The Battling Prophet

by Arthur W. Upfield

Ultimately the path passed from thick timber to a small clearing bordered by the river to one side. From the middle of the clearing issued music, and, with startling impact, a dog barked ferociously. An oblong of light confronted them, and framed within stood Knocker Harris and the dog, the smallest Australian terrier Bony had ever seen.

  Then Knocker Harris was inviting them into his mansion, and the dog was sniffing at Bony’s heels and trying to grab a trouser cuff.

  The kerosene pressure lamp blazed white light against the walls, walls built of odd lengths of milled timber, strips of thick bark, sheets of corrugated iron. The roof was of iron nailed to light logs with fencing wire. The table was of planks wired to cross logs, which in turn rested in the fork of the four legs planted in the hard earth. On the open fireplace a fire burned, and to one side stood a chair which had been fashioned from the stump and roots of a tree storm-blown clear off the ground. Two stools of similar fashioning completed the furniture, save for nine beer cases nailed together to serve as a pantry and dresser.

  “How’s things?” mildly enquired Knocker Harris. “Didn’t expect you. Have a squat. Drink of tea?”

  Without waiting for acceptance or otherwise, he filled a billy from a petrol-tin bucket. Mr. Luton gravely said it was a nice night, and expressed the hope that Knocker Harris wasn’t being put to too much trouble. Bony gazed at a blank in one wall and guessed the darkness beyond to hide a gentleman’s bedroom. The place, undoubtedly, was built with river jetsam and junk. Save for the sheets of iron, the wireless on the ‘dresser’ and the lamp were the only visible objects not fashioned with axe and saw.

  “How’s the fish biting?” politely asked Mr. Luton, who knew very well how they were biting.

  “Bit lazy since the last tide,” replied Knocker Harris. “How they doin’ down your way?”

  “About the same.”

  So they talked while Bony sat on a comfortable tree-root stool and rolled a cigarette, both merely waiting for the reason of this late visit.

  “I suppose you are not often bothered with visitors,” he said, having applied a match to an alleged cigarette.

  “No, not much, Inspector,” replied the host. “They come generally for bait-fish in the summer. I nets bait-fish for visitors, like. Never takes money. They make me a present of bread, or a cut of meat, or a bit of tobacco and what not, and I’m so grateful I make them a present of bait-fish.”

  “Barter trade, eh?”

  “Trade! No! No trade, Inspector. Can’t do no tradin’, else it makes me in business and I gets taxed by the bloodsucking Council.”

  “How often do you go into town?” was Bony’s next question.

  “Once a fortnight, generally. To draw me Bachelor’s Mite from the Post Office.”

  “What else do you do when you go to town?”

  “Oh, not much,” replied Knocker Harris. “Calls in at the chemist for pills and things, and at the sports store for fish hooks and lines. Then I have one small tiddly of rum to give me strength to get home, like, and I has a yarn with a few I know.”

  “A tiddly of rum!” snorted Mr. Luton. “When I offer you a proper snort you turn it down.”

  “Meaning not to be unneighbourly, John. Actually because I like a chip on me Pension Day, and me cobbers likes a drink at the pub.” A wail crept into the voice. “I keep telling you I can’t take the booze like I useter. It plays hell with me ulcers and things. Why ain’t you got some ulcers, too? Why me, and not you? The way you and poor old Ben shoved it down, like, you oughta have no stomicks at all.”

  Mr. Harris served tea in jam tins fitted with fencing-wire handles. He placed a tin of condensed milk on the table and with it an apostle spoon of bright silver. The sugar bowl was a fruit tin. The appearance of the spoon astounded Bony, but he said:

  “When will you be going to draw your pension?”

  “Next Thursday, Inspector. I walks in, but I often thumbs a ride out.”

  “I was wondering...” began Bony, when hell broke loose.

  Outside a bullock bell began to clang and clang as though agony itself were tortured metal. The miniature dog yapped and twisted into an S and than a reverse S, in its excitement. The bell sounded as though tied to a bullock in convulsions.

  Knocker Harris jumped to his feet.

  “Got me a fish,” he shouted. “Be seeing you.”

  Seizing the kerosene lamp, he rushed outside, leaving his visitors faintly illumined to each other by the fire. The bell continued its roar, and above it, Mr. Luton said:

  “Could be a big fish. I’d say about fifteen pounds.”

  “Could be a 300-pound marlin,” observed Bony. “I assume the fish is ringing the bell.”

  Mr. Luton chuckled and beamed at Bony. Abruptly the bell ceased its uproar, and he said:

  “Knocker’s as proud as a woman with a new baby when that bell goes off. Take a look at it in daylight. Bit of a character is Knocker. Harmless enough, though. Decent sort.”

  Presently the yapping dog came in, followed by Knocker carrying a bream. He assessed the weight at four pounds, and his friend argued it wasn’t more than two. The discussion went on over the fish lying on the table, and twenty minutes were spent in gutting it, and then washing down the table.

  “You was saying, Inspector, when that fish got hooked?” said Harris.

  “Ah, yes. I was wondering if you would make a special trip to town to-morrow morning. You could buy yourself a tin of salmon.”

  “Coo! Why the salmon?”

  “Well, you might think of something you really want. You could call at the hotel for your usual tot of rum. You could call on the chemist for a bottle of cod liver oil. By the way, is a local paper published in Cowdry?”

  “The Cowdry Star. Comes out every Toosday,” proudly replied Knocker Harris. “I know the editor, like. Champion of the down-trodden toiler, he is.”

  “Excellent,” decided Bony. “Perhaps you could pass to him an item of local news for his social column.”

  Two pairs of bright eyes watched the dark expressionless face of D.-I. Bonaparte. Two ancient men waited. He said:

  “I would be greatly obliged, Mr. Harris, did you take a trip to town in the morning, and to everyone you know, including the newspaper editor, whisper that you understand a detective is staying with Mr. John Luton, and that you think he’s come down from Adelaide about something concerning Ben Wickham. Just that, no more. And don’t mention I asked you to do this, or my name.”

  They looked from Bony to each other. Knocker Harris nodded as though with dawning comprehension.

  “Okay, Inspector,” he said. “I’ll be in town by nine o’clock.”

  Chapter Five

  The Fisherman

  HAVING cast his baited hook into the river of humanity, Bony strolled beside the Cowdry River and communed with the birds. Having slept on several problems, he was, this scintillating morning, satisfied by his own approach to them.

  His position relative to these problems was clear. The seconding to the South Australian Police Department having terminated, he had no official authority in this State. He had been granted absence of leave from his own State Department, and was thus almost a private citizen and could not approach these problems as he could in his own State of Queensland. To reduce the method of approach to the problems to its minimum in plain English: he could not go about stating he was so-and-so enquiring into the circumstances surrounding the death of Ben Wickham.

  In fact, he felt no urge to do so, no urge to track a hypothetical murderer. He felt relaxed and the need for further relaxation, to take every ounce of benefit from the period of leave granted. Like the good actor, the good detective is emotionally taxed, and Bony yearned to do nothing but loll about and fish.

  He had been thinking of nothing but fishing—for fish—when Mr. Luton’s letter reached him. The writer’s extraordinary thesis on delirium tremens was supported by the writer’s obvious sincerity and the clarity of his mind, but perhaps what was even a greater inducement to a
ccept the invitation to fish in the Cowdry River was his own instinctive loyalty to the race of men who had left their mark so indelibly on the Outback to which he was attached by ties never to be severed.

  Mr. Luton, of that remarkable race, had appealed for help. Mr. Luton, living on the south coast of South Australia, was a stranger in a strange land, surrounded by foreigners incapable of understanding him. It was a plea for help which Bony, of the Inland, could not ignore, and the thesis, in which, it was alleged, hid a means to murder, could not be set aside by Detective-Inspector Bonaparte.

  Having listened to argument in support of Mr. Luton’s thesis, he was still wary of giving it support, but he was convinced that Mr. Luton was completely sane and truthful. Loyalty again to Mr. Luton was actually the mainspring of the decision to do something about it. But what? The body of the alleged murder-victim was but dust settled upon the pastures of Mount Mario, and therefore nothing could be proved in opposition to certified medical opinion. There would appear to be nothing definite about the dead man’s will, and no information about the dead man’s recorded work in meteorology.

  Thus the gentle prodding, per Knocker Harris. Thus to broadcast the fact that a detective was staying with Mr. Luton, and probably was working on Mr. Luton’s silly idea that Wickham had not died of the booze but “of something given to him.” And thus to withhold who the detective was, and the fact that the detective had no official authority, and was merely on leave of absence from a distant State.

  So to wait and fish and loll about in the sun, to wait and see what kind of fish would jump.

  The three ancient gums held his attention for several minutes. They were actually grey box. The bark was softly grey, and, at this spring-time, the old bark had been cast, since when the trunks had suffered assault. Not only were these trees evenly spaced fifty-odd feet apart, they also were in line, and up and down this line of gums two madmen armed with great bullock whips had skipped and screamed and thrashed the imaginary animals to haul the imaginary wagon from a sand-bog, or urge them round a bend of the track that the wagon wheels would miss a damaging obstacle.

  Later, Bony wandered up-river to visit the camp of Knocker Harris. He was met by the man-eating midget dog, welcomed as a friend of the house, and inspected the ‘grounds’. It was quickly evident that Knocker Harris had achieved almost complete independence of Man, for if the miserable pittance called the Old Age Pension were suddenly to cease, Harris could still exist.

  Under a bark roof a bicycle without wheels was fixed to a heavy plank. Mr. Harris could sit on the saddle and pedal the normal way. The driving chain worked a roller and the roller motivated a chain of jam tins going down into a shallow well and coming up filled, to empty their contents into a trough at the highest point. Bony could not resist temptation, proving that the contraption worked, and sent water along a channel to reach a line of rhubarb crowns.

  He wandered about the little garden which revealed tender care for growing things and a sense of order not apparent in the construction of the abode. There were rows of last season’s carrots, and this season’s turnips and radish. The parsley looked ragged, but the sage, thyme, and other herbs thrived. Knocker Harris actually stocked roots of horse-radish, and Bony stole a piece to wash and chew with relish.

  Brushwood protected the garden from wallabies that were, however, given free access to the ‘lawn’, a patch of ground about a dozen square yards in area which, Bony had been told, Knocker Harris had carefully sown with the best grass seed. Here and there, spaced like croquet hoops, were set expertly the snares so beloved by the old-time poachers.

  Bony found the bell, a huge tempered-iron bullock bell weighing five or six pounds. Suspended from a cross-bar, it was worked by two sticks tied at an angle, and to the lower end of one stick was tied the fisherman’s line.

  He did not presume to enter the ‘house’, but he did look into a kind of cavern walled by a vast creeper bearing a red flower, and saw within the cold interior a hanging meat-safe made of boards and hessian bags. There was also a bench littered with junk: an iron pot on a battered primus, a bunch of dried lavender, a tangled fish-line, and bottles.

  The little dog escorted him off the premises.

  The path by which he had come did not go farther up-river, and having gazed with admiration at the landing-stage built of poles and planks and tree branches, and the trap built with odds of wire netting, he proceeded down-river till he came opposite Mr. Luton’s cottage, where he found a fallen tree-trunk upon which Mr. Luton must often have sat and fished, for the past six years, so smooth was the log.

  After lunch of cold mutton and a bottle of beer, he returned to the tree-trunk and expertly cast a line baited with garden worms. Like the morning, the afternoon was superb. The kookaburras were inclined to sleep, the lesser birds were busy, and to him came the large house-cat to sit by his side and purr its contentment.

  Nothing happened for two hours. The sluggish river passed slowly on its way to the open sea. A tidal inlet, the water was of the sea, and yet within a yard of it it was possible to sink a shallow well for fresh water.

  Nothing happened until into this sylvan silence there intruded the low throbbing song of a motor engine, and Bony witnessed the approach of an expensive convertible, all leaf-green and chrome and sparkling glass. The car stopped at the wicket gate, and from it stepped a man of medium build and energetic movement. He wore a light-grey suit, and was hatless.

  That much Bony noted before turning to his fishing, winding in the line and examining the bait before making the next cast. He heard the wicket gate being shut, and the dogs barking to warn Mr. Luton, who was at ease on the veranda. He did not look round, even when the wicket gate was closed again ten minutes later. The cat, who had crouched with spine fur raised and yellow eyes blazing, now stood and arched its back, a moment later to race to a tree.

  Then a man said, voice soft and cultured:

  “Having any luck?”

  Bony glanced upward to see the man in grey regarding him with clear dark eyes. About forty, he was well-knit, and the tiny dark moustache suited his handsome face.

  “They say the kingfish came back into their river yesterday morning. Must give them a try. You get them big sometimes. Haven’t seen you before. On holiday?”

  “Yes, down for a few days.”

  The man waited as though for additional information from the stranger, but Bony did not volunteer it. So he said:

  “Good healthy sport, fishing. Good because it relaxes the mind as well as the body. You staying with old Luton?”

  “Yes. Where do you live?”

  Bony caught the flash of hostility in the dark eyes.

  “Oh, I live at Mount Mario. I’m Dr. Maltby. Just trotted along to look up the old chap. Remarkably tough for his age. Interesting, and all that.” There followed a pause. “Will break out on the drink now and then, and I’m a little afraid he’ll walk into the river and be drowned. Oughtn’t to live alone like he does—not a man of his years.”

  “Seems to be self-dependent, and a hundred per cent sane.”

  “Oh yes, he’s all that ... while he remains sober. Are you a ... er ... relative?”

  “No. Mr. Luton asked me to stay with him for a few days. I met him years ago when he lived on his place above Wentworth.”

  “Ah yes, I fancy I heard some time that he owned a small sheep property up there. Are you in sheep?”

  The question, like those preceding it, was easily put and entirely without offence. Dr. Maltby evinced no stiffness in his make-up, being accustomed to meeting everyone on his own ground. As easily, Bony said:

  “Also met, when previously staying with Mr. Luton, his great friend Ben Wickham. I think Mr. Luton mentioned that you live at the late Mr. Wickham’s house?”

  “Yes. I’m by way of being married into his family. Fine old boy. Only one failing. The liquor. Must admit I couldn’t approve of his orgies with old Luton. I suppose you know the booze killed him?”

  “Not
till last night. The papers said nothing of it; merely that he died in Luton’s house. How old was he? Near eighty, I think the papers said.”

  “Seventy-five.”

  “Remarkable man. He certainly stirred up lots of people either to admire or detest him.”

  “The people on the land loudly praised his name,” supported Dr. Maltby. “I don’t know anyone personally who didn’t take his advice and batten down the hatches against bad seasons, and so save themselves from near bankruptcy at least. A pity they can’t understand the scientific formulæ on which he based his forecasts. Pity there’s no one to carry on where he left off.”

  “I didn’t know that,” admitted Bony. “It would seem, then, that his admirers are despairing and his enemies triumphant.”

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it. Back to the old gamble for the farmers. Back to the old grind of alternating prosperity and bankruptcy. Watching you fishing brings to mind the bit about Pericles. A disciple asked him how the fishes live in the sea, and he replied: ‘Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.’ Well, I must go. See you again, perhaps.”

  Bony nodded quiescently, and Dr. Maltby strode back to his car.

  He heard the car depart. His bait-fish was grabbed but he was too preoccupied to strike in time to hook the fish. Presently Mr. Luton came and sat with him.

  “He wanted to find out if Ben left any papers with me,” the old man said. “Seems they can’t begin where Ben left off, up at the Mount. It’s got ’em stonkered. Quack said Ben hadn’t confided fully in Dr. Linke. Then he asked me who you were. Like you said if he did, I told him. What d’you think? He come to find out about the papers or to find out about you, having heard the furphy published by Knocker Harris?”

  “Perhaps both with equal intent. What else did he say?”

  “Only jawed me about the drink. Said he was glad to see I looked sober and healthy. Advised me to stay that way. Seemed a bit friendly this time. Funny how people can be friendly when they want. It’s after three. What about a mug of tea? Shall I bring the billy out here?”