Wings above the Diamantina b-3

by Arthur W. Upfield

  With Sergeant Cox, Bony keenly regretted the omission of John Nettlefold to search the machine before he and his daughter left with the drugged young woman. They might have found her handbag, or an article of clothing giving a clue to her identity. There certainly was something in or on the machine to have made its destruction so important. What was it the incendiarist had feared? If it was the discovery of something that could easily have been moved the destruction was senseless. He destroyed the plane because on it and its controls were his fingerprints.

  Whose fingerprints? Those of the pilot, the person who had stolen the machine from Golden Dawn. Then the pilot was either a local resident or one well known to the police in a general way. More than likely a local resident, because, having heard that the machine was resting quite undamaged on Emu Lake, he had walked to it in the dark. That certainly indicated that he was a local resident and one, moreover, who new the country very well. Yes, if the girl herself was unknown to Cox and the Coolibah people, the pilot of the stolen aeroplane certainly was not. There must be living in the Golden Dawn district a man other than the doctor and Kane who possessed the requisite knowledge and experience expertly to handle an aeroplane.

  It was a pretty problem, one that satisfied even Bony, who was seldom satisfied. In this case there was only one disturbing element-the grave physical condition of the girl at Coolibah. Bony liked to spend plenty of time on an investigation but here the situation called for haste, because Knowles had said that if the cause of her singular condition were not cleared up, it might be impossible to find a cure in time to save her life.

  It might be that only the clearing up of the matter of the stolen aeroplane would give the medico the information he needed. After all, it is difficult for any doctor to cure a complaint of that kind, when he has no idea of its cause.

  So engrossed was Bony by these thoughts that the four-mile ride passed without the usual interest being taken in it He failed to note that his horse left a trail of fine dust hanging in the air, and tracks of exceeding clarity on the ground. He failed to notice the rabbit that sped across the ground before him and flung up a trail of dust in miniature, much like that raised by a car speeding along a dry track. He had ridden down the low bank edging the lake before he realized that he had reached it.

  Having secured the horse to a tree, he hurried with eager steps to the aeroplane, and the two men engaged among the debris of the burnt machine. So absorbed were they that his approach went unnoticed, until he said: “Good afternoon!”

  Mr Cartwright and the airman straightened up and faced round to see a poorly-dressed, slightly-built man on whose arms and face clung particles of red sand, and whose worn shirt and trousers were stained red.

  “Hullo!” returned Loveacre. “Where did you come from?”

  Bony smiled. “I am just out for an afternoon ride. Who, may I ask, are you?”

  The captain’s browsrose a fraction. The voice and style of speech were singularly at variance with the appearance of this blackfellow-or half-caste, or whatever he was. The insurance assessor offered a shrewd guess.

  “Are you, by any chance, Mr Napoleon Bonaparte?”

  Bony bowed gravely. “I am. You gentlemen have the advantage, it seems.”

  “My name is Cartwright, and this is Captain Loveacre.” announced the interested fire assessor. “I was hoping to meet you, as I believe you are in charge of this extraordinary matter. I have been sent by the Air Accidents Investigation Committee to ascertain if this fire was caused by incendiarism or by an act of God.”

  “Then, naturally, Captain Loveacre is even more interested in the wreckage.”

  “I am extremely interested, Inspector,” Loveacre assured Bony with emphasis. “If ever you find out who did it, I would be eternally grateful if you just mention his name and give me a few minutes with him in private.”

  “Have you discovered any leads yet?” asked Cartwright.

  “Tell me, first, whatyou have discovered,” said Bony cautiously.

  “Well-er, my report has, of course, to be submitted confidentially to the Air Accidents Committee. Doubtless, in due time-”

  “You are, I presume, a civil servant?” suavely inquired Bony.

  “No,” replied Cartwright. “I am a fire insurance assessor employed by an insurance company.”

  “Pardon! My mistake is natural. I had no idea that red tape was so prominent a feature of the insurance world.”

  Cartwright chuckled. The dusty face and clothes, which seemed to indicate that Bony had been sleeping in a dog kennel, were so much at variance with the detective’s keen, twinkling eyes and cultured accent that it was hard to imagine that they all belonged to the same man. Leaving the strewn wreckage, he stepped to Bony with extended hand.

  “I am delighted to meet you, Inspector,” he said. “Sergeant Cox told me I was to call you Bony.”

  “I am indebted to Sergeant Cox. I dislike being addressed either as Inspector or Mister, and I hate red tape, the god of the civil service, with all my soul. There is only one other man who hates that god more passionately than I, and that is my revered chief, Colonel Spendor. You were about to tell me how Captain Loveacre’s machine was destroyed?”

  “Actually, I was about to do nothing of the sort,” Cartwright corrected, laughing frankly. “However, I will tell you that Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane carried a high explosive when it was destroyed by fire. The explosion of petrol in the tanks could not have been of sufficient force so completely to disintegrate the structure. It could not have flung the heavy engine so far forward, the wings so far from the fuselage, and the fragments of both wings and fuselage so far outward from the central point.”

  “That is what occurred to me when I reviewed the wreck earlier to-day,” Bony said in agreement. “Do you think that the machine was burned and wrecked by the explosive, or was the explosive detonated by the fire consuming the machine? Possibly I am abstruse.”

  “I understand your point. Yes, I think that the explosive was detonated by the heat of the fire consuming the aeroplane.”

  “Thank you.” Bony pinched his nether lip with fore-finger and thumb. Then: “Perhaps you could give the explosive a name?”

  “Well-er-”

  “Please answer me,” Bony urged sharply.“Could you?”

  Cartwright nodded.

  “But,” he said, “I would like you to understand that I have been instructed not to divulge the result of my examination outside my report to the Air Accidents Committee.”

  “I understand that quite well, Mr Cartwright,” Bony responded earnestly.“In due time I shall have the gist of your report through my department-probably a fortnight hence. In two weeks’ time your report will be quite valueless to me, because I shall know what I now want to know. At Coolibah homesteadlies a young woman who is so helpless that she is unable even to raise or lower her eyelids. Dr Knowles says that if she cannot be cured of that strange paralysis she will shortly die from starved tissues. To me-and I think you, too, Mr Cartwright-the life of that young woman is of greater importance than the dignity of all the thousands of civil servants in this country. Until we know by clearing up the mystery of this burned aeroplane what has been done to that young woman she will be slowly dying. Again I ask you for the name of the explosive which shattered Captain Loveacre’s monoplane.”

  The stubborn expression on the assessor’s face slowly faded.

  “Under the circumstances, I will tell you. The explosive was nitro-glycerine.”

  “Thank you, Mr Cartwright!” Bony said warmly. “You may be sure that I shall treat your confidence with great respect. In return, I will tell you what I know. Have you discovered how the aeroplane was fired?”

  “No. I can obtain no definite proof. Have you that proof?”

  “Yes, I have proof that a man walked through the bush, set fire to the machine here, and then walked back through the bush to the main Golden Dawn-St Albans road. Have you found anything that may be called a clue among the debris? Cl
othes buttons, for instance, or fragments of a woman’s handbag?”

  “Nothing. I cannot understand, or even imagine, the motive for destroying the aeroplane.”

  “I can.”

  “What?”

  “Fingerprints. Either the man who stole the machine did not think he would have to abandon it, or he did not believe it possible to escape destruction when he did abandon it. The presence of nitro-glycerine in the machine points to the fact that he deliberately abandoned it so that it would crash with the passenger and be wiped out by the explosive. You cannot account for nitro-glycerine being in your red monoplane, Captain Loveacre?”

  The captain shook his head.

  “If he did what you say, then why?… Why should any man take that girl up in my machine and dump her with a wad of nitro-glycerine? Can you answer that question?”

  “I feel cramped,” Bony said provokingly.

  Loveacre stared at him in blank surprise.

  “Cramped? Well, what about a bottle of beer?” he suggested.

  “Beer won’t remove the cause,” declared the detective. “Like Mr Cartwright, I am cramped with red tape.”

  Captain Loveacre looked startled. Then he grinned boyishly.

  “I get you,” he said. “Go on.”

  “Tell me,” Bony urged persuasively. “How far, in your opinion, would your machine have flown after the pilot left it?”

  “Now you’re asking me. In still air it might have flown miles, or it might immediately have stalled.”

  “Well, being familiar with the machine, could you have fixed the controls with wire or something to make it self-flying until the petrol was used up?”

  “I think that I might do that in still air, but when I jumped the sudden redistribution of weight would not be automatically countered without a human brain at the controls. On the other hand, the machine might not be disturbed by the pilot leaving it. It was an easy bus to fly, and it was possible for me to fly it at times ‘hands off’-that is, without touching the controls.”

  “My last question. Assuming the thief fixed the controls, hoping that after he left the machine it would fly some considerable distance before crashing, and that he shut off the engine before he jumped, what most likely would have happened?”

  “Anything-even whatdidhappen. The bus at once, began to lose height, but strangely enough did not lose flying speed. By a remarkable fluke it made a perfect landing on this lake when for miles around lies scrub and broken sand-plain country.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bony Declares Himself

  CAPTAIN LOVEACRE had been flying for many years. The experience gained from several forced landings miles from any human habitation had fostered the habit of never going in the air outback without a small hamper, a billy-can, and a drum of water. When he announced that these things were in the grey biplane, the detective at once offered to fetch enough wood from the lake’s shore with which to brew tea.

  “Strange bird that,” remarked Loveacre, when Bony had gone off for the firewood.

  “Strange indeed!” agreed Cartwright. “The police sergeant was right about him, I wonder!”

  “What?”

  “I wonder, if given the same opportunities, how many Australian half-castes could reach the level of Bony’s attainments.”

  The pilot frowned. “I have had dealings with a lot of them,” he said thoughtfully. “In answer to your question, I’d say that quite a number could. Among the many I have met there are a lot of really smart fellows. Environment is against them, and so…”

  “Well?” Cartwright pressed.

  “The bush often gets ’emin the end. You take a black or a half-caste, and you put him to college or teach him a trade, but the time may come when he’ll leave it all to bolt back to the bush. Some of them can’t long resist the urge to go on walkabout.”

  “Perhaps they are happier on walkabout?”

  “Of course,” Loveacre instantly concurred. “They haven’t got the curse of Adam laid on ’emlike the white man. You can’t tell me that it’s natural for a man to slave in a factory, or on a road, or in an office. It is not natural for a man to work. That the white man does so is just because he’s always been greedy for power over his fellows. Many blacks never have worked. They have neverhad to work and they can’t see thesense of working. Blessed if I can see the sense of it, either. I know well enough that were I a half-caste I wouldn’t work when I could go on walkabout and dig up a yam or catch a fish when I wanted to eat.”

  Ten minutes later they sat down with Bony on the ground and ate tinned sardines and biscuits and drankmilkless tea.

  After they had rested for some time, Loveacre jumped to his feet, and feeling for his watch, said: “Well, this won’t do. We shall have to push off, for the sun is getting low,”

  “It is ten minutes after five o’clock,” announced Bony.

  The airman had seen the detective glance at the sun, and when his watch proved that Bony was correct, he asked: “Did you guess the time?”

  “I did not,” replied Bony. “I have never found it necessary to carry a watch. When the sun is hidden by clouds I ask a policeman.”

  “Supposing you cannot find one?” inquired Cartwright.

  “When that is so I do not worry about time. In fact, I seldomdo worry about it.” While they strolled over to the biplane, Bony said to Loveacre: “I am lamentably ignorant concerning aircraft. Assuming you were flying with your greatest enemy as a passenger, and assuming that you decided to murder him by jumping per parachute, leaving him to crash with the machine, would you switch off the engine or not?”

  Loveacre regarded Bony with narrowed eyelids.

  “Assuming that,” he said slowly, “I think I would fix the stick and the rudder controls, and leave the engine running. To do that would give me a better chance of getting clear of the plane, although by first switching off the engine I would not be necessarily hindered from leaving the machine, nor would the parachute necessarily be fouled by the machine even if at once it went into a spin or stalled.”

  “Thank you! Might I ask both you gentlemen, as a personal favour, to accept in confidence what I have said about this matter?”

  “Decidedly,” the assessor promptly replied. When Loveacre added his assent, Bony smiled, saying:

  “Until a few days ago I thought that I knew everything. It is a conceit due, I think, to my wife, to whom I am really a hero. I should have studied flying and all appertaining to it, for it was inevitable that an air crime would come my way. Where are you staying to-night?”

  “Golden Dawn? Youcoming?”

  “No, Captain, thank you. Well, kindly convey my regards to Sergeant Cox. And do, please, remember to be red-tapish. Thereare time when it is so convenient.”

  “So long, Bony. I’m damned glad to have met you, and I will look forward to meeting you again,” Loveacre said warmly.

  “Thank you, Captain. The pleasure, then, has been mutual.”

  “That goes for me, too,” seconded Mr Cartwright. “We will remember the god of the civil service when this aero-plane leaves the ground. Good-bye, and good luck!”

  The two men climbed into the machine.

  A quiet smile hovered about the finely-moulded mouth of Napoleon Bonaparte when, with his hands clasped behind him, he walked slowly to the timber, where his nervous horse was impatiently waiting.

  Nitro-glycerine! Cartwright, he decided, was broad-minded and altogether a decent sort: a man, moreover, extremely clever. He would have liked to know how the fire assessor could, from the evidence at hand, determine that it had been nitro-glycerine which had partly destroyed the aeroplane, not gelignite, or dynamite, or gunpowder. The fact that some explosive had been used to assist destruction certainly pointed to one assumption. The man who walked through the bush to destroy the machine certainly did not carry the explosive with him. His object was to destroy any clues, and to do that it was sufficient to set fire to the plane. The explosive agent, therefore, must have been in the
machine when it landed, and the inferences to be drawn from that were plain.

  Mounting his horse, Bony turned it due north. He had to give the animal his attention, for it was thirsty and hungry and wanted to return to its home paddock. Reaching the boundary fence he found a place where the wires were slack, and, strapping them together, he coaxed the animal to step over them. Having released the wires he rode smartly north-eastward to Gurner’s Hotel.

  Dusk was falling when he reached the single-story, rambling, wooden building facing north across a three-chain road. The wayside hotel was set down in the centre of sparsely scrubbed land, and there were no other buildings within sight. On riding into the yard adjoining the building, he espied a horse-trough and dismounted beside it to allow the beast to drink. To him came a tall, lank, unprepossessing aboriginal, grotesquely attired in the tattered garments of a tramp.

  “Are you the yardman?” Bony inquired.

  “Too right, boss!” replied the black. “You stay here?”

  “For an hour. I want a feed for my horse.”

  “Orlri’! I feed him up goodo. Yougibbittchilling?”

  “Here you are. Here’s your shilling. Give him a good feed, mind.”

  Without haste, the detective strolled out of the yard and so to the door of the bar. The place was very quiet. East and west, the winding track snaked along the wide cleared road until masked by the falling night. Above, the stars hung like hurricane lamps beneath the roof of a shearing-shed. In the bar, Bony found a little rotund man with a round red face and dark appraising eyes.

  “Good night!” said this individual, somewhat haughtily. “Travelling?”

  “Are you Mr Gurner?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I am glad to find you disengaged. I am Detective-Inspector Bonaparte. I want a drink first, then a confidential chat with you, and then dinner.”

  Mr Gurner’s superior air had by now utterly vanished.

  “The drinks will be on the house, Mr Bonaparte. I heard that you had come from Brisbane. Riding a hack? Staying the night?”