Читать книгу The Battling Prophet - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 8

The Conspirators

There was that about John Luton, ex-bullock-driver, D.T. expert, which forbade familiarity. It was the character of the man as presented in his eighty-fourth year, and was due only in part to his age. Seated in a high-back chair to one side of the sitting-room fire, he appeared to be relaxed though he sat upright, like a king on his throne. His eyes were steady. His great gnarled hands were passive. The expression on his large face was of calm confidence in his body and mind. It seemed that the natural form of address to this man, in acknowledgment not only of his age but of the inherent strength of character, was Mister Luton.

A man can be great though a bullock-driver. A man can be a king and yet a weakling. Mr. Luton had gained and was to retain Inspector Bonaparte’s respect.

Bony sat on that side of the fireplace having his back to the outer wall, in which was the door and the window. The black-and-white cat lay curled on the rug, its broad back pressed against the carpet slipper of Mr. Luton’s right foot, and not for twenty minutes had Mr. Luton moved that foot, that the cat be undisturbed.

He spoke of Ben Wickham as an equal, evincing no inferiority to the famous meteorologist, and Bony knew that this was the result of the man’s distant background where all men were equal, and all men were respected, provided they were not damned by meanness of thought and of act. All else was merely incidental.

Speaking of Wickham disclosed Mr. Luton’s deep affection for and loyalty to the dead man. And there was the wisdom of the old, which isn’t tainted by intolerance, smugness, bigotry.

He talked about those old days, revealing to Bony a picture of a young man who was lost to himself—a self he could not understand, and another of that young man grown tanned and physically strong, striding the length of fourteen pairs of bullocks, and wielding an eighteen-foot whip swung from a twelve-foot heavy handle, and able to flick the thong against any chosen inch of hide, to contact the animal like a fly or a flail; a third picture, that of a heavier man, of flowing white hair and dark eyes alive with ambition and the joy of achievement, the square face and alert eyes of the man who learned to fight only late in life; and the last picture of a man wearied less of fighting than of the astounding mental narrowness and crass stupidity of those in political power. These pictures made vivid all those blurred sections of the greater picture Bony had studied earlier this evening, and now he was impressed by Mr. Luton’s beliefs if not convinced by their relationship with fact.

“Ben Wickham was sleeping in this room, was he not?” he asked when Mr. Luton fell silent.

“Yes, on a stretcher by that wall where the whips are,” replied Mr. Luton. “Camp stretcher.” He nodded to the position and Bony noted it was opposite the front door and the one window and that a few feet from it was the door to the living-room.

“The table. In the same place then as now?”

“Yes.”

“Was there a chair or a stand at the head of the stretcher?”

“Low packing case I’d covered with a cloth. It had a jug of water on it and a glass. And Ben’s watch and a wallet. Of course, there was his pipe and tobacco pouch and matches.”

“The front and back doors were locked when you retired?”

“Yes. But that window was up. Ben couldn’t abide a room without a window open.”

“When you sent Knocker Harris for the doctor that morning, it would be shortly after eight o’clock, I take it?”

“Would have been, because I came in here with the dose exactly on time. I’d be talking with Knocker within five minutes of eight.”

“He walked to Cowdry for the doctor?”

Mr. Luton nodded, and Bony asked why Cowdry, when Dr. Maltby lived at Mount Mario, and that eight o’clock in the morning would hardly find the doctor at his surgery in the town. The point brought a glint of approval into the hazel eyes, and Mr. Luton replied:

“When I got to Knocker’s camp he’d just come back from looking at a set-line below the bridge, and when there he’d seen the doctor’s car headed for town. Being that early in the morning, he half expected to meet Maltby coming back.”

“At four in the morning, when you went to Wickham with the dose, was the light on?”

“Yes. Both of us slept with the lights on. Y’see we couldn’t stand waking up in the dark, and find we couldn’t sort of glimpse the things we knew were stalking from behind.”

“And the light was on when, you went to him at half-past six ... when you heard him laughing?”

“Yes.”

“Did he speak when you went to him with the dose at four?”

“Said it had been a hell of a time between drinks. Give me a ‘thank-you’ and then was willing to lie down, and closed his eyes.”

“He appeared to be quite normal ... in view of the, ah, circumstances?”

“Yes, nothing wrong at all.”

“The dose. Did he take it with or without water?”

“Neat. We never ruined good grog.”

“Why the jug of water on the packing case by the bed?”

“When you’re sufferin’ during a cure, a drink of water about an hour after a dose often gives the dose a renewed kick,” grimly replied Mr. Luton. “I noticed the next morning when I was cleaning up ready for the quack that Ben had half-emptied the jug.”

“You left the jug and the glass on the case, or had you removed them when the doctor came?”

“The jug, yes. The glass I took to the sink and cleaned it properly, knowing that Maltby would be bound to sniff at it, and took it back to the case and poured a little water in it. You see, when the quack came, all the empties were in the river, and the remainders put back in the cellar.”

“Oh! Not a real cellar?”

“ ’Course. Under the floor. I dug her out and carted the mullock down to the bottom of the garden. The cellar’s sort of secret.”

“Answer this carefully, Mr. Luton. Had you gone to your friend, say at three o’clock in the morning, and suggested a drink, would he have accepted it?”

“Perhaps yes: perhaps no. I’d never tested the point. Having agreed on the cure, we never suggested to each other a drink between drinks.”

“Yet you said that when he was laughing later, and you went in with tea, after he stopped laughing, you took the bottle as well, thinking he might be in such bad shape as to need a drink most specially.”

“If I had told him then that he’d have to take a snort, Ben would have drunk it, knowing I’d not say so if I wasn’t worried about him.”

“Then, Mr. Luton,” Bony pressed, “had you taken a drink to him at three o’clock, he would have accepted it.”

Mr. Luton flushed slightly, whether from annoyance or embarrassment Bony could not decide.

“I think he would,” he admitted. “You see, in the old days I was always the boss, and when I came down here to live because he wanted me to, he let me be the boss again. What I said regarding the grog always went with him.”

“Did he drink when at home?”

“A glass of beer sometimes. Cocktail before dinner. Port after dinner. The Parsloe woman said it was the social thing. If it was social to drink coffee out of an old boot, they would have had to drink from old boots.”

“Precisely, Mr. Luton. One more question I want answered with care. After you gave Wickham the dose at four o’clock, could he have obtained more gin without you knowing it? Assuming that you slept soundly. Or another kind of spirit, from what you had above floor, or even from the cellar?”

“Yes. I sleep in a room off the far side of the living-room. Ben could have gone into the living-room and had a swiftie from the stock in the cupboard by the stove. He didn’t. I knew how many full bottles there were. They were all there when I looked. The tide in the opened bottle hadn’t gone down since I’d lowered it at four. He could have gone down to the cellar and helped himself, but he didn’t, because nothing had been opened. And I didn’t sleep soundly. No one does when having the hoo-jahs.”

“Thank you for your patience, Mr. Luton.” Bony stood. “Let us make a call on Mr. Harris.”

Mr. Luton was obviously astonished, but he stood without commenting and went for a muffler and hat. Bony followed him to the clearing and along the path he could but faintly see, which wound under the great gums and avoided dense clumps of brush.

Ultimately the path passed from thick timber to a small clearing bordered by the river to one side. From the middle of the clearing issued music, and, with startling impact, a dog barked ferociously. An oblong of light confronted them, and framed within stood Knocker Harris and the dog, the smallest Australian terrier Bony had ever seen.

Then Knocker Harris was inviting them into his mansion, and the dog was sniffing at Bony’s heels and trying to grab a trouser cuff.

The kerosene pressure lamp blazed white light against the walls, walls built of odd lengths of milled timber, strips of thick bark, sheets of corrugated iron. The roof was of iron nailed to light logs with fencing wire. The table was of planks wired to cross logs, which in turn rested in the fork of the four legs planted in the hard earth. On the open fireplace a fire burned, and to one side stood a chair which had been fashioned from the stump and roots of a tree storm-blown clear off the ground. Two stools of similar fashioning completed the furniture, save for nine beer cases nailed together to serve as a pantry and dresser.

“How’s things?” mildly enquired Knocker Harris. “Didn’t expect you. Have a squat. Drink of tea?”

Without waiting for acceptance or otherwise, he filled a billy from a petrol-tin bucket. Mr. Luton gravely said it was a nice night, and expressed the hope that Knocker Harris wasn’t being put to too much trouble. Bony gazed at a blank in one wall and guessed the darkness beyond to hide a gentleman’s bedroom. The place, undoubtedly, was built with river jetsam and junk. Save for the sheets of iron, the wireless on the ‘dresser’ and the lamp were the only visible objects not fashioned with axe and saw.

“How’s the fish biting?” politely asked Mr. Luton, who knew very well how they were biting.

“Bit lazy since the last tide,” replied Knocker Harris. “How they doin’ down your way?”

“About the same.”

So they talked while Bony sat on a comfortable tree-root stool and rolled a cigarette, both merely waiting for the reason of this late visit.

“I suppose you are not often bothered with visitors,” he said, having applied a match to an alleged cigarette.

“No, not much, Inspector,” replied the host. “They come generally for bait-fish in the summer. I nets bait-fish for visitors, like. Never takes money. They make me a present of bread, or a cut of meat, or a bit of tobacco and what not, and I’m so grateful I make them a present of bait-fish.”

“Barter trade, eh?”

“Trade! No! No trade, Inspector. Can’t do no tradin’, else it makes me in business and I gets taxed by the bloodsucking Council.”

“How often do you go into town?” was Bony’s next question.

“Once a fortnight, generally. To draw me Bachelor’s Mite from the Post Office.”

“What else do you do when you go to town?”

“Oh, not much,” replied Knocker Harris. “Calls in at the chemist for pills and things, and at the sports store for fish hooks and lines. Then I have one small tiddly of rum to give me strength to get home, like, and I has a yarn with a few I know.”

“A tiddly of rum!” snorted Mr. Luton. “When I offer you a proper snort you turn it down.”

“Meaning not to be unneighbourly, John. Actually because I like a chip on me Pension Day, and me cobbers likes a drink at the pub.” A wail crept into the voice. “I keep telling you I can’t take the booze like I useter. It plays hell with me ulcers and things. Why ain’t you got some ulcers, too? Why me, and not you? The way you and poor old Ben shoved it down, like, you oughta have no stomicks at all.”

Mr. Harris served tea in jam tins fitted with fencing-wire handles. He placed a tin of condensed milk on the table and with it an apostle spoon of bright silver. The sugar bowl was a fruit tin. The appearance of the spoon astounded Bony, but he said:

“When will you be going to draw your pension?”

“Next Thursday, Inspector. I walks in, but I often thumbs a ride out.”

“I was wondering . . .” began Bony, when hell broke loose.

Outside a bullock bell began to clang and clang as though agony itself were tortured metal. The miniature dog yapped and twisted into an S and than a reverse S, in its excitement. The bell sounded as though tied to a bullock in convulsions.

Knocker Harris jumped to his feet.

“Got me a fish,” he shouted. “Be seeing you.”

Seizing the kerosene lamp, he rushed outside, leaving his visitors faintly illumined to each other by the fire. The bell continued its roar, and above it, Mr. Luton said:

“Could be a big fish. I’d say about fifteen pounds.”

“Could be a 300-pound marlin,” observed Bony. “I assume the fish is ringing the bell.”

Mr. Luton chuckled and beamed at Bony. Abruptly the bell ceased its uproar, and he said:

“Knocker’s as proud as a woman with a new baby when that bell goes off. Take a look at it in daylight. Bit of a character is Knocker. Harmless enough, though. Decent sort.”

Presently the yapping dog came in, followed by Knocker carrying a bream. He assessed the weight at four pounds, and his friend argued it wasn’t more than two. The discussion went on over the fish lying on the table, and twenty minutes were spent in gutting it, and then washing down the table.

“You was saying, Inspector, when that fish got hooked?” said Harris.

“Ah, yes. I was wondering if you would make a special trip to town to-morrow morning. You could buy yourself a tin of salmon.”

“Coo! Why the salmon?”

“Well, you might think of something you really want. You could call at the hotel for your usual tot of rum. You could call on the chemist for a bottle of cod liver oil. By the way, is a local paper published in Cowdry?”

“The Cowdry Star. Comes out every Toosday,” proudly replied Knocker Harris. “I know the editor, like. Champion of the down-trodden toiler, he is.”

“Excellent,” decided Bony. “Perhaps you could pass to him an item of local news for his social column.”

Two pairs of bright eyes watched the dark expressionless face of D.-I. Bonaparte. Two ancient men waited. He said:

“I would be greatly obliged, Mr. Harris, did you take a trip to town in the morning, and to everyone you know, including the newspaper editor, whisper that you understand a detective is staying with Mr. John Luton, and that you think he’s come down from Adelaide about something concerning Ben Wickham. Just that, no more. And don’t mention I asked you to do this, or my name.”

They looked from Bony to each other. Knocker Harris nodded as though with dawning comprehension.

“Okay, Inspector,” he said. “I’ll be in town by nine o’clock.”