Flight of the Eagle (48 page)

‘Old!’ Patrick exploded with mock anger. ‘You could grace the palaces of Europe and men would be fighting duels to the death for the honour of your smile.’

‘If that was only so,’ she sighed as he released her hand and invited her to sit in one of the comfortable leather chairs in the office. ‘But your opinion of me may change after we have discussed what I have come to speak with you about.’

‘By that I presume you mean you have come about the possible purchase of Glen View,’ he replied grimly. ‘Regardless of the outcome I still think that of any discussions we have, I would still consider you the most beautiful Duffy woman alive.’

Kate sat with her hands clasped in her lap and smiled. ‘I pray you retain that opinion of me, Patrick. I have always intended to meet you at the first available opportunity. I suppose we should clear the air before we talk about more pleasant matters. Will you sell Glen View to me? I already own Balaclava Station adjoining Glen View and it makes sense to my business interests to unite both properties.’

Patrick sat up in surprise at the bluntness of her question. ‘If it were in my power to do so, I might consider your offer,’ he said. ‘But the sale of Glen View is solely in Granville White's hands. You see, when my grandfather died he left the property to my mother. When she transferred her inheritance to her husband he automatically acquired the property.’

‘And you have no say in the sale?’

‘Sadly, no,’ he replied. ‘Lady Macintosh is furious at his proposal to sell Glen View. As you know, my grandfather and uncle are buried on the property. It means a great deal to the Macintosh name to retain the property for that reason alone.’

‘Both your grandfathers are buried on Glen View,’ Kate reminded him softly. ‘And lately your cousin Peter Duffy.’

‘You are right,’ he corrected himself. ‘Both my grandfathers and my cousin Peter who, I regret, I did not have the opportunity to meet. I read in the newspaper of the tragic circumstances surrounding his death. Uncle Daniel did not even have the courtesy to inform me himself,’ he added bitterly.

‘You cannot blame your uncle for his silence, Patrick,’ Kate stated, defending her cousin. ‘It is not every day a Duffy renounces his heritage.’

‘Then why is it that you deign to speak to me?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Was the offer on Glen View the only reason?’

‘No, Patrick,’ she replied gently. ‘I do not hold the same views as your Uncle Daniel. I have always been considered somewhat of a non-conformist in the family. I married my first husband against the wishes of my Uncle Frank and Aunt Bridget. Unfortunately their reservations on his character proved all too accurate. But even if I had known that then I would still have married Kevin O'Keefe. No, I came to meet you because you are the son of my brother and part of my blood.’

Patrick glanced down at the floor and felt shame at his peevish manner. ‘I'm sorry for my outburst,’ he said. ‘It's just that I have no family on my father's side anymore.’

‘You will always have me and your father,’ she corrected softly. ‘No matter where he is. I know he holds a great affection for you.’

‘I wish I could believe that about the great Michael Duffy but he has never made any attempt to find me in all the years that have passed.’

‘That is not true, Patrick,’ Kate said, interrupting his bitter rebuke. ‘He even travelled to the Sudan to search for you when you were reported missing in action last year.’

Patrick stared at his aunt with an expression of utter surprise. ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

‘I thought you must have known,’ Kate frowned. ‘Your father wrote to me from Italy last year that Lady Macintosh hired him to search for you. But it appears that by the time he reached the Sudan you had been found already and the authorities there refused to let him see you.’

‘Are you sure of what you are saying?’ Patrick asked, leaning forward in his chair with his hands extended as if he was begging for information like a beggar would alms. ‘That my grandmother hired my father to search for me.’

‘I am sure. Your father would not have written those things to me if it wasn't the truth. Apparently a Colonel Godfrey counter-ordered his letters of introduction sent to Suakin.’

‘Godfrey!’

‘Do you know this Colonel Godfrey?’ Kate asked.

‘Yes. I know Colonel George Godfrey,’ he replied with a growl. ‘I am sure he will tell me what I would like to know.’

Patrick rose and paced the office. He was tense with a disquieting concern. The revelation concerning his father's search for him had repercussions that would surely echo in the library of his grandmother's house.

‘I am sorry that my news has caused so much obvious grief to you,’ Kate said. ‘I presumed that you would have known.’

‘I returned to Sydney because I hoped I could use the considerable resources of the Macintosh name to search for my father, and one other. I have a need to meet him, at least once in my life. I am not sure I would even like him if I did. But I do know that I will never be able to truly know who I am until I confront him. Do you have any idea where in the world he is?’

‘If I knew where your father was I would tell you. But his last address was Rome and that was over ten months ago. Knowing your father as I do, he could be anywhere now.’

‘What was he doing in Rome?’ Patrick asked with an edge in his voice that puzzled Kate. ‘Was he with someone?’

‘He didn't mention anyone else in his letter. He was writing to tell me that he had returned to painting and that he was attending some of the art studios in Rome.’

Patrick fell into a brooding silence. Was Catherine still with his father? If so, was she his lover? How would he react to finding both his father and Catherine together? ‘Aunt Kate, thank you for telling me all that you have,’ he finally said. ‘I would very much like you to dine with my grandmother and myself tomorrow tonight at Lady Enid's residence.’

‘Thank you for the kind invitation, Patrick, but I will decline,’ Kate said as she rose from her chair. ‘I am afraid, as much as I hold no animosity to you as my brother's son, I will never step foot in any place that belongs to the Macintoshes. As it is I have a passage booked for Rockhampton the day after tomorrow and I have a need to see to business interests first.’

‘Your declining is my great loss,’ Patrick said gallantly. ‘But I feel that we shall keep contact in the future no matter what should happen in our lives.’

Kate leant forward impulsively to kiss her nephew on the forehead. ‘Oh, if only you could meet your father,’ she sighed. ‘He would be so proud of you.’

‘I hope you are right, Aunt Kate,’ Patrick said, as he escorted his aunt to the street where he hailed a Hansom cab and helped her to board.

He stood on the busy city street watching the cab join the stream of carriages, drays and horse-drawn omnibuses that displayed advertisements on their sides for whisky and tobacco products. It was a warm winter's day and big black clouds boiled up in the smoke filled sky, almost as dark as his own thoughts. He would first confront his grandmother and ask her why she had not told him of her meeting with his father. He would also ask her why it was that Godfrey counter-ordered the letters of introduction as he knew he would not have done so unless she had insisted. Then he would question Colonel Godfrey. He suspected that the former soldier knew a lot more about his father than he had ever let on.

Granville was not happy in his new office, nor was he pleased at losing his control over the shipping line to Patrick Duffy. Exporting the colony's produce was the key to the country's future and shipping the main means of reaching the lucrative markets in far-off England. He had lost control to a man who was nothing more than a mistake on the part of his estranged wife during an impressionable time of her life.

He paced the office and for a moment felt an almost wistful loss for his former employee, Morrison Mort. If he still retained the services of the vicious sea captain he might be able to discuss the means to dispose of his rival for power. But Mort was no longer of this world. The lurid stories that had filtered down from the northern frontier of Queensland years earlier described his death as particularly gruesome. It had been rumoured he had ended his life in a myall cooking fire as part of a heathen feast.

Granville shuddered. It was also rumoured that Mort's untimely demise was partially the work of that Irish soldier of fortune, Michael Duffy, father of his current hated enemy.

He plonked himself in a chair. Deep in thought he steepled his fingers and reassured himself that violence was not the sole means of destroying a man. He could take a page from his mother-in-law's book on the more subtle means of causing irreparable damage to a man's reputation. He sensed that even now Enid was playing her game of attempting to discredit him by the move to the new office.

The company ledgers lay open on the desk before him. They had been routinely delivered from David's office for his scrutiny without any fuss. It was purely a matter of good business to examine the big leatherbound books that recorded profit and loss for all the Macintosh companies.

Just for a moment Granville remembered his dead brother-in-law. Seventeen years earlier Enid's son had been an obstacle to Granville's ambitions as David stood ahead of him in the line of inheritance. But Mort had carried out his orders faithfully and the young man's bones were buried in an unmarked grave in the sands of a tropical island in the Pacific. David's death had been attributed to hostile natives but Granville knew his estranged mother-in-law did not believe the official account rendered by Mort when he returned to Sydney aboard the blackbirding barque
Osprey.

Two could play the game and even the hero of the Sudan would not be safe. He would no longer need to use extreme violence to discredit Patrick Duffy in the eyes of the world. He had at his fingertips the most reliable and unscrupulous means of destroying an innocent man's reputation. Did not the Macintosh companies include the ownership of a newspaper?

A plan had formed in Granville's astute scheming from the moment Patrick had taken possession of his office. Now it was time to execute his plan. Execute, he mused. A good word to be used in destroying Patrick Duffy and his chances of controlling the assets of the Macintosh companies.

For the first time all day Granville smiled. The neatly written rows of figures in the ledger columns were his ammunition. He had on hand a master forger who could transcribe in Hobbs' hand the figures to the blank pages of newly acquired ledgers, albeit with some telling additions – additions which would be corroborated with suitable bank receipts on hand for an audit.

The pen was indeed mightier than the sword, he smirked. And men like Mort not always required to destroy a man.

FIFTY-ONE

B
arcaldine was the name of the town. It was little more than a few pubs with their sprawling shady verandahs and stores that held the bare essentials for life. There was also one or two houses and a police lockup to hold the rowdy drunken shearers after they had blown their pay on drink.

Gordon James sighed with relief at the sight of the iron roofs that shimmered across the line of low scrub under the blazing midday sun. His patrol had trekked south for two hundred miles across a vast, flat expanse of miserable scrubland and the first real vestige of civilisation now lay before them.

Often on the trek he had questioned his decision to remain with the police. Without Sarah he realised he had little else in his life that held any meaning. Astride a horse on the sweeping plains he could lose himself in the loneliness of the great wide country of limitless horizons. But never was Sarah far from his thoughts. No matter how much he attempted to lose himself in his job he would often find himself thinking about her. The memories seared his soul worse than the midday sun of the harsh Australian summer. At least hunting men with his patrol helped divert such thoughts of her. As the leader of his band he was responsible for their welfare.

Gordon spurred his mount forward to follow the big Kalkadoon tracker through the bush. Terituba seemed tireless. Day after day he had followed the faint trail of the four bushrangers – a trail that was visible to him alone. At least until they were fifty miles north of Barcaldine when the tracks had disappeared after a series of destructive small, tornado-like winds whipped through the scrub. The willy-willies obliterated the delicate signs of the tracks and, puzzled, Terituba had wandered in search of them.

Gordon had lost a day in his hunt for the four men as he waited for the Aboriginal tracker to pick up the tracks again. He consulted his map and shot a bearing along the line of the pursuit with his compass. He deduced that the tracks had been leading them south to Barcaldine and remembered that Calder had once worked in the district as a shearer before joining the Native Mounted Police. It appeared that the wanted killer was leading his gang back into familiar territory.

Gordon had put away his map and issued orders to the patrol to ride south until they reached the tiny township. It was a hard ride, with only a few hours' sleep in the two nights preceding their approach to Barcaldine.

But now they were within sight of the township and he issued orders to his troopers to be on their guard as they rode in. According to Gordon's reckoning they were very close on the heels of the fugitives and his first stop would be at the local police lockup.

Sergeant Johnson adjusted his heavy blue uniform jacket as he strolled out of his one-room office to greet his unexpected visitors. He was a gruff man with a pock marked face that sweated considerably.

He stood in front of his office and eyed the young inspector with some curiosity and contempt. The Native Mounted Police allowed blackfellas to join the ranks and carry firearms. It was not a good thing. Sergeant Johnson did not feel he was required to salute the officer who he viewed as less than a real policeman. But nor was he discourteous. ‘Want to get down and come inside, Inspector?’ he invited. ‘Your boys can water their horses ‘round the back if you want.’