Part 27

"There may be something to show where he's gone," that casuist suggested, "for I don't believe he's anywhere here."

"Shall I hold the shooters, sir?"

"Thanks; and keep your eyes open, just in case. But it's my opinion that the bird's flown somewhere else, and it's for us to find out where."

Kilbride then crept into the gunyah upon his hands and knees, and found it less dark than he had supposed, the light filtering freely through the leaves and branches. At the inner extremity he found a mildewed blanket, and the place where the musical-box had evidently lain a long time; but there, though he delved to the elbows in the loosened earth, his discoveries ended. Puzzled and annoyed, Kilbride was on the verge of cursing his subordinate, when all at once he was given fresh cause. The musical-box had burst into selections from The Pirates of Penzance.

"What the deuce are you at?" shouted the irate officer.

"Only seeing how it goes."

"Stop it at once, you fool! He may hear it!"

"You said the bird had flown."

"You dare to argue with me? By thunder, you shall see!"

But it was Sub-Inspector Kilbride who saw most. Backing precipitately out of the gunyah, he turned round before rising upright--and remained upon his knees after all. He was covered by two revolvers--one of them his own--and the face behind the barrels was the one with which the last hour had familiarized Kilbride. The only difference was the single eye-glass in the right eye. And the strains of the musical-box--so thin and tinkling in the open air--filled the pause.

"What in blazes are you playing at?" laughed the luckless officer, feigning to treat the affair as a joke, even while the iron truth was entering his soul by inches.

"Rise another inch without my leave and you may be in blazes to see!"

"Look here, Bowen, what do you mean?"

"Only that Stingaree happens to be at home after all, Mr. Kilbride."

The victim's grin was no longer forced; the situation made for laughter, even if the laughter were hysterical; and for an instant it was given even to Kilbride to see the cruel humor of it. Then he realized all it meant to him--certain ruin or a sudden death--and the drops stood thick upon his skin.

"What of Bowen?" he at length asked hoarsely. The idea of another victim came as some slight alleviation of his own grotesque case.

"I didn't kill him," Stingaree.

"Good!" said Kilbride. It was something that two of them should live to share the shame.

"But wing him I did," added the bushranger. "I couldn't help myself. The beggar put a bullet through my hat; he did well only to get one back in the leg."

Kilbride longed to be winged and wounded in his turn, since blood alone could lessen his disgrace. On cooler reflection, however, it was obviously wiser to feign a surrender more abject than it might finally prove to have been.

"Well," said Kilbride, "you have the whip-hand over me this time, and I give you best. How long are you going to keep me on my knees?"

"You can get up when you like," replied Stingaree, "if you promise not to play the fool. So you were really going to take me this time, were you? I have really no desire to rub it in, but if I were you I should have kept that to myself until I'd done it. And you wanted to have me all to yourself? Well, you couldn't pay me a higher compliment, but I'm going to pay you a high one in return. You really did make me run for it last time, and leave all sorts of things behind. So this time I mean to take them with me and leave you here instead. Nevertheless, you're the only Victorian trap I have any respect for, Mr. Kilbride, or I shouldn't have gone to all this trouble to get you here."

Kilbride did not blanch, but he heard his apparent doom with a glittering eye, and was deaf for a little to The Pirates of Penzance.

"Oh! I'm not going to harm a good man like you," continued Stingaree, "unless you make me. Your friend Bowen made me, but I don't promise to fire low every time, mark you! There's another good man on the other side--Cairns by name--you know him, do you? He'll kick up his heels when he hears of this; but they do no better in New South Wales, so don't you let that worry you. To think you held both shooters at one stage of the game! I trusted you, and so you trusted me; if only you had known, eh? Hear that tune, and know what it is? It's in your honor, Mr. Kilbride."

And Stingaree hummed the policemen's chorus sotto voce; but before the end, with a swift remorse, induced by the dignity of Kilbride's bearing in humiliating disaster, he swooped upon the insolent instrument and stopped its tinkle by touching the lever with one revolver-barrel while sedulously covering the Sub-Inspector with the other. The sudden cessation of the toy music, bringing back into undue prominence all the little bush noises which had filled the air before, brought home to Kilbride a position which he had subconsciously associated with those malevolent strains as something theatrical and unreal. He had known in his heart that it was real, without grasping the reality until now. He flung up his fists in sudden entreaty.

"Put a bullet through me," he cried, "if you're a man!"

Stingaree shook a decisive head.

"Not if I can help it," said he. "But I fear I shall have to tie you up."