Madame Midas. Hume Fergus

wish he would!’ muttered Villiers, fervently; then with an uneasy glance at Billy, who sat on the old man’s shoulder complacently ruffling his feathers, he went on: ‘I wish you’d screw that bird’s neck, Slivers; he’s too clever by half.’

      Slivers paid no attention to this, but, taking Billy off his shoulder, placed him on the floor, then turned to his visitor and looked at him fixedly with his bright eye in such a penetrating manner that Villiers felt it go through him like a gimlet.

      ‘I hate your wife,’ said Slivers, after a pause.

      ‘Why the deuce should you?’ retorted Villiers, sulkily. ‘You ain’t married to her.’

      ‘I wish I was,’ replied Slivers with a chuckle. ‘A fine woman, my good sir! Why, if I was married to her I wouldn’t sneak away whenever I saw her. I’d go up to the Pactolus claim and there I’d stay.’

      ‘It’s easy enough talking,’ retorted Villiers crossly, ‘but you don’t know what a fiend she is! Why do you hate her?’

      ‘Because I do,’ retorted Slivers. ‘I hate her; I hate McIntosh; the whole biling of them; they’ve got the Pactolus claim, and if they find the Devil’s Lead they’ll be millionaires.’

      ‘Well,’ said the other, quite unmoved, ‘all Ballarat knows that much.’

      ‘But I might have had it!’ shrieked Slivers, getting up in an excited manner, and stumping up and down the office. ‘I knew Curtis, McIntosh and the rest were making their pile, but I couldn’t find out where; and now they’re all dead but McIntosh, and the prize has slipped through my fingers, devil take them!’

      ‘Devil take them,’ echoed the cockatoo, who had climbed up again on the table, and was looking complacently at his master.

      ‘Why don’t you ruin your wife, you fool?’ said Slivers, turning vindictively on Villiers. ‘You ain’t going to let her have all the money while you are starving, are you?’

      ‘How the deuce am I to do that?’ asked Villiers, sulkily, relighting his cigar.

      ‘Get the whip hand of her,’ snarled Slivers, viciously; ‘find out if she’s in love, and threaten to divorce her if she doesn’t go halves.’

      ‘There’s no chance of her having any lovers,’ retorted Villiers; ‘she’s a piece of ice.’

      ‘Ice melts,’ replied Slivers, quickly. ‘Wait till “Mr Right” comes along, and then she’ll begin to regret being married to you, and then – ’

      ‘Well?’

      ‘You’ll have the game in your own hands,’ hissed the wicked old man, rubbing his hands. ‘Oh!’ he cried, spinning round on his wooden leg, ‘it’s a lovely idea. Wait till we meet “Mr Right”, just wait,’ and he dropped into his chair quite overcome by the state of excitement he had worked himself into.

      ‘If you’ve quite done with those gymnastics, my friend,’ said a soft voice near the door, ‘perhaps I may enter.’

      Both the inmates of the office looked up at this, and saw that two men were standing at the half-open door – one an extremely handsome young man of about thirty, dressed in a neat suit of blue serge, and wearing a large white wide-awake hat, with a bird’s-eye handkerchief twisted round it. His companion was short and heavily built, dressed somewhat the same, but with his black hat pulled down over his eyes.

      ‘Come in,’ growled Slivers, angrily, when he saw his visitors. ‘What the devil do you want?’

      ‘Work,’ said the young man, advancing to the table. ‘We are new arrivals in the country, and were told to come to you to get work.’

      ‘I don’t keep a factory,’ snarled Slivers, leaning forward.

      ‘I don’t think I would come to you if you did,’ retorted the stranger, coolly. ‘You would not be a pleasant master either to look at or to speak to.’

      Villiers laughed at this, and Slivers stared dumbfounded at being spoken to in such a manner.

      ‘Devil,’ broke in Billy, rapidly. ‘You’re a liar – devil.’

      ‘Those, I presume, are your master’s sentiments towards me,’ said the young man, bowing gravely to the bird. ‘But as soon as he recovers the use of his tongue, I trust he will tell us if we can get work or not.’

      Slivers was just going to snap out a refusal, when he caught sight of McIntosh’s letter on the table, and this recalled to his mind the conversation he had with Mr Villiers. Here was a young man handsome enough to make any woman fall in love with him, and who, moreover, had a clever tongue in his head. All Slivers’ animosity revived against Madame Midas as he thought of the Devil’s Lead, and he determined to use this young man as a tool to ruin her in the eyes of the world. With these thoughts in his mind, he drew a sheet of paper towards him, and dipping the rusty pen in the thick ink, prepared to question his visitors as to what they could do, with a view to sending them out to the Pactolus claim.

      ‘Names?’ he asked, grasping his pen firmly in his left hand.

      ‘Mine,’ said the stranger, bowing, ‘is Gaston Vandeloup, my friend’s Pierre Lemaire – both French.’

      Slivers scrawled this down in the series of black scratches, which did duty with him for writing.

      ‘Where do you come from?’ was his next question.

      ‘The story,’ said M. Vandeloup, with suavity, ‘is too long to repeat at present; but we came to-day from Melbourne.’

      ‘What kind of work can you do?’ asked Slivers, sharply.

      ‘Anything that turns up,’ retorted the Frenchman.

      ‘I was addressing your companion, sir; not you,’ snarled Slivers, turning viciously on him.

      ‘I have to answer for both,’ replied the young man, coolly, slipping one hand into his pocket and leaning up against the door in a negligent attitude, ‘my friend is dumb.’

      ‘Poor devil!’ said Slivers, harshly.

      ‘But,’ went on Vandeloup, sweetly, ‘his legs, arms, and eyes are all there.’

      Slivers glared at this fresh piece of impertinence, but said nothing. He wrote a letter to McIntosh, recommending him to take on the two men, and handed it to Vandeloup, who received it with a bow.

      ‘The price of your services, Monsieur?’ he asked.

      ‘Five bob,’ growled Slivers, holding out his one hand.

      Vandeloup pulled out two half-crowns and put them in the thin, claw-like fingers, which instantly closed on them.

      ‘It’s a mining place you’re going to,’ said Slivers, pocketing the money; ‘the Pactolus claim. There’s a pretty woman there. Have a drink?’

      Vandeloup declined, but his companion, with a grunt, pushed past him, and filling a tumbler with the whisky, drank it off. Slivers looked ruefully at the bottle, and then hastily put it away, in case Vandeloup should change his mind and have some.

      Vandeloup put on his hat and went to the door, out of which Pierre had already preceded him.

      ‘I trust, gentlemen,’ he said, with a graceful bow, ‘we shall meet again, and can then discuss the beauty of this lady to whom Mr Slivers alludes. I have no doubt he is a judge of beauty in others, though he is so incomplete himself.’

      He went out of the door, and then Slivers sprang up and rushed to Villiers.

      ‘Do you know who that is?’ he asked, in an excited manner, pulling his companion to the window.

      Villiers looked through the dusty panes, and saw the young Frenchman walking away, as handsome and gallant a man as he had ever seen, followed by the slouching figure of his friend.

      ‘Vandeloup,’ he said, turning to Slivers, who was trembling with excitement.

      ‘No, you fool,’ retorted the other, triumphantly.