“That’ll be Mr. Grant’s name,” suggested Carew.
“I don’t know so much about that,” said Charlie. “I don’t think, if a man has a mortgage over a place, that he can take it in his own name. That fool Pinnock didn’t tell me. He was too anxious to know how we got on with the larrikins to give me any useful information. Anyhow, I’ll fill in my own name—for all the block is worth I ain’t likely to steal it. I can transfer it to Mr. Grant afterwards.”
“I don’t care,” said the old man indifferently, “I’ll transfer my interest to anyone you like. I’m done with it. I’m signing away fifteen of the best years of my life. But my name ain’t Keogh, you know, though I always went by that. My father died when I was a kiddy, and my mother married again, so I got called by my stepfather’s name all my life. This is my right name, and it’s a poor man’s name to-day.” And as the two men bent over him in the light of the flickering slush-lamp, he wrote, with stiff, uncertain fingers, “Patrick Henry Considine.”
For a few seconds no one spoke. Carew and Gordon stared at the signature, and then looked at each other. The newly-found Considine looked at his autograph in a critical way, as if not quite sure he had spelled it right, and then stood up, handing the deed to Gordon.
“There y’are,” he said. “There’s my right, title and intrust in all this here block of land, and all the stock what’s on it; and if you’re ever short of a man to look after the place in the wet season I’ll take the job. I might be glad of it.”
“I think it’s quite likely you won’t want any job from me,” said Charlie. “I’ll be asking you for a job yet. Are you sure that’s your right name? What was your father?”
“My name? O’ course it’s my name. My father was billiard-marker at Casey’s Hotel, Dandaloo,” said the old man with conscious pride. “A swell he had been, but the boose done him up, like many a better man. He used to write to people over in England for money, but they never giv him any.”
“Where did he write to?” asked Carew, looking at the uncouth figure with intense interest. “Do you know what people he wrote to?”
“Yairs. He wrote to William Considine. That was his father’s name. His father never sent any money, though. Told him to go to hell, I reckon.”