The Mountains Have a Secret Read online

  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 Superman. “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!”

  “I’m afraid you are quite wrong, Mr. Parkes, and therefore Mr. Lawrence and I have to settle with Toby.” With a quick hand movement he produced a wallet, speaking now more quickly with the evident intention of convincing a semi-drunken man of being in error. “Toby, your pound. As usual you have the luck. Matt—pay up. We must be good losers. I did think Mr. Parkes would bring it off. He came very close to doing so. What a joke though! Matt Lawrence, two-up king and emperor of the baccarat-tables.”

  “I don’t find it a joke,” the pirate said frigidly, and Bony supported himself by placing a hand upon the pirate’s arm as he said: “By the way, what do you do? How far out was I?”

  “I am, Mr. Parkes, a dress designer.”

  Bony chuckled and admitted he would never have guessed that. Superman pressed a full glass into his free hand. For the nth time the parson tossed a humorous remark to Ferris Simpson—and failed to melt the expression of cold watchfulness. Memory of what old Simpson had said stirred within Bony’s quite clear mind. The old man had wanted to know if Ferris knew these men. When she answered the front door neither her demeanour nor her voice betrayed recognition, and yet her attitude towards these new guests since she had been in the “cupboard” was such as to include the probability of a previous knowledge of them and their activities.

  The next move came quickly and confirmed Bony’s suspicion that the girl knew these men and suspected their real intention towards him. Had their objective been to relieve him of his money through one of a thousand confidence tricks, the suggestion which was now made would never have been put forward.

  “Let’s all go for a walk,” the parson said. “No doubt we could prevail upon Miss Simpson to open the cupboard for a little while before we turn in. What d’you say, Mr. Parkes?”

  Con men of the parson’s calibre do not take semi-drunks into a dark lane to rob them, and owners of gambling schools of the standard run by the pirate were not satisfied with a few pounds in the wallet of a man who might survive the robbery to identify them. Robbery, therefore, was not their motive. Bony’s interest in them swiftly increased.

  “I don’ wanna go out for a walk,” he protested. “Been out all the afternoon. Gonna sit down here and watch you fellers get drunk. Make me laugh to see rollin’ aroun’ a wrestler, a debt-collector, and big-time baccarat shot. Shorry. Mean dress designer.”

  Gravely determined, he occupied one of the easy chairs, eased his back, and closed his eyes. The parson said:

  “Let him be, gentlemen. I fear our friend is slightly overcome. Again, please, Miss Simpson.”

  The girl was not in the “cupboard”. Eyebrows were raised. The pirate leaned elegantly against the wall. The wrestler rubbed the palm of one hand with the enormous thumb of the other, belched, distended his cheeks. The parson sat down.

  “At least the cupboard hasn’t been closed on us,” he said, and leaned backwards with his head resting against his clasped hands. “Ah, here is Miss Simpson. We thought you had deserted us, Miss Simpson.”

  “I went out for a fresh drying-cloth,” the girl said tartly. “If you don’t want any more drinks, I think I’ll go to bed.”

  The wrestler smirked and said that the evening was still an infant. They kept Ferris busy for another twenty minutes, when the big man was showing signs of being drunk. No such signs were evident in his companions. Ferris’s attention was being given to filling the glasses when the watching Bony saw the parson wink at the wrestler, who then looked towards Bony and grinned.

  “Friend Jack oughta have a drink. Mustn’t let him sleep all his brains away.”

  He came towards the seated Bony, and the other two turned to watch him, their backs pressed hard against the drop counter and thus preventing the girl from looking through into the lounge. He almost staggered in his walk, and when he pushed a hand against Bony’s chest the weight was enough to wake the Sphinx.

  “Come on, ole feller. Have another drink with Toby.”

  “I’ve had enough,” Bony told him, and then was lifted by one hand to his feet and almost carried by one hand across the lounge to the waiting comrades. A glass of beer was offered to him by the pirate, and the wrestler said something about black men being unable to take it. He was working himself into a rage, Bony strongly suspecting it to be all pretence and wondering what the little scheme was about.

  “That’s enough of that talk, Toby,” the parson said sharply.

  “I talk as I like to a feller who refuses to drink with me,” bellowed the wrestler, drawing himself up and digging his fists into his hips. “What’s the matter with me that he won’t drink when I ask him?”

  “I think you had all better go to bed,” Ferris said, to which the large man asserted he was not going to bed, that he was remaining as long as he liked, and that he wanted another drink.

  Ferris Simpson closed the cupboard door on them, and that, it appeared, was the act for which they had engineered.

  “Ah!” breathed the wrestler, thrusting his bullet head towards Bony. “Now that the lady has left us, I’m going to give you a lesson in the manly art of wrestling.”

  He advanced upon Bony like a railway engine towards a light-blinded jack-rabbit. Bony backed away, coldly sober, tensed, believing that he now understood the reason actuating the coming of these notorious men. He was convinced that none here knew for sure that he was a detective, and therefore he could not declare himself even though he was defenceless, the gun given him by Superintendent Bolt being in his bedroom.

  He turn
ed and sprang for the door—to find it closed and blocked by the parson. There was a tiny smile at the corner of the pirate’s mouth and the black eyes gleamed with anticipation. The wrestler ceased to advance, turned aside, and calmly pushed a chair away and the table against the wall. All pretence of being drunk was discarded.

  “Well, now, Jack Parkes, since you have asked me to demonstrate on you the Indian death lock—and these gentlemen are witness that you did—I will now oblige you. No doubt you will have to enter a hospital or a nursing home for a little while, due, of course, to my slight inebriation and thus misjudgement, but you did insult me and that will be my excuse. I shall apologise and be very sorry and visit you often, and my publicity man will have a picture taken of me at your bedside. Now come to Daddy.”

  With astonishing quickness he was upon Bony, and Bony was equally quick. He attempted quite successfully the French drop kick taught him by an expert. The kick rocked the wrestler, and had it been given by a man of his own weight he would have been dropped cold. He swore viciously, and the parson called:

  “Well done! Very well done! Now, Toby, kindly get busy.”

  Bony backed, crouched to take the onslaught with an offensive and was savagely pushed from behind by the pirate. The push sent him out of balance into the wrestler’s huge hands, and in an instant he was on his back and his legs were gathered up, twisted into the wrestler’s legs, and the wrestler, grinning down at him, proceeded merely to hold him fast.

  “Excellent, Toby,” cried the parson. “Do be careful now. Our friend only requires a slight rest, not a broken back. Honour will then be satisfied.”

  Toby’s body began to lift, Bony’s legs locked behind his own. Up and up he went preparatory to flinging himself backwards and thus strain and wrench the ligaments and muscles of a man hopelessly unable to bear it. The other two came closer. They leaned over the prostrate Bony, still smiling gently, but with the joy of sadists flaming in their unwinking eyes. Something which glittered streaked between the face of the wrestler and the two heads, and from the wall came a sharp twanging sound. Three pairs of evil eyes rose from the victim’s face to clash, to waver, to move to the wall in which throbbed the blade of a throwing knife.

  “You guys better let up, sort of,” came the soft drawling voice of Glen Shannon. “If you don’t, well, I just can’t miss.”

  Like actors on a slow-motion film, the heads of the four men turned from gazing at the quivering knife to see the American yardman standing inside the cupboard, the door of which was wide open. On the serving-shelf were laid symmetrically four throwing knives. Another was lying along the palm of Shannon’s open hand. Shannon said, and menace was like metal in his voice:

  “Easy now, wrestler. Untie yourself. Think of a knife buried into your stomach, handle and all. Don’t you other guys so much as blink.”

  The wrestler cursed, lifted his upper lip in a wide snarl. Then he went about freeing Bony’s legs and, strangely enough, in this situation, Bony noticed the lacerated place on the great chin made by the toe of his shoe.

  He and the wrestler rose to their feet. The others stood up, watchful, silent, poised like snakes ready to strike. This silence was whole, solid, something of weight, broken a moment later by the banging of a distant door. Along the passage came the tread of heavy men. A gruff voice drifted inward from the back of the premises. The knives vanished from the cupboard-door shelf. Shannon drew back, snatched up a drying-cloth. The parson and the wrestler turned slowly to face the door. Bony sighed, and his mouth widened into a narrow red slit. The door opened violently, and two large men entered.

  “Licensing Police here,” announced one of them.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Raid

  NAPOLEON BONAPARTE was finding it necessary to exert willpower to subdue temper. He had suffered injury to his dignity, and that was also a blow to his pride, which could not easily accept physical defeat at the hands even of a man like Toby Lucas, one of the world’s greatest mat men. That he had come within an ace of suffering physical injury was of less significance.

  He regained command of himself during the moments when the two plain-clothes policemen took in the room, the open cupboard and Shannon standing within it and polishing a glass, the four hotel guests.

  The raid had been efficiently conducted. The police car had been stopped a mile away from the hotel, and on foot the crew had arrived to surround the hotel and simultaneously enter it at the front and the back.

  Two more policemen came into the lounge, and one of these took command. Unobserved by Bony, Ferris Simpson had entered the cupboard, and the American had emerged into the lounge to stand nonchalantly chewing gum. The girl was asked to bring the register.

  “You men staying here?” demanded the police leader, and, having received affirmative replies, he waited silently for the register.

  Bony sat down, emotional reaction causing leg and arm muscles to throb and heart to pound. Breathing was now slightly easier, but his brilliant blue eyes were still dilated and noticeable in the dark face. The leader of the raiding party flashed him a keen look the instant before he accepted the register, snapped open the leaves to lay bare the last entries, and examined the page.

  “Who is John Parkes?” he asked.

  “I am,” Bony admitted. “Address is Coonley Station, via Balranald.”

  “Huh!” grunted the leader, as though by force of long habit he did not believe a word of it. “Well, which of you is Cyril Loxton?”

  The parson answered. He was standing beside the table upon which he was elegantly leaning one hand.

  “Your name is not Loxton. Your name is Edson.” The slight movement of those in the room was stilled by that harshly spoken objection. “Which is Matthew Lawrence?”

  “That’s me,” replied the pirate. “That is my name.”

  “Not in Australia it isn’t. Your name in Australia is Antonio Zeno. And your name—your real name—you know, the name at birth?”

  “Toby Lucas,” replied the wrestler. “And you can’t argue about it.”

  “Good!” The policeman signed the book and returned it to Ferris, who had stood by tight-lipped and silent. “I like people who stand by their legal names. Saw you at the stadium a month ago. The wife barracked plenty for you. Thought I recognised you. Must say you’re pretty good on the mat. Still, I don’t think you’d put up much of a performance against four of us, so calm down. Now, what about you? You’re not in the book.”

  “I’m the yardman and general man employed here,” replied Shannon, without ceasing to chew.

  “How long you been employed here?”

  Shannon said he had been working at the hotel for close on three months, and then, to Bony’s astonishment, for the senior man had not once appeared to look in that direction, he was asked about the knife sticking from the wall.

  “I tossed it,” he announced. “Was giving a demonstration how it’s done.”

  The senior man now stared at the knife and then went back to the American.

  “H’m! Pretty good, eh? Friendly demonstration, I suppose?

  “Sure.”

  “Glad to hear it. Name is?”

  “Name’s Glen Shannon.”

  Ferris was brought into the range of the hard hazel eyes.

  “That O.K., Miss Simpson?”

  “Yes, that’s correct, Sergeant.”

  “Good! Shannon, you clear out. Miss Ferris, lock the cupboard and retire.” He waited until Ferris and the yardman had withdrawn, and then he addressed himself to Antonio Zeno, asking how he had arrived. Zeno said he had come in his own car and, when this question was put to Edson and Lucas, they admitted they had travelled with the pirate.

  “Well, we must get along, gentlemen,” proceeded the leader. “Parkes, I am going into your background in a minute. You, Edson, and Zeno, I’m taking back to Melbourne—for identification, you know. I have reason to think that the names you gave me were false.”

  The parson stepped forward.

&nb
sp; “Now look here, Sergeant, we’re not doing any harm. Came here for a short holiday. We’re going on to Lake George tomorrow for the fishing.”

  “Not now you’re not, Edson. Better cuff ’em.”

  There followed swift movement, and the pirate and the parson were joined with steel. The wrestler glowered and clenched his hands.

  “You’d better come with us back to the city, Lucas,” he was told.

  “But you can’t do that to me,” expostulated Lucas.

  “You’d be surprised. Go and pack your dunnage, and then get out to the cars and be ready to push off.”

  “But, look_____”

  “No buts—Lucas—else I charge you with consorting.”

  There was no beating down the ice-cold hazel eyes, and following only a slight hesitation the wrestler left with the others and three of the policemen. The door was closed and the sergeant said:

  “Superintendent Bolt asked me to tell you he was becoming anxious about you, sir. Said he doesn’t want to crowd in, and so he asked our branch to run the rule over this place and contact you. Someone’s been making enquiries about you.”

  Bony’s brows rose a fraction, but he made no comment. The sergeant proceeded:

  “Yesterday morning a telegram was received at Balranald from A.B. Bertram of NMN~, Collins Street, City, to the Agricultural Experts’ Association, Balranald, asking whether a person named John Parkes lived in the district. Bertram is an indent agent in a rather big way of business. Further to this enquiry, a man called at the Motor Registration Branch yesterday afternoon asking to be told the owner of a car registered number NMT ARO, which, you remember, is the number now on the Superintendent’s car. He wasn’t granted the information, and he was kept until a man could be put on to him. He was trailed to A.B. Bertram, and subsequently identified as Frank Edson, con man. Naturally Edson was kept under observation and was seen to leave Melbourne with another criminal named Zeno, in the company of Toby Lucas, the wrestler. The car was reported passing through Bacchus Marsh and, having taken the road to Skipton, was later reported by Dunkeld as heading this way.”