Wings Above the Diamantina

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “At this moment it is possible that certain people know all about Captain Loveacre and his passenger, and of our hopes being centred in Illawalli. They do not know what I know and they do not know what I suspect. They think that if the girl dies they will be safe for ever. They believe that the drug they administered will not be conquered by any treatment Knowles or other doctors can give her. They know, further, all about Illawalli and his powers, and that Illawalli can and will read her mind to place in our hands all the proof we need. Knowing as much, knowing that Illawalli will have to be taken to Coolibah by road, I gravely fear that a serious effort will be made to stop him. Nitro-glycerine was used in the aeroplane. A canister of it thrown against a car would certainly kill its occupants. With Lovitt ahead, and you behind with Illawalli, they will, I hope, recognize the danger—to themselves.”

  “Why not make the arrests and chance getting the proof,” advised Cox.

  Bony shook his head.

  “It wouldn’t do,” he said. “No, it wouldn’t do. We are not dealing with people with criminal records. If we made a mistake it would be finish for both of us. Come! I don’t like the sound of that thunder.”

  He left the office, and walked quickly to the front gate where he gazed anxiously at the sky. To the west all was clear. The yellow sun was shining, and the wind was laden with strange and alluring scents. Directly above Golden Dawn rat tails of cloud were drawing swiftly eastward after the rear edge of the vast cloud mass that had passed over. The rear of the cloud mass lay roughly north and south, and moment by moment it was growing in depth, whitening in the sunlight. Here and there great plumes of cloud towered high above the edge of the mass, like snow-covered mountains, with flickering lightning in their hearts.

  “Going to clear up,” predicted Cox on joining Bony.

  “I am sorry that I cannot agree with you.”

  “But all that is passing away eastward,” Cox protested.

  Bony continued to stare upward at the puffing, swelling cloud mass. Its base was darkening to ink-black, and the serrated top of the western edge, with the vast mountain peaks spaced along it, was being frozen here, gilded there by the sun. Icebergs floating on a sea of ink....

  Sergeant Cox gripped Bony by the arm. “That lot is going to come back on us,” he growled savagely.

  The detective nodded.

  The gibber plain, sunlit to its eastern horizon, appeared as though a storm of wattle blossom had rained upon it. It was bright yellow in sharp contrast with the ink-black sky. The store, the hotel, and the houses north of the hotel stood out against the pall of sky like buildings floodlit against a dark night—night ripped and scarred by lightning.

  “Yes, it will come back,” Bony breathed. “And away to the north flies Captain Loveacre on a southerly course. He will now be flying southward in front of that aerial ice pack which will force him ever westward. He is too far away to be able to land at Golden Dawn in one hour’s time, unless that storm again changes direction, and moves to the east.”

  “He will, then, have to make a forced landing somewhere,” Cox pointed out.

  “Without doubt, he will have to land many miles north or west of Golden Dawn. Then we will have to bring Illawalli many miles by car if the landing is made safely. The odds are that the landing will not be a safe one, because ground like this surrounding Golden Dawn is rare. Yes, a car will have to bring Illawalli over water-logged plains and swollen creeks. And perhaps the river will come down and stop us reaching Coolibah with him, preventing him from seeing the dying woman. And I will have failed! I’ll not fail to produce her murderers, but I will have failed to save her life with my friend’s aid. And I once told Dr Knowles that the Almighty holds the scales evenly between good and evil.”

  Bony’s face was distorted with emotion. The tails of the storm now had been sucked into what had become the frontal ramparts. The air was clear before those ramparts of cloud, and now the cloud mountains were disappearing beyond the edge of the mass as it advanced over Golden Dawn. It began to rain before the sun was vanquished, huge, golden drops falling with seeming slowness to the ground, there to break into a multi-coloured mist.

  Bony had just time to drive the runabout into Cox’s garage and gain the station veranda before the deluge began.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Storm Havoc

  AT THE CONTROLS of a two-seater biplane, Captain Loveacre regarded with anxiety the writhing, twisting wall of snow-white cloud little more than a mile from the tip of his sport wing. To maintain that distance from the perpendicular field of imitation ice and snow, he was forced to steer his ship several points west of south—several points westward of his course to Golden Dawn. He had flown a little more than half the distance from Cloncurry.

  Bringing back the stick, he climbed quickly from five to twelve thousand feet, but still the summit of the cloud wall was above him. Unequipped for high altitude flying, he yet went up to fifteen thousand feet, at which height he was able to see another wall in the distance rising farther, thousands of feet over the first wall.

  There was no getting over that storm with the ship he commanded, and to attempt to fly through it would be childish. He flashed a glance at the helmeted head of his passenger, who laughed and showed four wide-spaced teeth, and pointed at the wall before clapping his hands.

  “Who says a black hasn’t guts?” demanded the captain, who could not hear himself speak. He sent the machine in a long roaring slant down to three thousand feet.

  There the engine continued the even tenor of its song of power. Now and then Loveacre could feel the concussions of the thunder, but he could not hear them. Now and then veins of deep orange were etched on the background of the stupendous wall of ice. The time by the dash clock was ten minutes after four.

  Below, the world was pared neatly into a half-circle, a half-circle brilliantly floodlit with sunshine. The cloud foot appeared to be resting on the world—a world that was swiftly spinning into it as though it alone and not the storm and the tiny aeroplane were moving. Directly under them the ground was broken into several colours: grey and brown and bluishgreen. Westward the colour was more evenly a uniform darkgreen, denoting levelness in comparison with the low hills over which they were flying.

  Already pushed far westward off his course, Loveacre decided that he must set down as near as possible to Golden Dawn. Two minutes after that he decided that he must land on the natural ’drome north of Coolibah, risking damage on the soft surface. To his knowledge there were neither ’dromes, or even natural landing grounds westward of that, save only Emu Lake. Here, of course, in this wide land there were no wheat-fields and meadows, no fallow paddocks and grazing lands. What appeared from the air as level ground might well be rough enough to wreck an army tank.

  Now, below them, the earth appeared like a dark-green carpet on which a house painter carelessly had dropped splashes of light-brown paint, sand-dunes amid the scrub. The plane was edging towards a wide ribbon of country on which the trees grew in distinct lines. Loveacre knew it to be the Diamantina River, to which the storm was irresistibly pushing him.

  He continued, hopeful of being able to land north of Coolibah, and hope lasted until he had been forced to the east side of the river channels, and could not then see either Tintanoo or Coolibah homestead. He followed the eastern channels for some time, but at last the storm pressed him gradually across the river to its western side.

  Hope of landing at Coolibah vanished. On his scribblingpad he made some rapid calculations, checked them, estimated his position at forty miles north of Tintanoo homestead. Forty miles—twenty minutes in this hundred-and-twenty-miles-an-hour machine.

  It was singular how the trees below grew in defined lines. The paint splashes along the eastern border of the river were being swiftly blotted from sight by the foot of the cloud wall. It seemed that it was the earth which was moving, as though the lines of trees were slipping eastward to be devoured by the storm.

  He was now flying above th
e sandhills bordering the western edge of the river, and grimly he steered along them, his eyes searching ahead for Tintanoo homestead. Five minutes after that he distinguished the red roofs of Tintanoo. He was then half a mile from the storm face. Tenaciously he drove southward, defying the storm, ever narrowing the space between itself and him. The homestead ahead had become the judge’s box on the course, on which he and the storm fought out a hard race.

  The vast wall of cloud was rearing above him when, with accelerated speed, he swooped down in a steep slant towards the red squares and oblongs. A minute, and he was only six hundred feet above them, circling, peering downward on either side of the cockpit. There was a narrow strip of ground east of the homestead on which he might effect a landing, but already he was flying in the golden rain which outran the deluge joining earth and sky together.

  He was too late. Lightning flickered with blinding brilliance, and the plane rocked in the vibrations set up by the thunderclap. The narrow strip of land below faded. Then from his sight the homestead faded, and he was forced to race the storm into the clear and sunlit air in front.

  Winding westward, lying like a sleeping snake, stretched the track to St Albans. Where it passed through the greenblack scrub its brownness was emphasized, but where it crossed broken sand country and grey flats it was difficult to follow even when only five hundred feet above it.

  Loveacre unrolled the map. He had never been above this particular section of country before. Finding Tintanoo homestead on the map, he then saw that he was heading for St Albans. Was there not a hotel along this road—a hotel called Gurner’s Hotel? Of course there was. It was supposed to be north of Emu Lake. Emu Lake was a safe landing ground, but....

  The country ahead was clearing of trees. Loveacre decided to keep on along the track. If he found no possibility of landing within a few miles past Gurner’s Hotel he would turn south and seek Emu Lake....

  On the roofs of Coolibah the rain roared with a persistent drumming. In the pitch-black, lightning-shattered night the weight of falling water could be almost felt. The reverberating thunder never ceased.

  Slowly pacing to and fro outside the patient’s room, softly tramped the guard. He was keeping to the shelter of the veranda this stormy night, and he was mentally alert, knowing that the celestial uproar would mask the sound of an arriving car or the footsteps of an enemy.

  Within the room he was guarding, Dr Knowles was sitting beside the bed gazing at the white, thin face of the helpless Muriel Markham. Behind him stood Elizabeth, her hands clasped, her expression one of profound anxiety.

  The doctor was holding with his fingers one inert wrist, feeling the pulse, his dark eyes concentrating their gaze on the twin semi-circles of dark lashes lying against the alabaster skin. The girl was breathing so gently that, allied with the expressionless face, at first glance one would have supposed her dead.

  Knowles was a beaten man, and he knew it. He had done everything known to medical science to restore animation to the patient’s paralysed muscles, but he was vanquished. He had spared neither Elizabeth nor himself, but without avail.

  With the abrupt action of a nerve-racked man, he bent over his patient and lifted first one and then the other of her eyelids. For a full second he gazed into the expressionless eyes. For the first time they did not register a greeting. Always before they had smiled at him, but now they were vacant of intelligence. With infinite tenderness he closed them, and stood back, to contemplate this woman who might have been created from rough-hewn, flawless marble. Elizabeth saw the agony in his face when he turned to her.

  “Even the elements have conspired against us,” he cried softly. “I came in to tell you that Bony rang up just now. Loveacre and his passenger failed to reach Golden Dawn. Nothing is known of what has happened to them.”

  “We must not abandon hope yet, Doctor,” Elizabeth pleaded. “You are all to pieces. What are you doing to yourself? You must not worry so.”

  His smile was mirthless and terrible. He motioned to the large table, and beside it they sat, the shaded reading-lamp pitilessly revealing their worn faces.

  “I’ll tell you now what I am doing to myself,” he said, a fierce note of triumph in his voice. “For the first time since 1917 I have lived a full forty-eight hours without whisky. You cannot possibly understand what it has meant to achieve that. You cannot grasp what I have borne to secure forty-eight hours of freedom from the toils of John Barleycorn.”

  Knowles drew in his breath sharply. In rapid speech he told her what he had told Bony regarding the loss of the woman who had taken shelter with him in a London doorway.

  “This bush castaway is the image of the girl who died in my arms,” he explained to a wide-eyed Elizabeth. “That night most of me died, too. I wanted to die, but I was a coward. I could not commit suicide. I adopted John Barleycorn as a friend, seeking in his friendship forgetfulness. Sometimes I found it, but the more I clung to John Barleycorn the farther death drew back from me to take my enemies in the air. And then ... and then, here in this room in the form of our patient I see again that woman I loved. To me the resemblance is unearthly. I saw then that I must be keen enough, clever enough to save her, and that to do it I had to strike off the chains my friend, John Barleycorn, had wrapped about me. And I have done it—freed myself. I have conquered alcohol, for I know now I need never seek it again. Through these long weeks I have fought a thousand devils—real devils, devils I could see—and I have won. Because of her I have won.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes were streaming tears, but they never faltered in their gaze.

  “Yes, I have won,” he went on. “For what? For what have I fought, if we fail to save her? I love her, do you hear? I’m thirty-eight. She is about twenty-three. She could never love me—if we saved her—but that is of much less importance than the fact that I love her and would be paid for all the terrors I have faced by one smile. I ask nothing. I tell you, I ask nothing of her, and nothing of God except that her life may be granted to me ... and now ... now this storm.”

  He fell silent after that outburst, and for a little while Elizabeth was unable to speak.

  “I have guessed you cared, Doctor,” she whispered at last. “But she won’t die! She cannot die after all we have done together! Not after what she has unconsciously done for you. If Inspector Bonaparte’s black friend comes....”

  “It might have been possible, Miss Nettlefold, if he had arrived last week,” Knowles told her. “It promised hope when we needed it. But now—how could any man read a patient’s mind when that mind is not functioning? She is beyond the help of any magic, black or white.”

  It was eleven o’clock at Golden Dawn and the rain had stopped. Over the plain to the east the stars were beginning to show, but to the far west lightning still split open the sky.

  Within the police office, Bony sat before the telephone and the large-scale map spread over Sergeant Cox’s table. The detective picked up the instrument and called the exchange.

  “Have you yet been able to get through to Tintanoo or Gurner’s Hotel?”

  “No. The lines are still out of order,” replied the night operator.

  “Well, ask Mr Watts to speak, please.”

  A moment. Two. Then came the postmaster’s voice.

  “I am sorry to have kept you on duty to so late an hour, Mr Watts,” Bony said regretfully. “It seems that all those western lines are down. You haven’t been able to raise the St Albans exchange?”

  “No, we have failed to raise any one west of us,” Watts replied. “As you say, all the western lines must be down. Most likely a pole has been shattered by lightning.”

  “That is what has happened, no doubt. It is kind of you to stay on duty, but there appears to be no reason to ask you to stay longer.”

  “That’s quite all right, Mr Bonaparte,” Watts said quickly. “I am trying to raise St Albans by a roundabout route. I have got round to Springvale to the north.”

  “Good! We have plotted Loveacre as far south
as four miles east of Monkira Station. We have worked out the speed of the storm and Loveacre’s speed—of course sheer guesswork—and it places the captain somewhere west of a line drawn from the river’s western channels a little north of Tintanoo homestead to a range of sandhills on Coolibah called the Rockies. When will you be sending out a lines-man to repair the break in the western lines?”

  “First thing to-morrow morning.”

  “Do the poles closely follow the road?”

  “In some places, no. But my man uses a truck for the work, and it should not be long before he discovers and mends the breaks. I’ll ring immediately I can get St Albans.”

  “Thank you.”

  Replacing the receiver, Bony pushed away the instrument, and fell again to studying the map. At his side Cox sat bolt upright in his chair, smoking his pipe with savage energy. Presently Bony said:

  “If it were not for that Markham girl I would be enjoying all this. I do not so greatly fear for the safety of Captain Loveacre and Illawalli as I fear that it will be too late for Illawalli to do anything after all. Loveacre is too good a man to court death in that storm. He was south of Rosebrook when the storm turned back, and he was still west of the storm when he got as far south as Monkira. I incline to the belief that when he found himself unable to reach Golden Dawn he made for the temporary dry-weather landing ground north of Coolibah, and that when he could not reach there he flew west across the river to land somewhere near Gurner’s Hotel, where the country is fairly open, or to Emu Lake, which he knows....

  “We’ll ring Coolibah.”

  Within a few minutes he heard John Nettlefold’s voice.