Steelman and Smith had been staying at the hotel for several days in the dress and character of bushies down for what they considered a spree.
The gentleman sharper from the Other Side had been hanging round them for three days now. Steelman was the more sociable, and, to all appearances, the greener of the two bush mates; but seemed rather too much under the influence of Smith, who was reserved, suspicious, self-contained, or sulky. He almost scowled at Gentleman Sharper's "Good-morning!" and "Fine day!", replied in monosyllables and turned half away with an uneasy, sullen, resentful hump of his shoulder and shuffle of his feet.
Steelman took Smith for a stroll on the round, bald tussock hills surrounding the city, and rehearsed him for the last act until after sundown.
Gentleman Sharper was lounging, with a cigar, on the end of the balcony, where he had been contentedly contemplating the beautiful death of day.
His calm, classic features began to whiten (and sharpen) in the frosty moonlight.
Steelman and Smith sat on deck-chairs behind a half-screen of ferns on the other end of the balcony, smoked their after-dinner smoke, and talked in subdued tones as befitted the time and the scene -- great, softened, misty hills in a semicircle, and the water and harbour lights in moonlight.
The other boarders were loitering over dinner, in their rooms, or gone out; the three were alone on the balcony, which was a rear one.
Gentleman Sharper moved his position, carelessly, noiselessly, yet quickly, until he leaned on the rail close to the ferns and could overhear every word the bushies said. He had dropped his cigar overboard, and his scented handkerchief behind a fern-pot en route.
"But he looks all right, and acts all right, and talks all right -- and shouts all right," protested Steelman. "He's not stumped, for I saw twenty or thirty sovereigns when he shouted; and he doesn't seem to care a damn whether we stand in with him or not."
"There you are! That's just where it is!" said Smith, with some logic, but in a tone a wife uses in argument (which tone, by the way, especially if backed by logic or common sense, makes a man wild sooner than anything else in this world of troubles).
Steelman jerked his chair half-round in disgust. "That's you!" he snorted, "always suspicious! Always suspicious of everybody and everything!
If I found myself shot into a world where I couldn't trust anybody I'd shoot myself out of it. Life would be worse than not worth living.
Smith, you'll never make money, except by hard graft -- hard, bullocking, nigger-driving graft like we had on that damned railway section for the last six months, up to our knees in water all winter, and all for a paltry cheque of one-fifty -- twenty of that gone already.
How do you expect to make money in this country if you won't take anything for granted, except hard cash? I tell you, Smith, there's a thousand pounds lost for every one gained or saved by trusting too little. How did Vanderbilt and ----"
Steelman elaborated to a climax, slipping a glance warily, once or twice, out of the tail of his eye through the ferns, low down.
"There never was a fortune made that wasn't made by chancing it."
He nudged Smith to come to the point. Presently Smith asked, sulkily:
"Well, what was he saying?"
"I thought I told you! He says he's behind the scenes in this gold boom, and, if he had a hundred pounds ready cash to-morrow, he'd make three of it before Saturday. He said he could put one-fifty to one-fifty."
"And isn't he worth three hundred?"
"Didn't I tell you," demanded Steelman, with an impatient ring, and speaking rapidly, "that he lost his mail in the wreck of the `Tasman'?
You know she went down the day before yesterday, and the divers haven't got at the mails yet."
"Yes. . . . But why doesn't he wire to Sydney for some stuff?"
"I'm ----! Well, I suppose I'll have to have patience with a born natural.
Look here, Smith, the fact of the matter is that he's a sort of black-sheep -- sent out on the remittance system, if the truth is known, and with letters of introduction to some big-bugs out here -- that explains how he gets to know these wire-pullers behind the boom.
His people have probably got the quarterly allowance business fixed hard and tight with a bank or a lawyer in Sydney; and there'll have to be enquiries about the lost `draft' (as he calls a cheque) and a letter or maybe a cable home to England; and it might take weeks."
"Yes," said Smith, hesitatingly. "That all sounds right enough.
But" -- with an inspiration -- "why don't he go to one of these big-bug boomsters he knows -- that he got letters of introduction to -- and get him to fix him up?"
"Oh, Lord!" exclaimed Steelman, hopelessly. "Listen to him!
Can't you see that they're the last men he wants to let into his game?
Why, he wants to use THEM! They're the mugs as far as he is concerned!"
"Oh -- I see!" said Smith, after hesitating, and rather slowly -- as if he hadn't quite finished seeing yet.
Steelman glanced furtively at the fern-screen, and nudged Smith again.
"He said if he had three hundred, he'd double it by Saturday?"
"That's what he said," replied Steelman, seeming by his tone to be losing interest in the conversation.
"And . . . well, if he had a hundred he could double that, I suppose."
"Yes. What are you driving at now?"
"If he had twenty ----"
"Oh, God! I'm sick of you, Smith. What the ----!"
"Hold on. Let me finish. I was only going to say that I'm willing to put up a fiver, and you put up another fiver, and if he doubles that for us then we can talk about standing in with him with a hundred -- provided he can show his hundred."
After some snarling Steelman said: "Well, I'll try him!
Now are you satisfied?" . . .
"He's moved off now," he added in a whisper; "but stay here and talk a bit longer."
Passing through the hall they saw Gentleman Sharper standing carelessly by the door of the private bar. He jerked his head in the direction of drinks.
Steelman accepted the invitation -- Smith passed on.
