Wings Above the Diamantina Page 5

  The military-minded Sergeant Cox had failed dismally to conceal his disapproval of their omission. What a straight-backed man he was to be sure! Elizabeth wondered if he ever bent mentally and physically, even in his own home. She could find in him nothing soft or humanly weak, and yet there was much good spoken of him. Even Ned Hamlin, who invariably got himself locked up when he went to Golden Dawn, did not seem to dislike the sergeant particularly.

  Well, the affair had certainly banished boredom. Why she should ever have been bored both vexed and surprised her. The Greyson girls were never bored, but then numbers were in their favour. They could go to tennis and golf and bridge parties. Elizabeth liked tennis, but she was an indifferent golfer and bridge she hated.

  Perhaps it was in her mental make-up, that poignant dissatisfaction with life and its gifts! Why could she not face life with the insouciance of Ted Sharp? Ted Sharp, who rode like a devil, worked like a horse, and who was as staunch as a rock! No, that was a bad simile. What was the time?

  Half-past twelve. She found herself sleepy, and again made a determined effort to become interested in her book. Apparently it did master her attention, for time slipped by and the little clock struck its elfin bell once.

  Stifling a yawn, she rose and stepped to the bed, where she tenderly moved the patient over to her other side, making sure that the under-arm was free and naturally easy. She experienced a little thrill of pride when intent listening told her that the patient still slept, that the movement had not disturbed her.

  Within the dressing-room, now her bedroom, she lit the spirit lamp and set the saucepan containing milk above the blue flame, and by the time she had undressed and flung about her a dressing-gown, it was time to brew the coffee.

  Elizabeth realized quite abruptly that, tired though she was, she yet was feeling a sweetly contented happiness. The old gnawing but ever-present dissatisfaction with life no longer existed. She had lived on board the ship of life like a sailor; now she was the first mate! She might never have been the sailor had not Hetty become the Coolibah house-keeper before Elizabeth’s return from the university, or if, Hetty had then retired to the position of an ordinary servant. But Hetty had kept her important position with Elizabeth’s unspoken sanction ... and Elizabeth had become just a member of the crew.

  Taking a cup of the coffee to the small occasional table at the head of the bed she carefully measured into it a teaspoonful of the brandy. And, as she gave it to the patient, spoonful by spoonful, she talked softly to her.

  Having drunk her own coffee and eaten the sandwiches provided by Hetty, Elizabeth felt much more mentally alert. For an hour she read, now and then listening to be assured that the patient slept. Persistently the distant dog maintained its half-hearted barks, and it began to get on her nerves. It would have to be moved farther away. Why could it not bark furiously, with reason, instead of that eternal half-bark, halfyap?

  The night wore on, and towards four o’clock she again found herself being mastered by the desire to sleep. More coffee was indicated for herself; anyway, it was nearly time to give some to the patient. Rising, she raised her arms above her head and stretched herself before walking into the dressing-room.

  Beside the table on which were the coffee things was a full-length pedestal mirror. It faced the bedroom door, then partly open, and, having brewed the coffee, she heard a slight movement, and turned. The mirror revealed the figure of a man standing with his back to the dressing-room door in front of the small table beside the bed and on that side of it nearest the door opening on the corridor.

  Although she could not see the man’s face she was sure that it was Knowles. He was fully dressed in a dark suit like that worn by the doctor earlier in the night. Evidently Dr Knowles was paying his promised early morning visit, although as yet daylight was not visible in the sky beyond the window. Unperturbed, Elizabeth placed the coffee jug and cups on a tray, and on taking the tray into the bedroom was in time to see the corridor door closing behind the visitor.

  Half-expecting to find on the small table a bottle of medicine, she set the tray down on the larger table and crossed to the bed table. But there was no bottle, no note, nothing in addition to the tumbler of water, a teaspoon and the opened bottle of brandy.

  Hallucination! A waking dream! A vision due to want of sleep! She opened the corridor door and peeped out to see—as she expected—no one in the corridor. The burning lamp on the table standing opposite the door clearing revealed the extremities of the corridor. There was no one there, and if it had not been a vision—if it had been Dr Knowles—there had been ample time for him to reach his bedroom.

  Of course there was a perfectly natural explanation, she told herself, while she attended her patient. Unable to sleep, the doctor had stepped in to look at the girl, and, finding the nurse in the dressing-room, he had left without speaking. Or he might have wanted a drink, and had come in to take some of the brandy. The brandy! Setting the cup of coffee down on the small table, she picked up the bottle of brandy, turned, and held it between her eyes and the table lamp. Ah! Most certainly the doctor had not taken any of the spirit. The bottle was quite full. Then a little icy shaft sped up her back and caused her scalp to tingle.

  What if.... Quickly she carried the bottle to the table lamp. The liquid reached almost to the bottom of the cork—in fact, it would reach the cork if the cork was driven into the neck as it had originally been by the bottlers. And yet she had taken one teaspoonful of the brandy from the bottle, and Hetty had taken another.

  It was most strange. Surely Dr Knowles would not put anything into the brandy without informing her? He might have done so, not thinking it of sufficient importance to bother her, or to call her. But then it might not have been the doctor at all!

  Again the icy shaft swept up her back to tingle her scalp. Suppose.... Well, suppose the man had been an enemy? It seemed impossible, but then...

  Thoughtfully, she returned to the bed and gave her patient the coffee without adding the teaspoonful of brandy. She was half-inclined to call Dr Knowles, but he might think her nervous or incapable of nursing his patient. No, it were better to wait until the morning, and then, when the doctor came in, casually to mention it.

  Presently a cock crowed, and when she drew aside the window curtains she found the new day arrived. As she stepped out on to the veranda to inhale the clear, cool air, she heard the bright screeches of a flock of galah parrots among the gums bordering the creek which carried floodwater down to the river channels.

  It was five o’clock when she heard Hetty talking with Ruth, the fat and happy aboriginal cook. Hetty was up and supervising the breakfasts and lunches for Nettlefold and Sergeant Cox. She expected Dr Knowles, but he did not appear, and at six o’clock, almost to the minute, she heard them leave in her father’s car for Emu Lake.

  Shortly after they had gone, Hetty came in to say that she had set out Elizabeth’s breakfast in the morning-room.

  “You must be so tired!” cried Hetty in her dove-like voice.

  “Thank you, Hetty. I will run along and have something to eat,” Elizabeth said. “The patient is all right. If the doctor should call while I am breakfasting, please tell him where I am.”

  She was engaged with bacon and eggs when she first heard the low humming of distant aeroplane engines. Steadily the hum rose in pitch until, aeroplanes still being a novelty, she left the room and walked the length of the corridor to step out on to the east veranda, and from there to walk down to the short metalled strip of road.

  And there all silvered by the rising sun sailed the big passenger-carrying biplane belonging to the air circus. It was coming to fly directly over the house and so low was it that she clearly saw a man’s head thrust out of a window and then his hand waving a handkerchief to her. Waving up to him she watched the machine until it disappeared beyond the house roof, humming on its way to Emu Lake.

  “Captain Loveacre must have made an early start, Miss Nettlefold,” called Dr Knowles from the veranda
. Arrayed in a black silk dressing-gown trimmed with silver facings, he was smoking a cigarette. “Good morning!” he added.

  “Good morning, Doctor!” she returned, the thrill of that man-made bird still in her blood.

  “How is the patient this morning?”

  “I have seen no change in her. I suppose you wondered where I was when you peeped in?”

  “Peeped in, Miss Nettlefold? But Hetty said you were at breakfast.”

  He spoke nonchalantly, and into her mind swept the suggestion of evil which before day broke had touched her heart with an icy finger.

  “Oh! I mean before daylight, you know,” she told him coolly.

  By now she had joined him on the veranda, and she noted the perplexity in his eyes.

  “But I did not go into the patient’s room before day broke,” he said evenly, and yet evidently puzzled. “I trust you did not fall asleep and dream that I did.”

  “No, I was not sleeping,” she told him with conviction, and then explained how she had seen a person whom she thought to be the doctor, standing at the little table beside the bed.

  Knowles laughed shortly.

  “So you did fall asleep!”

  “But I did not,” Elizabeth protested.

  “But I did not visit the patient’s room after we were talking last night until just now, when I found Hetty in charge.”

  Elizabeth regarded him with troubled eyes. She recalled the mystery concerning the brandy. Knowles became serious.

  “You are quite sure that you saw me, or someone like me, in the room last night? What time was it?”

  “Just after four o’clock,” she replied. “Yes, I am sure a man was in the room when I looked into the mirror, and that he was closing the door after him as I walked into the bedroom. He did something to the brandy. I am sure of that, too.”

  “Took some, you mean?” the doctor demanded sharply.

  “No, he put something into the bottle. There is more in it now than when I took out the teaspoonful at one o’clock.”

  “Come! Did you give her any of the brandy at four o’clock as I ordered?

  “No. After what I had seen I was doubtful what to do.”

  “That’s good. When in doubt do nothing, as Bonaparte used to say. Let’s have a look at that brandy.”

  Throwing away his cigarette, he hurried before her to the patient’s room. There he snatched up the bottle of brandy and gazed at it earnestly.

  “How much have you taken out of this bottle, Miss Nettlefold?” he asked.

  “One teaspoonful, Doctor.”

  “What about you, Hetty?”

  “Oh, Doctor! Only one teaspoonful, Doctor!” fluttered Hetty.

  “Well, more than two teaspoonfuls have been put back, or I have never opened a bottle of spirits in my life,” he said slowly.

  Chapter Six

  Elizabeth Is Determined

  IT WAS LIKE A sand cloud that comes from the west, rolling over the ground with very little wind behind it, to plunge the brilliant noon-day world into utter darkness. Weary from her all-night vigil, Elizabeth lay down on the bed in the dressing-room only to find that, despite the urgent need for sleep, sleep could not master her aching brain.

  Carrying the bottle of brandy, Dr Knowles had led her to the morning-room, where, at his request, she had brought the other two half-bottles of brandy supplied, with the open bottle, by the hotel at Golden Dawn. In each of the unopened bottles the vacant space between the bottom of the cork and the spirit was approximately one inch, but the spirit in the opened bottle—when two teaspoonfuls had been taken out for the patient—reached the bottom of the cork before it could be pushed right to its original position.

  “Something wrong, evidently,” the doctor had said. “But what it is we shall have to discover through analysis. Now to bed, or I shall be having two patients at Coolibah on my hands.”

  Now convinced that it was not Dr Knowles she had seen standing before the bed table, alarmed by the sinister import provided by the opened bottle of brandy, Elizabeth tossed and turned and suffered the dull brain ache resultant from want of habitual sleep.

  Yes, it was as though the sun had been obliterated by a sand cloud, this sudden terrible suspicion. Here at Coolibah, which had gone on and on for eighty years with nothing to disturb its serenity save floods and storms, droughts and the cattle tick, the shadow fell of some black conspiracy of evil men...

  Poison! Suppose the night visitor to the sickroom had poured poison into the brandy bottle? The doctor had not voiced his grave suspicions, but she had been able clearly to see and understand them. Who was that man? She reviewed in turn the station hands and could recall not one whose back resembled that of the man she had seen. He had stood in the shadow, and she could not say definitely what kind of clothes he was wearing excepting that they were of dark material.

  Without warning, slumber overtook her, and she was awakened by Hetty who set down a cup of tea on the table at the head of her bed.

  “I hate to wake you, Miss Elizabeth, but it is six o’clock in the evening,” Hetty exclaimed. “Oh, Miss Elizabeth! Such news! Such happenings on Coolibah!”

  So long and so soundly had she slept that Elizabeth awoke mentally alert and refreshed.

  “What has happened, Hetty?” she asked, sweeping back the clothes and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Six o’clock! Why did you not call me earlier?”

  “Mr Nettlefold said I was not to. He and Sergeant Cox came in an hour ago. Someone has burned the aeroplane out at Emu Lake.”

  “Burned it!”

  “Yes, Miss Elizabeth, burned it. When your father and the sergeant reached Emu Lake early this morning they found the big plane landed there and the men all looking at the remains of the small one.”

  Elizabeth accepted the proffered cup of tea.

  “Do they think it was done on purpose?” she inquired, frowning.

  “I don’t know! I suppose so! And then about midday they phoned the doctor from Golden Dawn to say that Mrs Nixon was going to have her baby, and he had to leave right off in his aeroplane. Wouldn’t stay for lunch. He set off to walk to the plane with that opened bottle of brandy in one side pocket and a half-filled bottle of whisky in the other. Oh, dear! He drinks terribly. Does he ever stop? And flying an aeroplane, too!”

  “The patient. Is she...?”

  “Just the same, Miss Elizabeth! Doctor left you a note about her, and I fed her every two hours as I was told.”

  “Have my father and the sergeant had dinner?”

  “The sergeant left for Golden Dawn without waiting for dinner. He wanted to ask you a number of questions, but Mr Nettlefold forbade him to have you wakened. They brought Ted Sharp in with them, and he’s taken Mr Cox to Golden Dawn.”

  “Give me a cigarette and a match, Hetty,” Elizabeth ordered. “I used to cry my eyes out because everything was so hatefully quiet here. Well, life has bucked up with a vengeance.”

  “Oh, Miss Elizabeth! Do you think it wise to smoke before you have eaten?”

  “No, I don’t, but I’m doing it just the same.”

  While drawing at the cigarette. Elizabeth stared up at this fluttering woman. Eleven years had Hetty been at Coolibah, and for eleven years the homestead had run like a well-oiled machine. Beneath the nervous exterior was the calm placidity of the born organizer. Elizabeth, for the first time, realized to the full her stability and loyalty. A little impulsively, she said:

  “You know, Hetty, I don’t know how I would get on without you. Where is Father?”

  “He was in the study five minutes ago, Miss Elizabeth.”

  “Then run along and tell him that I will be ready for dinner in half an hour, there’s a dear.”

  Hetty nodded and smiled, and vanished into the bedroom, and two minutes later Elizabeth, arrayed in her bath gown and carrying a towel, entered the patient’s room on her way to the shower.

  The room was illuminated by the soft golden light of the westering sun. A cool evening b
reeze from the south teased the lace curtains ribbon-caught to the side of each of the open windows and, entering, stirred the scent of the roses in the bowl on the larger table. The only sounds were the petrol engine and the cries of birds.

  “How are you?” Elizabeth softly asked, when she bent forward over the helpless girl. The patient’s eyelids were raised half-way, and the dark blue eyes moved just a fraction, in them an expression of welcome. Hetty had been at work on the light-brown hair.

  “I am glad Hetty did your hair so nicely,” she said, smiling down at the pallid but beautiful mask. “I’ve been terribly lazy, you know. I have slept all day. But I will be with you all night, so you need not be a tiny bit uneasy. The doctor has had to go to Golden Dawn to attend a woman, but he will be back again tomorrow.”

  The blue eyes became hard in expression and then were filmed with mist.

  “Now you mustn’t fret,” Elizabeth said. “I know you want to speak ever so much, but you must not fret because you cannot speak. Speech and everything else will come back to you presently. The doctor says it will, so you really must not worry. We will soon find out who you are, and then we can send for your relatives or friends.”

  Elizabeth smiled at her patient and patted her cheek before turning to take up from the table the envelope addressed to her. The note was from Knowles, and read:

  Have to rush off to attend to Mrs Nixon. Carry on with the patient’s diet according to my instructions in writing. I will fly back as soon as I am able. Regards!