Battling Prophet b-20

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “The newspapers told me,” he said, “that Wickham died in this house, and early one morning. The doctor stated, and so signed the certificate, that death was due to heart disease. You support a private report made to me that he died during a bout of delirium tremens. Well?”

  “We were having the hoo-jahs. We were both getting over ’em,” declared Mr. Luton. “We were at the tail-end of ’emwhen Ben died that morning. He shouldof come out of them hoo-jahs like he always did. Same as me. But he died instead. Of something else.”

  “The doctor said it was alcoholic poisoning,” interjected Bony.

  “The quack’s a bone-pointer, like. He wouldn’t know,” argued Knocker Harris, savagely pulling at his dirty-grey ragged moustache.

  “Mr. Wickham had been drinking hard for more than three weeks,” Bony persisted.

  “Not a reason,” countered Mr. Luton. “We often drank hard for six weeks. Once for two months, solid. Nearly got carted off to hospital that time.”

  “Wickham was seventy-five.”

  “I’m eighty-four, Inspector.”

  “You told the policeman that that morning you woke from a good sleep. Feeling slightly better, you decided to light the stove and prepare something to eat. You were busy with the stove when you heard Mr. Wickham laughing. Mr. Wickham was occupying the front room. You went to him and found him sitting up in bed. He continued to laugh, and appeared to be unaware of your presence. You returned to the kitchen and brewed a pot of tea. When you returned to your friend with tea and dry biscuits, Wickham was lying back on the bed asleep. So you thought. You covered him with the bedclothes and left him for an hour. On again going to join him, you discovered that he was dead. Correct, Mr. Luton?”

  “All correct,” replied the old man, his eyes hard, his chin like a rock. “Still, Ben didn’t die of the drink. He was pointing to things on his legs, and he was laughing like hell at what he was seeing. We had been boozing on gin for a bitmore’n three weeks, andgin don’t have that effect on any man. Want me to prove it?”

  “If you can,” Bony assented, “prove it.”

  “I will, when I’ve lit the stove. Switch on the light, Knocker.”

  The stove was already prepared for lighting, and the electric light pushed the dying day a million miles beyond the doorway. Knocker said, as though Bony might be doubtful:

  “He can, too.” He smiled brightly, and Mr. Luton, turning back to the table, saw the smile and stared disapprovingly. He was breathing a trifle fast, and the fingers loading the pipe shook a little, all telling Bony that this was the crucial moment for which Mr. Luton had hoped. He began slowly, a pause between each word:

  “Back in the Year One, when I was wearing out me tenth pair of pants, I’d got sense enough to stick to whatever I started on, and found I could go further and stand up longer. You know how it is with us-a good, hearty booze-up every year, perhaps twice a year, very raremore’n three times a year.

  “I haven’t had time to tell you yet, but Ben andme was mates for something like ten years, flogging bullocks over the tracks back of New South. What I led with, he followed suit. When we boozed on whisky, the things we saw sort of grew before our eyes. When we blinked, they didn’t vanish, but stayed on the table, on our knees, wherever they happened to appear and grow like roses on a bush. Following a spell on rum, the things appear suddenly and vanish suddenly after playing around like they wanted to bite you. The gin hoo-jahs is still different. You see them out of the corner of your eye. They always stalk you from behind, and when you turn to look at ’em, they aren’t there. Understand?”

  “Partly. Go on,” Bony urged.

  “Ben andme wasdrinkin ’ gin that time he perished. He was laughing at things he was seeing on his legs and feet, pointing at them, and laughing so he couldn’t describe ’emto me. Them things wasn’t caused by the gin, and they wasn’t even the whisky hoo-jahs, ’cosyou don’t laugh at them. For two days we’d been seeing the gin hoo-jahs-things that creep up behind you and vanish when you try to look straight at ’em. So it wasn’t the gin that tossed him.”

  “Throughout the day before he died, your friend was seeing things from the corners of his eyes… as you were doing?”

  “That’s what I’m saying, Inspector.”

  “What would he have been drinking to produce the effects on him which you saw that morning, when you found him sitting up and laughing and pointing to things on his legs?”

  “General mixture of beer, spirits and sherry.”

  Bony pondered, and Knocker Harris brought his chair to sit at the table.

  “Last night in Adelaide,” Bony said, “I was introduced to several habitual drunks by a sergeant of the Vice Squad. One victim said that the hoo-jahs, to employ your name for them, always dropped on him from the ceiling. Another told us that the hoo-jahs came from nowhere and crawled all over him. Yet another victim said he had a pet hoo-jah with legs sticking up from its head and three eyes in its stomach. And so on. I have to admit that all these persons mixed their drinks, with the exception of a woman who invariably drank sherry. Have you ever had the hoo-jahs on wine?”

  Mr. Luton shuddered.

  “Once. A long time before I fell in with Ben. Neverno more. They pulled my hair out in chunks, and then my whiskers. After that they nipped out all me body hairs, one at a time. And now and then they threw things at me-a bale of wool, a bullock, a planet. And never missed.”

  “You take a point,” conceded Bony. And Knocker Harris cried triumphantly:

  “Therey’are, Inspector. Benkonked out onsomethin ’ not gin. You got to study this killing to find the lay of it.” His small eyes gleamed with sardonic humour. “Millions of people had no time for Ben and his weather-predictin’. And the politicians are in it, too. They were allagin Ben, like. He told us. The politicians would have their mothers murdered if they could hire someone to murder ’emfor nineteen andelevenpence. As for the Jews…”

  “You keep off the Jews, Knocker,” roared Mr. Luton. “I’ll have no sectarianism in my house. “You’ll be…”

  “Tell me about this last drinking bout,” interposed Bony, and Knocker Harris was unabashed.

  “Yes, tell him,” he urged, and Mr. Luton said:

  “It’ll be easy. Ben hadn’t been along for about two weeks, when he came down from the big house one afternoon. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask him, but he was soured by something or other, and when I seen how he was, I suggested a bender as we hadn’t had one going on for six months. First he says no, and then he says yes and to hell with everything, and so we got stuck into the gin.”

  “You happened to have a supply of gin on hand?” Bony asked.

  “I did, Inspector. Well, after a bit we didn’t want to eat no more. Now and then Knocker would call in and cook us a feed, hut we didn’t want it. Then he tried us out with soup, and after that he gave us up.

  “Mind you, this was all on the programme. Nothing unusual. We talked about the old days. We sang all the old songs we knew. Now and then we took the whips down and went outside and flogged the trees, pretending wewas once more on the tracks with the bullock teams. It ended like it always did. One of us got thinking about his mother, and then we cried and called each other drunken sots and swore off the booze for ever. That was two days before he died.

  “You got to understand that once we swore off the drink, we had to take on the cure and stick to it. We’d never been that weak-minded that any justice could have put us on the Blackfellers’ Act.*The cure was a small dose of the same every four hours. Between doses you suffer hell and you watch the clock like it was going to spit at you. * In several Australian States, a magistrate is empowered to declare an offenderan habitual drunkard, whereupon it is an offence for a hotel keeper to serve him with liquor. The aborigines are also debarred from hotels, and to serve them with liquor under any circumstances is an offence. Colloquially, the habitual drunkard comes under theBlackfellows ’ Act.

  “I got the hoo-jahs that night, and Ben got ’em
first thing in the morning, the same as me. He didn’t tell me so. Had no need to, or me to tell him. I knew by the way he kept looking sideways and back over his shoulders that he was having the gin hoo-jahs all normal and proper.

  “Towards evening that first day, I made a fire in the stove and got us a hot drink of meat extract. We couldn’t bear the stink of it. So we sat and called each other dirty names tillmed’cine time came round again. At midnight we had ourdoch-an’-doris. A real snorter for the night. I was a bit worse than Ben, so he seen me into bed, and, soon after, I heard him shout good-night from his stretcher in the front room.

  “I had a cat-nap, but I was awake long beforemed’cine time at four in the morning. I waited till four to take the bottle in to Ben. He was sitting on the stretcher with his feet on the floor, and he was holding his head with both hands to stop himself looking backwards at them hoo-jahs. Y’see, after a day of doing that, your neck aches like hell. I gave him his snort, and had one myself. Then I covered him up after he got back on the stretcher, and went back to my own bunk.

  “I had another cat-nap, and waswoke by hearing Ben roaring with laughter. I asked him what he was laughing at, and all he could do was to keep on laughing and point at his legs, him sitting up and the bedclothes on the floor. Iwasn’t liking the way he was going on. I pushed him down and covered him up and left him, the time being just before half-past six, and one hour and a half offmed’cine time.

  “He stopped laughing as I was making a brew of tea, pouring as much water on the floor as in the pot. I wasthinkin ’ then that if Ben didn’t come out from them funny sort of hoo-jahs pretty quick, I’d break our rule and give him a stiffener to keep him going. It seemed that I needn’t have worried, because when I went to him with the tea and the bottle, he was asleep and snoring. So I came back here and had a cup of tea and resisted the gin, deciding I’d wait for Ben to join me in the eight o’clock dose.

  “Come eight o’clock, I went in to see how he was faring. He must have sat up again, for the clothes were half off him. He wasn’t asleep then. He was dead. So I staggered up-river to tell Knocker to go for the quack.”

  “And the quack roared hell outer me, like,” snarled Knocker. “Told me that Ben and his boozing mate oughtadied a century back. And I oughta be ashamed of myself for associating with ’em. I told him to take arunnin ’ jump athisself, and I went to the policeman, and he said he’d a good mind to lock us all up, includin ’ dead Ben.”

  Mr. Luton took over once again.

  “They got here in the doctor’s car about ten that morning. By then I’d done some tidying up, throwing the empties into the river, planting the full ones out of sight. I told the tale that Ben had brought the supply with him, and we’d run dry and was sobering up. We had a confab on the veranda after the quack had seen Ben and said he’d died of the booze. I told them about the right kind of hoo-jahs Ben had, and how he couldn’t have died of ’em. They told me not to be a damned old fool, and that I ought to be put away for my own good.”

  “The quack said we both oughta be sent up to the Old Men’s Home,” supplemented Knocker Harris indignantly. “And the policeman backed him up. Ruddy bastards, both of ’em.”

  “You’d better get back to your camp,” Mr. Luton suggested with some severity. “I got to fix us with a feed, and feed the fowls and the dogs. It’s almost dark.”

  A smile of benign satisfaction spread slowly over the weather-bashed features of the neighbour. He said something about seeing them later, and departed. The dogs went with him, only as far as the garden gate.

  “You’ll be staying, Inspector, eh?” again pleaded Mr. Luton.

  “Of course. You asked me down for the fishing,” replied Bony. “I’m a good fisherman, Mr. Luton.”

  Chapter Three

  The Picture

  THEnight was peaceful and cold. The moon at zenith was almost completely triumphant, for the western sky was fast being drained of light. Beyond the garden fence the three mighty gums ruled a magic world of semi-tones, with the silvered pathway of the river in the distance.

  This was not the picture Bony was seeing. He was looking at a picture sharp in places, blurred in others, an unfinished picture. A man had died, and he and those associated with him were the subjects of this picture. They were portrayed brilliantly, were at once recognisable. The circumstances surrounding the dead man’s last hour of life were blurred as though befogged by Mr. Luton’s claims of extraordinary knowledge, knowledge which, superficially, was as fantastic as the dreams of the modern artists. Superficially to everyone save those who, like Bony, were familiar with the extraordinary background of the extraordinary race of men represented by Mr. Luton.

  This race has not entirely passed away. The last remnants are still to be found living in peaceful old age on the banks of inland rivers and near a township which they visit only onpensions days. It was a race the like of which will never again be seen, for it possessed all the admirable attributes and but few of the human vices. They were born long before motor traction could weaken their bodies and the craze for luxury and mental distraction could weaken their minds. Life made upon them such physical demands that occasional intemperance had no lasting effects, whilst their dependence on one another in a world of vast, semi-arid distances gave to them a spiritual strength rarely found in city and town even in their own times.

  John Luton’s background applied only in part to Knocker Harris, a younger man, less intelligent, less stable. He had been brought up on a farm, whereas Mr. Luton had roamed the open spaces of the Interior. He had driven horses in a single-furrow plough, long after Mr. Luton had saved a little money from the pubs and purchased his first bullock team and wagon. Knocker Harris had prospected for gold in Victoria when Mr. Luton was punching bullocks on the far tracks of the Interior. But, like Mr. Luton, he had worked from dawn to dusk, and he had lived with those whose motto was: “If your neighbour needs a pound, give him five. If a down-and-out begs for a crust, give him half your loaf.” There was no sentiment about it. It was just plain common-sensicalinsurance.

  Ben Wickham had been anewchum, atowny, an outsider lost in a rough man’s country. He was a full-grown man when Mr. Luton found him completely drunk on the wood-heap at the rear of a wayside hotel. The publican wanted Wickham away from his yard, and had no use for him in his bar, as he was broke to the wide, wide sky. Mr. Luton was conveying a mountain of stores and grog to far distant townships, and, the day before, he had left Broken Hill without his offsider, who had decided he couldn’t leave the bright gas-lights of Argent Street.

  Wickham was, of course, no use whatever to Mr. Luton. He was wearing a flash city suit, horribly soiled, and shoes, instead of he-man’s boots. He had never seen a bullock yoke, and didn’t know which end a bullock hauled with. Mr. Luton took the body off the wood-heap, nursed life back into it, and ultimately fashioned the best offsider he ever had. Twelve months later, Ben Wickham was driving his own bullock team in company with John Luton.

  They worked together for ten years. For ten years, summer and winter, they flogged and cursed bullocks up and down all the tracks of outback New South Wales and Queensland, loading wool to the railheads, loading stores and building material and beer and spirits back to the growing townships and the ever demanding station homesteads.

  Wickham had been a brilliant student and promised to become a brilliant scientist, and, like so many brilliant minds, he had a weakness for alcohol. Mr. Luton picked him off the hotel wood-heap just in time. Forced abstinence and gruelling work on the tracks, aided byhis own intelligence and by Mr. Luton’s remarkable influence, slowly brought Wickham into a world he could appreciate. He had accepted and profited by Mr. Luton’s advice, which was: “Don’t nibble at the grog. Have a gut-fulwhen you’re at the trough, and then give it away for a spell.” It was sound advice, too, when the visit to the trough lasted two weeks and the spell following it lasted nine or twelve months.

  The partnership was broken when Wickham inherited his father�
��s estate known as Mount Mario, at the time when the motor truck was banishing bullocks to the abattoirs. Mr. Luton decided to buy a small grazing property, and Wickham took up his inheritance and his meteorological ambitions. What Bony knew of him were tiny pen strokes which brought him into clear perspective in this large picture he was now studying.

  That Wickham had been a truly remarkable man was unarguable. He broke away from the orthodox science of meteorology, which was getting nowhere very fast and could only advise my lady what clothes to wear the next day, the airman what conditions he could expect to fly into during the next two hours, and the seaman whose barometer and radio contact with other ships could tell him more.

  Like Sister Kenny, he battled with obstruction, a professional jealousy and spite. From a low percentage of accurate forecasts, he had ultimately claimed accuracy of one hundred per cent, and the two years before his death had proved his claim. Without doubt, Ben Wickham had been greatly admired and greatly hated. Twenty thousand people watched the plane rise from the airfield with his ashes to scatter them over the place where he had worked and fought and triumphed.

  There was, of course, part of the picture so exceedingly blurred as to be almost undecipherable. Mr. Luton’s idea, if it could be so named, thatevery spirituous liquor has its own distinct effect on the mind subject to its power-it could be accepted only as an idea, barely as a theory. Who on this earth, other than Mr. Luton, with the possible exception of Knocker Harris, would accept as fact that hallucinations created by whisky were distinctly different from those created by gin? Who else would be even faintly interested by this subject, this idea, this theory, this utter rot? A man aged seventy-five existed on gin and nothing else for three weeks. Of course he would have delirium tremens. What was more remarkable was that he didn’t die before reaching that stage. He had had a sick heart. The doctor had warned him.