Gavan Blake, attorney and solicitor, sat in his office at Tarrong,
opening his morning's letters. The office was in a small weatherboard
cottage in the "main street" of Tarrong (at any rate it might
fairly claim to be the main street, as it was the only street that
had any houses in it). The front room, where he sat, was fitted
up with a table and a set of pigeon-holes full of dusty papers, a
leather couch, a small fire-proof safe, and a book-case containing
about equal proportions of law-books and novels. A few maps of
Tarrong township and neighbouring stations hung on the walls. The
wooden partition of the house only ran up to the rafters, and over
it could plainly be heard his housekeeper scrubbing his bedroom.
Across the little passage was his sitting-room, furnished in the
style of most bachelors' rooms, an important item of furniture
being a cupboard where whisky was always to be found. At the back
of the main cottage were servants' quarters and kitchen. Behind
the house, on a spare allotment, were two or three loose-boxes for
racehorses, a saddle-room and a groom's room. This was the whole
establishment. A woman came in every day to do up his rooms from
the hotel, where he had his meals. It was an inexpensive mode
of life, but one that conduced to the drinking of a good many
whiskies-and-sodas at the hotel with clients and casual callers,
and to a good deal of card-playing and late hours. The racehorses,
too, like most racehorses, ate up more money than they earned. So
that Mr. Gavan Blake, though a clever man, with a good practice,
always seemed to find himself hard up.
It was so on this particular morning. Every letter that he opened
seemed to have some reference to money. One, from the local storekeeper,
was a pretentious account embracing all sorts of items--ammunition,
stationery, saddlery and station supplies (the latter being on
account of a small station that Blake had taken over for a bad debt,
which seemed likely to turn out an equally bad asset). Station
supplies, even for bad stations, run into a lot of money, and the store
account was approaching a hundred pounds. Then there was a letter
from a horse-trainer in Sydney to whom he had sent a racehorse, and
though this animal had done such brilliant gallops that the trainer
had three times telegraphed him that a race was a certainty--once
he went so far as to say that the horse could stop to throw a
somersault and still win the race--on each occasion it had always
come in among the ruck; and every time forty or fifty pounds of
Blake's money had been lost in betting. For Blake was a confirmed
gambler, a heavy card-player and backer of horses, and he had
the contempt for other people's skill and opinions which seems an
inevitable ingredient in the character of brilliant men of a certain
type.