Читать книгу The Dark Highway - Arthur Gask - Страница 3

Table of Contents

THE sun had set a good four hours, but night hung heavy, like a smouldering furnace, over the sandhills of the Coorong.

One hundred and twenty degrees in the shade had been registered during the day, and even now, with the hour well on towards midnight, the temperature had fallen to only just below the century.

Not a breath of air stirred anywhere, and the dead black waters of the Coorong seemed hardly stiller than were the just faintly lapping waves of the hot sea itself.

A ghostly silence brooded over everything. Sea, land, and air lay wrapt in torpor, and only the myriad stars of an Australian summer night peeped through and twinkled with any signs of life.

But still, late as the hour was and desolate as was at most times the long Coorong track, to-night it was not altogether deserted by humankind.

Almost at its wildest part, and about thirty-five miles from the township of Meningie, was drawn up a small, black touring car.

The car lay just off the track itself, and round a bend where the curve was sharp, between two huge sand hummocks.

There was no one visible in the car.

Close near, however, and upon a high sandhill were two men, and, although motionless and outstretched at full length upon the sand, they were evidently not asleep, for their attitudes were not those of rest or repose.

They were watching.

One of them, a tall, big man, was clutching a pair of large binoculars, and, his arms supported upon his elbows, he never for one moment took his eye off the windings of the Coorong track. He looked always, however, in the direction of Melbourne.

He breathed hard, and every now and then his hands trembled.

His companion, a man of small physique and with a pair of ferrety little eyes set deeply in his head, was obviously, too, ill at ease, for he kept swallowing as if he had a lump in his throat, and from time to time he sighed heavily.

For a full hour the two men had exchanged no word, and, although so close together, so uncommunicative were they, it might almost have been assumed that each was actually unaware of the other's presence.

Suddenly, however, the man with the binoculars jerked up his head and spoke.

"Here he is!' he exclaimed, with a catch in his voice. "There's a car coming over the swamp."

"Here he is!' he exclaimed, "There's a car coming over the swamp."

The little man shivered violently, and his teeth began to chatter like castanets.

The big man turned on him with a snarl.

"Pull yourself together," he exclaimed savagely. "What are you afraid of, you fool? There's no danger if you do as you're told." He gritted his teeth menacingly. "But, by God, I tell you, it'll be the end of you if you mess it up. You'll pay for it first if anything goes wrong, and you just take that in."

"All right, all right," replied the little man testily. "I'm not afraid, but this long waiting's got on my nerves. It's three hours nearly since we came up here, and it's enough to make anyone feel bad. But I won't mess it up. I know what to do. I'll go and get the lamp now."

"No, you just wait," growled the other. "It'll be a long while before he gets here yet, and we must be sure it's him in the car."

He turned back to his binoculars, and again there was silence between the two men, only this time the smaller one remained standing up.

Far away, a faint spot of light had appeared, very faint at first, and visible only through the binoculars. It moved like a glow-worm, trailing languidly along by the edge of the lake.

"He can't come fast," muttered the big man. "The going's bad, and he'll be in low gear all the way."

Gradually, however, the light waxed stronger, and in a few minutes the two men from their high vantage point could plainly trace each foot of its journey as a big motor car made its laborious way along the winding track in and out among the sandhills.

"It's an eight-cylinder Jehu, right enough," whispered the big man in tense, hoarse tones, "and it's a hundred to one it'll be him. But we'll have to be quick now. You know where to wave the lamp."

He snapped his glasses together with a click, and, rising quickly to his feet, without further comment followed his companion in a slouching run down the high hummock side towards the waiting motor car.

Eli Barton, the wealthy cattle king, and the owner of vast properties in the Commonwealth, was motoring from Melbourne to Adelaide to see his great horse, Abimeleck, run in the Christmas Cup.

Strong and active in spite of his age, and strenuous alike both in his work and in his pleasure, he had left Melbourne in the very early hours of the previous morning. The five hundred and eighty odd miles that separate the two cities he expected to cover, as he had often done before, in two days. As usual, he was bringing no chauffeur with him, but was driving the car himself. The long journey was nothing to him, and it was well known to be his constant habit to negotiate it quite alone. He liked to go alone, he always told his friends, for so full was every hour of his busy life that it was only when motoring, he averred, that he could be entirely free from business worries and quit of the eternal weighing up of the value of other people's ideas.

So, whenever occasion offered, he took the Melbourne—Adelaide journey alone, and drove his mighty eight-cylinder Jehu with all the speed that the roughness and the danger of the track allowed.

But on this particular journey it so happened that he was not unaccompanied. A very old friend had arrived unexpectedly from the United States, and, breaking his usual procedure, Eli Barton had brought him as a companion.

The two occupants of the car were both drowsy, apparently from the heat, but maybe, also, it was the good dinner they had just eaten that made them disinclined to talk. At any rate, it was a long ten miles before either of them spoke, and then it was Eli Barton who first broke the silence.

"Eighty-two miles to go, yet, my boy," he remarked, "before we get to Meningie and, with not a house to pass, it's a million to one we don't meet a soul."

"But isn't the heat awful?" went on Eli. "I'd give almost anything now for a good downpour of rain."

"Good gracious! Not to-night, I hope. We don't want it here."

Eli Barton laughed. "Don't get nervous, Sam," he replied. "We're not likely to get it, but it was of Abimeleck I was thinking, not of ourselves." His voice dropped into anxious tones. "I don't know even now if I shall run him on Saturday. The going will be like iron, I am afraid, and, as I've told you, I'm a bit worried about his legs. He's done a lot of racing this year, and I'm not going to risk anything now, even for the Adelaide Christmas Cup. He's far too valuable to me for that, and if there's the slightest suspicion of anything wrong, I tell you, I shall scratch him to-morrow, directly I arrive."

"There'll be an awful howl, Eli, won't there, if you do?"

Eli Barton set his face in that determined frown which all his life his enemies had known so well.

"I can't help it if there is," he replied decisively. "I shall be a greater sufferer than anybody if he doesn't run. I had another thousand on him last week, and the public have made him so hot that I only got two's. Two's mind you, and he's got ten stone four to shoulder over a mile and three-quarters, and with some clinking good horses in the race, too." He smiled proudly. "But I shan't scratch him if I can possibly help it, for I want to show the Adelaide folks what a really good horse can do. He's the best horse I've ever owned and, with all his weight, I believe he'll romp home."

A silence fell again upon the occupants of the car and, as old Barton had prophesied, he had soon to drop on to low gear.

Eli looked round and then smiled to himself.

"Dear old Sam, like me, he's getting old," he muttered. "I suppose now he'll sleep right on to Meningie."

But he was mistaken.

The big Jehu was ploughing its way through a particularly deep drift of sand, when suddenly, to his great astonishment, he saw a light being waved ahead, and a few seconds later the headlights of the car brought into view a smallish-looking man standing in the middle of the track and gesticulating wildly. The track sloped up sharply behind where the man stood, curving abruptly between huge sandhills on either side.

Eli Barton brought the car gently to a standstill. They were in the middle of a sort of sand ravine and the headlights, because of the bend, illuminated the track only for about thirty yards.

"Don't come on," shouted the man with the lantern. "The track's blocked and you can't get through. There's been an accident."

"Good Lord! what a place," ejaculated Eli. "Anybody hurt?"

"Yes, one of them's killed," replied the man, and he shielded his eyes with his hand. "Oh! Oh!" he muttered instantly to himself, "he's got someone with him. There'll be two of them now."

Eli Barton sprang out of the car, and was followed promptly by his now thoroughly awakened companion.

"Thirty-five miles from Meningie, Sam," said Eli, "and no help for them until they get there. How did it happen?" he called to the man. "Was there a collision?"

But the man with the lantern made no reply. He stood hesitating, as if uncertain what to do. He made no attempt to move back to the scene of the accident.

Eli repeated his question.

"Was it a collision?" he asked sharply. "Here, you fellow, have you lost your tongue?"

The man seemed to bring himself together with an effort. "Yes, there was a collision," he replied, and at once he made to shamble back along the track.

But the two travellers were close upon his heels when the bend was reached.

Then suddenly Eli Barton flashed an electric torch. "Hullo! Hullo!" he exclaimed suspiciously. "The track's not blocked and there's only one car. Where was the collision?"

But the man with the lantern only muttered something indistinctly, and Eli, losing patience, caught him roughly by the arm.

"What's your game?" he asked sharply. "Turn round and let's look at your face," and he flashed the torch full upon him.

Instantly the man ducked his head, and at the same time, jerking away his arm, he started to run.

"Look out, Sam," shouted Eli. "Catch the beggar, quick, there's something fishy here. Shoot if he doesn't stop. Shoot, I tell you, quick."