The Mountains have a Secret b-12 Page 7

  On leaving the gates, Bony parted with the track, walking through the bush for a mile or more along the foot of the range, to examine the country in the vicinity of a little mountain of rocks sundered from the range when the world was young. A tiny stream came down from the range to pass by the little mountain and go whispering softly through the luscious scrub. Near-by Bony came to the tracks of the hotel dray, tracks now several months old.

  He found, too, fresh tracks of both Simpson and the American. He had twice visited this locality, and these fresh foot tracks provided the evidence that when last he had been this way he had been kept under observation. It was proof of what he had “felt”, of what the birds had indicated to him. The behaviour of the licensee and his yardman in keeping a guest under observation when that guest was merely taking the air, was surely motivated by something much at variance with the fear that the guest would lose himself in the scrub.

  The little mountain of rocks was surrounded by a clear space, and several months back the hotel dray had been driven almost to the edge of the clearing. From both old Simpson and the yardman, Bony had learned that the dray was used only for carting firewood, and that ample supplies of wood were to be had within a mile of the premises. The place was two miles from the hotel, and the dray tracks were old enough to coincide with the dismissal of Ted O’Brien.

  On the first of his previous visits Bony had circled the little mountain of rocks and found a natural passageway winding into its heart and ending at an open space as large as a small-house-room. He had this place in mind as a base for future operations, and he did not on this occasion approach the rock mountain, in case Glen Shannon was observing him.

  Bony could not fit the American into this picture. Shannon had entered Simpson’s service long after Detective Price had stayed at the hotel. However, enquiries concerning him would have to be made: when he had entered the country, his former employers in Australia, if any, and so on. It was not uncommon for American ex-servicemen who had visited Australia during the war to return. Many were coming back to seize the opportunities they thought awaited them, or to renew wartime friendships.

  As it had promised, the wind lay down before sunset; and, having dined, Bony was occupying the front veranda with only the cockatoo for company, when he heard a car approaching from Dunkeld. He expected it to be Simpson’s Buick. It was a well-conditioned tourer containing three men.

  By parting the veranda creeper he watched them leave the car to stand for a moment looking over the hotel front. The cockatoo told them to “get to hell out of it”, and they came up the veranda steps to greet the bird, whilst one knocked upon the fly-wire door.

  Ferris Simpson answered the summons. The man who had knocked asked for dinner and accommodation for the night, and the girl invited them inside.

  The surface of the pool of memory was stirred by a thought-fish deep in Bony’s mind. It was only for an instant, because he began to wonder not who they were, but what they were. He was thus speculating when old Simpson called from his bedroom.

  “Who was that?” demanded the old man.

  “New guests,” Bony replied, when standing beside the bed.

  “New guests, eh? How many?”

  “Three. Three men.”

  “What kind of men? What do they look like?”

  “One could be a university lecturer. Another could be a gentleman pirate disguised in a lounge suit. The third could be Superman. I think they’re staying for the night.”

  The watery eyes blinked, were hard, cunning. The old man said:

  “I heard Ferris at the front door. Did she know any of them?”

  “I don’t think so. Are you expecting people you know?”

  “Expectin’ people! We can always expect ’em. From what you said, these don’t sound like hard doers. Still, you keep your eye on ’em. And bring me in a drink later on. I wonder. Yes, I’mthinkin ’… Beenwonderin ’ why I was put to bed so early. Wasn’t no reason I could tell of.”

  Bony had reached thefrench window when the invalid called him back.

  “Did you hear what I said aboutbringin ’ me a drink?”

  “Yes, I heard,” Bony answered. “It will depend on circumstances. Your son might arrive home at any minute. However, we’ll see.”

  “Good for you, young Parkes. I hope you find out about your uncle.”

  Again old Simpson called when Bony had reached the windows. “Tell you what,” he said, his upper lip lifted in a leer, revealing a toothless gum. “You promise me, and in return I’ll tell you something you don’t know.”

  “Promise what?”

  “Promise you’ll bring me in a drink. You’ll be able to keep it.”

  “Very well, I promise. Now what?”

  “Jim won’t be back till early tomorrow. He’s gone farther than Dunkeld. He’s gone to Portland, and that’s a hundred miles away.”

  “Oh! What for?”

  “That’s all I’m telling. You promised that drink, mind.”

  Bony attempted to probe, but won nothing. In flashes the old man was cunning, concerned, loyal to his clan, fearful for himself, uneasy for Bony. It was difficult to winnow the wheat from the chaff: how much of what he said and suggested could be accepted and how much rejected. For Bony there was only the one weapon. He used it now.

  “Tell me why your son has gone to Portland and I’ll bring you a double drink.”

  “That’s a deal. I don’t know exactly why. I don’t think Ferris or the old woman knows why. I heard ’emtalking about Jim having to go to Portland to fix up about March twenty-eight. Seems like that day’s important for something or other. I’d tell you if I knew what about. Don’t you forget that double drink you promised. And you-”

  The voice broke away into silence, and presently Bony said:

  “Well-go on.”

  “You promise me you’ll come and say good-bye to me afore you leave. Then I’ll know the rights of it.”

  “That’ll be easy to promise.”

  From the dusk-draped bed came a soft chuckle.

  “Mightn’t be so easy. No, you mightn’t find it so easy if you’re lying all cold and stiff in the spirit store. Anyways, if you don’t come and say good-bye I’ll bethinkin ’ things about you.”

  Probing again without result, Bony left the invalid and the hotel to saunter, along the track to Dunkeld, his mind being teased by the possibility of any significance of March twenty-eighth and the visit of James Simpson to Portland this night. He might establish the significance, if any, by running down to Portland or getting Superintendent Bolt to send one of his men to make enquiries. He was feeling that the line of the investigation he was at present following should be altered and the case attacked from a different angle. The murder of Price and the suspicions of old Simpson concerning the dismissal of O’Brien were becoming red herrings, annoying to one who still wanted to concentrate on the disappearance of the two young women.

  On his return to the hotel he found the three new guests at ease under the veranda light. Coming upon them suddenly when he had mounted the steps, his problem was pushed into the background by interest in these men.

  “Been for a stroll?” asked the university lecturer, and, detecting unctuousness in the thin voice, Bony changed his guess for that of a parson. Of middle age, the man had the brow and the eyes of the intellectual.

  Bony admitted he had been for a walk and sat down in the chair invitingly moved for him by the man with the long black moustache, whom he had dubbed a pirate. Of the three, Superman was the most expensively dressed.

  “Been staying long?” enquired the pirate.

  “A week,” was Bony’s reply, his face angled as he rolled a cigarette. Somewhere deep in his mind lurked memory of this man or another much like him. He asked with polite interest: “What are your plans?”

  “Oh, we are going on tomorrow,” smoothly replied the parson. “There’s fishing at Lake George, so we understand. Have you been to Lake George?”

  Bony took in t
he light blue eyes, the thin mouth, theuncreased features above the flare of the match held to the cigarette.

  “Yes, I ran over there a couple of times,” he said. “Very pretty place. The guest-house proprietor told me that the fish were biting well.”

  The pirate said, studying Bony:

  “Might give the fishing abirl. Anything to drink at this Lake George?”

  “No, you would have to take it with you.”

  “Then I’m not staying at Lake George,” announced Superman with a voice that boomed. “I’ll get too thirsty, and I don’t sleep when I’m thirsty.”

  “You drink far too much,” the parson told him. “You have a magnificent body, and you have not any kind of right to harm it with alcohol. Moderation in all things, Toby, has been the advice of scholars and preachers down through the ages.”

  “Quit preaching at me,” pleaded Superman, and the pirate cut inplacatingly with:

  “Are you from Melbourne?”

  “No,” Bony replied. “I have a small station outside Balranald. Taking the first holiday since before the war.”

  “Balranald!” murmured the pirate, and he began to twirl the points of his moustache. “I’ve never been there. Wealthy town, I understand. Someone told me there used to be seventeen hotels in Balranald.”

  “Talking of pubs makes me feel queer,” asserted Superman. “What about a drink?”

  The pirate ceased his attention to his moustache and regarded the large man with brows slightly raised. And then it was that the figure lurking deep in Bony’s mind stepped to the surface and made its bow. It bowed from the photographic print of Antonio Zeno, proprietor of gambling schools and suspected of being connected with the murder of a business rival. It stepped aside to permit another to present itself in the guise of the parson. This was Frank Edson, a con man who had, prior to the war, risen to international status and, when on business, always favoured clerical garb. Edson’s last term of imprisonment had been in Canada.

  There was certainly something akin to old Simpson’s hard doers in these two men. Bony glanced at Superman, and Superman said through the still haze of tobacco smoke:

  “I want a drink.”

  “I am too comfortable to move,” murmured the parson, stretching his long legs, and the gentleman pirate impatiently said:

  “So am I. If you want a drink, Toby, go and get one. Take two, take three, a dozen.”

  Superman frowned and his square jaw hardened. He opened his mouth to speak and was stopped by the unctuous voice of the parson.

  “There is, my dear friend, a time to be born and a time to die; a time to rest and a time to labour; a time to eat and a time to drink.”

  “Hell!” said Superman, lurching to his feet to stand above them like the range towering above the hotel. “The time to drink is when you swallow. Come on! You can’t expect a man to drink with the flies. Trouble with you fellers is that you’re too correct and too careful with yourselves. You’d regret all the missed chances to drink if you got run over by a tram or something.”

  Viciously kicking the chair back from his legs, he stalked to the door and entered the building.

  “Friend Toby is ever too impatient,” indolently remarked the parson. “Nice fellow and all that, you know.”

  “Better go along in and join him, I suppose,” grudgingly surrendered the pirate. “Else he’ll get himself drunk too early in the evening. What about you, sir?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” replied Bony. “In another hour, perhaps.”

  “Well, you’d better come along,” the parson was advised, and he frowned and compressed his lips for an instant before saying: “Yes, I suppose we ought to keep an eye on Toby. Still, I hardly approve of deserting our new acquaintance. Alter your decision, sir, and join us. I can assure you, we are moderate in our minor sins.”

  Bony smiled and assented. It was the old, old story. And he was supposed to be a man of means.

  Chapter Ten

  Spanners in Machinery

  SUPERMAN had prevailed on Ferris Simpson to open the “cupboard”, and now she was standing within, and the narrow serving ledge had been dropped across the doorway. Her face indicated petulance.

  Superman brightened at the arrival of his friends and Bony and invited them to name their drinks. The parson and the pirate called for whisky, Bony and the big man choosing beer, and whilst the drinks were coming up the pirate offered expensive cigarettes. They stood at the cupboard ledge despite the inviting easy-chairs, and for the first half-hour the “shouting” was not consonant with moderation. They talked of the mountains, the hotel, the fishing at Lake George, and Bony began to wonder when the inevitable personal interest would come to the fore. The angling was expert, the acting of both the parson and the pirate superb. Superman only was his natural self. The fish was enjoying the situation, when:

  “Can’t get it out of my head that I’ve seen you before,” remarked the pirate. “I’m Matthew Lawrence. What’s your name?”

  “Jack Parkes,” replied Bony. “It’s unlikely we’ve met before, because I haven’t been away from home since ’39. Too much to do and too little petrol to do it with.”

  “H’m! Strange. Might have been in Sydney some time.”

  “Every man falls into one of about ten classes or types,” murmured the parson. “Thus it is that often we think we’ve met someone before. You mentioned, did you not, that you are a pastoralist?”

  “That’s so. Wool production is my living.”

  “Hell of a good living, too,” said Superman, grinning down at Bony. “Better’nwrestling for a living, anyway. I’m Toby Lucas. Toby to my pals.”

  “Ah, the lies men tell!” mocked the parson. He ranged himself closer to Bony. “Look at him. Perfect physical specimen of Man. The idol of the crowd, especially the female portion of it. Receives four hundred pounds every time he steps into the ring. And steps out again at the end of an hour or thereabouts. Do you make four hundred pounds an hour?”

  “Not much more than four hundred in a year,” Bony admitted truthfully.

  “Neither do I-after having been freed by the Income Tax people. Just imagine four hundred pounds per hour, about sixteen hundred dollars an hour, or, if you’d like to take it in francs, about a hundred and ninety thousand francs per hour, just to step into a ring and bow to the fans, and then put on a dashed good act of rough stuff with plenty of hate with a fellow who is a bosom friend. Look at this Toby Lucas. Take in the expensive suit, the silk shirt, the diamond-studded wrist-watch, the bulging inside coat pocket, where he keeps his gigantic wad.”

  “And then look at me, at my shabby clothes, at my flat pockets,” pleaded the pirate.

  “And also at me, my dear Jack,” urged the parson. “Regard me, Cyril Loxton, a slave to capitalistic bosses who demand sixty hours a week for a miserable few pounds. You’d never guess how hard I have to work-and at what.”

  “You are, I think, connected with a religious organisation,” Bony said, and the others laughed without restraint.

  “My dear fellow, you are very wide of the mark,” the parson asserted smilingly, and yet Bony detected the smirk of satisfaction. “I am a debt collector. I collect long outstanding debts owed to other people. I pursue debtors until they pay up, and after they have paid up and thus freed themselves of a load, they dislike me. And whatever guess you made about Matt, here, it also would be wrong.”

  Bony asked Ferris to fill the glasses and then stood back to examine the pirate, whilst swaying slightly upon his own feet. In the instant his gaze had been directed to the girl, he had noted that she was troubled rather than annoyed.

  “Give me three tries,” he suggested.

  “Bet you don’t hit the bull’s-eye,” struck in Superman, and Bony wondered why con men are so unoriginal in their methods. Then he was presented with a variation, for the pirate accepted the challenge on his behalf.

  “Bet he does,” said the pirate. “Bet a level pound.”

  “Do me,” agreed Super
man. “Now then, Jack, old pal, I’m backing you to lose and so gain me a quid.”

  Drunken gravity well assumed, Bony stepped by the parson to pay Ferris for the drinks she had set up. Without speaking she took his money. He saw her glancing at the others waiting behind him, passing swiftly over them. Then she was gazing at him as one wishing to impart a warning, but not daring to do so. That was all, and he was puzzled.

  Gravely he proffered the filled glasses, took up his own, and proceeded to look over the pirate as a man does a horse.

  “You’re in some kind of business,” he said thickly. “Wait. That’s not a guess. First guess is that you’re a restaurant proprietor.”

  The pirate shook his head.

  “All right! Second guess is that you’re a fruit merchant.”

  “Oi!” exclaimed Superman. “Still out. Leaves you one guess to win me that pound.”

  “Better have another drink before making the third try,” the parson suggested. “Thank you, Miss Simpson. The same again. This is becoming interesting. I think I’ll chance a little pound on Mr. Parkes. Take it, Toby?”

  Superman said he would even as he watched Bony, a broad grin on his great square face and his eyes a trifle hard. Ferris waited for Bony’s glass, and the parson urged him to “drink up”. Bony, however, retained his glass as he swayed and with determined gravity continued to examine the pirate. The room became silent.

  “Ready?” he asked. “Here’s my third try. You”-and he smiled foolishly-“you are the proprietor of a gambling den, a real slap-up, posh gambling school in Melbourne. Right?”

  The gentleman pirate stroked his moustache with the knuckle of a long forefinger, a speculative gleam in his black eyes. The parson’s fine brows rose to arch over his grey eyes which were no longer mocking. He was about to speak when Superman exploded:

  “Well, I’ll be back-slammed!”