Murder down under b-4

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Now, Miss Lucy, get to work. Make haste; try to replace those puzzling stitches. I may yet have to play Mrs Loftus a little longer,” he said with triumph in his voice.

  “Needles and that numberforty cotton, please,” she said with a calm efficiency which delighted him, even though he had met many calm and efficient women in the bush.

  He fell to watching the slim fingers threading the needle, the eye of which would have daunted any man. He saw her first secure the lips of the seven-inch slit with what he afterwards learned was overcast stitching, the needlepassing the cotton through the original holes. When she began the herringbone stitches he saw her difficulty in using the holes Mrs Loftus had made, yet marvelled at her dexterity. It was fifteen minutes to ten o’clock. She began the featherstitching.

  “I can’t see it! I can’t do it!” she breathed.

  “Never mind the original holes now. Make as good a copy as possible of her stitching.”

  The light gleamed on the now slower flashing needle. Across the darker bands of the mattress material the featherstitching made him realize how difficult was her task, hopeless of accomplishment to any but the most practised. Despite the necessity for haste, she made a splendid copy of Mrs Loftus’s work, although Bony was unable to appreciate it properly. When it was done Lucy said:

  “Unless she takes the mattress out into strong light I think she will not discover the trick.”

  He saw the paleness of her face when she stood up, even though her face was outside the light beam. Now that her work was done, the terrific excitement was becoming felt, threatening to overwhelm her. Gently he took her hands in his and said firmly:

  “Thank you! You have behaved wonderfully. Remain calm. There is absolutely no cause for nervousness. There is yet plenty of time. Just wait two minutes.”

  Quickly he detached the string from about the lamp. Now its circle of light swept over hessian walls and moved across every floorboard. It gleamed on the polished surface of the table and flashed across the picture on the easel. Finally it halted on the floor at his feet.

  “It is not here,” he said.

  “What is not here?”

  “A small box having a lock fitted by a peculiarly shaped key. Stay there.”

  His voice, she noticed, had lost its soft inflexion. No longer was he the courteous acquaintance, the understanding friend. The guttural liquids of his aboriginal ancestry had crept into his voice, as their hunting stealth had crept into his limbs. When he walked into the kitchen his legs were like clock springs and his body rested on the extreme tips of his sheepskin boots.

  Following him to the door of the bedroom, she stood to stare at his grotesque figure revealed by the quick-moving light which never once shone directly out of the window. She wondered why he did not lower the blind, as he had done in the room behind her. He was now examining the glass-fronted bookcase, now beginning the task of taking from the shelves every book to see if there might be one which really was a box fashioned like a book.

  Standing on a chair, he examined the top of the bookcase. Lying on his chest, he searched the narrow space between the bottom of the bookcase and the floor. With the fluttering quickness of a butterfly he hunted for that little box, even removing the wood billets in the iron scuttle. Finally his lamp flickered about the fireplace.

  It was a double fireplace, or rather a large open hearth with one-third of its space occupied by a cooking stove. At the time of the year the open wood fire would never be required, and now sheets of crimson tissue paper covered the brick flooring partly hidden by a hand-painted screen.

  Stooping, appearing like a giant spider framed against the whitewash of the fire back, Bony removed the tissue paper and examined the floor of bricks. The bricks appeared solidly cemented together. Whitewash made level the crevices between them. And yet Bony tested every brick and found the central three loose.

  It appeared that he had forgotten the watching girl, for he neither looked at nor spoke to her when he almost jumped to the painted dresser and took from a drawer two stout-bladed knives. With these he prised up one of the bricks sufficiently to grasp it with his fingers. The brick came up easily enough, and the two others were lifted out quickly. His light fell on the hole their removal made. It showed him a handle let flush into a japanned surface, and, when he lifted the handle and pulled, it required no exertion to lift out a square-shaped metal box. With it in his hands he was looking at the lock, preparatory to setting the box down and fitting the key, when the wash-basin outside topped over with a sharp crash. At once the light was switched out.

  The noise of the overturned dish sent Lucy’s fingers to her lips to prevent the threatened scream. Someone must have come in through the farm gate, for Hurley had signalled. To Lucy the silence was dreadful. She could not hear the near approach of a car, so that they were not coming in a car. Bony was at the window. She could distinguish the silhouette of his head and shoulders against the dark grey opaqueness of the window oblong. Thirty seconds passed, thirty hours to the girl, and then Bony’s head and shoulders vanished. She was alone, she thought, and they were coming, those people whom she guessed were evil.

  As though a snake menaced her she shrank back against the bedroom door-frame when flesh touched the flesh of her forearm. She wanted to scream, but was unable to open her mouth. Something brushed her hair, her cheek. Warm breath beat against her left ear, and, as though from the distant ages, soundless words came drifting to the electrical present. She heard Bony’s whispered sentences: “There is someone outside. He tripped up the binder twine and set off the alarm. Do not move or make any sound. Have no fear. I am with you.”

  They were both gazing at the open window, the oblong of dark grey. To the right of it was the door, now shut, fastened by the Yalelock. The silence pressed on their ear-drums, causing mental pain which was almost physical. From another world, millions and millions of miles away, came to them the faint hum of a motor engine.

  Bony thought of the moon being eclipsed by the earth’s shadow whenslowly, low down on the left edge of the window oblong, the edge of a large disc grew outward from the window frame. It was one quarter of a sphere before movement ceased.

  Turned to stone, Lucy looked at this strange object with wide-open eyes and parted lips. After what appeared to her to be an eternity she saw that the outer edge of the disc seemed to dissolve, and then outward from it there appeared a nose, lips, and chin. Only for a moment, and then the disc vanished. A man was outside that window listening.

  The dogs had never barked. Save from the falling dish, no sound had come to them of his approach to and presence there. Was that man George Loftus? Or Mick Landon? Bony shivered. He had been so sure that the body of Loftus was buried in the haystack.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Trapped

  “DON’T MOVE-an inch,” Bony whispered, his mouth close to the girl’s ear.

  With the silent movements of a stalking tiger cat he reached a position directly opposite the window and two yards from it. He could see the stars and a single deep black thundercloud east of meridian. He could see the faint whiteness of the stubble paddock, but not across to its farther side bordering the main road. Infinitely cautious, he drew nearer to the open window, its oblong frame giving him a growing view with every step he took.

  Four feet from the window, now three feet, and now but one foot. He could distinguish the edge of the stubble where it met the hard ground in front of the house. There were no car lights on the farm track, nor were any to be seen on the highway beyond the gate. He could not now hear the car engine he and Lucy had recently heard, and that car, he suspected, had been travelling on another road. The silence beyond the window was no less profound than in the house.

  And yet outside the house was a man.

  And still the dogs remained silent.

  The fact that the dogs had not barked once since Bony had thrashed the recalcitrant one was peculiar, to say the least. The arrival of the unknown at the homestead surel
y must have aroused them to angry barking, yet they were as silent as though they were dead.

  Standing there at the window, he was weightedwith one regret. He had not brought the automatic pistol then locked away in his grip. Only in exceptional circumstances did he ever carry a weapon, relying on his wit and his extraordinary native hunting gifts to secure escape from awkward situations. Now he regretted his defencelessness wholly on account of having Lucy Jelly with him, and, therefore, being responsible for her safety. He had more than once assured her that she was safe and had taken adequate measures to receive warning of anyone approaching the house. Now he was mentally flogging himself for his sin of omission.

  With quick resolution he took the last step to reach the window, but with resumed caution leaned forward over the sill, inch by inch, until his eyes were just beyond the outer edge of the frame. To his left, to hisright, and downward he looked, to see that no one was crouched against that side of the house.

  Black against the lighter side of the distant stubble were the grotesque outlines of the cart shed, and, as though it were an optical illusion he then believed it to be, he saw for just a fraction of a second a tall shadow move beyond its eastward edge. For several seconds he gazed hard at that place and so saw instantly the night-shrouded figure of a man edging round the right angle of the house wall.

  Inch by inch, so slowly that movement could not be detected in that darkness, Bony drew back from the window, backed till he came against the dining table, where he remained and waited, hoping and praying that the girl, crouched against the bedroom doorpost, would not speak or cry out!

  Oh, for that automatic in his right hand! He remembered that on the table against which he pressed was a large china vase filled with flowers, and his hands swiftly groped for it, found it, plucked from the water the flowers, took it up with its water content intact, and faced the window again with the base held before him.

  The window frame remained vacant for an apparently long period of time before Bony first saw a man’s hand, and then the forearm which the hand joined, silhouetted in the window oblong. The hand moved inwards, the fingers outstretched. Then both hand and arm vanished. The stalker had ascertained that the window was wide open. Still Bony waited. With wonderful courage Lucy, who had seen the groping hand, barred back the cry of terror with her teeth.

  The weight of everlasting silence was lifted from their eardrums by the quick insertion of a key into the Yale lock of the house door. The door was flung inwards. It banged jarringly against a chair set near the wall between its frame and the window.

  “Jelly-come out!” ordered Mick Landon.

  With all his will power Bony commanded the girl to remain both silent and motionless. He himself moved from the table edge to a position opposite the door without sound, the water-filled vase now resting on his head and held by both hands.

  “Do you hear me, Mr Jelly? Come out!” Landon again ordered, with raised voice which held chilling menace. Standing to one side of the door, he was invisible to Bony.

  Again, one of many periods this night, the seconds slowly dragged away. Not a tiniest sound came from Lucy or from Bony, standing as a statue of an Indian water-carrier. Bony could not hear the girl’s breathing, not knowing that she had stuffed her mouth with her handkerchief. Bitterly now was he blaming himself for having brought her to this position of danger, when almost sure of the kind of man Landon was, merely to serve his vanity to complete this case with irrefutable evidence before handing it over to John Muir; when by the bold move of having the suspects arrested he could have secured the evidence without let or hindrance afterwards.

  With abrupt swiftness Mick Landon stood squarely in the open doorway. Before the match he struck broke into the full volume of its flame the spluttering light revealed to the detective the long-barrelled revolver in the hand which held the match. Almost at the precise instant that the vase left his hands, when he hurled it at Landon’s face, he launched himself across the short space between them, his hands flung forward to grip the wrist of that hand holding the revolver. So quick was his leap that the water cascaded over him as well as Landon, and the vase was crushed between their meeting bodies.

  With a shattering report the revolver exploded. The report deafened him, for when the cartridge was discharged the weapon almost was touching his ear. He heard Lucy Jelly cry out at the instant that he gripped Landon’s right arm, then to endeavour to bring it across his own in a bone-breaking arm lock.

  But Mick Landon had not forgotten the lessons taught him in the Police Barracks during his training as a recruit. A younger and much stronger man than Bony, he tore free his arm, jabbed at Bony’s face with his left elbow, swung round, and pressed the muzzle of his weapon into Bony’s stomach.

  “I’ve got you,” he said with a short, hard laugh. “Put your hands above your head quick-quicker.”

  “Mr Bony! Oh, Mr Bony, I’m hurt!” Lucy cried with a low wail of anguish.

  “Who’s that in there?” Landon demanded, startled by the voice within the house. Then he said, as surprise swamped surprise: “So it’s you, is it, you black sneak? What’s your game? What are you after?”

  The whites of Landon’s eyes were clearly revealed to Bony, so wide and staring werethey. Believing that the man had killed a human being in the person of George Loftus, Bony now believed that Landon would not hesitate to kill to cover the first murder. To prevaricate would not do; the truth only would so astound Landon as to present to Bony a possible chance to get by the steadily held revolver.

  “I’m after you, Landon, and the woman who is the moral co-sinner with you,” he said, watching the other like a hawk.

  “You seem to know a lot. Why do you want me? Speak up quick.”

  “I want you, of course, for murder-you and Mrs Loftus. I have you both in my-”

  “Oh, Mr Bony! I’m wet with blood. Come quickly. I-don’t you hear me? It is so dark. I-I-I-can’t see the window.”

  “Who’s that in there? I’ve asked you once before.”

  “It is Miss Jelly, Landon. You hear; she is hurt. She must have been shot when your weapon was discharged. Let us go to-”

  And the detective risked almost certain death. With panther quickness, knowing that the space of time Landon had held him rigid with the threat of his weapon inevitably would have worn away a little of his vigilance, his raised hands flashed downward, knocked the revolver to the left as he leaped to the right, reached upward as his now doubled body lurched towards the man’s ankles. Landon felt his legs swept from under him. His revolver shattered the night stillness. From the ground he fired again at the hurtling figure of the detective, missed, was paralysed for a split second to see one rushing shadow coming from the cart shed and a second speeding across the stubble, rolled away from Bony’s groping hands, sprang to his feet, and raced round the south vine-clad veranda of the house. Overwhelming panic fell upon him as a deluge of water. He thought of but two matters-the encircling police, and the coming to him in a cell of the public hangman.

  Immediately Landon disappeared Bony forgot his first duty of giving pursuit, his mind at once becoming occupied with the plight of his brave assistant.

  “Let him go,” he cried to Hurley and the second man, now both close to him. “Come with me. Miss Jelly has been injured. Hurry!”

  Rushing into the house, he produced matches from a pocket, struck several in a bunch, and lit the lamp on the table. When the wick had caught fire, when he had replaced the glass chimney, he turned to see Hurley just inside the door, and beyond him Mr Jelly.

  The three saw Lucy Jelly lying across the bedroom doorway as though dead. Mr Jelly almost jumped the distance between the main door and his daughter, sweeping Hurley aside in the movement. Bony, picking up the lamp held it near the limp figure in Mr Jelly’s arms. Mr Jelly’s fingertips gently caressed the ashen face.

  Her eyes opened in a flash of consciousness created by his touch. Her wandering gaze became held by her father’s ruddy face beneath its ha
lo of grey hair.

  “Father! Father! Oh, it was so dark! That man, Landon, I think he shot me. The flash of the pistol! It was like-like-like a shooting star which hit me.”

  Mr Jelly’s voice was tremulous.

  “It is a time for courage,” he said softly.

  Bony watched with fearful heart the girl’s lids flutter down over her eyes whilst he recalled that when Mr Jelly had returned from his last absence, and his attention had been drawn to little Sunflower suffering from a scalded foot, he had used the same expression: “It is a time for courage.”

  Blood, a dark mass of blood, was oozing through the silk of her blouse. Her father snatched up her own scissors which she had been holding when the bullet struck her. He began to cut the blouse downward from the neck. Above the snipping of the scissors Bony heard the distant hum of a car engine, and that sound appeared to melt the ice clogging his mind, yet had no affect on the ice freezing his heart.

  “Eric, fetch that car,” he ordered sharply.

  He heard the fence-rider run out of the house but did not see him leave. He sprang up and to the fireplace where he had left the japanned box and the torch. With the light of the torch dispelling the shadows cast by the table and the kneeling figure of Mr Jelly, he found a large enamelled basin which he filled with rainwater from the galvanized tank outside. Without speaking, he set it down beside the working farmer, stepped over the girl’s form into the bedroom. Counterpane and blankets he tore from the bed. The upper sheet he whipped away, and, at the bedroom door, began to tear it up into large squares and long strips for bandages.

  “The swine! The shooting, murderous beast! I’ll get him. I’ll make sure that he drops,” he actually snarled in so ferocious a tone that Mr Jelly looked sharply up at him, to wonder at the hate-convulsed brown face and the blazing blue eyes.