"Committing another murder! By heaven, I wish I had had the chance!" muttered Miles.
"Then, if I'd started the hue and cry, it would have meant killing the golden goose—and most likely me with it. I thought of something better: I saw you drop down into the hold—there was too much risk in showing your money for a passage or trying for a fo'c'stle berth; the boat was to sail at daylight. I rushed to your wife and told her; but her cottage was three miles out of the town, worse luck to it! and when I got her to the quay, you were under way and nearly out of sight—half-an-hour late in sailing, and you'd have had a friend among the passengers!"
"And what then?"
"Why, then your wife was mad! I soothed her: she told me that she had some money, and I told her if she gave me some of it I might still catch you for her. I showed her how the mail from Sydney, by changing at Brindisi, would land one in England before the Queensland boat. I knew it was an off-chance whether you ever meant to reach England at all, or whether you'd succeed if you tried; but," said Pound, lowering his voice unaccountably, "I was keen to be quit of the country myself. Here was my chance, and I took it; your wife shelled out, and I lost no time."
The man ceased speaking, and looked sharply about him. His eyes were become thoroughly used to the darkness, so that he could see some distance all round with accuracy and ease; but they were eyes no less keen than quick; and so sure-sighted that one glance was at all times enough for them, and corroboration by a second a thing unthought of.
They were walking, more slowly now, on a soft mossy path, and nearing a small plantation, chiefly of pines and firs, half-a-mile from the avenues. This path, as it approaches the trees, has beside it several saplings shielded by tall triangular fences, which even in daylight would afford very fair cover for a man's body. Miles and Pound had passed close to half-a-dozen or more of these triangles.
"Well?" said Miles; for Pound remained silent.
"I am looking to see where you have brought me."
"I have brought you to the best place of all, this plantation," Miles answered, leaving the path and picking his way over the uneven ground until there were trees all round them. "Here we should be neither seen nor heard if we stayed till daybreak. Are you going on?"
But Pound was not to be hurried until he had picked out a spot to his liking still deeper in the plantation; far from shaking his sense of security, the trees seemed to afford him unexpected satisfaction. The place was dark and silent as the tomb, though the eastern wall of the park was but three hundred yards distant. Looking towards this wall in winter, a long, unbroken row of gaslights marks the road beyond; but in summer the foliage of the lining trees only reveals a casual glimmer, which adds by contrast to the solitude of this sombre, isolated, apparently uncared-for coppice.
"I reached London just before you," resumed Pound, narrowly watching the effect of every word. "I waited for your boat at the docks. There were others waiting. I had to take care—they were detectives."
Miles uttered an ejaculation.
"I watched them go on board; I watched them come back—without you. They were white with disappointment. Ned Ryan, those men would sell their souls to lay hands on you now!"
"Go on!" said Miles between his teeth.
"Well, I got drinking with the crew, and found you'd fallen overboard coming up Channel—so they thought; it happened in the night. But you've swum swollen rivers, before my eyes, stronger than I ever see man swim before or since, and I was suspicious. Ships get so near the land coming up Channel. I went away and made sure you were alive, if I could find you. At last, by good luck, I did find you."
"Where?"
"At the Exhibition. I took to loafing about the places you were sure to go to, sooner or later, as a swell, thinking yourself safe as the Bank. And that's where I found you—the swell all over, sure enough. You stopped till the end, and that's how I lost you in the crowd going out; but before that I got so close I heard what you were saying to your swell friends: how you'd bring 'em again, if they liked; what you'd missed that day, but must see then. So I knew where to wait about for you. But you took your time about coming again. Every day I was waiting and wat starving. A shilling a day to let me into the ching—and place; a quid in reserve for when the time came; and pence for my meals. Do you think a trifle'll pay for all that? When you did turn up again yesterday, you may lay your life I never lost sight of you."
"I should have known you any time; why you went about in that rig——"
"I had no others. I heard fools whisper that I was a detective, moreover, and that made me feel safe."
"You followed me down here yesterday, did you? Then why do nothing till to-night?"
The fellow hesitated, and again peered rapidly into every corner of the night.
"Why did you wait?" repeated Miles impatiently.
An evil grin overspread the countenance of Jem Pound. He seemed to be dallying with his answer—rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue—as though loth to part with the source of so much private satisfaction. Miles perceived something of this, and, for the first time that night, felt powerless to measure the extent of his danger. Up to this point he had realised and calculated to a nicety the strength of the hold of this man over him, and he had flattered himself that it was weak in comparison with his own counter-grip; but now he suspected, nay felt, the nearness of another and a stronger hand.
"Answer, man," he cried, with a scarcely perceptible tremor in his voice, "before I force you! Why did you wait?"
"I went back," said Pound slowly, slipping his hand beneath his coat, and comfortably grasping the haft of his sheath-knife, "to report progress."
"To whom?"
"To—your wife!"
"What!"
"Your wife!"
"You are lying, my man," said Miles, with a forced laugh. "She never came to England."
"She didn't, didn't she? Why, of course you ought to know best, even if you don't; but if you asked me, I should say maybe she isn't a hundred miles from you at this very instant!"
"Speak that lie again," cried Miles, his low voice now fairly quivering with passion and terror, "and I strike you dead where you stand! She is in Australia, and you know it!"
Jem Pound stepped two paces backward, and answered in a loud, harsh tone:
"You fool! she is here!"
Miles stepped forward as if to carry out his threat; but even as he moved he heard a rustle at his side, and felt a light hand laid on his arm. He started, turned, and looked round. There, by his side—poverty-stricken almost to rags, yet dark and comely as the summer's night—stood the woman whom years ago he had made his wife!
A low voice full of tears whispered his name: "Ned, Ned!" and "Ned, Ned!" again and again.
He made no answer, but stood like a granite pillar, staring at her. She pressed his arm with one hand, and laid the other caressingly on his breast; and as she stood thus, gazing up through a mist into his stern, cold face, this topmost hand rested heavily upon him. To him it seemed like lead; until suddenly—did it press a bruise or a wound, that such a hideous spasm should cross his face? that he should shake off the woman so savagely?
By the merest accident, the touch of one woman had conjured the vision of another; he saw before him two, not one; two as opposite in their impressions on the senses as the flower and the weed; as separate in their associations as the angels of light and darkness.