The Carved Emu Egg

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue VI, 7 February 1903, Page 384

The Carved Emu Egg

It'ontinued from last week.) It was a very different Kathie that went down town with me next day. Talk! Why, it didn’t seem as if the girl could keep her tongue still an instant. And such lively talk as it was. She made me laugh as much as she did herself. Yet, somehow. I felt uneasy, and inclined to put down her liveliness more to a sort of feverish excitement than to wholesome high spirits. l‘or her eves had a strained look, and her face was ghastly pale, save for tw< spots of red that burned on her cheek bones. When we got to town I voted that we should take our stand about the middle of Queen-street io see the procession pass': but Ixathie wanted to go where the Duke and Duchess would be stopping for a bit. so that we should have a good sight ot them. After balancing the bottom of Queen-street, where the city s address was to be presented to His Royal Highness, against the Living Union .Tack, in "Wellesley-street, beneath the Public Library, she settled on somewhere near the Union Jack. “There’ll be plenty of time while they’re listening to the children singing.” she said, under her breath. By dint of some gentle pushing and edging in- -I'm a biggish sort of chap, and tall Kathie was only a size shorter than mvself- we got right in < he very front row of the patiently waiting crowd. ••Couldn’t be better placed,” said Kat bio. and she started talking and laughing to me again at a great rate, looking about, her as quick and eager as a bird and quizzing the crowd ami tile decorations in a stream of good-natured nonsense. Everything was looking very bright and gay. and the time of waiting passed quickly enough for me. “Wish 1 could have persuaded i he mother to come too." said I: "but she is so scared of a crowd. “She’s well out of this, anyway, dear old soul.” replied Kathie “And it 1 had had my way I’r have had my watchdog chained to me to-day instead of you, old man.” I stared a bit at this, wondering if. Kathie was going to hark back to her nnunderstamiable talk of the night before. But just then the gun in the Altieri Park above boomed out. and the warships in the harbour took up the Rovnl salute. •‘They’ve landed!” said Kathie. in a low. strained voice. I glanced at her. Never before had I seen Kathie look so ill. Iler colour was deathlike, and her lips were drawn back, showing her tightly-clenched teeth. “Kathie, dear, let us go home.” I whispered. “I’m sure you’re ill.’’ I had to touch her several times before she heard. Then she turned round like a regular vixen, and snapped out fiercely. “Don’t bother me!” I'd no time to feel huffed, however,

for the next moment she cried in a stifled! whisper. ‘’Charlie, take my bag and give me your arm. Quick! I think I'm going t<> faint.’’ But she did not faint, and. after leaning all her weight on me for a few minutes, she said she felt better and would take her bag again. It was only a tiny Morocco handbag for carrying a purse or such like, but it felt most astonishingly ’ heavy. So I said I’d hold it for her, and joked about the weighty purseful of money that must be in it. To my surprise, she looked as if she were going to object, but she didn’t anyway, and stood quiet.lv waiting with the rest of the crowd, listening to the loud cheering that floated up to our oars from the bottom of Oueen-street. where the c : ty was welcoming the Royal visitors. Tbe sun shone bright overload, the street was as gay as street could be with bunting and groonorv. the nicelv dressed crowd talked and laughed about vs with nleosed. expectant A s bright and hanpy a scone as von could wish to see. But Kathie’s face was desperately out of keeping with it all. It was so grim and set. with all the young look gone out of it. and her eves seemed to burn with a wild li"ht as she craned forward to catch the first glimpse of the procession when it would round into Wellesley - st root. As T looked at her. iinoasv and unhapnv about her. the knowledge was suddmilv borne in upon me that not one in all that crowd was waiting for the coming of the Duke as Kathie was waiting. I knew- how I c-Hi’t tell — that every nerve in her bodv was ciuivering with anticipation— dreadful ant pupation, f don't vretend to sav that T giiecsM tin* reason why then. Mv about the matter was as vague and confused as it well might be. but it was there right enough. And at the same time! s-emed to realise that the mvsterious trouble that overshadowed this bright, handsome young creature h”d ”othi”g to do with tbe cough that wouldn't go away, or with the aunt’s cantankerous tongue: but had some big and terrible significance. I think Providence must have put those convictions into mv mind just then. Tf I hadn’t had them I shouldn't have acted as I did a little later. The sound of the cheering in Queenstreet drew nearer, ami presently the two companies of Rifles that formed the head of the procession turned the corner of Wellesley-street and came up the hill. Then cairn* some carriages and soim* more troopers. Then a low murmur broke from the crowd craning their necks for ward to 1 ’ : “Seo! there's the Royal carriage com ing now!” Kathie turned a white fact* and blazing eyes on me. “Give me the bag,

quick ! I want my handkerchief.” she cried in a strangled voice. I had slung the bag on my wrist, and the handle being a tight fit. 1 couldn’t pull it over my big hand just at once. So, without thinking, I opened it, meaning t-o pass her the handkerchief quicker. But there was no handkerchief in it and no purse either. What was there and nothing else was the carved emu egg that I’d always seen in the glass case over the mantelpiece in our neighbours’ house. A strange emu egg this, that felt near as heavy as a lump of lead of the same size! "The bag! Give me the bag!” Kathie’s whispered cry was in my ear as she frantically tried to pull 4ier satchel from me. But 1 was shaken with strange doubts and fears, and what 1 read in her eyes didn’t set them at rest. So 1 closed the bag with a snap and drew it out of her clutching hands. “There’s nothing in this that you can want now. T’ll give it you when we get home,” said I. “Curse you! Give me it now. at. once, you damned meddler!” she cried, in a fierce whisper. 1 could scarcely believe my ears! Still less my eyes that showed me tin' frank, handsome face, which I had come to care for so much, ugly with rage and excitement. But more than ever was I snr ■ that she must not have the bag. T shifted it quickly to mv other hand as she snatched at it again. Then began a struggle for the bag that was not a lit less determined because it was all done so quiet like: for. of course, neither of us wanted the folks about us to see what, we were doing. But, bless you! they weren’t looking at us. They had only eves for their Royal Highnesses driving up the street. T saw no Duke or Duchess, however. Some part of me was dimly conscious that their carriage had come to a standstill neariv opposite where we were, that the people were cheering loudly, and that the kiddies in the Living Union .Tack were piping “God Save the King ” for all they were worth. But the most of me was fighting hard

to keep possession of that little leather bag. Something told me, as straight as eould be, that if the carved emu egg was once in Kathie’s hand that gay, happy scene would be changed in a twinkling into one of sudden death and widespread panic and disaster. and Auckland would for ever be marked with a black cross against her name among the cities of the Empire. And all the time my mind was in a maze of pain and horror that it should be Kathie I was struggling with —Kathie whom I fondly hoped was to be my wife, that I was trying with might and main to keep from committing a crime that would aghast mankind. She did indeed struggle desperately, though quietly, to wrench the bag out of my hands, and showed a strength that struck me as simply extraordinary in a girl. But it didn’t last long. Suddenly she let go her hold and fell limply against the shoulder of a man beside us. He looked round startled. ‘’Blest if the excitement hasn’t made your young ladv go anil faint!” he cried. He helped me to carry Kathie to a near doorstep, and as the Royalties had now driven on and the crowd was dispersing. he obligingly ran oft' and fetched a cab. By this time she had come out of her faint, but she was looking so desperately ill that I drove straight home with her. She was quite silent all the way. lying back on the cushions listless and dazed-like, taking no notice of me at all. 1 thought she was angry past forgiveness for my not letting her have her way about the bag. But when i was helping her into the house she looked at me with the ghost of her old saucy smile, and said, “Poor old Charlie! And 1 swore at him, didn’t T? Shocking, shocking in a. girl!” The aunt was not in the house, but the sight of Kathie and me getting out of the cab brought mother round from next door in a tine state of anxiety. She has had a lot of experience of sickness, has mother, and she had scarcely looked at Kathie before she sent mo living off to telephone for a doctor while she helped her into bed. When 1 got back with word that he’d be there in a quarter of an hour. Kathie was being held up in bed by mother. ami she was coughing badly and spitting blood. I suppose my face said something of what T was feeling, for when the fit of coughing was over she looked at me very kindly and sorrowfully. “I’m not worth it, Charlie,” she said, earnestly. I eould only press her hand. A minute later she said, as if speaking to herself, “The end! And I’m a failure

•11 round. The thing I was pledged to do I have not done. Perhaps it is best ao, who knows !”

She lay for some little time after with elosed eyes, painfully struggling for breath. We watched her, suffering with her, both of us, for mother, too, loved her.

Suddenly Kathie started up in bed with a cry of alarm. Charlie! The emu egg! It’s a danger. Be careful—destroy it—”

A stream of blood gushed from her mouth and stopped her voice. At the same instant there was the sound ot wheels outside, and mother rushed to the door and brought in the doctor. A glance showed him that Kathie was past his aid. A minute later he took her out of my arms and laid her gently back on the bed. “It’s all over,” he said.

Some hours afterwards I was sitting in our own kitchen, a sort of stunnedlikc, feeling as if all the good had gone out of life for me, when mother came in. She it was who, in the absence of the aunt, had supplied the doctor, to the best of her knowledge, with particulars about Kathie and her illness; and he, promising to send the certificate of death in due course, had gone away, leaving her in charge of the dead. Mother, as she came into our kitchen, looked frightened and bewildered. She had the strangest, the most dumbfounding story to tell me. There was no dead girl in the house next door. It was a young man who lay there, pale and quiet, quit for ever of his earthly troubles —a mere bov not twenty.

At first it was impossible for me to believe that the girl who had lived in my thoughts and heart for the last six weeks as my future wife, had never existed. But, bit by bit, many things said and done by him whom we knew as Kathie came into my mind, and I believed right enough. I even began to wonder why I had never guessed the truth before.

Oh! but I was sore and angry at first to think how I bad been played with! But afterwards, when I stood looking down on the handsome face that seemed so young and boyish in death, I could not keep any anger against the poor lad. He had been the best, of comrades to me, and he counted me dear as a comrade— I knew that. As for the rest—for what lie had meant to do that day and would have done had I not stuck to the boy—Cod forgive him! How was a lad, trained from his childhood in wrong notions of princes and rulers, to understand the horrible wickedness of the thing he had pledged himself to do?—though I can witness for it that at times he had his misgivings. On the other hand, he was quite careless about the fate that he must have known his mad act would bring upon himself.

I was denied the satisfaction of relieving my feelings by “having it out” with the aunt. It did not take us long to realise that that worthy’s unaccountable absence meant that she had left the place for good, for the house had been cleared of every scrap of personal belongings, only the meagre bits of fur-

niture remaining. Moreover, mother suddenly recollected that, although she had never noticed Miss O’Brien go out, shortly after noon she had seen, to her surprise, a man leave the house that had so few visitors—an oldish-looking, whitebearded man, who had walked briskly down the street carrying a portmanteau. “The beard was false, and that was the aunt in her right toggery, she being no more a woman than poor Kathie was!” I cried out at once. And I ma le all the more certain that this was so, because of the man’s head I’d seen shadowed on the blind the night before. I now recognised it for what it had been

• —the so-called aunt’s head without .he bonnet ami bonnet strings that hid the heavy, cruel-looking jowl.

The old villain had certainly been beforehand in making tracks to be out of the way of trouble. This shows how dead sure he must have been that his young confederate would not fail that day to accomplish his terrible purpose— • the purpose that had brought both of them from America.

Oh. it wasn’t so difth nit for mo to piece the whole business out in my mind reasonable like, for there were lots of things about our next-door neighbours, not understood at the time, that were now as plain as a pikestaff to me. They had, evidently enough, both belonged to some secret Anarchist society in America, and this society had decreed, for the carrying out of its terrorising schemes, that the heir-apparent to the British crown should be assassinated dining his colonial tour. The lad who had played such a big part in my humble life for six weeks, had been chosen to do the job—■ perhap* because he was spirited and enthusiastic, and, in face of the disease that was slowly killing him, quite reckless of death. Auckland had been the place fixed on, no doubt as a niee out-of-the-way- spot, where no one would dream of looking for Anarchists or their like. And to Auckland the young, chap had come, in company with the elder man, who had evidently been told off to watch him and keep him up to the mark. The pair had taken the disguise of women, posing as aunt and niece, for the better concealment of their designs, and had settled down in our midst as decent householders, to make themselves quite familiar with Auckland and the ways of her folk before the time for action arrived.

Well, that time had come and gone. A great crime had been frustrated, and he who, in his blindness, would have shed innocent blood, had gone to his last account with his conscience free of that.

We buried the poor boy as Kathleen O’Brien. It was the name in which the doctor’s certificate had been made out—the only name by which we had known him.

The truth mother and I kept io ourselves. No need to tell, when no purpose could now- be served by the telling, what could only create a fuss and scandal and make people say hard things of the dead. Besides, I’d no mind to set myself up as the laughing stock of the whole street, and of my friends to boot, as I should certainly- have done if I’d have let it be known that the girl I’d been courting so desperately hard for the last six weeks had turned out to be a young man.

And the carved emu eggf Not much of an emu's egg was that when you came to examine it closely. An egg-shaped contraption of polished steel, coated thickly with nicely tinted wax, which had been all earved and graven in the way I’ve told before—that’s what it was. Cunningly done it was too, so that, unless you handled it, you could have sworn it really was a earved emu egg like those sometimes to be seen in a curio shop. But, for all its innocent look, a regular devil’s contrivance, arranged, as I guessed, to go off, with ghastly results, by the mere force of the concussion when thrown at an object. It was my duty to destroy the pretty, deadly thing, but it had to be gone about with caution. The day after we laid the poor, deluded boy in his grave I went across to Lake Takapuna. Borrowing a boat from a friend there, I w-ent for a row on the Lake. When I got to that part where folks say it has no' bottom I took the seeming emu egg from my jacket poeket and gently dropped it overboard. Down it shot through the clear water like a streak of light, and was gone beyond my sight and knowledge. A burden was off my mind —that was the end of the evil contraption. But, as I pulled back, to the bank, I could not but think of the very different, end for which it had been fashioned—the end that, sudden and swift ns a thunderbolt from heaven, carried death to the innocent and unsuspecting. And, for the hundredth time, I -was filled with wonder and thankfulness that it had been given to mo, a plain workingman of New Zealand, to keep that death from our King’s son and his wife, and so spare the Empire a great catastrophe. (The End.)