The affair of the red monoplane was made so obscure by both probabilities and possibilities that Bony was rightly attacking its weakest point; namely, definitely to establish whether the machine had been fired by natural causes or by some human being. If through human agency, then, through the movements of the person responsible, he might well get a line across the sea of mystery to the ship of truth.
It was useless to cogitate on the problem until he had established the causes of the fire. To do that he must with care read the pages of the Book of the Bush devoted to Emu Lake and its immediate vicinity. Loveacre had estimated on his arrival at Emu Lake that his machine had caught fire about five hours previously. He was quite positive that the fire had not occurred before sunset and after Nettlefold had left the lake-in which case the sun’s rays might have been responsible.
The odds certainly were in favour of the theory that, during the night after the finding of the machine and its helpless passenger, some person had crossed through the bush from some point, done his work, and then returned to the point from which he had set out. In consequence he must have left some trace of his passage; and, because since that night the weather had been fine and calm, the traces he must inevitably have left still remained for Bony and his companions to find and read as a white man reads a newspaper.
The half-caste had raised himself to a position of eminence in the investigation of bush crime, because he brought to his work a keen mind, patience and super-sight. In him were housed the gifts and remarkably few vices of both races between which he stood half-way.
The accident of his birth had placed him in the unique position of being able to look dispassionately on both the white man and the black. As a proof of this, he knew that when Bill Sikes and Shuteye were instructed to look for the tracks of a man who could have destroyed the aeroplane they set off on their task with one idea in their minds-to find the imprints of awhite man’s boots on the ground.
They looked for and hoped to discover awhite man’s tracks and had they crossed the boot tracks made by an aboriginal it is probable that they would not have mentioned it unless directly questioned. A white man’s tracks they were set to find, and a white man’s tracks would be all which would interest them.
Further, Bonyknew, when the two blacks were commanded to look for tracks made by either blackor white, they would search for the impressions made by boots or naked feet. Andonly that. Because it would not occur to them that the man whose tracks they were sent to discover might have adopted expert methods of leaving no traces, they would not have troubled to look for any indications revealing one of several methods:
Thus it was, Bony reasoned, that although the blacks had not found a man’s tracks the supposition that some person had visited the derelict aeroplane could not be put out of court. Rather the man who might have destroyed the machine-assuming that a man had done so-would know that determined men would search for his tracks, and he, therefore, would adopt measures to conceal his tracks or prevent his feet from making them.
To move about the interior of Australia without leaving plain signs for an expert native tracker to see is exceedingly difficult. To deceive or frustrate the expert white bushman is hard enough; to frustrate an aboriginal expert is almost beyond possibility-for a white man.
The detective noted with satisfaction how his two assistants brightened when he suggested that a possible incendiarist might have adopted the method of blood and feathers in an effort to leave no tracks. They knew now that the search had to be much wider than the hunt for mere boot tracks; and further that if the blood-and-feathers method of escaping detection had been used by a white man, he was yet bound to make serious mistakes, for he would not have the bushcraft possessed by the blackfellow. Their blood leaped to the thrill experienced by all stalkers whether of man or animal.
“We will track in a growing circle,” Bony explained, to proceed then in the vernacular: “Aeroplane here. We spread outlikum we muster cattle and walk about round and round farther and farther away. You go ’way back, Shuteye, till I say you stop, and you, Bill Sikes, you go ’way back beyond Shuteye.”
“Orlright, Bony. Metrack like Jacky,” assented the eager Shuteye.
“Too right!” added the other. “Him clever feller put feathers on his feet, but Bill Sikes clever feller, too.”
So forming a front, and separated from each other by about one hundred yards, they moved round the wreckage which acted as a pivot or the hub of a wheel of which they were spokes. To the hub and away from the hub had walked the possible incendiarist, and across the line of his double passage three pairs of eagle-keen eyes must pass their gaze. When a human spoke had made one revolution of the hub it moved outward to make another revolution, and so on and on until the three men were working in a wide circular movement round the hub and a mile from it.
They crossed the sand-dunes on which they could see the tracks of scorpions and centipedes. They crossed cement-hardclaypans, which but faintly registered the hoof tips of their horses. They crossed grassy clearings, but after the lapse of time trodden grass would have regained its upright position. Once they passed over a large area of loose, sandy soil bearing tussock-grass and herbage.
They read all the little stories contained in the Book of the Bush: stories written by kangaroos and emus, rabbits and mice, bush rats and goannas and the tiny lizards that live by catching flies; the cockatoos and galahs, and the finches and the crows. Constantly did they dismount to pick up bird feathers in order to examine them for a smear ofblood.
The sun poured down on them its hourly increasing heat, but of it they were oblivious. Unconsciously they waved back from their eyes the countless small flies. Bony even forgot his cigarettes.
The day was windless. Thewilly -willies were out, marching drunkenly across the landscape from west to east, tall columns of revolving, heated air painted by the red sand, swept upward into their vortex. Several passed quite close to the trackers, but they were disregarded. It was only the increasing determination of his horse to snatch morsels of grass and herbage that made the detective conscious of the passage of time, when he was astonished to see by the sun that it was after two o’clock. He called to his companions and dismounted in the shade cast by a leopard-wood tree.
“We’ll have lunch. It’s past two o’clock,” he announced.
Off came the quart-pots, to be filled from the canvas waterbags slung against each horse’s chest. Bill Sikes made a fire and superintended the quart-pots, while Shuteye secured the horses to trees by theirneckropes. Again Bony glanced up at the sun, and now at his shadow. He knew that they were then east of Emu Lake and not so very far from the fence andFaraway Bore.
“That aeroplane caught fire itself, all right,” Bill Sikes gave as his opinion.
“Until we have proof we must assume that someone fired it,” countered the obstinate Bony. “He might have left feathers from his feet for one of thosewilly -willies to sweep up and carry away for miles. Have you seen them this summer before to-day?”
“Plenty,” answered Shuteye, now seated on his boot-heels and busily rolling a cigarette.
Bony was experiencing disappointment, but he was far from giving up. There was yet the remainder of this day, and the next day and the day after that. Patience was his greatest gift. While the water in the quart-pots was heating they sat on their heels and smoked.
“The fellow who set fire to that aeroplane might have flown over it in another and dropped a bomb on it,” he argued. “It is possible but not probable. Who has an aeroplane besides Dr Knowles?”
“No one else,” replied Bill Sikes. “Them flying machinesis too tricky forord’nary fellers to fly around in. Ole Shuteye, here, couldn’t fly oneany’ow.”
“No fear. Horse good enough for this feller. ‘Way up there too close to bash up,” and Shuteye laughed as readily as he always did, and revealed perfect teeth that nothing seemed to stain.
He and Bill Sikes continued to talk and laugh about the instability of aeroplan
es, but Bony fell into pensive meditation. Had that poor helpless woman lying at Coolibah actually stolen the red monoplane? Recalling the picture of her lying so motionless on the bed, he could not bring himself to credit her with that feat. She was drugged. Knowles was positive; and if the doctor was right she could not have flown the aeroplane away from Golden Dawn. Besides, even if she had stolen it and flown it, she could not possibly have set fire to it.
Bony’s mind clung to the idea that the machine had been destroyed through human agency. There was not atittle of evidence to support what was, after all, mere supposition. They had no reason to believe that any one had approached the machine other than those whose visits were legitimate. And yet…
Long before, the question of motive had demanded an answer, and Bony thought he could supply it. The machine had been destroyed with fire, because fire was the easiest means to assure the removal of fingerprints. Dr Knowles had not worn gloves when he brought the detective to Coolibah. If the pilot of the stolen machine had not worn gloves, believing that his plan to crash the aeroplane would assuredly succeed, then his fingerprints would have been on the controls as well as on other parts of it.
However, all this was but creating theories, and Bony hated theories which had no basis of fact. If only he could find a clue proving that a man had stealthily visited the derelict machine!
He gave his assistants no rest after lunch had been eaten, and they took their stations and went on with the search. The sun continued its remorseless journey across the cobalt sky, and as remorselessly the three continued the hunt for a scent.
It was twenty minutes after lunch when, through the still air, came a cry of triumph. Bony saw Shuteye standing beside his horse and in the act of waving to him. Both he and Bill Sikes converged on the fat man, and Bony slipped eagerly to the ground when he saw that in his hands Shuteye was holding a stick.
“I see stick kicked up off ground,” Shuteye explained with hissing breath.
Bony took the stick-a piece of mulga. Shuteye pointed to where it had been lying, and the history of the stick since it had been blown from the parent branch was plainly to be read. Having fallen to the ground, successive windstorms had blown sand grains against one side of it. The white ants, working upward, had attacked its underside, and now their peculiar cement adhered to the stick. The place where the stick had been lying for perhaps several weeks was marked by the depression as well as the termite cement within the depression. There was even the mark of the stick on the ground made by it when moved from its original position.
Shuteye, when picking it up, had been careful not to disturb the ground, and had a crow moved the stick in its search for termites, the imprints of its feet would have remained to betray its activity. There were no such signs.
Carefully and slowly, Bony examined the stick. It was about two feet in length, and weighed less than half a pound. His eyes appeared to magnify it for his brain to note every crevice and raised curve of the bark still fastened to the parent wood.
“Ah!” he said sharply, and the two blacks crowded close. From one jagged end he detached a silvery fibre about two inches in length. It was crinkled, like a gossamer strand from a spider’s web. When Bony looked into the smiling faces of his assistants his blue eyes were blazing.
“There are no sheep on Coolibah, are there?” he asked softly.
They shook their heads.
“I see stick kickedalonga mark on ground,” Shuteye burst out.
“Well, there are no sheep on Coolibah, and yet here, fastened to the end of this stick, is a fibre of wool,” Bony pointed out. “How far away westward of this place are the nearest sheep-do you know?”
“West of Coolibah isUnesadoone. Big station, all cattle,” Bill Sikes explained. “Mr Kane has a few sheep for killing on Tintanoo.”
“Where are they kept?”
“Near homestead.”
“The homestead is roughly north-east of here. You ever seewilly -willies come from the north-east?”
“No fear,” replied Bill Sikes. “Not this summer, any’ow.”
“Therefore,” Bony continued, “this fibre wool could not have been brought here by awilly-willy. No ordinary wind would have carried it for so many miles. One of the countless trees would have caught it. Perhaps that feller he wear wool on his feet like black feller wear feathers, eh?”
“P’haps,” they agreed.
“What other stations about here run sheep?”
“Windy Creek and Olarie Downs. Butcher at Golden Dawn runs sheep on the common,” Bill Sikes replied.
“Ah! Well, so far so good,” announced the satisfied Bony. Carefully he rolled the wool fibre within a cigarette paper and stowed it away in a pocket. A quick glance at the sun, a general survey of the scene, and he knew that they then were approximately north of Emu Lake.
“How far is the Coolibah-Tintanoo boundary fence?” he inquired.
“’Bout half mile,” answered Bill Sikes, and Shuteye instantly agreed.
“Well, if this stick was kicked aside by a man having wool glued to his feet he reached Emu Lake from the north, and, likely enough, he returned to the north. We will track on a zigzag course, with me taking middle position. You two keep your distance from me.”
Less widely spaced, they advanced, having now a definite object for which to search-a wool fibre. Presently they came to fairly open country, and from the summit of a low whaleback of pure sand could be seen the wire boundary fence. Between the sand hummock and the fence Bill Sikes discovered a second wool fibre, caught in a butt of tussock-grass.
The second find of wool fibre, allied to the first, proved that some person had walked in wool from the Golden Dawn-St Albans road which ran east-west through Tintanoo Station, and, doubtless, had returned to the road. Bony knew that wool would leave impressions so slight-even on the softest sand-that the first zephyr would erase them. He had himself often used sheepskin boots, having the wool on the outside to enable him to investigate without leaving tracks behind him.
So the monoplanehad been fired! That fact certainly provided firm ground on which to raise a structure of further theory.
Thought pictures were flickering through his brain when his body became taut. Between his lips issued a long lowhiss, and the other stopped to look at him. He pointed to the west. A dark-brown mass, as solid-looking as a sand-dune, was rushing towards them, its upper edge about to blot out the sun.
“Grab your horses,” shouted Bony.
They were given just time enough to lead their mounts to nearby trees and there tie them with the rope each animal had around its neck when the sun went out. Half a minute later the advancing wall of sand reached them, to sweep over them and to bury them in its suffocating embrace.
Chapter Twelve
The Sand Cloud
ON THE MORNING of the day that Bony and his two assistants set out for Emu Lake, there landed at Golden Dawn a fast service plane which brought a Mr Cartwright, of the New Era Fire Insurance Company. The machine was piloted by Captain Loveacre.
While the pilot was supervising the re-fuelling of his ship from forty-gallon petrol drums stocked by the storekeeper, Cartwright sauntered to the police-station, where he met Sergeant Cox emerging from his office. The sergeant shrewdly noted the details of Cartwright’s appearance: his age, which was about fifty; his large and flaccid face, with its bulbous nose; and the immaculate suit of grey flannel matched by a panama hat.
The stranger announced his name before proceeding to inform the controller of the Golden Dawn police district that he had been requested by the Air Accidents Investigation Committee to examine the aeroplane wreckage at Emu Lake in order to test certain theories formulated by the Committee.
Mr Cartwright did not add to this statement that he was a truly remarkable man. His disposition was too reserved to permit him to say that of one hundred fires he could accurately determine how ninety-nine had started, and that by examining the burned stock of, say, a drapery business, he could correctly esti
mate to within a pound or two the value of that stock before fire ruined it. It was rather foolish of a fire victim to swear that the value of his stock had been five thousand pounds when its actual value was only four thousand five hundred. It was foolish, too, to swear that he did not know how the fire had started, no matter how cunningly he might have short-circuited the electric lighting system, or rolled a piece of phosphorus within a bolt of curtain netting. On the other hand, if the fire victim was honest he received every pound of his insurance.
“From what I have been told, Sergeant,” Mr Cartwright said, in his soft voice, “the aeroplane fire at this Emu Lake presents many interesting points. I understand that a young woman was found in the passenger seat, and that she is suffering from a kind of general paralysis. Is she any better?”
“Not the slightest,” Cox replied. “What do the members of theA.A.I. C. think about that burning?”
“They are a little mystified about it. That is why they asked my firm to lend them my services. I am advised to get in touch with the officer in charge of the matter, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. Do you know where I can find him?”
“Yes. He went out to a place called Faraway Bore last night. I understand that to-day he intends examining Emu Lake for tracks, although two good trackers have already searched around the lake for tracks of any person who could have deliberately set fire to the machine. The inspector thinks that some person did destroy the aeroplane, and that in consequence he must have left tracks. He is anxious to clear up that point.”
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