“What I want is a long holiday. I should go to Europe for a trip,” Martin went on, the gust of anger having subsided. “I have never had a holiday since I came home after my father’s death. If I owned the place, I wouldn’t worry about making a bloomer now and then. In fact, I’d sell it and go to Sydney to live. But Stella won’t sell with me. Says we would be betraying our father by doing such a thing. Say you’ll come back to the office, Donald.”
The pleading in the young man’s grey eyes touched Dreyton as no argument had ever done or would ever do. Martin hurried on:
“Here is this problem of two thousand hoggets I have to decide before tomorrow. I’m offered twenty-four and threepence a head. The market is inclined to rise and I am not short of feed. But a good rain down in the Riverina will cause the market to fall. What shall I do—sell ’em or hold ’em?”
Dreyton rose to his feet and thrust a hand deep into a trouser-pocket. He spun the penny he took from it, neatly caught it and laid it on the back of his hand.
Looking up from the coin, he said, “Sell them, Mr. Borradale. Forgive me, but you are too prone to magnify problems which are often of no importance. I will start here in the morning, and if you give me more responsibility I may presently be able to manage the place while you go for that holiday.”
“Good man! That’s splendid. But you start tonight by dining with us. No, I shall accept no refusal. Bring across your gear now. I’ll slip over and tell Stella. Why, we might get in a game of tennis before dinner.”
They left the office arm in arm.
Chapter Twenty-two
Trap Setting
INSPECTOR NAPOLEON BONAPARTE certainly agreed with Martin Borradale’s verdict that the evidence he found concerning the broken branch and the devilish laughter, which had so frightened the tennis players, proved the causes to be perfectly natural. Now, while the squatter and Donald Dreyton were talking in the office, he sought for and found Stella Borradale reclining under an orange-tree in the garden. The quick smile with which she greeted him but proved the strain still controlling her.
“Hullo, Bony! Have you come to talk to me?”
“Yes. May I sit here on the ground at your feet?”
“Why not bring a chair from the veranda? It would be much more comfortable.”
“I like comfort, Miss Borradale, but it is good for a man not to indulge in it too much. I wanted to assure you again that your uneasiness the other evening really had no foundation.”
“Oh!” she breathed, the corners of her expressive eyes become tight.
“I climbed the tree this morning and thoroughly examined the branch again, as well as making a careful examination of the ground. What I saw confirms my opinion of yesterday, and that was based on a superficial knowledge of the action of tree sap at certain seasons and in certain temperatures. Excessive heat drives the sap out of the branches, down the trunk and into the roots. Permit me to give an illustration. You know, of course, what is colloquially called a needlewood-tree. If a surface root is laid bare and broken off, and then fire is set to the foliage, the sap will be driven down the trunk to the roots, so that should a billy-can or other receptacle be placed under the broken root it will collect quite drinkable water. Over about three parts of Australia there is no need for anyone to perish if means are to hand to make fire.
“Well, then. What happened to the gum-tree branch was that the heat of the day had driven the sap down towards the roots, and when evening came the sap began its journey up into the branches. At the junction of the branch which snapped off from the parent trunk there was growing what I believe is called a tree cancer. The sap from the branch had taken a long time to pass round this cancer to the trunk, but it was not allowed to get back again quickly enough, and the first of the cool evening breeze was too much for the limb to resist. The laughter you assumed had human origin was, of course, made by a kookaburra. As you know, Miss Borradale, at times even the crows make a noise not unlike a man being choked.”
Stella sighed with relief. Bony smiled up at her.
“I am surprised by you,” he said in his disarming manner. “Imagination is our greatest gift and blessing, but when it is uncontrolled it can be a curse. And for an experienced bushwoman to be bushed by a new-chum book-keeper——”
“Please, Bony!”
“Oh, I know,” he said swiftly. “The longer we live in the bush the easier can we become frightened by it. I become horribly frightened by it sometimes.”
“Well, I am glad to hear what you have said about the branch and the laughter,” she told him half-laughingly. “Probably I would not have been so foolish if that stupid man had behaved normally. Why, he was a perfect coward. But, oh, I wish you would catch this beast who is so frightening every one. Do you know why I am sitting here?”
“Because it is cool and quiet and wonderfully pleasant.”
“No. It is because I am becoming so fearful that I despise myself. I am forcing myself to sit here under this tree. I am defying fear and deliberately allowing my imagination to do its worst. Martin told me that he believes the beast dropped out of a tree to attack his victims, and when I discovered the other evening that I dreaded being under a tree for an instant I determined to sit under this one.”
Bony, seated on the ground and smoking one of his badly-made cigarettes, regarded the small and attractive face turned down to him.
“The procedure is excellent,” he said. “To control fear one must exercise the will—which is always good. Still, it is not always desirable to carry that too far. I can most earnestly assure you that there are no grounds for fear during the day-time, and there need be none during the night if you do as I suggested: keep your bedroom door and windows fastened. Even that is merely precautionary, as the wearing of a hat is a precautionary measure against sunstroke.”
She was now leaning forward, her lips parted, her gaze fixed on his eyes.
“Do you think you will ever clear up this terrible mystery?” she asked.
It was one of Bony’s grandiloquent moments.
“I should be utterly astonished if I did not,” he said gravely. “After all, Miss Borradale, it is what I have come from Brisbane to do. I have never yet failed to clear up a mystery, and it would be absurd even to contemplate failing to clear up this one. Within a week I shall vanquish the ugly cloud hanging over Carie and Wirragatta.”
“You will?”
“Yes. I will make it a promise. You see, Colonel Spendor is becoming annoyed by my absence. He is a very impatient man. My wife, too, becomes unduly impatient when I remain away from home for a little while.” Bony’s face lit up from the smile originating in his eyes. “Like myself, my wife is a half-caste, but, unlike me, she has not the gift of patience. So you see, Miss Borradale, I have two impatient people on my tracks who simply will not allow me to take the time I would like on an investigation. Marie, my wife, tells me that she finds life almost unbearable when I am away from her. That, of course, is very nice of her. May I express the wish that some day soon you will be as happy as my wife says she is when I am home?”
The girl’s eyes abruptly sparkled, and she cried softly, “I told you once before, Mr. Napoleon Bonaparte, that you are a dangerous man. I ought to be furiously angry with you, and I cannot understand why I am not.”
“It is a problem somewhat common among my—my friends. I may regard you as a friend?”
“Yes … my dangerous friend, Bony,” she answered and laughed at and with him. Try as she did, she could not control the trembling of her lips or cease to wonder at her complete acceptance of him. “You know, Marion Trench used to make me smile over her letters about you. I understand her now. I think you are the most dangerous, the most discerning, the most sympathetic man I’ve ever known. No one, not even a woman, could hide a secret from you. Tell me, why did you so laud Harry West to my brother when we stopped at the fencers’ camp the other day?”
“I am, Miss Borradale, not the
only discerning person present,” he told her, utterly pleased with her and with himself. “I will lay bare my secret. I think quite a lot of Harry West, and on two occasions I have met his sweetheart. Harry is young yet, but he is possessed of moral courage beside physical courage, and he is considerate to others as well as being terrifically keen on his work. Tilly, when she smiles, is lovely. Alas! romance is my one weakness. If we can assist a dream to come true, why not?”
He saw her eyes become quickly diffused, and he looked away.
“Yes, why not?” she echoed. “I will see to it that this one does come true, even if others do not.”
Bony rose to his feet to stand before her, hat in hand.
“I must be going—if you will permit it,” he said grandly. “I promised your brother I would pay a visit to the prospector and his wife now camped beside Catfish Hole.”
“It is extremely foolish for them to stay there.”
“Yes, it is. A miner’s right, however, is a powerful document. Now, please, do not allow fear to trouble you. I shall soon banish the cloud, and I hope most earnestly that the result of the long investigation will not spoil a most valued friendship. Au revoir!”
Looking after his retreating figure, Stella Borradale permitted herself to blush. Only by exerting tremendous effort had she delayed it so long.
Once out of the garden, Bony sauntered up-river, humming a lilting tune. He was feeling elated as he always did when having spent time in the company of a good woman, and one whom he could completely blind to the facts of his ancestry. That was balm to his stupendous vanity. To make a white man or woman forget his social status and the stain of his skin was always to him a wonderful triumph. It was the eternal eagerness to be regarded with equality which had produced in him the exception of the rule that all who have the aborigines’ blood in their veins must in the end go back to the life and conditions of the bush nomads.
The hot sun was westering, but the birds as yet remained quiescent in the branches of the slumbering river trees. By walking along the dry bed of the river, Bony managed to pass the men’s quarters without being observed, and, after he skirted Junction Waterhole, he walked up Nogga Creek over its dry, shingle bed. Now, however, he maintained a wary watch of the tree-branches beneath which he was obliged to pass. These rows of bordering trees were to him like old friends, despite the being who used them at night. Every one he knew intimately: every one knew the secret he was so persistently teasing from them.
Coming to the boundary-fence and the Broken Hill road, he paused long enough to be sure that no chance traveller was approaching. Satisfied on that score, he jumped the fence and slipped across the road, and from this point he flitted from tree to tree until he was behind that one nearest the prospector’s camp.
Beyond the tent stood an old half-ton truck and beside it a much-repaired shaker. The man was washing sand at the edge of Catfish Hole, and the woman was tending meat grilling on the fire coals. She was slim and of medium height. On her feet were snakeskin shoes. On her shapely legs were silk stockings. Her skirt was of white duck and her blouse of white muslin. A mop of fair, short hair was the only untidy thing about her.
Bony stepped from the tree and gravely bowed.
“Good afternoon, madam,” he said.
Uttering a sharp exclamation, the woman sprang up and about to face him.
“Oh!” she cried. “Oh! Hullo, Mr. Bonaparte!”
Bony smiled and bowed again, saying:
“You make quite an attractive woman.”
“Do I? I hope so. I am trying to be as attractive as possible.”
“Good! I see your husband approaching. You must introduce me.”
The man walking swiftly to them was grey of hair and moustache. His shoulders were broad—very broad—and his hips were narrow—very narrow.
“Bill, this is Mr. Bonaparte,” said the woman.
The granite-hard expression on the prospector’s face relaxed.
“Pleased to meet you, inspector,” he said in deep bass tones. “I was hoping you would come along.”
“I would have come earlier, but there was no real necessity. What is your name and rank?”
“Smithson, sir. William Smithson, sergeant.”
“Champion boxer and champion wrestler in the New South Wales Police Force,” added the woman.
“Not now,” corrected the sergeant. “Still, I can take care of most of ’em. Satisfied with Elson’s get-up, sir?”
“Quite. Barry makes quite an attractive woman,” Bony replied, and studied Barry Elson with open admiration. “Did the Commissioner explain to you why I requested your services and those of your—er—wife?”
“Only that I had to report to Broken Hill, meet Elson, hire a truck and a prospector’s outfit, and come here with Elson dressed as a woman and armed with a miner’s right. Of course, Elson has told me all about this strangling gent, and I can make out what is wanted of us.”
“Good again. I will explain further. Perhaps meanwhile you might invite me to dinner. We can talk over the meal.”
With approval Bony noted that these two acted their parts with credit. The sergeant washed from a basin, and his “wife” continued the preparation of the meal until “she” called them to dinner.
“How was Miss Storrie when you last heard, Barry?” inquired the detective as he was given a plate of grilled chops, a slice of damper and a pannikin of tea.
“She is well forward to complete recovery, Mr. Bonaparte,” replied Elson. “I think she has forgiven me. She will, I know, if we can trap this strangling brute. I’d like to thank you properly for what you did for me as well as for giving me this chance to clear myself.”
“There are many people here who do not believe you attacked Miss Storrie, Barry. I suppose Simone was most disappointed?”
“He was, by the look of him. The inspector down at Broken Hill had me in his office and almost apologized. Then when I got your letter asking me if I would offer myself as a bait—why, I jumped at the idea.”
“Ah! I was hoping that Simone would be annoyed.”
“Strange how that feller got on as well as he has done,” growled Smithson. “He’s been mighty lucky all through.”
“He is an unpleasant person after one has become accustomed to his ego. However—— Are you still willing to carry on with this scheme of ours, Barry?”
The young man’s rouged and powdered face flushed and his eyes grew bright with enthusiasm.
“Too right!” he said earnestly. “Only by bringing this sneaking scoundrel to book can I avenge Mabel and clear myself.”
“I must impress on you that you will run a grave danger,” Bony pointed out. “I don’t myself like the idea now. If anything very serious should happen to you, I would always regret planning this trap. How does that iron collar fit you?”
“Comfortably. It will take very strong fingers to bend that iron against my throat. The police blacksmith made a good job of the collar. It protects all my neck right up hard against my chin, and it is light and easy to wear.”
“Doctor Mulray brought the acid paste?”
“Yes. It’s good stuff, too.”
“I should say,” agreed the sergeant. “I got a pin-head of it on a finger and it burned like fire.”
“It doesn’t tend to melt and run on account of the heat?”
“No,” Elson answered. “I was out last night, and the night before last, just to let the Strangler know I wander out of camp. If ever he gets his fingers round that iron collar his hands will be that blistered that they won’t heal for a month.”
“It’s a neat little scheme, Mr. Bonaparte,” the sergeant said admiringly. “As per orders, Elson walks up and down along the creek from here to the road several times during the late evening. If the Strangler attacks him, he’ll be branded plain enough. Should he get away—which he won’t from me—all we’ll have to do is to go through the population for him.”
Bony was pondering wi
th his fine brows knit.
Presently he said, “I want you to remember this, sergeant. The fellow’s capture, should he attack Elson, is of far less importance than Elson’s personal safety. Once the fellow gets his hands smeared with the acid on the collar, it does not matter if he gets away, because we can very easily pick him up when his hands are well blistered. We have to remember that he is exceedingly strong in the arms. He must be allowed to attempt to throttle Elson, but must not be given time enough to injure Elson, which he might attempt to do when he finds he is unable to strangle him. Therefore, Elson’s safety must come first.
“I do not anticipate an attack until the night following the next day of wind and dust, and by the signs in the sky this evening another wind-storm is due to break on us. Both you and I must never be far away from the bait, but we have to exert every possible precaution against giving the Strangler the suspicion that Elson is a bait and thus frighten him from the trap. Now listen carefully. This is what each of us will do from tomorrow night, as I do not require Elson to parade the creek-bank tonight.”
Lucidly and with remarkable detail, Bony planned their individual parts. In his woman’s clothes, wearing his iron collar on which would be smeared the doctor’s acid preparation, Barry was to walk from the camp to the road and repeat this walk until two o’clock every morning. If attacked, he had to resist the impulse to struggle until he was sure that the criminal’s hands were clamped round his iron collar. Then he was to shout for help. The sergeant would lie hidden from early in the evening at a spot approximately one-third the distance to the road, and Bony would be keeping watch on the road itself. Barry was not to begin his promenading before nine o’clock, at which time the watchers would be in their respective positions.
“Have you any idea who the bird will turn out to be?” rashly asked the sergeant.
“Yes. I am not a gambling man, sergeant, otherwise I would lay short odds against a particular man, one of ten I have had remaining on a list for a long time.”
Bony - 05 - Winds of Evil Page 20