The Rider of Waroona Part 31

Once the veil partly lifted, and he saw, as through a mist, Mrs. Burke standing defiantly before a man who slunk away out of the room while she turned quickly and came to the couch where he was lying and bent over him. As in a dream he felt her cool hand touch his brow and her face come close to him.

"Oh, why? Why?" he heard her whisper. "Why have you come into my life--now--to bring love to me? Better if I were dead; but I cannot let you go, I cannot! Oh, my love, why have you come so late to me?"

Her lips were pressed to his, her arms encircled his neck, and as he thrilled at her touch, at her voice, at her presence, he essayed to answer her. But he had no strength even to move his lips in response to her kiss, no power to raise a hand. It was as though his will no longer had control over his muscles, as though his consciousness were something apart from his body, something floating in s.p.a.ce, voiceless, nerveless, motionless, apart from himself, apart from all save the love she had for him, and the love he had for her.

And in the glamour of that love, the bare knowledge that he existed at all faded away, until he was as one enveloped in a mist through which neither sight nor sound could penetrate.

The sunlight was streaming around him when next he remembered. He was lying in a bed in an unfamiliar room. By his side the doctor was standing. His first memory was of the stifled cry which had come to him as he stepped on to the verandah.

"Ah, you're awake again, are you?" the doctor said cheerily. "Well, how do you feel now?"

"Where am I?" Durham asked weakly.

"Oh, you're where you're all right, if you feel all right. Do you?"

"I'm--this isn't the hut."

He glanced round the room which was at once strange and familiar to him.

"Don't you remember leaving there? You ought to. Don't you remember how we got you into the waggonette? When we put you on the blankets? Just think. You're at Waroona Downs. Mrs. Burke brought you."

"But I--how did I get here?" Durham repeated, glancing again round the room. Then it was that the memory of the cry forced itself to the front.

"Who was it?" he asked. "Who was it?"

Another figure joined the doctor, and Mrs. Burke looked down at him.

"Who was what?" the doctor asked.

"That cry--the cry I heard," Durham replied.

"There was no cry," the doctor said. "You've been dreaming."

Durham looked from one to the other. As his eyes rested on Mrs. Burke's, vaguely there came to him the visionary recollection of her kneeling beside him with her arms around him and her lips pressed to his.

"Dreaming?" he said slowly. "Dreaming? Was it all dreaming?"

He was looking straight into her eyes, as he spoke, forgetful of the doctor's presence, watching for the return of the soft love-light which had filled her eyes in that memoried scene. But no love-light shone from them. They were unmoved, cold in their grey-blue depths almost to hardness.

"Listen to me, my lad," the doctor said briskly. "The drive in from Taloona shook you up a bit, they tell me. Made you delirious, so that they had to keep you on the sofa all night watching you. That's where I found you when I got here at dawn. But you'll be all right now, I fancy, if you keep quiet and don't think about things that never happened.

You're at Waroona Downs in bed, and Mrs. Burke and that old idiot of a doddering Irishman are looking after you. That's all you've got to remember."

"Except to get well," Mrs. Burke added.

"Yes, except to get well; and I reckon your nurse will see to that. I'll call in again to-morrow or the next day. But remember--no more dreams."

CHAPTER XIII

REVENGE IS SWEET

As the days wore on and Durham won his way back to health, he waited in vain for a token from Mrs. Burke that the memory which persisted so clearly was other than the figment of a dream.

Although she gave him every attention a sick man required, there was neither look nor word from her to justify him in believing that the memory was of an actual scene. For hours she would be with him, reading to him, talking to him, meeting his glance freely and frankly; but never was there the veriest hint of the emotion he had seen in her eyes on that occasion.

Nor did he hear again the curious stifled cry which had seemed to ring in his ears the night he arrived. He was constantly on the alert for it, both by night and day, while he was confined to his room and later when he was able to get out on to the verandah. But there was no repet.i.tion of it, until at last he had perforce to accept the doctor's view and regard it, as well as the other memory, as merely the vagaries of delirium.

But if she gave him nothing whereon to feed the love he had for her, that love did not diminish as the days pa.s.sed. It took a deeper and firmer hold upon him until he lived in a veritable Fool's Paradise, giving no thought of the morrow, saving that it would be spent with her, and forgetting even the task which had brought him to the district. The outside world did not obtrude itself upon him, till the doctor declared that only once more would he visit him. Then it came with a rush.

A dozen questions forced themselves upon his mind.

Since his arrival at Waroona Downs, no word had reached him from Brennan, no mention had been made of the robberies. When, once or twice, he had attempted to speak of them, Mrs. Burke told him the doctor's orders were that he was not to be allowed to dwell upon anything likely to disturb him, and she insisted on carrying out those orders. He had always yielded, lest she put into execution the threat she made, to leave him to the tender mercies of old Patsy for a whole day. But now the injunction was removed, for the doctor himself had asked whether he should tell Brennan to come out.

Durham awaited his arrival with impatience. Now that he allowed his mind to revert to more prosaic matters than the object of his adoration, he concluded that, as he had not been troubled with official detail, someone else had been sent up to continue the investigation into the mystery.

He ran over the names of the men most likely to be entrusted with the work, speculating which one it was, and what course he had followed. He hunted for the letter he had found the day he discovered the track leading to the lake among the hills, and when he could not find it, he inferred that after he had been struck down at Taloona, the two marauders had searched him and had recovered what would have been invaluable evidence against Eustace.

The excuse Mrs. Burke had put forward for refusing to discuss the matter with him suggested she knew he had been superseded; the belief grew in his mind that his successor had succeeded in either tracing the stolen gold or securing the arrest of Eustace, and perhaps his companion also.

Mrs. Burke, knowing this, had declined to talk lest she revealed the secret and gave him, as she would consider, cause for mental anxiety and distress.

It was therefore a great surprise for him to learn from Brennan, as soon as he came out, that no one had been sent up to take charge of the case; that no arrest had been made, nor clue discovered; but that everything had been allowed to remain as it was until such time as he was sufficiently recovered to resume duty.

"They should not have done that," he exclaimed. "Look at the time wasted."

"I understand the Bank wished it, sir," Brennan answered. "Mr. Wallace told me as much. He said he and his directors were satisfied no one could solve the riddle as you could, and head-quarters had been asked not to put anyone else in charge, but to leave you with an absolutely free hand."

"It is very good of them," Durham said. "But still--look at the chance it has given the thieves to get away with the gold."

"They haven't gone, sir," Brennan said quietly.

"How do you know?"

"One of them was seen only last night," Brennan continued in a low tone.

"He was seen on the Taloona road, riding the white horse. That is what puzzles me. How does he hide that horse? It's never been seen in any of the paddocks for miles round, for everyone is on the watch for it. And a man can't hide a white horse in a hollow log--it must run somewhere some time."

"Where is Mrs. Eustace?"

"She's at Smart's cottage. She came in from Taloona yesterday. That's what makes it strange, to my mind, this white horse and rider being seen on the Taloona road the day she leaves the place."

"Where are the troopers--Conlon and his mate?"

"Went away three days ago, sir, on orders from head-quarters."

"And Mr. Dudgeon?"

"Oh, he's still at Taloona. They say he's pretty well right again, except that he limps with a stick."