The Sands of Windee Read online

  “Although it was not hot weather, Marks would have circled and circled until he dropped, and if he died at the foot of a ridge on its eastward side, the wind would have blown the ridge on him and buried him beneath tons of sand. Circle he doubtless would do, being a city man.

  “To me the only mystery is why he drove his car off the track for ninety yards before he abandoned it. But it may be explained by the fact that he looked an habitual drinker, and in fact got drunk one night in Mount Lion.”

  “What condition was he in when he left Windee?” Bony asked.

  “Well—slightly drunk,” the sergeant replied disapprovingly. “At lunch Mr Stanton produced a bottle of port, and Marks drank most of it. Drink, I believe, is the foundation of the whole affair. I think he went to sleep in the car, and it ran off the road, just missing two trees, and was eventually stopped by the heavy sand. He probably slept till dark, woke up wondering where he was, and looked about for the track. Forgetting to turn on the headlights in his muddled state, he lost touch with his car and wandered away in a fruitless search for it.”

  “Humph!” Bony smoked reflectively.

  “That was the only solution at which I could arrive,” Morris concluded, “and Headquarters were entirely in agreement with me.”

  “How far from the homestead was the car found?”

  “Two miles.”

  “Only two miles? Generally that distance from a homestead would be within a night-or horse-paddock, where one or more of the hands would be riding almost daily.”

  “There you are right. The car was abandoned in what is called the South Horse Paddock, which is only three miles square. But Mr Stanton had used it temporarily for sheep during shearing, and it had been eaten bare. So there was no stock of any sort in the paddock at that time.”

  “Could the car be seen from the track?”

  “No. When it left the road it took a wide curve, and stopped close to a large pine-tree. It was discovered by the station bullock-driver and his mate, when they went into that paddock to get pine posts.”

  “On the face of it, the case is one of simple death by exposure in the bush,” Bony said slowly. “That is, from your written report. My attention would not have been drawn to that report had it not recently been disclosed that Marks was a member of the New South Wales police attached to the Licensing Branch. His real name was Green. A week or so after he left Sydney several members of the Licensing Branch were examined by a Royal Commissioner on charges of accepting and demanding bribes. You will have heard of it. Green’s name was brought into the examination, and he was missing. The description of your Marks tallies exactly with that of the policeman Green, and the registration particulars of Green’s car are identical with those of Marks’s car.

  “Now the policeman Green had served several years at the station of Wilcannia as a mounted trooper. He was an experienced bushman. The day he left Sydney is known. It was the second day of his annual leave, and it was the day after he had drawn the sum of thirteen hundred and seven pounds from his bank. A week before that he had sold house property to the tune of several thousands. Knowing the crash was imminent, he realized all his assets and cleared off with the cash, and doubtless securities as well.

  “You see, Sergeant, we now have a horse of a different colour. It is unlikely that Marks, or Green, would have become bushed, even though drunk. Again, we may almost be sure that he had a lot of money and negotiable securities with him. Here we have a motive for murder. Even without your photograph of the abandoned car the case would be attractive enough to me. The photograph, however, is the crowning point, the basis of my conviction that Marks was murdered, not by the bush, but by some white man.”

  “And you arrive at that theory from my photo of the car?” exclaimed Morris in amazement.

  “Precisely,” Bony said slowly. “When you photographed the car you also photographed evidence of murder which to me is almost irrefutable.”

  With obvious delight Bony watched the effect of his bomb. No less than his illustrious prototype did he revel in dramatic situations and startling denouements. His expression then was one of amused satisfaction. He went on:

  “This is a case, Sergeant, worthy of my attention. I start my inquiries two months after the crime was committed. Nature has obliterated all tracks, and has had ample time to bury all clues deeply in sand. There is no corpse as a fingerpost to the murderer, as there is in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases in a thousand. Even if I find a corpse, the ants and crows will likely enough have picked the bones nice and clean. There will be no fingerprints; no autopsy is possible; and, because of all this, poor old Bony is going to have a really enjoyable time.”

  “But the photograph?” interjected Sergeant Morris.

  “I have studied all the famous cases of murder,” Bony proceeded gaily. “Murders committed in Australia, Great Britain, France and America during the last hundred years. My wife, who like myself is an educated half-caste, reads and enjoys dozens of crime mysteries expounded in modern novels_____”

  “The photograph_____”

  “In real life and in fiction as well as in stage plays, there is always a fresh corpse lying around for the detective to work on. All so sordid and all so simple to a man of my intelligence! I shall be shocked and disappointed and disillusioned if Mr Luke Marks is still living.”

  “Yes, yes. But what of the photograph? What have you learned from it?” demanded the tantalized sergeant.

  Bony reached into his unrolled swag and produced a copy of Sergeant Morris’s picture taken with a cheap camera, and handed it to his interrogator.

  “Look well!” he cried softly. “You see the car. What else?”

  “Nothing but the trees in the background,” the sergeant admitted.

  “Ah! But cannot you see in that near tree a bleached sheep-bone attached to a bundle of sticks arranged like a woman’s fan?”

  “Yes—I can. By gad!”

  “That is a blackfellows’ sign which reads: ‘Beware of Spirits! A white man was killed here!’”

  Chapter Three

  The Boss of Windee

  JEFFREY STANTON was a squatter of the blunt, downright type that lived and thrived in Australia seventy years ago. At this time, six years after the Great War, he was a living example of what a squatter should be; and, when occasion found him in the presence of our modern squatting aristocrats who reside in one or other of the cities and employ managers, he shocked them by his manners and horrified them by his generosity to his employees. As was his morning custom on weekdays, he left the large “Government House” at half-past seven and walked along a beaten path skirting a deep water-filled hole in a now otherwise dry creek, to reach finally the men’s quarters.

  Although he would never again see his sixtieth birthday, Mr Stanton’s movements were springy, his body was still lithe and supple, and beneath his white pent eyebrows scintillated searching grey eyes. Here was a man raised on the back of a horse, not on a cushioned seat behind a motor steering-wheel.

  The men’s quarters were situated on the creek-bank, shaded by gnarled box-trees. Outside the weather-boarded, iron-roofed kitchen and dining-room, flanked by the cane-grass meat-house and a huge iron triangle supported by two posts and cross-beam, he found a number of his men awaiting their orders for the day. Seeing him, the men ceased talking, and, seeing them, Mr Stanton paused, scratched his head, and looked vacantly at the cook, the picture of a man trying hard to find jobs for a pack of useless loafers. At last:

  “Morning!”

  “Morning, Jeff!” several replied in unison.

  “How were the sheep doing in the Seven-Mile, Ted?” Mr Stanton asked a stalwart brown-bearded man, dressed in white moleskin trousers, a blue shirt, an exceedingly old felt hat, and elastic-sided riding-boots.

  “They’re settlin’ down—settlin’ down,” came the drawled reply.

  “Well, you settle down into that saddle of yours and look ’em over again. We can’t risk them weaner ewes getting hung up
in a corner. When you’ve got ’em broke in properly to find their way to water, you can have a day’s drunk in Mount Lion on full pay.”

  Mr Stanton smiled grimly. Ted looked sheepish, but pleased, and moved away to the horse-yards. The boss glared at another rider, slim, agile and swarthy.

  “Better take a ride round Hell’s Swamp, Joe,” he ordered. “Water should be dried up and swamp probably boggy. Alec can go with you. Engine going good at Stewart’s Well, Jack?”

  “Not too good. Something wrong with the governors,” answered a man who was cursed with an atrocious squint.

  “Humph! Archie, you go out to Stewart’s Well and overseer that engine. Take the small truck. Bill, Mrs Poulton wants wood. Fetch her in a couple of loads.” Mr Stanton turned to a young man of perhaps twenty, fresh-faced, and written all over him the word Englishman: “Take the big truck into Mount Lion and bring out a load from Hugo, the storekeeper. When you come back I’ll smell your breath, and if I smell whisky you’re sacked. Whisky and petrol won’t mix.”

  Four remaining men were given their orders for the day, and although the work set them, as well as the others, would be done easily by two o’clock, they would not dream of asking for fresh orders, since Stanton never gave orders twice on the same day. For perhaps nine months in the year the average daily hours of labour would not exceed six, but during the remaining three they might well average fifteen. Lamb-marking and sheep-shearing are busy seasons. Fires and floods call for incessant labour, and that labour is cheerfully given on the old principle of give and take.

  Half-way back to the “Government House”—so-called because a great station is governed from a squatter’s home—Mr Stanton met Bony.

  “Are you Mr Stanton?” asked the disguised detective. “I am sometimes. The last time I was called ‘Mister’ Stanton was by a stranger two months ago. My name is Jeff Stanton. Up here we are out of the Mister Country.”

  Bony’s face remained immobile. Stanton’s grey eyes examined him keenly from head to foot. Bony said:

  “I’m looking for work. Is there any chance of a job?”

  “Work!” Stanton suddenly roared, the blood surging up behind the mahogany tint of his skin. “I lay awake half the night thinking out what in hell I’ll give my men to do the next day, and you want to keep me awake another half-hour! Things are bad.” His voice rose. “What with the politicians and the taxes and the price of wool, I’m that close to the rocks that a cat’s hair ain’t separating us. What can you do?”

  The question was shot suddenly at Bony, who, had he not been prepared by Sergeant Morris, might excusably have been stunned. Entirely respectful, yet inwardly at ease, he replied, “I can paint, drive a truck, put up a fence, and break-in horses.”

  “Ho! Break-in horses!” Stanton almost snarled. “I never met a nigger yet who could break-in a horse properly. You mesmerizes ’em, and cows ’em, and damns ’em. Anyway, I don’t like your looks. I never did like niggers. You’re_____”

  “That’s enough!” Bony cut in with assumed anger but secret amusement. “I’m no nigger, and you look like a half-caste Chinaman. Only for your age I’d knock you rotten. Don’t think that because you got a few million pounds you can blackguard me. You may think you’re Lord Jeffrey, but I’ll show you_____”

  Stanton suddenly threw back his whitened head and roared with laughter. The metamorphosis was astounding—so astounding as to make credible his next words, uttered in clapping Bony on the back: “You’ll do! I’ve got some horses I want broke in, and I’ll give you four pounds a head and tucker. Don’t mind me! You see, I only employ men with guts in ’em. I can’t stand the mistering, hat-raising sort. They get my goat with their bowing and scraping, and when they’re sent out to look over sheep they tie their horses to a tree and go to sleep till it’s time to come home again.”

  Over the ruddy features of the half-caste slowly broke his wonderful understanding smile, and from then on the two men, so far apart in birth, brains, and wealth, were attracted to each other. Stanton, rough, clear-sighted, and inclined to call a spade a ruddy spade, glimpsed behind Bony’s blue eyes a personality wholly sympathetic and staunch. In Stanton Bony saw a real specimen of the original conquering, pioneering British race.

  “When can I start?” he asked.

  “Well, I’ll have to get them horses in and drafted,” Stanton answered, suddenly thoughtful. “That’ll take a couple of days. Let me think. Ah, yes! Tomorrow the rabbit-inspector is due to arrive. In the horse-yards is a light-draft gelding with white forefeet. Harness him to one of the poison-carts in the shed and run it all around. Must make out we’re doing something.” He nodded and passed on.

  Bony, chuckling, went over to the horse-yards, cut out the gelding, harnessed him, and took him over to the shed. He had no difficulty in finding the poison-carts. They were light two-wheeled affairs, carrying an iron cylinder to hold the poisoned pollard when it was churned up into small pills and carried by a pipe down to a position behind a disk-wheel and dropped into the furrow the wheel made.

  Bony found the pollard in a barrel, and he also found another barrel full of water in which the cakes of phosphorus were kept. There was, however, only a very small piece of phosphorus remaining. It floated on the surface of the water, dirty white in colour, and as soon as he lifted it clear it began to smoke. Obviously it was insufficient to make even one cylinderful of baits.

  Unable to discover any further supply of the poison, Bony, calculating that Mr Stanton would have had time to breakfast, sauntered over to the office building adjoining the house. Within he found his new employer.

  “We want more phosphorus, Jeff,” he drawled. “There’s only about a quarter ounce left in the barrel.”

  “Phosphorus? What do you want phosphorus for?” Stanton demanded.

  “Want it for the poison-cart,” explained Bony patiently.

  “You don’t want to worry about poison,” came the roared injunction. “All you got to do is to drive the cart about the homestead, so that when the inspector comes to-morrow he’ll see plenty of furrow-marks.”

  “But the law_____”

  “Law be hanged! I won’t poison rabbits and have my horses and cattle poisoned by chewing the bones.’ Sides, I can’t afford poison, and it isn’t necessary. You drive the blamed cart, and leave the inspector to me.”

  There was a suspicion of a twinkle in the grey eyes, which was reflected in the blue eyes of the half-caste. He went out and drove the empty poison-cart about until five o’clock, and at eleven next morning he saw the rabbit-inspector arrive, and was near enough to hear and see Mr Stanton shake hands with him and invite him into the office for a drink before lunch.

  Chapter Four

  The Ants’ Nest

  THE SUNDAY following Bony’s arrival at Windee gave him his first chance to examine the place where the abandoned motorcar belonging to the man calling himself Marks was discovered. Careful to avoid observation, he slipped away after the midday meal and arrived at the junction of the two roads. Under his arm were two strips of sheepskin roughly fashioned as sandals, the wool on the outside. Before leaving the comparatively hard road he put the sheepskin sandals on, and, walking off the track on to the loose sand, observed with satisfaction that the marks he left were very faint, and would be obliterated by the first puff of wind. His feet left no defined footprints, nothing but a faint pattern of minute curves and circles. Even while he stood looking on the first half-dozen marks, the soft south wind wiped them out, whereas marks of his boots or even his naked feet would have remained for days with the wind at its present softness.

  Thenceforth he moved about freely, knowing full well that no white man would ever espy his tracks, and knowing, too, that no aboriginal would brave the spirits of the place where, according to the death-sign, violence had been done. In the art of tracking Bony had no equal, and that had led him to become no less expert at covering his own tracks.

  The place where Marks’s car had been discovered he found without
difficulty. There was, however, no faintest indication of wheel-tracks. Standing approximately where the car stood in relation to the black’s sign, Bony traced the probable path it had taken when it left the road, and made out the sand ridge which had stopped it. The ridge was not two feet high, and ran due north and south. The wind had shaped it into perfect symmetry. Its northern end was lost amidst a wilderness of sand-hummocks, and its southern end rested against a much higher ridge of sand running due east and west. On the west side of the low ridge which had stopped the car the sand was ankle-deep and fine, but east of it lay a strip of ground three to four yards wide, hard as cement, and known as clay-pan, which ran the length of the low ridge. The car had crossed the clay-pan, and when it stopped its rear wheels would still have rested on it.

  Even in sandy country on which grow sturdy pines, these clay-pans are to be found. An exceedingly heavy downpour of rain—probably occurring but once in twenty years—overcomes the sand’s power of absorption and collects in pools. The water eventually evaporates, leaving a perfectly level surface of mud which dries to iron hardness, and thereafter the wind is able to sweep it continually free of the omnipresent sand.

  In the centre of this particular clay-pan a colony of dark red ants with black legs had excavated their marvellous palace, whilst here and there along the edge of the clay-pan another species of ant, wholly black and about an inch in length, had founded colonies. These latter were not so ferocious as the red ants, nor were they so quick and purposeful in movement. The entrance to each nest was protected against flying sand, and presumably water as well, by a circular rampart, six inches high, which in turn was protected by a mass of pine-needles intricately woven together.

  The clay-pan interested Bony. On the soft sand there was but little hope of discovering anything, but the clay-pan might be revealing. He examined its surface with bent back, and sometimes also with bent knees. One particular spot held him for some time. He regarded it from several different angles, and from several varying altitudes, finally convincing himself that two lines almost invisible to him, and quite invisible to a white man, crossed the clay-pan and ended close beside a nest of the larger black ant. Those lines were made by car-wheels two months before. He had discovered the exact position of the abandoned car.