BRITISH MYSTERIES - Fergus Hume Collection: 21 Thriller Novels in One Volume. Fergus Hume

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. That is “Mr Right”.’

      Chapter III.

       Madame Midas at Home

       Table of Contents

      Madame Midas was standing on the verandah of her cottage, staring far away into the distance, where she could see the tall chimney and huge mound of white earth which marked the whereabouts of the Pactolus claim. She was a tall voluptuous-looking woman of what is called a Junoesque type—decidedly plump, with firm white hands and well-formed feet. Her face was of a whitish tint, more like marble than flesh, and appeared as if modelled from the antique—with the straight Greek nose, high and smooth forehead, and full red mouth, with firmly-closed lips. She had dark and piercing eyes, with heavy arched eyebrows above them, and her hair, of a bluish-black hue, was drawn smoothly over the forehead, and coiled in thick wreaths at the top of her small, finely-formed head. Altogether a striking-looking woman, but with an absence of animation about her face, which had a calm, serene expression, effectually hiding any thoughts that might be passing in her mind, and which resembled nothing so much in its inscrutable look as the motionless calm which the old Egyptians gave to their sphinxes. She was dressed for coolness in a loose white dress, tied round her waist with a crimson scarf of Indian silk; and her beautifully modelled arms, bare to the elbow, and unadorned by any trinkets, were folded idly in front of her as she looked out at the landscape, which was mellowed and full of warmth under the bright yellow glare of the setting sun.

      The cottage—for it was nothing else—stood on a slight rise immediately in front of a dark wood of tall gum-trees, and there was a long row of them on the right, forming a shelter against the winds, as if the wood had thrown a protecting arm around the cottage, and wanted to draw it closer to its warm bosom. The country was of an undulating character, divided into fields by long rows of gorse hedges, all golden with blossoms, which gave out a faint, peach-like odour. Some of these meadows were yellow with corn—some a dull red with sorrel, others left in their natural condition of bright green grass—while here and there stood up, white and ghost-like, the stumps of old trees, the last remnants of the forests, which were slowly retreating before the axe of the settler. These fields, which had rather a harlequin aspect with their varied colours, all melted together in the far distance into an indescribable neutral tint, and ended in the dark haze of the bush, which grew over all the undulating hills. On the horizon, however, at intervals, a keen eye could see some tall tree