“I don’t. The groom, a black, took it to the kitchen. One of the two maids would certainly take it to your room. I didn’t steal the damn thing—if it were stolen and didn’t fall from the swag.”
“I am not accusing you, my host. Its theft is not so very important, for after all I like to gather my own evidence in my own way. You mentioned that Mit-ji was an old man suspected of communicating with the Illprinka blacks. Are there any other Wantella men so suspected?”
“I’ve had my eye on a fellow named Itcheroo.”
“Ah! Perhaps it can be accounted to Itcheroo that the pilot knew of Mit-ji’s arrest, and now would know I witnessed his bombing of the car, that I retrieved a flat object belonging to Errey, and that I was here when he flew over the house this evening. I must interview this dangerous Itcheroo, and then we’ll go off to bed.”
Bonaparte had done all he could to obtain the confidence and the assistance of the man still angrily glaring at him; and now had arrived his predetermined time to break McPherson’s opposition.
“I understand that you never married,” he said. “I understand, too, that Miss McPherson is the only living relative. Your opinion of her sterling qualities is warmly supported by me. Who was the visitor here who left that extraordinarily vivid dressing-grown and the blue doeskin slippers?”
McPherson’s face became as grey as his moustache. Bony saw panic leap into his eyes, noted how the hand holding the pipe was faintly trembling. But the squatter’s voice was wonderfully controlled.
“He was a man who came up from Melbourne to write a book,” the harsh voice barked. “I tell you I’m sick of this conversation, this cross-examination. I’m going to bed.”
“In normal circumstances I would not be so persistent,” Bony said, and there was no buoyancy in his voice. “I am a man hating always to be hurried. I like to proceed with an investigation in my own plodding manner, declining assistance from anyone, resenting assistance if offered. I know this much, already. The man you say came here from Melbourne to write a book was a half-caste like me.
“In normal circumstances, I would regard the theft of Errey’s attaché case from my swag as in no way annoying. But, Mr McPherson, the present circumstances are not normal. No, not when a man drops bombs from an aeroplane and flies over a house at night to drop a treacle tin containing a threatening message. Here it is.”
With his right hand Bony pressed the end of the fifth cigarette into the emu-egg ash tray, and with the left proffered the squatter the piece of paper he had found among the sand inside the treacle tin.
McPherson’s face became grey. He stared into Bony’s eyes, and automatically his right hand accepted the paper. He read aloud the message, written in a small and neat hand.
“You had better give in and retire. I am becoming impatient. If you don’t surrender I shall strike again and again, and I shall strike harder.”
The paper planed down to the surface of the table desk, and Bony picked it up and placed it inside a slim pocket-book. For twenty seconds McPherson stared at him before saying:
“You win. The aeroplane pilot is my natural son.”
Chapter Seven
Pages of History
THE McPherson—so referred to by Chief Burning Water and by all the aborigines on the station—helped himself liberally and pushed the decanter and water jug towards Bony.
“I don’t like being beaten,” he said thickly.
“Defeat is a school in which truth always grows strong,” Bony told him. “I cannot recall who wrote that, but it is apt. Believe me, I don’t regard myself as a victor. I held a fifth ace in that message, and another good ace in the dressing-gown and slippers. You see, I know myself, and I know my kind. This airman says he will strike again and again, and I suppose he will. What d’you think about him?”
“Yes, Rex will carry out his threats,” replied McPherson. “I fail to understand him, and yet somehow I do understand him a little. Like to hear about him?”
“Naturally.”
The squatter gulped his drink, and with the tobacco cutter began to prepare loading for his pipe. He was calm now after a period of mental crisis. His arrogance had vanished. His body had lost its former stiffness in action. He seemed smaller than he actually was. Bony rolled his sixth cigarette.
“I must be just to myself before I tell you about Rex,” McPherson stated in preface. “I want you to understand me, so if you find me abnormal I can be more just to my lad. You see, I have never had the opportunities of gaining the outlook to life possessed by you, and by men who have had the sharp edges rubbed off them by association with competitors. Even that idea I have got from a book.
“I blame my mother for a little and my father for a lot. He was, like his forebears, through but just in all things. She was virile and courageous, self-dependent and frugal. I think I know more about their early background than I know of my own, through the books they brought with them.
“They were of the same age, and were I to speak to you in their tongue you probably wouldn’t understand me. They were young, both well under thirty, when they came here, having pushed on ahead of the settlement extending westward to the Diamantina. How they ever stuck it I don’t know; and how my father came to leave me close on a hundred thousand pounds beside this property I fail to understand. They don’t breed men and women like them nowadays.
“Picture them! They came with all their possessions loaded on to three bullock wagons, one of which was driven by that old man you saw tending to the lawn sprinklers. It happened to be a good season but that was the only thing in their favour. My sister was a baby in arms, and my mother was carrying me. When the baby was sick she doctored her; when I was born the lubras tended my mother.
“My father always got on fairly well with the blacks, and I think that was because of his sense of justice. He compensated them for the use of their land, as, he told me, Batman did down in Victoria. My mother found no difficulty in making friends with the lubras, and so, despite setbacks, they and those with them became established, the others who came with them being the three bullock drivers.
“It naturally followed that my sister and I grew up in close contact with the aborigines, especially with the children of our own generation. But the time came when my sister began to crave for a wider world, the outside world of men and women of our own race. Our father and mother encouraged us to read the books they had brought from the homeland, little understanding that those very books pictured a wonderful world beyond the vast and empty one in which we lived.
“So my sister fled with a surveyor. He was a good man and married her as quickly as was possible. Flora was their only child. I did not leave here. Flora got to hate the place and the country. The older I became, so the greater became my love for the country and those who inhabited it.
“I was considered headstrong, and my parents imagined that I would quickly fly to the devil if they sent me down to a city school, far from their watchful protection. My father had been tutor-taught, and was hostile to schools. That was why he had sent up here a succession of three Scotch tutors. Not until I was turned twenty-two was I permitted to journey away down to Port Augusta.”
McPherson paused to refill his glass and to relight his pipe.
“The only youthful friend I ever had was Burning Water. You and I agree that he still is a fine looking man. In those days he was a kind of deity to me. He had a sister named Tarlalin, meaning water lying at the feet of bloodwood-trees, and after my lessons had been learned for the day we three would race away to our bush humpy and there I would teach them what I had learned. Tarlalin was a dunce, but her brother sopped it up easier than I did. And the blacks married me to Tarlalin without my knowing it.
“Came the time when the blacks took me away to the bush and proceeded to seal me into the tribe. My father and mother raised no objections on the score that being thus allied to them, I would not in the future have any trouble with them, or from them. Shortly afterwards Burning Water was sealed
into the tribe. Now as warriors we were permitted to join in with the secret ceremonies.
“Then I fell in love with Tarlalin. Why does a man fall in love with a particular woman? Why should a white man fall in love with a black woman—or vice versa like Othello and Desdemona? The good Lord probably knows—we don’t. Tarlalin had always been good looking for an aborigine, and when I fell in love with her she was the sweetest thing that breathed.
“We went bush. The chief and Burning Water and almost the entire tribe approved. It might all have been otherwise had I known white women, but I have never regretted having known Tarlalin. I was as close to this land of sand and scrub and burning water as she was, as all her race are.
“My mother was shocked and then indignant, but my father didn’t raise a rumpus. He said the boy must have his fling; that later on I would marry a white woman and settle down and have an heir to carry on the line. Extraordinary man, he once knocked me down for saying damn, and in this instance he was wrong, for I have remained true to Tarlalin.
“I am certainly not going to offer excuses for myself. You can have but little idea of the young man I was grown to, the isolation to which I was born and reared, the cast-iron rules imposed by my father and endorsed by my mother. They seldom differed, but my mother wanted a parson brought out to marry us white fashion, and my father scoffed at the idea and made up his mind that it was but a youthful fancy.
“He had a house built for us up along the reservoir gully, and there Rex was born. Rex became the cause of the only serious quarrel I had with my father. He wanted the boy to live with him and mother. Tarlalin objected to her son being taken from her, and I wouldn’t have her living here because my mother could never approve of her.
“The years passed and Tarlalin died, died before she became old. My father then had his way with the boy, and my mother came to dote on him as well. Still more years passed. My father died. My sister died. Then my mother died, after Rex had been sent to a college in Adelaide, a course I determinedly insisted upon. The last word she uttered was the boy’s name.”
Bony was making his seventh cigarette, his gaze directed at his task; and the squatter paused to reload his pipe. Bony was not a little interested to note that this unburdening was making McPherson actually appear young.
“I suppose it’s because I’m a dunce at the science of living that on some counts I cannot understand my father and mother,” McPherson continued. “With me they had been strict, as though I were a young animal that must be trained. Their attitude to Rex was exactly the opposite. He could do no wrong. He had to have this and that, and whatever he wanted to do he could do. When my father died, he left the boy at school an income of two thousand a year without any qualifications or conditions whatever, other than that he was unable to touch the capital.
“When he returned from college for the last time Rex was flash. He was no good. Whatever he wanted he must have. He even regarded me as a semi-idiot. He said I’d have to be modern, have to have aeroplanes on the station to overlook the cattle instead of wasting time sending stockmen out. I refused, and he went down to Adelaide for two years and got himself taught to fly aeroplanes.
“News came that the trustees who managed his capital had dissipated it. Rex’s income stopped. I thought it a damn good thing it had stopped. Rex came home, and all the money he had was left over from the sale of an aeroplane and a car.
“I gave him all the chances, for he was my son; and when he laughed I gazed on the face of his mother. But he was finished. He debauched the blacks. He would clear out with those of his own kidney, go bush in the open country, hunting women of the Illprinka tribe.
“He was away on one of those expeditions when Flora came to manage the homestead, her father having followed her mother to the grave. She’d been here two months, and the place and life had become orderly and peaceful when Rex returned from the open country.
“You can imagine what followed. Rex wanted Flora, seemed to have the idea that Flora hadn’t a say in the matter. He swore he’d become reformed when she turned down his—well, unorthodox advances. He spurned his companions. He asked to be made my overseer, and I assented. He asked for a comfortable salary and I gave it to him. He swore he would be worthy of his name: he lasted five months.
“He offered Flora marriage, and Flora as kindly as possible told him she couldn’t marry him because she didn’t love him. So what did he do then? Why, he persuaded four of the blacks to join him, and they abducted Flora and ran off with her, headed for the open country. Burning Water and I caught up with them in time.
“The limit had been reached. I sacked Rex. Gave him a cheque for a thousand and told him if ever he showed his face here again I’d give him in charge for a dozen crimes we’d kept dark. Burning Water and his father dealt with the four blacks who had assisted in the abduction.
“Then followed the affair of the forged cheques. How could I prosecute a man who reminded me of Tarlalin every time he laughed: a man whom I would try to please just to see him laugh? After that there followed a period of peace, broken by the first theft of my cattle and a letter Rex wrote. He said I was getting too old to manage a station, and that I would have to retire to live comfortably in a city. He would take over the station, and if I refused to accept this idea he’d ruin me by stealing all my cattle and running them in the open country, where he’d form a temporary station of his own.
“I took no notice of his absurd ideas and his threat. Then he and the Illprinka blacks made the second raid, and another letter came from Rex demanding that I retire and hand the station over to him. I was to signal my surrender by making an oil smoke. Instead, Burning Water and I took a party of blacks into the open country and tried to locate the cattle. We found none and lost two of the blacks in a fight.
“Constant trouble became rife among the Wantella aborigines, lasting until Burning Water was made chief after his father died. There’s still trouble simmering, because there’s still hostility towards Burning Water and me, kept alive by Rex. I understand from Burning Water, who in turn gets to know things, that Rex has built himself a homestead, has broken down the sectional mode of living of the Illprinka blacks, and has drawn them into one big mob.
“He’s an Ishmael: always was. The final shove that pushed him over the edge was the money my father left him which was taken away by those dishonest trustees. Where he got his vices, I don’t know. I’ve never been really bad, and there was no hint of vice in Tarlalin. But he’s my son, and it’s my place to deal with him. It has been my money and my cattle he’s stolen, but he has stolen other things as well—the lives of Errey and Mit-ji and those two stockmen.
“And now, Inspector, you have come. D’you know, I’d determined to be my lad’s judge and executioner. I thought it would be best—in fact, I still think so—for all concerned, to take all my bucks and go after Rex and deliver justice. You can, perhaps, now understand why I don’t want you or any other policeman interfering. I’m the last male McPherson, for Rex cannot be counted; the last representative of all those men in the dining-room. It is my duty to obliterate the stain I have created on the honoured name. I have let loose on the world a human devil, a monster who has been a torment to me, who had put an awful fear into the heart of a good woman, the agony of grief into the heart of another; and has brought ruin to a tribe of blacks who, no matter how wild, were at least morally decent.”
Abruptly flinging backward his chair, McPherson stood up.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he shouted. “I can’t stand any more tonight. When you’ve finished with the whisky, turn out the light. You know the way to your room.”
Chapter Eight
Facets
I
WHEN the sun was gliding the tops of the bloodwoods bordering the gully between the land shoulders, Bonaparte was standing on the dam wall, watching the fish jumping for flies. The cement-faced barrier was all of two hundred yards in length, and was at least a hundred feet high from the bed of the
gully. Wide enough on the top to permit a wagon to be driven across it, it barred back a reserve of precious water sufficient to defy the worst of droughts. Smoke was rising from the house kitchen, and from the kitchen-dining-room beyond at the men’s quarters. The white-clad figure of the men’s cook appeared from a cane-grass meat house carrying a tray of beef steaks. For a moment Bony turned to gaze out over the golden pavement of the plain to the distant hills, softly blue-grey and mysterious, an inviting picture hiding its hideous tragedy.
Crows cawed and galahs shrieked. Calves bellowed for their yarded mothers, awaiting the milking. And Napoleon Bonaparte began another day’s work by seeking an interview with the men’s cook. Just inside the kitchen doorway he greeted the tall white figure standing before the stove with its back to him.
The cook twisted his body, and then continued to twist his neck until he was able to look back over a narrow shoulder. He was an elderly man, and was engaged in transferring the beef steaks to a large iron grill.
“Good day!” he said, his voice thin and piping. “How’s things up your street?”
“Fairly quiet, I think,” he said, finding himself in the usual interior of a kitchen-dining-room. “Have you many to cook for?”
“No—oh, no! Only me and old Jack and half a dozen nigs. I bake the bread and cake for the big house, but that ain’t much. I can do the flamin’ lot standin’ on me head. It ain’t a bad job, as far as it goes. We all has to work under the ruddy capitalist system, but the time ain’t far off when us workers will break our chains.”
“You think they ever will?” inquired the interested Bony.
“Too right they will,” asserted the cook, and with a crash he tossed the empty tray to a nearby bench. “The day’s gonna come when us slaves will take over the means of production, distribution and consumption, and then there’s gonna be no more unemployment and starvation and wars and things. I tell you——”
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