Wings Above the Diamantina Page 9

  Bony smiled.

  “Not that you stole the aeroplane, Mr Sharp,” he replied. “Oh, no! But it is my business definitely to nail down, like butterflies on a sheet or cork, the exact position of everyone on those vital nights. All of you here—every one in the district—are as fish in my net, and I have to take up each One of you and examine you to ascertain which of you is the stingray.”

  Bony made this explanation with a purpose. It was done to permit Ted Sharp to depart from the truth—if he wished. It was Bony’s favourite trap, this giving of time in certain circumstances.

  “Where did you spend part of that night away from Faraway Bore?”

  “I left the place about nine o’clock to visit Mitchell’s Well. That’s south of Faraway Bore. The weather had been quiet, and I wanted to see if the windmill had raised enough water into the receiving tanks to last the stock three days. You see, the next day we were shifting cattle for the drovers to take over. I got back about one in the morning.”

  “Ah yes! I remember seeing Mitchell’s Well on the map. You heard no plane engines?”

  “Not a whisper.”

  “And how did you go to Mitchell’s Well? Horseback?”

  “No. I did the job in my own runabout truck.”

  “Did you sleep that night in the same place as the night following?”

  “Yes. The conditions were the same. Warm and quiet with a slight nor’-east wind cooling the temperature.”

  Mr Nettlefold came in at this point, and Bony rose to meet him. Sharp got to his feet, relief evident on his weather-darkened face. The car was waiting, and the detective at once went to his room for one of his suitcases. He did not again see the boss stockman or Elizabeth, but Dr Knowles accompanied them to the car to see them off. Ten minutes later they were crossing the river.

  The river! Surely the maddest, the most impossible river in the world, the Diamantina. It collects its mighty flood-waters from among the hills in north-central Queensland and rushes them down into the semi-desert of north-eastern South Australia. When this river runs, its width at Monkira is five miles. Here at Coolibah its width was fifteen miles, and at this time not a drop of water lay in the intertwining channels.

  The beams of the car’s headlights swept up and then became level when the machine rose to cross each succeeding channel bank, and they reached down to light the channel beds for the car to take them, hugging the narrow track. The flood of the previous year had deposited grass and herbage seed, and now along many of the channels cattle and horsefeed grew profusely. It was like a frozen sea, a sea frozen solid when in tempestuous anger; it was as though the car was a ship steaming over stationary waves.

  “More than once in the old days, I have been returning from the back of the run to find fifteen miles of water barring me from home,” Nettlefold told Bony. “Nowadays, when a flood collects at the head of the river, the intelligence is passed down from homestead to homestead. So we receive ample warning.”

  “I have been wondering why the Coolibah homestead is built on the east side of the river when most of the run lies west of the river,” Bony said lazily.

  “Its present site was chosen chiefly for its elevation, and partly for the reason that it is many miles nearer to ‘inside.’ Again, Coolibah has about two hundred and fifty square miles of country east of the river. Tintanoo has no land on the east side, but its homestead, too, is built on a spur of high ground. Farther south, the river channels are thirty miles across.”

  Both men welcomed the easier travelling when beyond the river, and by the aid of the dashlamp the detective began to make his chain of cigarettes. He was now in possession of the telephone system connecting Coolibah with Golden Dawn and the outside world, but Nettlefold’s reference to telephonic communication up and down the river made him ask:

  “The line by which you receive warning of floods is a private line?”

  “No. The stations maintain it and pay rent to the Postal Department.”

  “Then you can communicate with homesteads above and below you without doing so through the exchange at Golden Dawn?”

  “Oh yes! In addition to that there is the usual private line connecting all the stockmen’s huts with the homestead. I rang up Ned Hamlin before we left.”

  “I understand now. One line direct to Golden Dawn, another to the river homesteads, and a third to your own huts. I saw only one instrument in your study. The others—”

  “Are in the office. I thought once of having all three in the study, but Elizabeth objected on the score that so many instruments would make the place like an office.”

  “Tintanoo being above you, what station is below you? Macedon, is it not?”

  “Yes. The Chidlows are there, but we do not often see them. Their nearest town is Birdsville. We are better acquainted with John Kane.”

  “Ah—the ex-flying officer. Tell me about Mr Kane, will you?”

  Nothing loath, for the manager enjoyed company when driving, Nettlefold complied with the detective’s request for gossip.

  “Old man Kane had two sons—John and Charles. I did not know Mrs Kane. She died before I came here. Before the war both boys were as wild as kangaroos, and early in 1914—when John was twenty-one and Charles twenty—the younger ran away with the Golden Dawn school teacher and married her.

  “Old Kane promptly cut him out of his will. He was that kind of man, gruff and stern and hard. John, the elder son, was treated similarly when he defied the old man and joined the A.I.F., the father again making a will in favour of his nephews. Charles faded out of the picture for some time, and John obtained a transfer to the Royal Air Force and did good work until a German bullet fractured his leg.

  “On his return to Queensland, John found that his brother and father were reconciled after a fashion, and, the war having broadened the old man’s mind, he took John back again into favour, so that affairs stood as they were before Charles married the school teacher. Then, early in 1920, Charles and his wife were both killed in a car smash near Sydney, and shortly after that John quarrelled with the old man and went off up into the Cape York Peninsula with a missionary. He stayed there for about two years, not trying to convert the blacks, but for the purpose of studying them and their customs. In his way, John Kane is quite an anthropologist; better, in fact, than many who have learned all they know from textbooks—professors and such like. He was, I understand, always interested in aborigines. Anyway, he knows more about them than I do, or any one else in this district. He used to write a lot concerning them, and he is the author of an important book on their beliefs and legends.

  “In 1923 he returned home when his father was desperately ill, and when the old fellow died the son naturally came in for the property. He never married, nor has he ever really settled down. The war might have spoiled him, but I think he was spoiled long before he went to the war.

  “He drinks a good deal in patches. Goes the whole hog at times, and in between refuses to touch it. Erratic in other matters, too. He has house parties to which sometimes he invites a flash social crowd from Brisbane, and at others genuine anthropologists and people actively interested in the aborigines. When I add that he drives a car like a madman, sacks all his hands one day and re-employs them the next, runs his station efficiently, and yet wastes time, or, perhaps I should say spends his time in other pursuits, you will have some idea of the man’s character. He’s not a bad neighbour, although he does consider himself a cut above us. He’s free with his money and supports all local charities.

  “Yes, Kane is a peculiar man—temperamentally unstable. A few years back I heard that he contemplated selling a property his owns north of Tintanoo, a place called Garth. It is not a large property, but the country is first class and well watered. I got my agent to make him an offer, and he flatly refused to sell to me because a year before we had had a slight disagreement about some unbranded cattle Since then he has received several offers, but he has invariably refused to close because he thought they were made on my behal
f.”

  “I should like to meet this Mr John Kane,” Bony murmured. “He should be an interesting man. Do I understand that the wound received during the war stopped him flying?”

  “I am not positively sure, but I think not. I think I heard once that he did a little flying afterwards, but the end of the war came before he could be sent again to France. He walks with a slight limp to this day. You must talk to Dr Knowles about him. He knows more about Kane’s war career than I do.”

  “I will. By the way, Knowles isn’t an Australian, is he?”

  “No. He is a Sussex man. His early life is a mystery. Excellent fellow, it is a pity, though, that he drinks so hard.”

  “That is so,” Bony readily agreed. “I wonder why he does it. In other ways he’s not the drinking type.”

  The car’s headlights picked up the sand barrier—called by Elizabeth the Rockies—silhouetting them against the seeming blackness of the sky beyond. Nettlefold explained how this range of pure, wind-blown sand extended roughly northsouth for eighteen miles. Countless tons of sand had formed there during his period of managing Coolibah. It was due to the general overstocking of the runs and the lopping of the scrub for cattle in dry times, and in turn that was due to the stupid leasehold system of the pastoral areas of Australia, which gave the lessees no interest in preserving the land and its timber. With the bores failing and the denudation of the scrub, the face of Queensland was destined to be much altered by the end of another hundred years.

  It did appear that the high walls of sand would block further progress, but the faint wheel tracks on the claypans twisted and turned to lead them through the barrier and on to the plain beyond. Here, where the ground was firm and level, the track ran straight away beyond the lamp beams, permitting fast driving.

  The high speed was maintained for mile after mile, the car being stopped only when it was necessary to open gates, but it was well after nine o’clock when the headlights revealed the black and white picture of a wooden-walled, iron-roofed hut, several outhouses and a tent pitched beneath two pepper-trees which guarded the hut from the westerlies.

  “Faraway Hut,” said Nettlefold, braking the car to a stop several yards beyond the hut door. Three or four chained dogs barked a frantic welcome. Two men came round from the tent, and a third hastened from the hut carrying a hurricane lantern.

  “Good night, boss!” chorused the first two.

  “Evening, Mr Nettlefold,” greeted the lantern-carrier. “The billy’s boiling. Staying for a cup-er-tea?”

  “Thanks, Ned, I will,” the manager assented heartily. “This is Inspector Bonaparte, from Brisbane. If you call him Bony, he will be pleased.”

  “A policeman, eh?” snorted the lamp-carrier. Then with vocal modification: “Well, I suppose there could be better policemen than old Cox—and worse, too.”

  The detective laughed, and the manager said:

  “Bony will be staying for a few days, Ned. There is a box of stores on the carrier. Bony, this is Ned Hamlin.”

  “Good evening, Ned,” Bony responded, getting out of the car. The lamplight fell full on his face and he knew he was being scrutinized. “No, I do not think that you will find me—from the layman’s point of view—a worse policeman than Sergeant Cox. In confidence, I am not a real policeman.”

  “Ain’t you?” exclaimed Ned. “Well, I am mighty glad to hear that. Ole Cox ain’t a bad sort, but he gets officious like when me and Larry the Lizard goes into Golden Dawn. Come on in and have a drink-er-tea.”

  The stockman swung his lantern from a wire hook attached to a roof beam, and it illuminated an interior of a kind long familiar to Bony. Opposite the door and against the farther wall was the plain deal table, standing in fruit tins filled with water to defy the ants. The floor gave to the feet like a bitumen road on a hot day. It was composed of sand and beef fat. During the winter it was cement-hard. At one end of the oblong-shaped hut was the wide, open fireplace flanked with well-scoured saucepans and a frying pan. At the other end was Ned’s stretcher bed, and in the opposite corner the two aborigines deposited the stretcher and roll of blankets loaned to Bony, and also his suitcase. The blacks then withdrew to hover about just beyond the door.

  “You can come in, s’long as you don’t spit on me floor,” Ned said in invitation to them. They entered again to squat on their heels, each with his back hard against a door-post. Ned threw a handful of tea into the boiling billy, permitted the brew to boil for ten seconds, and then lifted the billy from the chimney chain with an iron hook.

  “I want you fellers to give Bony a hand for a day or two,” Nettlefold said, addressing the two blacks. They were dressed exactly alike in blue dungaree trousers and red shirts.

  “Orl ri’, boss! What do?” inquired one of them with enthusiasm.

  “Bony will tell you in the morning.”

  “Too right he will!” interjected Ned Hamlin. Bony saw a little rotund man with a fierce and unkept grey moustache, bushy grey eyebrows, and a grey thatch of hair which sprouted forward like the peak of a cloth cap. His light-blue eyes twinkled with humour when he said: “Hey, you, Shuteye! Stand up like a man and get interjuiced properly.”

  Shuteye revealed in his ample proportions the evidence of good living. His little black eyes beamed from the centres of rings of fat.

  “He’s the cleanest of the two,” went on the remorseless Ned. “He’s only got one shirt, but he washes that every night and then goes to sleep in it to dry it. Shuteye’s gonna die young. I don’t believe in being that clean. He ain’t a bad worker, I’ll say that for him. Now, you, Bill Sikes! Stand up.”

  Up jerked the other blackfellow, like a jack-in-the-box. He was taller than Shuteye, less fat and more powerful. His features were rugged enough to make Bony blink in amazement.

  “Bill ain’t exactly movin’ picturish,” explained Ned gravely. “He’s got his good points, though, provided you keep your razor hidden and bar the door o’ nights. His heart’s handsomer than his dial. He’s reliable, too, in a jam, and he knows how to track. Both him and Shuteye camps in the tent under the pepper-trees. And now, I reckon, the tea’s properly draw’d.”

  “You funny feller like Jacky,” Shuteye got in. They both chuckled and again slid down the door-posts to sit on their heels.

  “We won’t push the breeding cows into Emu Lake yet, Ned,” Nettlefold said, now seated at the table and stirring sugar into his tin pannikin of tea. “There’s no hurry, and Ted Sharp has work to do in at the homestead. I was thinking of sending you out some timber with which you could employ yourself repairing this hut. The stockyards, too, could do with overhauling.”

  “You’ve said it,” Ned agreed. “If me and you and Shuteye was to go outside and lean up against the north wall the whole place would fall down. Once the white ants start on a joint it’s good night. Will you send out some tar as well?”

  “Yes, I can spare a drum.”

  “Good! I don’t wanter be like Mick the Murderer down Birdsville way. He got home one night after a razoo at the pub and brought a cuppler bottles of Blue Star Gin with him. Well, him and his mate, Paroo Dick, they gets to betting, and Paroo Dick bets a level quid that Mick the Murderer is so old and done for that he couldn’t run a mile. ‘You win,’ says Mick the Murderer. ‘But I’ll bet you a level fiver that I’ll blow down this ruddy place just to prove that me lungs is still sound.’ ‘Done,’ says Paroo Dick. ‘Have a go.’

  “So Mick the Murderer he gets up and, like a fool, he tries to blow the hut down from the inside. He draws in his breath until his stomach busts his trouser-bottons and then his belt. Then he lets it go. Down comes the hut, and the iron roof crowns him and Paroo Dick, and give them discussion.”

  “Lovely!” cried the delighted Bony.

  “Ain’t that correct, Bill Sikes?” Ned demanded with sudden choler.

  “Too right!” agreed the black, in the high-pitched voice so incongruent with his ferocious aspect. “I went by. I see the hut lying down. When I look under the r
oof there’s old Mick the Murderer and Paroo Dick look like dead fellers.”

  “And didn’t you drink all what was left of the Blue Star Gin before you dragged ’em out and revived ’em—with water?” cross-examined Ned.

  “That’s so. Blue Star no good to them fellers. They couldn’t taste it nohow,” argued Bill Sikes.

  Bony caught the gleam in Nettlefold’s eyes, and they burst into hearty chuckling.

  “Still,” said Ned, “the white ants ain’t so bad here as they is up north. Why, up there a bloke gets into a habit of testing a chair every time he wants to sit down. Sometimes the chair just falls to bits in a kind of dust. One bloke he writ in his will that fifty quid was to be spent on lining his coffin with lead so’s the white ants wouldn’t get at him, but he might just as well have given it to his cobbers to drink his health. Them ants goes through chromium-plated steel, let alone lead.”

  Nettlefold did not dally after he had finished his tea and eaten with obvious relish a slice of brick-hard brownie. Bony went with him to the car.

  “It was good of you to bring me out to-night,” he said, when the manager was behind the steering-wheel and the engine was running. “I’ll take the blacks across to the lake early in the morning, and should any serious developments occur at the homestead you might telephone to Ned and ask him to ride out to me.”

  “I will,” Nettlefold agreed. “Don’t hesitate to call on me for anything or any assistance you may want. Fortunately we’ll be slack for a month or two.”

  “Thank you! Now that the police will be working inside to get on to a missing typist whose initials are double M, we might get word at any moment establishing her identity. Au revoir! I believe I find myself in excellent company.”

  “You do. Goodnight!”

  The big car slid away on its return journey to the homestead, its headlights cutting into the black night like giant swords, its engine hum being slowly softened by increasing distance. Bony could hear Ned Hamlin telling the two blacks to be sure that the hen-house door was securely fastened.