Murder Must Wait b-17

by Arthur W. Upfield

  The years had neither bent his back nor drained his strength, and the shirt was a tragic disguise, the uniform of a tragic civilisation. Head up, shoulders squared, he came to the Tree, his eyes unmasked, clear beneath the beetling brows lined white. Bony beheld the veneration for the Tree on the calm face as Chief Wilmot paused to regard a living monument to which he was linked in defiance of Time and Death. To the Tree Chief Wilmot revealed himself as never in his life had he done to a white man, and rarely to one of his own race.

  Unlike his son, and his son’s generation, Chief Wilmot had known the days when the aborigine possessed the remnant of tribal independence. He could recall when, as a small naked boy, he had watched his father and elders fight with spears and waddies the warriors of invading tribes, forced by drought from their rightful country. He could remember his father being speared to death in one such battle.

  His father had died like a man; he had lived on to be robbed of his birthright by the white man, and shackled by the white man’s laws and taboos. His own son and his son’s generation felt not the shackles, cared little for the lost birthright, and even less for the tales of history handed down by generation to generation for five thousand years.

  This lonely representative of a race remarkable for its morality, its justice, its freedom from greed was now gazing upon the repository of the faith and the beliefs of the generations who had sunk into the graveyards of Time. It was not just another tree, an oddity because of its age. It was The Tree smitten by a Devil that had jumped from a cloud, burned by another Devil who had come running across the world to gouge a cave in its belly, and yet preserved by Altjerra to go on living for ever and ever. Altjerra himself had once slept at the foot of the Tree. For centuries The Tree had been the Sacred Storehouse of the people living in this country. It was here that famedOrinana had come to meet her lover of a forbidden totem, here that her brothers had caught her and slain both her and her lover.

  As Bony expected, Chief Wilmot espied the tracks left by Alice andhimself, and instantly became alert and shouted in his own tongue, so long in disuse that his son failed to understand and shouted in reply:

  “What’s up?”

  The old man’s urgency, however, brought Tracker Wilmot at the run, and together they examined the tracks, agreeing on when they were made, that a white man and a white woman had come from the road to the tree and had returned. They were wrong, of course, in one detail. Bony had walked like a white man, angling his feet at twenty-five minutes to five, and he had been careful to leave no evidence of having climbed the tree.

  “Came here yesterday?” Chief Wilmot said.

  “Yair,” agreed the son, who now had springs in his feet.“White people all right. Could be old man Jenks from Wayering Station. He brought a white woman here to see the tree. I better look-see, though. Be dark soon.”

  The Police Tracker faultlessly followed the tracks to the distant road where Bony had stopped the borrowed car. Watching, Bony could see by his actions that he was satisfied.

  The Chief returned to the camp fire and stood with his back to the blaze as Man has always done. Dusk was sweeping in from the east, impatient because the day wasn’t dying fast enough, and the furnace glare of the sun’s couch stained red the returning young man, the lubra nursing the baby, the aloof man at the fire. And upon the warmth of the colourful sky reclined the slender maiden moon.

  Chief Wilmot spoke to the lubra and she put the infant down into a nest she made of the blanket and strode gracefully to the buckboard. Taking a large hessian sack she gathered dead roly-poly, light as air, which quickly filled the sack and puffed it to its fullest. Having returned the filled sack to the buckboard, she was given the task of gathering brushwood on a site selected twenty feet beyond the tree cavern. Her husband set wood upon the kindling, and the old man brought a bottle and liberally splashed the heap with kerosene.

  The kerosene intrigued Bony, for the brushwood was tinder-dry. Still carrying the bottle, the old man took a stand ten feet from the tree cavern and marked the place with a boot-heel.

  “You lie there,” he said to the lubra.

  “All right,” she assented, adding: “But not on the three-cornered-jacks.”

  “I’ll fix itgood,” her husband volunteered, and with a branch-tip swept the place clean of the skin-piercing burrs.

  They returned to the camp fire without igniting the one just prepared, and there they squatted to eat. Laughter had sped away from them, the fire-flames moulded to a tall candle vying with the purple dusk.

  Bony ate and drank prudently, and afterwards managed to get a cigarette going by thrusting his head and shoulders into the hole excavated by the lightning bolt. He marked the change in himself brought about by the events since he had jumped from Yoti’s car, analysed it and was not ashamed that the subtle spirit of this vast land could sway him through his maternal ancestry.

  The maiden moon restedherself languorously on the tree-spiked horizon. The spikes cruelly took and devoured her, and cold rage took possession of the sky. The Southern Cross was low to the south-east and not worth looking at, but the Three Sisters, perfectly spaced and aligned, each the exact counterpart of the others, were faithfully following the path of the Sun and able to tell Bony it was eleven o’clock. It was then that the lubra built a little fire near the buckboard and there squatted, rocking the child.

  She kept her back to the main fire, for it is not lawful for a woman to witness what followed.

  Tracker Wilmot slipped off his clothes and donned the pubic tassel fashioned from the dove-grey skin of the Queensland duck. From his neck he suspended with string of human hair the dilly-bag of the initiated man, made of kangaroo hide and containing his personal treasures. With white ochre the old man painted wide lines longitudinally round his body, and horizontally up his legs and down his arms. The effect was to give likeness to the week-old emu chick, and the final touch was the band of woven human hair about his head which bunched his sleek black hair to a solid plume.

  The old man stepped away to view his ‘creation’ with some satisfaction… and stepped from his trousers.

  Standing on the tucker box, he was taller than his son, and the firelight glistened on his skin and banished the tiny hollows pitted by the years. He found ecstasy in the caress of the light wind, and raising his arms he exulted: “Orriockgorro!” meaning: “I am a man!”, and Bony in the Ancient Tree was tempted to strip and himself experience that primitive pride in his body.

  Chief Wilmot was like the snake that had sloughed its old and tattered skin. He was now smooth and hard and straight, hair and beard and brows white and fiercely virile with an aura of authority bequeathed him by five hundred generations of forebears.

  For the first time Bony saw deference in the son’s attitude. He handed to his father and Chief the pubic tassel of emuskin, and the dilly-bag of kangaroo hide containing the precious churingas, into which so much magic from afar had been rubbed. With white ochre he striped the Chief’s legs from waist to ankles. That done, both arms were completely painted in white, and the Chief sat on the box. The son opened the sugar bag, and taking from it a pinch of kapok dipped it into a solution of tree gum and stuck it on his father’s chest.

  As this ceremonial task proceeded, white bands became a pattern, and the pattern grew on chest and back and shoulders till Bony recognised the Mantle of the Medicine Man. White ochre marked the cheeks and mouth and nostrils, and on the forehead kapok again formed the letter U, representing The Devil’s Hand. Again, the final touch was the headband mounting the white hair to foam. And tiny claw-like hands clutched at Bony’s heart at sight of this Being of Magic Who Knows All, Who Can Kill with Pointed Bones, and Who Can Heal by removing the Stones of Pain.

  Not once had the lubra dared turn and look, continuing to squat over her fire not for warmth but spiritual comfort, and as still as her sleeping babe. The Medicine Man slowly pivoted, that the gum adhering to the kapok might the sooner dry. Presently young Wilmot announced that th
e drying was complete, and he draped a blanket about his father to hide from unauthorised eyes that dreaded Mantle. He himself donned his military greatcoat, and then called the lubra, who, being freed from her invisiblebonds, returned to the main camp fire.

  The fire was permitted to dwindle, to become one large bright ruby on the black velvet world. The Three Sisters marked off two hours. A newly-risen star was so bright it could be mistaken for a lamp in a stockman’s hut. There appeared another star, low to earth, far to the south, and this star seemed to dance and then slide down into a pit and there tremble like a lost glow-worm.

  Brushwood was thrown upon the camp fire, and minutes later Bony heard the singing of the car engine coming from Mitford, and knew that the driver was being aided only by a parking light. His headlights would have flooded the sky to be seen a dozen or more miles away. The car was driven off the track and stopped near the buckboard.

  Car doors were slammed shut, and two figures emerged from the dark background to advance into the firelight. One was tall, the other was short. The waiting aborigines gave greeting to Professor and Mrs Marlo-Jones.

  The Professor spoke with grave mien, and Chief Wilmot replied. Mrs Marlo-Jones talked with the lubra, who uncovered the infant’s face and laughed her pleasure at the compliment given by the white woman. Together they removed the infant’s white shawl and placed about it one of black.

  Minutes passed, for Bony slowly. Then two ‘stars’ appeared and behaved as had the first. Each driven by a single parking light, two cars arrived to park near the Professor’s car, and by that time the Professor and his wife and the aborigines were hidden by the night, and the camp fire was dwindling again to a bright ruby.

  For Bony the World spun in reverse back and back into the Days of the Alchuringa, and his pulses leaped and his mind reached with mythical arms to encompass All Knowledge.

  The ruby gave birth to a spark of light which whirled and circled as Tracker Wilmot handled the fire-stick, ringing himself with bands of light. He sped out upon the plain to come in behind the Tree, to round the Tree and race by the prepared fire into which he flung the fire-stick. Flame leaped high, its light pursuing him into the darkness. And a brolga far away vented its fearsome cry.

  Something was coming from the direction of the road, something without shape in likeness to any thing created. It stood ten or eleven feethigh, and it walked stiltedly like a bird unused to walking upon land. The red glow from the camp fire made it appear to shrink back upon itself, and then the light of the leaping fire near the Ancient Tree found it and clung.

  It had the head and the graceful feathered neck of the emu, and the long and ruffled tail of that bird. It had the body and legs of aman, and on one shoulder rested a great sack. The man-bird advanced, becoming clearer in the firelight to those about the cars, and to Bony thrilling high above.

  The bird-man wore the Mantle of the Medicine Man, and he circled the Ancient Tree. Coming again to the cavern in the great trunk, he withdrew from the sack what might have been white bird’s down, and the fluffy things fluttered to the ground, where Whispering Wind urged them to hide in the cavern.

  For a little while the man-bird lingered, gazing upwards at thetreetop, and Bony could hear him speaking in gentle tones. Then he passed into the Wing of Night, and the foot-lighted stage was empty save for the majestic backdrop.

  But not for long. A tall and graceful figure rose from near the ruby and walked hesitantly toward the lighted stage. The footlight accepted her, illumined her nude body, revealed a young and ripe lubra.

  Her hair was plumed in glossy black, fine and straight and living. Against her breast she hugged the baby in his shawl the colour of her skin, and all the while keeping the infant from being seen by the audience.

  Before the Tree she stood as though humbled in prayer, and then gracefully she sank to the ground, arranged herself that the child should still be hidden, and composed herself to sleep. Time passed. The brolga flew over the treetop, and Bony shrank beneath its haunting scream.

  Two figures advanced from the dark wing concealing the cars. One was a tall and lean man wearing a beret, and this man had his arm about the waist of a woman wearing a duster coat whose head was enveloped in a gauzy scarf. She might have been conscious of her surroundings, but she was unable to walk without the man’s support. Her hands, finely shaped, were bare and white of skin.

  They came to the ‘sleeping’ lubra. They moved round her and came to the tree cavern, and there the man eased the woman into the cradle of his arms and carried her into the Tree of Trees.

  Young Wilmot came silently to bring a blanket to clothe his wife, and she took the baby to the man within the Tree. With her husband she stood away, and a moment later the white man appeared and returned to the camp.

  The lubra sped away to the buckboard, and Tracker Wilmot scooped sand with his hands to douse the ‘footlight’ as the play was ended. Brushwood was tossed upon the camp fire and gave light to those standing about it-Professor Marlo-Jones and his wife, the tall man who had carried the woman into the Tree, a short, stout man, and yet another whom Alice could have identified as Dr Delph.

  The firelight illumined their faces. The Professor was in jovial mood, his wife vivacious. The tall man shook hands with the stout man as though heartily congratulating him. Dr Delph looked tired and alone.

  Presently they left the fire for the cars. Two cars were driven away, the drivers again aided only by parking lights. The short man reappeared at the camp fire, and lit a cigar. Then Tracker Wilmot appeared and was given a cigar. A moment later, again in coat and trousers, Chief Wilmot joined them and openly demanded a cigar. And finally the lubra came into the firelight, dressed and excited.

  They were there an hour later, obviously waiting for the dawn, and Bony silently climbed down the tree, knowing himself free from observation by those blinded by the fire, andhimself energised by memory of a woman’s hands.

  Within the tree cavern it was totally dark, and he knelt and found the woman lying on her side, the infant resting in the cradle of her arm. Bony found her hand, traced it lightly with his fingertips. His fingers, now impatient, found the woman’s face. The scarf had been removed. She was Alice McGorr.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Alice McGorr’s Story

  BONYSATat the feet of Alice McGorr. Within the frame of the arched entrance Night portrayed the distant camp fire and about it the stilled figures seemed to be waiting for the Dawn to free them. Within the heart of the Ancient Tree it was so dark that Bony could see nothing of the recumbent form of the woman and the child nestling against her. The child continued to sleep, but Alice, Bony suspected, was drugged.

  Within himself, the tension which had been steadily mounting for several days was now being submerged in the warm glow of satisfaction that yet another assignment was about to be completed, that once again the ever-present menace of failure had been subdued by triumph.

  Although unable to see the eastern sky, he knew when the Dawn stole softly over the earth. Young Wilmot added fuel to the fire, and the lubra brought water. Chief Wilmot stalked away to the buckboard, where he obtained the bridles and departed for the horses. The stout and prosperous-looking white man sat on a blanket for a cushion and waited expectantly for the billy to boil.

  The Day fought Night and the picture for Bony was etched on rose-tinted steel until the sun flashed above the rim of the world and all the metallic hardness vanished. It was then that Alice opened her eyes, to close them swiftly for a little while longer. When again she opened her eyes, she gazed wonderingly at Bony, and then at the black roof of the cave. She was trying to answer Bony’s encouraging smile when the infant stirred, and the miasma vanished as she turned quickly to look down upon the babe.

  That was a moment never to be erased from Bony’s memory.

  Her caress woke the child. It kicked against the enfolding clothes and yawned, and Alice continued to gaze upon it in unbelieving amazement. Then the baby yelled for breakfast.<
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  The group about the fire came to startled attention, beyond them Chief Wilmot roping the horses to the wheels of the buckboard in readiness to be harnessed. The white man hurried to the tree, the lubra behind him, and, stooping, peered into the cave… and into the muzzle of Bony’s automatic.

  “Good morning!” Bonysaid, interrogation under the cheerful greeting. The white man jerked away, and Bony followed to confront him outside the tree. The lubra shouted, and theWilmots came running. The white man demanded:

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “Forgive me,” murmured Bony at his suavest. “I am Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. And you?”

  “I… What in… Where’s my wife? What’sall this mean?”

  The stout man was well dressed, accustomed to being answered obsequiously, the city tycoon off balance in the vital Australia. Behind him, young Wilmot nudged his father and grasped the lubra by the arm. They retreated hastily.

  “Step back a dozen paces,” ordered Bony. “This automatic is too temperamental even for my liking. That’s better. You are under arrest. Your accomplices, I observe, are deserting you.”

  The white man turned to see his supporters swiftly harnessing the horses to the buckboard. Compared with them a fire-engine crew were sleepy dolts. Again turning to Bony, he saw Alice standing with him and the child in her arms.

  “Where’s my wife?” he shouted. “Where’s my wife?”

  “In hospital where she belongs, you baby-snatching swine,” replied Alice, her voice raised to straddle the yells of the infant. “I suppose you’ve got baby’s food in the car over there. Get it.”

  The man waved his arms in the hopeless gesture of defeat, and proceeded to obey the order. At the car, he found Bony just behind him.

  “The ignition keys first, please,” commanded Bony. In possession of the keys, he stepped away while the other man burrowed in the boot for a hamper, and the blacks climbed aboard their chariot. They began to shout at each other and the horses, and young Wilmot stood to wield the whip with greater vigour. The speed of their departure made Bony chuckle. The old man was pointing to the south, and Bony saw slipping down the distant rim of the plain the glitter of a speeding car.