The Masked Man Read online

  Copyright © Jane Smith

  First published 2019

  Copyright remains the property of the authors and apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.

  All inquiries should be made to the publishers.

  Big Sky Publishing Pty Ltd

  PO Box 303, Newport, NSW 2106, Australia

  Phone: 1300 364 611

  Fax: (61 2) 9918 2396

  Email:[email protected]

  Web:www.bigskypublishing.com.au

  Cover design and typesetting: Think Productions

  Proudly printed and bound in China by Hang Tai Printing Company Limited

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Creator: Smith, Jane Margaret, author.

  Title: The Masked Man / Jane Smith.

  ISBN: 9781922265425 (paperback).

  Series: Smith, Jane Margaret. Tommy Bell, bushranger boy ; bk 8.

  Subjects: Bushrangers - Australian - juvenile fiction. Time travel - juvenile fiction. Adventure stories. Gardiner, Frank

  BOOKS IN THE TOMMY BELL, BUSHRANGER BOY SERIES:

  1. SHOOT-OUT AT THE ROCK

  2. THE HORSE THIEF

  3. THE GOLD ESCORT GANG

  4. OUTBACK ADVENTURE

  5. GANG OF THIEVES

  6. MRS THUNDERBOLT

  7. THE RUNAWAY

  TO JAMES JAMES MORRISON MORRISON WEATHERBY GEORGE DUPREE

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1 Stranded

  CHAPTER 2 The masked man

  CHAPTER 3 The bank manager

  CHAPTER 4 Arrested

  CHAPTER 5 Noodles

  CHAPTER 6 Back to the past

  CHAPTER 7 Mr Sly

  CHAPTER 8 The well

  CHAPTER 9 The red neckerchief

  Historical Note

  Q & A with Captain Moonlite

  About the Author

  ‘Looks like we’re not going to make it tonight, boys,’ said Tommy’s dad. He kicked the tyres and swore.

  Tommy sighed. All day in the car, and then 15 minutes from their destination it just hiccups and dies. In the middle of nowhere.

  ‘Where are we, anyway?’ Tommy grumbled.

  Martin fussed with the map. He had a smartphone, but he was the sort of kid who still used maps. Tommy didn’t have a phone; his parents weren’t rich like Martin’s.

  ‘We’re just outside of Mt Egerton,’ Martin said.

  ‘OK,’ said Tommy’s dad, pulling his phone out of his pocket. ‘Let’s get this heap of junk towed to a servo and we’ll get a bed here for the night.’

  The boys scrambled out of the back seat to wait with Tommy’s dad. The sun was going down and it was late autumn; by the time the tow-truck arrived, Tommy’s fingers and toes were frozen. They checked into a motel: Tommy’s dad in one room and the two boys next door. It wasn’t what they had planned, but it was kind of exciting to be staying in a strange motel in the middle of nowhere.

  Tommy’s dad was worried because he was stuck in a motel in Mt Egerton when he was supposed to be in Ballarat for business. He told the boys to walk down the road to buy takeaways for dinner while he stayed in to make some phone calls. Tommy and Martin glanced at each other with shining eyes. They were only too happy to explore the strange streets alone after dark! If Tommy’s mother was there, she would never have allowed it. But she was busy studying, so when Tommy’s dad had told her that he had to take a business trip to Ballarat during the school holidays, she had suggested that Tommy could go with him.

  ‘It’s an old goldmining town,’ she had told Tommy. ‘You’d be interested in that.’

  It was true: Tommy had a great interest in the gold rush days. It had started when he’d found an old hat in a cave near his grandfather’s farm at Uralla. The hat was a battered old straw-like thing made from the leaves of the cabbage-tree palm; the type of hat that bushrangers used to wear. The hat seemed to have mysterious powers; whenever he put it on his head, it would send him back to the days when bushrangers roamed the countryside. He had had many strange and exciting adventures since he found it.

  Tommy’s friend Martin was the only other human who knew about the hat. Tommy’s beloved best friend, Combo – who happened to be a horse – knew about it too, but he didn’t quite count as a human, although sometimes Tommy believed that Combo could think like one. Tommy wasn’t allowed to bring Combo on this trip to Victoria, so his mother had suggested that he take Martin for company instead. She liked Martin; he was a ‘good influence’, unlike Tommy’s other friend, Francis, who was always getting into trouble.

  Tommy was pleased to have Martin along for the trip. Martin was kind and fun, even if he could sometimes be a bit of a worry-wart. Martin had once found a pair of old boots that had the same magical power as Tommy’s hat, but he didn’t like to use them. He’d only been back to the past a couple of times with Tommy; for some reason, the idea of coming face-to-face with a bushranger frightened him!

  The boys left Tommy’s dad in his room and wandered down the road. It was dark and quiet and the street was empty. The moon hung low and bright in a black sky. Tommy shivered.

  ‘I’ve read about this place,’ Martin murmured.

  ‘Of course you have,’ said Tommy with a smile. Martin was a great reader.

  ‘It used to be a goldmining town,’ Martin went on. ‘There was a gold rush here in 1854. The town was probably bigger then than it is now. There was a mine, a bank, a post office, heaps of pubs …’

  The boys squinted against the dark. Tommy’s cabbage-tree hat was in his hand; he fiddled restlessly with the black ribbon around its crown.

  A chilly breeze stirring the trees was the only sign of movement in the street. Tommy tried to imagine the town as it had been during the gold rush: the dusty main street bustling with ladies in bonnets and big skirts; horses tethered to the posts of hotel verandahs; whiskered men with waistcoats and pocket-watches marching in and out of the bank. The urge to put the cabbage-tree hat on his head and slip back in time grew steadily stronger. The fear and excitement of remembering his past adventures made Tommy’s heart flip. Surely there can’t be any harm in going back – just for a minute or two …

  ‘Imagine what it was like …’ he began, but Martin cut him off.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ he warned. Martin knew him too well.

  Tommy sighed. They walked in silence for a moment, each thinking about their time-travelling adventures. Then Martin asked: ‘Do you think we should tell Francis?’

  Tommy scowled in the dark. They’d had this conversation before. Francis knew that Tommy and Martin had a big secret from him, but never in his wildest dreams would he imagine what their secret was: that they could travel back in time. Martin wanted to tell Francis, but Tommy was reluctant. He knew that it hurt Francis to be left out. But Francis would never believe their story – not in a million years!

  The only way they could let Francis know was to show him – to take him with them. But that was something that Tommy was afraid to do. Francis got into enough trouble as it was. He was always getting detentions for talking back to the teacher, or climbing trees, or skipping classes, or picking fights … or just about anything! Just imagine if he was in the company of an armed robber! One part of Tommy feared that Francis (who was a bit of a hot-head) would stir up trouble and get them all shot. But a bigger part feared that his friend would join forces with the bushrangers!

  Francis loved excitement and he was not afraid of danger. He also liked to break rules. Taking Francis back to colonial times was a risk that Tommy was not willing to take. Tommy shook his head and reminded Martin of al
l these reasons not to let Francis know their secret.

  ‘Besides,’ he said (for the hundredth time), ‘How could we take Francis back to the past? Your boots are too small for him, and if I lend him my hat, I won’t be able to go back to the past with him. And there’s no way I’m going to let Francis go alone!’

  But Martin sighed and kept insisting in his quiet way. The trouble with Martin was that he trusted people too much; he couldn’t see how much trouble Francis could cause. The argument was making Tommy grumpy.

  ‘Well, if you’re so keen, why won’t you come back to the past with me now?’ he sulked.

  Even in the dark, Tommy could see Martin’s face turn pale.

  ‘I … I can’t,’ he stammered. ‘My boots are back at the motel.’

  ‘Fine then,’ said Tommy. ‘I’ll go by myself.’

  And then, partly to annoy Martin, but mostly just because he couldn’t resist an adventure, Tommy put the hat on his head.

  Normally when he put the hat on, the world would seem to black out, and then Tommy’s head would clear again and he would find himself back in the nineteenth century. But this time, when Tommy’s head cleared, it was still dark. The moon was still glowing big and heavy in the night sky. At first, Tommy wasn’t sure if anything had changed. The hat had failed once before, when he was locked up in a room; would it also fail in the dark?

  ‘Martin?’ Tommy whispered, but there was no reply. The hat had worked after all.

  Tommy felt a bit bad about leaving Martin alone in the strange night-time street, but he told himself not to worry. When he disappeared into the past, time seemed to stand still for those left back in the present. Martin would hardly notice that he was gone.

  Tommy walked carefully along the deserted street. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the dark. A shaft of moonlight beamed onto the village, and here and there he could make out the hunched shape of a building: a sloping roof, a little porch. The smoky air brought to his mind’s eye an image of families snuggled in front of fireplaces, all cosy in their humble cottages.

  The crunch of footsteps nearly startled Tommy right out of his skin. He ducked behind a bush, suddenly afraid. He peered out between the leaves to watch. He saw the figure of a man; the figure turned and stopped at the door of the building directly across the road from Tommy. The man raised a hand and Tommy could hear the jangling of keys.

  Then a blur of movement made Tommy gasp. The hunched figure of a second man was creeping silently up behind the first. He was bigger than the first man, and his right arm was raised high. There was something bulky in his hand. With a shock, Tommy realised it was a gun.

  What should he do? Cry out and warn the man at the door? Or wait and watch? The glint of moonlight on the gun’s barrel made up his mind for him: he’d stay hidden for now!

  Through the cold night air, the attacker’s voice carried clearly.

  ‘Don’t make a sound,’ he said, placing his gun at the other’s head, ‘or I’ll knock you down.’

  The man had a strange accent – soft and singsong. The man on the doorstep froze.

  ‘We’ll go in,’ said the man with the gun, ‘and you’ll give me the gold or I’ll shoot you.’

  As the door opened and the men shuffled inside, Tommy edged closer. A robbery was in progress! Tommy dashed across the road and hid behind another bush, where he had a better view of the building. Over the front door was a sign that said London Chartered Bank.

  Tommy was still creeping closer when the door swung wide again and the men spilled out. The victim was standing in front and, now that Tommy could see his face, he realised that the man was much younger than he had at first imagined. He was only a teenager. He was slim and blond and he looked terrified. The robber stood behind him, holding the gun in one hand and a sack in the other. His eyes were cool and pale. The rest of his face was covered with a red handkerchief. He was pressing his gun into the young man’s back.

  Tommy stayed in the shadows, silent, almost too afraid to breathe. As the men passed him, he heard the younger one whimper. They marched on, their boots crunching on the gravel. The older man walked with a limp. When they had gone a safe distance, Tommy decided to follow them. He crept along the roadside behind them, dashing from one bush to another for cover. The men’s voices carried in the still, cold night air.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ Tommy heard the young man ask in a wobbling voice.

  ‘Into the bush, where I shall tie you up,’ was the reply.

  The idea of being tied up to a tree for the long freezing night clearly didn’t appeal to the victim. ‘Please, no!’ he begged. ‘I have a sore throat and I’ll fall ill if you leave me out there!’

  His attacker sighed. ‘All right then,’ he grumbled. ‘We’ll go to the schoolroom.’

  He wasn’t a complete monster, then. But Tommy would stick around just in case the young man needed him. The two men trudged along the road, with Tommy trailing silently behind. The night was dark and eerie. The crooked skeletons of winter trees shredded the moonlight into ribbons and cast creepy shadows onto the earth. There was no sound but the crunching of boots on gravel.

  Suddenly the man with the gun let out a whistle, loud and clear, startling the life out of his victim – and Tommy.

  ‘Just letting my mate know where I am,’ the gunman explained. ‘He’s here in the bush, covering my back.’

  Liar, thought Tommy. There’s no one else here but me. The man was bluffing. Trying to frighten his victim even more by making him think he was part of a gang. What a bully.

  They marched on, the younger man stiff and awkward with the gun at his back. Tommy tiptoed behind, keeping to the shadows. His breath came out in foggy puffs. His heart pounded.

  They passed by a well. As he passed, Tommy peeped over the edge down the well's shaft. The moonlight glowed on the surface of its water like a ghost, and Tommy shivered with fear. At last they came to a little timber building that Tommy guessed must be the schoolroom. The men shuffled inside, leaving the door open. Tommy crept onto the porch and crouched beside the doorway. Carefully, he peered through the open door into the building. The darkness was almost complete; Tommy could barely make out the shapes of the men inside. But the voices were as clear as day.

  ‘Here is some paper and a pen,’ the masked man was saying in his soft, strange accent. ‘Now I want you to write what I dictate.’

  Light flared as the man struck a match. Tommy could see the flickering reflected in his pale eyes. The younger man took up his pen with a shaky hand.

  Then the attacker started to dictate: ‘I hereby certify that L.W. Bruun has done everything in his power to withstand our intrusion and the taking away of the money which was done with firearms.’

  The young man wrote as the robber spoke. When he was finished, the masked man took the pen from his victim’s hand. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘So don’t say I didn’t look after you. You won’t get blamed for stealing the gold and money now.’

  Then the robber leaned over the desk and signed the paper. ‘Now sit still while I tie you to the chair!’ he ordered.

  When the shuffling and grunting was over, the man with the gun turned back to the door. His mask had slipped down and Tommy could see his face. The man had thick, dark hair and a black beard, and his eyes were a cold, hard blue.

  Tommy shrank back in fear. He flattened himself against the shadowy wall as the man hurried past him and out into the night. The moon lit a path; in the white ribbon of light Tommy saw him limp down the road. Then the man veered off to a big dark shape by the roadside: the well. The man leaned over it and Tommy heard a splash. Then the robber limped back out to the road and disappeared into the darkness.

  Meanwhile, Tommy could hear the ragged breathing of the young man inside the schoolroom. He figured it would be safe now to tiptoe in. When Tommy appeared, the poor man tied to the chair nearly toppled it over in fright.

  ‘It’s OK!’ Tommy whispered. ‘I’m going to set you free.’

  He
fumbled around in the dark. If only Martin was there, with his phone to provide some light! At last he loosened the ropes and freed the shivering teenager from the chair. They stumbled out of the schoolroom and sat on the steps, where the moonlight cast its glow upon them.

  At first the young man was too upset to speak; he sat rubbing his wrists and panting.

  ‘I’m Tommy Bell,’ said Tommy. ‘Who are you?’

  The young man breathed deeply to steady himself. ‘Ludwig,’ he replied after a while. ‘Ludwig Bruun. I’m the manager of the bank.’

  This was surprising. In Tommy’s experience, bank managers were old and bald and wore thick glasses and badly cut suits.

  ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you kind of young to be a bank manager?’

  ‘I’m seventeen,’ Ludwig replied proudly, ‘… and a half.’

  Tommy thought about it. ‘Like I said,’ he began, and Ludwig snorted. Apparently, in colonial times, it was OK to be a bank manager when you were only seventeen and a half. Cool! Tommy wondered what he would be doing by seventeen and a half if he was living in colonial times. Would he be a bank manager? He didn’t think so. A teacher? No way. I’d be a farmer, he thought. I’d own a hundred horses.

  ‘So, what were you doing at the bank so late at night?’ Tommy asked. Even bank managers went home to bed at night – or so Tommy believed.

  ‘I sleep at the bank,’ Ludwig replied, with a slight roll of the eyes, as if Tommy was an idiot – as if everyone knew that bank managers slept over at the bank at night. ‘I was out at my friend’s place for dinner – James Simpson, the schoolteacher,’ Ludwig went on, ‘and I was coming home for the night. What is this, anyway: an interrogation? I’m the victim here, remember?’

  ‘Just curious,’ said Tommy. What strange times these were, when teenagers became bank managers and slept over at work and got robbed at gunpoint by masked men in the deep of the night!

  ‘Who was that man?’ Tommy wondered.

  To Tommy’s surprise, Ludwig answered: ‘I know who he was.’ He folded his arms with a frown. ‘He used to be a friend of mine.’