The Mountains Have a Secret Page 17

  “Good evening!”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Bony’s Dispatch

  GLEN SHANNON touched his head wound, looked at his fingers, and registered slight disappointment that red blood was not smeared on them. His eyes held pain, but his voice was as whimsical as usual.

  “Had the idea I was cracked by a bullet,” he drawled. “Certainly had that idea. Musta been a meteor.”

  “Bullet all right,” snapped Bony, sitting back on his heels and resting against the monolith beside the American. “It creased the right side of your head. How d’you feel?”

  “Pretty wild, Bony, old pal. I knew there was something I forgot to buy me at Dunkeld. Now I know. I forgot to include aspirin when I laid in them stores. How come?”

  “Tell me what happened,” commanded Bony, and Shannon’s underlip was thrust outward rebelliously, then was sucked back. The voice, the intensity of the blue eyes which he encountered quelled him when guns had failed. “How many horsemen were there?”

  Shannon groaned. “Only two,” he replied. “I was a bit careless with the second hombre. Having been mooching around most of last night, I decided I’d camp and I chose a place between two stone slabs. That was early this morning, and I slept good and sound until a crow somewhere handy woke me with his cawing. Instead of waking up properly, I mumbled a curse or two and drifted off again. Then I heard a guy say: ‘Hi, you!’ and I sits up and sees two characters on horses, and one of ’em looking down at me over his rifle sights. They weren’t nice characters, not like you, Bony. They had a mean look about ’em, and when they tell me to stand up and reach for the sky, I slips a knife into my hand as I’m scrambling to my feet.

  “I’m not at all pleased with that crow who musta give me away to these characters, and the one aiming the rifle tells the other one to dismount and come up behind to search me for weapons, as the guy is getting off his horse, and the other guy is saying how pleased he is to meet up with me after I had refused to stay and drink with him that night I left the hotel, I recalls what Pa advised to do in a situation like this. So I sorta stared at a bush behind him and nodded slightly, and that caused him to relax a trifle and so—take the knife.

  “The other guy dives behind a rock with his rifle, and as I’m in the open, I can’t pause to talk to him. He shoots twice as I’m on my way, but I’m not travelling in the same direction more’n one second at a time, and the only shooting he’s ever done has been on a rifle-range. To be real tough, a guy has to be fast, and me, I was fast, having been brought up that way. The second guy wasted time getting on his horse again. I got a good lead, but he soon reduced it and slid off his horse and did his stuff. I quite enjoyed the noise he made, and he wasn’t doing me any harm until I was sorta careless. He nipped me above the ear with a bullet, according to you, and while I was drifting into slumber I finished the war as far as he was concerned. You know how ’tis. A guy can be easily bumped off when he’s unconscious.”

  Shannon having finished speaking, Bony made no comment as he was summing up the action and trying to assess its likely results.

  “You can’t blame me, Bony, old pal,” Shannon went on. “I didn’t start the war, honour bright. There was me, lying comfortably asleep. I wasn’t sleeping on no private property, like Baden Park.”

  “Where did you leave your pack?” Bony cut in.

  “Where? Now lemme think. Where did I leave that pack?”

  “Take it easy,” Bony ordered. “I’ll go after those horses. We must get away from here. I have work for you to accomplish tonight.”

  Shannon rested his head upon his folded arms and thus did not see Bony’s departure in the gloom to stalk the dead men and relieve the bodies of identification documents and, with the assurance he did not feel, collect the horses and bring them to the monolith. Shannon was ordered to mount, and in single file Bony led the way eastward and then down off the range to stop only at a shallow but swift-running creek. He watered the horses whilst the American stepped into the water, knelt in the stream, and laved his aching head.

  “Can you remember now where you left your pack?” he asked when Shannon joined him and said that the icy water had given relief.

  “No, I can’t—not yet. It’s mighty peculiar, not remembering. But I will.”

  “Had you seen either of those two men before today?”

  “Yes, both of ’em at the saloon several times. One of them arrived in the car that night I left, as I told you. They’re Baden Park sheep-herders.”

  “And do you remember that one of them pointed a rifle at you and told you to get up and raise your arms?”

  “A guy can forget where he left his wallet or his watch, or even his pack, but he don’t forget looking into a rifle-barrel,” replied the American seriously.

  “What have you been doing since that morning Simpson burned the body?”

  “Mooching around some. I saw a truck deliver beer and stores at the hotel and take on stores and petrol to Baden Park. It didn’t come back. The driver was one of Benson’s herders. I saw Simpson leave the hotel with his mother and Ferris and return in three hours. That’s about all.”

  “H’m! D’you know where we are?”

  Shannon gazed at the mountain crest supporting the sky in which still remained a little light.

  “Guess we’re not so far from the Dunkeld road,” he replied.

  “We are about a mile from it. Do you think you could locate your bike?”

  “Sure. It’ll be safe enough.”

  “You are going to set off for Dunkeld right away,” Bony stated. “You are going to take a message from me to the policeman stationed there. After you have delivered the message you may return and carry on with your war, because you cannot be more deeply sunk than you are for having killed two Australian stockmen.”

  “Say_____” Shannon began, and was cut off.

  “It ought not to take more than an hour to reach Dunkeld on your machine,” Bony continued firmly. “Another hour to return makes it only two hours away from the battlefield. You can easily spare me that little period of time, and I know you will most gladly do so. Have you ever considered the possibility that your sweetheart may be alive?”

  “No!” The word was flung at Bony, and to his forearm was clamped a vice of flesh and bone. “What d’you know, Bony, old pal? Come on, tell a guy—quick.”

  “I know nothing, and because her body has not been found, I refuse to believe that she is dead. Therefore, I proceed on the assumption that she’s alive. It is a possibility which we must accept, and so have to use our brains with greater facility than we use our pistols and our knives. You were in the Army, and you must appreciate the relationship of an army to its general. I have elected myself the general because it is the general’s task to think. I want two hours of your time. Do I get it?”

  Shannon said: “You do,” and added nothing.

  They mounted and rode forward in the dark, and Shannon gave proof of his bushmanship by sighting the ranges against the sky so that when they reached the road it was within half a mile of his hidden motor-cycle. As the American was removing the waterproof sheeting from it, Bony asked:

  “What is your opinion of those two riders? D’you think they were sent out to locate you?”

  “No. I reckon they happened to be passing and the crow roused their suspicions.”

  “I think you’re right,” Bony said. “They must have come from the east, otherwise I would have crossed their tracks when I went up the slope to investigate. They could have been returning from Dunkeld, taking a short cut to the entrance gate instead of following the road round past the hotel.”

  He assisted the American to push the machine to the road, confident that the noise of its engine would be beaten off from the hotel by the wind blowing lazily from the north. Shannon bestrode the machine, started and warmed the engine, and then cut it dead at Bony’s command.

  “I must write a little note,” Bony said. “We will sit at the side of the road and you sha
ll strike matches to give me light.”

  The note was written in three minutes, sealed in an envelope, and handed to the American.

  “You have to contact Constable Groves without any delay. If he is out of town on duty, you must still contact him and give this report. He will at once proceed to Glenthompson because the telephone system in this district may be, shall we say, defective. From Glenthompson he will contact Inspector Mulligan at Ballarat. He will inform Mulligan that I request the arrest of both Simpson and Benson for the murder of Edward O’Brien and that I require a large party to raid Baden Park. He will also inform Mulligan that you will be waiting at the entrance gate to Baden Park Station to give him further information. Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “Having given the note to Constable Groves, you will return to this place, park your machine in the scrub, and mount the horse I will leave tethered close by. You will then ride to those locked gates inside which Simpson burned the body. Take with you a spanner to remove the bolted hinges, the size of the nuts being one inch and a half. By removing the hinges of one gate you will be able to draw both gates clear of the road and thus leave it open for Mulligan. Then you will wait for Mulligan at the electrically controlled main gate, and on his arrival, if I am not with you, you will inform him that I am at the homestead and that he is to take the place by storm and arrest everyone on sight. Is that clear too?”

  “Clear as battery water, Bony, old pal, but_____”

  “Well?”

  “When ought the cops to arrive at the main gate?”

  “Before daybreak. I shall be counting on that hour. You will do nothing whatever to upset the peace of the summer night—and should you find it necessary to take action to preserve the peace of the summer night you will do so discreetly. Remember that you have already shot one man and knifed another. Remember, too, the most important factor is that swift and silent approach by the police might well be vital to the safety of your sweetheart and her friend—if they still live. Now get along and don’t spare the horses.”

  When the noise of Shannon’s machine faded into the silence beyond the sound of the slight wind in the trees, Bony was smoking a cigarette and reading the papers he had taken from the bodies of the stockmen, reading with the aid of a small fire carefully hidden in dense scrub. He learned that the name of one was Paul Lartz, a Czechoslovakian subject naturalised in NVPU, and the other was named William Spicer, according to a letter addressed by Bertram & Company, Melbourne, who stated that letters received for Spicer would be forwarded to Baden Park. There was a second letter forwarded by Bertram & Company from a man signing himself Hans Stromberg. It was dated June NN, NVQS, from a P.O.W. camp north of Victoria, the writer expressing fervent hopes of being soon returned to Germany.

  The camp, Bony recalled, confined German soldiers found to be dangerous members of the Nazi party.

  Germans and Germany! How often had some association with Germany cropped up in this investigation! Doubtless Spicer was an alias for a German. Bertram was a German name. In fact, Bertram was a German. The Czech could be a Sudeten German. Then there were the Bensons, whose father’s name was Schoor, said by old Simpson to have been Austrian or Swiss. Organs from Germany. Ah! And stockmen who rode like soldiers and who gave careless salutes which could be the Nazi salutes carefully disguised.

  The Bensons had been in Germany in NVPV. Through the war years they had worked and lived quietly and had made money. In ’QR they had made the new road over the mountain and past the hotel to the Dunkeld road. After the war, after ’QR, they had entertained parties of people said by old Simpson to be unlike the type of visitors who toured the Grampians and stayed at the hotel over Christmas and Easter, parties who “throw out their chests like they own the Grampians.” Germans!

  It was a thoughtful man who rode in the dark over bad country to the hidden camp amid the boulders at that place he had burrowed under the great fence. There he ate the remainder of his cooked food and smoked two cigarettes from the last of his preserved ends.

  Ten minutes later he was standing inside the fence. He looked at the stars. It wanted two minutes till ten-thirty.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Rebels in White

  MINUS the heavy swag and gunny-sack, Bony travelled light and fast, keeping parallel with the fence to reach the gate and follow the road. The night was dark though the stars were clear, and he did not see the wire over which he almost tripped. It had been dragged away from the fence after a repair job, but it was still tough and flexible.

  He had left it behind when an idea halted him, sent him back to break off about four feet of it by constantly bending and opening the bend. One end of the broken-off piece he bent into a long hook, slipped the hook down through his belt, from which it was suspended something like a sword. A length of heavy wire is a handy weapon against men and dogs.

  The gate was shut, but it opened when he stood on the metal bar inset into the roadway. It closed again shortly after he removed his weight. He thought of placing a boulder on the bar to keep the gate open for Mulligan and discarded the idea because someone arriving or departing before he was ready would give the alarm.

  Keeping well off the road, Bony arrived eventually at an open gateway in a massive hedge guarded by a plain wire fence, and because the wind was coming from the north and there being the likelihood of dogs, he skirted the hedge to the south and so came to the anchored aeroplane and the wicket gate through which the passengers had been conducted.

  Beyond the wicket gate and through the short tunnel in the hedge was the house, several of its rooms being brilliantly illuminated. To the left of the house was the observatory. The men’s quarters and the outbuildings must be situated on the far side.

  Having unlaced his boots and hidden them in the hedge, he made his way through the garden and on to the lawn laid before the front of the house, moving like a wisp of fog in a lightless dungeon.

  The house was the usual bungalow type and built three feet above ground, this side being skirted by a wide veranda having four steps to it along its entire length. From the lawn it was not possible to see the lower portion of the rooms beyond the open french windows.

  Bony spent five minutes assuring himself that none other was in the garden, and then he slipped along the black bar between two of the broad ribbons of light falling half-way across the lawn, to float up the veranda steps and gain the shadow against the wall between two pairs of windows. The murmur of voices rose to clarity as he edged one eye round a window frame.

  The size of the room, the electroliers, the tapestries on the walls, the long table of gleaming walnut, the floor covering, the high-backed chairs; the two women and the twelve men seated at the table, the sergeant-major of a butler, and the huge portrait against the end wall, all comprised but a hazy background to the presentation of two young women arrayed entirely in white.

  Seated at the head of the table was the man who had watched the burning of O’Brien’s body. At the far end of the table sat the man who had conveyed the body on the dray. Upon Benson’s right hand and on his left sat a woman, middle-aged but preserved by all the’ arts, big-framed, and stiff. Like Benson and James Simpson, the other men were in formal evening clothes. Directed by the butler, the two women in white served the host and his guests.

  The conversation was conducted in a language with which Bony was unfamiliar. It was a harsh, masculine tongue, and the men and women who spoke it were masculine and harsh and handsomely arrogant. They sat stiffly, moved jerkily, like subalterns at mess when the general is present. No one smiled. They were of one race, blond and square. The men looked corseted, save Simpson, who was not of them.

  The serving maids! One was a brunette, slim and pretty. The other’s hair gleamed like the aftermath of a sunset. She was taller than her companion and more robust. She was worth any young man’s voyage across the world.

  It had been logical to assume that these two young women had wandered off the road and had perished in
the bush. It had been logical to assume that they had been murdered because they had stumbled upon a dreadful crime or a tremendous secret. It had been logical even to assume that they had been kidnapped to appease the hunger of lascivious brutes, but to have been kidnapped into domestic service Bony had not permitted himself to assume.

  Domestic service in Australia, even in this ultra-democratic age, is not impossible to obtain. The Bensons possessed the wherewithal to induce girls from Dunkeld, and even Melbourne, to come to Baden Park. Why, then, kidnap two tourists and compel them to domestic service? Why, when such an act, if discovered, would surely ruin them?

  When discovered! Perhaps it had never been intended that it be discovered.

  That these two girls had been kidnapped was surely true because they had not been seen after they left the hotel; they had not communicated with their parents and friends since leaving Dunkeld. That they had been impressed into domestic service was only too obvious, for rebellion was in both faces and even in the manner in which they walked to and from the serving bench.

  Their fate was plain enough now. Old Simpson and Carl Benson between them had drawn the picture. James Simpson had known that the Bensons could not employ domestic servants because of something they had to keep hidden. Benson had referred to surrendering to his sister’s demand. So James Simpson had brought the two hotel guests at Baden Park to be inspected by Cora Benson, to be approved of by her, to be claimed by her from her brother, who had engineered the kidnapping.

  They three, the Bensons, brother and sister, and Simpson, were au fait with this crime upon the persons of two Australian women, and the other woman and the other ten men must also be au fait with it.