"No footprints in the bush" - читать интересную книгу автора (Upfield Arthur W.)

Chapter Four

The McPherson’s Justice

McPHERSONconducted Bony from the office to the south veranda of the big bungalow-style house, and through what evidently was the main door into the hall. This hall amazed Bonaparte. Never in any station homesteads had he seen a hall so richly furnished-not even in those mansions, designated homesteads, he had visited on the sheep farms near Sydney and Melbourne. Tapestries illustrating Scottish battles hung from the walls. A grandfather clocklorded it in a corner. Broadswords and claymores rested on the arms of a teak rack. Jacobean settees and chairs and small tables flanked the gleaming parquet floor of darkened mulga.

From a passage at the end of the hall appeared a girl whose coiled hair was as black as his own, whose eyes were as blue as his own, whose skin was the texture of the white roses decorating the lawn outside. She was of medium height, under thirty years old, and wore a plain black dress the severe cut of which appeared to enhance her striking charm of face and figure. A further surprise was given by McPherson:

“Flora, allow me to present to you Detective-Inspector Bonaparte. Inspector, my niece, Miss McPherson.”

Bony bowed in grand manner. The somewhat stilted form of introduction was made quite naturally, and his mind remarked it.

“I ask your pardon for my somewhat war-worn appearance, Miss McPherson,” he said, gravely, but with a distinct twinkle in his eyes. “I left Shaw’s Lagoon as a stockman seeking employment. Circumstances, and the kindness of your uncle, have transformed me to a senior police officer. I possess a braided uniform, a pair of beautiful gloves, a walking stick, and a peaked hat; but alas, my wife has never permitted the regalia to leave the tissue paper in which it was received from the tailors and outfitters.”

He was not sure, but he suspected a responding twinkle in her eyes. She did not smile when she said:

“I am happy to meet you, Inspector Bonaparte. I saw you arrive with Burning Water. Your coming has caused much excitement.”

“I was almost overwhelmed by the welcome extended to me,” Bony stated, the twinkle still evident to her.

Now she smiled, saying:

“The blacks are like children-in many things.”

“The Inspector will be staying for a few days, dear,” McPherson cut in. “His luggage is being brought in by Price who is leaving at once. Should be here by half-past eight. I suggest that dinner be delayed.”

“As you wish, uncle. I will see that Ella prepares the room next the bathroom for Mr Bonaparte. Oh, and perhaps, Mr Bonaparte you would like a cup of tea?”

“It would be a really valuable gift-after a shower.”

“Of course, and a drink before the shower would be another,” she said, laughing at him. “Uncle, attend to our guest and beyourcharmingest. We have so few guests, MrBonaparte, that we cannot afford to neglect them.”

Bony bowed again, less grandly, and McPherson led the way to the dining-room, and yet again Bony was astonished and betrayed it only with a narrowing of the eyelids.

He followed his host to a massive Jacobean sideboard which must have weighed a ton. Only with effort did he prevent his interest becoming vulgar. The long table was set fortwo, tall hard-wax candles set in silver sconces were ready to shed soft light on silver and cut glass. Full-length portraits in oils of men dressed in tartan and kilt were suspended from the walls, iron-faced men with prominent jaws and small blue or grey eyes, men with faces reddened, not by the sun of Central Australia, but by the keen winds of the Scottish Highlands.

Bony surveyed them above the rim of his glass.

“Your ancestors?” he inquired.

McPherson nodded, saying:

“Everything here was brought from Scotland by my father and mother. That is he above the fireplace. I had it done by a man in Melbourne from one of those old daguerreotype pictures. They were all a tough crowd, theMcPhersons. Just fancy a man, with his wife, coming right out here when the advance of settlement was only just this side of the Diamantina. They brought all their possessions on three bullock wagons. You know anything about furniture?”

“Next to nothing. Jacobean, isn’t it?”

“So they told me. I don’t know anything about furniture, except what I’ve seen in the homesteads on the way to the railway. We still use the iron kettles and pans and things the old people brought with them. Tough. Humph! I often wish I was a quarter as tough. Well, I’ll show you to your room and the bathroom, and leave you, as I’ve work to do before dinner. There’s what we call the library if you’re interested in books.”

The bedroom was in keeping with the hall and the dining-room. Towels lay over a brass handrail. The narrow bed was monastic. There was no floor covering. There was one strikingly discordant note-a gaudy dressing-gown and a pair of blue leather slippers waiting on a chair and the floor. The squatter noticed these articles, and grunted.

“That gown and the slippers were left here by a visitor,” he explained, irritably. “Don’t think I’d select such colours for myself. I’ll leave you. You know where to find things, and the maid will bring tea-if she hasn’t discarded her clothes and gone back to her tribe. And don’t worry about your clothes at dinner. I’ve never dressed for dinner since my mother passed on.”

“I have a reasonably respectable coat in my swag which will conceal my working shirt,” Bony said, adding: “Above table I will appear, well, not naked. I am going to thank you now for the hospitality you have extended to me, and express the wish that I shall have your assistance in my work.”

“I will do what I can.” McPherson was facing the window and Bony observed the smallness of his eyes. “Why did you tell Price just now that Errey had met with an accident?”

“Because the town exchange is not in an official Post Office, and the manner in which poor Errey met his death cannot be made public for the present. I had another reason. I never tolerate interference with an investigation I have begun, and you can imagine the result of the destruction of Errey and his car did it become public. There would be a half-squadron of Air Force machines sent to find that mysterious plane, and then you and I and the blacks would have to go and find the Air Force pilots forced down in that open country.”

“You intend to keep it dark, even from Price?”

“I intend to keep the matter dark from the outside public until I can say: “Sergeant Errey was murdered in such and such a manner and this is the man who killed him and his aboriginal passenger.”

“You first have to arrest the killer.”

Bony’s eyes widened, and the squatter winced as though the light in the blue eyes gazing at him was a weapon. Bony’s voice was metallic when he boasted:

“I shall not fail to bring Errey’s murderer to justice.”

“You will if the Wantella justice reaches him first. The crime was committed on Wantella land, and the Wantella blacks thought highly of Sergeant Errey.”

Left to himself, Bony passed to the window from which a sectional view of the dam wall could be seen. He was not interested in the view, however. His brain demanded opportunity to think, to adjust thought to the unusual. For the first time in his career Bonaparte was thrown off his balance.

He surveyed the incidents of this day, the people he had met. Only the girl appeared normal. Burning Water was slightly abnormal. More so was this Donald McPherson. They would have to be pinned for close examination, like butterflies pinned as to a board and examined through a glass by a naturalist. There would be time later for that-after his body was refreshed.

Turning away from the window, he picked up the dressing-gown. The trace of bewilderment in his eyes gave place to an expression of pleasure, for one carefully restrained inhibition had been admiration for colours in clothes. Ah! Those beautiful ties and socks he had put away in favour of more conservative colours!

The shafts of the setting sun slanting through the open French windows rested on thegown, illuminated its glories. In such a room and in such a house, it was a sheer monstrosity. Its basic colour was a bright yellow and on the base were laid bars of purple and squares of Cambridge blue. What kind of guest had he been who selected such a combination of colours even in a dressing-gown? And the slippers! They were of soft doeskin leather. They had long pointed Eastern toes. Their colour was sky-blue.

Slippers and gown he carried to the bathroom: when he returned he was wearing both and carrying his clothes.

His swag had been placed on a chair, and on a small table were tea and cakes. He now felt refreshed both physically and mentally, and, with a sigh of contentment, he sat in a chair beside the table he placed in front of the long dressing-mirror. And in that mirror, which, too, was slightly out of place, he surveyed himself, admired himself in Joseph’s coat, and ate and drank.

What a gown! What slippers! What a room! What a house! What an investigation awaited him! He could not command his mind whilst encompassed by those alluring colours.

On the floor he unrolled his swag and took from it clean underwear and shaving tools. Again he went to the bathroom, and afterwards dressed, putting on a neat dark-grey serge coat over the clean khaki shirt. Now he felt better, and the clamour in his mind insisted that he hide the dressing-gown beneath the bed pillows and the slippers beneath the bed. He sat down again on the chair to begin the manufacture of a cigarette. Began, for not then did he complete the task. In a flash he was on his hands and knees beside the unrolled swag.

Sergeant Errey’s small attache case he had so carefully rolled in the swag before leaving the camp of the cabbage-trees, had vanished.

The shock succeeded, when past efforts had failed, in restoring his mind to calm normality. He recalled clearly that minute of time in which he had placed the attache case on top of the unrolled blankets and then carefully had rolled and strapped the swag without possibility of case, or any other article, falling from it.

Beyond this fine homestead, beyond the painted Land of Burning Water, lay a shadow as black as night, a shadow in whichflickered the flame of human emotions and passions. Flame in the shadow! It was there, all right. He could feel the heat of the flame in the chill of the shadow.

What had Chief Burning Water said? Why, he had said: “We have seen what we ought not to have seen.” Why did he say that, if he did not know that those Illprinka blacks were present to remove anything not destroyed by the fire: if he did not at least suspect they were acting on the orders of the pilot? That would more than hint he knew, or suspected, a particular man to be the pilot of the aeroplane.

Then McPherson had said just before he had left that very room: “You will (fail) if the Wantella justice reaches him first. The crime was committed on Wantella land, and the Wantella blacks thought highly of Sergeant Errey.” What lay behind that? Was it not the betrayal of knowledge, or suspicion, coinciding with that contained in Chief Burning Water’s statement? If those two men did not know the pilot of the aeroplane, then both of them based on other facts a good guess.

The house and its owner were not normal here on the edge of Central Australia. Chief Burning Water was abnormal, because of his long and close association with theMcPhersons. McPherson was a travesty, a problem. He offered hospitality like a man not wanting to but unable to refuse. There was no warmth in him. Even his temper was not warm. He did not speak with the easy freedom of the bushman, and that seemed to be natural in him and not the evidence of fear. Only the girl was warm and human and open; but even she presented a problem.

Without the slightest hesitation she had accepted him as her uncle’s guest, when he had appeared to her travel-stained, escorted by aborigines to the homestead instead of arriving on horseback or by car. She had evinced no hostility towards his mid-race; had accepted him without question.

Bony’s subsequent actions might have led an observer to form the opinion that his mentality was not normal. His eyes became brilliant orbs of blue radiating light. On his dark face was a smile more of gloating than amusement.

Snatching the dressing-gown from under the pillow he held it to his faintly quivering nostrils. Then he donned the garment, stood before the mirror, and turned himself to view the picture from every angle.

“Let me tabulate my emotions,” he murmured to the reflection in the mirror. “My brain feels stimulated. My spirit seems to be something light within me, something I can feel. It is as though Iwere intoxicated, and I’m sure this particular reaction is not due to the glass of lager I drank in the dining-room. Nor is it due to the prospect of solving a profound mystery. No. No! It is due to the gown itself. It is the kind of gown I would buy for myself-if I were not university educated, if I were not an inspector of detectives.”

Sighing, he removed the garment and again hid it beneath the pillow. Although certain the missing attache case was not among the articles of his swag he removed them all, before rolling up the swag and pushing it under the bed.

He was still on his knees when, through the open windows, came a human cry of distress. It was like a spring lifting him to his feet. Tensed, he listened. He heard now the sound like a man’s face being slapped, and this sound was instantly followed by another cry of distress. Out on the veranda, he again listened. For the third time the cry was uttered; and now he knew it came from the stockyards beyond the men’s quarters.

His room faced west. He stepped off the veranda, followed a garden path made of termite nests, skirted the detached kitchen and wash-house, and passed through a gate, to cross the open sandy ground to the long building, in the door frame of which was standing a white man dressed as a cook.

Beyond the men’s quarters, Bony saw over against the rails of the stockyard, a crowd of aborigines. Their backs were towards him. Among them was he whose cries answered the sound of face slapping. Then the group abruptly split asunder and Bony saw the duck-clad figure of the squatter. Then, like Jonah being spewed from the mouth of the whale, there shot from the centre a naked figure, who raced with astonishing speed along the northern fence of the garden, over the concrete wall of the dam, to disappear among the bloodwoods.

Towards Bonaparte came Chief Burning Water and Mr Donald McPherson, coiling his stockwhip. He said:

“There goes one of your late enemies, Inspector. I have been administering the McPherson justice. It is always better to flog than to hang. Hanging doesn’t hurt.”