Bony and the Mouse

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “You have the reports of the trackers, and they all agree that the man is about 160 pounds in weight, has an eight foot, and walks with a slight limp. And that he is a white man. You agree?”

  “Yes. Go ahead. You’re the oyster now, about to open up a bit, I hope.”

  “I have a reason for opening up a little to you. First however, this tracking of the man who killed again last night. I tracked him from the side door, over the back fence, to rock faces and then to a large area of surface rock where he changed his sandshoes for old boots. Now up to this point it was obvious that either the aboriginal trackers engaged on the previous cases were semi-trained, or the killer, after this last killing, intentionally made subsequent tracking of himself comparatively easy, I think for the purpose of inculpating Carr in this his final step to his goal. Follow me?”

  Inspector Mann nodded, his forgotten pipe cold, but smelly none the less.

  “He walked off the rock and headed diagonally up the slope to the far end of Main Street. He had covered approximately a hundred yards when he tripped over an old mulga root which sent him sprawling. He was careful to erase the marks of knees and hands, but did nothing about the displaced root.

  “As with any other man who trips like he did, he was mentally upset by the incident. He had planned with cunning care of details. He had murdered with cold calculation. He had purposely left tracks to indicate carelessness and/or the amateur, as could be expected of Tony Carr’s limited experience. Then he fell over a root in the dark, and the calmness of mind was replaced by anger. From the root he made a hundred and twenty-seven steps without limping. Anger caused him to forget to limp. When making those steps he forgot to walk like Tony Carr does, the lad having suffered a genuine physical injury.”

  Inspector Mann sighed, nodded, grinned, remembered his pipe and struck a match. Over the agitated flame he regarded Bony.

  “There’s no ruddy doubt, Bony, that you have the knowhow,” he said, and placed the burned match back in the box. He asked no probing questions, able to see the inference and evaluate them without doubting this man of two races. “What a bastard! Planning to murder maybe half a dozen people to reach some place in his overall scheme, and tie the lot on a known juvenile criminal.”

  “You will recall that I mentioned I had a reason for confiding in you,” Bony went on. “That reason concerns young Carr. I understand he escaped from Harmon.”

  “Easy. Just slipped the cuffs when Harmon was opening a road gate. Gate nicely opened, and he drove through. Tried to run Harmon down.”

  “Slipped the cuffs!”

  “Yes. Car found out of petrol beyond Laverton, which he by-passed. Probably thumbed a lift to Kalgoorlie.” Mann chuckled. “Could have been on either of two trucks, or in one of three cars which passed us before we reached Laverton.”

  “Harmon was doubtless annoyed,” observed Bony, keeping his gaze to the task of rolling a cigarette, and joyful that Esther Harmon would not be tackled about the spare key. She had relied on the boy not to harm her brother, and he hadn’t tried, no matter what Harmon said. Carr had gone to the limit to protect her, by re-locking the cuffs after he was free of them.

  “Annoyed!” echoed Mann. “Harmon was frothing at the mouth.”

  “And now every member of the Department will be looking for Carr.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Yes, naturally,” repeated Bony, and stared up into the black eyes above the pipe. “You will issue a secret instruction that no harm is to come to that lad in any effort to take him.”

  “I’ll countermand the order to take him.”

  “No, you won’t. He has to be arrested, and he has to be held. And once you lock him up you’ll see to it that he’s fed on bacon and eggs, and T-steaks and onions and plum-duffs, and that he’s given the best cigarettes and provided with the books he chooses. And a soft bed in a cell to himself.”

  “You gone wonky?” inquired Mann, mildly.

  “You are going to re-arrest an innocent man,” Bony continued. “You will issue a Press item to the effect that you are holding a man in connection with the Daybreak murders. You do not repeat to anyone what I’ve told you about those tracks. Before you leave Daybreak, as soon as possible in the morning, you will have from me two letters. One, a confidential report to your Commissioner, and, two, a letter to Carr to be given him when you grab him, telling him he’s to behave until his Daybreak friend, Nat, uncovers the swine who has framed him. Clear?”

  “As pea soup.”

  “At all costs, the murderer is not to suspect that his frame is doubted. Is that clear?”

  “As distilled water. Blimey, what about a drink?”

  “I’ll get you one. What do you sip?”

  “Sip! Two double Scotches.”

  Bony brought a bottle of whisky, there being a water carafe and glasses on the washstand.

  “We must keep our voices down,” he said. “The doctor’s next door. Say when.”

  “Tomorrow will do. It’s on the house?”

  “Keep your mind on business, and the house will take care of itself. I’m owed about sixty pounds by the house.”

  “Bets or wages?”

  “Wages as barman and secretly hired private eye. Have to earn my salary as an employee of the State, though, so you might co-operate to the extent of supplying me with a dossier on Melody Sam.”

  “Easy. He’s an antique, a character, a history, a ruddy legend. Any particular angles?”

  Bony pondered, or Inspector Mann thought he did. He noticed that Bony’s whisky would not cover a lump of sugar. He found no need to rack his mind to recall items of intelligence which had come to him concerning this blue-eyed, brown-complexioned man, who, like old Melody Sam, was a legend too. Strangely enough, one seldom found these legends in a city. It must be the flaming bush that did things to certain men, making some and destroying others, and ignoring those whose ambition was merely to amass money.

  “I’ll like to know more of Melody Sam,” Bony said. “With emphasis on his early years. You know, any falls from grace, such as skulduggery, associations with the aborigines, marriages and children, and the like. Then ... wait!”

  The inspector waited, and poured himself another drink.

  “Not so long ago, someone dealt me a card whose value I failed to recognise until Kat Loader was murdered. Now it’s been promoted to an ace. Yes, Mann, you send me that dossier on Melody Sam.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  No Foulness on our Hands

  MORNING CAME to daybreak to awaken Melody Sam to consciousness of death and grief and rage. He sat up on his bed, reached for his pipe and tobacco, and when he saw Bony sitting on the edge of the bed he realised how old he was, and how like a rock this stranger from the bush had become.

  “How are you feeling?” Bony asked. “Better?”

  “All right, Nat. That sleep done me good. How’s the world?”

  “Still spinning, Sam. I’ve brought a tea tray. There are matters to talk about. We had late guests. Harmon came back with Inspector Mann, Sergeant Wellings, and Doctor Flint. You’ve met Mann before.”

  “And that sergeant-detective. Flint’s a stranger. What else?”

  “The inquest will be held this morning. Probably be adjourned to Kalgoorlie. Young Tony Carr slipped his handcuffs and escaped from Harmon. Happened three miles this side of Laverton. They haven’t caught up with him.”

  “Hope I do, Nat. I’d give all I have to catch up with him.” The old man stretched his long body, and thumped the cup on its saucer down upon the table, spilling the tea. His grey eyes sparkled and emotion became something like an embattled adversary. “Young Kat never did anything to harm him. No one here in Daybreak ever did anything wrong against him.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree,” Bony said swiftly.

  “I am? What d’you mean by that?”

  “I’m not saying until you calm down, Sam. Remember putting me on that extra job as private investigator into these murde
rs?”

  “Yes. I’ll pay what I owe. I always pay my debts.”

  “You haven’t sacked me yet. Not from that particular job.”

  “Job finished when they arrested young Carr.”

  “The job doesn’t finish until they arrest the murderer of your granddaughter, and those other victims, Sam. The murderer is still here in Daybreak, which is why I’m asking you to put off your anger like you’ll be putting off your nightshirt in a minute or two. The police will be clearing out of Daybreak before noon, and then you and I will have this murderer all to ourselves. That is, if you’ll play along.”

  Melody Sam took up the saucer, and slurped down the tea spilled into it, drained that in the cup and proffered the cup for a re-fill. Bony could see the effort required to gain mastery over emotion, and did not speak until Melody Sam loaded his pipe and ignited the tobacco.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Do we team up?”

  “How can I pull me weight, Nat?”

  “By not pawing the ground and neighing, and busting your heart trying to move the load all by your little self. In other words, by using your block, being your age, and playing for a rise.”

  “Tell me some more,” demanded Melody Sam.

  “I don’t barter,” Bony said, abruptly chilly. “I want your promise to play along with me. Or I play it alone. Well?”

  “You win, Nat. I’d like to know who I’m playing with, that’s all. You can break in horses, but you’re no breaker by trade. What do I do?”

  “In a couple of minutes you get out of that nightshirt and dress and take over the command of this hotel. You act normally. You tell the cook what to cook, you tell me to earn my money as the yardman. You count the money in the till, and deal with that. You will be asked to identify the body and attend to the funeral arrangements. Afterwards you’ll open the bar, as per usual. And what I tell you now, you will keep strictly under your hat. Do you agree?”

  The old man nodded.

  “As you mentioned, I am not a horsebreaker by trade,” Bony conceded. “I am, however, by trade a tracker. We talked about tracks the other afternoon, and about the lack of details supplied by the aborigines. It was why you decided to employ me as your private investigator, remember?

  “This time yesterday morning I tracked the man who murdered your granddaughter. Later in the morning I tracked him again, to be sure of my first reading. That man, Sam, isn’t Tony Carr. That man planted the sandshoes he wore, and the old boots he wore; the boots in Carr’s hut and the shoes on the roof. I didn’t tell Harmon what I knew because I want the murderer to think he succeeded in framing Tony. Even now he’s thinking what a clever feller he is.”

  Melody Sam filled his lungs with air, squared his great shoulders and released the imprisoned air as though he’d risen from a deep dive.

  “You wouldn’t tell me how you knew by them tracks that Tony didn’t make ’em?” he suggested.

  “No.”

  “Oh!” The negative answer had been given with such finality that Melody Sam offered no attempt to upset it. Quietly he said: “All right, Nat. You’re the boss.”

  Satisfied with his victory, assured that Melody Sam would not behave irrationally and possibly begin another of his famous benders when it was so necessary that he continue to behave normally, Bony left him to dress, and departed to perform his early-morning chores.

  The hotel awoke to the business of another day, and the town stirred to take immediate interest in events which had become repetitious. The yardman cut the cook’s daily supply of firewood, then polished the linoleum along the passages, and finally cleaned out the bar and the lounge. Bedroom doors opened, and the showers swished as the guests made their toilets. The breakfast bell was rung, and Bony ate his in the kitchen and chatted with the cook.

  At ten o’clock the yardman was called to the police station to give his statement in detail of the tracking he had done in company with Constable Harmon, and his actions on their arrival outside Carr’s hut. The inquest wasn’t opened, and the doctor signed his certificate. He and the police party left Daybreak shortly before two, leaving Harmon again the officer in charge, and the townspeople free to accompany the funeral cortege to the cemetery.

  With the exception of two people, every man, woman and child living at Daybreak, at Dryblowers Flat, and at the homesteads within sixty miles of Daybreak were on Main Street when Katherine Loader passed for the last time under the pepper trees, the casket on the tray of a utility, and bearing but one wreath, comprising all the flowers to be gathered in the township. Behind the utility walked Melody Sam, accompanied by the minister, Fred Joyce and his wife, and followed by the entire population ... on foot.

  Only two people were not of that procession ... Bony and Esther Harmon. In the silence of the deserted town Bony found her sitting on the front veranda of the station house.

  “He said nothing about Tony,” she told him when he sat on the veranda edge almost at her feet.

  “Nothing about that key?”

  “No. He’ll be saving it up, Nat. He’s like that.”

  “You haven’t been told, then, that Tony merely slipped his hands through the cuffs and left them cuffed to the window bar?”

  “He did?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Oh, Nat, I knew he’d do it right for my sake. He must have unlocked the cuffs, and then re-locked them all in a flash, so that no one would know about that key. What else do you know?”

  “That he by-passed Laverton, and drove on for five or six miles before the petrol gave out, and the police think he must have thumbed a ride to Kalgoorlie. You know, Esther Harmon, when it’s all summed up, you are a wicked woman. And a very lucky one.”

  The dark, almost black eyes deepened as the mind behind them sought to reach his own, and was defeated. She suffered no feeling of frustration, although mystified by something in him which previously she hadn’t detected. As with Melody Sam, and with all those others in Daybreak who had encountered the hotel yardman, she had sensed only what he had decided she should do, but now, as Melody Sam had done early this morning, she realised that this man was no itinerant bushman.

  Intentionally she moved her crippled leg, and said:

  “A wicked woman, and a lucky one, Nat?”

  “Wicked because you created grave risk for either or both men in that car. Lucky because your judgement of Tony Carr proved to be correct. Lucky, too, because when that accident happened much was taken from you, but much more was given to you.”

  He stood, and now her lips were trembling, and with no further word he turned and left her.

  The sunlight was bright and the pepper-tree shadows were dark, and all the town seemed hushed. Frail wisps of cloud beneath the sky of pale blue told of the peace of autumn, when the winds are so gentle that the willy-willies never rise to stagger over this land having no limits. Bony walked out beyond the stone man, and tarried when clear of the street to watch the compact mass of people gathered in the distant cemetery. There, this kindly day, a murderer would be watching his victim being planted in the dust.

  Bony wandered back to the hotel, which he entered by the kitchen door. The silence of emptiness greeted him and, having shut and locked the door, he passed to the long passage skirting the dining-room, and so came to the bedrooms. Evidence of the recent guests had been removed, and the doors of those rooms were open. He entered the bedroom long occupied by Kat Loader.

  The spirit of Kat lingered here. The fragrance of her he had first encountered when they pretended courtship to entice Melody Sam up from his gelignite den met him again in this room, and aroused that horror and fury he always felt when hunting a killer.

  He spent several minutes in the room, looking at the framed photographs on the mantel over the fireplace which was never used, and the three seascapes which would be a Mecca for a woman living all her life so far from the ocean. The dressing-table appointments were decidedly costly, and the lounging-chair by the window was most inviting. Here,
a woman had indulged her taste for the best that money could buy.

  Melody Sam’s room possessed a different odour, the smell of strong tobacco which nothing less than complete renovation would defeat. Bony had, of course, been in this room as recently as that morning, but now he had the leisure to examine it. Compared with the other, it was austere in its furnishings and appointments. There was a vast American roll-top desk. On shelves of plain deal backed by one long wall were five old violins, lumps of quartz wired with gold, specimens of ore in the shape of ancient churches and Eastern palaces, all brought up from Sam’s Find. There were nuggets of pure gold, and pieces of a theodolite, old books and wads of documents weighted with gold nuggets. There in a corner stood a safe so vast it was surprising that the floor carried its weight.

  The picture over the fireplace was the item Bony really wanted to examine. He raised the window blind and fixed the curtains to provide more light. Enclosed by an ornate gilt frame, it was an enlargement inexpertly coloured, a photograph taken long ago, when gentlemen wore fancy waistcoats and combed their forelocks to dampened quiffs.

  There sat Melody Sam, and nothing which the enlarger and the artist had done to the original picture could detract from a face chipped from red granite, or from the power of eyes beneath the beetling brows. Behind him were a man and a woman, obviously Sam’s son and his wife. On each side of him stood a little girl, both in the vicinity of seven and eight years of age, and Melody Sam could never deny that these were his grandchildren, for both took after their father, and the son was the incarnation of his father.

  Bony left the room and sat on the form outside the bar window and rolled a cigarette. He could see Esther Harmon still meditating on her veranda. A dog lying under a pepper tree stood and uttered a half-hearted bark, wagged his tail and trotted past the stone man; and presently appeared Melody Sam walking home in company with the minister, and after them, forming a ragged procession, came the crowd. Constable Harmon broke away to return to his station. Fred Joyce and his wife reached the sidewalk and passed Bony without glancing at him. Bert Ellis winked as he passed with a tall woman, and in the wink was the aching thirst for a cold beer multiplied by six. Les Thurley, the postmaster, and his wife and all the others passed along the street, leaving Melody Sam to thank the Reverend Mr MacBride for his kindness and help, before sinking wearily to the form beside his yardman.