The Shadow of Larose

I—Red Death.-1

I—Red Death.Who will deny that all men have their secrets, and that deep down in every one of us the mind is scarred somewhere with the memories of unforgotten but never-mentioned acts?

I know I have my secrets, and they must be heavier, too, than fall to the lot of most men, for I—have taken life.

Ten years ago I secretly killed two men. One I shot with a rifle and to the other I dealt out death in a different way. And I was never found out.

But I was no murderer, and I regret nothing, for their deaths were forced upon me, and they were bad men, and they both deserved to die. One himself had just violently taken life, and the other would have tortured me in a form of living death. He was a blackmailer.

But they are both long since forgotten now, these men who died, and the manner of their passing even has never become known.

One lies buried in an old-world garden near his home, and laughing children play and gambol now above his bones. His people never knew what had happened to him, but they were grateful that he did not return. He had brought unhappiness and tears to all around him, and his own blood feared and hated him as little children fear and hate the ogres of their dreams.

The other died upon the desert sands. I left him with a bullet in his brain and with his staring eyes upturned towards the sky. He died in great loneliness, this man, for it was I alone who saw his limbs grow still in death. There was no pomp nor ceremony about his burial either, and there was no stone placed over him to commemorate his sleep. His end was as it should have been—the ending of a stricken beast of prey, and he just died and was left unheeded where he'd drawn his last breath. The winds over the salt bush sang his requiem while the crows picked his bones clean.

I doubt if I could find the place now where I killed him, for his remains must have long since been covered over by the driven sands. But it can be only a few hundred yards at most off the Port Augusta track, for vengeance had followed swiftly, and he died very near to the scene of his own dark crime.

Well, no one can learn my secret now, and I have no fears. I am safe after all these years.

But I was not always safe. There were days of peril for me once and any moment. Then I might have been delivered to the law.

Following quickly upon this death upon the desert sands I fell under the suspicion of the police for a murder I had not done, and they moved heaven and earth to connect me with the crime. No one could have been in more fearful danger than I was then, for by evil fortune my tracks had crossed those of the very assassin they were looking for, and by blind chance they had stumbled on my trail.

No, no, it was not blind chance that led them to suspect me, indeed it was no chance at all. It followed inevitably upon the appearance of one man. It was Larose himself who picked up that trail. Gilbert Larose, the star of all the detectives of the great Commonwealth of Australia, the prince of all the trackers of crime. The man who never failed.

They brought Larose across from Sydney to succeed when all their searchings had been vain and almost from the first moment of his coming he suspected me.

He saw what to their blind eyes had been hidden and news came to me quickly that he had marked me down. Yes, he hovered over me as the hawk hovers over a sparrow in the grass, and nightly the scaffold loomed up to me in my dreams. I knew that he was shadowing me, but for a long time I could not tell which among my enemies was he. He waited on me with a dreadful patience, and was so certain and so sure. But he never did, after all, get the evidence that he wanted, and with all his genius he never learnt the secret that I had to hide. My love for Helen made me brave, and I met him always, with a face as calm and inscrutable as his own. I had so much to live for, if I were not found out.

But he was a just man, this Larose, with sympathy and great kindness of heart, and many times I longed to throw myself upon his mercy and tell him all. But my lips were sealed by my own folly, and I could disclose to him nothing of the things that he wanted, without incriminating myself shamefully in another way.

It was an act of madness when I took that money off the man I had shot, and I regretted it within the hour. It was done heedlessly upon the spur of the moment, but it put me in the wrong at once, and I could never right myself after that.

Ah! but he was puzzled, this great Larose, and although I shall always believe that his suspicions of me have never been quite dispelled, yet long before the end came be grew to like me and shield me too, in a way.

And he ought to have liked me, too. If only out of mere gratitude, for when he was completely at a loss I helped him to one of the greatest successes of his career. I added yet another leaf to the crown of laurel that he wears.

As I have said, it is ten years now since all these things happened, but Larose has not passed out of my life yet, and it is unlikely now that he ever will. We are good friends, he and I, and he always comes to see us when his work brings him to this State.

Yes, we are good friends, but still he often even now, regards me in an unusually thoughtful kind of way, and he seems to look searchingly too at my children sometimes, as if he were still wondering exactly what manner of man their father was.

Ah! well, the years pass on and time is not without its recompenses. I have suffered, but I have also rejoiced, and if I have plumbed once to the lowest depths of misery, surely I have climbed also to the greatest heights of joy.

I have possessed the woman of my desire. I have strained to my arms the woman that I love. Bodies and souls we have been one to one another, and I have lived to see my likeness in the faces of her children when they smile.

Yes, mine are happy days now. I am well-to-do and prosperous, and there are no shadows upon my life. But I have not forgotten my folly of those years ago, and as a Justice of the Peace, have always pity for those who from sudden temptation have fallen under the ban of the law.

I am not, and never was, a bad man, notwithstanding that I have taken life and for ever and ever shall have blood upon my hands.

Ten years ago, and I was just over three and twenty. I was alone in the world and was a clerk in the head office of the Bank of all Australia in Adelaide. For three years I had been in the thick of the fighting in the Great War, and upon my return home had never been able to quite throw off that feeling of restlessness, that for so many of us proved in the end to be the most lasting heritage of those dreadful days.

I was frittering my life away in the ordinary aimless and desultory manner of so many young fellows about the city. I just lived from day to day, and although I was not without certain ambitions, I yet lacked somehow the impulse to try to realise them by application and hard work. Instead, I was always lazily hoping for something that would lead me by a short cut to fortune.

I was interested in the sports of the day, played football occasionally, and went too often to the races. I was a good shot with the rifle, could ride well, and was a somewhat bored member of the chief dramatic society of the city.

Altogether, however, I was a rather gloomy and reserved young man, keeping myself to myself, and making few friends.

But there was one great dream of my life, one great romance that should have spurred me to much greater endeavor. I was madly in love with Helen McLaren.

I had never spoken to her, and in those days she did not even know of my existence, but for more than a year then I had regarded her as the most beautiful girl in the world. She was the only child of old Alexander McLaren, and her father was very rich. He was a retired pastoralist, and had a big home in North Adelaide. I rarely saw either of them except when they came into the bank, but there was often mention of them in the newspapers, for with the old man's wealth his doings were considered of sufficient interest to chronicle at all times.

Helen was really beautiful, in all the glory of young womanhood, and all that those could say who envied her was that her expression was sometimes unduly proud. She was just a year younger than I.

Well, so things were up to the very afternoon of that hot day in November, when I was on the eve of starting for my annual fortnight's holiday and then the avalanche swept into my life, bringing within forty-eight hours the dreadful incidence of crime and sudden death.

Fate came to me in the unromantic person of young Binks, of the Eastern Extension Cable Company. I almost knocked into him as I came down the bank steps exactly at half-past four.

His arms were full of parcels, and he scowled angrily until he realised who it was that had got in his way. Then his face broke into a friendly smile.

"Good-oh! Charlie," he said gleefully. "We've just met to say goodbye. I'm off to Northern Territory tomorrow. Going to be stationed at Darwin for two years. Only knew it last week."

"Darwin," I exclaimed enviously. "What a change from here!"

"Yes, old chap," he said, "it'll be A1. Lots of sport up there. Shooting and fishing—alligators and crocodiles,"—he winked his eye, "and beautiful young black gins. But look here," he went on, "come over to the Southern Cross and I'll stand you a drink; I've got to pick up some more parcels there."

"Now, Charlie," he said presently, "do you want to buy a motor bike? I've got one you can have dirt cheap."

"No," I said, shaking my head; "I've no money for motor bikes. My luck's been too bad at the races lately. I'm almost broke."

"Silly ass," he remarked reprovingly, "but, mind you, I'm almost giving this bike away. It's yours for a mere song. It's like this," he went on, "the bikes worth forty quid if it's worth a penny, but I had arranged to sell it to a chap at Mitcham for thirty. The beggar had agreed to that price, but at the last moment, this morning in fact, he rang up and said he would only give twenty! He knew I was going away to-morrow, and thought I should have to take anything he offered." Young Bink's face got very red. "But I told him off properly and hung up the receiver before he could think of any worse words than I had used, to say. I tell you, I'd rather give the bike away now than let that brute have it."

"A fiver's all I've got," I said solemnly, "and I'll throw in a couple of verses of God Save the King as well." I grinned, "You say you'll sell it for a mere song."

"Twenty pounds, my boy," he said firmly. "You shall have it for twenty pounds; if not, I'll let it rot until I am back in two years' time."

I shook my head. "I'm just off for my holiday," I said, "and I've barely twenty pounds to my name. I'm going for a tour on my push-bike and camping out all the time. That's all the holiday I can afford."

"Push bike!" he sneered. "Why don't you hire a pram at once? But, look here," he went on, "I'd like you to have the bike, and, what's more, you needn't pay me until it's convenient. You can send the money on whenever you like. The governor's come down handsome, and I'm pretty flush just now."

I hesitated. "Does the darn thing go?" I asked.

"Like the wind," he laughed. "You should see the way it rips down a good steep hill." He grabbed me by the arm. "Now you're coming up to my place at once to have a look at it."

"But I've no driving license," I protested, "and I shall have to register it and all that. It'll mean delay and more expense."

"Nonsense," he insisted. "I'll pass you over my license and you can run it in my name." He looked at me disgustedly. "Where's your pluck, man? You'll never get on in the world if you don't risk things. It's courage that wins every time." He pulled me towards the door. "Now, come on, you're going to have it. I'll take you home with me now. You help me with some of these parcels until I get a taxi," and three minutes later we were bowling along to where he lived.