Bony and the Mouse Page 18

  “At some time in the past you, Sam, fell out with Mrs Joyce, and you concentrated your affection on Kat, and made her your heiress. Kat was the bar between Fred Joyce and your money. In short, the idea was to remove the bar by progressive steps, and at the same time build up an unbreakable frame about a young man whose reputation before coming to Daybreak was bad. He, therefore, championed the young man all the way through, so that, when his final step had been taken, he’d be the last person to be considered in such a role. To champion the underdog and frame him for the murders brought him right against Melody Sam and all his property. Not the first time in criminal history that a man has committed several murders to reach the one person standing in his way, thus evading suspicion.

  “Joyce foresaw that, following the removal of Katherine Loader, her grandfather would be compelled to turn to his other granddaughter. Katherine was to be the last murder, and the series would be cleared up with the hanging of Tony Carr.

  “The murder of the lubra gave him what he thought was an excellent start. That killing was tribal business. By chance he happened to see it done, and he blackmailed Iriti, who was to pay by imposing bad eyesight on the trackers when called to assist the police on the murders of Mrs Lorelli and Moss, and thus preserve his building of the frame against Tony Carr.

  “He was approximately Carr’s weight and foot size, and practise enabled him to copy Tony’s limp. The price of blackmail was: one, to make no positive report on who wore the sandshoes when Mrs Lorelli and the boy were killed, although normally the trackers would know it wasn’t Tony, and that it was a person imitating his walk; and, two, they were to state definitely, when they tracked after the killing of Kat Loader, that it was Tony Carr.

  “All beautifully tidy if, when on his last murder, Joyce hadn’t tripped, and in anger forgot to limp. I am sure, Tony, you would never forget to limp, because you cannot stop limping.”

  “The rotten, dirty, blackhearted_____”

  “Now, Sam, that’ll do,” Bony chided, and stopped him like shutting off a siren. “I am convinced that Mrs Joyce has no knowledge of all I have outlined. Now you will understand how this is a classic case of the police knowing without the shadow of doubt who committed a dastardly crime, and not possessing evidence clear enough to gain a conviction.”

  “As yet,” snarled Tony Carr. “He done right by me. He give me things. He was decent to me when other people bashed me down. And all the time he was going to do that to me. You’re all the same—all rotten stinkers. A feller can’t trust no one.”

  Quietly Bony said: “There is one person, Tony, you can trust right now, and without any doubts, and you know who she is.”

  Tony rose and strode off into the darkness, and the men sat on and thoughtfully smoked. Eventually Sam said:

  “He’ll come good. I’ll look after him.”

  Sam and his assistants were half way up the slope to Daybreak when they were halted. They turned towards the invisible forest and strained their ears. In the camp Harmon and Bony also directed their eyes to the invisible forest. From it, from the very heart of it, a voice came to them, screaming defiance; so small a voice, so lonely, that it might have come falling down through space from one of the unwinking stars.

  The man squatting over the little ceremonial fire lifted his head, and turned his face to Bony and the policeman. The white teeth gleamed as the mouth smiled with triumph.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The Mouse

  1

  THE MAN who trudged over the light-red sand deposited on the firm earth, and on which the mulgas stood like toy trees, was hotly angry. That damned barman! He had always felt there was something wrong with his front. He was too easy, too la-di-da, and too thick with Harmon from the very day he came from out of the bush.

  He should have shot him cold when he had him at the end of his rifle, instead of being tricked into thinking he was a half-abo dope.

  It was no good kicking himself to death, not now. He had a job ahead which would need clear thinking. He was in a bad jam, but no jam was ever so bad a feller couldn’t force his way out. He could lie up at the ceremonial rocks and nut things out. There he would be safe enough from Harmon and that blasted barman, if he took a hand in the game, and as for the abos, well, even if they came into it, which wasn’t likely, they wouldn’t run the risk of a killing, not on their ceremonial grounds. Anyway, if it came to the worst, and it might, he’d do a lot more killing before they got him.

  Once he stopped to lower the sack of food to the ground and wipe his face. He glanced back, and could see his footprints winding in and out of the green-brown trunks to merge finally into this plastic forest. Leaving those tracks couldn’t be helped. He wasn’t Tarzan to swing himself from tree to tree, and there was no other way to avoid leaving his trail. There were no areas of broken surface rock over which he could skip and jump, not like that country away to the north where he could trick even the abos.

  Hoisting the sack to a shoulder, and with the rifle slung over the other, he pressed on. Tracks! Where the hell had he gone off the rails that night he killed Kat? Yes, that was what the barman said Harmon had said. He remembered tripping over that blasted root, and Harmon had said that Tony Carr had forgotten to limp, or that he had forgotten to limp like Tony Carr.

  That was a snag all right, forgetting to limp after all the practising he’d done, so that he’d come to limp like Carr without thinking to do it. Well, so what! The blacks couldn’t have told Harmon. Who else? Only that barman chap. Creepy kind of bird. Never seemed to notice a bloke exceptin’ sometimes, and then his eyes were steady and kind of calculating. But the blacks must be behind Harmon. He’d sent for them, and Nat had been told to climb the poppet head to signal when they came. And they had had young Tony planted in the shed behind the compound. Nothing made sense, and yet, by hell, it did.

  Anyhow, it could wait. He could see the stones of the ceremonial ground between the set-up of trees, and the open space widened at his approach and there was the heap of rocks that would be a fortress he could defend to the last kick.

  The accompanying dark cloud lifted when he left the trees and sunlight became strong, or so it seemed. He kicked a marker stone savagely out of his way, walked through the stone-marked passage to the head of the design, and so reached the rocks and ended his flight. It was good to be surrounded by them, to remove the weight of the tucker he had brought. And plenty of cold, clear water in the rock hole.

  Frederick Joyce settled into his fortress. There was a handy place where he could lie comfortable, and command every yard of this open space.

  Here he was one up on the aborigines, anyway. Somewhere close was their treasure house where they kept their pointing bones, and their rainstones, their father and mother churinga stones. And there were the dead ones all around, too, and they’d all stand up and go to market if one drop of blood was spilled on this place. The abos wouldn’t try for him, not here they wouldn’t. Harmon and the others might, and then the abos might start something with them.

  2

  Nothing moved; not a leaf of the distant trees, not a bird. There were no rabbits, no jerboa rats, no banded ant-eaters. The only tracks he had seen of anything living were those he himself had made. It was a great forest, anyone would have to admit. He had seen grass growing, following a good rain. But it hadn’t rained since early last spring. Must have been August; eight months back, and the ground here must be extra porous, because even after the rain and the grass sprouted, it didn’t last long.

  No wind to blow it away if there was grass. Quiet spell. Often happened at this time of year. Quiet was right. Joyce listened, and could detect no sound. It was so quiet that if the sun crackled he could have heard it.

  When night came the soundlessness was emphasised by the elimination of sight. The mind, occupied by day with what it registers through the eyes, by night seeks to register objects by sounds, and under normal circumstances succeeds.

  At first Joyce was confident that he
would hear the approach of humans in this sound void. He became so sure of this that throughout this first night he slept, if fitfully, and when day broke, ate a breakfast of cold beef and bread.

  Again he surveyed the scene, which was not even fractionally altered from the previous day. Nothing moved in the motionless air save the smoke from his cigarette. He heard nothing save when he sniffed or breathed heavily, and as Bony had experienced when gazing over the salt lake, so did Joyce come to be impressed by what he saw, as a picture without perspective, a flat surface.

  The rising sun gave warmth which he didn’t need. He cleaned the rifle, which required no such attention. He counted his stock of cartridges, and if he hit the bull’s-eye every time, he would achieve two hundred and three dead men. Then he fell to tossing rock chips to strike against a boulder, and found the sound pleasing. As hour followed hour and still nothing moved, he began to doubt that Harmon or the aborigines were taking any interest in him. This puzzled him, then dismayed him, eventually angered him. He was all set to make a last stand, and no one would act the scene with him.

  It was not until the afternoon that the tension waned and reaction found him mentally exhausted to the point that he slept without warning. On waking he was mentally calm, and, after a swift survey of the surroundings, he ate, and drew water from the rock hole with the aborigines’ tin bucket.

  There had been no attack, and still no sign of it. Harmon hadn’t dared to try it on in broad daylight, and the blacks most likely had gone on strike. The night could be different, and night wasn’t far off. At long last the sun set, and, the shadows having departed with it, there remained the countless identical trees standing on the ground of salmon-pink sand, which in the gloaming appeared to shine in rivalry with the evening sky. Then the trees drew away and the white stones of the ceremonial ground whitened still more and looked just like the sand-polished skulls of the aborigines supposed to be buried hereabout. These sank from sight, and only the darkening sky was left—a circular plane of stars cold and remote.

  The objects he could no longer see became magnified and took to themselves personality. They were at first benign. Then they were contemptuous. He could not hear them, but they were discussing him. Yet, it wasn’t the trees whispering about him; it was Harmon and that yardman and Iriti and his bucks. If only he could hear something. The silence, which at first was a friend to betray the approach of an enemy, became his enemy—a Thing which made his ears ache from the strain of listening.

  Seated there among his rocks, gripping the rifle-stock so hard that cramp seized his hands, Joyce existed through the hours of his second night. He wanted daylight, and when light did come, all the furniture was in its place, and he didn’t think to look for ‘the cat’.

  Throughout the morning nothing happened. Nothing moved. And such was the strain he placed on his eyes, he thought not of watching the ants. Not a sound came to him from the encircling forest. His ears were aching intolerably, and to relieve them he beat lightly on the aborigines’ water tin, lightly, that Harmon and his men wouldn’t hear it before he saw them.

  Some time in the afternoon he decided he could not remain inactive any longer. They wouldn’t come for him, so he would go hunting for them. He’d shoot the first bastard he sighted. One part of his mind urged action, the other frantically pointed out the stupidity of leaving his fortress; the first being dominant and soundly berating the second for its cowardice. He heard the argument in progress, and realised he was talking loudly. He listened to his own voice, and could hear the sounds comprising the utterance speeding from him like little bullets, and knew they would never return.

  Nothing did in this blasted forest. He snatched up his rifle and raced to the trees.

  He was the only living thing in a picture of trees, and presently he walked right through it to be one with another picture of a great open space; the ground gently rising to the line of Bulow’s Range broken by Daybreak and Sam’s Find. In this picture also were the ghost gums where Bony had found Tony Carr mustering courage to cut a stick from a girl’s foot.

  He stood against a mulga trunk and made a cigarette, the tough bark pressed comfortingly against his broad back, the rifle leaning against the tree at his side. He struck a match, and the sound was good to hear. The flame was almost invisible in the strong sunlight, and the pale smoke rose before his face. The picture came back to him, and he frowned, for there seemed to be something out of place in it. He stared at it, up and down and from side to side and into the four corners. There was something. Ah! against the white trunk of one of the ghost gums there was movement. Damn it, there was an abo behind that tree, not more than a hundred yards distant.

  Maintaining his gaze on the white trunk, his hand went down to his side for the rifle. The hand groped for it, found only trunk as rough as a wood rasp. He had to remove his gaze from the distant ghost gum to locate the weapon. And did not see it.

  3

  The shock had been severe, and now, as he crouched among the rocks at the ceremonial ground, his world was filled with sound ... the noise of his erratic breathing. Those blasted abos had got his rifle, took it as he was standing with his back to the tree; took it when the rifle was leaning against the tree trunk, within six inches of his thigh. They had waited for him to do that, to use both hands making a cigarette, and then one had caught his attention by moving out a fraction from the ghost gum, and another had been right behind the mulga waiting to lift the gun.

  There were the tracks going away to the next mulga, a clear set of naked feet. He had chased the thief to the next tree, and the next, and had to give it away and run like hell back to the rocks. And now he had no gun, nothing to keep the black scum off. Well, he wasn’t done yet. He’d shift into that rocky doorway and have a heap of stones ready for them, and he fell to gathering this makeshift ammunition with frantic energy.

  Afterwards the hours passed, and there was nothing to see and nothing to hear. The sun slid down and the evening came, and with the certainty of coming darkness came the terror. It would be completely silent again, and he would hear anyone approaching ... but no, it had been dead silent when he leaned against the mulga, and he hadn’t heard the abo creep up behind it and take the rifle. What use was the silence? They could be just round the rock corner and he wouldn’t hear them. They could be right in his hair and he wouldn’t know until they tugged it out. They could be breathing down his neck and he wouldn’t see them.

  Seated there with his back against rock and his flanks guarded by rock, Joyce imagined the stars above being blotted out by a dark figure making ready to drop a great slab of rock upon him. He imagined black hands reaching for him from the blackness which he faced, and terror increased to spur his tortured ears to give warning of death, which was magnified a thousand-fold by a mind now embattled with the threat of disintegration.

  He might have found solace in the crackling wood had he dared to make a fire. He might have found a balm to his ears had he beaten the blacks’ water-bucket with a sliver of rock. He suffered no remorse; did not recall the gurgling sounds emitted by two women, nor the guggling of a blood-drowning young man. Nothing so melodramatic as that. How could remorse, memory, influence these hours of impenetrable darkness in which invisible hands might be clamped about his own throat, and he would listen to his own death-rattles?

  Strange, and yet perhaps not so strange, that he came to feel the proximity of black hands in the blackness about him. Perhaps not so strange when faintly he saw tiny globules of pitch surrounded by the whites of approaching eyes.

  He yelled and fled from the rocks.

  In the open of the ceremonial ground, where the stars shed a little light, where the air was free, where there were no confining walls, he began shouting his defiance of the creeping, sneaking, snivelling aborigines, and of that swine of a Harmon, and of that many-times-accursed barman. It all went from him, ricocheting among the stars.

  The stars came down to crush him. The trees marched in to smother him. He was
buried beneath the pounding of their silent feet. And when he clawed his way up from the pit, it was day.

  He ran back to his rock pile. Nothing was changed. The silence was now a thing living with him, like his shadow, to follow always. His ears ached from the buffeting received from his hands, and the drums burned with pain. His face, known to all the people at Daybreak as one of open frankness, was slack of flesh and lined perpendicularly. His eyes, once so warmed with apparent humour, were without lustre, the irises of the pale malevolence of those of a shark just brought to the gaff.

  4

  It was the third day when he began to poke at his ears in an effort to relieve the feeling of pressure on the drums. The pressure was accompanied by a faint and persistent hissing noise, until it faded into the breathing of a black-feller behind him. The silence was now pressing upon him from all sides, and when he shouted, the sound was outside the pressing force.

  He made a fire and boiled water, and the crackle of the tree debris he had gathered was like glorious music. Waiting for the tea to cool, he was seized by the childish whim of tossing on to the fire the store of cartridges. From behind a rock he shouted gleefully as the cartridges exploded, seeing himself in the centre of a battle, the last heroic stand, and shouting his defiance at the encircling trees that wouldn’t move one solitary leaf to prove that they were living things, and prove to him that he was a living thing too.

  On the fourth day, discarding all discretion, he fled to the northern extremity of the forest and was confronted by the steep face of the breakaway down which Bony had ridden a few weeks before. The rock wall was marked with crevices. It was surmounted by desert jamwoods and tufts of spinifex. In a rock crevice there was a thing with eyes. He could see the white about the graphite centres. There stood an old burned tree stump. It had eyes, too. They flickered, went out, appeared. They were fixed to the stump.