Part 9 (1/2)
”Am I right in saying that you knew her very well?”
”Yes, I did know her very well.”
”Don't think I am attempting to pry into your private affairs, Mr.
Harding. In a case of this kind, the clues that lead to the unravelling of the mystery often lie on the surface in some trifling circ.u.mstance that seemingly has nothing whatever to do with the main question. You have already realised, I take it, that we are concerned with something quite distinct from the ordinary cla.s.s of crime. Perhaps you have not had sufficient experience with the criminal cla.s.s to recognise what was apparent to me from the beginning, that in this matter we are following the work of one who is a master of his craft.”
”So far as that goes, I am absolutely dazed,” Harding exclaimed. ”The more I hear, the more hopelessly confused I grow.”
”I am not surprised. You are following the work of someone who is, I am quite satisfied, no ordinary criminal, but one of the most astute, clever and unscrupulous individuals who ever adopted dishonesty as a profession. If I ask you questions which appear to you to be irrelevant and possibly impertinent, will you give me credit for being actuated only by my sense of duty, and answer those questions as fully and as accurately as you can?”
”Certainly,” Harding replied.
”Thank you. Now, will you tell me this--Were you ever engaged to Mrs.
Eustace before she married her present husband?”
”Yes.”
”Did she break it off, or did you?”
”She--she married.”
”She married Eustace, while she was practically engaged to you?”
”While she was actually engaged to me.”
”Then he must have known of your existence?”
”I a.s.sume so, but--well, nothing was ever said about it between us. I will tell you exactly what happened. The letters I had written to her, the presents I had given her, and her engagement ring, were returned to me in a packet through the post with a piece of wedding-cake. Until I came here and met her, I did not know to whom she was married. Whether Eustace knew we had once been engaged I do not know. I never referred to it.”
”You never knew that, in applying for an a.s.sistant, he named you personally to the general manager of the bank and gave as a reason a long-standing friends.h.i.+p?”
The look of astonishment which showed on Harding's face was sufficient answer.
”Yet it is what happened--I have the information from your general manager.”
CHAPTER V
MRS. BURKE'S PRESENTIMENT
Waroona Downs was fifteen miles from Waroona towns.h.i.+p by the road, and ten as the crow flies, the intrusion of a rocky and precipitous range making it impossible to take the shorter and more direct route. One had perforce to use the road, and the road turned and twisted where the level plains were broken by the range, pa.s.sing, at one stage, through a narrow gorge hemmed in by steep, rock-strewn heights, on which a growth of stunted gums flourished sufficiently to hide the jagged boulders from the road below.
Half-way through the gorge a stream, having its source in a series of springs hidden among the tumbled rocks, swept across the track in a shallow ford. The road dipped to it on both sides, the constant flow of water having stripped away the soil and left a barrier of naked rock which dammed back the stream to form a wide pool sheltered among the hills and fringed by a more luxurious growth of vegetation than clothed the heights above.
The last gleam of the setting sun shed a ruddy tinge on the topmost branches of the trees as Durham reached where the road dipped to the stream. The subdued light in the pa.s.s made the distances elusive and turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, the silence was unbroken.
Durham reined in his horse and sat loosely in his saddle as his glance swept over the tangled ma.s.ses of undergrowth, the tumbled boulders peeping here and there from amid the shadows, the precipitous sides of the pa.s.s, and the broken ruggedness of the ground beyond. But it was not an appreciation of the picturesque, nor a recognition of the poetry in landscape which held him. He saw in the place only such a spot as the men concerned in the robbery of the bank would select for hiding their booty. Within that maze of rock and tree and mountain, how many nooks there must be to serve the purpose.