Page:Golden Fleece v1n2 (1938-11).djvu/6

 both hands reassuringly upon a small, oblong chest hidden under the seat. It was made of teak, brassbound and held closed by three Yale padlocks. The duplicate keys to these locks were at Kalgoorlie and Kargie. The messenger never carried them on his person.

Ten minutes later he made a blanket bed which would have looked familiar to an American cowboy—which Tom Varney had been, years back. In a few minutes more, he slept.

His camp-making had been watched. From the crest of a low sand dune more than a mile away, a black-bearded man wriggled back into the hollow where the camels were lying and men crouching. The bushranger, Paxton Trenholm, closed his folding brass telescope and put it away in its leather case.

"All top-hole," he said with satisfaction. "We'll give him an hour to be snoring. It will be pitch dark then. Keep those camels lying down, and don't let them grunt and groan too loudly."

The sleeping messenger, Tom Varney, never had a chance. He awoke suddenly to find the weight of a squat, muscled Malay on his chest, and the sharp blade of a kris at his throat. At a distance of three yards stood a tall, black-bearded; well proportioned white man who held a dark lantern now unhooded. In his other hand a revolver slanted, aimed at Tom's head.

"We have no particular need to kill you, Varney," said Trenholm, sounding negligent and rather haughty with his English public school accent. "So turn over obediently like a good lad, and let us bind your wrists."

Gritting his teeth in savage, hopeless anger, the messenger was forced to comply. He knew it was a mere whim on this madman's part, that he still breathed. Trenholm was like that—a paranoiac whose fits of murderous insanity came in cycles. In between rampages he was known to be quiet, cultured of manner, almost sane. Varney said nothing at all, as he was trussed with skill—albeit loosely enough so he could work free in the course of an hour or two.

They paid him no more attention then. While the Malays and the sevenfoot, skinny blackfellow servant got their camels, Paxton Trenholm harnessed the horses and drove away into the night. Helpless, writhing against his bonds, Tom Varney had to let them get away with the treasure entrusted to his keeping.

OM took a deep breath, and then started to work free. But even when he succeeded, what then? In the brassbound teak box had been the money of other men, slightly more than nine thousand dollars, brought back in payment for the pokes of new gold sent in his care to Kalgoorlie by the dry-placer miners of Kargie.

Was there any chance at all that these rough miners would believe his story, and forgive the loss?

Their curt, angry answer was given at nightfall, when Tom arrived. Growling a beginning frenzy of disbelief, threatening a rope, they threw the unlucky messenger into his own corrugated iron shack, and padlocked the door.

At the rude barrel house which served Kargie as a pub, an angry meeting started. Tom had a few friends, but only a few—due to the fact that he was a Yank. The friends did not have much to say. They had known him