Bony - 25 - Bony and The Kelly Gang

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Want you to take a spell from spud digging for a couple of days, Nat. All right with you?” Mike Conway began.

  “Yes, why not?” replied Bony easily. “What’s doing?”

  “There’s produce to deliver to people in Kiama. Has to go by the back track. Rough track. Have to use horses, pack-horses.”

  Conway paused, and Bony was expected to say something.

  “Sounds all right to me,” he said. “I think I can use horses. Had plenty of experience with ’em, as you know.”

  Mike Conway gave one of his rare half smiles.

  “The fellows with the horses are capable enough, Nat. Where you come in is your experience with horses under conditions which don’t normally apply to Cork Valley. In addition, of course, to my summing up of you as a reliable man who could be depended on to have the Conway interests at heart.”

  “That’s true, Mike.”

  “I feel sure it is. We do a fair bit of marketing by the back track, if you get me. We’ve never believed in paying more than we need to, and we believe in getting as much as possible for our produce. That means, of course, closing an eye to this and that. You understand?”

  “Beginning to,” replied Bony.

  “We have to take risks, of course. However, normal precau­tions keep the risks down to a minimum. The returns are high, and we all share in the greater prosperity. With this job I’d like you to take on there are certain physical hardships, but as I’ve pointed out, the pay is exceptional.”

  “But not everything, I hope,” observed Bony. “You know me, and I think I know you. You Conways have been generous. You’ve given me protection, and that sort of thing. We might get on faster if I could ask a question without giving offence.”

  “Ask away, Nat, ask away.”

  “Is this marketing by the back track illegal?”

  “Well, in a way it is.”

  “It might be better if I don’t know what your produce is,” Bony said. “Let’s keep to the actual job of getting the produce to the market. I’ll do my part in that, Mike.”

  “Good!” exclaimed Conway. “As I said, the pay is …”

  “And, as I said, the pay isn’t everything. I don’t forget that you Conways have taken me as a Conway. I’m happy enough with you. You’ve given me a square deal. I’ll give you one.”

  “Good again, Nat. Well, the drill is this. I’ll call you for breakfast at four in the morning. The horses and men will be ready to leave just before daybreak.”

  “Suits me,” agreed Bony.

  “By the way! I’ll have your bagged spuds brought in, and the lot credited to you. Joe Flanagan said he’d had a few words with you about conditions here. Annual holiday, and that kind of thing. They earn plenty of money for a good annual. No one’s expected to stay in Cork Valley without a bender outside. Okay?”

  “Okay by me, Mike. Well, if I’m to be up at four, I think I’ll turn in. Thanks, Mike, for everything.”

  So Rosalie Ryan had been right about this coming trip with the horses; and, not unnaturally, having studied potatoes for three weeks, the prospect of a change gave Bony an anticipa­tory thrill. There were to be mountains, and travel by horse, and produce which was illegal. Almost certainly smuggling!

  Well, so what? His assignment didn’t include ‘Smuggling—Investigation of. His assignment covered only ‘Homicide’. The suspected murder of Excise Officer Torby might well be associated with smuggling, for illicit stills and suchlike were thought to be the motif of his walking tour at the time he was found … dead.

  Smuggling! Smugglers! It sounded romantic. In the books he had read, the clever smugglers invariably outwitted the revenue officers, and the coastguards of a later era. What fights they had! What escapes from being hanged and sus­pended over the turnpikes until they rotted! The fortunes they made; especially those made by gentlemen of high estate who were granted knighthoods and had never experienced physical hardship.

  Smuggling! Was it the right word to describe taking ‘pro­duce’ out of a country? You smuggled something into a country. Could it be said you smuggled something out? This delicate point was occupying Bony’s mind as he groped his way along the side of the shed to reach his cellar apartment. Fog is right. Well, smugglers always like fog to assist them in filling the secret wine bins and snuff jars of the lords and ladies.

  Bony was obliged to feel his way round to the front of the shed. He couldn’t see the houses, or the television antennae servicing the sets that didn’t pay taxes. Down in the apartment it was appreciably warmer, and having lit the lamp, Bony sat and smoked, and silently chuckled.

  The alarm clock said it was five to nine, and he was to be called at four in the morning. The bed invited, and he accepted the invitation. He began to undress, and then remembered the letter he was to post for Rosalie. Rosalie! A pretty name, indeed. A pretty owner of the name, too. The pocket of the coat had better be secured with a safety pin.

  And then he was gazing down at the inscription in the neat handwriting, only obliquely conscious of the stamp affixed for the posting. It was addressed to Mr Eric Hillier, 10 Evian Street, Rose Bay, Sydney. How strange! Mr Eric Torby had lived at Number 10 Evian Street, Rose Bay.

  Chapter Eleven

  Out the Back Door

  IT’S FOUR o’clock, Nat, and breakfast’s ready,” called Mike Conway down the trap-door steps.

  Ten minutes later, Bony appeared in the living-room where Mike Conway had cooked breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast and coffee. The logs on the hearth fire had been replenished. The table was set at that end nearest the fire, and Mike nodded to the chair placed there.

  “I’ll explain the set up while you eat, Nat,” he said, and also sat and sipped coffee. “On the chair over there is a roll of blankets in a ground sheet, and there’s a military greatcoat as it will be cold, with leggings as well.

  “Besides you, there will be three men. One of them you won’t see by day. At least I hope not. He’ll be young Brian Kelly, who will keep well ahead of you and act as the scout. He’ll leave signs to be followed, and by that I mean he’ll give you constantly the green light—or the red one. The two men will show you how to read the signs. I want you to be able to read them in the future, and also to take particular notice of the track for future trips. Understand?”

  “Yes, that’s clear enough, Mike.”

  “The journey will take you two days, and then you’ll be met by a man with a truck. For our purposes his name is Timothy O’Grady. He is tall and rangy. Long nose and small brown eyes, with a slight cast in the left one. He’ll check the produce on to his truck and you will see to it that he signs the form of receipt on the delivery note. I have it here in this envelope. Under no circumstances must you forget to have him sign for the stuff. And he’ll deliver goods to you for which you must sign.”

  “That’s plain enough,” Bony said. “The two men with me—to be trusted?”

  Mike Conway’s singular half smile flickered about his mouth.

  “One is a Kelly, the other is Steve Conway,” he explained. “Both can read Brian’s signs, but cannot read or write. Never went to school, and don’t miss that. Both are good men. On the mountains and with horses.”

  “Can I ask a question?”

  Mike nodded, brows raised enquiringly.

  “Are they armed?”

  “Only with their tongues,” replied Mike. “They’re expert with those. Don’t worry. Everything is taken care of. I’ll tell you this much, Nat. My great-grandfather started this trade something more than a hundred years ago, and there’s never been a hitch. All down through the years the most import­ant man on these trips has been the scout. You were born for that, Nat. It was why I picked you up that day. This trip you go with the horses. Next time you go with the scout. After that you will be the scout. You’ll have the picture when you get back.”

  “All right, then I’m all set, Mike. Can I ask one more question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “You say Brian Kelly
will be scouting on this trip. What’s wrong with him scouting on the next and the next? Anything I should know?”

  “Don’t see why not,” agreed Conway. “There are some who are born to scout over these mountains, and some who are born only to dig spuds. Brian took to scouting years before he went out to college. Did well at college. His father wants him to visit relatives in Ireland. Sending him over there for a year.”

  “He doesn’t want to go?”

  “He’s not keen, Nat.” Mike pursed his lips. Then he added: “We want him to go, Nat. He’s inclined to be troublesome to our Rosalie, as a matter of fact. The change will give him new horizons, new interests. His boat sails in July.”

  “Oh!” Bony stood up. “Didn’t mean to probe into family affairs. None of my business.”

  “It’s the Conways’ business. Remember you’re a Conway. Well, here’s the delivery note. And it’s most important to get O’Grady’s signature.”

  “I’ll do that, Mike.”

  Wearing the military overcoat and carrying the blanket roll, Bony accompanied Mike Conway along the settlement road­way and on past the cheese factory. The fog was less dense, but the morning was cold and still dark. Conway carried a powerful torch which he directed to the ground just beyond their feet, so they could follow the rough track on to the pig­gery. This in turn was passed. The track led them to a low bridge spanning the river, and Bony wondered if this bridge, too, was wired.

  He could hear the incessant noise of the waterfall some distant ahead and thought they were making for it when Conway took a divergent track which was nothing more than a path through close-skirting scrub. They followed this for perhaps a quarter mile when someone with a torch came from behind what proved to be a hut. Here the horses and several men were waiting. The man with the torch greeted them with:

  “All set, Mike. Mornin’, Nat! Give us your roll and I’ll add it to a pack.”

  “Brian left?” asked Mike.

  “Twenty minutes ago.” He was one of those who ate at the Conway table, and Bony knew him as Steve. The blanket roll was strapped to the load on one of the vague shapes of horses. The second man appeared, and this one Bony didn’t know. He said:

  “Brian took Paddy and Tottie. Said that Streaky wasn’t up to the mark. Said would you take her back some time. She’s tied up over there.”

  “All right. Well, you’d better start. Good luck fellers.”

  The cavalcade moved off, each horse tethered to the pack of the one in front. The strange man led them and Steve, and Bony followed close behind the last. There was no wind, but the air was sharp, and it was so dark that Bony and his com­panion had almost to walk on the hind hooves of the animal in front. One of the horses nickered, but other than that there was no sound save the dull thud-thud of hooves on soft earth.

  So this is why Mike Conway had stopped to pick up the wayfarer! had first passed and then, after seeing the man’s face, had decided to give him a lift with the end view of making him a scout serving a smuggling party. Respect for Mike Conway grew in Bony, and a suspicion that the man had profound depths became a conviction.

  Since Steve chose to be silent, Bony thought in retrospect of the hints and incidents, and his instinctive reaction to them, which had gone into the vetting of him by Mike Conway and his grandmother. The vetting had been progressively and carefully done, and he would be rash, indeed, to believe he was now rated one hundred per cent. Conway’s admission that he had picked up the wayfarer to induct him into the profes­sion of smuggling banished any credit for altruism which the unwary might have granted.

  Bony was sure that he would continue to be subject to check. Much would depend on the report that Steve Conway would give of him on their return to Cork Valley, and, as Red Kelly would have pronounced the word, he would have to be ever ‘carshious’. The statement that neither Steve nor his companion could read or write was certainly at odds in these days when others of the Conways and Kellys had been educated outside Cork Valley. To have him, the new man, sign for goods to be brought back would certainly give the Conways a hold over Nat Bonnay. It could not be said that Brian Kelly was unable to write his name to a form of receipt, and Brian was one of this party.

  Despite his feeling that Rosalie had been motivated by the desire to contact a lover by side-stepping the normal postal link with Cork Valley, the letter he now carried could be a test of his loyalty to Conway, could well be a trap, and if this or any other trap closed about him his body might be found far beyond Casement’s rabbit burrow.

  Hillier was the name of the addressee. Eric Hillier, at Num­ber 10 Evian Street, Rose Bay. Eric Torby had lived there, and the name Hillier had neither been mentioned by Casement, nor appeared in any report. It had to be borne in mind that the identity of the body found on the road to Bowral had been kept from the public. It was known only to the police, and to the person or persons associated with his death.

  There was, however, the strong presumption that Torby had called himself Hillier, and in view of Rosalie’s apparent anxiety to write and have her letter posted to Hillier, it could also be presumed that she was entirely ignorant of the death of Torby, alias Hillier. But could this presumption be accepted in respect of the Conways and the Kellys? They might well know of Eric Hillier’s death and the conveyance of the body to a distant place on a road.

  Bony was affronted by the thought he would have to read the letter, no matter what he decided to do with it when he met Bessie O’Grady. He could visualise in posting it what would result. It would be passed to the police by Eric Torby’s landlady, and they would easily trace the writer to Cork Val­ley where every person was listed, and they would interrogate Rosalie without waiting for Inspector Bonaparte to reappear. On several counts, therefore, the letter he carried could be dynamite.

  A love letter! Love takes time to generate. If Hillier was Eric Torby, then Torby had been in Cork Valley, and for some time.

  He was cogitating thus when they passed close to the bulk of a house so large it must have been that owned by the Kellys. There were no lights from the house, but a light did come from another building which could be a dairy or milk­ing shed.

  Half an hour later, at six o’clock, the horses stopped, and the lead man came back to say that Bony should go with him as the track would be rough. Up past the horses, none of which was to be ridden, Bony was told to walk close to the lead man who said his name was Jack. Bony could see only that Jack was short and apparently fat.

  Now the going was rough, a narrow path leading upward through dense scrub, turning and twisting about mountain shoulders, slithering down into gullies and across gurgling streams and up the far side and on and always twisting among the branches of scrub and bush. The fog-shrouded night often compelled Jack to direct his masked torch to the ground, but he did not use it unless it was necessary. Only the constant slope from the left down to the right told Bony they were ascending to the rim at the south-west arc of the amphitheatre. He walked on the inside and often felt rock when feeling his way through the bush, and he knew without seeing that on Jack’s other side there was a precipice. That, no plainsman likes.

  Eventually the darkness greyed, and still later he was able to see, through the fog, the round face of his companion and the black outlines of bush and scrub branches. It was after that that Jack said:

  “How ya going?”

  “Still have my eyes and no skin off my nose,” responded Bony.

  “Worse going down than coming up. Anyway, we’re run­ning true to time. You’ll want to keep your hair on over the next bit.”

  They came to the foot of a vast wall of rock extending into the fog, and the fog was a blessing, for the path followed the base of a mountain face, and there was nothing but space on the outer side, space hidden but nonetheless menacing, space without height or depth. Here there were no trees, no bush, only stony rubble which gave way under foot, and which caused the horses often to scrabble madly to keep themselves against the wall. Here they found a short sap
ling, whittled of its bark, lying on the path.

  Picking it up, Jack said:

  “Brian’s up ahead, Nat. On the job. How would you like to go this-away follerin’ an all-night beano?”

  “I’d be dead sober time I arrived home,” asserted Bony, at that moment moving with his back to the wall like a crab racing for its hole.

  “Long way down. Takes the loose stones more’n a minute. I’ve listened to ’em.”

  “I like the fog, Jack.”

  “Ya, I always do. Fog’s the poor man’s friend.” To the lead horse: “Come on up, you silly ole bastard. This ain’t a skating rink. Ya, as I was sayin’, fog’s the poor man’s friend. Only time the poor man can say he’s free, free to thumb his nose at all and sundry and kiss me backside. Great life if you don’t weaken.”

  Bony hoped he wouldn’t weaken while edging round a granite shoulder which, he was positively sure, overhung a drop of ten thousand miles. He recalled seeing often these rock faces from the stable earth in which grew nice, homely spuds, and he wondered if the kookaburras were even then down there waiting for him.

  As long as he didn’t slip, they wouldn’t be seeing him this day. Blessed be the fog.

  The fog was blessed. It continued to hem them in from space, as they scrabbled and slid and poked their way across the chin of one rock face after another, until Jack turned into what appeared to be a cathedral, gloomy and ghostly and haunted by the hound of the Baskervilles.

  The hound was a beagle. It came to meet them, its jaws slavering, its great sad eyes reflecting the light behind the party. It came to sniff about Bony’s legs and when Bony spoke its tail wagged. Jack removed the strip of green cloth from the animal’s collar, and the beagle turned and ran on and out of the opposite door of the cathedral.