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Dr Morley Answers a Call

Situated so far from the sea, and amid the southern ramparts of the Kimberley Ranges, Agar’s Lagoon is blessed by a remarkably good climate throughout the winter months. The long summer is endurable, when the seaports of Broome and Wyndham are blobs of perspiration.

An enthusiastic advocate for the Kimberleys’ climate was Dr Morley, who asserted that were it not for the contagious ills of the south, man would live for centuries. There seemed to be authority for his assertion if one could accept his claim to eighty-six years when he did not look a day more than sixty. His body verged on gauntness, but he walked more sprightly than the average youth of today. His brown eyes were clear, and despite his substantial contribution to the bottle ring, his mind was as alert and aggressive as that of a keen business man of forty.

When Bony tapped on the door of his three-roomed shack, Dr Edwin Morley’s voice was as strong and gruff as that of an old-time bullock driver:

“Come in and be damned.”

Bony opened the fly-netted door and entered a passage illuminated only by the light in a front room. Entering this room, he was astonished to find it carpeted, book-lined, comfortably furnished, and restfully lit by shaded oil-lamps. The long-legged man reclining in an easy chair beside which was a small occasional table bearing whisky decanter, soda siphon and glass, said nothing further in greeting, and Bony, standing just within the doorway, found his eyes held by those light-brown ones. At once he adjusted his approach.

“Forgive my intrusion, sir. I am Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. You are Doctor Morley?”

“I am. Sit down.”

Bony accepted the invitation. With the interest of the expert diagnostician, Dr Morley examined him from his white canvas shoes upwards, passing the creased drill trousers, the silk shirt tucked into them, and steadily noting the colouring of the face and hands and the oddly unusual blue eyes of this half-aborigine.

“I am staying at the hotel,” Bony explained. “Half an hour ago a transport driver arrived from Wyndham, and reports that he found Constable Stenhouse dead in his car some ninety miles from here. It’s his opinion that the constable was killed by his tracker, who has vanished. I would very much like you to accompany me to the scene of this affair and ascertain how Stenhouse died. I understand you are not in general practice and, therefore, I make the suggestion with some diffidence.”

“Bring a glass from the sideboard and help yourself to a snort,” ordered Dr Morley, who then gazed at the ceiling as though intensely bored. “It has been in my mind for some time that Stenhouse would be murdered. A good policeman but not a good type. His body, you say, is now in his car on the Wyndham road. H’m! I don’t know how come, but I thought he was away down south on the edge of the desert. A Detective-Inspector, you mentioned?”

“Yes, I have that rank. I’ve contacted the senior police officer at Wyndham, who is better situated to communicate with divisional headquarters at Broome. The Wyndham man says the doctor is in Darwin. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to reach the body by plane.”

“And the track as rough as the road from Hell,” growled the old man. “Worst track in all Australia. The most benighted, undeveloped area in the continent, and the richest in metals, human health and many other resources. Well, I suppose I must look-see over Constable Stenhouse. How d’you propose to make the trip?”

Bony smiled.

“I’ve commandeered Ramsay’s car,” he said, adding after a pause: “Through his nominee referred to as ’Un. Laidlaw, the transport driver, will drive the car. They are loading now with petrol and spare tyres.”

“Better get a couple of pillows to take the jars,” the doctor advised. “And an overcoat if you have one with you. It’ll be chilly before dawn. I’ll get my bag and one or two items. Once I could rough it. Now I’m soft.”

Bony returned to the hotel and procured a bed pillow and raincoat. In the darkness of the street, he found the car and with it Sam and two other men. Dave Bundred, the postmaster, bumped into him, saying:

“Sergeant Booker, at Wyndham, says he’d be glad if you would remain on the scene until Constable Irwin arrives. Irwin left Wyndham before the message was dispatched. He’ll have farther to travel, but his section of the road is easier than from this end.”

Sam Laidlaw said:

“All set when you are, Inspector.”

They had to wait five minutes for the doctor, who arrived with long arms burdened. Bony relieved him of the heavy Gladstone bag, passing it into the car when the doctor had buttressed himself with cushions in the back seat.

“We have a tucker-box, I suppose?” the doctor asked.

“Too right,” replied Sam. “She’s filled up by ’Un.”

“And plenty of tea and sugar and water and petrol?” persisted the doctor.

“And a bottle of rum to go with the tea, Doc,” supplemented ’Un.

Sam, still wearing only his greasy shorts, wedged himself behind the wheel and the little yardman sat beside him. Bony settled himself in the back seat, and thus the journey was begun. The headlights cleft the darkness and emphasized the roughness of the alleged street, and immediately Bony was thankful for the doctor’s suggestion of pillows, for the vehicle appeared to have no springs.

The pounding went on all night, and when day dawned Bony had ‘had’ what the maps state is The Great Northern Highway. He was, however, rewarded when the new day was about to be crowned by the sun.

The sky was splashed with eastern purple. To the left, Black Range glowed with blossom-pink luminosity. The purple sky became as rusty iron, and the rust was burnished away to leave it polished silver. The pink of the Range deepened to the red of a robin’s breast, and when the sun appeared the luminosity vanished, and the greens and greys emerged.

An hour later, Sam shouted:

“There it is, gents.”

As Sam had come to the policeman’s jeep, so did Bony and his companion in the car ... abruptly when the car roared to the top of the ‘bump’. Sam stopped the car where he had halted his transport, and several crows cawed their defiance from the stark limbs of a baobab tree.

No one spoke or moved. The jeep, pushed aside by Sam, was angled to the track, and they could see the blanket-shrouded figure behind the wheel. The blanket was grey, and the figure looked as though roughly chiselled from granite. When Bony did speak, his voice was crisp.

“We will make camp and have breakfast. Please keep away from the jeep. We must wait for Constable Irwin. When should he be here, Sam?”

“Barring blow-outs, he oughta be here any time now,” replied Sam. “Come on, ’Un, let’s make a fire. I got no stomach: only a backbone.”

Sam made a fire, and the yardman dragged out the tucker-box. The billy was filled from a drum, and the doctor stood waiting for the water to boil, a tin of coffee in one hand and a bottle of brandy in the other.

Bony circled the jeep, standing forlorn like a good ship aground on a reef. This ‘bump’, like all the thousands which made up the floor of the comparative valley between the ranges, was sheathed with ironstone flakes and weathered stones. The Great Northern Highway was merely twin ribbons maintained by the wheels of motor traffic, and between the ribbons, as well as either side, grew spinifex and tussock grass.

Presently the doctor called and Bony joined the group by the fire. Sam poured coffee into an enamel pannikin, and the doctor urged him to help himself to the brandy. ’Un was cooking slabs of steak on the blade of a long-handled shovel.

“Like old times,” he said. “Often thought I was getting sick of living at the pub and parking me legs under a table, and now I know I am sick. You oughta have an off-sider, Sam. What about taking me on? I’d be a hell of a good chaperone.”

Talking of nothing, they breakfasted with relish, and then smoked while waiting for the policeman from Wyndham. And the dead man waited in his jeep. Bony said:

“You mentioned, Doctor, that you understood Constable Stenhouse had gone south of Agar’s Lagoon to the desert country, and we find him dead approximately ninety miles north.”

“That’s so, Inspector,” agreed Dr Morley. “I don’t get it. Didn’t you hear that Stenhouse had gone south, ’Un?”

“I did. Everyone at Agar’s thought Stenhouse had gone south on patrol to Leroy Downs. Jacky Musgrave said so, anyhow. Stenhouse never gave much away. Secretive sort of bloke. You never knew how you was with him.”

“Jacky Musgrave! The police tracker?”

“Yes. Been with Stenhouse for nigh on three years,” replied ’Un, twirling the points of his upturned moustache. “Good tracker by all accounts, and pretty thick with Stenhouse. Stenhouse could have got him to put it around that he was headed south when he intended heading north. Musta. He’s north now, ain’t he?”

“How long was he stationed at Agar’s Lagoon?” asked Bony.

“Seven years and a bit.”

“He was a widower, I believe.”

The cheerfulness departed from ’Un. Sam Laidlaw spoke:

“Wife died on him three years back. Doc can tell you about her.”

Dr Morley remained taciturn. He was still wearing his overcoat and, squatting on his heels, was apparently entranced by the blue spirals of smoke rising from the camp fire. Again the transport driver spoke:

“Wife got knocked about a bit. She was only two hands high, and couldn’t take it. If she’d been my sister, Stenhouse would have been sitting dead in his jeep years ago. Fair’s fair, I reckon. A good belting don’t do any woman any harm, but no woman is expected to take punches from a bloke like Stenhouse.”

Sam picked a live coal from the fire and balanced it on his pipe. Dr Morley helped himself to brandy and added a dash of coffee. ’Un concentrated his gaze on the crow cawing defiance from a wait-a-bit tree. Bony rose and wandered away.

The three men covertly watched this stranger: noting the way he placed his feet, the manner in which he held his head. Observation with them was a habit from which came inductive reasoning.

“Colour in him, for sure,” murmured Sam.

“Quarter, I’d say,” supplemented the yardman. “Decent sorta bloke, though.”

There was a pause in their critical appraisal, terminated by the old doctor.

“He’s all there. Entitled to his police rank, for he’s learned more than to read and write. The shape of his head and the power of his eyes have brought him a long way. If either of you men have anything to keep under cover, watch your step. You made a bad break, Sam, when you said what you’d have done if Mrs Stenhouse had been your sister.”

“Oh! How so?”

“Mrs Stenhouse had a brother, and you remember what happened that day she was buried.”