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
