Читать книгу Winds of Evil - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 9

The Fence-Rider

It was by chance that Mounted-Constable Lee met Donald Dreyton several miles to the west of Carie on the boundary of Wirragatta Station. For five minutes they conversed across the netted barrier, and Dreyton learned of the brutal attack on Mabel Storrie. When Lee went on his business, Dreyton regarded the stiff military figure astride the grey gelding with the manner of one whose eyes are blinded by mental pictures.

Behind the fence-rider stood one riding- and two pack-camels, animals possessing personality and able to think and reason.

Dressed, this first day in November, in khaki slacks, a white cotton shirt, a wide-brimmed felt hat and elastic-sided riding-boots, with face and forearms tanned by the sun, Dreyton had the appearance of being over forty when actually he was but a little more than thirty years of age. Constant exposure, day and night, to the sun and the air had so darkened his skin that the peculiar blue-grey of his eyes was startlingly emphasized. The thin nose and mobile lips, added to the breadth of forehead, indicated intelligence above the average, whilst the two sharp lines between the brows bespoke constant mental activity. He was not a bushman born and bred, but in this was no oddity.

It was seldom that Dreyton troubled to ride. For one thing his riding-camel vigorously objected to being kneeled to be mounted, nor would it consent to be climbed up and down whilst standing. At nearly every wire strain something was required to be done to the fence, and consequently Dreyton walked the ten to fourteen miles every day along his section of one hundred and eighty-three miles. It was doubtless this incessant walking that gave to his body its lithe grace of movement.

Having filled a straight-stemmed pipe with rubbed chips of Yankee Doodle tobacco, having lit the pipe with a match ignited on the seat of his trousers, he resumed his patrol to Carie and the homestead of Wirragatta.

It was almost four o’clock when he arrived at the corner post between the two black gates in the Common fence, there ruefully to observe the long rampart of dead buck-bush built by the wind against the fence running south from that point to Nogga Creek, where his section terminated, and for many miles beyond. So clear was the air he could see the individual trees bordering the creek, while Nelson’s Hotel and Smith’s bakery appeared to be within easy stone-throw.

When again on the move, headed southward, Dreyton smiled a little grimly. He knew it to be certain that a pair of brilliant dark eyes would be observing him from the south end of the hotel’s upper veranda. Between Mrs. Nelson and him existed a kind of armed neutrality, created by her desire to know everything about Donald Dreyton and his determination that she should know as little as possible.

Now he saw the man forking the imprisoned buckbush over the fence and experienced relief that this job he would not have to do before setting off again on another trip. For two hundred yards back from the creek the fence had been cleared of buckbush, and the worker leant on his long-handled fork whilst watching the approach of man and camels.

Blue eyes set widely in a dark-brown face noted every detail of the fence-rider’s appearance, and then the thin-lipped mouth beneath the straight nose and the dark brows of this Australian half-caste resolved into a kindly smile.

“Good day!” greeted Dreyton.

“Good day!” responded Joe Fisher, alias Bony, alias Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. “It is a day to be appreciated after yesterday. A glorious wind, that. It has provided me with a job of work.”

“So I see,” Dreyton said dryly.

“And all day I have been observed, I hope with admiration, by someone on the hotel veranda. He, or she, owns a pair of glasses.”

The fence-rider laughed with quick amusement and named the culprit. After that he stared at Bony, and, less openly, Bony stared at him. The result was that neither could “place” the other, and mutual interest quickened.

“Mrs. Nelson is a woman possessed of a remarkably sharp sense of curiosity,” Dreyton explained. “She owns almost the whole of the township, and wishes to own everyone in it as well—You’re a stranger here, I take it.”

“Yes. I came along on the look out for work,” Bony admitted. “I—er—put the hard word on Mr. Borradale for a job, and so, fortunately, clicked. Have you heard about the girl, Mabel Storrie?”

“A rumour, yes.”

“Ah! You are English, are you not?”

“Of course. My accent, I suppose?”

“Less your accent than your national reserve. I saw Constable Lee riding away along the fence to the west, and it is more than probable that you met. He was bound to talk of Mabel Storrie, and yet you say you have heard nothing more than a rumour about her and of her terrifying experiences near here the night before last.”

“You are, then, a sort of bush Sherlock Holmes?”

“I am,” admitted Bony gravely.

Dreyton smiled.

“In that case, you have examined the scene of the latest crime?” he said, not without sarcasm.

“Certainly. I, too, have a sharp sense of curiosity.”

“And discovered the murderer?”

“Not yet,” confessed Bony, still grave. Dreyton laughed good-naturedly.

“You are a strange fellow.”

Bony unconsciously bowed. He was thinking that this fence-rider also was a strange fellow. He had seldom met men like this Donald Dreyton—so seldom, in fact, that he was as puzzled by him as he was puzzling to Dreyton.

Then he thought he saw light, and asked, “How long have you been working on Wirragatta?”

“Just two years now. I started here three days before the half-caste girl was murdered at Junction Waterhole. Heard about her?”

Bony nodded.

“Was that your first introduction to the bush proper? he asked carelessly.

“It was. It was not a good moment for the introduction. You see, the detective fellow certainly thought I was the murderer.”

So this fence-rider had had no experience of Australian blacks, because shortly after his arrival in the bush those then on Wirragatta had cleared away. And, too, shortly after his arrival, Alice Tindall had been strangled.

“Would you care to see the place where Mabel Storrie was attacked?” asked Bony.

“No, thanks. I am not that much interested in the details. On the road, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, on the road,” Bony agreed. “She was left for dead on the road.”

Again Dreyton laughed good-humouredly.

“I am afraid, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you are a little out in your statement of the crime,” he said. “Mabel Storrie was found some twenty yards off the road by the mail-car people.”

“Admitted, my dear Watson. Even so, she was left for dead on the road. When she recovered consciousness, she walked blindly off the road for twenty-odd yards. Then she tripped over a tree-root, and in falling received a severe blow on her forehead. There she lay till she was found.” Dreyton’s blue-grey eyes narrowed. “How do you know all that?” he demanded. “Lee doesn’t know it.”

“Lee? Oh, the policeman! Perhaps not. Perhaps he does and didn’t think to tell you. Come with me and I will prove my statement. We must run the grave risk of killing the cat on the hotel veranda. Even then I saw the sunlight reflected by her glasses.”

Having vaulted the fence, Bony led the way up along the creek-bank till he halted at the edge of a fairly large sand patch. Across the patch was the upper surface of a tree-root, and on it were the imprints of many feet. On this patch the girl was found. Bony explained:

“Those footprints were made by people who came here early this morning. The imprints left by the coach party and Constable Lee were, of course, wiped out by the wind. Now, the girl was walking home when the night was as black as a stove. Quite naturally, she clung to the road, and on the road she was attacked. Remember, no efforts were made by the murderer to conceal the bodies of Alice Tindall and Frank Marsh: so we may assume—if we take it for granted that Mabel was attacked by their murderer—that he, thinking he had killed Mabel, merely let her slip out of his hands and then fled. There was no purpose in carrying her to the place where she was found, because, although her assailant might have known her brother was due to pass on the truck, he knew that before the dawn the wind would have wiped away his tracks.”

“That seems a reasonable argument,” conceded Dreyton.

“It is. The Strangler’s tracks were quickly expunged from the ground. So were his victim’s—save in one place—Come here!”

Motioning the other to follow, Bony led the way towards the road where there was a small wind-swept area of claypan—sun-dried mud of a once-filled surface puddle. Pointing downward, he said:

“On that claypan are the impressions of cuban heels, the heels of Mabel Storrie’s shoes. Her walking shoes, for she changed her dance shoes for them before she left the hall.”

“My eyes are good, but I can see no tracks,” objected Dreyton.

“No? Then step back here a little. Bend low, like this, and look across the claypan, not down at it.”

The fence-man did as instructed, and at the lower angle he thought he could make out faint indentations. Still——

“I can certainly see something,” he admitted.

“I can see heel-marks plainly. Look! I will outline one of the marks.”

Standing over Bony, Dreyton watched him scratch the hard grey surface with a match-point, and there grew the outline of a woman’s shoe-heel at the position where the woman would have taken her second step to cross the claypan. “I say,” he said apologetically, “I’m sorry I chaffed you about Sherlock Holmes and all that. Hang it! You must have eyes like telescopes.”

“It is a gift bequeathed me by my mother. You will see that if Miss Storrie recovers, and can recall all that happened to her, she will tell how she got up from the road and walked dazedly away, only to trip and fall and remember nothing more. Now I must get back to my job, or I will be getting the sack at the end of my first day.”

Continuing his work, Bony watched Dreyton and his camels travelling down the creek road to the homestead until man and beasts disappeared round a bend and so were hidden by the box-trees. Although mystified by the fence-rider, he had come to form a favourable opinion of him. He was a gentleman by his manner and appearance. Regarded on his present situation, he was a gentleman no longer.

“I wonder what he was, for what he is he has been only for two years,” Bony said aloud.

For a further half-hour he tossed the light filigree straw balls over the netted fence, so that the next of the prevailing westerly winds would roll them across the track and away to the east.

It was five o’clock when he shouldered the fork, unhooked the water-bag from the fence, and began his return to the homestead. Along the creek road, plainly to be seen, were the fresh imprints of the camels’ feet. Here and there was a solitary imprint of a boot; here and there but a portion of a boot mark. The camels following after the man, almost but not quite, had blotted out his tracks.

Eventually Bony rounded the creek-bend, the bordering track now running to the south-west to Junction Waterhole. On the left of the track grew the line of box-trees, and between their trunks the detective could see, across the flat, the timber bordering Thunder Creek drawing nearer as he proceeded. On the right of the track, two hundred yards round the bend, there grew out on the bluebush plain a thriving leopardwood-tree, in the vivid branches of which a party of crows vociferously quarrelled.

On reaching an imaginary line to be drawn from the leopardwood to the nearest creek box-tree, Bony saw that Dreyton’s camels had been halted for some time. Now there was no necessity for the fence-rider to halt at this place, for he no longer was patrolling his section. Bony’s mind at once sought for an explanation. Without the smallest difficulty he saw Dreyton’s boot-tracks walk off the track to the creek box-tree, and, on following them, he saw where they circled the trunk. He was further astonished to discover marks on the tree-trunk, clearly indicating that Dreyton had climbed it.

Why? Bushmen do not climb trees for exercise or the fun of it. Dreyton was on his way to the homestead after a tiring day, and there must, in consequence, have been something up in this tree to successfully entice him to climb it.

Bony climbed the tree, too. He climbed high to the point reached by the fence-rider.

Later, when he continued the walk to the homestead, he wondered much about Dreyton, and if his climb had had anything to do with the crows quarrelling in the leopard-wood-tree.