Bony - 01 - The Barrakee Mystery Read online

  “This morning the rider tracked them to the first creek of the Washaways, where he saw both men had simply ridden straight into the creek that was running a banker. And on the farther side of the creek, on a sort of island, was Smith, horseless and marooned, because he cannot swim. The creek being too wide for the rider to do anything, he returned to his hut for a wire well rope to get across to Smith with a lighter hemp rope.

  “But, before he got back, Dugdale himself rang up Thurlow Lake from Cattle Tank Hut, ten miles this side of the Washaways, having, of course, swum his horse over the remaining creeks, to tell them of Smith’s situation and urge immediate relief. It seems obvious, Bony, that Dugdale is bringing Sinclair’s wallet to someone on the river—it might be someone at Barrakee; and, as all our fellows are west of the Washaways and it is impossible for me to reach Barrakee in time, you’ll have to arrest him when he reaches Barrakee and secure that wallet.”

  Bony was silent for a little while. Then:

  “I don’t think it will be necessary to arrest Dugdale yet,” he said. “You see, Sergeant Knowles, he is bringing that wallet to me. I expected Sinclair would send it if anything happened to him.”

  “Oh! Well, anyhow, Dugdale will have to be arrested for assaulting me, a police-sergeant, and resisting arrest at Thurlow Lake. Blair and McIntosh are under arrest now.”

  “Pardon my mentioning the matter, Sergeant,” Bony cut in silkily, “but I must point out that I am the officer in charge of this case. The recent circumstances are peculiar, I know, but I do not advise, and probably shall not advise, Dugdale’s arrest. And, for one or two reasons, which I shall explain later, I think it expedient that Blair and his offsider be released for the time being.”

  “Very well,” snapped the sergeant.

  “Now, please don’t get angry,” Bony exhorted. “Anger up-setteth judgement. The Emperor knew that, which was why he seldom indulged in the delightful emotion. I can assure you that, as far as the law is concerned, the case ends with the death of Sinclair. His confession rounds it off. Let those extraneous happenings drop; for to do so lets you out from the misfortune which has dogged you, and will save the force from the slight discredit it has incurred. You will agree, I think, that that will be the best way.”

  “All right, Bony. Perhaps it will,” Knowles agreed, with less rancour. “Still, if the fool Dugdale had told me to whom Sinclair was sending his wallet, all this hullabaloo would not have happened, and I wouldn’t be here with a splitting headache.”

  “Take some aspirin,” Bony advised.

  “Darn it! That’s what Dugdale said.”

  “Take it, anyway. I’ll ring you up later. Now I’ll get you through to Thurlow Lake, when you can order Blair and Co’s release.”

  When he left the office Bony was smiling. While not positively certain, he was almost sure that Dugdale was bringing the wallet to Mrs Thornton. Had the intended recipient been a person of lesser importance, Bony considered that the young man would not have risked so much, and would have been less hurried.

  The men’s lunch gong sounded, but Bony ignored it and decided to wait for Dugdale on the sunny side of the blacksmith’s shop, which was close to the stockyards; and he had been there barely an hour when Dugdale, riding The Devil, came in sight over the causeway.

  Bony waited till the young man was dismounting. Then, slowly, he walked over the short distance to him, and said:

  “Why, Mr Dugdale, I didn’t expect to see you here today! I quite thought you were settling down on Eucla.”

  “I have a little business to transact with Mr Thornton,” Dugdale replied stiffly.

  “Well, well! That is none of my affair, I suppose,” Bony said easily, drawing close. “Horse appears done up. Wonder you crossed the Washaways, for I hear they are in full flood.”

  The two men stood against the horse, Dugdale with his back to Bony, removing the saddle. Both his hands were engaged, and both his arms were raised. Bony’s hands, however, flickered with movement truly astounding. It was a superb conjuring act; for, with the lightness of butterfly wings, the half-caste’s arms slid round Dugdale’s body and Bony’s fingers found and abstracted from one of Dugdale’s inner pockets Sinclair’s wallet with Sinclair’s letter still inside.

  “Yes, I had to swim him,” Dugdale admitted.

  “He must be a good horse, indeed. Alas! I am getting too old to enjoy a good gallop,” Bony sighed, drawing away.

  “Mr Thornton about?” Dugdale asked, when the freed horse was rolling in the sandy stockyard.

  “I saw him half an hour ago. It must be lunch time. In fact, the gong has just sounded.”

  Bony sauntered off towards the men’s quarters. Dugdale walked along to the homestead, where at the double gates Mr Thornton met him.

  “Dugdale!” he exclaimed. “Why are you here? Have you brought news of Ralph?”

  “Ralph! No. What has happened to Ralph?”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  ‘Judge Not’

  “DUG, THE flood has brought material disaster to many people on the river; it seems to have brought disaster of another kind to my wife and me.”

  The two men were seated in the station office. Mr Thornton had suddenly become aged. His mouth drooped at the corners, his hair was greyer, his eyes were full, and beneath them were small puffy swellings. Dugdale was shocked by the change in him: he felt stunned by the story of Ralph’s infatuation with Nellie Wanting, which he had thought to be only a passing flirtation.

  “Mrs Thornton—how does she take it?” he asked.

  “I am afraid, Dug, terribly afraid. My wife has turned into a block of stone, like the block of salt which held Lot’s wife. She hardly ever speaks, but the look in her eyes makes me afraid. Sometimes I think, after all these years, she is still a stranger to me.”

  “And Kate?” The young man’s eyes were riveted on the saddened face of the squatter. There was a spice of sharpness in his voice, for at that moment Dugdale hated Ralph for preferring a black tulip to so fair a rose.

  “Kate, of course, is greatly upset,” Thornton said slowly. “About her, I think, I have found out a surprising thing. She seems more concerned for my wife and me than for herself, as though she grieves because of our grief and not because of the wrong she has received. I have come to think that Kate did not love Ralph as a prospective husband.”

  “That she feels relief at being justified in breaking the engagement?” demanded Dugdale swiftly.

  “It appears that way. Matters being as they are, I am thankful for that.”

  “And no one has any idea where he is now?”

  “That is so.”

  A long silence fell between them, a silence throughout which the squatter’s mind wandered aimlessly, deadened to lethargy, whilst the thoughts of the younger raced at lightning speed. Smitten though he was by the calamity which had fallen on the people dearest to him, yet he could not help feeling a sense of elation that Kate was not wholeheartedly in love with the fallen Ralph, a gladness that her hurt was not so very acute, a hope newly born when hope had been dead. He was about to speak when the office door opened and admitted Bony, who, seeing them seated at the broad writing table, came over and occupied a spare chair. Without preamble, he said:

  “My work here is accomplished, Mr Thornton. Never yet have I failed in a case, and this one is no exception. I came to find the murderer of King Henry. I found him. I stayed on to discover the motive actuating the murder. I have found it. But at the end, at the moment when every clue, every proof, every motive, was in my hands, I found that I had a duty to perform—a duty not to the State, not to the Law, but to a woman. I would consider myself dishonoured if I evaded that duty, much as I could wish to; for I fear that, in doing that duty, I shall both shock and grieve you. I want you to request Mrs Thornton and Miss Flinders to meet both you and Mr Dugdale and myself in a place where we can talk in private. May I suggest your sitting room?”

  “My wife is ill,” objected the squatter.

&nbs
p; “She is ill because she has a millstone weighing her down,” Bony announced quietly. “At least I shall remove the millstone.”

  For fully half a minute the station-owner gazed searchingly at the detective.

  “I have a mind to refuse you,” he said. “Tell me what you have to say, and I will tell my wife.”

  “Permit me to do my duty in the manner I think best.”

  “I cannot agree.”

  “I am sorry.” Bony regarded Thornton a little sternly. He went on: “In case you are unaware of it, I will tell you that I am a detective-inspector of the Queensland Police. I was sent here expressly to investigate the murder of King Henry. It was I who advised the arrest of Sinclair, alias Clair, the brother of Mary Sinclair, one time your wife’s cook and the mother of your adopted son, Ralph. If you refuse to allow me to speak to your wife in your presence, you will compel me to advise the arrest of Mrs Thornton.”

  “For God’s sake, why?”

  “For complicity in the murder. Come, let us go to your sitting room and hold a conference. It will be so much better for all of us, even better for me, for I should find the arrest of your wife a matter of lasting regret.”

  Bony met Thornton’s blazing eyes with steady calmness. He saw the fierce light die out of them, fade and become dull with the tiredness of despair which no further shock could lift. A chair scraped, and Thornton got to his feet. The others rose and followed him silently from the office, through the gates, to the house veranda, to the sitting room. Bony and Dugdale remained standing while Thornton went in search of his wife and niece. A clock ticked with startling loudness, ticking away the seconds of fate.

  The door opened again to admit the Little Lady. When she saw Bony her eyes showed no recognition, but surprise flickered in them for a moment at sight of Dugdale. Behind her came Kate, and into her eyes leapt a light that blinded the eyes of Dugdale’s soul. The young man smiled at her, and moved forward to escort Mrs Thornton to a seat. It was Kate, however, for whom he performed this courtesy. Bony, having reached the Little Lady first, with ineffable gallantry led her to a great lounge chair.

  “Mr Bonaparte wishes to speak with us all, dear,” Thornton explained, seating himself near his wife. Kate sat on the other side, Dugdale stood behind them. Bony’s eyes were half shut, as though he wished to conceal emotion or experienced pain. His voice reached the Little Lady faintly, as coming from a great way off. The startling scene in the office was burned into Dugdale’s brain. The possibility of the Little Lady’s arrest was balanced by the amazing revelation that Bony, the half-caste painter of boats, was a detective-inspector; whilst above and beyond that was Bony’s statement that Ralph was not Mr Thornton’s son, but the son of some woman named Sinclair, a cook.

  “I fear that in order to make matters quite clear it will be necessary to go back to the year 1908,” Bony was saying. “It was a mere coincidence that Mrs Thornton and Mary Sinclair gave birth to boy babies within forty eight hours of each other. The records show that the baby born to Mary Sinclair died and the one born to Mrs Thornton lived. Whether the doctor attending the two patients was aware whose baby died and whose baby lives it is impossible to discover, as the doctor is dead and his case books are destroyed.

  “In any case, Mary Sinclair died shortly after Mrs Thornton’s baby died, and Mrs Thornton took Mary’s child, reared it, loved it, and called it Ralph Thornton. But before Mary died she confided to Mrs Thornton the name of her betrayer.”

  Bony saw the squatter’s eyes narrow and turn upon his wife, whose face was an alabaster mask. Bony went on:

  “I think, and the philosophers agree with me, that the most wonderful thing in the world is a woman’s love for a baby. Mrs Thornton, saddened and heartbroken at the loss of her own child, took and cherished Mary’s child; but when Mary whispered the name of her paramour, the father of her child, Mrs Thornton deliberately took to her bosom a living asp. The laws of heredity are immutable, and it is a very great pity that she did not recognize this.

  “The father, moreover, was unprincipled, or perhaps proud of his paternity. We will credit him with the latter motive when he interviewed Mrs Thornton a few weeks later and demanded his child. Apparently he was refused and offered payment, which he took; but, being dissatisfied, he came again to Mrs Thornton, who again paid and eventually wrote an appealing letter to Mary Sinclair’s brother, whom we knew till recently as William Clair. That letter I found in Sinclair’s pocket wallet.”

  Dugdale’s hand went convulsively to his inside pocket. For a second or two he stared into the half closed eyes of the detective-inspector, then took a stride forward:

  “You have no right to that wallet,” he said fiercely. “I don’t know how you came by it, but it was given me by Sinclair before he died to deliver to a particular person.”

  “Exactly, Mr Dugdale,” Bony murmured. “He gave it to you to bring to Mrs Thornton. As the contents of the wallet bore upon the case under discussion, I relieved you of it. It is fortunate indeed that Knowles, or his juniors, did not do so. I will now read Mrs Thornton’s letter to William Sinclair. It is dated April 1908, and reads:

  Dear Mr Sinclair,

  Thank you for your letter written from White Cliffs. Your thanks for what I did for your poor sister are appreciated, as is your assurance that never will you speak of the fact that I have adopted her child or claim relationship to it. I did all I could for Mary, and now you must do all you can for me and the child.

  I have paid King Henry over £20, and now he is demanding more. I have thought and thought about this menace till my head aches. What can I do? Can you do something to seal his lips and stop his demands? It would be no crime to slay a black—would it?

  Ann Thornton.”

  “Am I to understand that King Henry was Ralph’s father?” exclaimed the squatter; and, not waiting for Bony to reply, turned to the Little Lady: “Tell me, Ann, is that so?”

  In reply she nodded, but kept her eyes unseeingly upon her shoe. Thornton’s breath hissed between his teeth. He would have spoken, had not his wife said very softly:

  “Let Mr Bonaparte go on. This is my Waterloo.”

  “We know how Sinclair, calling himself Clair, replied to that letter,” Bony continued. “Somehow King Henry learned of Clair’s determination to kill him, and fled. Clair tracked him for more than nineteen years. A report being circulated that Sinclair was dead, King Henry returned to his people. As he himself said to Mr Dugdale, he made an appointment with somebody at Barrakee—we will presume with Martha—and Sinclair, hearing of this, as we will again presume, waited in the dark for the black fellow to come down the river.

  “We know, or rather the police know, that Sinclair spent many years in North Queensland and there learned the art of throwing a boomerang. In his confession, written an hour or two before his death in Mr Dugdale’s hut, he describes how he missed his throw, how the boomerang returned, how they both stooped for the weapon. Sinclair got it and struck King Henry whilst the latter was still stooping forward.

  “There is one point which still remains unexplained. It happened that one day a gentleman named Pincher Joe ransacked Mrs Thornton’s boudoir, and among other things he stole a boomerang. Without any shadow of doubt it was the boomerang which killed King Henry, because it was made by a member of the tribe with which Sinclair sojourned. It bears the marks of the tribe on it, and it left an outline of those marks when it struck a gum-tree instead of King Henry when thrown. Either Martha was at the meeting place and handed the weapon to Mrs Thornton, or Mrs Thornton herself was present and picked it up.

  “Parallel with this story, we have the parentage of Ralph and its effect upon him. Like many half-caste children—even like myself—the baby was white of skin. For years the black strain in his blood was held in abeyance by his upbringing and education; for years the pigmentation of his skin remained white. But the inevitable change of colour began much earlier than the heredity of character. The cessation of college life, the return to the native
bush of his father, hastened the hereditary urge, so that Ralph’s reversion to ancestral blackness was accelerated.

  “In no case does a half-caste rise to the status of his superior parent. In this case we have the mother possessing, as all white people possess, a veneer of what we call civilization; and the father full-blooded and wild, able to speak the white man’s language, but without the mother’s veneer of civilization.

  “I watched the growing change in the lad, and for a long time it puzzled me. I saw the growing love of colour in his clothes, I noted how quickly his college accent dropped from him. For many years at school, and only for short periods in the bush when on holidays, the young man picked up the art of tracking with remarkable ease. You will remember how he tracked the dingo and slew it. You will remember how he caught the outlaw horse at Thurlow Lake and rode it. He took to the bush as a duck takes to water, he who most of his life was away at school.

  “The lure of the bush gripped him. I could see it in his face, and I marvelled. He felt the lure and could not explain it even to himself. And then came this last, this fatal yet inevitable surrender. He fell in love with a black gin. He was betrothed to a beautiful white girl, he was heir to a great estate, yet he fell in love with a gin. Mr Dugdale reasoned with him. I discovered the affair and pleaded with the girl. She went away, persuaded by me, but the youth learned of her whereabouts and wrote passionate letters, and she, being a woman, and a poor ignorant black woman, too, could not resist.