Bony looked deep into the candid grey eyes and then examined in a split second the boyish, kindly face. Slowly he shook his head.
“I don’t really know what to think, Mr. Borradale. Were he a lunatic he would not select the time and the place when opportunity presented him with a victim. Were he a lunatic he could not hide his lunacy from his associates for long. I may be wrong, of course, but that is what I think. The Strangler is a man who is controlled in exaggerated form by the lust to kill. This same lust, in much lesser degree, finds expression in the normal man who shoots pigeons released from traps, and who kills animals and birds when not bound to do so for food. I should say that the Strangler is a man who has never mentally matured.”
“You think, then, that Simone arrested the wrong man?”
“Yes, I am sure he has.”
“How will Elson get on?”
“He will be charged and probably remanded. I feel confident, however, that the Crown Prosecutor will not be satisfied with the evidence set before him by Simone, and that Elson will be released.”
“I hope so, Bony. The lad was all right, you know. He was a bit wild with the girls and all that, but he’s not vicious.”
“I think with you. I would not be surprised if the Strangler turns out to be a stranger to everyone here. It is quite an interesting case.”
“I wish you luck with it. I may take a run out to the camp in a day or so. Dogger Smith will take a peg or two out of young Harry’s ladder. The young blighter is afraid of nothing. I expressly told him not to ride Black Diamond, and, as you are aware, he rode the brute to Carie to see his girl. He has let me see he would like to be promoted to the boss stockman’s place and live in the married people’s cottage, with Tilly for his wife. Because I would like to promote him and see him married to Tilly, I have decided to teach him a lesson. The young rip is a born horseman and a good sheep-man, and he looks on manual work as terribly degrading.”
They laughed together.
“It will probably do him a great deal of good,” said the delighted Bony.
“I think it will. He has many excellent qualities. Please do not mention to him what I hope to do for him. Ah, here is my sister on the veranda. She wishes to speak to you, I think. I’ll go back and finish the orders.”
Martin nodded, leaving Bony at the wicket gate to pass through to the garden and so to the veranda, where Stella waited, cool and charming.
“How are you getting on with the investigation?” she asked.
“Slowly but surely, Miss Borradale,” Bony replied. “There are many little matters I have to straighten out.”
Her warm hazel eyes became swiftly serious.
“I am not going to be dangerous this morning,” Bony gravely told her, whereupon she laughed deliciously and her eyes told him he should dare to try. “I am going with Harry West to work at repairing a fence, and I shall be away for several days. Would you grant me a favour?”
“If it is not impossible, certainly.”
“It is this. While having no intention to alarm you, or to be melodramatic, I would urge you not to leave the house at night without escort, not even to step into the garden. And in future, after a day of wind and dust, keep your bedroom window and door locked, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. And, too, instruct the cook and the maids to do likewise.”
“Surely there is no danger to us in the house, is there?” she asked, her face now drawn and revealing the horror which had been in her heart for many a long month.
“The reason why my namesake, the Great Napoleon, won so many battles, Miss Borradale, was because he took every possible precaution against defeat. It is during the night following a day of high wind and dense dust that every man, woman and child in and south of Carie is in grave danger. All that I ask is that all sensible precautions be taken specially throughout such a night.”
Stella expelled her breath in a slow sigh.
“Very well,” she assented.
“Thank you. Within a week or two I shall have removed the danger for all time.”
“Then you suspect someone?”
“Alas! I suspect ten people,” he replied. “One of the ten is my man. Have no uneasiness. I shall get him in the end. I have never yet failed to finalize a case.”
“Never failed?”
“No, never. As Colonel Spendor says, and says truly: I am a damned poor policeman but a damned good detective. Permit me to leave you. I must roll my swag and assist Harry West to load the truck.”
When she bowed her head slightly in assent, he bowed to her and wished her au revoir. Watching him walk to the gate, she felt like crying after him mockingly. Then she remembered the expression in his blue eyes and turned to enter the house for breakfast. Had he been dressed in evening clothes and with a jewelled turban on his head he would have been the living likeness of her idea of an Indian prince—polite, assured, dignified.
By the time the truck was loaded with rolls of wire, shovels and crowbars, rations and a tent and swags and a round iron tank, it was nearing noonday. Hence it was after one o’clock when Bony and Harry West and Harry’s five sheepdogs left Wirragatta for the scene of their coming labours.
Two miles below the homestead the outback track crossed the now empty river over a roughly built but stout bridge, and thereafter the road ran southward for several miles before bearing again to the west. During the first half-hour Harry maintained a grim silence. There was no cabin to the truck and one of the dogs stood with its jaws resting on Harry’s shoulder, another crouched against Bony, while the remaining three rode the load. All enjoyed the speed.
“Make us a smoke,” requested Harry dismally. He handled the truck as though it were his greatest enemy.
“Certainly, my dear Harry,” consented Bony, rolling him a cigarette. “Why are you so depressed this calm and warm afternoon?”
“Depressed!” snorted the youthful outlaw-rider. “Stiffen the crows! What bloke wouldn’t be depressed at coming down to a fence lizard? Which ends of them shovels do you use to dig with, any’ow? Fencin’! Come down to fencin’ and you want to know why a bloke’s depressed.”
With one hand working the steering-wheel, Harry struck a match and lit the rolled cigarette. The track wound sharply across a wild range of sand-drifts, and the detective regarded the slim, brown hand clutching the wheel with some misgiving as the speedometer was registering forty miles an hour. The cigarette alight, Harry reinforced his right hand with his left and savagely pressed down on the accelerator.
“I reckon I done me dash for that married cottage,” he moaned. “Last year a bloke done some crook work, and the boss set him scrubbing the house verandas. You see, the boss don’t ever sack a man. If he wants to get rid of him, he sets him to work such as scrubbing floors, knowing that no bloke will stand that for long before he asks for his cheque. I got a good reason to ask for mine, too, ’cos this fencing to a horseman is just as crook as scrubbing floors is to a fencer.”
“You must swallow your pride, Harry,” Bony said softly. “You listen to one who is possessed of much worldly wisdom. We should always mould our conduct on the examples set by the great men in history. Er—Nelson, Napoleon, Marlborough and others learnt in their youth how to obey. Having learnt how to obey, they were fitted to demand obedience. There arrived a point in the lives of all great men when they could and did put telescopes to their blind eyes and otherwise intimate to their superiors that they could—er—retire to the equator. The secret of success, Harry, is to know just when you can tell a superior to retire to the equator without resultant disadvantage to oneself.”
“I didn’t exactly tell the boss to go to hell, Joe. Some fool went and let the ridin’ hacks outer the yard when I wanted one to ride to Carie. Black Diamond was in a yard by himself and they hadn’t the guts to let him out. Any’ow, I can ride that cow on me nose.”
“I don’t doubt that, Harry. The circumstances, I admit, were annoying, and the business urgent. The b
oss said not to ride Black Diamond. You said ‘I will ride Black Diamond.’ Inexperience permitted you to disobey the boss when you expect advancement. Impulse blinded you to the obvious way of disobeying without subsequent unpleasant result. Now, Black Diamond is black all over. If you had thought at all, you would have stolen some white paint and given him a forehead blaze and white hocks. Then no one in Carie would have recognized him.”
“Gosh, Joe! You’re a corker,” Harry said with great earnestness.
Bony laughed.
“I have the idea that the boss is merely testing you by putting you to real work, Harry. You see, if he thought of making you boss stockman, he would want to be sure of your character, that you would have strength of character to lead the men under you. In any case, why worry; why be depressed? As I pointed out, it is a beautiful day and you find yourself in good company.”
The young man’s expression of gloom persisted for another half-minute, when it swiftly changed to normal cheerfulness. He slapped Bony on the shoulder with his left hand and put on additional speed.
“You know, Harry, I think you are eager to get going on the business end of a crowbar and a shovel,” Bony murmured, or rather his voice sounded but a murmur above the roar of the engine. Harry turned to face his companion, and the truck shied violently.
“Me eager——! Cripes! What you mean?”
“To me it appears obvious. You seem to be so eager that you are endangering both our necks in order to reach the work as quickly as you can.”
The engine ceased its roar and the speed dropped to five miles an hour.
The grinning youth said, “I never thought of that.”
Chapter Nineteen
Dogger Smith
DOGGER SMITH HAD for many years lived in a world all his own—a world in which human beings had a quite secondary part. The supreme being in this particular world was Dogger Smith himself, and the lesser beings were the wild dogs against whom he pitted his cunning and the wiles of his trade. Beings of much less importance were the other human inhabitants, but, notwithstanding, Dogger Smith knew every one of them intimately. He appeared to draw their secrets and the details of their lives out of the air, for he was seldom in touch with any human beings, black or white.
He was of immense stature, the most remarkable thing about him being the snowy whiteness of his full beard and hair. He might have been seventy years of age, and then again he might have been over a hundred. He was one of the “immortals” created in the 1860’s, hardened by a diet of meat, damper and tea, and an annual “drunk” at a bush pub. The remnants of these “immortals” are still to be found camped in the pensioners’ communities along the Darling, ancients blessed with agility and mental alertness to be envied by modern men of half their age.
Early this day he had arrived with a flourish at a narrow belt of mulga crossing a section of the fence which had to be repaired. The flourish was given by the roar of an ancient Ford engine lashed with fencing-wire to a truck chassis, clouds of following dust, and a really terrible stench. The grinding of iron and the dust having subsided, Dogger Smith made a fire and boiled a billy for tea.
He was oblivious, or impervious, to the stench, and drank black tea and smoked black tobacco in a short-stemmed wood pipe with evident appreciation. Being refreshed, he set to work cutting forked poles and straight poles and tree-branches, the whole of which he fashioned into an efficient wind-break. Having accomplished so much, he drank more tea and once more filled his pipe with the jet-black plug tobacco.
Harry West unwisely stopped the station truck to leeward of the decrepit Ford, and, as one animal, his five dogs jumped to ground with noses twitching with delight and raced up-wind to the dogger’s truck, where they pawed the ground and whimpered.
“Good day-ee!” roared Dogger Smith. “Come and ’ave a drink er tea.”
“Gosh!” gasped Harry. “You gotta dead horse on that hearse of yours? Cripes, she stinks something awful!”
“Haw! Haw!” came the bellowed roar. “That’s only my secret dog attractor.”
“Secret? There’s nothing secret about that! She’s worse’n a loud-speaker at full blast. What’s it made of?”
“Coo! Like to know, wouldn’t you? Why, I bin offered a ’undred quid for that secret attractor. She’s caught more dogs than you got hairs on your head, young feller. Who’s your lady friend?”
“This here’s Joe Fisher,” replied Harry, to add with pride, “Friend of mine.”
“That is a wonderful dog-lure you have,” Bony said, looking again at the five dogs who were standing on their hind legs and pleasurably sniffing at Dogger Smith’s gear on the truck.
From above a height of six feet a pair of keen hazel eyes looked down into Bony’s smiling face. There was nothing rheumy about those eyes, and there was no mark of spectacles on the bridge of the big Roman nose.
“Glad-ter-meet-cher,” was the non-committal greeting. “You’re a stranger to this district.”
“Yes. I’ve come over from the Gutter for a change,” Bony admitted. “Er—that secret attractor has a very powerful influence over Harry’s dogs. I suppose you get used to it in time?”
“Well, she takes a bit of getting used to, I allow, but she ain’t so crook as the lure what Boozer Harris worked with back in ninety-two. I generally parks the truck well to leeward, and I’ll shift her now you’ve come. You gonna get water today, Harry?”
Harry decided that he would, and Bony, who decided he could not endure the stench a moment longer, elected to go with him. They unloaded the truck without discussing the weather, and then took the tank four miles away to fill it at a dam. During their absence Dogger Smith removed the offence and cooked the dinner—boiled salt mutton and potatoes.
The first night in camp Bony and Harry West were entertained by vivid descriptions of a dozen most gruesome murders, and Dogger Smith averred that never before or since his time had there been a cement-worker surpassing Deeming. Throughout the following day the dog-trapper proved that his interest in labour was equal to his interest in murders, and when the second evening of this association arrived Bony was indeed thankful that the sun did not permanently remain above the horizon.
The weather was clear and hot and calm, and constantly the detective looked for signs of the next wind-storm. As none appeared, he delayed his questioning of Dogger Smith in order not to arouse the old man’s suspicions and thus shut off a valuable fount of knowledge. It was the unfortunate Harry who unconsciously gave the lead when, a few evenings later, he complained of Martin Borradale’s decree of banishment to fence work.
“I ain’t gonna hear nothing against young Martin Borradale,” sternly said old Dogger Smith, his great white head thrown back and his hazel eyes hard with sudden wrath. “He’s the best boss you ever worked for, me lad, and he’s just the man to keep you young fellers in your places, like his father before him.”
“Oh, all right,” snarled Harry, really too weary to argue about it.
“Has the boss owned Wirragatta long?” Bony slipped in conciliatorily.
Anger subsided like a spent wave.
“Since his father died. He was born on Wirragatta. I mind the time he was born. It was on the third of January, 1910. The day he was christened I’ll never forget. Old man Borradale and Mrs. Borradale—she were a fine woman, to be sure—was that proud of having a son and heir that they give a grand party in the shearing-shed. Every man on the run was called in to the homestead the day before. Most of the townspeople were invited, too. The day of the christening there were barrels of beer and a special dinner, in the shearing-shed, and the barrels were tapped quick and early. Old Grandfer Littlejohn then was old man Borradale’s horseboy, old Grandfer even in them days being considered past real work. He always was one of them tired sorta blokes. Any’ow, ’im and the woman wot was cooking at ‘Government House’ got that drunk that they hung onter each other on the dance floor and cried. And then Mrs. Littlejohn was told, and
she came on the scene and started to screech at the cook, telling her in about ten thousand words that she was no lady. Then the cook, she hauled off and clouted Ma Littlejohn, and Ma Littlejohn, she clouted the cook. Then all hands fell down together and went orf to sleep for two days and two nights.”
“It must have been a great day,” encouraged Bony.
“Too right she was. Old man Borradale was never as generous before or after as he was when young Martin was christened. He was a hard old bloke, but he was just. He married the best woman ever the back country saw. She near died giving life to young Martin.”
“The boss appears to be well liked,” Bony craftily pursued. “He’s worried, though, about the Strangler, he being a Justice of the Peace and all that.”
“But,” objected the old man, “they got Barry Elson for it, didn’t they?”
“He never done it,” Harry interjected warmly. “And there’s a lot of people think like me, too.”
“And a lot think he done it,” dryly persisted the old man. “Still, I don’t think it’s him. I reckon it’s that there bunyip old Snowdrop has been yelling about for years. Wot-in-’ll’s the reason for doing of it if it ain’t a bunyip. There’s more in them blacks’ ideas than you’d think. What we wants is a real detective to prove the Strangler is a real bloke or a bunyip.”
“Sergeant Simone——” began Bony, but the old man cut him short.
“Him!” he exclaimed with withering contempt. “I means a real detective, not a drunk-pincher. We wants a proper bush detective.”
“I agree there,” Bony said dryly. “Whoever the Strangler may be, I think he is a little mad—someone who goes mad now and then. Do you know a man just man enough to arrange his killings without being caught?”
Dogger Smith chuckled. He was blessed, like many lonely men, with a sense of the ridiculous.
“Only old Stumpy Tattem,” he said, and now his eyes were alight. “Now and then poor old Stumpy rams his hat on a fence-post and says just what he thinks of it. Me and him was putting up a division fence in Yonkers’ paddock when Mabel Storrie was nigh killed. It blew like the devil, you remember, and that evening I baked a damper, the best damper I ever baked. Old Stumpy went crook because it wasn’t perfectly round. Then he went for me and nearly bit me ’and in two. I had to clout him hard with me other, and when he comes round he gets up and clears off into the scrub, and I don’t see him again until next midday.”
Bony - 05 - Winds of Evil Page 17