Sand on the Gumshoe: a century of Australian crime writing

‘I, of course, had them in a few seconds, and in a few more I was in the strongroom itself. I forgot to say that the moon had risen and was letting quite a lot of light into the bank. I had, however, brought a bit of candle with me from my room, and in the strongroom which was down some narrow stairs behind the counter in the banking chamber, I had no hesitation in lighting it. There was no window down there, and though I could no longer hear old Ewbank snoring, I had not the slightest reason to anticipate disturbance from that quarter. I did think of locking myself in while I was at work, but, thank goodness, the iron door had no keyhole on the inside.

‘Well, there was heaps of gold in the safe, but I only took what I needed and could comfortably carry, not much more than a couple of hundred altogether. Not a note would I touch, and my native caution came out also in the way I divided the sovereigns between all my pockets and packed them up so that I shouldn’t be like the old woman of Banbury Cross. Well you think me too cautious still, but I was insanely cautious then. And so it was that, just as I was ready to go, whereas I might have been gone ten minutes, there came a violent knocking at the outer door.

‘Bu

‘There was only one thing to be done. I must trust to the sound sleeping of Ewbank upstairs, open the door myself, knock the visitor down, or shoot him with the revolver I had been new chum enough to buy before leaving Melbourne, and make a dash for that clump of trees and the doctor’s mare. My mind was made up in an instant, and I was at the top of the strongroom stairs, the knocking still continuing, when a second sound drove me back. It was the sound of bare feet coming along a corridor.

‘My narrow stair was stone I tumbled down it with little noise and had only to push open the iron door, for I had left the keys in the safe. As I did so I heard a handle turn overhead, and thanked my gods that I had shut every single door behind me. You see, old chap, one’s caution doesn’t always let one in!

‘Who’s that knocking?’ said Ewbank, up above.

‘I could not make out the answer, but it sounded to me like the irrelevant supplication of a spent man. What I did hear plainly was the cocking of the bank revolver before the bolts were shot back. Then, a tottering step, a hard, short, shallow breathing, and Ewbank’s voice in horror:

‘Good Lord! What’s happened to you? You’re bleeding like a Pig!’

‘Not now,’ came with a grateful sort of sigh.

‘But you have been! What’s done it?’

‘Bushrangers.’

‘Down the road?’

‘This and Whittlesea – tied to tree – cock-shots – left me – bleed to death.

‘The weak voice failed, and the bare feet bolted. Now was my time – if the poor devil had fainted. But I could not be sure, and there I crouched down below in the dark at the half-shut iron door, not less spellbound than imprisoned. It was just as well, for Ewbank wasn’t gone a minute.

‘Drink this,’ I heard him say, and, when the other spoke again his voice was stronger.

‘Now I begin to feel alive.’

‘Don’t talk!’

‘It does me good. You don’t know what it was, all those miles alone, one an hour at the outside! I never thought I should come through. You must let me tell you – in case I don’t!

‘Well, have another sip,’

‘Thank you… I said bushrangers. Of course there are no such things nowadays.’

‘What were they, then?’

‘Bank thieves; the one that had the pot-shots was the very brute I drove out of the bank at Coburg with a bullet in him!’

‘I knew it!’

‘Of course you did, Bu

‘You’re delirious,’ he says at last. ‘Who in blazes do you think you are?’

‘The new manager.’

‘The new manager’s in bed and asleep upstairs!’

‘When did he arrive?’

‘This evening.’

‘Call himself Raffles?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m damned!’ whispered the real man. ‘I thought it was just revenge, but now I see what it was. My dear sir, the man upstairs is an impostor – if he’s upstairs still! He must be one of the gang. He’s going to rob the bank – if he hasn’t done so already!’

‘If he hasn’t done so already,’ muttered Ewbank after him, ‘if he’s upstairs still! By God, if he is I’m sorry for him!’

‘His tone was quiet enough, but about the nastiest I ever heard. I tell you, Bu

‘Better have a look down here, first,’ said the new manager.

‘While he gets through his window? No, no, he’s not down here.’

‘It’s easy to have a look.’

‘Bu

‘No, he’s not down there,’ I heard, as though through cotton wool. Then the streak went out too, and in a few seconds I ventured to open once more and was in time to hear them creeping to my room.

‘Well, now, there was not a fifth of a second to be lost but I’m proud to say I came up those stairs on my toes and fingers, and out of that bank (they’d gone and left the door open) just as gingerly as though my time had been my own. I didn’t even forget to put on the hat that the doctor’s mare was eating her oats out of, as well as she could with a bit, or it alone would have landed me. I didn’t even gallop away, but just jogged off quietly in the thick dust at the side of the road (though I own my heart was galloping), and thanked my stars the bank was at that end of the township in which I really hadn’t set foot. The very last thing I heard was the two managers raising Cain and the coachman. And now, Bu

He stood up and stretched himself, with a smile that ended in a yawn. The black windows had faded through every shade of indigo. They now framed their opposite neighbours, stark and livid in the dawn, and the gas seemed turned to nothing in the globes.

‘But that’s not all?’ I cried.

‘I’m sorry to say it is,’ said Raffles apologetically.

‘The thing should have ended with an exciting chase, I know, but somehow it didn’t. I suppose they thought I had got no end of a start. Then they had made up their minds that I belonged to the gang which was not so many miles away, and one of them had got as much as he could carry from that gang as it was. But I wasn’t to know all that, and I’m bound to say that there was plenty of excitement left for me. Lord, how I made that poor brute travel when I got among the trees! Though we must have been well over fifty miles from Melbourne, we had done it at a snail’s pace, and those stolen oats had brisked the old girl up to such a pitch that she fairly bolted when she felt her nose turned south. By Jove, it was no joke, in and out among those trees, and under branches with your face in the mane! I told you about the forest of dead gums? It looked perfectly ghostly in the moonlight. And I found it as still as I had left it – so still that I pulled up there, my first halt, and lay with my ear to the ground for two or three minutes. But I heard nothing – not a thing but the mare’s bellows and my own heart. I’m sorry, Bu