Wings Above the Diamantina

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “You beeg feller fool this time,” he said, chuckling. “You no ’member how blackfeller dope waterholes to make fish all stiff and come to top of water, eh? White woman, she bin doped like blackfeller fish. Now I gibbet her dope to kill the other dope. Me fine feller blackfeller, all ri’! Bimeby that white woman, she goodo. She no die, Bony. No fear! Bimeby she open her eyes and she smile at ole Illawalli, and then bimeby still she laugh at ole Illawalli and tell him plurry fine blackfeller doctor. Better’n whitefeller doctor, any’ow!”

  Bony drew in a long breath.

  “Oh, that’s it, is it? What a fool I am! What a blind idiot! Why did I not guess that?”

  “Don’ you lash yourself, Bony,” Illawalli pleaded. “You don’ look for blackfeller dope in white woman for sure.”

  “No, I did not look for an aboriginal poison. I saw no aboriginal influence at work in this case. Fool—blind fool! I see it all now. I recall something to which I should have given much greater attention. I was told that John Kane had been living for some time with the aborigines of York Peninsula. Of course! When he learned that you had been sent for he knew for what purpose.”

  “Don’ you lash yourself,” again cried old Illawalli. “No man he know all. You worry too much over white woman dying and you don’ think properly. Now we go to homestead. I got what I want. We get fire going and we boil up med’cine, eh?”

  “Come along, then.”

  Back again at the big house, Bony called on Hetty, and she took them along to the detached kitchen.

  An hour later they slipped into the patient’s room. Elizabeth and the two doctors were still there, and to Dr Knowles Bony handed a china basin and a spoon.

  “Give her as much of this as it is possible for her to swallow,” he instructed.

  Stanisforth came forward to gaze disapprovingly at the dark-green liquid in the bowl.

  “What is that stuff?” he demanded. “We must know what it is before we can permit it to be given to the patient. We are responsible for her.”

  “I do not know the ingredients,” Bony confessed. “And I do not think Illawalli will tell us. You may, however, have no fear that it will harm her.”

  “But—but—”

  “What is it?” Knowles asked the chief.

  “Med’cine make white woman better,” came the evasive answer.

  Knowles flashed a doubtful look at Stanisforth.

  “Tush!” the specialist burst out. “An aboriginal mess like that! It is impossible! It is unheard of! It is an outrage on the ethics of our profession.”

  “Not long ago hypnotism and psycho-analysis were regarded by medical men as outrages on the ethics of your profession, Doctor,” Bony said quietly. “I know the type or class of drug which was given the patient, and this is the antidote.”

  “It cannot make the patient worse,” Knowles cut in impatiently. “I’ll give it her.”

  “The responsibility will be yours, Knowles,” Stanisforth said stiffly.

  “And mine,” Bony added. “And mine. Don’t forget that!”

  Illawalli was standing apart with arms folded, his majestic face calm in repose. Elizabeth and Hetty gazed from the doctors to him and back again. Abruptly Knowles turned to the bed.

  For several minutes he endeavoured to induce the unconscious girl to swallow, and presently he looked up, defeat written in his eyes. Then Illawalli strode round the bed to reach the opposite side of the patient, whose head was cradled in the doctor’s right arm. Taking her hands into his, he said softly:

  “Drink! Drink! Drink! You hear ole Illawalli talkin’? He say drink. You drink, white woman! You wake! You hear ole Illawalli talk. You do what ole Illawalli tell you.”

  For ten minutes they watched and waited, Knowles giving the liquid in the basin drop by drop, keeping her mouth slightly open with the tip of a little finger.

  “How much, Illawalli?” he presently asked.

  “All, whitefeller doctor.”

  The minutes passed. The empty basin was taken away by Hetty. They now stood about the foot of the bed. The silence was absolute. Illawalli continued to sit crouchingly, holding the girl’s hands, and then he cried softly, triumphantly:

  “She comes. White lubra she comes back from the darkness. My hands know it.”

  “What!” Knowles exclaimed in hissing whisper.

  “Hist! Wait!”

  The tension grew: became unbearable and yet had to be borne. Illawalli turned partly round to smile at the watchers. Now they found no incongruity in the tweed trousers and the cheap cotton dress shirt and the flying helmet. In Illawalli’s triumphant smile they saw the personality of a man they were never to forget. From him they stared at the marble face still cradled in Knowles’s right arm.

  “My hands talk. Put her down, whitefeller doctor,” Illawalli requested.

  Knowles obeyed. Dark lay the hair, and dark lay the lashes on the marble face, so dreadfully devoid of expression. Then Elizabeth bent forward over the bed-rail, and Knowles drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. Elizabeth thought then that the lashes were trembling, and it was the first time she had seen them move. A moment later the miracle happened.

  The face of the girl seemed to dissolve. The cold whiteness and the soullessness of it sank away, to be replaced with life and an expression of calm peace. It was as though a statue was coming to life, was alive and sleeping. About the tender mouth hovered the ghost of a sweet smile.

  “You wake, white lubra!” cried old Illawalli. “You open your eyes. You see all whitefeller friends and ole Bony and ole Illawalli. You wake, wake, wake! Open your eyes, your eyes, your eyes!”

  Quite abruptly the girl’s eyes were wide open. The smile became more emphatic. The large blue eyes slowly moved their gaze from one to another, taking them all into their orbit.

  “You better now, eh?” Illawalli said. “Now you eat plenty tucker, eh? Then you sleep long and wake up strong and goodo, eh?” To Knowles he said: “Quick! Give her tucker. She hungry. She eat. She sleep. Bimeby she goodo.”

  “He continued to hold her hands, and Knowles held a consultation with the specialist.

  “All goodo, eh?” queried Illawalli. “Me fine feller blackfeller doctor, eh? Bimeby you eat plenty tucker. You get strong as buffalo.”

  He continued to hold her hands and to murmur about eating and sleeping, and presently Dr Knowles came with a bowl of beef tea and a little toast. And the patient willingly opened her mouth and swallowed.

  “Now you sleep,” suggested Illawalli. “You sleep, eh? Sleep is good! Sleep is good!”

  And lo! The girl lay sleeping, on her warm face still the sweet smile.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Knots Untied

  FOR THE FIRST TIME for weeks a cheerful atmosphere brightened the sunlight falling on Coolibah. Two parties were gathered on the wide south veranda of the spacious house, two parties of happy people taking afternoon tea. One party consisted of the perfect number—two—the patient and Dr Knowles; the other was larger, comprising Elizabeth and her father, Sergeant Cox and Bony, Ted Sharp and Captain Loveacre.

  “Bony, before you go, you really must tell us everything,” urged Elizabeth. “I’ve tried the pump-handle on Sergeant Cox, but he clamps that stubborn jaw of his and simply won’t speak.”

  Bony regarded her fresh beauty with twinkling eyes. Then he said solemnly:

  “I am almost as tongue-tied as Sergeant Cox.”

  “Go on, Bony, there’s a decent sort,” urged the airman, one eye still hidden by the bandage covering his nose.

  “Very well, then!” assented Bony. “As a preface, I have to assure you that this case has given my vanity a severe shock. Sergeant Cox has done infinitely more important work than I. In this matter I have been a mere amateur, and the only credit I can take is that I guessed the reason for the conspiracy against the patient’s life. Sergeant Cox gathered the proofs.

  “Well, the beginning dates back before the war. At the close of 1913 old Mrs Kane was dead, her husban
d still ruling at Tintanoo. Beside that station he owned considerable property, which he then intended to leave equally to his two sons, John and Charles. That was the year when Golden Dawn was a town ten times larger than it is to-day, when a Miss Piggot was teaching at the school, and a Mr Markham, a solicitor, was living there with his wife.

  “Early in 1914 Charles eloped with Miss Piggot, and they went to Sydney. Old man Kane called for Mr Markham, and he made a new will, leaving the whole of his estate to John. Then came the war, and, defying the old man, John joined the A.I.F., went overseas, and eventually obtained a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps. That caused the old man to send for Mr Markham again, and to make a fresh will, leaving everything to his four nephews.

  “The old gentleman appeared to have a mania for willmaking. In 1920 he made yet another will, in which his two sons were made equal beneficiaries, to the total exclusion of the nephews. Shortly after that John, the son, again quarrelled with his father and went off with a missionary into York Peninsula. He was, strangely enough, keenly interested in anthropology, and when north he heard of Illawalli and his remarkable powers. Once again the old man cut him out of his will, leaving everything to Charles and his heirs.

  “Towards the end of this year,1920, both Charles and his wife were killed in a motor accident, and their tragic deaths materially hastened the death of the old man. Shortly afterwards, Mrs Markham left Golden Dawn to live in Sydney—and to care for Muriel, a daughter born to Charles and his wife, and of whom neither old Kane nor his son John Kane knew anything.

  “Old Kane being dead, the son returned to Tintanoo, and it was then made manifest that the old man had been extremely remiss in not himself destroying the wills he had made when each new one was signed. Markham coolly produced the last will, making Charles and his heirs the beneficiaries. Charles was dead, but Charles’s daughter was still living. Markham produced the birth certificate. He then produced the previous will, leaving everything to John, and he suggested that in return for a pension of a thousand a year he would put that will forward for probate and withhold the last one. Having obtained an official copy of the birth certificate of Muriel Kane, John Kane surrendered to the blackmail, or rather concurred in the conspiracy.

  “Unlike nearly all blackmailers, Markham was satisfied with his thousand a year. He died in 1927, and the pension was paid thereafter to his wife—who held the transferred power. She was not by any means a bad woman. Between her adopted daughter and herself a strong affection had arisen, and on her deathbed, knowing that the pension would cease with her life, she confessed all to Muriel Kane and produced the wills, the last of which left all old man Kane’s property to her as heiress of the dead Charles, her father.

  “Muriel then wrote to John Kane, her uncle. The letter was typewritten, for the girl had fallen into the modern habit of typing her correspondence. The more easily, as she was a free-lance journalist, and habitually used a machine. Generously, she offered to take but half of the estate, permitting him to retain the other half. He replied, expressing his gratitude and his contrition, and he suggested that as he was in poor health she should visit him at Tintanoo. He would send a neighbour in his car to meet her at Broken Hill. She received that communication the day before Mrs Markham died, and almost at once Owen Oliver left to meet her and to bring her north. It is quite a long story, you see.

  “The arrival of Muriel Kane at Tintanoo was arranged. In Golden Dawn was Captain Loveacre and his air circus, and early that day Mrs MacNally, the jackeroo, and all the men at the homestead were sent off to Golden Dawn. They knew nothing of her arrival. At breakfast she was given the poison used by a tribe of aborigines of Northern Australia to poison fish in waterholes and make them rise to the surface. As a student of aboriginal life, Kane knew it well. She was then taken to an uninhabited hut on the boundary of Windy Creek Station.

  “Owen Oliver has always been a wild spendthrift, and to curb his vicious habits his father curtailed a once too-generous allowance. Young Oliver began to borrow, and when his creditors threatened to go to his father he applied to John Kane for temporary assistance. It was a debt that made Owen Oliver a tool. Kane promised to wipe out the debt and to give him five thousand pounds for his assistance.

  “The night following her arrival at Tintanoo, Muriel Kane found herself paralysed, lying on the floor of the empty hut on Windy Creek. That night John Kane stole the red monoplane and flew there, to land on a narrow ribbon of level ground in the near vicinity and aided only by Oliver’s torch. He must have had extraordinary nerve.

  “Into the aeroplane they packed a large canister of nitroglycerine and strapped the helpless girl to the passenger’s seat. Kane took enormous risks that night, the chief of which was taking off from unlighted, and almost unknown ground, with that terrible explosive in the plane. He flew straight for the junction of the Coolibah track with the St Albans road. Flying westward, he flew between the homesteads of Coolibah and Tintanoo, picked out his position by a long strip of water lying in one of the river channels, then flew north of west, and so passed north of Gurner’s Hotel. He circled southward until he saw below him the bore stream and lake, known as Bore Fourteen, which is but a mile or so north of Emu Lake paddock. There he fixed the controls of the machine, and then he made his only mistake. Before jumping he switched off the engine With sheepskin boots on his feet he landed by parachute, gathered up the parachute and walked with it to the main road, where Owen Oliver soon arrived to pick him up.

  “With extraordinary good fortune the machine landed perfectly on an area of ground, which, compared with the surrounding scrub and broken country, was no larger than a grain of sand. This was something neither Kane nor any one else could have foreseen—something that scarcely any one in the world would have believed possible. But it has happened before.

  “Together, Kane and Oliver drove at breakneck to Golden Dawn, where, one mile out, the car was stopped. Kane then walked to the town and to his bed at the hotel, reaching it a little before day broke. Oliver turned the car and drove back to Tintanoo.

  “Kane’s statement that he was at Golden Dawn immediately after the aeroplane was stolen was false. He certainly was in his bed at the hotel in the morning, but when he claimed to have collided with Dr Knowles in the rush to see the stolen plane fly off, he relied on the doctor being, as was then too often the case, in no condition to deny it.

  “Now into this affair entered the telephone exchange operator. She hoped to marry John Kane. He, indeed, had promised to marry her. At his request, she reported to him everything which passed along the telephone wires through her exchange and everything which passed along the telegraph wires through the post office, she being an expert telegraphist and able to hear and read the clacking of the instruments. That is, she told him everything which could, even remotely, bear on the theft of the aeroplane.

  “When John Kane learned of the discovery of the monoplane and the young woman in it he communicated with Owen Oliver, and Oliver, wearing his master’s sheepskin boots, went out to Emu Lake and fired the machine in order to destroy all fingerprints. The nitro-glycerine, of course, exploded. Knowing that medical men might achieve a cure—knowing that most probably the young woman would be taken away to a town or city hospital—John Kane himself came to the house that same night and attempted to poison Miss Kane by putting strychnine in the brandy. It was his last chance, because that telephone girl informed him of the watch being kept. She informed him of my sending for Illawalli, and without doubt, had Captain Loveacre landed my friend at Golden Dawn, we should have met opposition when bringing him here. I have told you how Kane did deal with Illawalli.

  “He knew that I had ordered the suspension of the telephone operator and the arrest of Oliver. He knew, too, I was on my way in from Gurner’s Hotel, and he removed and concealed the batteries working the two telephone instruments in his office. Fortunately I had with me the telephone instrument I had removed from Gurner’s Hotel. I believe he then planned two objectives. He knew
that the flood was nearing Tintanoo, and he decided to lure us in our much slower car across the front of it and then, when he was half-way over, to take a seldom-used branch track leading direct to Coolibah. Had he achieved the first objective he would have been safe, knowing that Oliver would stubbornly refuse to talk. And now Oliver has talked, and John Kane is destined for a long term of imprisonment.

  “Kane is somewhat an abnormal type. He has revealed courage of a high order—proved when he took to the air that night with enough nitro-glycerine to blow up a town hall. His plan to remove Miss Kane without trace—that is, without leaving any clue to her identity—was original and well executed. But, like all clever men, he made mistakes—mistakes which a less clever man would not have made! He was clever enough to deny the fact that he held a quantity of nitro-glycerine down in the cellar. Not knowing just what I knew, he played well the card of perfect frankness. That was a good card, and it might have been the winning card if only he had remembered to wipe away Owen Oliver’s fingerprints on the empty carboy.

  “That, I think, is about all. With Muriel Kane alive he was practically a pauper. She offered him half of her grandfather’s estate, but he was not satisfied with that. Having lured her to Tintanoo, having assured himself that the vital wills were lying in a safe-deposit vault in Adelaide, he conceived the idea of stealing the aeroplane, and making certain that his niece’s remains would be found among the debris and taken for those of the thief. After all the astonishing risks he took, he should have succeeded, but the more perfectly the crime is conceived and executed so, strangely enough, the more likely is fate or chance or a higher Power to step in.”

  “But what about Gurner?” protested Cox.

  Bony smiled. “Mr Gurner is more fool than knave. He likes, evidently, to oblige powerful squatters. No doubt, in future, my dear Cox, you will keep your eyes on him. As John Kane did not, and now never can, pay him for the drink consumed by Illawalli, I vote that we leave him to father enough rope for his next masterly crime. When your successor arrives you might—”