The Sands of Windee Page 16

  “Not quite up to expectations, my dear Sergeant. He told me all that Moongalliti knew, but that was not quite all I wanted to know.”

  “What did it come to?”

  “I will tell you when I find out the little he, Moongalliti, doesn’t know. With your permission, I will just scan these letters.”

  The half-caste proceeded to read his mail. The first communication was from the Research Department, Police Headquarters, Sydney, relating to a boot-sprig. The second was far more lengthy and dealt with Marks’s early history and that of a certain Mrs Thomas. Mrs Thomas’s history was obtained chiefly from official records. The third letter was from Colonel Spender demanding to know when Bony anticipated returning to his duties in Queensland, as the murder at Longreach was baffling everybody. The fourth letter was from his wife, and this he decided to read later. The fifth letter related to a small silver disk, and the writer was Sir Alfred Worthington, a very famous Australian.

  From his letters Bony’s eyes rose slowly to the impatient face of Sergeant Morris. Bony’s eyes were veiled to hide the triumph in their blue depths, and from the sergeant they wandered to a police trooper engaged on clerical work at another table, and from him came finally to rest on two emu eggs set up on the mantelpiece as ornaments.

  “I want an urgent telegram dispatched,” he said at last. The sergeant reached for pencil and telegram forms. Dictated the half-caste: To Inspector Sutley, Criminal Investigation Branch, Sydney. Wire personal particulars Mrs Thomas—mail photo if possible.—B.

  The message was given to the trooper, who was ordered to dispatch it at once. On his leaving, Bony picked up from the mantelpiece the two emu eggs, and, examining them, saw that they had at each end a small hole through which the contents formerly had been blown.

  “Can you lay your hands on a .44 Winchester or Remington rifle and a .22 Savage rifle?” he asked softly.

  “Yes. The trooper has a Savage, and I can borrow the Winchester. Why?”

  “It is necessary to carry out a little experiment. Can one in your back garden be observed by any of the neighbours?”

  “I don’t think so. But what’s the scheme?”

  “Go and borrow that Winchester. If you see the trooper, tell him to bring away his Savage. We might want two cartridges for each rifle.”

  Sergeant Morris rose obediently, even though he saw the incongruity of a uniformed police-sergeant obeying an aboriginal half-caste. When he was gone, Bony searched the officer’s desk till he found a half-sheet of postage stamps, from which he detached a strip of the gummed border. Tearing off two rough squares, he stuck them over a hole in each of the eggs, and over the paper he melted ordinary sealing-wax.

  Returning with the borrowed rifle, Sergeant Morris found Bony lounging down in his chair, the back of his head supported by clasped hands, a cigarette between his lips.

  “The trooper has gone to his lodgings for his Savage rifle,” he told Bony, who thereupon rose and picked up the large, blue-green eggs.

  “These will more easily be filled with water if they are submerged in a basin. Perhaps Mrs Morris will oblige?”

  “You’re darned mysterious, Bony. What is the idea?” demanded the sergeant, with prominent determined jaw and glinting grey eyes.

  “Patience, friend, patience; and perhaps, in a few days, I will describe the perfect murder. However, I do not promise. Let us fill these eggs with water.”

  Together they made their way to the kitchen, where Mrs Morris was discovered making pastry. A dish was procured and filled with water from a rain-tank, and after a little trouble the eggs were filled to Bony’s satisfaction. Back in the office once more, Bony sealed the remaining openings in the shells as he had done the others, and by that time the trooper appeared carrying a well-kept .22 Savage rifle. He and his superior followed Bony carrying the eggs into the neat garden at the rear of the premises. There Bony selected an earth border surrounding a tiny grass lawn that was the pride of the sergeant’s lady. Making sure that beyond the fence there was nothing but open common, he then formed two golfing tees and on them set the eggs firmly up on end.

  “Which of you is the better rifle shot?” he asked his perplexed audience. “Rowland is,” Morris admitted promptly.

  “Very well. Now, Mr Rowland, I want you to lie down about twenty feet from these eggs. I want you to fire a bullet from the Winchester exactly through the middle of one of the eggs, and a bullet from the Savage exactly through the middle of the other. Take your time and don’t miss, for probably we could not find another emu eggshell in Mount Lion.”

  The trooper loaded the Winchester and took up the specified position. When the rifle cracked the egg very slowly fell from its supporting tee, and Bony, picking it up, said: “See, the bullet has passed through the egg, making a very neat round hole through each side. With my penknife I will mark it with a ‘W’. Now the other, Mr Rowland.”

  The action of the bullet from the Savage rifle was markedly dissimilar, as was the report of the exploding cartridge. The egg collapsed at the moment its water content was whisked away in spray. But one small piece of shell remained, the rest having been dispersed in a thousand fragments. On that one piece of shell Bony scratched the letter “S”.

  “Thank you!” he said. “The experiment was entirely successful. Let us return to the office.”

  Again seated in his chair, with Sergeant Morris in position at the farther side of the paper-littered desk, Bony fell to making his eternal cigarette with the long thin fingers bequeathed him by his mother. With his head bent to the task he nevertheless now and then looked up at the stern military face of the police sergeant, a ghost of a smile playing about his mobile lips.

  “Once, I think, I told you that murder generally is a very sordid affair, yet to a man of my intelligence a crime very easily finalized,” he drawled softly. “The number of men—and doctors are included among them—men of mental ability who have tried and dismally failed to destroy the bodies of their victims, is remarkable. Perhaps the difficulties that confront a murderer desirous of utterly destroying the body of his victim should make law-abiding normal people very thankful. Equally thankful, too, the police who investigate crimes of this kind.”

  “I should say so,” Sergeant Morris interjected sharply.

  Bony waved his hand airily. “The chief and overwhelming evidence against a murderer is the victim’s body, or part of it. A body, or identifiable parts of a body, being found, convicts ninety-nine murderers in every hundred. The odd one escapes justice not through his own cleverness, nor by good luck, but because the investigating officer is a fool.”

  The sergeant frowned. Bony continued blandly: “In British law a charge of murder made when no body or part of a body is found is almost unknown. There is one case recorded, and one only. A woman named Perry and her two sons were hanged for the murder of a farm bailiff without the production of a body by the prosecution. It may be surmised, therefore, that when, a few years later, the supposed murdered bailiff turned up alive, he caused no little surprise. This case may be the cause of the judicatory authorities being very particular about making a human body the basis of a murder trial.

  “In any case, if a killer can manage to destroy without trace the body of his victim, his chance of escaping due punishment for the crime is excellent. You remember that I told you I knew six wholly different and effectual methods of destroying utterly a human body with agencies and implements obtainable by anyone. Windee has revealed to me a seventh.

  “I know now how the murder was committed and the body destroyed. I know that there were two, possibly three, men implicated in it. I know the name of one man, and may be excused for guessing the name of the second. The third man I do not yet know. To complete my case I want this third man’s name and also the motive.

  “You may say that to establish a motive for murder is the most important part of a prosecution. I agree. In this case, however, it has been necessary first to establish the fact of murder, because the body of Marks
, or any recognizable part of it, does not now exist. The discovery of the motive will indicate the third man, whom as yet I cannot name.”

  “Who are the other two?” Morris demanded.

  Bony’s smile contained a hint of scornful remonstrance.

  “I believe,” he said slowly, in a manner which implied that he believed nothing of the sort, “I believe that all great detectives in fiction, Mr Sherlock Holmes and Dr Thorndyke among them, never divulged their progress in a case until it was finished, so far as they were concerned.”

  “But, damn it, we are not book detectives!”

  “Your objection is perfectly legitimate, my dear Morris. On the other hand, although I am not a book detective, neither am I an ordinary policeman in plain clothes, despite my official rank and connections. I am a man who has never yet failed to finalize a ease allotted to me. Why? The answer is simple. I have from the beginning refused to be bound by red tape. I have never cared a tinker’s curse for chief commissioners, advancement in the service, instant dismissal from it, or any other of the many things that govern a policeman’s career.” Bony rose to his feet. “Nothing influences me in my profession but the elucidation of some mystery, which often is extremely simple. Permit me to leave you now. I have an appointment with Father Ryan. I am taking with me Marcus Aurelius and Virgil.”

  “Who the devil are they?” exploded Sergeant Morris.

  “They are, I think, strangers in Mount Lion,” replied Bony, walking out.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  “A Bloomin’ Corker”

  BONY PASSED an hour with Father Ryan, and the little priest, although he failed to convert the half-caste from Paganism, revelled in the luxury of a mental bath. The light and airy room which his host used as his study, the shelves of books on theology, history, biography, and philosophy, as well as the great table used for writing, delighted Bony, and made him feel a rare regret that he had not given his life to the practice of the arts instead of the detection of crime. When at last he rose to leave, Father Ryan waddled round the table and clasped in his the two hands of his visitor, exclaiming:

  “My son, you leave me with memories of a delightful conversation, and a little touched with sorrow that the Church failed to call you as a young man. What a missionary you would have made! What convincing arguments you would have put forward, and with what eloquence! Almost you have convinced me that the Greek philosophers were right and Christ wrong. You have touched my mind, but you have not weakened my faith. The reason why your philosophers are wrong, the reason why man ever marches forward and upward, is because of the faith which is within him in an ideal, which is God. Au revoir, and my heartfelt gratitude!”

  “Your reverence is kind—and a most worthy antagonist,” Bony replied, smiling down into the round chubby face. “I will call on you again before I leave the district, which I regret I shall have to do soon. I, too, say’ au revoir’!”

  At the gate the trooper joined him, asking him to return to the office, because Sergeant Morris wished some further talk with him. With a hint of amusement in his blue eyes, Bony entered the office, and with assumed resignation slipped into the vacant chair and at once proceeded to make a cigarette.

  “There are one or two points in this Marks case which I would like you to explain more fully,” the sergeant said persuasively.

  “Well, go ahead.”

  “You say that you know how Marks’s body was destroyed. Am I to understand that it was destroyed utterly?”

  “That is the fact I endeavoured to explain.”

  “It is going to be very difficult, then, to satisfy a judge and jury that Marks is dead.” For a moment Sergeant Morris paused. “Have you hope of bringing forward other evidence to prove it, or in an effort to prove it?”

  “Decidedly. I possess proof that Marks is dead, even though we cannot produce the body,” Bony said with a trace of triumph in his voice. “Even though we cannot produce the body, I can prove how he died.”

  “How can you prove that?”

  “By a little silver disk which might have come from the back of a wristlet watch, but did not.”

  “Explain, man! Damn it, explain!”

  “Not now, Morris. I am not quite ready. What is the visiting lady’s name?”

  “Thomas—Mrs Rose Thomas. Interested in her?”

  “Not personally,” answered the half-caste, faintly smiling. “She has business with Jeff Stanton. Ron is taking her to Windee this afternoon. By the way, if the reply from Headquarters does not arrive whilst I am in town, I want you to get it to me as soon as possible.” Bony rose to go, and added: “Never hurry in detecting crime. So many people scoff at coincidences, and yet coincidences are the toys of Father Time, and Father Time is pre-eminent as a crime investigator.”

  When Bony walked to the door of the office Sergeant Morris bit a fingernail. Of all the strange men he had come across during his long official career this half-caste surely was the strangest. His methods were unique, his philosophy of crime detection most original, yet for all that Morris felt utterly sure that Bony would be completely successful. There was the inevitability of fate in the man’s make-up.

  “Oh, by the way,” the half-caste drawled, returning to the desk, “you might put this stuff in your safe for security.”

  The sergeant, with widened eyelids, saw on the desk before him wad after wad of treasury notes which appeared with baffling quickness from various portions of Bony’s dress. “What the deuce...!” he began.

  “That is the money which Marks had with him at the time of his death,” interrupted Bony in the quietest of tones.

  “The devil!”

  “No. Marks, not the devil.” And before the astonished policeman could exclaim further Bony had vanished, and was heard swinging back the wicket-gate.

  It was then a little after noon, and the two stores were closed during the lunch hour. Knowing that a further twenty minutes was at his disposal, Bony sauntered to the hotel, and, seating himself in the shade of one of the flanking pepper-trees, he produced the letter with the Queensland postmark, opened it, and proceeded to read.

  Dearest Bony,

  Your letter written November 25th reached me this morning, and I am so glad to know that you are all right. All day I have been laughing at your description of Runta and the way you frightened her off marrying you. You be careful now, or I shall be losing you yet. I will send on the dress for her. A figured print one-piece garment in an out-size should suit her, and I do trust it will repair her broken heart.

  Remember, though, that if you don’t come home soon your Marie will be suffering a broken heart, a broken heart which will take all your attention and all your affection to mend....

  Come home, Bony dear! We all want you; and write soon to

  Marie.

  Smiling gently, the detective re-read the letter, and pictured in his mind the tall, robust figure, almost regal in its grace, and the dark brown face with its clear-cut features and wide-spaced fearless grey eyes. Every time he saw his wife, every time he thought of her, he experienced a sense of prideful satisfaction that she was his mate—she was so worthy to be the wife of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.

  He was still thinking of her and his family when the lunch-gong sounded from the hotel, and, seeing Ron coming from the direction of the store, he rose to meet him. They decided to have a drink before lunch.

  Within, they found Mr Bumpus in his shirt-sleeves drying glasses. With deep and intense boredom depicted on his round, red face, he served them with tantalizing slowness.

  “I’ll come along and give you a hand with the loading after lunch, if you like,” Bony volunteered to Ron.

  “The job’s done,” was the triumphant reply. “All I’ve got to do now is to do the errand for Miss Marion, collect the mail, have one more drink, and rope in our fair passenger. Then...”

  With the utmost caution Mr Bumpus leaned over the bar till his face was between their empty glasses and about on a level with them.
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  “She’s a corker!” he whispered. “Gonner stay at Windee at least one night, and got the lubrication’ arf hour ago. Two bottles uv whisky and one uv gin. Strike me pink! Fancy being married to ’er!”

  “Must have more money than I’ve got,” Ron commented.

  Mr Bumpus refilled their glasses. “She’s a bloomin’ corker—a bloomin’ corker,” he whispered again. “If she wus my wife, I’d—I’d...”

  “What?” inquired the delighted Bony.

  Mr Bumpus once more wormed himself across the bar. His face had become purple with honest indignation. He spoke with conviction: “I’d cut her ruddy throat!”

  He did not share their low laughter when they left the bar and walked along to the dining-room. Here, with all the windows open and the blinds three parts drawn, the air was a little cooler. There were three tables, and at one of these sat the lady who called herself Mrs Rose Thomas. On seeing them she smiled and invited them to sit with her. An anaemic young lady waited on them.

  In the darkened room Mrs Thomas did indeed appear youthful. She was gay, possibly a little too gay. Her small, very modern hat was pulled well down over her head, but beneath it was to be seen the highly peroxided hair. On her fingers there flashed several rings, whilst resting on her breast was an enormous diamond pendant which, if genuine, must have been worth considerably more than a hundred guineas. Throughout the meal she addressed herself entirely to the Englishman, without studiously avoiding Bony, and for this the detective was thankful, for it enabled him to observe her carefully and to listen.

  She appeared avid for information about the Stantons and about Windee. Regarding Jeff Stanton, she asked of Ron several questions at intervals. How old was he? What was he like in appearance? How long had he occupied Windee? Bony came to wonder what was her actual reason for visiting the squatter. Her hunger for information appeared excessive in a woman supposedly seeking employment as cook or maid, and when the time came for them to leave the table Bony had become deeply interested in her. Ron promised to be ready to leave at precisely two o’clock.