Bony and the White Savage Page 3

  “Abandoning the car at Mildura was clever, for this led the police towards Sydney. Rhudder, however, doubled back to Port Pirie where he signed on a ship taking horses to India. He left the ship at Albany on 3 January when thousands of policemen were hunting for him in Sydney.

  “Now this is where it comes close to us,” Bony continued. “On the night of 9–10 January the man Karl Mueller saw him in the bright moonlight. Eight days later Matthew Jukes almost casually mentions it to you, knowing nothing to associate Rhudder with murder. Before that day, you also knew nothing of Rhudder being wanted for murder or any other crime, due to the fact that everyone thought he had run back to Sydney. The genesis of the report, which reached you that day Jukes mentioned Mueller’s doubts, was the delayed discovery of his prints in the shipping office at Port Pirie.

  “He had been home eight days, when you knew he was there. You acted with shrewdness, and Inspector Hudson admits that you were opposed to the course of action on which he insisted. You went to Rhudder’s Inlet and there inquired after the son Marvin, and told them that he was suspected of being concerned with the Elton murder. As you anticipated, results were nil. Further, you were opposed to police action, like an organized raid and search, because of the extraordinarily difficult terrain where Rhudder could stay in hiding. You said that, where an army would fail, one man with a tracker could dig him out, and you suggested that you be the man. Instead, and I think they were wise because you are known, they have sent me.

  “It is now 27 January and Rhudder has been home, perhaps, for seventeen days. He could have left for a far-away place at any time during the period, so that I may have to hunt for a man who isn’t there to locate. Unless you or Matthew Jukes gained evidence that he’s still there.”

  “Nothing of recent date,” said Sasoon, obviously pleased by Bony’s support. “To get home Rhudder had to cross the main stream into the Inlet. He left his boot-tracks on the mud either side. I took an aborigine there, and I made plaster casts of the tracks. The aborigine was definite about those tracks.”

  “Definite! Meaning?”

  “Quite sure they were Marvin Rhudder’s tracks, having remembered the manner of his walking in the early days. They don’t forget things like that.”

  “Go on, more, please,” urged Bony, and then aside to Mrs Sasoon: “Do forgive us for talking shop at this hour.”

  “Following my instructed visit to the Rhudder homestead, I had Lew and another tracker camped a bit off an old track from Albany, just to check if Marvin should break back that way. They report every morning, and so far he hasn’t. He could go west to the railheads at Nannup and Augusta, and there police are on their toes. He hasn’t come north unless he kept to the forest. Although we’ve done what we can to close him in, there’s plenty of escape routes for anyone born hereabouts.”

  Sasoon fell silent whilst watching Bony make one of his dreadful cigarettes. He was recharging his pipe when Bony said:

  “Your visit to the homestead could have resulted in blurring a clear picture. It is probable that, until you went there, his people would think that the bad egg had turned up having been released from gaol. He would know he was wanted for murder, and would tell them he had broken the condition of his parole and must lie low. I, for one, wouldn’t blame his parents for giving sanctuary to him. Then, when you told them he was wanted in connexion with the S.A. murder and having given him sanctuary they would feel obliged to continue. Both before and after your visit, knowing he was wanted for murder, I believe he would stand fast and not chance apprehension. What were the impressions gained at your visit?”

  “I’ve thought about it quite a lot,” Sasoon began after a pause. “We’ve never been real friendly with them like with the Jukes, but we’ve known them all our lives, and when I’ve had to call on Government business they’ve always welcomed me. I didn’t like the job, and I was put to disadvantage. I was invited to afternoon tea on the veranda. There was the old man, Jeff Rhudder, who’s a cripple with sciatica, his wife, his next son, Luke and his youngest son, Mark. With the family for many years has been a Mrs Stark and her daughter, Sadie. Sadie grew up with the Rhudder children as had the two by Matt Jukes. All went to school together, played pirates and all that.

  “As you said just now, about not blaming the parents if Marvin was wanted only for evading the terms of his licence, I wouldn’t blame them for helping him to keep holed up. But there’s this to it. Many times since his son cleared out after what he done to Rose Jukes, old Jeff has said he’d shoot him like a dog if ever he went back home. They’ve been keeping tabs on Marvin through a lawyer in Sydney, and I think, or did think, that Jeff Rhudder would carry out his threat. He’s that kind of man.

  “Now for what you asked. Up to the time I went down there, I think Jeff didn’t know Marvin was home. When I left, I think he was suspicious that the others did know, all of them, including Mrs Stark and her daughter. He said something to Luke like ‘what did you come home for without the wife and kids?’, and there was emphasis on the word ‘did’. Every one of ’em denied having seen Marvin since he left home years ago.”

  “Luke, then, is married and not living at home?”

  “That’s so. He left home a couple of days after Marvin left. Went to Perth and got himself a job, did pretty well at it, and was married five years back to a nice enough girl, we think.”

  “When did Luke come down?”

  “Three days after Karl Mueller saw Marvin in the night. Been home ever since. I could be wrong, but I think the women sent for him.”

  “The situation could be worse,” Bony decided. “Inspector Hudson says that at this time the Rhudders would believe the police had no firm suspicion that Marvin had returned. Do you agree with that?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. They could have no cause to think otherwise. I was careful to give the impression that I was making a routine inquiry about their son’s latest crime committed two thousand miles away. I expressed regret at having to trouble them so sorely, and really felt regret too.”

  Glancing at the mantel clock, Bony saw the time, and asked for information about the road south to the Jukes’s homestead. He was told that the road wasn’t good for fast travelling, that it wound down and up steep slopes for seven miles, and then eight miles of better grades, making fifteen miles in all. Should do the journey in under the hour. On from Jukes for four and a half miles would take him to the Rhudder homestead. There were no intervening farms save two on the outskirts of Timbertown.

  He was informed that the Jukes were not on a telephone party-line, and this gave him satisfaction. Then he arranged procedure by which he could contact Sasoon, and Sasoon him, and with this understanding he rose to leave.

  “It has been a pleasant evening, and thank you for the supper,” he said to Elsie Sasoon, and to her husband: “So far you have come out favourably with the top brass, Sam. If Marvin is still down there, I’ll pluck him out of it like pulling a feather from a fowl.”

  Sam Sasoon escorted the visitor to the front gate, and on rejoining his wife, said, smiling broadly:

  “Well, what d’you know.”

  Chapter Four

  One Tree Farm

  PASSING THE second farm from Timbertown, the road became a rough track, winding and often steeply graded. Onward, Bony found himself in what any stranger would accept as a primeval forest. From the floor of green bracken and fern rose the jarrahs and cedarwoods, widely spaced, as the best of them had long since been gathered to the mills. The sunlight was beaming between their limpid crowns to cast green-gold pathways on the bracken, and, at this time of day, to polish the creamy grey-blue trunks of enormous karri trees.

  On the green floor it was cool and completely still. The wind was blowing at two hundred feet: close to the ground the silence was the silence of a cathedral, with the vocal sounds of the tomtit, the honey-eater, and the lorikeet intruding through the great arched entrance.

  Being unable to drive and appreciate this forest, Bony stopped his ca
r, and leaned against it to gaze along the deep fold of a narrow valley. His last assignment had been in the country inland from Shark Bay east of Gladstone, in the arid lands of low scrub and blistering summer heat and searing sunlight. This forest so wonderfully clean of foreign growths wasn’t Australia: it was paradise.

  The track was a slow one, and there was plenty of time, anyway. It was an hour later that he came to a bar ramp in a wire-fence, and twenty minutes afterwards came to a turn-off sign-posted ONE TREE FARM. Then he was driving towards the one tree and the tiny doll’s house his side of it, with other tiny buildings on the far side. The doll’s house was confined within a picket-fence, and Bony stopped his car outside the gate and stood entranced by the one tree. There was only the one tree, because fruit-trees and wattles and a couple of cedarwoods beside the track were toys to be bought at a store.

  Bony had admired the occasional karri tree beside the road down from Bridgetown; he had been enthralled by the karri trees still standing in the forest, but this one was truly majestic. From behind him a man said:

  “Girth at the butt sixty-eight feet. A hundred and seventy-seven feet up to the first branch.” Bony’s eyes slipped their gaze up the perfect column of blue-grey, up and up with never a halt to disapprove of a blemish, up to the first mighty branch, still upward to encounter the next branches. “Two hundred and eighty-six feet to the top,” said the man. “Proved by the surveyors. Make a dent in the roof if it fell on the house, wouldn’t it?”

  As Bony’s gaze had moved upward like a climbing monkey to the topmost branches, so now it descended down the trunk to the ground. Almost reluctantly, he turned about to the man who had spoken.

  “I take it you’re Mr Bonnar,” said Matt Jukes, plain curiosity in his dark eyes. Without his hat it could be seen he was balding, the greying hair forming a dark halo resting on his ears. “Mrs Sasoon told us you were coming. Come on in and meet the wife.”

  “Thank you,” Bony responded as they shook hands. “Yes, Mrs Sasoon said she would ring you. Gave me a parcel to bring along.” He obtained the parcel from the back seat and then halted at the gate in the picket-fence to look back at the tree. “Well, that is a tree of trees. I’ve seen mountain ash in Gippsland but they’re pygmies.”

  Matt led the way to the rear door of the doll’s house, and ushered him into the large living-kitchen-room of a rambling homestead. Emma came to meet the visitor, and in Bony’s mind was the thought that Sasoon’s wife was large and slow in action, and placid of mind, and this woman was small and vital and quick.

  “It’s nice to see you, Mr Bonnar,” she told him. “Elsie has been raving about you to us. Said you are a friend of our Rose and her husband. Now do sit down, and I’ll pour you a cup of tea. It’s time for the morning break, anyway. And how did you leave Rose and the children?”

  “Mrs Sasoon didn’t mention my business?” Bony asked.

  “No, she said you were on holiday. D’you take sugar? Just help yourself.”

  “Thank you.” Bony smiled at them, and sipped the tea. “I find myself still a little awed by your karri tree. How old could it be?”

  “Probably only a couple of feet shorter when Tasman sailed the water of this coast, and that was 1642,” Jukes answered, and there was no evading the pride in his voice. “Biggest tree left standing down this way, and it’ll always stand while we’re alive. It belongs to us.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Bony said charmingly, and added with truth: “You belong to it.”

  “That’s right, Mr Bonnar,” Matt agreed, “It’s what my father said in his time.” He discoursed about recorded giants and told stories of even bigger karri trees which had flourished and fallen before the coming of the white man to stand abashed by the vision of what they must have been when standing. And then when Emma brought up her daughter again, Bony turned his mind to more serious affairs. He said:

  “Your buttered scones were delicious, and now that you cannot get them back from me, I will make a confession. Please hear me out before telling me to go. I have here a letter from your daughter which doubtless will tell you a little about me. Several days ago I called on her and her husband. I then explained who and what I am, and the purpose of my intended visit down here, and they were pleased to give me this letter of introduction. Having talked with Constable Sasoon and his wife about you, I am encouraged to take you into my confidence and seek your co-operation in the work I have to do.

  “I am supposed to be the manager of a cattle and sheep property away up in the Murchison District. I like fishing, and I am supposed to be a keen amateur photographer and have with me a camera and some pictures to support the claim. Actually, I am a detective-inspector, and actually my assignment is to apprehend a man you know, viz: Marvin Rhudder.”

  They had both become taut, the woman stilled with her hands in her lap, the man’s hands clenched and resting on the table. Bony went on:

  “I don’t know this part of Australia and the coast, but Sasoon says, and he has pressed the point, that a man holed up down here wouldn’t be dug out by an army, and might be by one man acting alone. This is the type of assignment which I have accepted more than once, proving past history in that sometimes it takes an army of detectives to round up one criminal, and other times it demands only one man to corner a gang of crooks.

  “In the old-time story-books great detectives were ever the masters of disguise. I am a master in the art of fabricating a fictitious background, and every detail supporting my claim to be the manager of a station in the Murchison District has been firmed in presumed fact, so that anyone wishing to test will find every detail substantiated. Which is why the senior officer at Geraldton and I called on your daughter and explained about the Rhudder problem. They both gladly consented to give me this letter of introduction. Here it is, and here I am.

  “And as for the children, Mrs Jukes, I found all four of them just splendid, and when I retire, which I don’t suppose I shall, I am going to buy a house like theirs and live in Geraldton.”

  Jukes and his wife remained quiescent after Bony ceased speaking, and he poured himself another cup of tea and began to roll a cigarette. Matt then said:

  “Our Rose wouldn’t of told you about what Marvin Rhudder did, I suppose?”

  “No. However, Sasoon did hint at some bad trouble years ago when he told me he was sure you would be glad to help me as much as you can.”

  “I’ll help you, too right I’ll help,” came flooding from Matt Jukes, his eyes blazing and his beard standing out from his chin. “Old Faust traded his soul with the devil for youth, and I’d trade mine for the chance to get my hands on young Rhudder.”

  “Now, Matt! Please, Matt!” cried Emma, laying a hand over his fist. The man fought for composure and won, but his voice trembled when he spoke again.

  “That swine dishonoured our Rose, and he broke his father’s heart. Me and old Jeff were boys together. We had our fights and our good times, and we grew up like brothers, and where one had bad fortune, the other always went to his help. We begat children and they all grew up close, playing together, schooling together, adventuring together. You wait till you see old Jeff Rhudder. ’Taint the sciatica what’s made him old afore his time. What’s made it bad for all of us down here is that we raised Marvin as high as the top of yonder karri, and he went and fell not to the ground but for a mile or more under it. Too true, I’ll help you, Mr Bonnar.”

  “I’ve been hoping you would, Mr Jukes. Sasoon tells me you know this coast as well as the back of your hand, and that is where we think Marvin is holed up. Or somewhere in the nearby forests. Because of the lapse of time, I’ve first to be assured he is still down here, and then find him and have him apprehended. And I can expect no assistance from his own people.”

  “No, you won’t get any help from them. Let me tell you about Marvin, as from the beginning. Let’s go outside and talk.”

  Matt rose and strode to the doorway, and Emma cast a look at Bony which was both appealing and enco
uraging. They sat on a bench against the wall, and again Bony was confronted by the great tree which now dwarfed the picket fence to a line of matching sticks.

  “The kids called themselves the Inlet United. There were the three young Rhudders: Marvin, Luke and Mark. There were our two: Ted and Rose. And there was Sadie Stark, the daughter of the woman who’s been housekeeping for Mrs Rhudder for many years.” Matt paused to light his pipe. “Six of ’em. They was always close; grew up close, you might say, until the explosion.”

  Emma came from the house and quietly sat next to Bony, and her husband proceeded with the occasional hesitation of the man wanting to choose his words. “Six of ’em, remember. Four boys and two girls. No other children. No neighbours. Marvin was ever the leader, beside being the eldest. What he led ’em into down on the coast made our hair stand on end when we heard tell of it. He saved Sadie from drowning one day and pulled our Ted out from under a sneaker some other time.

  “Just imagine those six kids, reared like babies together, going to school on the milk truck to Timbertown, sometimes having a fight, sometimes ganging up to fight the kids in town. We watched ’em growing up, me and Emma and Jeff and his wife, and we were proud of every one of them like they could of been all our own.

  “To Marvin learning was as easy as falling out of that karri. He went to High School at Bunbury, and from the High he passed to the Teachers’ College up in Perth. Went in for writing stories for the magazines, and could do it without failing anywhere at the College.”

  Matt stopped to attend to his pipe, and on the other side of Bony, Emma sat with her hands in her lap and in that immobile state he had seen her in before. Her husband sighed, and went on:

  “Learnin’! Learnin’ wasn’t anything to Marvin. Read a poem, shut the book, then recite it. Go to chapel, listen to the sermon, come and repeat what the minister said from first to last. Did his course at the Teachers’ College and then entered the Theological College intending to be a preacher. Us oldies, and all the kids what had grown up with him, could see the sun shining on him.