Murder down under b-4 Read online

  Bony could see no alteration of the furniture, the heavy articles occupying the same positions they had done when he had paid his secret visit. Door and windows were opened wide, the window blinds drawn to minimize the glare. Above the conversation rose the hum of the curious blowflies attracted by the scents of the meal.

  “You had quite an adventure last night,” the detective said when all were seated at the table.

  “Yes. We were so frightened,” Mrs Loftus told him with a wan smile. “We were thankful enough when day dawned. I feel horribly tired, having had barely four hours’ sleep.”

  “I am sure I shall sleep well tonight,” Miss Waldron said in more cheerful tones.

  “Tonight you need not be nervous, for that man won’t come back again,” Landon assured them with laughter.

  Miss Waldron shivered. “I hope not,” she said, adding when she turned to the detective: “Do you think you will be able to track the wretch?”

  “I have no fear of failure,” he replied egotistically, and then proceeded to lie with the calm assurance of Landon. “My mother was wonderfully adept in the art of tracking, and she trained my gift of observation, inherited from her.” Bony could not remember seeing his mother at any time in his life. “To see marks on the ground of the passage of some living thing that no white man can see does not depend entirely on vision. A blackfellow will see a track which the white man wouldn’t see through atelescope, because he does not understand what his unaided eyes show him. The lubras are better trackers than the men, for the men are less energetic as food foragers, and, therefore, less practised.”

  “Is it correct that you have worked for the police?” inquired Mrs Loftus.

  “On several occasions,” he replied frankly, his teeth flashing in a smile. “Yet they are hard masters, although the pay is good. I don’t like working for them. They are too suspicious. Because they cannot see so well the little tale-telling marks, they think, when a tracker faults, that he is lazy or is playing a game of his own.”

  “Tell us one of your tracking adventures, Mr Bony, will you?” Mrs Loftus entreated. “Let me fill your cup first.”

  “Thank you. Your coffee is delicious. If I bore you, tell me to stop.” Bony leaned back in his chair, idly stirring his coffee. “The most remunerative work given me by the police was related to theMetters case. You might remember it. No? Well, in nineteen twenty-four a little girl was horribly murdered on a farm fifty miles west of Toowoomba, Queensland. I happened, at the time, to be in Brisbane, and quite by accident a detective officer met me in Queen Street. To shorten my story, I set off when the price of my services was fixed at sixty-five pounds and expenses paid, because they get all the praise for the work a black tracker does for them.

  “I reached the scene of the crime three days after it had been committed. The child had been murdered in a small block of uncleared timber. She was returning from school, following a path through the timber as she had done for several years, and it was obvious that the killer waited hidden there. It was a most shocking affair altogether, and, apart from the money, I determined to get him.

  “I can understand and have a little sympathy for theman who kills whilst influenced by alcohol or passionate anger, but I have none-and no normal person could have any-for a person who cold-bloodedly plans such a crime against an innocent girl. The murderer in this instance made no effort to conceal his tracks till he reached a main road two miles away. Once there he kept close to the crown of the road, where the wheels of passing traffic would obliterate his tracks.

  “I had to examine every foot of eleven miles of one side of the road and seven miles of the other side before I found where he had left the road in his socked feet. In his socks he walked fifteen miles, taking every advantage of hard surfaces and several watercourses. It was ten o’clock in the morning when I started, in company with three mounted policemen, and it was six o’clock that evening when I pointed out to them the murderer’s hiding place.”

  “Where was he hiding?” simultaneously demanded the women.

  Bony, looking from one to the other, laughed softly, a little triumphantly, for he had captured their interest. His gaze fell to his plate, on which he began to butter a piece of bread.

  “WhenMetters saw us crossing his paddocks he barred himself into his house, which, like this one, had only one door. He was armed with two rifles, and not only refused to surrender, but threatened to shoot anyone who went in to arrest him.

  “Many of the neighbours came in their cars. A cordon was drawn round the house which at night was illuminated by the headlights of motor-cars. The fifth dayMetters rushed out, firing a rifle and killing one man before he was shot dead.”

  “How dreadful!” exclaimed Mrs Loftus.“Didn’t the police give the man a chance so that he might stand this trial?”

  “I think it was as well he was shot dead,” Bony said quietly. “At the time he came out there were more than two hundred very angry men, and only seven policemen, surrounding the small house. Police reinforcements were on their way. The crowd knew that. They wanted to fire the house. Metters knew it was but a matter of time before the crowd would burn his place down, and that when he did run out and was not killed the crowd would throw him back into the flames. When he was killed the police were hustled away until it was established that he was really dead. It would be impossible to imagine a more disappointed crowd.”

  “Dreadful!” murmured Mrs Loftus.

  “It was a pity they shot him dead,” her sister said fiercely. Turning to her, Bony said:

  “I believe that the utmost penalty the fool law inflicts on the killers of little children is ridiculously disproportionate to the enormity of the crime. Not being a Christian, I am not swayed by sickly sentiment. However, I have read your Bible and believe in the Old Testament’s statement of justice so aptly condensed into the phrase, ‘An eye for an eye.’ To accompany the painless death of such a monster with legal and religious ceremonial is but to mock the little victim’s cries for justice and vengeance. I am uncertain that vengeance belongs wholly to God. The torturers of little children should be pegged down on an ants’ nest.”

  “Oh!” whispered Mrs Loftus, her face white, her eyes staring.

  “So they should,” Miss Waldron said with emphatic agreement.

  “Cruelty will be stamped out only by cruelty,” was Bony’s opinion.

  “And yet the cruelty of theMiddle Ages did not prevent crime,” Landon pointed out.

  “Soft-hearted leniency hasn’t diminished crime,” Bony returned swiftly. “The tortures of theMiddle Ages were crude, and men were then better able to stand pain than they are today. The discovery of anaesthetics has made us increasingly sensitive to pain. Man, a few years ahead, will faint when he cuts his finger.” Bony was quite calm when he made these statements. Pushing back his chair, he got to his feet, when he said: “If you will excuse me, I will run over your burglar’s tracks. I would like you ladies to remain in the house so that you will not confuse them. If you accompany me, Landon, please keep behind me always.”

  Outside the house he asked:

  “Can you tell me precisely where you stood when you fired at the man?”

  “Yes,” Landon assented. “I was about four yards west of that broken-down grindstone. I fell over it when I was running after him.”

  “Good! Now, please, don’t talk.”

  Walking to the grindstone, the half-caste saw the tracks left by Landon wearing slippers. He saw, east of the grindstone, the tracks of a man coming from the cart shed, turning abruptly eastward, where he staggered, saving himself with his hands, and then turning to the edge of the stubble paddock. The prowler had come from the direction of the main road and had returned to it after he was shot.

  Without speaking, Bony proceeded to investigate on behalf of John Muir. Pretending to follow a track, he circled the cart shed before crossing the short distance to Landon’s camp, which he also circled.

  “Missed anything?” he asked the hire
d man.

  “No. Did he go into my tent?”

  “If he did, it was while you were at the dance. Your constant passage through the entrance has wiped out any tracks he might have left. But I think he did go into your tent.”

  Slowly then the tracker walked to the dam, to find between the mullock banks a thirty-foot square of water fenced from the stock. A windmill raised water to a galvanized-iron tank on tall supports, from which it gravitated through pipes to the trough behind the stables and to the house.

  Now southward walked Bony, passing the snarling dogs chained securely to their kennels of case boards, to a small shed containing superphosphate bags and other lumber. Fowls scratched in the shade. From that place he went on to the long haystack, and for the first time Landon offered a question.

  “Did he come here?” he asked.

  “He did,” Bony replied cheerfully. Bending forward, he pointed to the straw-strewn ground. “There is the mark of his right foot. Can’t you see it?”

  “Be damned if I can!”

  When he stood up Bony was smiling. Walking along one side of the stack, he noted the holes at its base where the dogs had scratched in the ground in search of coolness and the fowls had scratched to clean themselves. At the south end of the stack the shadow was longest, for the sun then was at the zenith. Here the detective paused to stand pinching his bottom lip.

  “Did the fellow come here?” Landon demanded.

  With his index finger Bony pointed at the ground.

  “He passed along there,” he said, impatient at the other’s doubt; then impassive for a moment, a man sorely puzzled. Acockbird, perched on a pole leaning against the stack, crowed vigorously. The blowflies hummed like a harvester machine in a far paddock, anxious to remain in the deep shadow, swarming in the crevices among the straw.

  Bony’s vacant stare became focused upon Landon. Landon’s mouth was a straight line, the lips drawn inward. His peculiar blue eyes were wide, expressionless, their gaze fixed on Bony’s face. Not a muscle of his face moved. It seemed almost that he waited. Bony said:

  “I cannot understand the interest your burglar took in the dam, your tent, the superphosphate shed, and in this haystack. You know, it does seem that Loftus, if it were he, hoped to discover an object which might be outside as well as inside the house.”

  Abruptly the detective moved away, walking direct to the house, where he was met by the anxious and curious women. He told them that the burglar had first visited the house and then had wandered about the homestead until he was shot.

  Once again at the broken grindstone he followed the man’s real tracks to the edge of the stubble and at once began to zigzag across it. Seven times he pointed out to the interested Landon a drop of blood on yellow straw. Unable longer to see footprints on the broken and matted straw, the drops of blood few white men would have seen blazed the trail for Bony.

  On the far headland of the paddock he again saw tracks, now crossing a narrow, iron-hard ribbon inside the rabbit fence, and now beyond the fence crossing the wider and grassier ribbon between farm fence and road. The tracks turned south along the main road, but Bony turned northward, walking up the long sand slope till he was about midway to the summit, when he stopped and turned to Landon, saying:

  “Here your man climbed into a car. His tracks go no farther. He wore several pairs of socks over his boots. His size in boots is either seven or eight. He would weigh about eleven stone. It might have been Loftus had not the dogs been lured away.”

  “It was George Loftus. He takes an eight boot.”

  Bony laughed. “Have it your own way,” he said lightly.

  “It must be Loftus. Who the devil else would come poking about and take nothing that we know? Anyway, Mrs Loftus will appreciate what you have done for her. Let’s go back for a cup of tea, and then I’ll take you to Burra in the car.”

  “I will not put you to that trouble, Mick, thank you all the same. I’ll leave you here and walk back. I shall enjoy the walk. Convey my compliments to Mrs Loftus and to Miss Waldron, and thank them for me for that excellent breakfast.”

  “Getting the car will be no trouble.”

  “Really, I would prefer to walk,” Bony said with smiling finality. “I hope to meet you all someday soon. Perhaps at a dance. Aurevoir.”

  They smiled at each other at parting as two dogs undecided whether to be friends or not. Bony, walking down thenorth slope to the old York Road, wondered about many things. He wondered why Mrs Loftus and her paramour were so perturbed by the theft of a candle; why they were so anxious to know who it was whom Landon had shot; why Landon had shot instead of first tackling the prowler; why he said he shot him with a rifle, and why he had not produced the rifle to back his statement.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mr Jelly Is Shot

  ERIC HURLEY was three days late returning to Burracoppin. With strange thoughtlessness, probably due to inexperience of sandy country, the Rabbit Department had permitted the farmers south of Burracoppin to clear the land to within one chain of the fence on its west side, subsequent stubble fires burning off the low bushes which are the natural protection against wind-driven sand.

  When Inspector Gray returned from his north trip of four hundred and twenty-one miles, Bony inquired of him the whereabouts of Eric Hurley. Gray explained the reason of Hurley’s delay-sand against the fence-and on hearing that the detective wished to interview his subordinate he offered the loan of the government truck for the afternoon.

  Bony found the boundary rider shovelling sand from the fence at the fifteen-mile peg. It was a sweltering hot day, certainly not a day suitable for sand shovelling. The place where Hurley was working was on high ground at the southern edge of a wide belt of wheat country, a district which bore the name of a State governor. The land fell away east and west of the straight fence and adjacent road, tree- and bush-cleared land with the horizon flung back for a dozen miles, thousands of acres of ripe wheat and thousands of acres of fallow roughly forming a vast chessboard. Here and there the giant sloths devoured the wheat with a thin, purring whine of pleasure and a halo of dust. Along a distant road the leaping dust clouds indicated the speeding trucks and the slower, lumbering, horse-drawn wagons. The granite rocks, lying along the horizon like recumbent reptilian monsters, breathed and lived in the fierce heat haze which caused the wheatears on the near rises to a dance as the chorus in asuperpastoral play. To emerge on that wheat belt from the bordering bush was as though one stepped out from a church.

  “Hullo, Bony! Got the inspector’s job?” exclaimed Hurley, leaning on his shovel, which a second later he dropped. Then vaulting the fence with the ease of long practice, he came round to the off side of the truck and sat down on the running board in the shade.

  “Which inspector’s job do you mean?” Bony asked mildly.

  “Gray’s, of course.”

  “I am informed that you know I am a police inspector,” Bony said a little sternly.

  “Oh! Who told you?”

  “Sunflower.”

  “Then you know that I learned about you by accident. The boss was careless about that letter, but I’ve told no one. Lucy made me promise.”

  For a little while the detective stared down into the strong, lean face. That Hurley had kept a promise delighted him.

  “I am glad to hear you say that, my dear Eric,” he said. “A man who can successfully guard his tongue will never want for friends. Let us go along to your temporary camp and boil the billy for tea. It’s too hot to shovel sand just now, and I’ll make up your lost time by working for an hour with you this evening.”

  And then, while they sipped tea from enamel pannikins:

  “You must have thought a lot about Mr Jelly’s mysterious absences. Have you any idea of the reason behind them?”

  “The old feller’s all right,” Hurley said without hesitation. “A bitstrait-laced, and a crank on one thing. If he’d give up collecting murders, Lucy and Sunflower would be a lot happier.”

&
nbsp; “You would, of course, like to have those girls more happy?”

  “Naturally. But there’s nothing crook about the old man,” Eric loyally maintained. “Some reckons he goes after a woman, being a widower, and others say he goes away on a bender. Well, a man is entitled to do both-within limits. A man who indulges in either near his family is a blackguard, which old Jelly is not. I don’t thinkit’s either women or wine, because the old chap always comes home richer than when he went away.”

  “He has gone away again. He was not home when Lucy got up on Sunday morning,” Bony stated.

  “It’s a pity he can’t stay home for the harvest. It leaves old Middleton shorthanded, and he’s not as young as he used to be. Lucy will be worried again.”

  “She is doubly worried this time, because her father was wounded when he went away early Sunday morning.”

  “Wounded!”Hurley echoed.

  “Yes. He was prowling about the Loftus farm and Mick Landon shot him.”

  “What the devil was the old feller doing messing about the Loftus farm?”

  “That I do not know. He was shot about a quarter past three in the morning. He went home wounded. I tracked him Sunday evening. Lucy told me that one of his bed sheets was torn up, presumably for bandages, and there was a tinge of blood in the wash-basin.”

  “But what was he doing on the Loftus farm at that hour?”

  “We do not know.”

  “What does Mick Landon think about it? Why did he shoot?”

  “Landon does not know that it was Mr Jelly he shot. No one knows that Mr Jelly was shot, other than Lucy andmyself, and now you.”

  “Then how did you know? How did you come to track him?”

  “Because I saw him shot.”

  “Then what were you doing on the Loftus farm?”

  “Having a look round.”