I went back to the lodging house to get my tea, and as I sat on the bare form at the bare table, along with the other out-at-elbow chaps who were frequenting the place, I chuckled broadly to myself to think how amazed they would have been if they had only known how much money I had under my dirty coat. How their eyes would have opened in amazement if I had pulled out the notes before them. Handfuls and handfuls of fivers, and not a few tens as well. I am sure every man jack of them would have been prepared to take his dying oath that I had stolen them. If anyone there ever became suddenly possessed of money, even in the small way of a pound or two, it was always surmised at once that it had been acquired dishonestly.
We were certainly a queer lot there, and most of us were known by names never given to us by our parents in baptism.
I was Rob Turner, and I was supposed to have hailed from Brisbane. We were all very reticent about our affairs. Folks without a shilling upon them, I have found, are always quite as distrustful of one another as rich men with big balances at their banks.
But we were not a glum lot all the same, and joked and laughed together sometimes as if we hadn’t a care in the world. One man in particular was always merry — old Nat Saunders, who made a scanty living by selling papers or carrying bags for folks arriving at the railway station.
He was a rare old gossip, and somehow always seemed to gather all the news of the under-world of the city. It was quite uncanny sometimes how he would regale us overnight with bits of news that would next morning appear in the newspapers.
That evening he was very excited.
Something was doing in Adelaide, he said; something was going on. He had recognised Arnold Kitson, the famous Melbourne detective, that morning coming out of the station carrying a bag and a rug, and he followed him up to the police headquarters, and from the way the man on duty at the door received him, he was quite sure the visit was not unexpected; and so on, and so on.
He wondered if it had anything to do with the Mount Gambier murders, and of course that set them all talking. The Mount Gambier mystery was then about a fortnight old. A man and his wife, on a small outlying farm, had been brutally murdered and the two assassins, after ransacking the house, had got clear away. It had been at first thought there was no chance at all of tracking them down, but a week after the murder a little girl had come forward with important information. She had been going to the house the day the poor victims were killed, but hearing dreadful shrieks as she got near the door, she had hidden in the woodstack, and subsequently had seen the two murderers ride away. She had given the best description of the men she could, and all Australia was now on their track.
But Australia is a wide place, and the track was no longer fresh; so very little hope was entertained now of catching the men. Everyone was, of course, blaming the police.
I slipped out quietly when I had finished my tea. I wanted to get away somewhere by myself and think. The money I had so fortunately acquired would give me another chance in life, and I wanted to map out my plans.
I took the train to Glenelg, meaning to walk from there along the sands the five miles to Henley. It was still pretty warm when I arrived on the sands about half-past six, and there were lots of people about. But a couple of miles away I was, as I expected, quite by myself.
It is always a lonely walk from Glenelg to Henley along the foot of the sandhills, and one generally has only the seagulls for company the middle part of the way.
I lay down between two sandhills and gave myself up to my thoughts.
Here was I, quite a failure in life at twenty-six, and I wanted to understand to myself why.
I was an only son. My mother had died many years before; indeed, I hardly remembered her. My father had been one of the leading doctors in Melbourne, and two years before the war, he had sent me to England to walk the London hospitals and in due time take my degree. When the war had broken out, I had joined up at once, but I had been badly wounded on the Somme with a fractured thigh, and had been many months in hospital. When I rejoined my regiment I had come in for some hot times, but in less than a year I had risen to the rank of captain, and, indeed, when the Armistice was signed, was on the point of going up a step higher. So I hadn’t done badly there. Just after the war had ended my poor old dad died suddenly, and I had returned to Melbourne to settle up his affairs.
Unhappily for me there had not been much to settle up, and a bare two hundred pounds was all that came to me when the estate was closed. I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was, of course, quite impossible for me to continue my medical studies, and for a time I couldn’t settle down to anything.
I messed about Melbourne for a while, stopping at good hotels and going about, and my money soon began to dwindle down and get beautifully less and less.
Then one day I suddenly woke to the fact that I had less than a ten-pound note between myself and actual want. I pulled myself together at once, and, like every true Australian, turned to the land for succour.
I got work on a sheep station out Broken Hill way, and for about eighteen months stuck like a limpet to my job. It was lonely, hard, and monotonous, but it suited my despondent state of mind for a time.
When I finally decided that I had had enough of it, the old man was very angry at my going, and did his best to persuade me to remain, but I had persisted in my resolve, and through my stupidity had ultimately arrived at Adelaide almost penniless, as I have explained.
My meditations were interrupted by the appearance of a man coming along the sands from the direction of Glenelg. I expected he would pass by without noticing me, as he was walking about a hundred yards away close to the sea. But getting level, he noticed me at once and, to my annoyance, turned in towards me. He walked very slowly, with his right hand tucked away in the breast of his coat.
As he got near me he called out and asked me the time. Without getting up, I told him abruptly I hadn’t got a watch and didn’t know, but he still came on towards me very deliberately. I thought he must be deaf, and so I raised my voice loudly this time and told him again I had no watch.
I didn’t want his company, and was in no mood to talk to anyone.
He had almost reached me, and indeed could not have been more than a couple of yards away, when a great shouting came up almost alongside of us, and three young fellows in bathing dresses dashed down from behind one of the adjoining sandhills and raced each other laughing to the sea.
The man just in front of me evidently was not deaf, for he stopped instantly and took his hand out of his coat with a frightened startled gesture, as if he was expecting someone to strike him from behind.
He seemed dazed for a moment, and stood hesitating, staring back at the three boys running down the sands. Then he muttered huskily something about his watch having stopped, and moved off as abruptly as he came.
But he left me thinking hard. As he had turned away I had noticed a watch on his right wrist and just above a patch on the coat sleeve.
It was the same man who had stood near me in Victoria Park when I had drawn the money over Rose of Dawn. The sinister significance of it came home to me at once. He had undoubtedly been following me all the way from the races, and but for the unexpected appearance of these three lads, had meant to do me mischief.
Now I came to think of it, the peculiar deliberate way in which he had approached me with one hand hidden in the breast of his coat, could only have meant that he was holding some kind of weapon there, and for my benefit evidently.
I wasn’t a bit frightened and indeed once the flash of my recognition was over, felt rather amused.
I had been in too much hand-to-hand fighting in France to be afraid of any one man, and a rough-and-tumble scrap would have been just to my liking, provided, of course, that the affair had started on equal terms.
All this flashed through my mind before the fellow had got twenty yards away, and I jumped up to go after him. Then I thought I was a fool. It might have been only a coincidence after all, and what an ass I should look if he were only a harmless individual like myself, just after fresh air from the heat and rush of the city.
I dropped down again on the sands, meaning to forget the interruption and go on with my meditation. But somehow I couldn’t shake off the idea that the fellow had meant mischief. At any rate, I wouldn’t take any more risks, I thought.
I had a little revolver in my hip pocket, and I took it out. It was quite a toy affair — a little .22 Yankee one. It was no good for any accurate firing, except at point blank range, and then it was as deadly as any revolver of much larger calibre, as I had fortunately found once when dealing with a savage dog up country.
It had no value, or I should have sold it long ago. I carried it, always wrapped up in a little bit of linen, along with about a dozen of its little cartridges in a scrap of oiled paper. I loaded it in its seven chambers, and slipped it loosely into my jacket pocket.
I lay watching the boys enjoying themselves in the water for about a quarter of an hour, and then moved off again on my way towards Henley.
There was no sign anywhere of the man who had disturbed me, unless it was a little figure now hardly discernible in the distance.
It was a lovely evening, and when I was less than a couple of miles off Henley, I thought I would have another rest and watch the sunset over the sea.
I lay at the foot of the sandhills and idly drew in the peaceful beauty of the scene. It was warm and still under the dying sun, and my thoughts went irresistibly to the girl in the car. I wondered if I should ever see her again. My whole life seemed to have altered since the morning. I had found the motive of my life at last. For her sake I would work, I would strive, and I would endure.
About a dozen seagulls suddenly made their appearance upon the sands in front of me, just down by the margin of the waves. They were interested in a small object lying there, and started squabbling and fluttering about.
Although quite close, they didn’t notice me, and I lay back with half shut eyes dreamily watching the quarrel. They seemed so much like human beings, fighting among themselves.
All at once they all rose up together and started flying out to sea. I wondered lazily what had disturbed them, and then suddenly I thought of my racecourse friend.
I jumped up in a flash and turned round. Only just in time. There was my gentleman not five yards from me, creeping shoeless down the sandhill with a great ragged paling in his hand.
His footfalls had made no sound on the sand, but his mouth was wide open and I could hear him panting with his exertions. I saw that his white evil face had murder on it, but I smiled grimly to myself to think what he had taken on.
Stick or no stick, I felt I was more than a match for him, and could have knocked him out easily in a hand-to-hand struggle, but I didn’t know whether he was carrying an automatic, and my decision was made instantly.
I whipped out my little revolver and gave him three bullets, one after another, as quick as I could, right bang in the middle of his face. One at any rate hit him, for he lurched forward in the sand, and falling on his side, lay moaning at my feet.
I had my hand on his neck in a trice, ready to squeeze the breath out of him, if necessary. But there was no need. I had killed men in France before in many a midnight trench raid, and I knew the feeling about a man’s neck when he’s finished with.
I stood up and turned the body over with my foot. It was still quivering convulsively, and I saw I had made a ghastly mess of his face. Two bullets had entered his forehead almost in the same hole, and the third had ploughed a deep furrow along his cheek. The blood and sand together quite obliterated his features and made him unrecognisable.
The blade of a large bowie knife was protruding from the opening of his jacket. It looked sharp as a razor, and I thought unpleasantly of what he had intended for me.
I was not at all excited and felt no compunctions at having killed him. He had richly earned his bloody end. But I was sorry and anxious for myself.
Here was I, just on the start of a new life, just when I wanted to break away from all the old unhappy surroundings, involved in the killing of this man, and when it became known, in the horrible publicity of police court proceedings and the whole Commonwealth Press.
Besides, was it certain they would believe my version of the affair? The dead man was well dressed and I was shabby and poor-looking, but in the possession of a large sum of money, the source of which it would be difficult to explain.
Again I made up my mind quickly.
I walked casually down upon the sands. No one was in sight in either direction. The sun was down below the sea. It was rapidly getting dusk. I climbed a tall sandhill and cautiously looked round. There was no one to be seen anywhere.
I went quickly back to the body, and dragging it along by the heels made my way deep among the sandhills behind where I had been lying down. In one of the small sandy gullies there I scooped a long depression with my arms.
The light was failing rapidly, and I dared not stop to make the hole as deep as I would have wished.
Before dumping the body in, it struck me I had better search it.
Notwithstanding the possible danger attending any delay, I was intensely curious to find out something about my would-be murderer.
What manner of man he was, who went about in good clothes, wearing an expensive gold wrist watch, and yet who had all the cunning and methods of the habitual assassin.
My experiences in France had taken away all repugnance in handling the dead, and in a few seconds I had methodically gone through all his belongings.
There was a thickish wallet in the vest pocket under his waistcoat, and I promptly appropriated it for later investigation. His money and a silver cigarette case I left with him; also a hefty looking automatic that he had in his hip pocket. It would have been too dangerous, I thought, to have it about me. Fortunately for me, it was unloaded, and there were no cartridges in his pockets. I ran back and picked up his hat, which had fallen off when I shot him. Then with his own knife, which I buried with him, I made it possible for the gases to escape from his body when decomposition set in. The dry sand over his remains was so loose that it would be only too easily disturbed by putrefaction.
I looked around hurriedly for his shoes but could not find them. He had taken them off somewhere to make his approach upon me quite noiseless.
I covered the place well over with a large quantity of sand by rolling it down off the adjoining sandhill.
I obliterated as best I could the track I had made in dragging up the body, and then, assuring myself that there were no late roamers on the sands, made off confidently in the direction of Henley.
As I walked along in the darkness I went over everything carefully, to be sure I had left no clues behind me.
By hiding the body as I had I knew that if anything were discovered I had laid myself open to a charge of murder. But there was only the pocket-book, I argued, to connect me in any way with the dead man, and that I would soon get rid of when I had examined the contents.
Then, suddenly, it came upon me with a sort of shock that I had still my revolver upon me, with its three spent chambers.
I was just passing the first of the numerous wooden bathing huts that stretch in line upon the sands for nearly a mile from the Henley jetty when the fact occurred to me; but I thought at once of a safe place to hide it.
I groped my way in the darkness to behind one of the huts, and, thrusting my arm deep down in the sand alongside one of the big square supports, consigned the revolver and remaining cartridges to what, I hoped, was an eternal oblivion.
The band was in full swing when I finally reached Henley, and I sat down for awhile to rest and listen. They were playing a selection from ‘Il Trovatore.’ I had seen the opera when on leave in London, and when they came to that part where the monks accompany the coffin to the vault, the haunting melody of their dirge quite got on my nerves.
I thought of that wretched man out there under the sandhills, with his white, bloody face, with the holes in his forehead, and with the gashes I had made in his body, so that he might rot quiet and still.
The excitement of the day was beginning to tell on me, and so, leaving the crowds on the beach, I took the tram to return to the city.
When we reached the turn of the road at South Henley there was quite a long delay. The trolley arm must have slipped off the overhead wire I thought. At any rate, we were held up for quite three minutes, and it afforded an opportunity for a little, inquisitive, parchment-faced looking man to poke his face in every department of the car and have a good stare at all of us.
Sitting in a corner, I deliberately turned my head the other way; but he wasn’t to be baulked, and came right round to the other side of the car to stare me straight in the face.
The incident rather annoyed me at the time. It could be only idle curiosity I knew, but still, when one has just killed and buried a man, it is not pleasant to be the object of anyone’s attention at all.