Breakaway House

by Arthur W. Upfield

  So still did she lie, and so quietly, that she heard the handle of her door turn and the door being pushed against the lock. A superhuman effort prevailed to prevent the scream tearing from her throat; for, outside in the passage, was the man who had engineered those two attempts on Harry Tremayne’s life, the man who now knew how the last attempt had failed, knew what Tremayne knew and suspected, knew where he had been all that day, and where he might be that night and tomorrow.

  “Frances!”

  Her name was spoken softly, and she might have made reply had not fear and horror paralysed her tongue. With that paralysis fortune favoured her. Morris Tonger spoke the name again, softly and with cunning, and she then knew why he did not shout it and demand admittance. Had she replied it would have proved to him her wakefulness and her knowledge of him, for he did not utter her name loud enough to waken the lightest sleeper. Not replying indicated to him that she slept; and indicated too, that it was not she who had spied upon him. He had pictured her – if it had been she who had shut the drawing-room door – waiting for him to come, her senses taut, keyed to tautness by the turning door handle and her spoken name.

  When finally he went away, Frances knew he would be furiously wondering who it was who had seen him reading the diary, but now that he would be sure it had not been his niece, he would be less perturbed. For that would mean it must have been one of the maids, and a maid would see nothing significant in his action of reading the diary, unless, of course, it was a spy acting for Harry Tremayne.

  Frances writhed on the bed, a corner of her pillow stuffed between her teeth, long after Tonger had departed, long after he had crept back to the door to listen for five minutes and again depart. She did not realise the passage of time until it occurred to her that actually a long time must have passed since he uttered her name. Now that her uncle knew of the two men camped on the island, he would at once scheme to get rid of them, understanding their dangerousness; especially Tremayne who knew so much and suspected more, and also held definite proof that he, Tonger, had been in the car when the great slab of rock had been blown out over the truck.

  What monstrous thing was it that her uncle directed or was a part of? He now knew all she knew, all that Harry Tremayne had told her, which was all he knew and suspected. If this thing with which her uncle was connected had killed the policeman, Hamilton, and was thought to have killed John Tremayne, then it would now determinedly set out to kill Harry Tremayne who was far more dangerous to it than they had been.

  There would, more than likely, be a hunt early the next morning. A man hunt! They would steal up to the island summit, probably before daylight, and shoot Harry and Ned, and hide their bodies in one of the thousand caves along the breakaway. They would get rid of them somehow, for the past had proved that murder was not a rare weapon.

  Time! What was the time?

  Her illuminated wrist watch told her it was six minutes after two o’clock. It was at the shortest two hours since she had heard her uncle outside the door. Her mind was beginning to function now that the need for action was becoming apparent. It was becoming unclotted by that gritty substance called fear, fear caused more by the shock of new-won knowledge regarding her uncle than by the actual calling of her name through a closed door.

  How should she act? How could she act? Pertinent questions, these, which hammered away on the anvil of her mind. She came to see that the only manner in which she could repair the grievous damage she had done through her diary was to warn Harry Tremayne before her uncle gathered some of his men and struck.

  Slipping out of bed, she began silently to dress, and got as far as working her skirt down over her shoulders before she gave thought to the style of clothing best suited to the expedition before her. Hastily discarding the skirt, she donned her riding kit and wisely chose thick-soled tennis shoes and putties in preference to the lovely officer’s top-boots.

  Fortunately she remembered the class of country over which she was to walk, most of it littered with loose stones and here and there surface bars of granite. Rubber-soled feet would negotiate this country much more quietly than heavy leather boots. And more for comfort and companionship, than with any idea of use, she took with her a small-bore plated revolver that her uncle had given her soon after her arrival from the southern city.

  Inch by inch she raised the window to its full height, careful not to make the slightest noise. Inch by inch she thrust her body over the sill, and inch by inch she closed the window.

  The moon long since having set, the night was dark though starry, and, standing beside the window, she spent a full minute listening. Then crossing the narrow strip of garden, she reached the gate which was open, slipped along the north side of the enclosing fence, rounded the corner and passed soundlessly along its east side until she reached the south-east corner from which she set off due south for the eastward thrusting headland.

  Its steep, boulder-littered slope met the level ground about a quarter of a mile distant, but it was level ground gashed with water-gutters, not very deep but liable to give the unwary a nasty jolt. To avoid these, Frances was obliged to move circumspectly until she found herself walking up a gentle rise leading to the long low line of rock rubble skirting the headland. Looking up she saw that from meridian to western horizon, the sky was masked by a cloud bank thrusting eastward. That plus the north wind presaged rain.

  Wisely, she walked straight towards the headland looming ever higher, and presently reached the line of rubble beyond which the slope rose steeply. Here, turning to the left, she skirted the rubble bank, her canvas-shod toes jabbing against stones which made her wish she had selected the officer’s top-boots after all, although she knew that leather boots would have proved more difficult in the darkness.

  It came upon her with the rushing speed of an express train, a horrible wailing shriek, and passed with the sound of mighty wings close above her head, but the shriek rose higher in sobbing notes, the shriek of an evilly tormented woman. Frances fell on her knees, her hands clapped to her ears, her eyes staring wildly about her. Every nerve in her body echoed every note of the awful cry. The pain in the sound of it ran down her limbs from her solidified brain.

  Then she saw close to her a tree stump, a stump she had not noticed before the cry froze her blood. Was it a stump? Was it that awful something which had screamed so? She had read of the Bunyip in Aboriginal tales and legends, the formless monster which devoured those rash humans who wandered through the bush at night. Biting her nether lip in a bid to make physical pain banish her mental numbness, she straightened her legs, stood up, took her position, and walked on quickly. She hoped that she would find Harry Tremayne very soon.

  Queer little cold shivers flickered about her shoulder blades quicker than her heart was beating. She felt sure that someone was behind her, but when she turned, which was often, she could see nothing sinister dogging her footsteps, nothing but that dim void on her right, and the blacker void of the featureless headland on her left.

  Forward again, with no thought of turning back, Frances at last reached the point of the headland, and from there tried to make out the position of the island. It was a mere five hundred yards away, but its smaller and lower bulk was invisible in the cloud-creating darkness which was now becoming more intense. Then that something was at her back again. She knew it. Every particle of her skin was pricking. Once more she swung round to look fearfully behind her.

  Perhaps ten feet, or it might have been fifteen feet, she made out the motionless image of a tree trunk. It stood on the path which she had taken, and she knew she had not passed by a tree trunk during the last several hundred yards of her journey.

  For many long seconds she stood frozen with dread, staring at the tree trunk stunted as though broken off by a gale of wind. It was as still and fixed as the bluff point of the headland towering above her. Of course, it was the remains of a once living tree and it was just her imagination, that feeling of something alive behind her, stalking her like the Bu
nyip; but…but she must make sure; she must be certain that it was a tree trunk before terror overcame her and compelled her to run and run, and probably hurt herself by colliding with a boulder or falling into a water-gutter.

  With an impatient movement she drew from her breeches pocket the loaded revolver, resolved to use it were she attacked. Slowly at first, but with quickening steps, she walked resolutely towards the tree trunk, her eyes wide and staring in a terrific effort to pierce the gloom.

  She began to imagine its outlines were shaped like those of a human being, yet continued to approach it, praying she might reach it before fear conquered her. Seven feet, now six feet, now five feet separated it from her. It was a man. Surely it was a standing man? Why, that dark putty-coloured blotch was a man’s face! And those twin gleams were eyes! And the man said with steely softness: “Put up your hands – quick!”

  Frances began to laugh and to sob. She swayed on her feet, extreme weakness mastering her knees. She swayed towards the “tree” and, with a sharp exclamation, Harry Tremayne caught her in his arms. Her arms slipped up round his neck and tightened. Again she began to laugh and to cry.

  “Frances, it’s all right Frances,” he said soothingly. “But what are you doing out here? I saw you and followed you, but I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was one of your uncle’s scouts. Don’t laugh like that, please, please.”

  With a mighty effort she controlled her hysteria and managed to say: “All right! All right! I’ll not again! But hold me – hold me tight! Oh, I was so frightened.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  THE TREE TRUNK

  “TIGHTER, please,” Frances pleaded. “I want to laugh. Tighter! Stop me laughing!”

  “Laughing! You’re not laughing, you’re crying,” Tremayne said tenderly. Then he exclaimed exultantly, with amazement: “Why, Frances, Frances – you care for me.”

  “Of course I do,” she whispered. “Do you think I would have ventured out here to warn you if I didn’t? First Uncle. Then that dreadful scream. Then you standing behind me like a tree trunk. What was it screamed? Did you hear it?”

  “It was a curlew, dear. It made me jumpy, too. But your uncle! Come, let’s sit down for a little while. You’re still trembling. Here’s a handy rock. Sit so, close to me, my arm round you and your head against my shoulder.”

  The words began to fall from her lips like a cascade, traces of strain still in her voice. “It was I who told Uncle about your proposed visit to the balancing rock. I told him through my diary,” Frances explained, going on to relate the sequence of events which had so shocked her nerves. When she had finished they sat in silence, she beginning to feel a strange state of peace, he going back over her story and experiencing grim satisfaction that his suspicions concerning Breakaway House were proving to be well grounded.

  “Dash it!” he exclaimed, breaking the little silence. “I wish I could smoke. I can’t think without smoking. Thank goodness it’s going to rain. I felt a drop on my hand just then.”

  “Why do you want it to rain?” she asked.

  “To wipe out your tracks. If, in the morning, your uncle should think to have the ground outside the house examined for tracks, or by chance your tracks are picked up – and that’s a good chance, too, because they’ll be hunting for my racks – he’ll know of this, your early morning stroll, will see that it was taken to warn me, and will know that it was you who saw him reading the diary. Now tell me, if you can remember, when did they finish shearing?”

  “I can tell you that because it was the day before I went to the Gatley-Tomkins’s.”

  “That was August tenth. My brother arrived at Breakaway House on August twelfth. So did Colonel Lawton. Can you remember when your uncle dispatched his wool to Mount Magnet?”

  “Let me think.”

  “Would a kiss help you to think more clearly?”

  “It might be worth trying.”

  For a moment time ceased to exist.

  “Well, was it worth trying?”

  “Y-yes, I think so,” she replied breathlessly. “Um…They trucked some of the wool during the shearing. Then they trucked more after I had returned from the Gatley-Tomkins’s. About a week after, I believe. None since then, although a lot of it is still in the shed. Uncle said he was holding it back for the December sales. Why are you asking questions about wool?”

  “Early this morning your uncle and his boss stockman, Whitbread I believe his name to be, and Alec were opening the bales of wool in the shed,” Tremayne said thoughtfully. “They were pulling out of each bale almost half its contents. I don’t understand that.”

  “It does seem queer, Harry. How did you learn that?”

  “I watched them for some time.”

  “You…you watched them?”

  “Yes. At nine o’clock I was snooping round the house. I stayed for nearly half an hour outside the drawing-room window listening to you playing the piano. Ah! It’s going to rain right enough. I must take you back.”

  Frances squeezed his arm. “I don’t mind getting wet,” she said softly.

  “But I mind your getting wet. And I mind your tracks being seen and read tomorrow, which they will be if you make tracks when the ground is soft with water and the following rain is not hard enough to wipe them out.”

  Already on his feet, he pulled her up and took payment for the courtesy before slipping an arm round her waist. As lovers walk in Lovers’ Lane, they set off for the house.

  “What about your own tracks?” she asked.

  “I don’t leave tracks,” he replied.

  “But you must. You cannot help it.”

  “Nevertheless, I don’t leave tracks. I wear, as you are unable to see, eagle skins over my feet with the feathers on the outside. My feet are then covered and protected with feathers, and my feathered feet leave no marks on the ground, break no twigs, turn no stones. But when the ground is wet, the mud clogs the feathers together into a kind of pug which leaves distinct impressions. Which is why Ned and I must be off Breakaway House territory before it rains enough to make the ground sloppy. I sent Ned on to the well an hour ago. I was following when I saw you and became a tree trunk.”

  “The rain’s going to set in,” Frances said a little later.

  “It is. Look, I can see the house, dark as it is. Now, no more talking after this. I’ll get Brett Filson to ring up tomorrow, and make arrangements for you to come over on Sunday. We might even invite your uncle as well, although I hope he won’t come.”

  “He won’t. He’s expecting Colonel Lawton tomorrow.”

  “Is he?”

  For a space Tremayne was silent. Then he said rapidly: “In that case, you might expect me tomorrow. Anyway, we’ll see each other on Sunday. I’ll work that all right. Now, no more talking. Just a farewell kiss.”

  They were standing with their faces pressed cheek to cheek when he murmured: “Keep still. Be a tree trunk. Remember that you are a tree trunk. Don’t speak.”

  She felt his body stiffen and become taut. Her heart began to pound. She wanted to ask what was happening, what was going to happen. She could see nothing for the world was shrouded in darkness.

  Tremayne heard the soft, padding footsteps six seconds after he heard the low but sharp click of one stone meeting another. And then he saw looming out of the darkness a strange shape which resolved itself into five separate shapes – five men walking in single file.

  Then Frances heard them. They were somewhere behind her. It occurred to her then that her lover had been turned into a tree trunk by the Bunyip, so motionless and rigid was he. She strained to control her trembling, fearing that her shaking would betray them.

  Then she saw the five figures passing within twenty feet of them, indistinct shapes which glided silently over the ground, four men led by a fifth who walked with the sureness of one heading for a predetermined destination.

  Tremayne lifted her off her feet, and slowly he swung her round, pivoting on his feet, so that he might follow those men wi
th his eyes. Together they watched them pass from sight, and for yet another minute he held her before releasing her and chuckling.

  “There go the happy huntsmen,” he said. “I swear it was your uncle in the lead. They’re due for a nice wet march – and so are we, if we don’t hurry.”

  Pressing his arm against her side, she sighed, saying: “I’m so glad I came. They might have surprised you.”

  “They would not have done so. But you did.”

  “How?”

  “We might have gone for weeks before we found each other had not you mistaken me for a tree trunk.”

  They walked for a further hundred yards before he spoke again in low tones. “How did you leave the house? By the window, I think you said.”

  “Yes. I climbed out through the window. I shut it after me.”

  “Well, go back that way. Go in as quietly as you came out. That may not have been your uncle leading those men, and therefore you mustn’t take chances.”

  “I won’t. I wouldn’t dare.”

  “I’ll probably see you tomorrow,” he whispered. “There’s the house. You can’t miss it. Au revoir, sweetheart! And don’t worry about anything. Remember to be sure to write me at once if and when they send you away again.”

  Embracing, they parted, the girl to hurry to the house fence, the man to stand and watch her figure dim and blur in the darkness until it vanished in the deeper shadow of the house itself. He waited a further five minutes, listening, and then having heard nothing, not even the bark of a dog, he set off on his ten-mile tramp to Bowgada.

  WHEN Brett Filson entered his living room for breakfast, he found Tremayne lounging beside the table sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette. The younger man was arrayed in dry clothes. He was shaved and he was smiling, although beneath his eyes were the dark marks of lack of sleep.

  “What time did you get back? I didn’t hear you,” Brett said.

  “About an hour ago,” Tremayne replied airily. “I’ve had my brek. I couldn’t wait. Say, do you know what firm sells Tonger’s wool?”