Mrs Saunders had moved Sunflower into the living-room, and the girl was waiting to ask Bony to write something in her autograph album. When he had written a verse of Shelley’s and had added his signature beneath it, he said, looking up at Lucy:
“By the way, this afternoon I saw a woman leaving Mrs Loftus’s house with afternoon lunch for Mick Landon and the other man on the harvester. Who is she?”
“If she was a tall, thin woman, that would be Miss Waldron, Mrs Loftus’s sister. She has been staying with Mrs Loftus ever since her husband disappeared.”
“She wasn’t staying there before Loftus disappeared—when he was in Perth?”
“No. Oh no!”
He remarked the stare she gave him when she answered that question. It was as though the question had created the link completing a chain of incidents. In the presence of Sunflower he refrained from pressing the subject and began to talk of the wild things of the bush, beginning with the great battle he had once seen between two eagles and a fox; how the eagles in turn swooped and knocked the fox over with their wing pinions until they had beaten it to death.
The golden yellow lamplight fell on his animated face. Mrs Saunders was knitting, but Lucy had forgotten her needlework, being as fascinated as her sister. Through open fly-netted doors and windows came drifting and soft distinct night sounds: the constant clickings of the cicadas, the honkhonk of the bullfrogs at the edge of the dam, the whorl-whorl of a fox daintily padding the far sand ridges. And then the dogs barked suddenly.
Bony continued to talk, but he wondered why the dogs barked. Twenty seconds later he heard the low hum of a motor engine. Five seconds after that he saw the flash of fear spring to Sunflower’s eyes and knew that she, too, now heard the car. Still he went on talking, not seeing, but aware that Lucy had quietly gone out of the house.
Happiness and tranquillity went away with her, and in their place came fear. A quick glance at Mrs Saunders showed him the fixity of her eyes whilst her mind was projected beyond the house to the rabbit fence and the roads. Waiting—she was waiting to hear the car stop. Outside, Lucy was waiting to see the car stop. She watched the headlights winking whilst the machine passed beyond the roadside trees, watching and wondering if the car was travelling south on the main road beyond the fence or along the government track their side of the fence, which Mr Jelly would have to take to reach his home. The car did stop—at the farm gate.
Those within the house heard the engine hum die into silence. They could see with mental eyes, as clearly as though they stood against the fence, the tall figure of Mr Jelly getting out of the car. They gave him time to say a word or two to the driver. And they heard the engine hum into song when the driver let out the clutch and began to change gear upward.
The car was returning to Burracoppin, and then, likely enough, on to Merredin.
“Father!” whispered Sunflower.
“Everything will be all right,” Bony assured her. Lucy Jelly came inside and, without speaking, sat down and took up her needlework. Mrs Saunders continued to knit with the stoicism of a Madame Defarge. Bony proceeded to describe a native kangaroo hunt, knowing that not a word he said was heard by the other three, who, with straining ears, were listening for footsteps above the barking of the dogs.
Sense of time became distorted. The dogs raced away from the house. Their barking quickly gave place to whimpers of welcome. A man commanded them to keep down. Then footsteps on the veranda.
Quietly Bony stood up, taking position at the foot of the sofa facing the door. The cigar-shaped figure of Mr Jelly was revealed by the light before he entered. He halted just within the door, a raincoat flung carelessly over one shoulder, a suitcase held by one hand, the other hand and arm cradling a large stoutly corded parcel.
The farmer’s ruddy complexion had been replaced by a sallow greyness. It was but half a shade darker than the halo of hair that appeared to rest on his ears. His pale blue eyes, that reminded Bony of Landon, were black-ringed and strangely glassy.
Without giving any greeting, he stalked across the room to the passage leading to his den.
“Father! Sunflower has badly scalded her foot. Won’t you speak to her?” Lucy said with brave calm.
Retaining hold on all his impedimenta, Mr Jelly halted with obvious reluctance. He then crossed to Sunflower’s side, to stand mutely looking down at her. The child valiantly smiled up at him, into his ashen face, her hands tight clasped upon the autograph album.
“My foot is getting better now, Daddy. But it did hurt,” she said as calmly as her sister had spoken.
Mr Jelly’s lips moved. Just for a second his hard, glassy eyes softened.
“It is a time for courage, Sunflower,” he said, and without kissing her or touching her, he turned and left them. They heard him lock his room door. Sunflower began to cry softly. With a little fluttering rush Lucy fell upon her knees beside the sofa and cried with her.
Chapter Eleven
Dual Mysteries
THE DUAL mysteries at Burracoppin were getting more interesting. Detective-Inspector Bonaparte was realizing that the disappearance of George Loftus was a little more profound than a pavement murder. The case presented features that made it stand out from other cases of human disappearance or even of murder. He had traced the farmer for one mile along a little-used track to a gate crossing a busy highway, a lonely tree-girt place from which the nearest habitation was more than a mile distant.
At this time the Loftus case comprised three main questions. Was the man killed near the York Road gate and his body cleverly hidden? Did he plan his disappearance and board a car for the purpose of leaving the district? Did he walk on and finally reach his farm?
The problem of Mr Jelly was even more extraordinary. What lay behind his absences? In what business was he engaged which during a time of financial stringency supplied him with money? What could that business be which so remarkably affected him? From what Mr Jelly had said, he and Loftus were friends. Certainly they were near neighbours. Was there any connection between them, their absences from their homes, the strange business of Mr Jelly?
These questions engaged Bony’s attention during the Monday afternoon following the return of Mr Jelly. He sought answers to them while slowly he drove his horse and dray along the east side of the rabbit fence south of the York Road.
At this time he believed that the Jelly case could be cleared up with ease, and he decided that before dealing with it he would test the third significant question relating to the Loftus case. Did Loftus reach his home?
Could he prove that George Loftus never had reached his farm, and lack of evidence went a long way to prove it, he would be obliged to follow other avenues of investigation, avenues he would follow if he spent a year of time, sent his chief, Colonel Spender, to his grave with worry, or received permanent dismissal from the Queensland Police Force. Death only would draw him away from this absorbing case.
On the Loftus farm the two men were still stripping the wheat. The land east of the farm and the fence was uncleared, the bush comprising tall white gums standing in thick-growing scrub. Arrived at the camp site half a mile south of the Loftus gate from which Hurley had heard the dogs howling the night Loftus disappeared, Bony unharnessed the horse when the dray was pulled into the best shade and kept level by propping its shafts with the drop sticks. Giving the horse the four buckets of water it needed, he secured it with a neck rope to a tree from which he suspended a bag feeder. Quite accustomed to being tied to a tree all night, the horse was content to feed, and Bony made sure that the length of rope permitted it to lie down when it wished.
The sun was still high and hot. He made a fire and boiled the billy for tea. He moved the water tank to the front of the dray, pushed his swag against it for a back rest, and then sipped his tea whilst seated on the floor of the dray away from the ants.
A rabbit which came from a bush and nibbled chaff dropped by the horse recalled to Bony the absence of Ginger, who had departed with Inspector Gr
ay three days before to join his master. And it was memory of Ginger which recalled Hurley’s statement that he had heard the Loftus dogs howling when last he camped here. It was to test this statement made to Mrs Poole, and to grasp opportunity, if presented, to learn more about the Loftus household that he was here.
All dogs will howl, but not all dogs will bark. A dingo will howl, but never bark as a domesticated dog does. The wild dog, the cross between the domestic dog and the dingo, very seldom barks, delighting to howl in concert with the pack or when alone in answer to another dog. Domestic dogs will howl at the moon for no special reason of which man knows, and it is not yet established that they howl only when saddened or grieved.
Yet, despite all this, there remains the fact that domestic dogs will howl when unable to accompany a loved master. Very often they howl when the master dies, irrespective of the master’s colour. Where the subject provokes discussion is in the question:
Does a dog howl because it knows its master has died?
When the sun went down, Bony ate his supper of cold mutton chops, bread, and butter from the enamelled billy, which was wrapped in hessian, saturated with water, so that the evaporation might keep the contents hard.
Whilst he ate he watched Mick Landon coming over the stripped stubble, wondered if he was coming to speak to him, and wondered where he was really going when Landon jumped the fence, wondered till he saw him cross the fence track and made for the Jelly farmhouse, half a mile east.
Landon returned in the dusk, carrying a machine part which he had borrowed from Mr Jelly or from Lucy. He came to Bony’s camp, to say pleasantly enough:
“Good night! Didn’t I see you at the dance?”
“Yes, I was there,” Bony replied, looking up from his cigarette making. “A good dance, too,” he added.
“Too right. We are having another next Saturday night at the Jilbadgie Hall. Sure to be a crowd from Burra. You could get a lift in a car.”
“Where is Jilbadgie Hall?”
“The hall is close to the Ten-mile Gate. Try and get down. It’ll be a good dance.”
“I’ll try,” Bony compromised, casually examining this open-air worker, whose magnificent body was boldly outlined beneath the armless cotton vest. The man’s face, chest, and arms were whitened by the harvester’s dust, yet he appeared clean, most certainly he had shaved that day.
“Was that you walking over our rock Saturday afternoon?”
“Yes. I was asked to tea by Miss Jelly, and I walked a straight line from Burracoppin.”
“Rough country.”
“Very. Yet I preferred it to the dusty roads.”
“You could have got a truck ride.”
“I could, but I like using my legs. It is what they were given me for. If I come to the dance I might walk the ten miles.”
In the fast-falling light Bony was carefully scrutinized.
“You must like walking,” Landon said. “You’re lucky to get a job with the Rabbits these bad times.”
“Influence, my dear man, influence, not luck,” Bony told him lightly. “The Black Hand Society, you know.”
Landon laughed at this, and the laughter enhanced his good looks. Yet somehow the laughter did not remain long. It subsided abruptly, as though Landon was unused to laughter and felt its strangeness.
Again he searched Bony’s face with those light, evenly coloured blue eyes of his, gazing at the detective as though tantalized by a memory of having met him somewhere before. Bony offered him a pannikin of tea, and his cigarette material when the tea was declined. Whilst Landon’s supple fingers worked at tobacco and paper, the half-caste said:
“By the way, when I passed Loftus’s house the other day and called for a drink, I could not but admire the expert manner in which that new haystack was built. I wondered how many tons of hay it contained. Can you give an estimate? I guess fifty tons.”
“The haystack!” Landon ejaculated sharply. “Oh! The weight? About sixty-four tons as near as nothing. Interested in stacks?”
“I am interested in everything about here. You see, this wheat country is all strange to me, for my home is on the Queensland cattle stations,” Bony blandly explained.
“Never been up there. Ah well, I’ll get along. See you at the dance most likely. Good night!”
“Good night,” returned Bony pleasantly.
At eleven o’clock the moon rose. At eleven-thirty the Loftus dogs howled long and mournfully. It was so quiet that Bony could hear Mick Landon shouting at them to stop.
Late the next afternoon, when Bony reached Burracoppin, he called at the post office, and there received three envelopes, two of which bore the Brisbane postmark; the third came from Perth.
Having parked the dray and fed the horse, he read his mail in the privacy of his room. The first envelope opened contained a copy of a telegram sent by John Muir care of the C.I.B. It read:
GOT HIM. LEAVING BRISBANE TODAY. SAW MISSUS. SAYS YOU COME. BACK AT ONCE. TOLD HER YOU AMUSING YOURSELF.
JOHN.
The message was stamped with John’s impulsiveness, a quality that annoyed Bony, who had his career at heart. He was at the time so impulsive that he was unable to write a clear message. The contents of the second envelope was a letter signed by Colonel Spender, Chief of the Queensland Police Force. Without preamble, the typed part ran:
Please curtail your leave and return at once. Important case out at Cunnamulla requires your services. Suit your abilities. Must be undertaken.
Below the signature, in the Colonel’s handwriting, was this:
For God’s sake come back quick. Every fool here falling down on his job. Can’t succeed in convicting common drunks. I’m the only policeman among the damned lot of them.
[Initialled amid scattered blots] G.H.S.
The image of Colonel Spender’s choleric face and his violent manner that so adequately disguised a generous heart flashed on Bony’s brain, causing him to laugh softly. The letter was dated. 11th November, two days after Bony had met John Muir in Perth. By now the Western Australian detective would have explained the Burracoppin case to the Colonel and have been energetically cursed for introducing it to the half-caste.
The third letter was from his wife, the last paragraph reading:
I hope that you are enjoying your holiday. The long train journey would have been too much for me, and you have always wanted to see Western Australia. Have you met John Muir by now?—John is very nice, isn’t he? He will never grow old; always will he be a rampageous boy. Is that the right word?
Bony’s smile was softer now and his eyes were faintly misty. His wife, a mission-reared half-caste like himself, possessed those splendid maternal qualities of gentleness, sympathy, and deep understanding. Twenty-two years married and sweethearts still, there never had been a moment’s anger or distrust. Where no white man, and no black man either, would have understood Bony or Marie, their understanding of each other was perfect.
The next morning the detective decided to take a day off and pay a visit to Merredin to investigate the source of Mr Jelly’s telegrams. Accordingly he boarded the guard’s van of the nine-forty-five goods train.
At the Chicago of Western Australia (a flourishing centre and the railway terminus for several branch lines) Bony inquired his way of a small boy and eventually entered the police station, where he found Sergeant Westbury seated at a plain deal table.
“Good day! Good day!” jerked out the senior officer at Merredin, heaving his bulk upwards and outwards to seize a chair and place it invitingly near him. “Pleased to see you—pleased to see you.”
The screwed-up eyes regarded Bony like the naked points of blue steel rapiers.
“I am taking a day’s holiday from manual labour,” Bony explained gravely. “I dislike manual labour intensely. It may be suitable for the white men, but I am not wholly white. Have you made any progress with the dossiers I asked for?”
“Slowly—slowly. Had to take care; take care. Have ’em here, but not comp
lete”.
Taking the sheets, Bony quickly sorted them and learned what had been painstakingly gathered. Landon had been born at Northam, Western Australia, in 1919. He joined the A.I.F., 7th August 1918, and was discharged 19th July 1919. In May 1923 he joined the Police Force and was dismissed the following year for trouble with a woman. After that he worked in the mines about Kalgoorlie until he went to work for George Loftus in 1927.
“So Landon was in the Force?”
“Yes. Mason—D.S. Mason—was here yesterday. Says he remembers Landon. Smart man—promising—mad on women—women his downfall. I heard the other day in Burracoppin that he’s a sheik around there!”
“Undoubtedly he is a sheikh with the ladies,” assented Bony. “Yet there appears nothing against him. What was the trouble with the woman when he was in the Force?”
“Maintenance.”
Mrs Mavis Loftus—so the dossier stated—was born at Cobar, New South Wales, in March 1902, of pastoral people. Her career, as far as the sergeant had ascertained, had been uneventful. She married Loftus at Cobar, 2nd May 1924.
Leaning back in his chair, Bony pinched his lower lip reflectively. The dossiers were barren of important information. It seemed as though he had figuratively reached a high and blank wall over or round which there was no possible way.
“Know anything?” asked the sergeant wistfully.
“Nothing,” Bony confessed.
“No reports from South Australia, either, but that don’t mean that Loftus didn’t keep hid on a boat when at Adelaide and went on to Melbourne—Melbourne.”
Bony smiled frankly at the perspiring sergeant.
“He did not go to Victoria. He did not leave this State.”
“How do you know, how do you know?”
“I know by the same reason or agency that permits your good wife to know you have been in a hotel.”
Westbury broke into a roar of laughter, saying when he could:
“Then you must be right. Loftus must be in Western Australia. My missus is always right; always right.”
Mr Jelly’s Business Page 10