Late one night, Harrington, sauntering from the theatre to his hotel, met, to his intense astonishment, a man he knew—had known years before when he (Harrington) was a drover and the other man—Walters—was a mounted trooper in the Queensland police.
They shook hands warmly, and then Walters said, “Come along with me, Jack, to the Water Police Station; we can have a yarn there.... Oh, yes, I’m a Sydney man now—a full-fledged inspector of police… tell you all about it by and by. But, push along, old man. One of my men has just told me that a woman who jumped off the Circular Quay and tried to drown herself, is lying at the station, and is not expected to pull through. Hallo! here’s a cab! Jump in, Jack; there’s some whisky in the sergeant’s room, and after I’ve seen the cadaver—if she has cadavered—we’ll have a right down good yarn.”
The cab rattled through the now almost deserted street, and in a few minutes Harrington and his friend alighted at a small stone building overlooking the waters of Sydney Harbour. A water-policeman, who stood at the door under the big gas-lamp, saluted the inspector and then showed Harrington into the sergeant’s room.
Ten minutes passed, and then Walters, accompanied by a big, stout, red-faced man, came in.
“Ha, here you are, old man. Jack, Dr. Parsons—the man who does the resuscitating and such silly business of this institution; Parsons, my old friend, Jack Harrington. Sergeant, where is that whisky?”
“Is the woman dead, doctor?” asked Harrington presently, as the sergeant’s wife brought in a bottle of whisky and some glasses.
“No,” replied the police doctor slowly, as he poured some whisky into his glass, “she is not dead; but she may not live much longer—a day or so perhaps. It all depends. Shock to the system.”
“One of the usual sort, Parsons, I suppose?” inquired Walters—“left the baby on the wharf, with a written request for some ‘kind Christian to love it,’ eh?”
The fat doctor grunted. “You’re a beast, Walters. There’s no baby in the case. Here, give me ten shillings—you’ll spend more than that in drinks before you go to bed to-night This girl isn’t one of the usual sort. She’s a lady—and she’s been starving. So ante-up, you ex-nigger-shooting Queensland policeman; and I’ll add another half-sov. Then perhaps your friend will give me something for her. And I’m not going to send her off to the hospital. I’m going to take her to some people I know, and ask them to keep her for a few days until she gets round.”
Harrington put his hand in his pocket, and then in a nervous, diffident way, looking first at Walters and then at the doctor, put five sovereigns on the table.
“I’m pretty flush now, you know.... I’m not a plunger, but I shall be glad, doctor, if you will take that and give it to her.... I was almost starving myself once–you know, Walters, when I got the sack from the ‘Morning Star’ Mine for plugging the English manager when he called me a ‘damned colonial lout.’”
The fat-faced doctor looked steadily at him for a moment or two. Then he reached out his hand.
“You’re a good fellow, Mr. Harrington. I’ll take a sovereign or two. Come in here with me.”
III
Harrington followed him into an adjoining room, where, upon a wicker-work couch was reclining the figure of a young girl. Standing beside her was the police-sergeant’s wife, who, as soon as the two men came in, quietly drew aside.
“Now, here I am back again, my dear child,” said the doctor good-humouredly, “and here is a very old friend of mine, Mr. Jack Harrington; and we have come to cheer you up and tell you that you have two or three good friends. And we won’t let any women or parsons come to you and worry you, and tell you that you have been a wicked girl, and ought to have thrown yourself upon God’s mercy and all that sort of thing. So just drink that coffee, and then by and by we will take you to some people I know well, and you shall come and tell us in a day or two how sorry you are for being so foolish.”
The girl’s dark hazel eyes looked steadily at them both; then she put out a thin white hand.
“You are very kind to me. I know it was very wicked to try and kill myself, but I was so lonely, and… and I had not eaten anything since Wednesday… and I wanted to die.” Then she covered her face and sobbed softly, whilst the doctor patted her on the shoulder and said—
“Don’t worry, little girl; you are in good hands now. Never mind Mrs. Thornton and her un-kindness. You are better away from her—isn’t she, Mr. Harrington?”
Mr. Harrington, knowing nothing about Mrs. Thornton, promptly said “Oh, most certainly,” and the girl’s eyes met his for a second, and a faint smile flushed upon her pale lips. The tall, bearded, and brown-faced man’s face seemed so full of pity.
“Now you must go to sleep for an hour or two,” said the doctor imperatively; “so now then, little girl, ‘seepy-by, beddy-bo.’ That’s what my mother used to say to me.”
Harrington followed the doctor out into the sergeant’s room, where Inspector Walters, with his heels upon the table, was falling asleep.
“Sit down a moment, Mr. Harrington,” said Dr. Parsons, taking up a book which the sergeant had left upon the table; “this is a sad case. Here is a girl, Nellie Alleyne, age 19, nursery governess to Mrs. Lavery-Thornton, of Waverly, jumped into the water off the Quay; rescued by Water-police Constables Casey and Boyce.”
Harrington nodded.
“This girl has told me her story. She is alone and friendless in Sydney. She came out to Australia when she was seventeen, got a billet with this Mrs. Lavery-Thornton—who seems to be a perfect brute of a woman—suffered a two years’ martyrdom, and then was dismissed from her situation with the large sum of twenty-two shillings in her pocket Tried to get another such position, but people wouldn’t take her without a recommendation from her last place. The Thornton woman wouldn’t give her one; said she was too independent. High-spirited girl with twenty-two shillings between her and starvation, wanders about from one registry office to another for a couple of weeks, living in a room in a Miller’s Point slum; money all gone; pestered by brutes in the usual way, jumps into the water to end her miseries. Rough, isn’t it?”
Harrington nodded. “Poor thing! I should like you, Dr. Parsons, to—to let her know that she has friends. Will you let me help. Fifty pounds or a hundred pounds won’t hurt me… and I’ve been stone-broke myself. But a man can always peg along in the bush; and it’s an awful thing for a child like that to be adrift in a big city.”
The kind-hearted police doctor looked steadily into Harrington’s face for a moment, then he said quietly—
“An awful thing indeed. But there are some good men in the world, Mr. Harrington, who are able and willing to save pure souls from destruction. You are one of them. Tom Walters and myself are both hard-up devils—we see a lot of misery, but can do nothing to alleviate it; a few shillings is all we can give.”
Harrington rose, and his sun-tanned face flushed as he drew out his cheque-book. “I never try to shove myself in, in such matters as these, doctor, but I should feel pleased if you will let me help.”
Then he wrote out a cheque for fifty pounds, pushed it over to the doctor, said he thought it was getting late, and that he had better get back to his hotel.
Dr. Parsons gave the sleeping inspector a shake, and in a few words told him what Harrington had done.
“You’re a dashed fool, old man,” said Walters sleepily to Harrington; “most likely she’ll blue your fifty quid, and then blackmail–”