Читать книгу Mr Jelly's Business - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 8

The Wheat Belt

A wide tubular and netted gate in a netted fence four feet nine inches high, and topped with barbed wire, halted further progress. Climbing from the truck. Bony made a swift survey of the surrounding country.

The fence ran north and south in a straight line, to the summit of a northern rise and to the belt of big timber to the south. Elaborate precautions had been taken in its construction to keep it rabbit-proof where it crossed the pipeline, whilst the single-track railway line passed over a sunken pit. The fence gate had been repaired, but the wrecked car was still lying partly down on the massive pipeline. The half-caste paced the distance between fence gate and car and found it to be little more than fourteen yards.

About five hundred yards beyond the fence was a house belonging, he was informed, to the Rabbit Department farm, and then occupied by the farm foreman. Also beyond the fence, and on the farther side of the railway, was a farmhouse occupied by a farmer named Judd.

Gray was disappointed when Bony failed to run about like a hunting dog, as all good detectives are supposed to do. For a detective he seemed too casual, and his blue eyes too dreamy. Yet Bony saw all that he wanted to see, which was that the backing of the car from gate to pipeline was done quite naturally, with no tree stumps to make the act a matter of chance.

“I hate the word, but I must use it,” Bony said softly. “I am intrigued. Yes, that is the word I dislike. The railway crossed by the rabbit fence makes a perfect cross. On all four sides the land is cleared of timber and now is supporting ripe wheat. Here is difficult country in which to hide a human body indefinitely; for, supposing the remains of George Loftus were hidden somewhere among all those acres of waving wheat, it would be only a matter of time before a man driving a harvester machine came across them. Assuming that Loftus was killed, what object could his murderer have in hiding his body for only a few weeks, excepting, perhaps, to put as great a distance between himself and it before the body was discovered. And to carry the body weighing twelve stone to the nearest timber, which I judge to be not less than three-quarters of a mile distant, would be no mean feat.”

“It’s mighty strange what’s become of him,” the Fence Inspector gave it as his opinion.

“I shall find him alive, if not dead.”

“You think so?”

“I am sure of it. My illustrious namesake was defeated but once—at Waterloo. I was defeated once … officially, at Windee Station, New South Wales. I shall not meet my Waterloo twice.”

Inspector Gray hid his face with cupped hands, which sheltered a cigarette-lighting match, to conceal his silent laughter. Bony proceeded, unaware of the effect his vanity was having on his companion. Pointing to the fence, he said:

“I see several posts which want renewing. I suggest that you employ me cutting and carting posts and replacing those old ones. It will give me both opportunity to look about and time to study this affair. Now, please, take me on along the road Loftus would have taken from here to his house.”

Proceeding southward west of the fence, the land to left and right appeared as a golden inland sea caressing the emerald shores of bush and timber. The drone of gigantic bees vibrated the shadowless world—the harvesting machines were at work stripping fifteen bushels of wheat from every acre.

Crossing the old York Road and then continuing straight south, the truck sped up a long, low grade of sandy land which bore thick bush of so different an aspect from that familiar to Bony in the eastern States that he was charmed by its freshness. Here this bush, by its possible concealment of the body of Loftus, presented a thousand difficulties: for in it an army corps could live unseen and unsuspected.

“What is your real opinion of this case?” Gray asked.

“Tell me your opinion first,” Bony countered.

Silence for fully a minute. Then:

“This is the twelfth day since Loftus disappeared. It is my firm belief that he didn’t just wander into the bush and perish. As you see, there is as much cleared land as uncleared bush. Loftus was not a newchum, and even a newchum hopelessly slewed would surely come to the edge of cleared land, where nine times in ten he would be able to see a farmhouse. I think he was killed for the money he might have had with him—anything from a shilling to a fiver—either where his car was found or at some point on his way home, possibly as he crossed the old York Road.”

“Muir informed me that the vicinity of the York Road gate, as well as the edges of the wheat paddocks around the wrecked car, was thoroughly searched.”

“Doubtless that is so,” Gray assented. “Still, the possibility remains that Loftus may have been killed by a man or men possessing a car, who could have taken the body miles away to hide it in uncleared bush north of the one-mile peg beyond the railway.”

“There is solidity in the composition of your theory,” Bony said slowly, his eyes half closed, yet aware of the quick look brought by his ponderous language. “I am beginning to think that tracing Loftus will resemble the proverbial looking for a needle in a haystack. However, we must not rule out the possibility that Loftus disappeared intentionally. How did he stand financially?”

“He was as sound as the average farmer.”

“And how sound is the average farmer—I mean in this district?”

“Distinctly rocky. Nearly all are in the hands of the Government Bank.”

“Was Loftus an—er—amorous man, do you think?”

Inspector Gray took time to answer this pertinent question.

“Well, no,” he replied deliberately. “I should not consider him amorous. To an extent he was popular with the ladies, but, nevertheless, he was a home bird. And, as I said before, Mrs Loftus is still young, good-looking, and a good wife. There you see the Loftus farm.”

They had reached the summit of the long slope. Before them lay a great semicircle of low, flat country chequered by wheat and fallow paddocks: to the east and south-east reaching to the foot of a sand rise similar to that on which they stood; to the south far beyond the horizon; to the south-west extending to a sand rise which drew closer the farther north it came. The Loftus farm was situated immediately to their right as they slipped down the grade. The house lay not quite half a mile from the road at the foot of a long outcrop of granite with oak-trees growing in the crevices. A tractor driven by one man, which pulled a machine operated by a second man, moved with deceptive slowness round a near paddock.

“That will be Mick Landon driving the tractor,” Gray said when he had taken in all the view. “The man on the harvester is Larry Eldon. He comes out every day from Burracoppin on a bike.”

With narrowed eyes Bony examined the scene spread out before him, for the land dipped a little to the foot of the granite outcrop. Silently he regarded the small iron farmhouse, the stables beyond, and the stack of new hay beyond them. Over all that vast belt of brown fallow and golden wheat here and there moved the humming harvester machines like giant sloths, feeding on the grain voraciously and flinging behind them the dust of their passage. Gray said:

“That’s Mr Jelly’s place. You remember I mentioned him. He’s a mystery, if you want a mystery. With him mystery is added to mystery. Most of us when we go away come back poorer than when we leave. He comes back richer than when he goes.”

“Mysteries!” Bony sighed as though greatly content. His eyes were almost shut when he said: “Always has my soul been thrilled by mystery.”

Seated at the table in his room at the Rabbit Department Depot, Bony slowly read once again the collection of statements gathered by John Muir. The most important of these statements was that signed by Leonard Wallace, the licensee of the Burracoppin Hotel. It appeared to be a straightforward account of his movements and actions from the time he left Perth to the moment he entered the room in the hotel occupied by his wife and himself. There were three statements which in part corroborated this, in addition to that rendered by Mrs Wallace.

One was signed by Mavis Loftus, giving the date of her husband’s departure for Perth, the nature of his business there, the date of his expected return, which was 4th November—two days after his actual return. Michael Landon stated over his signature the orders that Loftus had given him before he went away and the fact that he had not seen or heard Loftus during the night of 2nd November or at any subsequent time.

The story, in full, of the finding of the wrecked car was given by Richard Thorn, employee of the Water Department.

From the mass there was nothing to point to murder, nor was there anything in them to make Loftus suspect of wilful disappearance. As far as Bony could then cull from his collection of facts the missing man was remarkable for no one habit, vice, or virtue.

Seated there in the quiet peace of late afternoon, idly examining each signature, noting the badly formed scrawl of Leonard Wallace at one extreme and at the other the neat calligraphy of Mick Landon, he experienced the sensation of elation he always felt when a baffling case, by great good fortune, came his way.

Questions poured through his mind as water through a pipe. He declined to halt the flow with a mental tap to find an answer to any one of them until he had cast his net in the still water about this small wheat town. When the fish had been landed for his inspection, then would he search for the deadly stingray which, if found, would prove that George Loftus had been slain.

Hearing the Depot gate being opened and a horse-drawn dray enter the yard, Bony rapidly collected the documents and placed them in his grip, which he locked. His bed was made, and from beneath clean clothes folded neatly for use as a pillow, he produced a book, then lay on the bed and pretended to read.

He heard the horse and dray cross the yard, saw horse, vehicle, and driver pass before the open doorway. Came then the sound of a dog racing over loose gravel. The door of the chaff room next his rattled when a speeding animal passed through the small cut opening at the bottom. A dog scratched and sniffed loudly. A man whistled and shouted:

“Ginger, come here!”

Into the room swept the whirlwind. His clothes were covered with a greyish dust; his face and neck and arms were whitened by the same dust. Hazel eyes, reddened by dust, gleamed good-humouredly.

“Ginger! Hi, Ginger! You callused-jawed pork sausage! You chase cats! You kill the boss’s cat and get me sacked! You—you—you——!”

A dog, a red-haired cross between a whippet and an Irish terrier, came to heel, to stand with lowered head and uplooking soft black eyes which so plainly said:

“You’re only kidding now.”

“Lay down, you callused-jawed slaughterer.”

Ginger lay down, head resting on forepaws, shortened tail thumping the floor.

“What kind of a day have you had?” Bony asked.

“Lovely … lovely! I’ve been breathing chaff dust for eight and a half hours. It’s got under my clothes, and tomorrow I’ll be a red rash. See you later. I’m headed for a shower. Come on, Ginger!”

Whirlwind and dog departed, to return with equal speed ten minutes later. Bony continued to read while his room-mate dressed in clean clothes, and when Hurley finished lacing his boots he happened to look at the cover of Bony’s book.

“What’s that? What’s the name of that book?” he asked.

Above the lowered book Bony’s blue eyes twinkled.

“It is entitled,” he said, “A Contribution to the Natural History of the Australian Termite, written by a little-known but really clever man named Kurt von Hagen.”

“What’s it all about?”

“About the Australian termite.”

“Who’s he, when his hat’s on?”

“Do you refer to the author or the termite?”

“The termite. What’s a termite?”

“A termite is a white ant.”

“Oh! Then why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place? You interested in white ants?”

“I am interested in everything,” Bony replied grandly. “Art, philosophy, the sciences. At present my leisure is devoted to the study of the termite, which is the most wonderful of all living creatures. Its civilization is so simple, yet so complex, so strong as to defy every other creature save man, yet so vulnerable as to die in sunlight. We may be excused for thinking that what many regard as——”

“Say, Bony, are you interested in murder?”

It was seldom Bony was trapped into visible astonishment. On this occasion it must be said in his defence that his mind was not then employed by the subject of homicide. Hurley’s question actually brought him to a sitting position.

“Why do you ask such a question?”

“Because I am looking for a feller thoroughly in earnest on the subject of murder.”

For a fraction of time Bony hesitated. His brain raced to supply answers to a dozen questions raised by Hurley’s abrupt inquiry. Did the man know him for a policeman? Was it desired that he, Bony, should become a confidant? Did Hurley know that Loftus had been murdered and who murdered him?

“I believe,” he said blandly —“I believe I can truthfully say that I am interested in the subject of murder.”

Sighing deeply, Hurley leaned back over his bunk. Bony thought that the mystery of Loftus’s disappearance was to be explained even before he had started his investigation. And the case had been so promising, too.

“Can you recite the names of Australian murderers since nineteen twenty?” Hurley persisted. “You know, like we did at school with the kings—William the Conqueror, ten sixty-six; William the Second, ten … but can you?”

“Phelp, Trilby, Smith, and Low, nineteen twenty; Brown, Little, two Wills, Turner, and Love, nineteen twenty-one; Maynard, Ro——”

“You’ll do! You’ll do!” Hurley was standing over the half-caste, thumping him on the back. “You’ll do, Bony, old lad! You’re meat for old Jelly! Hooroo! Saved—I’m saved!”

“Kindly explain the cause of your exuberance,” Bony urged.

Eric Hurley snatched at the detective’s tobacco and papers, swiftly rolled a cigarette and lit it. His face was beaming; his eyes were bright. Somehow Bony’s liking for this impetuous man deepened.

“I’ll tell you the tale,” Hurley consented. “As a matter of fact, I’m in love with a girl. Her name’s Lucy Jelly. She is the loveliest thing within a thousand miles of Burracoppin. Twenty years old, she is. Her father is a cocky four miles out. He doesn’t seem to mind me courting his daughter, but he doesn’t give me a chance to do any courting. That’s Irish, but it’s a fact.”

Bony nodded sympathetically, his eyes veiled by the black lashes, the tablets of his mind wiped clean to receive new and startling impressions. Hurley went on:

“Every time I go to her place I get a moment or two with Lucy, and then the old man opens up on murder. He can’t talk about nothing else. He knows the details of every murder case that has happened in Australia for the last ten years at least, how the blokes slipped and got caught, and how they behaved on the drop. Old Jelly sort of catches you by the ear and leads you off to his private little room. He pushes you into a chair, from which there’s no getting out till it’s time to come home. There’s photographs of murderers all round the walls, and, as an extra treat, sometimes he’ll show you the rope Merrier, the Bendigo killer, was hanged with. You simply got to stay put, and look at the pictures on the walls, and read bits with him out of his albums. You’re his meat, Bony! You’re his meat!”

“It sounds as though he were a cannibal,” Bony interjected, his interest thoroughly roused, pleasure that this mystery was not so soon to be solved making him happy. “How am I his meat?”

“Why, it’s simple enough. You come along with me this evening. I introduce you to Lucy and old Jelly. Then you recite your table of murderers. Old Pop Jelly will fall on your neck and take you into his chamber of horrors—he might even show you the rope—and I can go courting Lucy as she should be courted. Gee, I’m glad you got a job with the Rabbits!”

“Your description of Mr Jelly interests me,” Bony said. To which Hurley replied:

“Jelly himself will interest you a thunderin’ sight more.”