“Better one than two more. I can take care of myself. It’s a job that only little me can finalise. When I see the light, if there’s any light to see, I’ll not take chances. I promise that, and you promise not to interfere.”
“And if I don’t?”
A smile spread over Bony’s face.
“Then I go back to Brisbane and report for duty to my own chief.”
“Hug! What a man! What a pal! What a splendid blackmailer! You run the guts out of my car yet?”
“Your car is in excellent condition despite the fact that it’s old and won’t do more than fifty-two miles per hour. Now, are you ready to talk to Inspector Mulligan?”
“S’poseso. You suck me dry, don’t you, but I don’t get the same chance at you. Gosh, I wish I had you on my staff.”
“You’d soon tire of me, Super. Now so long. Have a word with Mulligan, please. And don’t worry about me. I’ll arrange about keeping in contact and all that.”
When Mulligan replaced the instrument he told Bony he had been asked to do everything required of him-even to robbing a bank.
“I have always liked Superintendent Bolt,” Bony said. “He is one of those rare men who is never hesitant to accept responsibility. Now, first, I want your word you will not report to him my requests excepting under circumstances I will outline later on.”
“But Superintendent Bolt will want to know,” Mulligan objected.
“You will be protected by your word to me.”
“Very well. You have it.”
“Thank you. By the way, I mustn’t forget. I want you to take charge of Bolt’s car. I’ve left it at the Haymarket Garage. See that it’s returned to him as soon as convenient, and remember that he loves that antique more than a youth would love a hundred-horse-power roadster.
“Well, now. I have tried to get into the disappearance of those two girl hikers by the front door, as it were. I’ve been staying at the Baden Park Hotel for more than a week, and, as a matter of fact, I’ve become interested in the people running the place. It’s my intention to return and enter by the back door.
“I am convinced that there are distinct disadvantages in numbers, and so I shall proceed alone. I want you to drive me to a point near the junction of the Hall’s Gap-Dunkeld road with the track to the hotel, and there set me down. I intend to live on the country as much as possible, to go in as a swag-man, and mooch around without being seen or tracked. I must purchase suitable clothes and rations and a quart pot. And I would like to leave Ballarat by six tonight.”
“I’ll be ready. I can get a car.”
“Thanks. Have you, or could you obtain, a pistol fitted with a silencer?”
That made Mulligan’s eyes shoot wide open. Then almost sorrowfully he shook his head.
“Going to be like that, eh?” he murmured. “I can let you have an automatic.”
“I have one, but I wanted something silent. Never mind.” Bony produced the pistol given him by Bolt and laid it upon the table. “I want at least fifty cartridges for this weapon. One ought always to provide for misses.”
Chapter Thirteen
By the Back Door
VIEWED from the north, the Grampians are minus features of interest, presenting a seemingly low and flat-topped front. It is when nearing Hall’s Gap from the Western Highway that these mountains grow swiftly impressive, and it is on entering the Gap that one is conscious of the success with which they have hidden their grandeur.
Mulligan, wearing sports clothes, drove a well-conditioned car through the small tourist resort of Hall’s Gap. Beside him sat Detective-Inspector Bonaparte, no longer debonair, no longer tastefully clad. The riding-breeches were new, but the boots and leggings belonged to Mulligan’s son, who was an enthusiastic hiker. The coat was slightly too large, having been bought from a second-hand dealer, whilst the khaki shirt beneath the coat was one of Mulligan’s own and four sizes too large. On the rear seat rested a blanket-roll within a canvas sheet, and a gunny-sack containing food, tobacco and matches, and a couple of boxes of pistol cartridges.
When a little more than two miles south of Hall’s Gap, Mulligan said:
“This is where Price was found. His car was beside the road and facing towards Hall’s Gap. Half a mile back along the road to Hall’s Gap there was at that time a large camp of road-workers. It was not until half-past nine in the morning that the first traveller came along and saw the dead man still seated behind the steering-wheel as though he had fallen asleep. He had been shot through the brain with a . 32. The engine was switched off, and the car was in neutral gear. It could be that Price steered the car to the side of the road, switched off the engine, and foot-braked to a stop. And that immediately after the stop he was shot dead.”
“Indicating that either he was signalled to stop or that he met and recognised someone,” added Bony with faint interrogation in his voice.
“That’s so,” agreed Mulligan. “There were no finger-prints inside the car other than those of Price. According to Simpson, Price washed and polished the machine the day before he left. Outside the door nearer the driver were Simpson’s fingerprints, and Simpson made no bones about admitting that on the morning Price left he had leaned against the door chatting with him.
“Price left Baden Park Hotel on the afternoon of December thirteenth. He was found dead here the following morning. There were two bullet-marks inside and at the back of the car, and the two bullets were located. Three shots at least had been fired.”
“Any theory about that-of your own?”
“Yes. That the killer opened fire as he ran towards Price and didn’t know that his first shot had killed him.”
“Seems sound deduction. No one at the camp hear the shooting?”
“No one. The evening of December thirteenth was still and hot. The night was still and warm. We chose two different days of similar conditions to fire pistols here and have men at the camp. Our men at the camp heard the reports, but they were not loud enough to awaken the lightest sleeper, and during the early part of the evening there was an accordion band concert in progress. However, after the roadmen had gone to bed, one was taken ill and another sat up all night with him. Neither of them heard any shooting.”
“Giving strength to the theory that Price was not shot just here.”
“Or that the killer had a silencer fitted to his pistol.”
“Price was armed, I understand.”
“A. 22 revolver. A mere toy. It was snugly buried among hisdunnage in a suitcase. It was his private property.”
Mulligan drove on, and Bony fell pensively silent. The sun went down and the crests of forbidding mountains lay in wait for them. Dusk was falling when the road turned sharply to the endless range, taking them up and over the crossing, twisting and turning but newly formed and dangerous to careless drivers. It skirted the granite face of a mountain against which a planet might crash and, apparently, be repulsed. When they reached the farther valley it was dark.
They came to a sign-post having but one arm, announcing that Lake George was five miles distant. Then, twenty minutes later, they crossed the long bridge and met the sign-post having three arms, one of which indicated the track to Baden Park Hotel. When a hundred yards beyond the sign-post and still on the road to Dunkeld, Bony asked Mulligan to stop and switch off his lights.
“On coming to that sign-post for the first time,” Bony said, “I could smell nothing but the gums and the good sweet earth. I’m now smelling something in addition to nature’s scent. My gift of intuition is informing me that something extraordinary is being hidden in these mountains. Therefore, I shall not under-estimate probable forces exerted against me.
“Be easy, my dear Mulligan, and tell the Super to be easy too. There is no practical way to establish regular communication with either yourself or Constable Groves at Dunkeld. Maybe I shall have to call for assistance, or deem it necessary for the hotel to be raided, or meet with a situation impossible of being dealt with by myself. Therefore, I woul
d like you to be prepared, to have cars and men ready for instant dispatch into this area on receiving a call direct from me or through Groves.
“That’ll be fixed. You’re going to live tough all right. What about extra supplies and that sort of thing?”
“I’ve enough rations to keep me going for ten days. There are rabbits to be snared and nice fat hens to be requisitioned from the hotel’s small farm. I’ll live better than in the Outback, for there is water everywhere and the winter rains are still a month away. Now we’ll part company. You return to Ballarat via Dunkeld, so that there will be no turning round to arouse the suspicion of anyone hearing the sound of the movement and wondering why. Let me out before you switch on your lights. Aurevoir!”
“Cheerio, and the best of possible luck, old man. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
Bony opened the door, stood on the running-board, tossed his swag and gunny-sack into the scrub, and then jumped from the car into the scrub and thus avoided leaving his tracks on the roadside. He crouched beside hisdunnage and was concealed when the car’s headlights were switched on. He watched the machine growing smaller in the frame of its own lights, watched it until it disappeared round a bend in the road, and listened until the sound of it was overmastered by the frogs in a near-by stream.
He sat on his swag and smoked cigarettes whilst the quiet and balmy night caressed him like a woman wanting to wean him from all distraction. Only very gradually did the night subdue the elation of the hunter, the chill of the hunted, the warm thrilling of the adventurer. He was alone in strange and glamorous country, and the vibrant instincts of his mother’s race would not wholly submit. Now he was cut off from men and was the close companion of the living earth, clothed with tree and scrub. He would have to pass over the living earth upon his two feet, not along plain and easy roads, but over gully and mountain, and through tangled scrub and treacherous swamp, the while trying to see round corners and himself never to be seen.
A transformation of himself was going on, and it was not the first time in his life nor the first time he noted it with incurious interest. It was similar to the transformation of Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll, although the opposing influences were not good and evil, but rather the complex and the primitive in man. The highly-civilised Inspector Bonaparte was retreating before the incoming primitive hunter. The dapper, suave, and almost pedantic product of modern education and social intercourse, which is but a veneer laid upon the ego of modern man, was now being melted away from this often tragic figure, in whom ever warred the influence of two races.
Hitherto, Bonaparte had not wholly surrendered himself to his mother’s racial instincts, the great weapon of pride winning for himself the battle. He would not wholly surrender himself on this occasion, but he did give himself in part because of the conditions which would govern his life for the next days or weeks, and because of the probable forces with which he would have to contend.
His career as an investigator of violent crime had been unmarred by a single failure, and this was due much less to keen reasoning and keen observation, than to the inherited lust for the chase, bequeathed to him by a race of the greatest hunters the world has ever known, a race which has had to employ reason, patience, and unbreakable determination to gain sustenance in a country where food was ever hard to win.
Within the rhythm of the battle of instincts and influences going on within, there was born a note of discord, and the contestants fell apart and were quiet, that the alarm could gain ascendancy. The conscious mind became receptive and through the ears strove to detect what had struck the discordant note. Bony could hear the bullfrogs, the rustling of insects, the trees breathing the zephyrs. Into this orchestral symphony came the low booming of a bass drum, and after split-second hesitation Bony decided what it was. It was rock falling down the face of a mountain range.
Then he heard that which had given the alarm. From the general direction of the hotel came the sound of a motor-cycle. It was coming from the hotel and was being driven at the highest speed permitted by the track.
Bony backed off his swag farther into the scrub and lay down behind it. At this level the road and the bush beyond presented a black and featureless void, and it was a full minute before the right edge of the void paled with light. A few seconds later the motor-cyclist arrived at the road junction, rounded the bend, and came roaring to pass him. The back glow of the single headlight clearly revealed Glen Shannon.
The image of the road and the scrub, across which had flashed the machine, faded out. The night fought with the sound and slowly, slowly won. Bony waited and wondered. And then his mouth widened and his upper lip lifted in a hard and fixed grin, for from the hotel he heard the sound of an oncoming car.
The car stopped at the road junction, its lights illuminating the world of trees and scrub to Bony’s right. Upon hands and knees, he crept to the edge of the road, where he was able to see the junction and the men who were examining the ground. There were four men, three of whom Bony had not previously seen. The fourth man was James Simpson.
The men conferred for a little while and then vanished behind the car’s headlights. The car was driven forward and turned on the junction, and it was not Simpson’s Buick. It disappeared down the side track leading to the hotel, and the sound of it proved that the speed on the return journey was much slower.
It seemed that the four men had come thus far to establish whether the American had taken the road to Dunkeld or that to Hall’s Gap. The tracks of the motor-cycle on the dusty road would have decided the matter for them.
Chapter Fourteen
Bird’s-Eye Views
IN every city throughout the world men watch houses and note who enter into and issue from them. Men watch houses from busy sidewalks, from dark doorways, and often from houses opposite. For the first time Bony watched a house from a mountain-top.
A great volume of water had passed down the creek to skirt the Baden Park Hotel since that early night when Mulligan left him on the roadside, but not much had been added to the investigation into the disappearance of the two girls.
Entry by the back door into this scene, as he had described his intention, had been effected in the dark of night. He had carried his swag and essential equipment for five miles over country extraordinarily difficult in broad daylight, and before dawn had made his camp inside the little mountain of rocks sundered from the parent range.
For five days now he had maintained observation on the hotel, and had employed the early hours of daylight in scouting expeditions, which previously he had been unable to conduct without being observed.
Having discovered a way up the face of the range to the summit, he had selected for his observation post two huge granite boulders set upon the very lip of the precipice and appearing as though a child could push them over. Between the boulders lay dark shadows, and behind them the scrub provided concealment from any who might come up the mountain slope.
From this vantage point Bony was able to gaze to the far limits of the great amphitheatre, in which old Simpson had founded a home and reared his family. The forest carpet of rough pile appeared to be almost level. Actually it concealed swamp and water gutter and creek, steep slope and stony outcrop, barrier of tangled scrub. He could see a section of the white bridge near the road junction, and the indentation on the forest carpet marking the track from the junction to the hotel and then on for some distance towards Lake George.
Fifteen hundred feet below, and seemingly so near that it was possible to drop a pebble upon the roof, stood the Baden Park Hotel, red-roofed and cream-painted. Nearer to the watcher, the hen-houses and the stables appeared like so many silver matchboxes, and the hens in freedom like white and black pinheads upon light green velvet. Nearer still was the square of the deserted vineyard.
Throughout the days of his vigil he had seen nothing untoward in the lives of those down at the hotel. Ferris Simpson fed the hens morning and evening, and her brother looked after the dray horse and the gelding h
e had recently purchased. On one afternoon he had harnessed the bigger animal to the dray and brought in a load of wood and thereafter was seen cutting the wood at a saw bench. Bony never once sighted Glen Shannon, and no other man appeared to take the yardman’s place in the hotel organisation.
His early-morning scouting expeditions were not quite so profitless. He found that the hotel’s electric power was brought over the range from the Station homestead, and that a direct telephone line connected the two places. And that was all, save the addition that Glen Shannon had done a great deal of hiking both before and after his, Bony’s, stay at the hotel.
Because on the afternoon of this fifth day he wanted to sleep, he pinched out the current cigarette and carefully preserved the end to leave no clue to himself, as well as to conserve precious tobacco. Then, ready to move, he stood for a minute to scrutinise the scrub back of the boulders.
People could become lost and die in this country. A man could wander through and through it seeking help and never finding it. And yet! Bony recalled the story told by two men constructing a fence in the bush, a dozen miles from the nearest road and a hundred from the nearest township. They had run out of meat, and one had taken a rifle and hunted two miles from camp, where he had shot a kangaroo. As he was skinning it a mounted policeman rode out of the scrub to charge him with having killed a kangaroo in the closed season.
It was like that here-and probably more so. Because the bush looked empty, felt empty, the odd chance of someone observing him had to be recognised and countered with the utmost caution. There had been three men with Simpson at the road junction, three men he had not seen during his stay at the hotel. They might have come from Baden Park Station: they might be three of the hard doers Old Man Simpson had spoken of. And to clinch the argument for caution, no one had heard the three shots fired at Detective Price. No one would have done so had the pistol been fitted with a silencer.
The Mountains have a Secret b-12 Page 10