The Greatest Thrillers of Fergus Hume. Fergus Hume
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humour to hear chatter.
“Murdered in a cab,” he said, lighting a fresh cigarette, and blowing a cloud of smoke. “A romance in real life, which beats Miss Braddon hollow. There is one thing certain, he won’t come between Madge and me again. Poor Madge!” with an impatient sigh. “If she only knew all, there would not be much chance of our marriage; but she can never find out, and I don’t suppose anyone else will.”
Here a thought suddenly struck him, and rising out of his seat, he walked to the other end of the carriage, and threw himself on the cushions, as if desirous to escape from himself.
“What grounds can that man have for suspecting me?” he said aloud. “No one knows I was with Whyte on that night, and the police can’t possibly bring forward any evidence to show that I was. Pshaw!” he went on, impatiently buttoning up his coat. “I am like a child, afraid of my shadow—the fellow on the pier is only some one out for a breath of fresh air, as he said himself—I am quite safe.”
At the same time, he felt by no means easy in his mind, and as he stepped out on to the platform at the Melbourne station he looked round apprehensively, as if he half expected to feel the detective’s hand upon his shoulder. But he saw no one at all like the man he had met on the St. Kilda pier, and with a sigh of relief he left the station. Mr. Gorby, however, was not far away. He was following at a safe distance. Brian walked slowly along Flinders Street apparently deep in thought. He turned up Russell Street and did not stop until he found himself close to the Burke and Wills’ monument—the exact spot where the cab had stopped on the night of Whyte’s murder.
“Ah!” said the detective to himself, as he stood in the shadow on the opposite side of the street. “You’re going to have a look at it, are you?—I wouldn’t, if I were you—it’s dangerous.”
Fitzgerald stood for a few minutes at the corner, and then walked up Collins Street. When he got to the cab-stand, opposite the Melbourne Club, still suspecting he was followed, he hailed a hansom, and drove away in the direction of Spring Street. Gorby was rather perplexed at this sudden move, but without delay, he hailed another cab, and told the driver to follow the first till it stopped.
“Two can play at that game,” he said, settling himself back in the cab, “and I’ll get the better of you, clever as you are—and you are clever,” he went on in a tone of admiration, as he looked round the luxurious hansom, “to choose such a convenient place for a murder; no disturbance and plenty of time for escape after you had finished; it’s a pleasure going after a chap like you, instead of after men who tumble down like ripe fruit, and ain’t got any brains to keep their crime quiet.”
While the detective thus soliloquised, his cab, following on the trail of the other, had turned down Spring Street, and was being driven rapidly along the Wellington Parade, in the direction of East Melbourne. It then turned up Powlett Street, at which Mr. Gorby was glad.
“Ain’t so clever as I thought,” he said to himself. “Shows his nest right off, without any attempt to hide it.”
The detective, however, had reckoned without his host, for the cab in front kept driving on, through an interminable maze of streets, until it seemed as though Brian were determined to drive the whole night.
“Look ‘ere, sir!” cried Gorby’s cabman, looking through his trap-door in the roof of the hansom, “‘ow long’s this ‘ere game agoin’ to larst? My ‘oss is knocked up, ‘e is, and ‘is blessed old legs is agivin’ way under ‘im!”
“Go on! go on!” answered the detective, impatiently; “I’ll pay you well.”
The cabman’s spirits were raised by this, and by dint of coaxing and a liberal use of the whip, he managed to get his jaded horse up to a pretty good pace. They were in Fitzroy by this time, and both cabs turned out of Gertrude Street into Nicholson Street; thence passed on to Evelyn Street and along Spring Street, until Brian’s cab stopped at the corner of Collins Street, and Gorby saw him alight and dismiss his cab-man. He then walked down the street and disappeared into the Treasury Gardens.
“Confound it,” said the detective, as he got out and paid his fare, which was by no means a light one, but over which he had no time to argue, “we’ve come in a circle, and I do believe he lives in Powlett Street after all.”
He went into the gardens, and saw Brian some distance ahead of him, walking rapidly. It was bright moonlight, and he could easily distinguish Fitzgerald by his light coat.
As he went along that noble avenue with its elms in their winter dress, the moon shining through their branches wrought a fantastic tracery, on the smooth asphalte. And on either side Gorby could see the dim white forms of the old Greek gods and goddesses—Venus Victrix, with the apple in her hand (which Mr. Gorby, in his happy ignorance of heathen mythology, took for Eve offering Adam the forbidden fruit); Diana, with the hound at her feet, and Bacchus and Ariadne (which the detective imagined were the Babes in the Wood). He knew that each of the statues had queer names, but thought they were merely allegorical. Passing over the bridge, with the water rippling quietly underneath, Brian went up the smooth yellow path to where the statue of Hebe, holding the cup, seems instinct with life; and turning down the path to the right, he left the gardens by the end gate, near which stands the statue of the Dancing Faun, with the great bush of scarlet geranium burning like an altar before it. Then he went along the Wellington Parade, and turned up Powlett Street, where he stopped at a house near Cairns’ Memorial Church, much to Mr. Gorby’s relief, who, being like Hamlet, “fat and scant of breath,” found himself rather exhausted. He kept well in the shadow, however, and saw Fitzgerald give one final look round before he disappeared into the house. Then Mr. Gorby, like the Robber Captain in Ali Baba, took careful stock of the house, and fixed its locality and appearance well in his mind, as he intended to call at it on the morrow.
“What I’m going to do,” he said, as he walked slowly back to Melbourne, “is to see his landlady when he’s out, and find out what time he came in on the night of the murder. If it fits into the time he got out of Rankin’s cab, I’ll get out a warrant, and arrest him straight off.”
Chapter IX.
Mr. Gorby Is Satisfied at Last
In spite of his long walk, and still longer drive, Brian did not sleep well that night. He kept tossing and turning, or lying on his back, wide awake, looking into the darkness and thinking of Whyte. Towards dawn, when the first faint glimmer of morning came through the venetian blinds, he fell into a sort of uneasy doze, haunted by horrible dreams. He thought he was driving in a hansom, when suddenly he found Whyte by his side, clad in white cerements, grinning and gibbering at him with ghastly merriment. Then the cab went over a precipice, and he fell from a great height, down, down, with the mocking laughter still sounding in his ears, until he woke with a loud cry, and found it was broad daylight, and that drops of perspiration were standing on his brow. It was no use trying to sleep any longer, so, with a weary sigh, he arose and went to his tub, feeling jaded and worn out by worry and want of sleep. His bath did him some good. The cold water brightened him up and pulled him together. Still he could not help giving a start of surprise when he saw his face reflected in the mirror, old and haggard-looking, with dark circles round the eyes.
“A pleasant life I’ll have of it if this sort of thing goes on,” he said, bitterly, “I wish I had never seen, or heard of Whyte.”
He dressed himself carefully. He was not a man to neglect his toilet, however worried and out of sorts he might happen to feel. Yet, notwithstanding all his efforts the change in his appearance did not escape the eye of his landlady. She was a small, dried-up little woman, with a wrinkled yellowish face. She seemed parched up and brittle. Whenever she moved she crackled, and one went in constant dread of seeing a wizen-looking limb break off short like the branch of some dead tree. When she spoke it was in a voice hard and shrill, not unlike the chirp of a cricket. When—as was frequently the case—she clothed her attenuated form in a faded brown