The Battling Prophet Page 13

  “Wait a bit!” implored Mr. Luton. “She ... she ... she! Police escort a she?”

  “Yes. Policewoman. Chosen, I think, to reduce to the least possible minimum any rancour I might feel toward the S.A. Police. Anyway, we arrived at the bridge just when you were exploding your whip. The young fellow who drove thought the reports were those of guns, and only with difficulty did I prevail on him to leave it to me, and also to leave me at the bridge and return to Adelaide.

  “We arrived when you were addressing a bullock called ‘Red’. Accept my sincere compliments on your linguistic artistry! We heard plainly all the adjectives in their magnificent sequence. However, in the midst of our enchantment, your performance ceased, and on arrival I found that you must have gone in for a gargle. The front door was open, and I heard voices. I regret that I did not arrive two minutes earlier.

  “We are left with several items. Those thugs were indifferent to what was occupying you at this time, being confident they would quickly find what they were looking for. They thought there was no danger of interruption from you, and, because of the hour, no interruption from anyone else. Hence the open door. They knew what they were looking for—that green-covered book. And they knew of Wickham’s friendship with you, and of his visits here.”

  “Think they would have found the cellar?” asked Mr. Luton.

  “They would be experts in tearing a house to pieces.”

  “What was wrong in handing ’em over to Gibley? They can’t do such things in Australia.”

  Bony shrugged. “Remember the story about the great king who visited Australia and committed a murder? To have handed those trained sadists over to Gibley might have resulted in ringing down the curtain before the end of the drama.”

  “All right. Leave ’em. What about the Melbourne police? Wouldn’t they check up on the train and find you wasn’t on it?”

  “Without doubt. My disappearance will send many people into a dither. Which is why, like Brer Rabbit, I am going to burrow deep.”

  “You going to hole up? Where?”

  “In your pub down under.”

  Mr. Luton evinced swift contentment. Bony said:

  “Time flies, as a thousand million people have said before me. We must sleep, unfortunately. Now please listen carefully to what I say, while I clear the table and wash up. You will be the custodian, and there will probably be many visitors.”

  An hour later, Bony surveyed his sanctuary, after hearing the trap-door shut and Mr. Luton replacing the floor-covering.

  The stock had been slightly rearranged. The stretcher bed was set up against one damp wall, and a couple of gin cases served as a bedside table. The oil-lamp burned on the bar counter, and there was a primus stove on which to boil water for tea.

  At three places a series of one-inch auger holes had been bored, to provide Bony with listening points. He could thus hear what was said at the front door, within the lounge, and inside the living-room. If Mr. Luton wished to converse with him, he would have only to lie on the floor at one of these points and emit a mild version of his bullock team whistle down the auger holes. Stacked spirits provided mounting steps to the listening vents.

  It was a quarter to seven when Bony turned in. It was four minutes after two when he woke. Like the cellar, the house above was still.

  Bony lit the oil-lamp. He put on his several spare pairs of socks and a large blanket dressing-gown belonging to old Luton, and started the primus.

  About three o’clock he heard, very faintly, the dogs barking, and a moment later, the distant thud of Mr. Luton’s feet on his bedroom floor. The thudding eventually changed to the padding of comfortable slippers.

  When someone knocked on the front door, Bony climbed the steps of brandy cases to sit on the topmost, when his head touched the perforated flooring. He could hear his host crossing the sitting-room, heard the door open, and Senior Constable Gibley say:

  “Day-ee! What! You on the booze again?”

  “Do I look like it?” snapped Mr. Luton.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m not, Senior, and I’d take it kindly if you minded your own business. I had a bad night, as you seem to be interested, and if a man of my age can’t sleep when he likes and get up when he likes, then it’s time the atom bomb blew up the likes of you. What is it?”

  “Now, now, no sparks, Luton. Keep your hair on. I only called for a chinwag, anyway. You goin’ to ask me in?”

  “Don’t see why. Still, if you want to waste the taxpayers’ money....”

  They moved back into the kitchen and the door was closed. Bony descended from his brandy steps and mounted the gin steps which brought him beneath the kitchen dresser. He was in time to hear Mr. Luton following his instructions.

  “Cup of coffee or tea? I’m going to light the stove.”

  “Whatever’s handiest,” accepted Gibley. “Anyone been around this morning?”

  “How in hell should I know? You woke me. Lumbago kept me up all night and I didn’t get off to sleep till after daybreak.”

  “All right! All right! Of course the dogs would warn you if anyone had come around. They make enough noise.”

  “They would of woke me, I suppose,” admitted Mr. Luton. The sound of case wood crackling in the stove reached Bony. Gibley said:

  “How long do you intend living on here now old Wickham’s dead?”

  “Just as long as it suits, Gibley. Anyone putting up an argument?”

  “You’re a source of worry, that’s all. I don’t like old blokes living alone. It’s not safe. Anything could happen and they’d perish before anyone woke up to them being ill. That goes for Knocker Harris, too, although he’s a different case. If he caught himself alight or fell into the river there wouldn’t be much to it. You got any relations or anything?”

  “You know, Gibley, up in the back of Noo South, in my time, there were towns called ‘police-controlled’. The police in ’em could do pretty well what they liked, especially with swagmen and old pensioners camped on the river near-by. Would you like to know something?”

  “I like learning, Luton. Make that tea strong.”

  “It’ll be strong enough to twitch your appendix. What you don’t know and what the quack don’t know is that this house and the land along the river right to the highway belongs to me. You can tell Maltby that. And you can tell him, as well as yourself, that I’m the boss of this bit of country. Ben being murdered don’t leave me defenceless.”

  “Well now, you don’t say!” Gibley said slowly. “How come? They haven’t found Ben’s will yet, have they?”

  “Nobody don’t need to. So neither you nor Maltby can shift me. Like to learn some more?”

  “Yair. I’m in the mood. Where’s the sugar?”

  “When I came here to live I’d sold a fairish bit of property up in Noo South when the price of land and stock was going up on the wool boom. So I got a lot of money to spend on advertising and such like, and I got a friend or two who knows how to do it. If you or Maltby interferes with Knocker, I’ll give you and the quack such a advertising that your ears will burn right off your skulls.”

  “I’m not saying I was going to interfere with Knocker or you,” countered Gibley. “All I’m saying is that you both give me a lot of worry, both living alone, and with no one living close to give a hand if needed.”

  “Very thoughtful of you, Gibley,” Luton came back. “Pity you talk so much to the quack. He’s not good for you.”

  “To hell with Dr. Maltby!” exploded the policeman. “I was only thinking of your welfare and my responsibility if anything happened to you. Wouldn’t be so bad if you lived together. Why don’t you put Knocker up here? He’d be happy to doss in with the chooks.”

  “So you been talking to Knocker, eh?”

  “I have not—not on this subject. How did you come to know Inspector Bonaparte?”

  “He told you.”

  “I know, but I’ve forgotten.”

  “You come out from town, but you didn�
�t think to pick up my bread from the baker, did you?”

  “I did. It’s in the car. When did you say you met Bonaparte in the old days?”

  “Up on my place out from Wilcannia. He was making for Bourke and stayed the night. That was the first time I met him. When don’t matter, and how often don’t matter, either.”

  “Seems to be a smart sort of caste, by all accounts. They wanted him back in Brisbane in a mighty hurry. What did he think of your cranky idea of Ben Wickham being murdered when he had the jim-jams?”

  “Said he’d think about it.”

  “Didn’t take to the idea, eh?”

  “I don’t think he did,” answered the old man, and Bony congratulated him silently on his astuteness. “Blast it! What’s the matter with them dogs? Someone else must be coming. Don’t I ever have any peace?”

  “Let ’em come, Luton. I’ll have another cup of that appendix-twitcher.”

  Without going to his porch auger-holes, Bony could hear the car approaching and stop at the wicket gate. The dogs maintained their warning right until someone knocked on the front door.

  “I’ll see who it is,” decided Gibley.

  Bony heard the door being opened.

  “Why! Hullo, Sergeant.”

  “The wife told us you were making out this way, Gibley. We’re wanting a few words with Mr. Luton. May we come in?” Two men crossed the threshold. “Good-day, Mr. Luton. This is Superintendent Boase down from Adelaide. What, you drinking tea, Gibley?”

  Mr. Luton acknowledged the introduction to Boase, and gave to Bony that he already knew Sergeant Maskell, stationed at Mount Gambier. Mr. Luton suggested that someone bring extra chairs from the lounge, and that he’d made a fresh pot of tea. The Mount Gambier sergeant told Gibley he could get along, and Mr. Luton reminded him to leave the bread.

  The talk was thin until after Gibley drove away. Superintendent Boase expressed the wish to have a home like this, beside a river like this, and the Mount Gambier policeman asked how the fish were biting, and did Mr. Luton think that Knocker Harris had a fish he could take back to his poor wife and starving children. Mr. Luton said he had about five pounds of kingfish he could have and welcome. After that, Superintendent Boase got to work.

  Chapter Seventeen

  According to The Book?

  NO man rises to the position of chief of a criminal investigation branch of a State Police Department merely for the manner in which he combs his hair. Superintendent Boase had well earned his promotion. Adept in dealing with the criminal mind, as well as minds not so tabulated, he was now at some disadvantage by never having met a Mr. Luton. He began correctly, continued easily, never suspecting that Bony was right under his feet.

  “I’ve come down from Adelaide, Mr. Luton, about a matter you could say is no damn business of mine,” he said. “I’m referring to the recent visit of Inspector Bonaparte, who has been a personal friend of mine for several years.”

  Boase expected Mr. Luton to spring to defence by silently waiting for more, but Mr. Luton’s eyes smiled.

  “Bonaparte’s an old friend of mine, too.” He chuckled. “My father was a doer. He used to tell me: ‘Us Lutons don’t discuss our friends with the police, ’cos we never know what our friends have been up to the night before.’”

  Having a sense of humour, Boase didn’t find it hard to laugh.

  “I’m sure our mutual friend Bonaparte hasn’t been up to anything illegal,” he assured Mr. Luton, and asked the sergeant to pass the scones. “Matter of fact, he called on me yesterday on his way east to Melbourne and Brisbane. Spoke warmly of you, and about his few days’ fishing down here. I don’t know what’s behind the sudden recall to Brisbane, but he hinted at a spot of trouble. You know how it is with us policemen. One in trouble: all others help out. Did you happen to invite him down to stay?”

  “Yes. About fourteen years ago.”

  “He just turned up? You didn’t actually expect him?”

  “I did and I didn’t. He wrote askin’ how the fish were running, and I wrote back that a couple of million were in the river waitin’ to be hooked. As for him being in a spot of trouble, don’t you worry. Inspector Bonaparte came out of the Back Country, like me, and we don’t pull our forelocks to any jumped-up boss. He didn’t go back to Brisbane because his boss ordered him to. He went back to find out what it was all about, to tell his boss to mind his blood pressure, and come back here to finish off his fishing.”

  “I know how he felt about it, Mr. Luton. We all have a job to hold down, and he has a wife and several fine boys to think of.”

  “His wife came out of the Back Country, too,” Mr. Luton countered, the smile again in his eyes. “Likely enough, she’d kick his backside if he pulled his forelock on her behalf. And his boys would hold him while she did it. Us people from the Back Country can always look after ourselves. How long have you been in Australia?”

  Superintendent Boase was secretly jolted by this question, but he claimed Australian origin. The old man pressed home the attack, deceptively mild of face and voice.

  “Then you ought to know, Mr. Boase, that trouble to Bonaparte is like a lovely colleen to an Irishman. My mother came out of County Clare when they was chasin’ English landlords into the Atlantic. So you get two of a kind.”

  Boase politely agreed with Mr. Luton, beginning to realise that he wasn’t going to arrive very fast on an easy over-drive. The old man sat regally upright in his chair at the table, his expression being of bland benignity. He came again.

  “Did you happen to mention to Bonaparte that theory of yours about Ben Wickham dying of something other than alcohol?”

  “I have an idea that Constable Gibley did,” replied Mr. Luton.

  “Did he now?” Boase was rocked by this falsehood for which the Recording Angel placed a mark against Bony’s name. “What did Bonaparte think of it?”

  “Said he thought it was good enough to have his scribe put it into a book what’s to be called ‘Kidding the Bloody Police’.”

  “Did he, indeed!”

  Boase searched for, and failed to see, the slightest trace of mockery in the hazel eyes or in the vibrant voice. Mr. Luton continued, furthering the impression that he accepted these visitors with natural bonhomie:

  “My father used to say: ‘If you can’t get a man to bite on sugar, try a lemon. If he bites on either, he’s unreliable.’ There’s Dr. Maltby. Knows everything—perhaps. Don’t like me. So I tried him with the sugar of this yarn about different effects of the hoo-jahs, and there’s no need to offer him a lemon. I tried Gibley, and he didn’t get to the lemon, either. Bonaparte didn’t even take the sugar. I’d have been surprised if he had.”

  “Don’t you know it’s wrong to make such a statement to a policeman?” asked Boase, abruptly severe.

  “I know this much, Mr. Boase. When a statement like that is made just after a man dies, it’s wrong for a quack to sign a death certificate before opening him up, and more wrong for the police to allow the body to be cremated.”

  Boase frowned, and Mr. Luton knew he had him, and inwardly was jumping with glee.

  “That, of course, was Bonaparte’s views, eh?”

  “Tramp on it, it’s mine!” Mr. Luton roared with such vehemence that the two men were stunned. “Like all the city la-de-dahs, you think us Outbackers are a lot of morons. You think we’re all comics what the papers draw. Look, my old man couldn’t read nor write, but he could make better whisky out of spuds than ever came out of Scotland. Another cup of tea? Plenty in the pot.”

  This sting without a tail nettled Superintendent Boase. He shifted gears back to low.

  “I understand that Bonaparte called on the Commonwealth Bank in Cowdry. D’you know why?”

  “Yes. Didn’t the manager tell you?”

  “I haven’t gone into it that far. Why did Bonaparte go there?”

  “Because I asked him. We walked to Cowdry one day as he wanted a hair-cut. On the way, I asked him if he’d call at the Commonwealth and
find out if old Ben had left his will there. That’s all.”

  “Why are you interested in Wickham’s will?”

  “I’m interested to the tune of twenty thousand quid. Ben told me he had put it in. No will—I don’t get the twenty thousand. No will’s been found yet.”

  “Lucky man, if it is found,” observed the Mount Gambier sergeant. “What I could do! I’d retire to this river and buy a rip-snorter of a cabin cruiser and a cosy house. Was Bonaparte in a good mood when he left?”

  “Yes and no,” replied Mr. Luton. “He was annoyed because you sent Gibley to tell him to go home. Said it was no ruddy business for the South Aus. Police. Said he’d speak his mind to his own high-up-ers, and wished he had memorised my bullocky language. I didn’t blame him. This is a free country, or was before Federation.”

  ‘High-up-ers!’ ‘Morons!’ ‘Forelock!’ Boase thought he could trace friend Bonaparte all round Australia on those words. His mind was now easy. There could be nothing in this ancient’s idea that Wickham had been poisoned, too little anyway, to send Bony on the warpath. Good job that. Anything of that kind made public, there would be a hundred or so ‘Please explains why permission for cremation.’ Damn Wickham. He’d been a continuous source of annoyance to official Australia. To Luton he said:

  “Bonaparte get any fish?”

  “Eight or nine kingies,” replied the old man. “That’s what made him wild. Having a good time down here, and they couldn’t let him alone for five minutes, but had to send for him. I told him: ‘Don’t you take it, Bony.’ What do they expect? Expect a man to chase murderers in his sleep?”

  “Perhaps....”

  “You running a racket down here?” blasted Mr. Luton. “Don’t think it likely, though. But someone could be runnin’ one, and got frightened ’cos they thought Bony might find out. Or did they want him to round up them bodgie-widgies? Anyhow, there’s one man left in this country who can milk a goat, and that they’re going to find out when Bony gets home.”