Bony and the White Savage Page 10

  Bony offered no comment, and Breckoff waited on him. It was Fred who, following a period when he teased the firesticks closer together, voiced a solution.

  “That bloody Marvin’s down there all right, an’ all. Luke, he takes tucker to him and leaves the bag, knowing his folk’s expecting visitors and won’t see him go. And then Sadie she goes along to pick up the empty gunny-sack. The visitors ain’t supposed to know nothing.”

  “How did you know about the visitors to the Inlet today?” queried Bony, and Fred’s simple solution of this mystery raised laughter.

  “Heard you tell Matt’s missus to wear her best clothes for the afternoon party at Rhudders. We was having a cuppa and supper before the Senior left.”

  “Quick, eh!” Bony said, and Fred smiled with pleasure.

  Three o’clock in the morning, Bony roused Lew. They ate breakfast and rode away without disturbing the others, and the new day was lifting high the clear sky when they reached the hut and the yards.

  “I want you to go in there, Lew, and sit quiet and use your nose,” Bony told his tracker. “Someone’s been staying there. Maybe a week or more back. There’s a case to sit on.”

  “There’s a well at the back,” Lew said, and went to the windlass where Bony heard the cranking and then the aborigine drawing water up his nostrils from his cupped hands, and spitting it out.

  “I’m not much good,” he told Bony on coming round to the door. “Not like my old father after he’d been on walkabout for a month or more and never a smoke to keep his nose asleep.”

  He was inside the hut with the door shut for fifteen minutes and on emerging to join Bony, who was standing with the horses, he made his report.

  “White man been stopping in there. He had grilled meat to eat off the fire. Perhaps didn’t stay long. He had shaving-soap instead of ordinary wash-soap. He was frightened, dead frightened. I could smell him frightened. There was a woman, too. I could smell her. One of ’em had scent, you know the scent they buy at a store. Boronia it’s called. More’n likely the woman had the boronia scent. Store scent ’cos the boronia flowering was over months ago.”

  “I hand it to you, Lew,” Bony told him. “I smelled man. I smelled grilled meat. I smelled the shaving soap. The other scent I couldn’t name. You beat me there, and you beat me on the smell of fear which I didn’t get. Now let’s ride and use our eyes.”

  They rode westward to the boundary and, keeping to outside the fence, they walked their horses, often zigzagging, examining every dry gutter and the edges of every small stream. They looked at every tree they passed by, every bush, and at every stone which could be turned. And when back at camp, Bony knew that Marvin had not left Rhudder’s Inlet.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Bonaparte Is Stern

  BONY SPENT the rest of the day at the police camp, meditating as his maternal ancestors had done, when squatting over a tiny fire and absently pushing the little sticks together. Occasionally he climbed to the ridge to ask if movement had been noted at the Inlet. And when he left on his horse for Matt’s homestead he was sure of one thing only, viz., that Marvin Rhudder was still at or in the vicinity of the Inlet. Nothing can induce an aborigine to reach top tracking-form more than dislike of the man to be tracked, and therefore Fred could be completely relied on to be as efficient as his father. Of Lew’s efficiency, Bony’s long ride that morning had given convincing evidence.

  Riding homeward in the growing dusk, again he pondered on the bones he had collected in the short period of his investigation, but the bones he did have he could not build into the skeleton frame of a hypothesis to advance the investigation.

  The work done by Lew and Fred, the work additionally done by Breckoff and himself, was good enough on which to found conviction that Marvin was still inside the boundaries of these two Inlet properties. It could be supported by Luke’s testing of his assumed background; but it could be opposed by the money and articles in the suitcase found in the tree, by the cheery atmosphere at the Rhudder home, by Luke’s decision to return to Perth.

  Expert examination of the suitcase and contents might well provide very important leads. On the case itself there could be finger-prints in addition of those of Marvin, and were this so then the finger-prints of everyone at the Inlet would have to be obtained surreptitiously to establish the owner.

  Meanwhile, he, Bony, would have to seek for other bones to add to his collection, and other bones might be dug up from the soil of the Rhudder homestead and its people. He would have to cultivate them, and leave to the watchers the larger scene.

  He apologized to Emma for being so late, and they forbore to question him on his long absence. He insisted that he wanted only a cup of tea and a buttered scone, knowing he had interrupted the reading which had become the highlight of Karl Mueller’s day. After the light supper, and Karl had gone off to bed, he continued to sit with Matt and Emma under the lamp above the table. And it would seem that this was the moment chosen by Sasoon to telephone.

  “The old suitcase gives nothing, Nat. The lab reports that inside and outside has been wiped clean. The lab says, too, that only the bloke’s prints were found on some of the contents. The money is being further tested, but isn’t expected to give much.”

  “I didn’t expect to receive much,” Bony replied. “It is important though to know if the money is traced to the bookmaker.

  I want to keep the gang down here. All right with you?”

  “As long as you want ’em. They done any work yet?”

  “Just been looking at the scenery, Sam. Very pretty down here, you know.”

  “It would be. Prettier than here in my ruddy office. How’s the folk?”

  “As the State will be paying for your call, I’ll put Emma on.”

  There was a pad and pencil which Emma had been using to note down groceries she would be wanting, and Bony tore off a spare page and drew the position of the lightning-blasted tree relative to the hut. The plan he placed before Matt, saying:

  “The cross represents a tree which some years ago was struck by lightning. Since the strike a branch which escaped destruction is now a sturdy limb. The top of the tree was burned out to a cinder, and at the bottom of the cylinder was that suitcase. D’you happen to know when the tree was blasted?”

  “I know it was before I took over that land,” replied Matt. “There’s something else I ought to know, too. Wait a minute. It’ll come.”

  Matt was trying hard to quicken memory when Emma hung up and returned to her chair and the memo pad.

  “Emma, wasn’t there something about a lightning-struck tree long ago? An argument or a row about it over the kids?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Ted was Starlight, and the others were police troopers. They were gaining on him, so he got up the tree without getting off his horse, kicked his horse on to let the others think he was still riding it. I remember him telling me about it after he got home with his new shirt as black as a kettle and his trousers torn. It seems he went up to the top of the tree, found a hole in it, thought to get inside, and then slipped.”

  “I remember now,” Matt took over. “He didn’t think the hole was so deep, and he couldn’t get out. Would of stayed there a mighty long time if Marvin hadn’t ridden close and heard him yelling. Cripes! That was years ago.”

  “Then,” said Bony, “Marvin would know about that hollow tree?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Another little bone, Matt. Tell me this. When you decide to send some cattle to market, do you inform Jeff?”

  “Always tell him. He always tells me. It’s like this. I muster for to get what fats I want, or can find among the mob. If there’s a good number they have to be driven overland. Same goes for Jeff. If we both send cattle, it doesn’t want any more men. Sometimes I supply the men, sometimes he does. Saves labour. There might be only half dozen beasts between us to hit a good market, so we pool ’em and send ’em by truck. Saves expenses.”

  “Excellent!” Bony exclaimed. “And
before either mustered you would tell the other about it?”

  “We’ve always done that, Nat. Me and Jeff has always got on smoothly like our fathers did before us. I think I told you so.”

  “You did. Now if Marvin lived at that hut after returning home, he could receive ample warning through, say, Luke or Mark, even Sadie, that you were going to muster?”

  “Easy. Did Marvin live there?”

  Bony nodded, and the Jukes waited and watched him roll a cigarette slowly and without once looking at his fingers, and then light it with a match with the same disregard of these physical actions.

  “Marvin stayed at that hut for some time,” Bony said. “Why he left it for another hiding-place I don’t know precisely. It wasn’t because of being warned you were going to muster. Probably it was just before he left that he decided to cache his suitcase in that hollow tree. He cleaned the case inside and out to remove his prints, and he did what he could with the things inside. Why? Why do that? Why didn’t he take the case to wherever he thought he would be safer? I know, and everyone tells me, there are a thousand safer places for him than that hut.”

  “Didn’t want to be arrested with the case in his possession, might be,” Matt suggested, and was countered with:

  “Marvin could not be incriminated more than he is by the case and it’s contents which include the money he murdered for. He wouldn’t plant the case there intending to return for the money at some distant date. He’d want the money with him, and he would know that his case would soon rot and the money be quickly pulped when the next heavy rain covered it with water. When he was in that hut he was badly frightened, and I think it was the cause of that fear which drove him out to live in a cliff cave. Now what would frighten him?”

  “Nothing,” replied Emma quietly. “Marvin wouldn’t be frightened of anything.”

  Bony regarded this small, compact, tidy woman who compared so favourably when set beside Mrs Jeff Rhudder, and even Mrs Sam Sasoon. He had met women like her, and in number they are very few. Emma was wise, and the quality of her wisdom was a gift, not that acquired by experience. She led her husband, ruled him, and doubtless her two children, and not one of them would ever so much as think she led and ruled. She looked at her husband. He was still physically powerful, he was prone to surrender to emotion, and, without realizing it, found comfort in being ruled. Bony smiled, a gentle rueful smile, and said:

  “You still have Marvin on his pedestal, eh? You can see him only as he was. Marvin the braggart, the fearless, the natural leader, and oh, so clever, so wonderful a speaker and so marvellous in his ambitions. What you did not see then, and don’t now, is that all you did see in him was the façade he built to hide behind. He couldn’t hide behind anything from Lew’s father, from Lew, and from Fred.

  “No one knows about the façade, or shield, he built to protect his inner, his real self, more intimately and closely than Marvin. It has been a wonderful cloak for him to wear, and looking back over his early youth, and early manhood, and later, his dreadful career, he has felt himself completely safe from exposure to his own people, to you, and to the prison authorities and scientific people whom he bamboozled.

  “A moment more, Matt. It was likely that on coming home he did not mention his crime of murder. It was even probable that his brother Mark and his mother did not inform his, father of his home-coming. But, when Sasoon went there all then knew he was wanted for murder, and eventually one or other of them told him the police were seeking his tracks.

  “What then? Marvin would know, of course, that his crime of murder in South Australia meant death by hanging. He knew, equally well, that if and when the police suspected he was here that they would put the aborigines to look for his tracks. He would know that the aborigines set to work after him would include Lew and Fred, who had always been able to see the shrinking fearful thing behind its façade, behind that glorious filthy cloak he wore. It was when in that hut he was told the police were after him that fear of the hangman became naked, so naked, so strong, that the aborigines can smell his fear in that hut to this very day.”

  Matt and Emma saw him stub out the cigarette-end as though impatient, when actually the normal little chore was absurdly trivial in the balance, compared with the subject occupying his mind.

  “One more word,” he asked of them. “In his extremity Marvin Rhudder would now be capable of walking into his old home and slaughtering his own parents. He is capable of walking into this house and killing anyone found here whom he thinks might oppose him or his desires. I believe he will not visit his home or come here, and I believe it because he is now too frightened to leave the dark hole in which he hides. I have pulled him from his pedestal so that you may take reasonable steps to safeguard yourselves.”

  Matt abruptly stood, and anger flared from his blazing eyes.

  “If he came here I’d shoot him on sight,” he cried. “I never put him on a pedestal. I don’t forget what he did to our Rose.”

  “You don’t even now understand what I have been trying to do, to tell you, Matt,” Bony went on calmly. “You still see Marvin sauntering to this house and asking for food, or something. You cannot see him as I do. You say you’d shoot him on sight, and I say he wouldn’t give you the opportunity to see him over your gunsight.

  “I can do nothing for the people at the Inlet. I can, and do, ask you to adopt reasonable precautions like locking the doors, and having a little dog to sleep here in the living-room. And, Matt, keep close to Emma always. I cannot be here with you. Now I know for certain that Marvin hasn’t left, that he is still at the coast, I have to go after him.”

  Matt sat down as though weary, and Emma said:

  “Thank you, Nat. We were a tiny bit blind, weren’t we? Don’t worry about us any more. And now it’s so late would you like a cup of tea before going to bed?”

  The look of severity on his face and in his eyes gave place to a beaming smile.

  “Thou knowest a man’s weaknesses, O Emma.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Stalking Sneaker

  THE NIGHT was cool and quiet, and the scents of Emma’s flowers and those of the forest behind the homestead were sentient beings vying to enter Bony’s room. A dog growled, and Bony was instantly awake. Another dog barked and the other supported its alarm. They announced the coming of a car from the Inlet.

  In green striped pyjamas, Bony slipped from the house and ran the short distance to the track to Timbertown. It was only then that he heard the sound of the vehicle, and was aware it would be travelling at twenty five miles an hour over this unmade road. It was fast enough to cause his haste.

  Its headlights shot beams into the faint mist above the trees, then it gilded the top of the karri tree, finally to glare on the trackside tree behind which he had taken cover. The car came on with its engine purring, did not take the turn off to the homestead, passed Bony with the instrument lights switched off. He could not identify the driver, but the silhouette of the car in addition to the rear number-plate proved it to be that owned by Luke Rhudder.

  In the living-room he found Matt also in pyjamas.

  “Was that Luke? Said he was going home today, didn’t he?”

  “It was his car, Matt. Mind me telephoning? Sorry to disturb you. Three o’clock! Must be hoping to get up to Perth before the real heat of the day there.”

  “Poor old Sam,” Matt said, and grinned.

  “Now what!” said poor old Sam. “That you, Nat?”

  “Luke’s car has just passed. Couldn’t see who was driving, or if he had any passengers. Remember he told his wife he’d be coming home today.”

  “Yes. Think he’s worth checking?”

  “I was going to suggest it,” Bony said mockingly, and Sasoon chuckled and came fully awake. “Don’t report until six. I’m going back to bed.”

  “And they say a policeman’s life is all beer and bash.”

  Bony went back to bed, and immediately slept. The dogs settled and the many perfumes took
over the night. Until half past three when the dawn touched the sky, and a little wind came from the sea. It was then that the birds decided on revenge for being rudely disturbed.

  In a cedar-tree just beyond Emma’s detached laundry a cock butcher-bird practised one note several times, before rendering the first of four distinct melodies. It was as though this small imp of a bird knew that Bony had earned a night’s sleep, because he kept at his repertoire until another of his kind entered into competition.

  The several magpies in the karri tree began to contribute their warbling to the orchestra, producing the sweetest notes in Nature, each musician playing with all stops out and doing his damnedest. The performance was unique, unforgettable, lovely enough to stir the heart of a goanna. But why, oh why, at half past three in the morning?

  Bony clawed the sleep from his eyes and went to the living-room where he filled a kettle and put it on the primus for quick boiling. He opened the door and stood there. The light was filling the sky with pearls and opals. The birds’ music stopped. There was complete silence for half a minute. Then several kookaburras cackled and screamed their laughter at him, and he had either to shake his fist or laugh back at them, and did neither as his mind was occupied by the worm in the apple of this Garden of Eden. A rooster crowed, and that did interrupt his thinking with the extraneous thought that the rooster had crowed many times this morning without being noted.

  “Talk about Alfred and the cakes!” exclaimed Emma. “You’ve let the kettle boil dry.”

  Turning into the house he saw Emma in a bright kimono, and holding the ruined tin kettle by a fork under the handle.