ain't just landed—Oh, no!"

Suddenly Miles stopped short in his walk. They had entered again the region of lights and houses; the road was no longer dark and lonely; it had intersected the highroad that leads to Kingston, and afterwards bent in curves to the right; now its left boundary was the white picket-fence of the railway, and, a hundred yards beyond, a cluster of bright lights indicated Teddington station.