A Bid for Fortune - Guy Boothby (ready player one ebook TXT) 📗

warn the authorities in Australia, I suppose?”

“No. That would do little or no good⁠—remember, they’ve three weeks’ start of us.”

“Then what shall we do? I’m in your hands entirely, and whatever you advise I promise you I’ll do.”

“If I were you I should doff my title, take another name, and set sail with me for Australia. Once there, we’ll put up in some quiet place and set ourselves to unmask these rascals and to defeat their little game, whatever it may be. Are you prepared for so much excitement as that?”

“Of course I am. Come what may, I’ll go with you, and there’s my hand on it.”

“Then we’ll catch the next boat⁠—not a mail-steamer⁠—that sails for an Australian port, and once ashore there we’ll set the ball a-rolling with a vengeance.”

“That scoundrel Baxter! I’m not vindictive as a rule, but I feel I should like to punish him.”

“Well, if they’ve not flown by the time we reach Australia, you’ll probably be able to gratify your wish. It’s Nikola, however, I want.”

Beckenham shuddered as I mentioned the Doctor’s name. So to change the subject I said⁠—

“I’m thinking of taking a little walk. Would you care to accompany me?”

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m going to try and find the house where we were shut up,” I answered. “I want to be able to locate it for future reference, if necessary.”

“Is it safe to go near it, do you think?”

“In broad daylight, yes! But, just to make sure, we’ll buy a couple of revolvers on the way. And, what’s more, if it becomes necessary we’ll use them.”

“Come along, then.”

With that we left our hotel and set off in the direction of the Casino, stopping, however, on the way to make the purchases above referred to.

On arrival at the place we sought, we halted and looked about us. I pointed to a street on our right.

“That was the way we came from the mosque,” I said. Then, pointing to a narrow alley way almost opposite where we stood, I continued, “And that was where I saw Nikola standing watching us. Now when we came out of this building we turned to our left hand, and, if I mistake not, went off in that direction. I think, if you’ve no objection, we’ll go that way now.”

We accordingly set off at a good pace, and after a while arrived at the spot where the guide had caught us up. It looked a miserably dirty neighbourhood in the bright sunlight. Beckenham gazed about him thoughtfully, and finally said⁠—

“Now we turn to our right, I think.”

“Quite so. Come along!”

We passed down one thoroughfare and up another, and at last reached the spot where I had commented on the signboards, and where we had been garrotted. Surely the house must be near at hand now? But though we hunted high and low, up one street and down another, not a single trace of any building, answering the description of the one we wanted, could we discover. At last, after nearly an hour’s search, we were obliged to give it up, and return to our hotel, unsuccessful.

As we finished lunch a large steamer made her appearance in the harbour, and brought up opposite the town. When we questioned our landlord, who was an authority on the subject, he informed us that she was the S.S. Pescadore, of Hull, bound to Melbourne.

Hearing this we immediately chartered a boat, pulled off to her, and interviewed the captain. As good luck would have it, he had room for a couple of passengers. We therefore paid the passage money, went ashore again and provided ourselves with a few necessaries, rejoined her, and shortly before nightfall steamed into the Canal. Port Said was a thing of the past. Our eventful journey was resumed⁠—what was the end of it all to be?

Part II I We Reach Australia, and the Result

The Pescadore, if she was slow, was certainly sure, and so the thirty-sixth day after our departure from Port Said, as recorded in the previous chapter, she landed us safe and sound at Williamstown, which, as all the Australian world knows, is one of the principal railway termini, and within an hour’s journey, of Melbourne. Throughout the voyage nothing occurred worth chronicling, if I except the curious behaviour of Lord Beckenham, who, for the first week or so, seemed sunk in a deep lethargy, from which neither chaff nor sympathy could rouse him. From morning till night he mooned aimlessly about the decks, had visibly to pull himself together to answer such questions as might be addressed to him, and never by any chance sustained a conversation beyond a few odd sentences. To such a pitch did this depression at last bring him that, the day after we left Aden, I felt it my duty to take him to task and to try to bully or coax him out of it. We were standing at the time under the bridge and a little forrard of the chart-room. “Come,” I said, “I want to know what’s the matter with you. You’ve been giving us all the miserables lately, and from the look of your face at the present moment I’m inclined to believe it’s going to continue. Out with it! Are you homesick, or has the monotony of this voyage been too much for you?”

He looked into my face rather anxiously, I thought, and then said:

“Mr. Hatteras, I’m afraid you’ll think me an awful idiot when I do tell you, but the truth is I’ve got Dr. Nikola’s face on my brain, and do what I will I cannot rid myself of it. Those great, searching eyes, as we saw them in that terrible room, have got on my nerves, and I can think of nothing else. They haunt me night and day!”

“Oh, that’s all fancy!” I cried. “Why on earth should you be frightened of him? Nikola, in spite of his demoniacal cleverness, is only a