LINGER AND DIE

by Neil Brooka

Part two (chapters three and four) of my steemit weekly(ish) serial

And for those who came in late, click here and check my blog to start from the start.

CHAPTER THREE - THE IMPRINT FLAW

"Mr Frederick Moore." Tulip motioned to the corpse of what had once been a man. He followed Mary Draper's eyes around the murky half-sunk cellar morgue, up the side of the rust coloured concrete slab, to finally rest upon the grey corpse that lay there. Although her gaze seemed to have locked upon the cloudy eyes of the docker, Mary failed to react in the way Tulip would have liked. Her stare was almost as dead as the one coming up from the slab.

"Do you know this man?" fumed the chief constable. “Does the name not ring any bells?” he crossed his arms and began to pace like a caged animal before her. “Mrs Umphelby insisted upon informing me of your abject distress when the death of your son had been confirmed. I saw the grief first hand and I am no fool. So wouldn't you agree it’s a mite bit strange that, while you remember your son, you do not remember this man seen in your own company at the docks on the day before last? Would you agree it seems a bit of a contradiction?”

Silence followed as Mary, still staring at the corpse, brought a handkerchief to her nose. She tried to remind herself that it had been she who had wanted to give herself up in the first place, but something about Tulip's air of arrogant authority had acted in repelling her from that original intention to hand herself in. From the moment she had recognized the docker's body on the slab it was almost as if the decision had been made. The decision to fight.

"Miss Doe, please believe me when I suggest that you're only doing yourself a mischief by maintaining this charade." Tulip opened the heavy iron door leading from the simple morgue. “Come this way if you please.”

Emerging from the gloom of the small out-building, Tulip led Mary across a lawn into a weather-board building she assumed to be the police office. To her left, the other government buildings looked directly down upon the modest docks of the river Yarra curving away to meet the ocean of Port Phillip Bay. It was not far from here that she had met the docker to secure her and her son's fictitious place aboard the Valhalla. Reflecting inwardly upon the mental tattoo of his waterlogged body, she felt no remorse or guilt of what had become of him. The docker had deserved it with all his corrupt little soul.

Before long Mary found herself inside a small office, apparently belonging to Wright. It was a simple room consisting of a moderately neat desk, a couple of uncomfortable looking chairs and a small window opening back into a garden. While Mary stood, half deciding what she should do with herself, Tulip crouched before a small single lock safe. From this he withdrew a hefty canvas bag and what looked to be a small velvet cloth.

"Before me I have some of the belongings found on the body of Mr Moore when he was fished from the shores of Sandridge – not long after your own appearance." Tulip waved his hand over the bag like a magician. After meeting Mary's eyes for what had seemed like an age, finally and with much showmanship, he proceeded to place each gold sovereign, one by one, upon the leather inset surface of the desk. One by one for all fifteen. “Look familiar?” he said, stepping back to admire the shining matrix of uniform sovereigns. “Upon searching Mr Moore's exceedingly humble residence we found a couple of their kin,” he added. “Then there was the old chap who found your body; I suspected he might have taken a souvenir and I was correct. Your last meal ticket nicked.” The final coin hit the table.

Beneath the fabric of Mary’s dress the rest of the sovereigns burned cold against her thigh.

Just now the door that Tulip had closed behind them sucked back to reveal a portly man wearing small round spectacles, a top-hat and a tightly bound cravat beneath his high collared, ill-fitting jacket. Despite the poor tailoring the little man bore himself with pompous entitlement before Tulip and Mary. He had an air about him of someone in charge of great things beyond any ordinary man’s comprehension.

"Please let me introduce Mr Newcombe of the W.F.A Rucker savings bank from across the way."

"Good day, Miss," said Mr Newcombe, removing his hat.

"Don't be too polite, Mr Newcombe. If I am correct, this lady ... well, we'll get to that later, shall we?"

Mr Newcombe adjusted his cravat, ignoring Tulip for the gold upon the desk.

"These two small half-sovereigns were found within the poor man's pockets." Tulip sucked his teeth with mock-awkward rhetoric. “Around his neck was this.” Allowing himself to enjoy the renewed snap of interest upon Newcomb's face, he dropped the canvas bag upon the coins with a thunk. “It seems he had managed to tear a hole in the bag, but failed to empty the contents soon enough.” Tulip turned to Mary. “The man was drowned, Miss Doe, and I think you know something of it.”

But Newcombe seemed to have not paid much attention to this last address. Instead he scuttled forward like a cockroach to examine the coins before him.

"Have a look at the imprint, Mr Newcombe, and tell me what you make of it." Tulip's gaze remained squarely upon Mary.

Newcombe already had one of the sovereigns before his quivering eye, while the other hand flailed about in his leather satchel. "Very good sir. I brought the pattern book like you said," he murmured, still failing to retrieve the thing. “Shouldn't take too long to fathom, sir – ah, here it is.” He placed it on the table without so much as a glance at the picture-frame sized book.

Tulip snapped up the volume while Newcombe fingered the coin lustily. For a time the two men became absorbed. The silence was only punctuated by an occasional golden reflection of the coin whipping about the room, and the steady lapping of pages, as Tulip scanned the book.

"The date is marked as 1824," Newcombe finally said, “but it all looks in order to me, sir.”

"Now, now, Mr Newcombe, let me help you out." Tulip produced a similar coin from his own deep corduroy pocket. Jamming it between the inner spine of the open book, he said: “Here is a coin of the same issue I happen to have had access to. Now hold them up next to each other, sir, paying attention to the number of olive leaves in the laurel wreath.” Tulip handed over the book with the coin still wedged between the open pages.

From where she was standing, Mary could see that each page consisted of two plates illustrating a number of coin designs. Newcombe took the new sovereign, comparing each between a thumb and forefinger, twisting them this way and that, clearly not quite sure of the differences he was expected to find.

"You will note, Mr Newcombe, that there are thirteen leaves upon the head of our friend George, and ten upon these other coins. And look: half of the back of his head seems to have been rendered particularly carelessly."

Seeing that the golden reflections had stuck Newcombe's attention fast, Mary turned to the window, but found it barred. Her expression hardened as the two men picked her world apart. She turned back and her dress followed, the coins sewn into the lining, briefly holding sway over inertia.

"And that's not all, sir. Why these sovereigns are full of flaws and the quality isn't much to go by neither." Newcombe scratched his chin.

"Thank you, Mr Newcombe. This is the conclusion I, too, have arrived at. I think you will find it obvious which of the coins are the forgeries. Now to the real question: to whom did the gold in these forgeries belong?"

"Well you've got them all together here sir. It shouldn't be too hard to trace. We have their weight and might be able to –"

"Here is what I think happened," interrupted Tulip. “You have happened upon,” he turned toward Mary, “or endeavoured upon some large score of ill gotten gains. How this has come about is yet to be determined, but I'm sure in time the victims will step forward and the story will unravel. Either way, you have this wealth with no apparent means to fence –” Tulip checked himself “– but I digress –”

All three in the room jumped as the yapping commenced for a second time.

"SHUT UP, YOU MUTTLEY SHITE," echoed a shout from somewhere outside. The barking stopped.

"Latrobe, our new superintendent, has had his dog sent in advance with his luggage. He gets lonely during his master’s absence, you see," Tulip explained to Newcombe.

"Has a busy master," Newcombe replied with a portentous chuckle.

Tulip adjusted his waistcoat, nodded to himself as if having found some lost thread, took a deep breath and turned upon Mary. His expression darkened.

"You hear of a ship coming into port, bound for London. In your haste and failure to consider the facts, you pay off a docker at our modest immigration house to take you out to the Valhalla with the intention of bribing your way to London."

Newcombe stepped back from Mary, a look of shock upon his face.

"Of course you couldn't have know it was, in actual fact, a convict transport incognito with some of the hardest criminals from Van Diemen's Land on route to Norfolk Island. So in a way you have dodged a bullet, ma'am, but I digress. Some altercation occurs on the route between here and there, and our good Mr Moore finds himself in the situation that many such turning criminals find themselves in. It is one that transforms good men into thieves and vigilantes into villains. What could possibly be the moral complications, he thinks to himself, of ripping off a criminal. And from a woman and child, how easily, could it not be carried out?"

Mary could see it all in her head as he said it. She could hear the lapping of the waves against the sides of the boat and see the far off lights of the Valhalla. The docker had stopped rowing not far from shore.

"He managed to secure your wallet around his neck when it looks as if you, or your late son, have attacked the man and in the following scene all three ended up in the water."

Mary clutched at her dress as the memories surfaced. Brendan had pleaded with her to remove it as the water dragged its folds around them. Beneath, in the freezing pitch she imagined the docker struggling to remove the sack that would have gouged a line upon the back of his neck from its weight. She imagined her golden hope exploding down into the darkness when the bag had ripped, from his panicked throes of death. She could still hear her son pleading,I can't hold on to you. Your dress is too heavy. Had she tried as hard as she might to remove it?

"We have yet to find your boat. Maybe it overturned and sank. More likely it was pilfered – but all in good time, Miss Doe."

While this was all being said, Newcombe had taken to examining the rest of the forgeries in the new light of the facts.

"Now, to the chief question of your identity and of the circumstances in which these Sovereigns have come into being. But we will get to the bottom of that, Miss Doe, in good time I am sure."

"Could be Wolfram," offered Newcombe, “a by-product of tin as a matter of fact. Rare around here, it’s true, but the same weight as gold. I should very much like to drill a sample if you wouldn’t mind.”

Now was the time to confess. She could reveal her identity to both Tulip and herself and be done with it all at the end of a noose.

"Sir?"

A young spotty faced man had appeared at the door while Tulip continued to bore his eyes into Mary, but the boy persisted.

"We have caught one of'em, sir."

"What?" snapped Tulip.

"He was going to cut Henry Onion's throat sir, but we got him."

"Henry and Pete Onions," murmured Tulip, remembering the men who had claimed that the Valhalla had been overrun by her convict cargo and that natives had shot this McGee chap upon the beach. “You mean to say they've caught one of the natives responsible?”

"No sir, one of the convicts that landed the longboat from the Valhalla; followed Henry and Pete with the intention of offing them before they could talk."

"It matters not," said Tulip. “Those stockmen came to me as soon as they arrived in Melbourne just this morning. He'd have been late to the ball either way. It's funny because I didn't half believe what those lads told me at all. I haven’t yet heard from this Captain who was supposed to have landed at Williamstown. Thought the Onions boys might be saving face in having been beat by the blackskins. I'd like very much to hear of this directly. It means the Valhalla has indeed been lost.” He turned to Mary. “Miss Doe, I regret to inform you that our business must wait, but in the meantime you shall be moving to residences closer.” Tulip sat down at his desk and began composing a letter. “Have Miss Doe's belongings relocated to The Shakespeare Hotel making sure a man is stationed outside her room at all times. We do not yet know what this woman may be capable of, and I refuse to leave it to chance.”

Mr Newcombe cleared his throat but Tulip cut him short to enquire if he would stand witness in relation to the forgeries. As the two of them talked about the particulars, Mary's mind raced through the possibilities of escape.

"I regret to inform you, Miss Doe, that you are henceforth under house arrest."

Mary came to her senses as Tulip grabbed a hold of her arm and made for the threshold. Presently there came a commotion from the corridor beyond, and Latrobe’s dog began barking again.

"– I'm telling you I'll cooperate Sir, but I must make it clear that it was Caesar’s bullet that killed him," came the roughed up Irish voice of Johnny from the corridor.

"Wait here," Tulip snapped, before locking the office door behind him.

Mary looked about the room and a surge of adrenalin hit her in the chest as she realized that if any time was ripe for escape it was this.

"Henry told me it was a native man," came Tulip's voice beyond.

It looked as if the window bars where attached to the wooden frame instead of the surrounding stone walls. If she could only find something with enough weight to shatter the wooden beams – but first she would have to block the door.

"Henry wouldn't know a Scott for an Irishman and I am telling you this one was West Indian."

"Is this the only man you landed with? Surely there were others?"

"Just me and him. Everyone else was too busy getting drunk. They’re headed to New Zealand."

"New Zealand? Hah! The poor devils. Why, Downing street is fixing to have her in the folds of the empire before long."

Mary was just about to silently slide a door jam underneath the frame when she heard the words she'd been dreading since her capture.

"Sir, a Mr Hutton to see you?"

Mr Hutton. Could it be? Having forgotten her escape Mary listened by the door, attempting to slow her breathing so as to hear it all. Hutton's voice had triggered bad memories. Her hand crept down to where the oval shape lay sewn into her dress alongside the remaining sovereigns.

"Mr Hutton? To what pleasure do I owe?" came Tulip's voice. “And shut that damned dog up, Watkins ...”

"A matter of delicate urgency if you please."

A memory came to her senses of Mr Hutton's breath as a mixture of alcohol and sour milk. An image of his cruel beak of a mouth formed with the words heard from behind the door.

"I'm sorry, Mr Hutton, but matters of delicacy must be put on hold at this time. Everything heavy is mizzling down at once, so I beg of you," Tulip growled.

"Very well, very well, Mr Tulip. I'll be in town of the week on my own business, but I must insist that I see you tomorrow."

"The morrow is fine."

The door opened and Mary's skin prickled, but there was only Tulip. Hutton was nowhere to be seen.

"Miss Doe, this way if you please," said the chief constable.

---

The intense heat of the day seemed to act as a vacuum to suck them from the cool government buildings. It was one of those days in which the wind was not quite sure of its direction, putting everyone on the streets in a bad mood. It didn't take long for Mary to figure out where Tulip was taking her. He said nothing as they walked past the stocks, together down toward the Yarra. As they walked Tulip kept slipping back a pace, his own gaze zoning out to her peripheral, his expression maintaining a curious repressed amusement in reaction to her own ticked off glances. It was to the docks they were headed – down past the immigration hut.

Tulip watched her with the vigilance of a hunter on the lookout for the slightest sign of recognition. They wove their way around the crates as sprightly men unloaded their wares from the barges that had made their way from Williamstown. Occasionally the odd sailor would look up, leer at Mary and wink to Tulip as he nudged her forward from behind. A few times Mary stopped altogether in a weak kind of protest hidden behind an allowance for him to pass. At last Tulip finally rounded upon her, apparently satisfied, and motioned for them to turn back up towards the town. It was a short walk to The Shakespeare Hotel, which lay directly opposite the government buildings.

"Few-ee, would you look at that?"

Mary heard the cheekily tense man say the words beneath his breath, unseen in an alcove beside the lobby of The Shakespeare Hotel. His mate across the pool table ducked his head and aimed his shot.

"Under guard ... What dy'a recon? A bagdad hanger-on?" the voice added, using the semi-acceptable slang for a whore.

His friend, who did not look in the slightest bit amused under the darks of his eyes, re-aligned the shot and said nothing. It did not stop him glancing, however, at Mary when the ball found its home.

Tulip stood behind her while they waited for the clerk to appear.

"A nymph of the pave?"

"Shut it," said his friend as he drove the pool-cue home between his fingers for another successful shot.

The two men possessed a strange kind of neatness in their working class attire as they stood toward the end of the game. They might have been dockers themselves weren't it for their spotless cream britches and virginal leather lace-ups. Their work shirts were spotless and their beards thick and well groomed. The more well mannered of the two surveyed the situation with a hawk-like intensity. There was something about the look of Tulip's female prisoner that appealed to him enough to defend her from his friend's lurid remarks.

"What's her story?" he said through the corner of his mouth.

"Morgan’s a'bit peaked, eh?" his friend mocked. “Short reckons they found her washed up upon the beach ... reckons she can't remember anything, but they reckon she murdered –”

"Excuse me," Mary spat, flinching over her shoulder toward the two men.

Tulip smirked and the man called Morgan looked to have become suddenly concerned with what was going on upon the pool table. The wolfish yet strangely attractive lady turn on them once more.

"I'm right here you sewer rats."

"Wellyou've found your voice, haven't you," said Tulip, barely suppressing a guffaw.

But Mary's face had already fallen with the guilt of her outburst, for behind her, in the door of The Shakespeare Hotel, stood none other than Mrs Umphelby.

"Wouldn't you know it – just a few hours ago she was muttering and weak. It must be a miracle, don't you think?" she rounded on Mary before spitting upon the ground. “Not even a thank you for my hospitality?”

"Thank you Mrs Umphelby, I –" was all she could manage without meeting the woman's eyes.

"Good riddance." Umphelby spat on the ground again. “Wouldn't have had her at mine if I was paid – after hearing the news ... Just though I'd pass by to see the two face cow one last time before she hangs.” Umphelby glared about at the apparently inferior establishment.

Tulip tugged at a non-existent lock as he watched her leave, skirts in her fists, face as red as hellfire.

"Cor, get out of it Morgs."

"What?"

"What's it, you reckon, about criminals that makes them more attractive?"

"Eh?"

By the time the clerk had appeared, Tulip's guard – who was to be entrusted with Mary's secure charge – had also materialized. The three of them were now having a hushed conversation, presumably of her predicament, when finally the clerk scuttled back behind his reception desk, satisfied with whatever deal had been reached. Much to Mary's disturbance Tulip left on his own shortly thereafter.

The guard approached her, ringing his hands as if he'd just been served the most delicious treat. He was a balding, well tanned man with a wide oily face slapped below two block-like eyebrows. He stopped before her, swallowed deeply and said:

"Tulip was always the lady's man. You're lucky, you are. Treats'is women prisoners with respect, he does."

Mary was tempted to run. It seemed like the perfect circumstance for an escape, yet the consequences of capture, she felt, might become a little too personal – the way the man was staring at her. A ladies man this one was not, and as he directed her before him up the steep stair, the backs of her legs became suddenly self-aware as her charge allowed her to ascend enough steps above to get a good eye upon her ankles. When she reached the landing the guard pushed his way forward and worked the key into the lock. He glanced at her for a beat before opening the door.

"Get in there, darling. No trouble from you and everything will be fine and I'm sure if trouble does show up –"

Mary felt his fingers finding their way to her spine as he pushed her into the room.

"– we can find a way of dealing with it." His eyebrows danced with a final grin before the door closed behind her.

Mary's own wolfish gaze turned stiffly about her new surroundings. Presently a new pair of boots made their presence known upon the landing, followed by a few low acknowledging grunts. She stopped moving to listen. As far as she could tell, her new captor had made himself at home by the stair. The other pair of boots clumped past her door and she heard the scratchings of a lock in that door. Then silence.

For a time Mary paced about the four whitewashed walls. Apart for a narrow single bed and a picture-frame window, the room was absolutely featureless. Crossing her arms and taking caution not to tread too heavily, she inspected the window latch and its fixings as if examining a dangerous animal. Again, the consequences of her guards thinly veiled threats against her propriety stood chiefly upon consequence. She sat upon the bed. The man next door had not made a sound since entering his own room so she reasoned that the walls were thick enough at least to hide a domestic level of noise.

She unlatched the window, which delicately opened inwards like a cupboard. Hot air gushed into the room but she left it open just the same. The drop was much too high and there was nothing for footholds in sight. She sat back down upon the bed, her hands unconsciously finding their way into the sovereign-lined hems of her dress.

Now that she had time to think, her mind drifted to Mr Hutton. Had he found out about the gold, or did he simply wish to ask her why she had fled the station and cracked his heart? The coins were not his to fret over just the same and she was done with him. It was just as good as slavery – the deal he had over her. She had been completely at his mercy.

Her hands came up to her collar, twisting upon a small button. She tore it off, holding it in the light cast by the open window. It read ‘Co HUTTON’. It meant that she was his property – a working convict, nothing more than a glorified slave. The button had been facing in, but now that she had the chance she tossed it hard from the window. What did one less button mean now?

‘Captain’ Hutton, whose greedy claws had felt their way around the new pastures of the southern districts of New South Wales. She wondered if he wanted his property back. He himself had told her of his contempt for the law of the colony – as if it might ease her opinions of him. Hutton had been a weak man, a weak lover and easily manipulated. She would escape or hang rather than share in what was left of her spoils in another failed bribe for his silence.

"Looks like you're in a bit of a pickle."

Mary's pupils contracted. She jumped toward the window, searching out the teasing voice that had read her mind. But there wasn't so much as a soul upon the sun-baked street.

"Your day could end badly –"

She jumped her head against the top of the frame.

"– if the royal plod finds out of your fraternizations."

Turning to her left, her eyes adjusted to the light and she saw the head of the man called Morgan – one of the men who had been playing pool downstairs – poking from the window. It had been him who had entered the adjacent room.

"Come to think of it I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Every one of em's been a convict in this town. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. Even Chief Constable Tulip if needs know. Show them some coin and they'll lend a clogged ear. Not Tulip though, he's solid." Morgan stared back at her, a fat grin broadening across his face.

"Mr Tulip was a convict?" she said without thinking.

"Aye he was," said her new friend, the bags under his eyes swelling with pleasure to be at the helm of dangerous gossip. “Got transport when he was in his thirties, I believe, and worked his way up in Diemen’s Land.”

Mary was impressed. He had the criminal propriety not to quiz her upon her position, and the consideration to provide information.

"You know what he did?" she asked.

"I've got good enough of a picture. See Tulip loves to tell stories, he loves to drink and he loves women. And I know all the women."

"You're a ponce, are you?" she smiled into the glare of his face.

"Hey, now look here –"

Mary shaded her eyes and shrugged her shoulders as if it were none of her concern either way.

"– How dare ya," Morgan said, looking down to the street for some pantomime support.

He was the kind of man you couldn’t help but like. Mary recognized it as a dangerous attribute in the context of her predicament, but all the same. Morgan's head vanished from the window at the end of this last outburst, and after a minute Mary was beginning to wonder if she had indeed hurt his feelings.

"Tea?"

His head reappeared and before she could decline he was handing over a steaming earthen mug full of tea. It was neither the temperature, not the settings to be indulging, but she hadn't the heart to disappoint him.

"I think I've just about forgiven you for your slip of the tongue," he said, handing over a fresh green apple to seal the tribute.

"Well thank god for that," said Mary. Was there something to her son in his young face?

"I like you."

"You think I'd make you a lot of money do you?" she said through a mouthful of apple.

"That's the last chance I'm giving you see?"

Mary shrugged.

"Or else you'll slap me around? Make me bend the knee and unbuckle the –"

"Stop it – please. I swear I'm being honest with you. I want nothing in it, or mean nothing by it other than I like you. You're my kind of girl is all."

"I could be your mother." It might have been true, if she'd have been a obscenely young mother. She guessed he was about twenty-five, or so, but he seemed wise and world weary enough still to take caution with.

"Never had a mother," he said.

"Well don't be taking it out on me."

"I ... you've got me mistaken. I want to help you, to make your acquaintance, and I mean nothing lecherous or crawling by it. That's just how it is."

He took a pipe from his pocket, still squinting at her through one scrunched eye, and lit a match.

"Give us a puff," she said, trying for a mother's tone. “Now what was it Mr Tulip was in for?”

"I'll tell you – if you tell yours. I heard you was a forger. That’s pretty impressive for a lady," he handed over the smoldering pipe, “but I don't think this is the place to discuss it. A bit touch and go and it might leave you self-incriminating. I’d rather we find a safer place to talk – at liberty.” These last two words were said with emphasis.

"I'm listening."

CHAPTER FOUR - THE LONG JOHN SPRINT

"Easy does it, that's right. Come on now."

Johnny's head snapped back as constable Ryan gave him one last explosive shove onto the lawn.

The Melbourne police lock-up was a modest affair and Johnny now found himself inside the yard usually reserved for drunkards to walk off their hangovers. Today, however, most of the small space was occupied by a large pile of what looked to be reclaimed blue-stone demolition. Upon spotting the towering pile a lump grew in Johnny's throat. It was almost as tall as he was and he imagined that if any of it should collapse he would probably have his legs crushed.

"Now see that pile of masonry?" said Ryan in his sleazy Liverpool drawl, “I thought the superintendent's garden might need something a little more. Do you think you could turn that there pile of bluestone into a lovely little garden path? What'ya reckon it would take?”

"Well," replied Johnny, “you'd need some big stones for the skirting I suppose and some paving for the footpath.”

"Try again'ya Irish cunt."

"Some gravel?"

"You ought to count yourself lucky, John. It's a rare occasion that breaking stones is serving a purpose other than your own good."

"Right, sir."

"Right ... That's right."

"Duration?" Johnny said automatically. Each guard had his own routine for putting convicts through their paces. Some were kind and let you break at will. Others less so.

"Until it's done of course. Until Latrobe has'is garden path."

"Right, sir," said Johnny, allowing himself a flash of a violent fantasy toward Ryan. He had not been fed since arriving and already had a slight tremor to his arm as he took up the hammer over his head.

"Funny thing, a stone. Hard and heavy ... strong, yet brittle ... breaks in an instant. Unpredictable in behaviour ... an annoyance. This country is full of'em," Ryan began.

Johnny prepared himself for a dramatic monologue he'd heard a billion times from a billion different troopers, constables and bulls. Most of them just wanted to get on with the job, but some had a genuine chip on their shoulders. that usually had something to do with their contempt for their own level in the job and by extension, ego.

"You know they found the yellow-belly skin you shed?" said Ryan, referring to the yellow colours of a political prisoner Johnny had left upon the beach.

"Just like a snake – a filthy catholic snake. Are you ashamed to wear your skin?"

Johnny bit his tongue and smashed another stone.

"What's eating you, Jim?" came a voice from the stations back entrance leading into the small compound.

Johnny allowed himself to look up at the sound of another Irishman. He saw a strong boxer of a man, a thumb hooked lazily into his waste band, his elbow winging about as he came to a halt and rocked back on his heels. The man leered sceptically at Ryan.

"Got a nigger lover in my yard –" Ryan said, at the same time interrupted by vigorous yapping from Latrobe's dog over the way. “SHUT IT,” he bellowed, but it made no difference.

"Well it's time for the nigger lover's break. Break it up John," said his new ally. “Blacksmith will be here this arvo to put your mincers on.” He turned to Ryan. “Now Jimmy, how's about you come with me. Come on now, you know Tulip won't turn the cheek.”

"Tulip – you'd thinkhe was a catholic – with his inverted dress," said Ryan, shuffling toward the station house, his shift apparently over.

"First: Mr Tulip has been with more women that you've had hot dinners, and second, it'll be you that stands before the pillory stocks and it'll be Tulip and I raising bets for the first to knock out one of your beady little eyes."

"Nigger lover," murmured Ryan.

"Still, I suppose you're such a shortarse the pillory would probably hang you with its height." The Irishman turned upon Johnny. “Break's up you little fucker. Get back to work.”

A quarter-hour hence, Johnny's hammer was still smashing bluestone while the new guard read loudly fromThe Port Phillip Patriot as if it were the word of god. Every now and then he would pause at the conclusion of an article to cry: "what d'yeh think of that?" to which Johnny would reply, “all good, sir.” It was a routine he was used to – a round about way for a guard to keep track of a prisoners exhaustion.

"It true you did a Buckley a few years back?"

Doing a Buckley was prison talk for escaping into the bush to live off the land, as the famous William Buckley had done before, and although Johnnyhad tried to escape a number of times, he had never gotten very far at all.

The next hammer blow failed to land.

"Aye, sir."

"I don't believe it."

The hammering restarted.

"Johnny?"

"Aye, sir."

"Spend much time with the blacks?"

"I did learn one of their languages, sir," Johnny lied before he could stop himself.

"One? Don't they all speak the same gibberish?"

"No, sir. Different tribes for different areas have different tongues, you see?" He had learned this from other prisoners, but it seemed to be doing the trick in impressing the guard.

"Hah! Who'd have though the savages'd be so diverse?"

Johnny's head emerged from the pile of rocks.

"Ah, but they're still pathetic savages, sir. The first lot I came across thought I was a ghost of a neighbouring tribe. Nearly speared me through clean." This is what had happened to Buckley, almost verbatim, but Johnny was running out of material to forestall the impending request for a demonstration of the language he had supposedly learned.

"Did I say you could speak?" the guard snapped back.

"Sorry sir."

And so Johnny's hammering took up again, punctuated only by the occasional volley of barks over the wall from the superintendent’s mutt.

"You ever – taken one for a wife?"

The hammering stopped.

"Three, sir."

"Fuck me ..."

---

Something about the slow, rhythmic hammering, the low sunlight kissing the edge of the lock-up walls and the gentle spray of exploding rock, was having an alarmingly soporific effect upon the sleepy guard.

"Did they ... nah," he began before giving up on the thought.

He tried again.

"Was it ... SHUT UP, ROVER ..."

The barks stopped for only a few seconds.

"Fuck it, Johnny," he finally said, throwingThe Patriot to the ground, “you know what I'm trying to say, damn it.” There was no hammering, nor barking now. He could actually hear the crickets. “Johnny?”

As the guard approached the limb of the pile he saw Johnny kneeling awkwardly by a hole in the base of the wall. Bright light shone through where the high walls blocked out most of its glare. Instinctively the guard brought his rifle to bare, jabbing the barrel against Johnny's shoulder, which moved strangely – before falling apart into a cloud of dust, steel and wood. Two hammers had been balanced one upon the other, in an asymmetric T, with Johnny's clothes draped over them scarecrow style.

"Good lord have mercy," the guard said, for a moment suspecting witchcraft. He glanced back down to the hole in the wall – the one Johnny had actually been hammering through all along – obscured by the tall pile.

"JOHNNY!"

Ryan watched his comrade sprint through the small Police office lobby and listened with nonchalance at the guard's cries vanishing into the hot afternoon.

"Constable Baker, left his post at 1640," he murmured to himself, dipping his nib and adding the new entry to the log. After having blotted out the excess ink, Ryan looked up at his reflection in the beat up old clock that stood facing him and allowed his features to morph into hurt innocence. “I swear he was drunk, gov,” he said. “Accused you of being inverted ... After caught buggering with the prisoner ...” He trailed off into thought. Ryan licked his lips, imagining the two Irishmen at it over the stone pile.

---

"Here girl. That's right. Who's a good girl?" Johnny had said to the bitch, scooping her up against his stinking long-johns much to the dog's delight. If Johnny was honest with himself the success of the escape had come to him as a genuine surprise. But now that everything seemed to have worked he had a strange feeling of somehow being invincible.

As if in some semi-controllable dream, he had just kept on hammering that hole in the wall, so that when he spotted the sleek-black Jack Russell – the superintendent’s loyal companion – scrabbling against the cord around her little glistening black neck, he saw a split second opportunity to release another pair of wings from their shackles. It had seemed like the right thing to do.

It was only after the dog had lovingly nestled into his undergarments that he realized the possible value of the thing. Although, if he dared think of it deeply enough (he did not), Latrobe having sent the mutt before him, probably would not be too affected to meet any hostage-wise demands Johnny might have. Still, it did have a certain kind of poetic weight and so he ran with it, both figuratively and literally.

"What the – whoa there."

"I'm taking your fucken pony."

The Shepard – if that's what he was – found the pistol his hand had been fanning for seemed to have appeared in another man's grip; a hand attached to a crazed Irishman wearing nothing but a pair of long johns, having a small black Jack Russell of some kind tucked firmly to his hip.

Johnny twitched his hand threateningly to the now grinning shepherd.

"Easy there lad. Is that your girlfriend?" The shepard grinned at the equally amused mutt.

"No," said Johnny, “she's my hostage.”

They were the last words the shepherd heard as his own pistol came down hard upon his jaw, followed by a swift knee to meet him in the fall.

---

Early the next morning a great orange sun cast long wobbling shadows behind the covered dray-cart caravan as it rattled along the track. It was a western road leading from the town of Geelong directly to Melbourne. Completely unaware of the dramas of the escape the previous night, a man sat behind his horses singing merrily to himself with the diction of an elderly thespian. Pausing, he stretched and yawned, revealing a subtle tattoo upon his forearm – of a snake with the head of a dingo. Rolling down his sleeves and shuddering in the morning air he took up with his singing once more:

Come all the gallant bushrangers who gallop o'er the plains

Refuse to live in slavery, or wear the convict chains

Attention pay to what I say, and value if I do

For I will relate the matchless tale of bold Jack Donohue.

"Shut it fore, there," screeched a witch of a voice from within the dray.

The old thespian's contemptuous eyebrow drew the rest of his sour features over his shoulder to squint upon the quivering hessian wall. Shuddering slightly from the cold of the morning and with the knowledge of what lay behind the curtain, he took off upon his little song again, this time violently spitting the consonants in a whisper of utter resentment.

Now when Donohue made his escape, to the bush he went straight way

The squatters they were all afraid to travel by night and by day

And every day in the newspapers, they brought out something new

Concerning that bold bushranger they called Jack Donohue

Now one day as he was riding the mountainside alone

The hairs stood up on the back of his neck. Was that a rider he could see against the sun? He tried shielding his eyes. The song took on an entirely new meaning.

Not thinking that the pains of death would overtake him soon

The rider's shadow danced before him.

Johnny, with his horribly deformed long johns looking as if he was halfway through shedding his skin, wobbled in his harness before the thespian. He had spent the night curled up with the contented little hound in a makeshift hut of the kind the blackskins used. Having nothing but the saddle and a thick blanket of ferns to stand him against the cold, he had been thankful in his decision to take the dog. She had given him comfort, both in mind and body.

"Good afternoon sir," Johnny barked with the panicked agitation of a homeless man (for that is what he now was).

"I ... G-Good day to you sir," replied the elderly thespian.

"I was wondering if you might help me out a touch," began Johnny, attempting to enliven his manners before this well spoken man.

"Are you a bushranger sir?"

"Do I look like one?" Johnny looked at himself and then down to his new doggy friend, who sat panting with her legs splayed out in the dust as happy as she could be for a rest.

"No sir. No sir, you don't. It's just these roads are crawling ... But would you ... " The old man glanced over his shoulder into the caravan's interior. “Would it be too much trouble for you to keep your voice down sir? It is just, my wife – I've been in trouble enough with the Mrs,” he grimaced, “but of course I'd be happy to help you in any way I might. Are you in trouble?”

"No," Johnny snapped before he could stop himself.

"Oh ... Please I beg of you sir, but we have no money."

"It's not money I'm after – "

"I have some opium and some spirits, sir."

"Don't drink."

"What?"

The two men sat before one another for a moment while Johnny did his best to calm his sleep deprived features.

"All I ask for is a sturdy change of clothes and a report of the state of the road to Portland." Johnny mustered all the pathos he could in his condition.

"Oh, no, no, no, sir, there's a fire that way sir, a terrific fire you see. After the drought they've been battling and the lack of development – a terrible blow." The words came pouring out of the old man's mouth mixed with a strange kind of desperation; as if something had occurred to him, or caught his fancy enough to head Johnny off.

"It's not on the wind," said Johnny, referring to the lack of smoke.

" – And bandits, sir. Why, I thought you were one of them. This part of the country is in such an alarming state, crawling with brigands and thugs. Trust me Mr, you don't want to go that way. I've just come from Geelong where the smoke’s almost unbearable."

"I'm sure I can take a safe coastal route."

"On your own life be it," the old man said, slapping his knee and turning to his unseen wife as if Johnny were a lost cause.

"What's you're line of business?" Johnny began, looking to steer the conversation back to his needs.

"Why the theatre, of course. Can't you tell by my diction and these set of contrivances?" He pointed out some set pieces strapped to the side of the dray. “I've just come from a tour of the great southern districts, and in fact, sir, your destination was the beginnings of my run. Mrs Bird and I started in Portland and have been working our way around the coast for the past year.”

"And you're certain the way is blocked?" said Johnny to Mr Bird.

"For the time being ...I wouldn't risk it."

Riding forward, Johnny reached out a greasy hand to introduce himself as one Douglas O’Connell and complimented Mr Bird on his fine looking establishment in tow.

"And I'm guessing Melbourne's your next destination?" finished Johnny.

"Certainly, sir. I – not meaning to be too presumptuous, sir, but I don't suppose you'd probably want to go back that way, would you?"

Mr Bird had a very definite glint in his eye, so Johnny gave him a charming smile back.

"Thatis very presumptuous of you Mr Bird."

"Well then, can I ask what your business is, or was, or is going to be?" Bird crossed his arms and looked Johnny up and down.

"Just a station hand, Mr Bird. A simple labourer."

"At what run was that, to have left you nothing but your undergarments?"

"Got ambushed at our quamby by a pack of blackskins up north," Johnny improvised. “The dew damped our powder so we had to run.”

"Furtherest I've been is Wolfscrag. Nothing but quarts and dust up that way isn't it?" said Bird.

"Campaspe and Loddon have good enough runs to have it settled," Johnny replied, racking his mind and remembering an article the guard had read him fromThe Port Phillip Patriot.

"Is that so? So you're sure you'd not be convinced to head into Bearbrass Melbourne town then? It's just you have a gun and a dog for warning and come to think of it, I've an idea you could be of two uses to me and my wife."

Johnny had the distinct feeling an offer of refuge was being put forward. Mr Bird had a strange look set to his face. Something in between admiration and lust – either sinister and self-serving, or completely in the spirit of the moment.

"What would convince me?"

"Well – Aggie and I – that's Mrs Bird – are setting up shop at St. John's Tavern ... Have you heard of it?"

"Can't say I have."

"Well – I mean – and this is only if you'd be interested sir, but you're a well spoken lad and you have an interesting face and as I'm coming to the point ... Your dog."

Rover grinned up to Johnny like he was her god and saviour.

"What about her?"

"She's very handsome and well behaved, isn't she?"

"She is."

"You see," Mr Bird began, twisting his fingers about. “Aggie and I have been running over the same old material time and time again and if I have to utter another line of Shakespeare I shall lose my faculties. Don't get me wrong, Ilove Shakespeare. He is without doubt the most fabulous of play-writes, but –”

"You're a little worn out?" offered Johnny.

"Quite. Aggie and I used to have a little one just like –"

"Nigger," Johnny improvised. If he himself could have a new identity then Rover could be Nigger. “She's a right little princess too.”

"– Nigger, of course. Anyway, we used to do this little number – a small play calledThe Dog of Montarges. It's a melodrama of sorts, based on a chap named Macair."

"You can buy her if you want," said Johnny with a thought he regretted as soon as the words had escaped his mouth.

"I wouldn't dream of it. But don't you want to be involved? The pay is modest – you see we hire where we play. We could never afford to take actors on the road."

Johnny's heart sank. There was no way he could risk returning to Melbourne, but the cover was perfect. And work. And pay. A new beginning and no questions asked. He almost cried at the cruelty of it.

"On top of Nigger having the part of Dragon, you yourself might also see fit to play a part?" Mr Bird concluded the thought with a flourish.

"She's going to play a Dragon?"

"No, sir. Dragon is the name of the dog in the play. You see the dog's owner, Aubri, is murdered, while an innocent mute is given the blame due to him having in his possession some of the dead man's gold. It is of course then up to our cute little friend here to prove his innocence and to reek rabid vengeance upon his master's killer."

"I don't think she can do rabid vengeance."

"Oh, but you see that is the fun of it, sir. In actuality the villain is played by the dog's master – that would be you – and the rabid attack eventuates as his death by a thousand licks."

Johnny found himself suddenly in love with the idea. Performing in a play under Tulip's nose with a kidnapped superintendent’s dog. With a little talc applied liberally to little Nigger's coat as a disguise and the possibility of himself being in make-up ... "This role as the villain require me to be made-up?"

"Oh, would it be a problem? I'm afraid heis generally made up with many dark lines over heavy foundation."

But what if he was caught? He hadn’t killed anyone and he knew that there was a chance that his story would be so ridiculous and brazen that Tulip and the general public might see pity in his punishment. It was either that, or an uncertain future slogging it out under the hot Australian sun. In Melbourne he could have all the things he had missed out on as a youth spent in chains. Why not take his chances and run up a bill upon chance? "It won't be a problem. I think Nigger here might need some colour in her though. A black dog would not stand out as well against the backdrops you see. I think a bit of powder here and there would suit her up nicely – for the gas-lit hue of the melodrama. What you think?"

Mr Bird looked as if he was about to pop at the seams with the fun of it all.

"Like a bit of the old make up do we? I think you and I will get along just fine. Just fine indeed. What an adventure this will be."

Bird measured him up and down with the same queer look.

"We will make a thespian of you yet, O'Conell. You definitely have the flare."

"Flare it is," said Johnny with a flourish.

---

End of PART TWO.

If you liked it make sure to keep an eye on my blog, and check back next(ish) Sunday for PART THREE.

Neil.