Benworden (19 page)

Talbert began picking up his pace when all of a sudden he felt himself hurtling downward, and out of sheer desperation he threw his hands forward trying to grab hold of anything that would stop the momentum of his fall. He finally caught hold of the old dangling rope that was attached to the hoist at the top and came to a sudden halt. Talbert hung on grimly as his heart raced like a stampede of wild horses. He had no idea
what lay below him but he knew he had fallen a fair distance and his arms felt like they had been jerked from their sockets.

Once he had calmed himself down he remembered what his gym instructor in junior school had taught him about how to rest safely when scaling a rope, so he entwined the rope around his leg to give his aching arms and hands a rest. He then removed the torch from his backpack and shone it down the shaft to the floor below. He could see it wasn't far to the ground but looking up he could now confirm that his fall had been further than he initially thought. Talbert felt he wasn't ready to scale the rope back up to the top. He wanted to give his arms a chance to recover, so he began his descent to the bottom knowing he could rest up for a while and contemplate the job he had ahead of him once he regained his strength. As he approached the floor below his hands were too weak to maintain their grip and he slipped from the rope, falling a short way to the dirt below.

Talbert had had the wind knocked out of him so he lay there for a few moments trying to regain his composure. His torch landed just out of his reach and was lighting up the wall on the other side. He rolled over towards the torch and was about to grab it when he put his hand on what seemed to be a smooth rounded boulder with holes in it. Talbert used the rock to help hoist himself to his knees and once upright he grabbed the torch and pointed it towards the rock – he then let out a scream like a teenage girl at a pop idol concert.

He quickly jumped to his feet when he realised he had been poking his fingers into the eye sockets of a skull that had a body connected to it, and began jumping up and down with his arms and legs flapping in different directions. This was followed by a swatting motion like someone who suffers from
arachnophobia trying to rid his body of a dozen crawling spiders.

Talbert murmured to himself, “Calm down you fool! Some adventurer you turned out to be. It's dead. It can't hurt you!”

His heartbeat slowed and the shaking was now under control. He began imagining himself as a hero in a Hollywood movie who had just made a great discovery in a cave after a trek through a remote jungle. This was another new adventure and he wasn't going to miss it for the world.

Like a member of a crime scene investigation team, Talbert knelt and moved his torch up and down the corpse and thought to himself, “Mmm, by the look of this poor fellow's clothes he seems to have been here for some time.” All of the history books that Talbert had read in the past were finally starting to pay off. He identified the clothing on the body as Chinese, dating back to gold rush times around the mid- to late- 1800s. The blue pants and top were distinctive of the Chinese style from those days.

“Hmm, fascinating,” said Talbert, while scratching his head and continuing to scan the light over the clothing. He suddenly stopped moving the torch and began focusing around the vicinity of the corpse's chest. At that moment a cold chill ran up his spine as if someone had tipped freezing water down the back of his shirt. Right in the top centre of the jacket were two distinct circular holes.

“Bullet holes, and straight to the chest. Whoever did this was definitely out for the kill,” he thought to himself. “Yes I see,” Talbert said. “This is definitely a homicide. Colt 45, I imagine,” speaking out loud as if he were surrounded by the whole CSI team.

He then began to reach inside the jacket searching for any concealed piece of evidence that would lead to the identity of the victim.

“Bingo!” he cried on finding a large silk and cotton wallet with official looking papers stored inside. He carefully opened the wallet and then unfolded the documents, only to find they had all been written in Chinese.

“Just as I thought,” said Talbert with a small grin rising from one corner of his mouth. “Definitely Chinese.”

As he moved the beam further down he noticed one arm was straight and the other bent as if it had just been removed from the jacket pocket.

“Hmm,” he hummed, while rifling around inside the pocket. Then like a magician who had just found a rabbit in a hat he pulled out an old pencil and paper. Unlike the other documents it was in English and it was easy to see that it was a very shaky hand that had written it. The words on the note read: “Found gold. Shot by Sid Thomas.”

Talbert thought to himself, “Whoever this Chinese guy was, he was smart. Not only did he hang on long enough to get his murderer's name on the paper but with his last dying effort he got the note back in his pocket to make sure it was preserved for whoever found him.”

Scooping up the note and the Chinese documents, Talbert grabbed an old self-sealing lunch bag from his backpack and placed the two documents in it and then neatly stored them in a side pocket of the pack.

Suddenly, there was a loud crashing noise overhead like a vehicle driving over a bridge, and he figured it must have had something to do with Greg. Fully erect, he moved closer
to the far end wall where he could clearly see a rich vein of gold running through it. This vein was bigger than any other he had seen in all the books he had read and if mined could provide endless wealth to those who staked a claim. Talbert had no need for money – his parents had plenty, but this sort of adventure was a once in a lifetime experience and this is what Talbert saw as his fortune.

All of a sudden the aches and pains he had been experiencing from his earlier mishap no longer mattered, and he scaled the rope like a cat up a tree being pursued by a dog and headed straight back to Benworden. Talbert was right when he heard the crashing noise overhead: it had been Greg towing the motor through to the club rooms and by the time Talbert had worked his way back, the mule and its trailer were now concealed in the club's cavity.

That night Talbert had trouble sleeping and when he eventually dozed off he dreamt about what may have happened to the Chinese man on that fateful day when he had lost his life.

The following morning the whole mystery behind the man's death was completely engulfing Talbert's thoughts, so he got up early and went to the computer room to sort through listings of old newspaper headlines from around that time to see if he could get a clue as to who Sid Thomas may be. Talbert's detective work paid off and during the peak of the goldrush period The Ballarat Gazette featured a story that caught Talbert's eye: “Sid Thomas died tragically today after being hit by a Cobb and Co. coach outside the Ballarat claims department. He leaves behind his widow Joan and two sons Samuel and Isaac.”

Talbert started to put two and two together. He worked out that Sid had murdered his partner after finding the gold,
knowing that no one would miss the Chinese man and the gold would be his. But he didn't foresee his early demise on the way to stake the claim.

Just as Talbert was about to shut down the computer he accidently hit the wrong button and turned up the headlines for two years after Sid's death. It was almost like the old Chinese man was guiding him, and he was shocked to see the front page news that read: “Joan Thomas to wed banker and financier Richard Snippiton.”

This had totally got Talbert's curiosity buzzing so he began to search the births and deaths notices. He found that Joan's two sons had changed their surnames to Snippiton. Talbert then realised that Sid Thomas was Isabel's great, great, great grandfather.

19

L
OYALTY

B
y the following week our new elevator was up and running and Gerry and I had decided the members had earned a treat. We took some money from the safe and bought Gold passes to the movies in Melbourne and organised that we would all meet up at Flinders Street Station.

It was one of those weekends where there were only a small number of boarders remaining back at Benworden, and unknown to us, it created the perfect opportunity for Isabel to expand her area of snooping. Out of the handful that remained Talbert was the only boy. He thought this would be a good time to take a closer look at the tunnel below the smithy's shop so as usual he packed his bag and headed for his favourite tree. Once inside the smithy's shop he was careful this time to step well back from the trapdoor. He went down the stairs into the tunnel and grabbed a torch as he had before, but instead of heading down the shaft to the cavity where he had found the body he took a small stroll in the opposite direction.

While Talbert was fossicking around down below, Isabel was doing some fossicking of her own up above. In the past she had searched the rooms of the girls who wore the club rings but she had never had the opportunity to look around in Gerry's room. Isabel had become an expert at picking locks and Gerry's was just as easy as all the others, so it wasn't long before she was inside going through all of Geraldine's personal belongings.

“Hmm, nothing out of the norm here,” she said to herself while carefully putting everything back where she had found it. Isabel knew the consequences of being caught and worked hard to avoid certain expulsion by covering her tracks. She sat on the bed for a moment and thought to herself, “Maybe I'll find something in Gerry's wardrobe that I can get her into trouble with.” Isabel got up from the bed and moved towards the wardrobe. On opening its door she tripped, pushed her hand threw the hanging clothing and hit the back of the wardrobe making a loud click. She was amazed when another door opened inside and she could see what appeared to be an elevator.

Isabel was overjoyed by her discovery but she was wondering what more she could find out and how many more boarders were involved, so she climbed into the elevator where she saw two buttons: one with a “U” and the other with a “D”. It wasn't hard to figure out that these meant “Up” and “Down” and she didn't hesitate to press the down button.

It wasn't long before she found the elevator coming to a gentle halt. She opened the door and hopped out. Isabel found herself in the room with the old fruit boxes and had no idea what was behind the bookcase. She looked around in awe of what she had literally stumbled across and said to herself, “So this is where those clowns disappear to, is it?”

Isabel felt there should be some further investigation and headed to the rock wall on the opposite side of the room. She started scratching and feeling around on it to see if there were any more hidden switches or buttons. At the same time Talbert was on the other side of the wall and thought he could hear faint scratching. He put his ear to the wall and heard a “CLICK!”

The wall moved and Talbert found himself lying on the
ground looking at a pair of feet. He slowly looked up and glaring down at him was Isabel with her arms crossed.

“Hello,” he said as he gingerly pulled himself up.

She replied, “What are you doing here?” while one of the feet he had been previously staring at began tapping away impatiently.

Talbert was now dusting himself off and replied, “I don't know. I was leaning against a wall one moment and here I am the next.”

“Rubbish!” she said with a snarl and then poked her finger in his chest. “You and that club of yours are in big trouble now!”

Talbert grabbed her finger and said, “That's enough! This isn't my club and I don't think you'll want to get anyone in trouble when I tell you what I know!”

Talbert told Isabel about the letter he had found and if she were to speak a word of what she had discovered he would make sure that the letter would make its way into the hands of the media. Isabel asked Talbert why he would protect the club when they had rejected him.

Talbert replied, “Like you, Benworden is all I have that's stable and secure in my life. This is my family. My home and all my families have problems, but we shouldn't betray each other.”

Talbert spoke with such conviction that Isabel was stunned with his words. She had never experienced loyalty like this before and tears began to well in her eyes. “But don't you get tired of not being a part of something?”

Talbert understood what Isabel was saying and knew he had to put it into perspective for her. “But that's what I'm
saying,” he said. “I am part of something and so are you, but being part of something doesn't mean we have to control it.” He continued passionately. “In the past when I felt insecure I would often try to control others as I felt this would help me hold onto them, but all it did was push them further away. I'm now ok within myself and know the only person I have control over is me.”

Isabel's eyes filled with tears as she began to release her emotional torment. Talbert had somehow reached the last essence of hope within her and she glanced up at him and said, “You're right. I've been seeing things all wrong and I've taken my anger out on people who would've cared about me if I'd given them half a chance. I'm so sorry, Talbert. What have I done?”