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  Came presently a swish of starched clothes. Tilly appeared. Behind her came the new Wirragatta hand, Joseph Fisher.

  “Here is Mr. Fisher, ma’am,” Tilly announced, and Bony said, advancing, “It is indeed kind of you to ask me to come and see you, Mrs. Nelson. I trust I find you well?”

  The old woman’s eyes gleamed like glinting water. The soft, pleasing voice astonished her. She had known many half-castes and quarter-castes. Most of them had spoken pleasingly, but this man’s voice contained something deeper than mere vocal sounds.

  “I like to meet all my customers personally,” Mrs. Nelson said lightly. “Tilly shall bring a chair for you—if you will consent to stay for a few minutes and talk to a lonely old woman.”

  “There is nothing that would please me better. Permit me to fetch the chair.”

  Bony turned back to take the chair Tilly was bringing from the sitting-room. From the moment James had informed him that his employer would like him to visit her, the detective was, to use a word he himself always barred, intrigued.

  “May I smoke?” he inquired whilst arranging the chair with its back touching the veranda rail.

  “Certainly.”

  “Thank you. I am mentally sluggish when unable to smoke.”

  “They tell me, Mr. Fisher, that you were camped at Catfish Hole the night Barry Elson nearly murdered poor Mabel Storrie. Did you know about the terrible crimes that have been committed near here?”

  “Yes. But who would want to strangle a poor half-caste station-hand? I suppose that you, like every one else, are glad that Elson was caught at last?”

  “Of course! We shall all be able to sleep peacefully tonight,” replied Mrs. Nelson. “What part of the State do you come from?”

  As Bony expected this leading question, he was decided to save time. He said:

  “For many years I was working on Barrakee, on the Darling. Before that I was farther up the river, above Bourke. You see, I was born north of Bourke. I left the river to escape my sponging tribal relations. I have never before been out this way.”

  “By the sound of you, you have received a good education.”

  “Oh, yes. A Mr. Whitelow saw to that.”

  “Your father?”

  “That, madam, I am unable to answer,” gravely replied Bony. “Mr. William Shakespeare, or some other, wrote something about the wisdom of the man who does know his own father.”

  Just how Mrs. Nelson would take this Bony was uncertain, but interested. There followed a distinct silence before Mrs. Nelson said:

  “You are caustic, Mr. Fisher, and I do not approve of caustic people.”

  “Your pardon, Mrs. Nelson. Do you really think that young Barry Elson attacked his sweetheart?”

  “Who else? I have thought it all along,” she conceded, evidently pleased that they had successfully skated across thin ice. “He is a young man I have not liked, but until the attack on poor Mabel Storrie I had certainly not connected him with those two terrible murders. I suppose Sergeant Simone questioned you severely?”

  “‘Severely’ is the correct adverb,” Bony admitted with a low laugh, and he wished he could see his questioner’s face. The sequins decorating Mrs. Nelson’s black silk blouse gleamed now and then as they caught the light of the hotel lamp reflected upward from the wide light-sword flung across the street.

  Mrs. Nelson waited for Bony to proceed, and having waited vainly she said, “You would get on better with Constable Lee. What does he think of Sergeant Simone arresting Barry Elson?”

  “Lee is too good a policeman to tell me what he thinks.”

  “I don’t know about that,” swiftly countered the old woman. “Lee is just a grown-up boy. There’s nothing bad in him like there is in Sergeant Simone. Lee’s policy is to live in peace and let live in peace. Simone told me that Lee is too popular to be on duty in a bush town, and that he considered it advisable to get him transferred.”

  “Indeed!”

  “Yes, indeed. And so I gave Mister Sergeant Simone a piece of my mind. I’ll tell you just what I said to Sergeant Simone, because I would like you to tell Lee some time and so ease his poor mind. Both his wife and him are scared to death that he might be transferred, and then what her father and mother would do I don’t know. Don’t let him know I asked you to tell him. Mention it casually.”

  “Yes. I understand perfectly,” Bony agreed, the sound of the cash register and the murmur of voices in the allegedly closed bar drifting up to them. It appeared that many afterhours customers were celebrating the departure of Sergeant Simone, or the arrest of the supposed Strangler. Lee certainly was leaving people to live in peace.

  “Very well, then. I said to Sergeant Simone only last night, and up here on this veranda—‘Simone,’ I said, ‘like all government servants, you and your Commissioner think you have got the boss hand. I, a little old woman, would break you like a straw. I own the majority of the shares in the Sydney Post, and I’d have a reporter sent up and tell him how you have failed in your duty of catching the murderer of Alice Tindall and consequently let Frank Marsh be murdered. I’d make the people of New South Wales laugh at you first and then hunt you out of the State. So, you see, you don’t know me, my man. I’m the boss of this district, and don’t you ever forget it.’”

  Bony laughed softly. Another silence fell upon them. Far away towards Nogga Creek there came to Bony’s abruptly straining ears the rhythmic drumming of a horse’s hoofs pounding on the earth track. The animal was being furiously ridden.

  Bony sensed, rather than saw, Mrs. Nelson’s fragile body stiffen in her chair, and he knew that she, too, heard the thudding hoofs. Together they listened, Bony trying to decide if the rider was coming from Wirragatta or from Storrie’s selection, and whilst he listened he watched the sequins glinting on Mrs. Nelson’s black blouse and noted that their movement was becoming more rapid.

  Then he said slowly and softly, “I wonder, now!”

  It caused Mrs. Nelson to ask sharply, “At what do you wonder?”

  “I wonder if Sergeant Simone had his prisoner handcuffed.” “I don’t understand you, Fisher,” Mrs. Nelson said, become so agitated that she omitted the courtesy title. “Do you think this horseman is coming with news of another_____?”

  “Supposing that Barry Elson was not handcuffed, wouldn’t it be possible for him to strangle the sergeant and escape in the car, and for this horseman to have found the body on the track?”

  “Don’t be a fool, man!” snapped Mrs. Nelson. “Why, Simone could eat his prisoner. Still—still—I fear_____ Which direction is the rider coming from?”

  “I cannot determine,” answered the thrilling Bony. He stood up to peer into the black void hiding the Common. “I think he is now at one of the gates.”

  For three seconds the silence of the night surrounded them. Then from out the void the hoof-beats again came to them, quickening to a wild thrumming pounding. Which of the two gates had the rider just passed through? Which one?

  “I—I—oh, I hope there hasn’t been another murder done. I couldn’t stand...” Mrs. Nelson cried softly, the fire with which she had described her threats to Simone burned to cold ash.

  “What’s that?” Bony demanded, his entire attention centred on the possibilities of the horseman’s errand. His body, to Mrs. Nelson, was silhouetted against the sword of light cast across the street by the hotel lamp, and she saw it stiffen. From along the Broken Hill road, swiftly rising in tone volume, came the pounding tattoo on sandy ground of the animal’s hoofs. Both half-caste and white woman could picture the rider crouched along the horse’s neck, a great horror on his ashen face.

  It seemed that Mrs. Nelson no longer could bear the suspense engendered by the oncoming horse and rider. She rose from her chair and stepped quickly to the veranda rail at Bony’s side, there to clutch the rail with small beringed hands.

  Somewhere in the void beyond the end of the street came to them a sharp metallic report which further agitated Mrs. Nelson and sent Bon
y hurrying below. Mrs. Nelson heard men’s voices raised, and out through the main door of the hotel ran James, the barman, and his several customers. Mr. Smith appeared in front of his shop, his rotund figure illuminated in the light-sword cast by the hotel lamp.

  The pounding of hoofs rose in crescendo, but no faintest indication of horse and rider was to be seen in the black void of night until man and animal abruptly burst into the light-sword, to be followed by a rolling cloud of dust. A stockwhip cracked like a machine-gun, metallically. The horse was reined back upon its haunches, and then its rider sat and stared at the gathering of men outside the hotel, which now included Bony.

  “What’s up?” demanded James Spinks.

  The little crowd moved towards the rearing horse.

  “Look out!” someone shouted. “Harry’s ridin’ Black Diamond.”

  “What’s up?” shouted the youthful Harry West. “Nothink’s up. Can’t a bloke ride to town without all the population wantin’ to know what’s up?”

  “What do you mean by riding to town like that?” James wanted further to know, and Bony saw that his face was drawn and ghastly white.

  “Well, how was I to come? Think I was gonna lead this devil of a horse?” complained Harry. “Stiffen the crows! It’s a bit thick if a bloke can’t ride to town to see his girl without being roared at. You draw me a schooner of beer time I get in from parkin’ this cross between a lion and a tiger-cat.”

  “Drat him!” Mrs. Nelson cried softly. “Drat him! He gave me quite a fright.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A Dangerous Man

  THE DAY FOLLOWING that evening when Harry West, mounted on Black Diamond, had so perturbed Mrs. Nelson and Detective-Inspector Bonaparte was Sunday. There was no faintest wind this day, but the sky was tinged with an opalescent white, hinting at wind within a few days.

  The quietness which governs a city on Sunday also governs a station homestead, especially during the afternoon. Even the birds seem to respect the Sabbath. The morning had been spent by Bony and the other hands washing clothes and cutting hair, and then, although Hang-dog Jack said he did not believe in cooking on Sundays, he presented the noonday meal with the air of a man quite ready to accept congratulatory remarks as his due.

  There was no afternoon smoko tea for the hands on Sundays, and, having made his own tea and shared it with Bill the Cobbler and Young-and-Jackson, Bony quietly gathered together the Wirragatta weather reports, a writing-pad and a pencil, and crossed the river to the camelman’s hut on the far side.

  This was a small corrugated-iron hut, but fortunately a drop-window in the wall, opposite the door, when opened provided a cooling draught of air. Under the window was a roughly made table, and along each vacant wall was a roughly made bush bunk. For a seat at the table there was an empty petrol-case. Bony found this hut, occupied only by the two fence-riders when at the homestead, to be an excellent retreat.

  With the hundred and twenty monthly weather sheets before him, the detective began to continue his study of them. Each sheet duplicated data supplied to the State Meteorological Bureau, and each day of every month the station book-keeper-in-office had entered the number of points of rain fallen, if any, and general remarks on the conditions of the weather. From all these records Bony completed the plotting of a graph showing throughout the ten years covered by the reports the incidence of wind-storms; and, as he expected, the index curve rose to its highest point in late October and early November. After these two months the number of wind-storms was greatest in September; then in March, and least of all in February.

  It will be recalled that the three crimes now occupying Bony’s attention were committed—the first during the night of 10th-11th November, the second during the night of 17th-18th March, and the third during the night of 30th-31st October—all during a period of twenty-four months.

  On each of these dates the wind had blown with hurricane force, and Bony’s conclusion from this, as well as from his observations among the Nogga Creek trees, was that the significance of the dates might have been produced not by the activities of the Strangler so much as the opportunities presented him by a chance victim. The fellow could go out in the weather conditions he evidently liked fifty or a hundred times and meet with a victim but once.

  On the other hand, and this appeared the more likely, he might well have known the approximate time when a victim would pass a certain way. Quite a number of people would know that Alice Tindall spent her last evening of life in the kitchen of the Wirragatta homestead and that she would be walking back to the camp at Junction Waterhole. Quite a number of people knew that Frank Marsh was in Carie that last night of his life, that he was working for and living with the Storries, and that he would be walking to the selection from the township.

  An even larger number of people knew that Mabel Storrie was at the dance in Carie, but all these people knew she had been escorted from her home by her brother on the truck, and all these people thought that she would return home on the truck with her brother. Only when the dance was over were Tom Storrie and the truck missing. Only by chance, or seeming chance, did Mabel part from her lover when half-way home, to go on alone.

  Sergeant Simone certainly had some grounds for arresting Barry Elson, but Bony considered them not nearly sufficient. That the lovers did part company, that Mabel did go on alone and Elson return to the hotel, Bony was morally certain.

  He proceeded a step farther. A man knew that Alice Tindall would be returning to her camp from the homestead late one night. Weather conditions promised another day of wind and dust to follow. Knowing the character of the girl, this man knew she would refuse an escort. Therefore, pre-knowledge and not chance had given him the opportunity to strangle her. The same reasoning could be applied to the murder of Frank Marsh committed in the identical weather conditions. But in Mabel Storrie’s case it must have been chance, not pre-knowledge, which had presented the Strangler with his opportunity to attack her.

  Two of these three cases, therefore, were alike with regard to presuming that the murderer had pre-knowledge of his victim’s actions. It raised again the possibility that the attack on Mabel Storrie had been done by an imitator of the murderer of the other two, but telling against this possibility was a third fact. Alice Tindall and Mabel Storrie had been attacked from the branch of and under a tree along the same creek, whilst Marsh had been killed three-quarters of a mile from a tree, near the Common gates.

  Here, however, there was room for argument. Marsh had been found close to the Common gates, but there was no shred of proof that he had been strangled to death where his body was found.

  Bony’s mind went back to the first two cases, those of murder. These bore similarity and favoured pre-knowledge. The prevailing weather was an inducement to people to stay at home. Assuming that the murderer did have pre-knowledge of his victim’s movements, he must have been at Wirragatta homestead the evening of that night Alice Tindall was killed, and he must have been either at Storrie’s selection or in Carie the evening of the night Marsh was murdered.

  Now if it could be established that someone resident in Carie or at Storrie’s selection was visiting Wirragatta when Alice Tindall was murdered, or if it could be established that a resident at Wirragatta had visited Carie or the Storries the evening that Marsh was murdered, then the name of a man, or men, who knew the movements of both these unfortunates could be regarded as that of a person having the pre-knowledge the murderer almost surely had.

  Bony came to favour this pre-knowledge theory at the expense of that which assumed that the murderer obtained his victim only by blind chance, like a thug waiting at a dark street corner for the casual pedestrian to come within striking distance of him. The chance of meeting a lone walker on such nights was so infinitely small as to be put aside in argument as unworthy of consideration. Only in the case of Mabel Storrie had chance given the killer a prospective victim, and again only through chance had she escaped death.

  Bony felt he was on safe gr
ound to reason thus. He must find if there were any visitors to Wirragatta the night Alice Tindall was murdered, and if there were any visitors to Carie or to Storrie’s selection from Wirragatta the night that Marsh was murdered. Anyone out visiting on either of these two windy nights could be held gravely suspect.

  Outside the hut wherein Bony was pondering these theories a willy-wagtail shrilly chirped its warning call, and, thus warned of someone’s approach, he quickly stacked the weather reports and was wrapping them in their brown-paper covering when Stella Borradale appeared in the open doorway. From Bony, now on his feet, her cool gaze fell to the table.

  “Do I interrupt you?” she inquired pleasantly.

  “An interruption can be much appreciated,” he replied, advancing to her. “Might I be of service?”

  “I saw you come here an hour ago, and I have suspected that you make this hut your writing-room,” she said smilingly. “Would it, do you think, be permissible for me to enter? I have a message for you.”

  “Back in 1900it might not have been. In this year, certainly, Miss Borradale.” Bony turned back and rearranged the petrol-case seat. “If you will be seated—I am sorry I cannot offer you a cigarette. I make my own, and badly, too.”

  “I have cigarettes, thank you.” Stella became seated and Bony held a match for her use. “I have had quite a long letter from Marion Trench, and she and her husband and Mr. Stanton all wish to be remembered to you. I hope you did not mind me mentioning to her that you are here?”

  “By no means—if you stressed the fact of my incognito. I recall many pleasant incidents of my stay at Windee.4 There I achieved my greatest success—and sacrificed it.”