“Letters? Official?”
“One official, one private, both with the Brisbane postmark.”
“Oh, the chief writes wanting to know what the devil this, that, and the rest of it; and my wife writes that the children are well and that she still loves me,” Bony predicted with a smile. “What do you think of the bride?” he asked.
“What do you?” was the guarded response.
“Nice sort of a girl. Who is she?”
“Daughter of old MacKennie. Owns a run called Willoughby. Comfortable, but not rich. Willoughby is east of Mount Lion.”
“And that tall, well-dressed man—Dash, they call him?”
“He’s a mystery.”
“Good! I like mysteries. What do you know of him?”
“Precious little,” Morris admitted. “Came in nineteen-nineteen. Receives a remittance from London four times a year. Was a jackeroo on Windee for three years, and suddenly threw that up and joined Dot. Quite a retrograde social step, but they get on well together and make money.”
“H’m! Any vices?”
“None chronic. Drinks no more nor less than I do,” the sergeant went on. “Yet no one knows his people, or what part of England he comes from inside Hampshire, unless Jeff Stanton does. People must be big bugs, because Dash is a gentleman in the commonplace acceptance of the word. He gives one the impression he was once in the British Army.”
“No doubt of that by the way he carries himself. Now about the nigs, Morris. Do you know why they are at Range Hut?”
“Oh, just on a walkabout, I think. Have you made any discoveries?”
“Nothing of importance,” was Bony’s evasive reply. “By the way, do you know who gave Miss Marion her ring set with sapphires?”
“Lord, no! Never noticed it. Why?”
“I was just wondering. It is rather a unique ring. The setting is entirely old-fashioned. You see, I know a little about jewellery. Have you sent for Marks’s or Green’s record?”
“Yes. Last week. I’ll let you have it as soon as I get it. But have you discovered nothing as yet?”
“One or two little things.”
“What are they?” pressed the sergeant.
“I have found out that there was a struggle, a fierce struggle, when Marks’s car came to a stop, which was where it was found. When I receive the man’s history I may be able to say how he was killed, as well as prove indubitably that he was killed.”
“And you found no trace of the body?”
“No. I rather think there is no trace to find.”
“No trace? But the body or portions of the body must exist. To totally destroy a body is the most difficult thing in the world.”
“One would think so, to read the newspapers and novels of to-day, wouldn’t one?” Bony said naively.
Chapter Thirteen
“And so to Bed”
THAT THE tin-kettling of the Fosters was a huge success was agreed with complete unanimity. It was five in the morning when Jeff Stanton, in conference with Father Ryan, decided that the hour of departure had arrived.
Stanton’s party was the same, and they left ahead of the trucks on account of their greater average speed. The false dawn tinted the eastern sky, which now they faced. The air was cool enough for the women to need their wraps, but not for the men to wish they had brought overcoats.
For a while conversation among them was general, and then gradually silence fell and the silky hum of the giant engine was the only sound. Marion sat with Mrs Poulton in the rear, and she nestled against her father and was promptly asleep with his arm around her. Mrs Poulton slept lying back in her corner quite comfortably. Father Ryan smoked a cigar, happy and content; the sergeant wished he was at home and in bed.
As for Bony, his mind was busy. There were several points in regard to this case which wanted clearing up, points that it should have been easy to clear up. There was the question of the object of Marks’s visit to Windee. He had arrived at Mount Lion with the full intention of interviewing Jeff Stanton. At the time of the search for Marks Sergeant Morris had asked casually the business that brought Marks to Windee. He was told that Marks was a one-time friend, and was satisfied with that because so far there was no suspicion of foul play.
Bony felt that to get Morris to ask Stanton bluntly what business Marks had with him would not yet be politic. He had no proof, or even leaning in thought, that Stanton had had anything to do with Marks’s death or knew the manner of it. Time was on Bony’s side. Marks’s history might disclose valuable aids to putting a theory on a practical basis. Then, again, the aboriginal tribe was about to return to Windee after a “walkabout” that had hindered his questioning them. Once he became friends, especially with old Moongalliti, he could work to find out who was responsible for making that warning sign. For whoever made that sign witnessed the murder. Yes, a great deal lay in the womb of time.
The most astonishing feature to date was the fact that the sapphire which the ants had brought up from their nest had originally been set in the ring now worn by Marion Stanton. That she had been implicated in any struggle with Marks seemed very remote, yet skilful questioning of Mrs Poulton had elicited the fact that Marion had habitually worn the ring given her by her mother. And that night, whilst playing on the leaf, he had been able to make certain that the missing stone had been replaced by another when the pianist’s hands had rested idly on the keys. He had not boasted when he said he knew something about jewellery.
There was yet another mystery which, however, was entirely distinct from that of the disappearance of Marks. To most men this second mystery would have appeared trivial. It was the singular fact that Dash had left the “Government House” to become a vermin-destroyer and fur-getter.
To meet Dash even casually was to place him immediately in the squatter class. It required no brain fag to decide that he was a gentleman. The fact of his being a remittance man was peculiar, but not necessarily discreditable; and certainly his habits since he had been at Windee had been above reproach.
He had brought a letter of introduction to Jeff Stanton, and had been offered the position of jackeroo, or pastoralist’s apprentice. This position entitled him to a room in the “Government House” and to be treated as one of the family—a position quite in accordance with his upbringing.
Then suddenly he left all that to become the partner of an illiterate American, and to carry on work which the least fastidious gentleman would not undertake because of the exceedingly rough living and the necessity of constantly handling dead animals. Why did he make that sudden change? Why suddenly give up a life of comparative comfort among his near equals at least for the rough, uncouth existence of a fur-getter? Money was not the object. At least it did not appear so, for Dash was not extravagant, neither did he drink to excess. Something had happened a few years back which had never become public property.
This, as well as the greater problem, occupied most of Bony’s wakeful thoughts. He had arrived on the scene of a crime of violence two months after its commission, when the sand had overwhelmed all traces of it. Before he could prove who committed that murder he must prove that the murder itself had been committed, for the blackfellow’s sign was not definite proof. Whilst this sign pointed to the fact of murder, whilst it entirely satisfied the half-caste, it would not weigh a featherweight in itself with a judge and jury. As Morris had hinted, the judge and jury would want nothing less than proof of the existence of Marks’s body, or identifiable portions of it, to satisfy them that murder had been done.
As a case, it delighted Bony. From the fallen sands of time he had to reconstruct the crime, as from the sands of the bush he had to recover clues and definite proof. Here was no corpse on the library carpet silently crying for vengeance, and giving the investigator a dozen important clues with which to start his tracking. Yes, Bony was absorbed. His belief was becoming strengthened that at last he had found the perfect murder—had stumbled by chance on a problem worthy of his exceptional intellig
ence. …
Entering the homestead was like coming into harbour, and the sense of limitless space vanished, to be replaced by one of protection from the sleeping elements. Alf the Nark was in the kitchen of the “Government House”, and Mr Roberts had done his best to set the breakfast-table. The trucks arrived whilst they were eating and discussing the tin-kettling, and Alf the Nark was then in his own kitchen, grousing as was his habit.
An hour later the homestead was as still as the grave. Father Ryan and Sergeant Morris had gone, driven to Mount Lion by young Jeff. Mr Roberts sat at his desk in the office. Alf the Nark punched dough for the next batch of. bread, and everyone else was sound asleep.
Young Jeff pulled up before the police-station, adjoining which was the house occupied by Sergeant and Mrs Morris, with Father Ryan as their lodger. Mr Bumpus was standing in his door, and, seeing him, Sergeant Morris suggested a reviver. Father Ryan hesitated for the fraction of a second, and young Jeff seemed to understand why, for he said: “It will be all right, Father; I am driving the dad’s car.”
“Of course it will be all right, my son,” chuckled the little priest. “We will partake of some refreshment, ‘and so to bed’, as the immortal Pepys used to put it.”
Within Mr Bumpus’s private parlour they were served with a glass of bottled beer, and it was young Jeff who was the first to leave. Again at the car, he detained Father Ryan and handed him a cheque for five pounds.
“My fine, Father,” he said, smiling.
“Thanks, son! Remember, next time it will be ten pounds.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Passing of a Cook
ALF THE NARK aroused the men at five-thirty that evening by beating an iron bar on the enormous triangle outside the kitchen. The gleam in his black eyes indicated that he was in a towering rage.
Cooking on an Australian station does not induce placidity of mind. In the first place it is a seven-day-a-week job; in the second it very often happens that one or more of the men are late to meals having been delayed by sheep-work in a paddock; and in the third place the hours are long, and the cement or wooden floor of a kitchen is particularly hard on a cook’s feet.
On account of these drawbacks cooks are scarce, good cooks are priceless, and all cooks are martinets. A cook’s uncertain temper is, therefore, regarded with the indulgence given to lumbago, or gout, the sufferer receiving all consideration and sympathy.
When Alf the Nark started work in a kitchen his temperament was well-nigh angelic; but when the first month had passed—and Alf had a ten-pound cheque behind him—the small worries of life began increasingly to annoy him. At the expiration of three months a man accidentally spilling his pannikin of tea on the table, or not removing his eating utensils to the wash-up table when passing out, was quite sufficient to cause the speechless Alf to remove his apron with dramatic gestures, go roll his swag, and almost run to the office for his cheque.’
This indecent haste to quit a job invariably caused great inconvenience to his employer and to the men, who were compelled to cook their own food the best way they could until another cook was procured. That did not worry Alf the Nark unduly. He walked, if he could not get a lift, into Mount Lion, and made straight for Mr Bumpus’s hotel but before he became quite drunk was “bailed up” by Father Ryan and persuaded to hand to the jovial little priest five pounds. Left in peace then to drink his fill whilst the balance of his cheque lasted, Alf passed a gorgeous week or ten days, leaning against the bar for sixteen hours and intermittently sleeping on the hotel wood-heap for the remaining eight.
The culminating brawl that preceded his escorted stroll to the one-cell gaol at the rear of Sergeant Morris’s house was never remembered. When finally he regained consciousness his limbs trembled as with palsy, and his companions were reptiles and insects seen elsewhere only on the planet Mars.
Then came his appearance in the small court where the storekeeper, who was a Justice of the Peace, regarded him with judicial sternness. The sergeant or one of his troopers gave evidence after Alf had, as usual, pleaded “not guilty”, and the J.P. sentenced him to seven days without the option of a fine, as he had been advised to do by the sergeant before the court day.
Again in the cell, dishevelled, unwashed, tormented by dreadful multi-coloured creatures, Alf was presently visited by Father Ryan bearing the orthodox prescription of a stiff whisky-and-soda. Since Alf had eaten nothing solid during the whole of the debauch, the restorative doses of alcohol were given on the strict understanding that the prisoner drank a bowl of Mrs Morris’s soup.
By the time Alf the Nark was due for release Father Ryan had obtained for him another job. The grand old man never had any difficulty in getting Alf the Nark a job, for Alf the Nark was a most excellent cook—for three months. When the day of release came, Father Ryan escorted him to one of the stores, and there paid out the cash for what clothes and necessaries the man required, thereafter to lead him to the hotel, buy him one drink, and from the hotel escort him to the mail-car, pay his fare, and stand by him talking in his merry way till the car pulled out.
Alf the Nark, with many such another, worshipped Father Ryan. It mattered little to any one of them what religion Father Ryan represented. They respected him for his cloth as they would any other minister, but they loved him—well, because he was Father Ryan.
And when he had seen them go out of the township the little priest sighed, entered his book-filled study, and made up his accounts. Every penny that he so jovially demanded in “fines” was accounted for, and every penny expended in “doctoring his patients” and fitting them out for the jobs he found for them was also entered up. At the end of every month the sergeant and the J.P. were invited to audit his accounts, and they invariably did so, for Father Ryan was insistent.
After beating his triangle calling the men to dinner, Alf the Nark began to cut up two roast legs of mutton. Usually the first man entered the kitchen-dining-room precisely ten seconds after the triangle was struck, but this day the men were in bed and asleep, and it was fully ten minutes before the first of them arrived, having had to wash and dress.
“Soup?” snarled Alf.
“Please,” came the sleepy answer.
“Soup?” snarled Alf to the next man, and so on until all were seated and occupied. Then: “I’ve ’ad enough of this. If yous think I’m going to be on deck orl the blasted day and ’ang about ’ere ’arf the night waiting for yous to grease yer ’air, you’re mistaken. There’s yer tucker. Eat it or chuck it art. I’m finished.”
With a superb gesture he ripped off his white apron and threw it on the floor. One of the men impolitely laughed. Alf became speechless and danced on the apron, and, still speechless, rushed out to his room, where feverishly he rolled his few belongings in his blankets, and almost ran to the office. Half an hour later, with his cheque in his pocket, he set out on the eighteen-mile tramp to Mount Lion, visions of whisky-bottles drawing him on, memory of fits of trembling, of awful depression, of frightful creepy tormenting things obliterated.
That night the men washed up their own utensils and cleaned out the kitchen-dining-room, and when Bony had performed his share he sauntered down the winding empty creek until he came to a fallen tree. There he sat and gazed out over the great plain whilst the sun went down, and marvelled at the stupidity of men and the sinister influence of the bush which so greatly augments their stupidity.
Quite suddenly he remembered the two letters slyly given to him by Sergeant Morris, and these he took from a pocket and examined the superscriptions. That addressed to him in his wife’s handwriting he opened first, and read:
Banyo,
nr. Brisbane.
Dearest Bony,
Detective Holland came out from town yesterday especially to tell me that you had left Sydney for the Western Division N.S. Wales, on another case. He says that Colonel Spender is very angry, because you went to Sydney only to finalize a case and have gone off without authority, especially when there is a
murder case giving them trouble out of Longreach.
We are all disappointed, too, because we were looking forward to a walkabout beyond Winton. When are you coming back? We haven’t had a walkabout now for nearly nine months, and you know how it is with us. Little Ed is going to the Banyo school next week. Bob wants to go west and get a fob on a station, and I know you won’t like that. You had better come home and stop him. …
Do come home, dear Bony. But there, I know you won’t until your present case is finalized. Charles is going up for his University entrance exam the week after next. He is going to be like you, but like you and me and all of us the bush will get him in the end. It’s in our blood and can’t be resisted.
We send our love, dearest Bony. All are well.
Marie.
The handwriting was neat, the spelling faultless. The writer was a half-caste like Bony, and in her way an equally satisfactory product of mission station education. Bony was smiling gently when he replaced the sheet in its dainty mauve envelope and thought of the pride of his life, his eldest son Charles, to whom he had bequeathed most of his mental gifts, and then of the lad who was always unhappy at school, always pining for the bush. The call of the bush was knocking at Bob’s heart almost as soon as he could walk, whilst the call came to his wife and himself much later in life, but nevertheless was equally insistent, equally compelling.
Once more he smiled, this time a little more broadly, when he ripped open the official envelope from Headquarters, Brisbane. The typed part was terse and to the point. Below his name and rank it read: You are hereby notified that you are allowed six weeks’ leave of absence without pay, as from October 1st, 1924. Should you fail to report at the expiration of this period your appointment will automatically cease.
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