The Battling Prophet Page 12

  Again the whistle for the leaders to pull ahead and straighten the haul-chain right back to the pole. Again the command to “Lean into it!” Again the stream of invective, this time directed to Lumpy, whose ancestors had been most careless. The whip swung round, faster and faster, the report sharper and louder than that of a discharged shot-gun, and the driver swaying, his feet wide, his shoulders almost bursting the seams of his dressing-gown, shouting and swearing, cajoling, threatening.

  “What!” he yelled. “You’d stop the wagon dead in the middle of a sand-bog, would you?” Mr. Luton pranced up and down the line of trees. The whip touched one, slashed another, hissed at a third. One minute of pandemonium passed, a second had almost sped when Mr. Luton dropped the whip and pressed both hands to his chest.

  “I’m gettin’ on, Ben. You know that, don’t you? Can’t cut capers like we used to, but, by hell, you and me could still make bullocks shift thirty-forty tons on a tabletop. Getting old, all right. Dropped me flamin’ whip. Have to put another cracker on her sometime. We’d better go on over to the house for another snort.”

  Shouldering the whip, Mr. Luton walked across the clearing to the front fence. And the trees nodded and began to chew their cud, and old Squirt turned his great head with the sawn-off horns to watch his master depart.

  Mr. Luton closed the wicket gate, walked strongly along the cinder path, stepped lightly up to the veranda and entered his house. Closing the front door, he proceeded to replace the whip on the wall nails.

  When he turned to make for the door to the living-room, he saw two men who seemed to be emptying the cupboard of his hoard of rum. He made no effort to reduce the sound of his movements, and the two men went on with their task. On entering the kitchen he roared:

  “What in hell d’you think you’re up to?”

  Neither man spoke. One looked at the other; the second man nodded. The first casually approached Mr. Luton, his face without expression, his eyes expressionless. He punched him on the chin, and, as Mr. Luton was trying to recover his balance, snatched an automatic from a shoulder-holster and laid the butt against Mr. Luton’s temple. As the victim was collapsing to the floor the man hit him again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Boots and All

  MR. LUTON discovered himself lying on the living-room floor. That was after he had accustomed his eyes to the direct rays of the ceiling light. Pain hammered at him, and swift anger burned. The clock on the mantel took shape, and he remembered that the time was of more importance than the cause of his discomfort.

  Twenty-three minutes after four o’clock.

  A voice said: “Get up.”

  The toe of a shoe pounded against Mr. Luton’s ribs, and he scrambled over to draw up his knees and with effort at last managed to stand. A chair was jammed against the backs of his legs, and he sat, the chair against the wall so that he faced the back door, with the sitting-room to his left. One man was decidedly foreign, the other less so. One was tall and slim, wearing a dark suit under his unbuttoned overcoat, and the other was smaller and wore his overcoat with the collar turned up. Their heads were round, large. The hair of both was dark and grew far back above foreheads narrower than the width of the face. Their eyes were dark and small, and appeared prominent in faces almost devoid of colour.

  The tall man seemed to be the leader. He sat at the table, opened a suitcase, produced a length of light sash cord and tossed it to the smaller man, who proceeded to bind Mr. Luton’s hands. Mr. Luton kicked him in the ankle, forgetting he was wearing slippers. The blow failed to produce a wince, and the binding continued.

  “Keep your feet still,” ordered the man quietly.

  Mr. Luton rebelled, and the heel of a shoe was stamped on his toes. Expertly and swiftly, Mr. Luton’s feet were bound to the chair-legs and his tied wrists bound to the chair-back. The man then stepped back, carefully gauged distance, and viciously kicked Mr. Luton’s right knee-cap. With the same methodical approach, he kicked Mr. Luton’s left knee-cap.

  You have to hand it to these people. They can deal it out without heat, without even the faintest visible hint of malice.

  Mr. Luton craved to be sick, such was the pain. Fire consumed him and icy-cold sweat drenched him. And deep down was born a fury that he couldn’t take it, that he was too old, that he was weak when once he had been strong.

  “Luton,” said the man seated at the table. “I require information. You have that information. You were dear friend to Benjamin Wickham. You drank together. You have tales to tell. Wickham told you about his work with the weather. He told you about his papers. I want them. Where are they?”

  “Don’t know,” growled the old man.

  “Mr. Wickham had a secret book, a book with green covers. Where is it?”

  “Go to hell.”

  The slim man nodded, and the other once again took careful aim and kicked Mr. Luton’s right knee-cap. Only the cords kept the victim from falling off the chair. Blood from a temple was flowing slowly down his lined cheek and staining redly his white moustache.

  “Tell,” commanded the tall man.

  Mr. Luton was mute. His eyes were glazed. The man at the table sighed with resignation, and took from the case a hypodermic syringe and a capsule.

  “No more assault, Paul. Too old to stand it,” he said calmly. “He might not know of that we want. This drug will prove it. Rip the sleeve.”

  The shorter man produced a clasp knife, opened it and advanced to Mr. Luton. His approach was casual. In neither face had there been any evidence of sadism, but the complete lack of emotion was more horrible than the depraved leer of a devil. He expertly ripped the sleeve of the dressing-gown, and was about to insert the point of the knife in the sleeve of the pyjama coat, when there was a loud report and, for the first time this night, emotion did register on the white face.

  The knife clattered to the floor, and blood spurted from the hand which had held it.

  The ensuing silence lasted for precisely five seconds. Neither man moved a fraction of an inch, save their eyes, which jerked to right and left. Then a third man was in the room, standing just inside the doorway to the sitting-room.

  “Will one or both of you gentlemen kindly grant me the excuse to kill?” mildly enquired Bony.

  Two pairs of dark eyes glittered. That was all. No movement; no sound save the regular beat of water dripping from a tap—blood dripping to the floor.

  “If I sound melodramatic it is to be regretted, gentlemen,” Bony purred. “Doubtless you have heard of me, and doubtless, too, knowing that I am a police officer you gamble on a police officer made weak by Anglo-Saxon laws and regulations. In that you are mistaken. In Australian parlance, I am one out of the box. I have at the moment no inhibitions. I have a hunger, gentlemen, a craving to kill. This Western civilisation, which you hold in such contempt, is the only brake to my lust.”

  “I’m bleeding to death,” snarled the man with the wounded hand, his eyes like agates, his upper lip lifted with pain and hatred.

  “Of mere passing interest,” murmured Bony, and Mr. Luton felt astonishment at the altered face of his recent guest. There was no doubt, too, that the others noted the blazing blue eyes, the flash of white teeth, the expression of unutterable loathing. The lips trembled; the cheeks twitched; but the eyes never flickered, and the automatic never wavered a hair’s breadth.

  No one watching that automatic, and that brown face, could have an inkling of what was really going on in Bony’s mind. They would know nothing of the battle being waged, on the one hand by his aboriginal instincts, and on the other by the training imposed on him by what is named ‘Western civilisation’. There is pardon for killing under intense provocation; there is none for cruelty inflicted on the helpless.

  “You with the hand! March to your left for the towel on the wall rack. Use the towel to bind the hand. I shall be waiting for the excuse to kill, after I put a bullet through your other hand.”

  This human jungle monster couldn’t take it. He was gen
uinely on the verge of fainting as he staggered to the wall and snatched the towel,

  “Stay there facing the wall,” commanded Bony. “You at the table, stand!”

  The slim man stood, eyes never moving from the blazing eyes holding him like a fascinated rabbit.

  “Retrieve that knife and cut Mr. Luton free.”

  The slim man bent to pick up the knife. The other spun about and leaped. The automatic roared and blood spurted from his left hand as he stood dazedly looking down at it. The slim man had straightened swiftly, to be frozen into stone by the barrel of the gun emitting a faint trail of blue smoke.

  “There will be no more fancy shooting, gentlemen,” Bony warned. “You! Back to your wall. You! Pick up the knife and cut those cords. Ah! Nice sharp knife. Used, I suppose, to cut throats.” The cords fell away from Mr. Luton’s ankles and wrists, and he lurched to his feet and stood glowering down at the slim man. “Your double-barrel shot-gun, Mr. Luton,” interposed Bony. “Number One shot if you have it.”

  The old man padded away to the bedroom.

  “Who are you?” suavely asked the slim man, eyes frantically trying to lock the blue eyes so that they would not take in his companion. Not that the companion was in good enough shape to start anything.

  “You know who I am. You thought I was crawling back to my superiors and therefore you had a free hand here. And I know you. If you and your superiors were to use your minnow brains more and be less addicted to raw brutality, you would be more worthy of my attention. Certainly you would not have made that stupid mistake of calling on Mr. Wickham in a car belonging to the Hungarian Consulate; or commit the childish error of scorning our Australian barbers. Mind you, they are no artists. However, I suggest that you forward my advice to your masters luxuriating in that place of intrigue and treason named Canberra. What drug were you going to administer to Mr. Luton?”

  “A soporific.”

  “What drug? Or am I to accept your refusal to answer as the excuse for which I am waiting?”

  “Sodium pentothal.”

  “Its action?”

  “Eliminates will-power and induces the craving to sleep.”

  “And you keep the victim awake by torture until he gives?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you wine and dine with the staff members of embassies, consulates? Well, there is this to be said for the Australian black-fellow—he is particular with whom he sleeps. Thank you, Mr. Luton. A hammerless gun! Are you sure the safety catch is off?”

  “You can leave it to me.”

  “I hope I can leave it to you to pull a trigger without the slightest hesitation?”

  “Only one, Inspector? I never fire singles.”

  “Now then, you two! Face the wall. A little farther back, Mr. Luton, that a swinging arm cannot knock your barrel aside. At the slightest excuse, shoot for a kidney, either side the spine. You take the left specimen while I attend to the right.”

  The pistol barrel was jammed hard into the spine of the slim man, and a chest pushed him hard against the wall so that he was unable to twist round with any degree of freedom. An arm wound about him, and a brown hand plucked the automatic from the shoulder holster. He was also relieved of a pocket wallet, and his clothes were efficiently searched for secondary arms.

  There were fewer risks with the wounded man, and the search produced a sap as well as an automatic, and an implement that looked like a fountain-pen, in addition to a pocket wallet.

  “Turn about. Sit there.”

  They sat on chairs against the wall. Mr. Luton covered them with the shot-gun while Bony went through the wallets. Save for treasury notes, there was nothing—not even a card bearing a name; not even a driver’s licence.

  “How did you come here? By car?”

  “I ... we forget,” answered the slim man.

  “I will tell you,” Bony said. “You came up-river by boat. The boat is moored to the bank yonder. You are living in a caravan down near Cowdry. Daylight will be here in an hour. You should be back in your caravan before daylight.”

  “What is this?” asked Mr. Luton.

  “A timely observation, Mr. Luton. It will occupy us at least two hours in setting this house to rights. Let us say five shillings an hour. They will pay you ten shillings, and depart.”

  “Depart!” echoed Mr. Luton. “Let them go?”

  “Well, we don’t want them living with us, do we?”

  “Living with us! Hell, no.”

  “Very well. We must speed them on their way. If day should come and find us associating with them, what would the neighbours say?” Bony extracted a ten-shilling note, brand new, and the wallets he put into the case. The syringe and capsule case he put aside with the fountain-pen which fired a potassium bullet. “Now, gentlemen, you may depart. Return to your boss and tell him you have made a muck of things. Your boss will then understand that you have been attempting to bale up real Australians, who do not play the game according to cloak-and-dagger rules.”

  White faces, expressionless, terrible faces of human automatons! Backs stiff, they marched out into the setting moonlight, round the house and through the wicket gate, and so across the clearing to the hired boat they had moored at the river-bank. Mr. Luton and Bony watched the boat slowly move down-stream till it was out of sight.

  They went back to the house, where Bony proceeded to light the stove, and Mr. Luton to replace cupboard débris from the floor. Then he saw Bony looking down at the treasury note on the table.

  “Burn it,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” replied Bony. “This note, just issued by a bank, will tell us if these birds came from Adelaide or Canberra.”

  Mr. Luton paused in his work, a bottle of rum in the crook of one arm, another held in the opposite hand. There was no doubting the admiration in his voice when he said:

  “You’re a ruddy corker.”

  “I am not,” denied Bony. “In fact, I am now feeling reaction. Pour drinks—long ones. I was never more frightened in my life.”

  “Frightened!” exploded Mr. Luton. “Frightened!”

  “Yes, frightened. If those fellows had given me the excuse to shoot them dead, I would never have forgiven myself.”

  “The dirty bastards,” snarled Mr. Luton, filling pint pannikins with rum.

  “I agree. The dirty bastards....”

  Bony lifted the pannikin to his lips. Mr. Luton said nothing when he noted how the brown hand was shaking.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A Promising Pupil

  MR. LUTON was rubbing an embrocation into his bruised and swollen knees, while Bony was busy at the stove cooking breakfast and watching the coffee-pot.

  “Getting old, blast it,” growled Mr. Luton. “Old age is a curse. Can’t take a bit of stoush any more, and can’t deal it out.”

  “Strong-smelling embrocation you have there,” remarked Bony.

  “A good one Knocker Harris invented. Half eucalyptus and half camphorated oil with a dash of some of the herbs he’s got in his bit of a garden.” Mr. Luton chuckled. “Knew a feller who suffered from rheumatism. He’d heard that pure emu oil was good for it. So he got an emu and boiled him down and drew off about a pint of pure oil. Before he come to use it, his son came on it and oiled his saddle and bridle with it. Next day all the leather was like spongy paper and finished.”

  “Did he ever try it for the rheumatism?” questioned Bony.

  “So they say,” replied Mr. Luton, now whistling through his remaining teeth like a man grooming a horse. “Terrible penetrating stuff, emu oil in the pure. It cured his rheumatism overnight, but it rotted his leg bones to sponge inside a week.” A moment later he asked, off-handedly:

  “D’you think those ponging foreign bastards will come again?”

  “I hope not, but they may.”

  The old man stood, making a wry face, and he said furiously:

  “Look! Forty years back I’d have pulled their ears off and mixed their rabbit brains together. What do you reckon this
country’s coming to?”

  “Your question would indicate that Australia is proceeding from one point to another, Mr. Luton. Instead, it has already arrived. You have been extremely fortunate, and I, to a lesser degree, by having lived in an era when human behaviour was influenced by a code inspired by the world’s rulers. Since the world’s rulers have become schemers and scientific thugs, what can be expected of us, the ruled, the scum? Don’t let it worry you. Good and evil are relative.”

  “Could be right. That bacon smells good. How did you get back here?”

  “Train and car.”

  “When you left, did you intend coming back?”

  “Yes. What about your hands? Breakfast is ready.”

  Mr. Luton unrolled the legs of his pyjamas and hobbled to the wash-bench.

  “Knees any easier?” asked Bony.

  “Much. Take a lot to damage ’em properly. But that ape knew just where to kick.”

  “He and his kind have, of course, plenty of practice. I am serving you three eggs. We have to eat. When Gibley told me the other afternoon I was to report to my Department, or else! it was necessary to determine how strong were those persons who were made nervous by my presence here. I did that by going to Adelaide, and I assessed the strength of the opposition when the S.A. Police Department went to the extraordinary limit of having me conducted out of their State. I am convinced they were motivated by a Power outside their State and outside the Constitution.

  “Those thugs knew I left by bus yesterday morning. It is certain that it was they who broke into the office at Mount Mario. And that they are the foreigners in whom Constable Gibley expressed interest. Their actions, I believe, have nothing to do with my recall and the extraordinary behaviour of the S.A. Police Department.

  “Anyway, before reporting to the C.I.B., Adelaide, I rang Mr. Wickham’s friend who, with his son, supplied the necessary transport for stocking the bar down below. It was arranged that he would have his car just outside Serviceton when the Melbourne train pulled in. The police escort being instructed to leave me at Serviceton, I was saved the bother of evading her, and was happy about that, because she was a joy to look at, and intelligent.”