Wings Above the Diamantina Read online

  Having bathed and dressed, Elizabeth found her father waiting for her in the dining-room. His first words were an inquiry after the patient.

  “About the same, Dad,” Elizabeth told him. “Is it correct that someone has burned the red aeroplane?”

  “It is. I’ll tell you about it while we eat. I am famished. Had a hard day and a devilish exciting one, too.”

  The young lubra, smartly dressed in a maid’s uniform, of which she was obviously proud, came in with the dinner dishes, and not till she had gone out and they were engaged with knives and forks did the big man begin his explanations.

  “We left here, the sergeant and I, about six this morning,” he said. “We reached Emu Lake just before half-past eight. Captain Loveacre’s big de Havilland passed us before we cleared the Rockies. When we got to the lake, there it was with the pilots standing about the ruins of that beautiful red monoplane. Parts of the wreckage were still hot. The petrol tank had exploded with terrific force, for the wreckage was strewn about almost all over the lake.”

  “Tracks?” breathed Elizabeth, the bush-bred.

  Nettlefold shook his head and sighed.

  “It beats me,” he said gravely. “The sergeant told the airmen not to move about, and he and I circled the ruins. But not a blessed footprint could we discover. No one had approached that monoplane to fire it. No one could have done it without leaving tracks, as you know.

  Still, Cox and I are white men having the white man’s deficiencies. I drove across to Ned Hamlin’s hut, and I was just in time to stop Ted setting off in his car with Ned and the two blacks. Shuteye and Bill Sikes went back with me, and we loosed ’em on a hunt for tracks. They found nothing of the kind, although they circled on the lake and all around it.”

  “Strange!” murmured Elizabeth. “Could the monoplane have caught fire through natural causes, do you think?”

  “The captain said it was possible, but not probable. The weather yesterday was quite clear, as you know. There was no lightning last night or this morning.” The cattleman smiled grimly, and then added: “For some time, I think, the sergeant suspected us of firing the machine.”

  That made Elizabeth laugh.

  “How stupid of him!” she said. “What possible motive could we have had for doing anything so silly?”

  “Ignorance of motive does not prevent suspicion,” her father replied. “Our tracks were plainly to be seen, but there were no others. Therefore, we must have done it. That was his reasoning. However, the sergeant’s suspicions faded when he read Dr Knowles’s letter.”

  “Oh! Did Dr Knowles write him before he left?”

  “Yes.”

  Nettlefold pinched his nether lip with sudden pensiveness and regarded his daughter with penetrating eyes. She looked at him with ill-concealed impatience.

  “Well, what did Dr Knowles write to Sergeant Cox?” she demanded.

  “Quite a lot—about that man you saw in the sickroom, and who tampered with the brandy on the bed table. Elizabeth”—his voice became very grave—“Elizabeth, that poor girl will have to be taken to the hospital at Winton, where she can be properly looked after.”

  Then he saw his wife with brilliant clarity in his daughter’s eyes when she flashed at him:

  “Do you mean, Dad, that Hetty and I are not looking after her properly?”

  “No, not in that respect,” he was quick to assure her, “but you must realize that last night a probable assassin entered this house and poisoned the brandy which Knowles ordered to be given the patient.”

  “Are you sure that the brandy was poisoned?” she countered.

  “No. We are not sure, yet. Knowles, however, states in his letter that when he examined the brandy before strong sunlight, he could easily detect a substance foreign to the spirit. Further, he stated that he was convinced that the brandy was poisoned, and that a most serious attempt had been made on the girl’s life. He urged that someone sit up on guard all to-night in case another attempt be made.”

  “One of the men can be persuaded to do that, and we can leave the dogs off the chain,” she suggested swiftly.

  “Quite so,” he agreed. “But we cannot turn this house into a fort.”

  “Oh, yes, we can. After last night no one is going to harm that girl, not if I have to sit beside her with a loaded rifle in my lap. Dr Knowles told me that the patient may remain here, that she is better off here than in Winton, and therefore you are going to give in to me and allow her to stay with us. Why, her coming has given me just the stimulus that I have so badly needed.”

  “Well, have it your own way, Elizabeth. You always do,” her father said, with just that tinge of sulkiness betrayed by a woman-defeated man. “It’s all so damned mysterious, and I hate mysteries.”

  “I don’t. I love them,” she said, smiling his reward. “I am going to fight for that poor girl to remain at Coolibah. She is better off here than anywhere. What does Sergeant Cox think of it all?”

  “Candidly, I think Cox is well and truly bluffed. He hinted that the case looked too big for him to handle, and that he intended to advise his immediate superior to call for a detective from Brisbane.”

  “A lot of good that will do,” Elizabeth burst out. “If those two blacks cannot pick up any tracks, how could a city policeman succeed?”

  “Detectives are trained.... There’s the telephone. Excuse me!”

  He rose at once and departed for the study, and, frowning, Elizabeth continued the meal which their conversation had interrupted. She had read novels with plots far less fantastic than these happenings at Coolibah. The room, the house, life itself, appeared to have passed into a shadow making the real world distorted and fantastic. Down in Sydney and Melbourne there was a murder at least every week, and a hold-up or a smash-and-grab raid every night. One could accept a straightout murder, but helpless young women in abandoned aeroplanes and mysterious men slinking through the house poisoning brandy, belonged to the world of nightmare.

  “That was Knowles,” Nettlefold explained, returning. “He is leaving Golden Dawn at once, and he wants me to meet him at the landing ground. I’ll have to hurry to finish dinner and get out there.”

  “Did he give any news? Anything about the brandy?”

  “No. When I mentioned it, he shut me up.”

  “Oh! Well, I am glad he is coming to-night. I am glad, too, that Ted Sharp will be here. When should he be back?”

  “Not before midnight.”

  Elizabeth regarded her father steadily. Then she said:

  “Before you go, get the men to let all their dogs off the chains, will you?”

  Chapter Seven

  Sergeant Cox’s Visitor

  SUMMER HAD COME AGAIN, and Golden Dawn drowsed in the hot afternoon sunlight. The poppet-head of the mine danced in the heat waves rippling across the gibber plain, translucent waves which distorted the shapes of distant cows and flocks of goats. A hammer clanged on metal in the blacksmith’s shop, where, instead of making a set of horse-shoes, the smith was straightening a truck axle. The striking hammer appeared to mark time for the school class singing “Waltzing Matilda” in the little wooden building at the far end of the town.

  With both coat and waistcoat removed, Sergeant Cox was at work in his office. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and his jaw methodically worked at a large chunk of chewing gum. Office work demanded gum in preference to a pipe or an occasional cigarette, and the work in hand called for so much mental attention that the humming of the car that entered Golden Dawn from Yaraka passed quite unnoticed.

  The sergeant was expecting the arrival of detectives from Brisbane on the mail coach due in at five-thirty, and his pen was busy drawing up a full report concerning the derelict aeroplane found at Emu Lake. The present was a distinct lull, as it were, after the storm of activity consequent on the discovery of the monoplane and its helpless passenger. Captain Loveacre had flown away with his fellow pilots in the de Havilland, and the members of the Air Accidents Investi
gation Committee had arrived, examined the wreckage, and had departed only that morning. Their findings, Cox had been informed, would be made known to the Commissioner, Colonel Spendor.

  When a light step sounded on the veranda, Sergeant Cox frowned fiercely and continued to write. Filling in forms and making official returns were easy to a man long accustomed to such red tape, but he was finding the writing of an account of an investigation far more difficult. The coming of a visitor added to an irritation partially produced by the distracting tinkle of china in the kitchen where his wife was preparing afternoon tea. He kept his iron-grey head bent over his writing when the caller entered the office, and his pen continued its laborious scratching.

  “Good afternoon, Sergeant!” greeted a low and cultured voice.

  “Day!” snapped the sergeant, continuing to write.

  “You appear to be very busy this afternoon,” remarked the voice.

  Had he heard that voice before? Cox decided that he had not. Some traveller, without doubt. Men of all types, cultured and coarse, tramped the outback and here was one seeking the usual ration order supplied by the government. With grim determination, he went on with the paragraph in hand, and then, having completed it, he raised his head to glare at the caller.

  He saw, seated on the small iron safe, a man of medium height and build, dressed in a light-grey tweed. His tie matched his shirt, and so did the soft felt hat now resting on the edge of the writing-table. The visitor’s face was turned downward to the busy fingers engaged in making a cigarette, and with no little astonishment the sergeant noted that the man’s hair was fine and straight and black, and that his skin was dark brown. And then he was gazing into a pair of bright blue eyes regarding him with a smile.

  “Well, what’s your business?” Cox demanded, affronted by the caller’s freedom. The fellow was obviously a half-caste. He struck a match and calmly lit the cigarette he had made. Cox flushed to a deep red. He was used to stockmen and half-castes treating him with more respect than this.

  “I asked you your business with me,” the sergeant rasped, his nether jaw protruding, his eyes blazing.

  And then the soft and pleasing voice again:

  “My dear Sergeant, my business is the same as your own. My name, given me in the long ago by an unthinking matron at a mission station, is Napoleon Bonaparte. Believe me, I have often considered seriously taking another name by deed poll, because no man—least of all myself—is worthy to be so honoured.”

  “Napoleon Bonaparte!”

  The pen dropped from the sergeant’s fingers. Slowly he stood up, his legs pushing back the chair. The glare now was drained from his eyes, but they remained as widely open.

  “Not Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte!”

  The caller bowed ever so slightly.

  “I hold that rank in the Queensland Police Force,” he admitted.

  “Well, sir, I am surprised. I was not expecting any one from Brisbane until the mail arrives this evening. How did you get here, sir?”

  “I hired a car at Yaraka. I should have been here two days ago, but I was finalizing a case out from Longreach. The Commissioner thought I would be the best man to clear up this little bush mystery of yours. Oh, by the way! Please do not employ the ‘sir.’ I am known to all my friends and colleagues as Bony. Just Bony. Even Colonel Spendor calls me Bony. He says: ‘Where the hell have you been, Bony?’ and ‘Why the devil didn’t you report, Bony, when I ordered you to?’ Colonel Spendor is volcanic but likeable. He will die suddenly—as a soldier should—and we shall all miss him. I like a man who damns and blasts. There is no conceit and no sly treachery in his make-up.”

  “Well, sir—er, Bony—I am glad to meet you,” barked Cox, still controlled by astonishment. Moving hurriedly round the table, he jerked a chair from the wall corner. “Have heard a lot about you, of course. The wife is boiling the billy, I think. Can I offer you a cup of tea?”

  “I was hoping that you would,” Bony assented smilingly. “The driver of my hired car is removing the alkaloids of the track with pots of beer, but I find that beer taken during the day gives me a headache. Do not, however, put your wife to any trouble.”

  “Not at all! Not at all! I shall ask her to bring a tray here, and we could then discuss this aeroplane business. Have you seen my report which, I take it, was forwarded to Headquarters?”

  “Yes. Otherwise I might have been disinclined to come,” Bony replied.

  “Disinclined! But the Chief Inspector, C.I.B., allocates cases, doesn’t he?”

  “He does, Sergeant. He allocates cases to me, but sometimes I decline to accept them.” Bony smiled and revealed his perfect teeth. “I have found it necessary on more than one occasion to refuse to stultify my brain with a common murder or a still more common theft. The Chief Inspector of my department does not see it in the same light, or from the same angle. Neither does the Commissioner, whose damns and blasts are frequent.”

  “Yes, yes, of course!” Cox gasped, his face now purple, the military soul of him seared by this devastating defiance of discipline and questioning of authority. “Just a moment! I’ll see about the tea.”

  When the sergeant had gone, the blue eyes of Napoleon Bonaparte twinkled. His defiance of authority and lack of respect for superiors never failed to create horror, and that horror never failed to amuse him. Moving his chair forward so that he came to be seated at one end of the writing-table, facing where the sergeant would be sitting, his long brown fingers began rapidly to manufacture a little pile of cigarettes.

  This slight and handsome man had carved for himself a remarkable career. Taken into a mission station when a small baby, there had grown in the matron’s heart a warm affection for him. At her death, she left in trust for him the whole of her small estate. Early in youth, Napoleon Bonaparte revealed a quick intelligence and facility for assimilating knowledge. At a State school he won a scholarship taking him on to high school at Brisbane from which he graduated to the then new university, at which he obtained his Master of Arts degree.

  Then occurred a grave disappointment in love that sent him back to the bush. For a year he ran wild among the natives of his mother’s tribe, and during that year he learned as much bushcraft as he would have done had he never been to school and to the city. The murder of a little girl out from Burketown, in which case he did invaluable tracking and found for the police the murderer, was the beginning of a brilliant career in the police force. His successes were remarkable, because wise superiors employed him wholly on bush cases, at which his natural instincts, inherited from his aboriginal mother, added to his own natural mental astuteness, were given full scope.

  For a little while low-pitched voices drifted to him from the kitchen, and presently the sergeant returned to lower his bulk into the official chair.

  “The wife will be bringing the tea in a minute or two,” he informed Bony. “As for this aeroplane case ... well, I don’t think it will—what did you say?—stultify your brain, although it has deadened mine thinking about it. I can manage drunks and disorderlies, and make the owners of cars and trucks comply with the regulations, and all that, but this business is right off my beat.”

  “What you say is most promising. By the way, since the aeroplane was found has it rained or blown dust?”

  “No. The weather has been clear and hot.”

  “Excellent! I understand that the Air Accidents people have visited the wreckage. What did they have to say?”

  “Nothing,” Cox growled. “Said they would report to the Commissioner.”

  “Well, well! We must allow these civil servants to wield their own thunderbolts. Dignity, you know, must be maintained. I wonder, now! Did they tramp about in the vicinity of the burned plane trying to shoot kangaroos or otherwise enjoy themselves?”

  “I believe not. They were there most of one day pottering among the ruins. No, they did no kangaroo hunting. The only men who have tramped about much looking for tracks are the two station blacks, Shuteye and Bill Sike
s.”

  “Oh! Another unfortunate, named this time after a famous person in literature. I do not think it right. Was this Bill Sikes so named because of any resemblance to the original cracksman?”

  “Maybe. He’s ugly enough in all conscience.”

  “What success did they achieve?”

  “None—unless the fact that they could find no tracks does prove that no person left the machine after it landed, and no person approached it to destroy it.”

  “Well, that will all have to be checked, and, as the weather has been fine and still, it will be mere routine work.”

  “I have here statements made by several men on Coolibah and elsewhere.”

  At this moment Mrs Cox arrived with the afternoon tea. She was wearing an afternoon frock, hastily donned. Knowing as much about police matters as her husband, she had insisted on bringing the tea in order to be presented to the most remarkable member of the force, and the member of it least known to the public.

  On his feet, Bony bowed acknowledgment of the introduction. Mrs Cox had called him “sir,” and now she was staring at him.

  “Tell me, Mrs Cox,” Bony urged, “do I look like a commercial traveller?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Or a tramp?”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “Or a criminal?”

  “Criminals are hard to detect until they are found out, sir,” she answered cautiously.

  “Thank you, Mrs Cox. I was afraid your husband mistook me for a criminal, or a tramp, or a commercial traveller. And now will you render me a great kindness?”

  “If I can, sir.”

  “Please call me Bony. Just Bony. You see, I hold an inspector’s rank merely because my training and my mental gifts entitle me to an inspector’s salary. But it is the salary, not the rank, I covert. I have a beautiful wife and three growing boys to educate, and I have to find a great deal of money. My boys and my wife, the Commissioner and your husband, all call me Bony. I would be happy were you to do so.”

  Mrs Cox wanted to laugh, though not altogether with merriment.