“Worried about John!” she asked with genuine concern. “Why, what’s he done? I met him several times and liked him.”
“He’s gone and disappeared,” Tremayne answered her with spurious levity.
“Disappeared! When?”
“He was last seen on August twelfth of this year.”
“Where?”
“He was last seen alive at this gate just ahead of us by Nora who was then oiling the mill at Acacia Well.”
Now she was staring at him, and no longer was he turned towards her. “I don’t yet quite understand,” she said quickly. “Please explain.”
When he spoke his voice was hard and his face lyingly aged him. “John was up here on a holiday,” he said, “a holiday spent in pushing a bicycle about. He arrived at Bowgada on August tenth. He left Bowgada on August twelfth for Breakaway House. As I have just told you, Nora saw him at this gate we’re coming to. Your uncle doesn’t remember seeing him at Breakaway House, nor do people at Kyle station, nor anyone at Mount Magnet. Swagmen aren’t so numerous on the Murchison that no one would have noticed him. Up to the time he left Bowgada he wrote regularly to my mother. Since then she hasn’t received a word.”
“Well, he must be looked for. He must have gone off the track and become bushed. Why hasn’t my uncle or the police organised a search party?”
“The police have. I’m the search party.”
“That’s not a satisfactory answer.”
They passed between the stout posts of the now open gate before Tremayne spoke again. “You see, there are the Breakaway House lights,” he pointed out. “From the gate, the homestead is plainly to be seen in daylight. There was no reason why my brother should get off the track and become lost. Can you remember where you were on August twelth?”
After a pause she replied: “No. But I can find out.”
“How?”
“I’m one of those possibly foolish people who keep a diary.”
“Good! People who keep a diary are not foolish. If everyone kept a diary police work would often be much easier. You would, of course, remember seeing John about that time – if you had seen him?”
“Without any doubt. I haven’t seen him since some time before I left Perth.”
“I wonder how it is that my mother never mentioned you in her letter to me. I wonder, too, why my father didn’t inform me that you were here at Breakaway House.”
“Probably because I wasn’t very intimate with them,” she replied readily. “You see, really I was a friend of a friend.”
“That would explain it. Well, I’ve driven as slowly as I could, but we’re here. You’re going to the house to change your shoes, aren’t you? Just look up dates and tell me where you were on August twelfth.”
“All right, Mr Policeman.”
For a moment he saw her smiling face, and then she was hurrying off to the house in the gloom. Switching off the car lights, he pensively rolled a cigarette in the dark, fingers working automatically, mind occupied with this tangle of Breakaway House.
There was something queer about the place; that was certain. This Morris Tonger, an established squatter, a second-generation squatter, well educated, in every way able to associate with the squattocracy, and yet he included the Buck Roses of the Murchison in his visiting list and business activities. Everything was wrong with him and with his station. Nothing squared.
The noise of Brett Filson’s borrowed car recalled Tremayne to his surroundings. He got out and crossed over to meet the Bowgada squatter.
“How does your chest feel?” he asked.
“A little sore, yet,” Brett replied. “That swine might have killed me,”
“So might Nora have killed him.”
“It was fortunate for us that she didn’t. I told her and Ned that they must move camp to Fowler’s Tank first thing tomorrow. They’re too near to Tonger.”
“They certainly are. Where’s Fowler’s Tank?”
“Twenty miles south of Acacia Well. Where the east and the west breakaways finally meet. Those two will be camped four miles from Tonger’s land, not two hundred yards.”
“Good hunting. Between ’em they’ll commit a murder if they’re not watched. Come on, let’s go and have a snifter.”
Just inside the main doors Ann Sayers and Violet lay in wait for them. Violet’s wide mouth was drawn into a straight line. Her eyes were screwed into pinholes of suspicion. She noted the mark on Tremayne’s temple and his disarranged hair. “Where have you been?” she demanded a little truculently. “Fighting?”
“Fighting! My dear Violet, this is a ball, not a war.”
“Then how did you get that bruise on your temple?”
“That’s the result of my temple coming into contact with the car hood. It’s made me dizzy and very thirsty.”
“It makes me thirsty to look at you. I’ll go with you for a drink.”
During Tremayne’s absence something had happened. Both Violet and Ann were different towards him. Ann determinedly ignored him while Violet regarded him with cold disfavour.
“What’s biting your little pink ear?” asked Tremayne, as they lifted filled glasses.
“Nothink. Only when a gent brings a lady to a ball, he doesn’t go canoodling with a black woman.”
“Forget it. It had to be done. I took her back to Acacia Well.”
Violet sniffed.
“Come on, Violet, you promised me this dance,” a man said from behind them, and as a further mark of her disapproval, she gushingly responded: “Of course, Tom. I’m just dying to dance. Let’s go.”
From a smiling contemplation of Violet’s broad back, Tremayne turned to Ann Sayers. “What dance is this, Ann?”
“This is the last dance, Mr Tremayne,” Ann replied, stressing the courtesy title.
“Then I must bolt. See you after, both of you.”
“He has hurt Violet very much, and he has disappointed me,” Ann said to Brett. “I was beginning to like him. So was Violet. She thought the world of him.”
“What’s he done?” asked Brett, quietly amused.
“We both saw him pick up a black woman in his arms and carry her off in your car.”
“Did you, indeed? So did Miss Tonger and I. So did another man who informed Ross and another of his friends. They followed Tremayne, and Miss Tonger and I followed them. Not one of us followers of Tremayne’s car knew that besides Nora, he had with him Nora’s man, Ned. You see, when Ned could not induce Nora to go back with him to Acacia Well, Tremayne abducted the girl and took them both back.”
From the wide parted lips and the bright eyes, Brett turned his gaze to his glass. If only he were a whole man, if only… What an ecstasy to look upon this wonderful woman and what a hell!
And on the floor, Tremayne, who was dancing with Frances, was also feeling ecstasy. The scent of her intoxicated him, swept him out of this mundane world as wind sweeps a dust-mote into a sunbeam.
“I looked up that date,” she said.
“Not now! Wait until it’s over,” he implored. “Look up. I want to look at you.”
“Look at me? Why?”
“Just because.”
“On August eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth, I was staying with Major and Mrs Gatley-Tomkins,” she persisted impishly, and, raising her face to his she laughed. Then quickly the laughter died and her expression became serious. “So you see I wasn’t here to notice John’s arrival. What…”
“No more. I’ll tell you things and you can tell me things when we meet at the balancing rock at three o’clock on Wednesday.”
“But I shan’t be there.”
“If you say that again I’ll shake you. Dance, do you hear? How can you dance so divinely when you go on like a parson reading the church notices? That’s right. Look up at me.”
“All right, Mr He-Man.”
CHAPTER XV
BLACKMAIL
IN accordance with Brett Filson’s programme, his party returned to Bowgada at about two o’clock on the S
unday morning and, after coffee and biscuits, Tremayne drove the ladies back to Myme. When eventually he went to bed day was breaking. He slept throughout the day, and rose only in time to dine with Brett when the sun was setting.
“She was a great shivoo,” he said, referring to the ball. “Good dancing, a little romance, good liquor, and an excellent fight. How’s the chest?”
“Pain’s gone. I aroused Jackson to rub it. Since then, I believe, Jackson has been selecting a weapon and seems to favour a sawn-off shotgun.”
“The fact that the stone-thrower isn’t a capitalist indicates that Jackson doesn’t intend to waste hemp,” Tremayne pointed out, chuckling. “Our cook is a real man’s man. I wish I could be more sure of Mug Williams.”
“He arrived this afternoon.”
“Good! I wrote him a note asking him to call.”
“Oh!”
“Yes. I’m going to blackmail him.”
Filson glanced up from his plate to regard Tremayne with steady eyes. “I would rather like to know what you suspect,” he said.
“I suspect a lot and know little. It’s the little I know which leads me to suspect the lot.”
“Tell me what you know,” asked Filson, again engaged with his trifle.
“I know that I’m in love with my Breakaway Flower.”
“Your who?”
“My Breakaway Flower – Frances.”
“Indeed! Well, as a matter of fact, I knew that.”
“The devil you did!”
“Yes. It was easy to guess. People who begin by irritating each other always end up by falling in love.”
“Oh!”
Tremayne searched for tobacco and papers. Brett was smiling at him, but if the younger man felt discomfort his face did not show it.
When he spoke, it was quite casually. “Anyway, you’re not the only good guesser on the Murchison. There’s two people I’ve guessed are in love, although from outward appearances no one would think it.”
“Oh! And who are they?” Brett inquired.
Tremayne made and lit his cigarette. Then pushing back his chair he rose to his feet to stand looking down at the man whose eyes refused to meet his.
“One of ’em is Brett Filson,” he said, and added when he reached the door, “and the other is Ann Sayers. I would have married Ann if I hadn’t fallen in love with Frances. I wouldn’t have wasted no damn time – bee-lieve me.”
When Filson turned it was to see the door shut and the handle being released by Tremayne, who was now beyond it. The calm which had reigned during the meal was suddenly dethroned by burning anger; anger with Tremayne, anger with himself and anger against his fate.
“Better let me rub that chest of yours,” advised Jackson when he came in and saw his employer slumped moodily in a chair.
“Leave me alone. My chest’s all right,” Brett cried out. “It’s my left leg and my left ribs that are all wrong. Crawling over the land like a maimed crab.”
“Who said so?” demanded the now truculent cook.
“I said so. Didn’t you hear me? Clear away the things and get out.”
Slowly Jackson gathered the crocks on to his tray, covertly watching this man whom he had brought back from No Man’s Land. Never before had he been spoken to in such terms, and rather than feeling hurt by them he was curious. “Young Harry” must have upset the boss. He would have something to say about that.
MUG WILLIAMS was lounging against one of the fence posts in front of the house, on this occasion no cheerful smile lighting his mahogany-tinted features. In the small grey eyes which encountered Tremayne’s was a patent expression of anxiety.
“Pleased you came, Mug,” announced Tremayne cheerfully. “Sorry if you’ve had to wait long but, as you know, I’ve been out on the tiles all night.”
“Wot’s all this about hinting at me duffin’ cattle?” Williams demanded with the innocence of a little child, albeit an aggrieved one.
“Let’s take a little walk,” Tremayne urged pleasantly, to add with a chuckle: “That sounds like a policeman, doesn’t it? What do you think of Soddy’s efforts to grow vegetables? Cabbages and turnips looking fine. Let’s go out on the breakaway and admire the scenery.”
The little man’s eyes shrewdly searched Tremayne’s face, the invitation to take a walk seemingly prompted by something far more important than admiring a view.
Having crossed the track and passed through the gate beyond it, Tremayne said conversationally: “Good idea of Mr Filson’s old father, and of Mr Filson, too, to preserve this strip of scrub from damage, don’t you think? The idea, of course, was to maintain a natural windbreak without which the homestead would be exposed to the full force of the westerlies.”
And then, when they stepped forth from the scrub to the narrow rock ledge: “Here it’s very nice and quiet and private. We’ll park ourselves on that seat and smoke and talk like old friends.”
The sun had gone, draping the western sky with a crimson tapestry, the upper edge of which was orange, merging into yellow, and the yellow into bars of azure. Outlined against this fire was the western breakaway, its face masked by shadows, and purple-tinted mist floating at the base of each tower, pinnacle and hump raised above the general skyline.
The two arms of the bay above which they sat were softened and made lovely by the afterglow, like arms of grey and brown velvet reaching out over the peaceful valley which was already sinking into the bed of night. A flock of grazing sheep dotted the saltbush flats below them. The stillness was broken only by late crows lingering near the killing yard beyond the Bowgada homestead.
“Well?” Williams said at last. “The scenery’s all right, but it ain’t worrying me.”
“No! Then what is?”
“Your note, Mr Tremayne. I don’t understand the insinuations in it,” Williams stated frankly.
“Indeed! And yet, Mug, it seems to me that you’re up against it. Now just listen. I know that during last Monday night you duffed three steers off Breakaway House, took ’em into Bowgada through the fence which runs over an area of surface rock, and took ’em out of Bowgada on to the Myme Common by way of a wide, stony-bottomed creek.
“You rode an old cow. About a mile from the Bowgada boundary, you got off your steed and kept quiet while a man leading four pack-horses passed you. You then went on to your yard, killed and skinned the steers, and afterwards buried the hides in a gilgie hold close to a big kurrajong tree.” Tremayne shook his head reproachfully, adding: “You should really have cut out Tonger’s brand before you planted those hides.”
The little man grunted, offering no comment.
“It does appear, Mug,” Tremayne went on with painful cheerfulness, “that your day’s work is done. You’ll be put away for three years at the least, ten years at the most. They’ll take you down to Fremantle where there are no views like that one, and lock you up every night in a cell with a hundred thousand bugs to torment you. The bugs are not so bad in the winter, but the winter has gone, and for seven months you’ll be tortured with bugs. And a bushman like you, having lived in a land where there are no bugs, no fleas, no filthy vermin, will live ten years for every actual year you’ll be in Fremantle gaol. I’m sorry for you, Mug. I was beginning to like you.”
Looking sharply at the little man, Tremayne was not surprised by the expression of resignation on his face. At long last found out with ample proof, and with the certainty of imprisonment facing him, Mug Williams did not whine about a cruel fate, plead to be given another chance, nor offer to pay for the cattle he had stolen. He said, as his kind would say: “When are you going to give me in charge?”
Before replying, Tremayne gazed idly across the intervening space at the battlemented horizon behind which the orange and yellow edge of the scarlet tapestry was rapidly sinking.
“I haven’t decided that, Mug,” he presently said. “I’ve been contemplating compounding a felony. As a matter of fact, it’s possible for you to purchase your immunity from gaol for your past theft
s of cattle.”
The little man’s face showed his relief. Freedom! Well, if dearly bought, freedom was better than confinement. And he had heard about the vermin in Fremantle gaol. “Oh!” he breathed. “How much?”
Now that the moment had come to back his judgment of character with, perhaps, his life, Tremayne hesitated. It was his belief that Williams was not a member of any gold-stealing gang nor any group engaged in more nefarious crimes, but that during his cattle-duffing activities he had seen things of significance which would be of great value. But belief is not proof, and Williams might be a member of the association which had murdered Hamilton, and, probably, his younger brother, John Tremayne.
Brett knew about his mission; so did Frances Tonger. Could he, Tremayne, rely on Brett Filson’s estimate of Williams’
character? That was the point about which Tremayne hesitated now that the moment for decision had come.
“How much do you want? Play your hand,” urged Mug Williams, happier now in thinking it to be a mere question of money.
“I will,” Tremayne said with decision. “In return for my silence regarding your past duffing, I want all the information you can give me regarding the man with those packhorses, the contents of the pack-bags, and the destination of their contents. You can tell me, too, what you think those flash signals over there, south of Breakaway House, were made for.”
Mug Williams whistled the first six bars of He’s My Daddy. “I’d sooner do three years in the jug – even ten years – than get shot, or kicked to death, or found at the foot of one of those breakaways with a broken neck,” he said with conviction. “I’m not going to mess about with that crowd, and I advise you not to either. It’s a police job that. They’re paid well to get killed; we’re not.”
“Are you serious that you would prefer gaol to parting with a little information?”
“Never more serious in my life,” Williams assured the blackmailer. “I’ve bin on the fields since the year one. I’ve known many blokes who stole gold over a long time before getting nabbed; and I know others who were never nabbed, and who are living in Perth and Albany, ’ighly respected gents. They was tough nuts, most of ’em, but they wasn’t criminals, if you get me, ’cos gold-stealing ain’t a proper crime, and they was as suckling babes compared with the push running this show. You keep wide of ’em – well wide.”
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