Batchelors of Broken Hill b-14 Page 15

  “Quite a catalogue,” Bony said approvingly. “D’youknow anything of kangaroo hunting?”

  “Not a thing, but I’ve never heard offeedin ’ them with cyanide andhittin ’emin the eye with a bottle of strychnine. Have you?”

  “Cyanide is used extensively, however, in keeping down rabbits and other vermin.”

  Jimmy lit another cigarette.

  “You know, Inspector, I think the state ought to hire me at two thousand quid a year just to amble around people’s houses. No need to pinch anything, and I could live me natural life. Think of theinterestin ’ things I’d find for government departments-Taxation, Customs, Health. And the police. Read the other day that writers in Russia are best paid in the world. Why don’t Australia use up burglars like Russia uses up their writers? A dozen good burglars would wipe out all the rackets.”

  “I have had the idea, Jimmy, for a considerable time,” Bony said, his eyes twinkling. “But Australia being a nation of knockers, I would certainly be knocked down did I suggest it in official quarters. There are decided weaknesses too. I also read the article you refer to, and you will remember that the Russian writer who doesn’t keep strictly to the Party line is very soon retired. How many burglars could keep the lawful line, even at two thousand a year? Know where I can buy a glass dagger?”

  “Can’t say I do. Never seen one. Feller told me he saw one in the fist of a Negro soldier. Got anything on the old-fashioned bright steel kind?”

  “It seems that the blade of a glass dagger can be filed near the haft and broken off when in the wound, to stop bleeding.”

  “Neat, Inspector.” Jimmy stared pensively at Bony. “The papers didn’t say it was a glass dagger.”

  “That is so. Other than tampering with the blade for the purpose I mentioned, I cannot see any advantages.”

  “Coloured?”

  “Blue.”

  “Ask the Great Scarsby. I’ve seenfellas like him throw coloured daggers at dames on the stage.”

  “That, I think, was the original use for the knife which killed the Lodding woman. We haven’t found the haft yet. When taking your day-time constitutional, keep on the look-out for it. You don’t know of any likely hide-outs Tuttaway could tenant, I suppose?”

  “Fair go, Inspector. Those I did know have been pretty thoroughly probed by Crome and his boys. Must be slick as hell rigging himself up. Wish I had his know-how. When are you letting me out?”

  “Still pining?”

  “There’s that sick aunt, you know.”

  “And the attraction?”

  “And the attraction. Wants to see my police badge. You got one to spare?”

  “Never possessed one, Jimmy. Fixed a date for the wedding?”

  “No, she keeps backing and filling.”

  “Strange. You should make a very successful shopwalker.”

  Jimmy was plainly startled.

  “She told you?” he asked.

  “No. It’s my own opinion. I hope your intentions are strictly honourable?”

  “They’re damned unprofessional,” snorted Jimmy the Screwsman. “I get an eyeful of the pearls and diamonds, and then you butt in and say: ‘Oh no, you must not. You don’t disconnect them burglar alarms, and you don’t withdraw those trinkets from their velvet beds.’ Then, when I make up me mind that I’m keener on the dame than the jewels, and she falls for me, you say that I aim to marry her for ’em. Why must you demons always be so damned suspicious?”

  “I am wondering, Jimmy.”

  “What in hell about?”

  “Whether you are being driven by love or avarice.”

  Jimmy heaved up to his feet.

  “Whatd’you think?” he almost shouted, and indignation told its tale. “Goodnight!”

  “I’ll see you out,” Bony said, and accompanied the burglar along the corridor. His shoes resounded on the bare floor; Jimmy’s feet made no more noise than a cat’s paw. At the door Bony paused.

  “The best of luck, Jimmy. I mean that.”

  Chapter Twenty

  To Court a Maid

  TED PLUTO was a Darling River aborigine and quite a smart fellow. He could read comic strips and the sporting papers and he could write and even work out the simpler crossword puzzles. Naturally, he was a fine horseman and a fairly reliable stockman.

  Ted liked Broken Hill. He liked working for the police as black tracker, horse breaker, car-washer, and handy man at the lock-up. Since he was only twenty, it could be expected that he would soon tire of the city and its white people and suffer unbearable nostalgia for the bush and the maidens of his own race, but then ChicChic was the city magnet for Ted Pluto.

  ChicChic was eighteen and beautiful, and the Reverend Playfair quite a good sort, provided a fellow did his courting openly and in daylight. Thus it was that every Sunday afternoon Ted Pluto walked to the Manse, escorted ChicChic to Sunday school and back to the Manse to eat quantities of sweet cakes in the kitchen with ChicChic after she had taken afternoon tea to the Reverend and Mrs Playfair.

  These visits demanded much attention to dress, and this Sunday, as usual, Ted Pluto asked Sergeant Crome for leave of absence and left the Headquarters with his mind cleaned like a slate of everything connected with it. Even the glass dagger.

  The haft of the glass dagger had become an object of great importance to Ted Pluto, as to the other trackers. He had contributed to the story of the man who had carried a dead woman across sandy ground to the foot of a mullock dump, and he had been shown the blade of the dagger, cleaned of blood, and translucent blue when held before the sun.

  With the other trackers and Sergeant Crome, Ted Pluto had hunted for the missing dagger haft, and he had quickly made up his mind that it wasn’t to be found in that section of waste ground. Nevertheless, Sergeant Crome had ordered him to continue the search, and to please the boss he and the other trackers had done so. Finally the sergeant had promised a pound of tobacco to the tracker who found the haft which fitted the glass blade.

  Dressed in gabardine trousers and white silk shirt, and with gleaming brown shoes on his slightly pigeon-toed feet, and with a pretty face in the offing, who the heck wanted to remember glass daggers with or without hafts?

  He was some distance from the Manse when he saw a group of white children playing, and the game they played so captivated him that he actually forgot that ChicChic would be waiting.

  A small boy and a smaller girl were sauntering along the pavement. The boy carried a stick as, doubtless, he had seen a Regency Buck so doing on the screen. The little girl trod daintily at his side, over her arm a narrow sheepskin hanging to represent a fur. She had brilliant red hair and wore a clean print frock, and from about her neck was suspended a shining ‘gem’.

  Out of their sight, round the corner of a low iron fence, lurked three desperadoes, one armed with a pistol, and, on the lady and her escort arriving at the corner, they jumped out, shouting:

  “Stick ’emup!”

  The gentleman employed his stick as a sword, whereupon the gunman shouted “Bang!” and the gentleman realistically sagged at the knees and collapsed in the best cinema style. The desperadoes proceeded to surround the lady, and the gunman shouted:

  “Come on, now, hand over that jool or you’ll get it too. This is a stick-up, lady, an’ we’re desperate men.”

  As the gunman’s accomplices were holding tightly to the lady’s arms, it was not possible for her to obey, and the gunman clenched his teeth about the pistol and jerked the ‘jool’ upward to free the neck string from the lady’s head. The three then decamped, and the dead gentleman raised himself to one knee, groaned with agony, lifted his stick like a rifle, and yelled thrice “Bang!” He proved to be an excellent shot, for one after another the robbers fell down lifeless.

  That concluded the game. The children gathered into a bunch, and the boys proceeded to argue which of them should be the gentleman in the next performance. This having been settled, the game was played through to the end, watched by the entranced
Ted Pluto, who till then was more greatly interested in the play than in the prop which gleamed like the Pacific Ocean under the noonday sun.

  With a mental shock he was forcibly reminded of the blue glass dagger and all that Sergeant Crome had said about the missing haft.

  “Let’s have a look,” he asked the little girl, hand outstretched.

  Gazing into his round and smiling face, she permitted him to lift the ‘jool’ attached by the string to her neck, and one of the boys shouted that it was only a bit of old glass they had found. Ted examined it closely. There could be no mistake. The marks of the file and the smooth facet at the break were sharply clear.

  “Give you ashillin ’ for it,” he said.

  The boys accepted the offer, but the girl declined. Ted raised the offer by a shilling, and the boys became excitedly eager to close. Still the little girl objected, not to the amount of the offer but to parting with the pretty ‘jool’. The tracker persisted, raised the offer by yet another shilling, and one of the boys snatched the glass from the girl, broke the string, and presented it with one hand, the other held out for the money.

  The little girl burst into a storm of tears, and Ted Pluto was instantly compassionate. He had to have the haft of the dagger wanted so badly by Sergeant Crome, chiefly for the glory which would be his and lastly for the desirable pound of tobacco. Having gained possession of the haft, he was tempted to run away from the weeping girl and the shouting boys, and refrained from so doing only by his inherited sense of fair play.

  “Who owns this bit of glass?” he asked above the uproar.

  “I found it,” one of the boys shouted.

  “We all did,” yelled the remaining three, and the girl stopped crying to add her claim. Ted remembered the waiting ChicChic; was dismayed by the time he had dallied here.

  “I’ll give you all a shilling and be done with it. Yes or no?”

  That settled it. And with the dagger haft rammed into his hip pocket, Ted Pluto hurried off to the Manse, his mind busy with excuses.

  Arrived at the kitchen door, he was confronted by an indignant ChicChic. She was a modern miss, and no aboriginal man was ever going to keep her waiting, or behave like the lord of the bushland. In up-to-date parlance she told Ted just where he got off, then cooled down and ran a critical eye over him before they set out for Sunday school.

  The bulge of his hip pocket gave her another handle to turn.

  “What you got there, Ted Pluto?” she demanded, pointing to his nether region. “You bin wasting money on another pipe, Is’pose.”

  A guilty hand flashed astern to feel the protuberance.

  “Summit I got for the sergeant,” replied Ted, withdrawing the glass haft.

  “Ooh! Nice!” ChicChic thrust forward a hand. Ted made no effort to place the ‘jool’ in that shapely hand of dark brown velvet, and ChicChic stamped her well-shod foot. “Let me see that, Ted Pluto.”

  “Can’t. Belongs to the police. ’Tisn’tmine, ChicChic.”

  The girl grabbed the hand and began a struggle to force it to give up its treasure. Ted Pluto came within an ace of cuffing her, and it was surprising that countless generations of lordly men failed to hold this young man to their iron influences, so that instead of cuffing her he placed his other hand over Chic Chic’s hands fighting to obtain the lump of blue glass, and with wrist strength forced her hands away.

  Nothing would have given him greater delight than to make ChicChic a gift of this object. He was of a race of men who had never owned anything excepting freedom when they became old. Nothing belonged to the individual: everything to the tribe. Possessiveness had ever been non-existent, and if ChicChic wanted the bit of glass, or his shirt, he would normally have given it to her, and she in turn would give it to another aborigine if he or she wanted it-for to have was not to possess.

  But behind and in front was Sergeant Crome. And Sergeant Crome was a white man and, more, a white policeman. Sergeant Crome wanted that silly-looking lump of blue glass, and Sergeant Crome must have it.

  ChicChic began to cry. She couldn’t understand Ted Pluto’s going on like this. They were tears of disillusionment. Poor Ted attempted to comfort her, tried to explain that he must give up the thing to Sergeant Crome, that he and the other boys had been searching for it ever since the white woman had been killed, that Sergeant Crome had shouted and sworn it must be found. ChicChic remained indifferent to Sergeant Crome. She loved Ted Pluto, and Ted Pluto refused her a bit of old glass.

  “Go ’way! Go on, Ted Pluto, go ’way!” she screamed. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want you to take me to Sunday school. I’ll tell Mrs Playfair on you, and she’ll tell the minister, and he’ll soon tell you to get to hell out of it for keeps.”

  A white suitor would have surrendered, but despite the black man’s partial assimilation by white civilisation, he remains his own man. He sees more to be drawn from the future than the present. When ChicChic pushed him from the kitchen and slammed the door in his face, Ted Pluto turned away and sadly walked back to Headquarters.

  From the piece of glass in his great hands Crome looked into the smilingly triumphant eyes of Ted Pluto and said:

  “Good on you, Ted, my lad. Where did you find it?”

  “I didn’t find it, Sergeant,” Ted replied. “I got it from a white girl playing in a street. She was with some white boys-playing hold-ups. I had to pay ’emfiveshillin ’ for it. Yougivit back fiveshillin ’, eh, Sergeant? And pound of tobacco, eh?”

  “You never asked the kids where they found it?” persisted Crome without ire, almost nonchalantly, for to shout or bully would have been useless.

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “Think we can find those kids? You remember the street?”

  “Too right, Sergeant. I paid those kids fiveshillin ’.”

  “Here’s your five shillings, Ted. Come on. Let’s find those kids.”

  ChicChic was an unpleasant dream. The clouds shadowing the spirit of Ted Pluto vanished. He had done right, had behaved like a man, and Sergeant Crome was pleased with him, so much so that he invited Ted to get into the front seat of the car instead of the back. It was a fine afternoon, much better than going to that old Sunday school, even with ChicChic. The sergeant didn’t even object when Ted rolled a cigarette.

  “Out towards the Manse, eh, Ted?” Crome asked.

  “Yes, Sergeant.” Half a mile of pleasant driving, and then Ted instructed the sergeant to follow a road cutting off an angle. It was good, giving orders like this, and there was no need to ration his tobacco, either, with that pound lot coming to him.

  Ted told Crome to stop at the corner where the hold-up had been staged. There were now no children playing a game, and Sergeant Crome frowned and brought back the clouds to shadow the aboriginal spirit.

  “Should have found out where those kids got the haft,” he said severely. “Where’s your brains, Ted? Never be a policeman going on like that. Now we’ve to find those kids, and there’s a lot of ’emin Broken Hill. You’d know ’emagain?”

  “Course, Sergeant, I know ’em.” Ted brightened. “P’rapsthey’re spending the dough in the nearest lolly shop. In that next street there’s a lolly shop.”

  “Good on you, Ted. You’ll make a policeman after all.”

  The sun shone brightly on Ted Pluto, and his chest could be seen, almost, expanding with pride. On the kerb of the pavement outside the lolly shop sat two of the boys.

  Crome stopped the car beside them, leaned out, and grinned.

  “Good day!” he cried. “How’s things?”

  “Gooddayee, mister!”

  “Come here,” Crome invited, and they stood on the running-board and leaned over the door to stare at the silver lying on a huge palm. “Remember that bit of glass you sold for five bob?”

  “Yes, mister. We picked it upcoupla days ago. True, mister.”

  “Think you could point out where you found it?”

  “Too right, we could. Some way from here, though. You take
us in the car an’ we’ll show you.”

  “Inside a garden it was, mister,” added the second boy.

  “All right! You go to the shop and buy four ices, and we’ll take you along.”

  One of the boys accepted the coin and dashed into the shop, returning with four ice-cream cones. The sergeant handed them out. The boys climbed into the rear seat. Ted Pluto lived in heaven, and Crome drove with one hand whilst licking an ice.

  Eventually he was directed to a street of substantial houses and pulled the car into the shadow cast by one of a number of pepper trees.

  “In this street, you say?”

  “Yes, mister. The garden’s further down, though.”

  “Well, one of you boys stay here with Ted. The other can come and show me the place.”

  Crome got out and terminated the argument over which of the boys was to go with him. They strolled along the pavement under the pepper trees, passing garden gates, and under wide-spaced light standards.

  “That’s the gate, mister,” the boy said, pointing ahead, and Crome told him not to shout and not to stop walking when they came to the gate.

  They came to a double gateway, and one of the gates was open and appeared never to be shut. The grounds contained severalti -tree shrubs and a fine old pine, and the driveway curved to avoid the pine tree. Farther on in the same fence was a small wicket gate, with the ground about proving it was never used. The boy said:

  “It was just inside that little gate, mister. Rod seen it first, though. He fetched me to see it, and I went in and got it.”

  Man and boy passed on to skirt more garden fences, and presently they turned about, and so again came to the little gate. Crome said nothing. He and the boy continued walking. Beyond the solitary pine tree stood a stone house, weathered and commodious, and of two storeys. He had seen it before.