Simpson came round the corner of the veranda.
“Old boy never likes going to bed,” he said. “Quite a trial at times, and Mother has her work cut out, what with the cooking and all.”
“Says he suffers from arthritis,” observed Bony. “Very painful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s so. Doctor says there’s no hope of a cure. We give him a sleeping-tablet about ten.” Simpson paused, pursed his lips, and gazed hard at Bony. “Don’t like to ask you,” he said. “Wouldn’t if Mother was well. Ferris and I ought not to go to Dunkeld tonight, but—I wonder—would you mind slipping into the old boy’s room about ten and giving him his tablet?”
“Not at all. Yes, I’ll do that,” assented Bony, and the not unattractive smile crept into the hard eyes and the overfleshed face.
“I’ll leave the tablet and the glass of water on the table in the hall. See that he doesn’t spit out the tablet. He tries to sometimes. Been telling you all his troubles?”
“No,” replied Bony. “No. He was relating to me how he and Mrs. Simpson first came here and settled down. Must have been hard going in those days, especially for a woman.”
“Indeed, yes. Well, I must get out the car and then dress. I’ll put the whisky and soda in your room and the old man’s dope on the hall table. See you later. And thank you. Mother can get to bed as soon as dinner is cleared away. She’ll be all right until Ferris comes home.”
He moved briskly off the veranda, a man not in keeping with his environment. He was no backwoodsman, and Bony experienced bewilderment when relating him to the invalid. A car was being driven from the garage, and it was brought to the veranda steps. Simpson appeared again and passed into the building. After a little while Bony stood up and was able to see the car and gaze over the clearing, now shadowed from the westering sun.
It was a beautiful car, almost brand new, a Buick, all black and silver, dustless and gleaming. Bony recalled reading that the cost of these machines was more than eleven hundred pounds. Like Simpson, the car’s environment wasn’t right.
He was in the hall looking at the pictorial map of the locality when the dinner-gong was struck. The map had been drawn by an artist and was an ornament for any hallway. The hotel in the clearing was excellently depicted, and behind it were the yard buildings and a grassy paddock with stables and hen-houses, and beyond the paddock a vineyard. The track on which the Rolls had appeared was not drawn on the map farther back than the vineyard. The creek and the bridge carrying the road on to Lake George were pictured. All the details were clear. One could travel the road round to Lake George, and then onward in a rough curve to rejoin the road to Hall’s Gap.
On entering the dining-room, Bony found a well-dressed couple seated at one of two set tables, and he received a little shock of astonishment when he recognised Simpson in an immaculate navy-blue double-breasted suit. His dinner companion was a girl well under thirty, equally well dressed. She rose to meet the guest and to indicate the other set table.
“Will you sit here, please?” she said, her voice low.
Bony bowed and sat down. He was offered the written menu and made his selection. He noted that the girl’s hands were roughened by work and her make-up badly applied. She did not wear her clothes with the distinction her brother did his.
He was still waiting for his dinner when she and Simpson left their table and passed him on their way to the front entrance. Simpson walked with the grace of a trained man, preceding the girl and forgetful of holding open the swing door for her. Bony was reminded of an aboriginal woman following her lord and master.
A frail, aged woman entered the dining-room from the back, carrying a tray. Her straggly hair was white, she was grey of face, and her brown eyes were distinctly wistful. As she placed the soup before Bony she said in thin tones:
“You mustn’t mind me waiting on you tonight. My daughter has gone to Dunkeld with her brother. She doesn’t often have an evening out.”
“Are you Mrs. Simpson?” Bony asked, rising.
“Yes,” she replied, her eyes widening as she gazed up at him. “Now sit down and eat your soup. I think you’ll like it. Do you like roast potatoes well done?”
He was drinking coffee when she said:
“I hope you won’t feel lonely tonight. I’m going to bed early. I haven’t been too well. Thank you for consenting to give my husband his tablet. He suffers dreadfully at times.”
Again on his feet, for, despite this woman’s work-a-day appearance and the fact that she was waiting upon him, there was that indefinable attribute in her personality which demanded respect. He said:
“You need have no concern for Mr. Simpson. I’ll look after him. He’s been telling me how you had to battle when first you settled here.”
A smile lit the faded brown eyes, and the worn features caught the smile. Then, abruptly, the smile vanished.
“It wouldn’t do to believe everything my husband says,” she said. “He’s very petulant. Those early years were hard, indeed. We both had to work and work. Then came the easier years, and I’m afraid my husband drank too much. Now he’s paying for his sins. We all have to do that, you know. Now please excuse me, I have to get the yardman his dinner.”
Bony sipped his coffee and smoked a cigarette. His mood was pensive. Man and woman had suffered hardships. They had worked and slaved and denied themselves to create a home in a wilderness. And Time had dogged them, worn away the youth and the strength, had given a little of joy and much of sorrow. These two, old Simpson and his wife! What had they achieved through hardship and toil and frugality? The one an emptiness—the other pain! They and their like had achieved a nation and saw not the splendour of it.
He sat on the veranda, watching the night steal across the clearing and listening to the birds going to roost. The son was reaping where the old folk had sown. How come that this small country hotel could afford smart clothes and an expensive car if the old people had not saved and scraped and denied themselves?
It was ten o’clock when he went to his room for the whisky. On his way out through the hall he picked up the glass of water and the tablet. The old man was awake, and he talked with him for ten minutes and managed to pass in through the bars a little comfort.
On the veranda the darkness was like scented velvet, and as he was about to pass under the bird-cage he directed his flashlight to it. The bird muttered, and he stooped and said softly:
“You and the old man are imprisoned for life, but he did have his fling.”
Chapter Four
The Man from Texas
THE next morning Bony left the hotel as the sun was slipping above the summit of the rock-faced range. The sky was patterned by tiny puff clouds, and the wind played upon the strings of the scrub bordering the clearing. He crossed the little white bridge and strolled along the road to Lake George, and a white-haired terrier came racing after him. From beyond the hotel came the proud call of roosters, and within the bordering scrub bellbirds announced his passing.
Peace! Security! Tranquillity all-pervading! Certainly not an atmosphere of tragedy. Tragedy could, like an ogre, emerge from the creases of that face of granite and drop down silently upon those two girls, luring them off the road, luring them deep and deeper into the bush, herding them away from water and then snapping at their weary feet, to hunt them farther and farther from help, until help was no longer so frantically urgent.
They had come to this quiet and homely hotel, two girls in their early twenties. And then one morning, when the sun was not much higher than now, they had slipped their arms through the straps of their packs, had shaken hands with Simpson and his sister. Here, just beyond the bridge, they had turned and waved to the licensee and Ferris Simpson, who were standing on the veranda. Then they had walked round this bend, and lo! no longer were they within sight of those at the hotel. They had walked on, and then what? It was as though that mountain face, or another, had bent down and with its iron mouth had devoured them.
It was no
w March, and that had been in October. In early December had come a man who, throughout the first twenty years of his life, had lived among mountains higher and wilder even than these. He was a trained investigator, the product of a hard school, and he had had ideas of his own concerning the bush and its powers. Had he succeeded in lifting the coverlet lying so heavily upon the scene of that vanishment? Had he found a sign and, finding it, had the discovery brought steel-jacketed bullets to his body? Bolt smelled blood beneath the coverlet when none other did. To date, Bony could not smell blood, and in this he experienced slight disappointment.
He examined his impressions. First take that of James Simpson. Because he kept himself nattily dressed and wore expensive clothes when he visited the town, because he owned an expensive car and raced horses, one could not automatically suspect he had done away with two young women. The sister was quiet and minus her brother’s somewhat forceful character and certainly did not fit into a background of violence. As for her mother—as well to imagine the old lady capable of competing with Joe Louis. That Old Man Simpson was a wreck on the shore of life, that his mind was not so agile as once it had been, was all too evident.
These people could have no motive for murdering their guests and, therefore, none for murdering Detective Price. Price had paid his bill, stowed his baggage in his car, had got in behind the wheel and shut the door. Then for a little while Simpson had stood beside the car chatting with him, expressing the hope that he would come again, promising to send word if a clue was found concerning the fate of the two girls.
Price had taken the track from which the girls had vanished, this same track trodden by Bony. He had driven past the guest-house at Lake George. There the people had recognised his car as, on two previous occasions, he had run over to take lunch. On then for five miles to reach the Dunkeld-Hall’s Gap Road, and on over the slightly dangerous cross-over and down into the valley, at the lower end of which was the tourist resort. He was approximately twenty-two miles from the hotel when he was found dead in his car.
The evidence pointed to the assumption that he had been shot at the place he was found. On the door beside the wheel were Simpson’s finger-prints, left there when he chatted to Price. There were no other prints save those of the mechanic at Dunkeld, who had serviced the machine.
The picture of the hotel and its inhabitants was brilliantly clear. It bore, however, one small smudge placed upon it by old Simpson, a garrulous ancient, a trifle spiteful towards those who guarded him from the Thing which had wrecked his body and brought his mind to the very verge of collapse.
Was the smudge on the picture more significant than a flyspeck?
The old man had uttered words which could have meaning. He had said that he possessed a key to the spirit store, and he had invited Bony to raid the store with him, a proposal obviously the product of a weakened mind. Then he had said that if his will was discovered, the door of the spirit store would be left open for him, “so’s I could get inside and drink and drink and drink and never come out no more. Then I’d be another body in that spirit store, all stiff and cold.”
Bony was examining the smudge when he came to an opening through the scrub not fashioned by the elements. It was narrow and littered with tree debris and once had been a used track. He recalled the details of his own map, and hereabout would be the track turning off to Baden Park Station. The slight mystery of this track not being drawn on the pictorial map in the hotel hall was now solved. Those at Baden Park Station now used a track skirting the hotel and the vineyard at its rear. He turned and walked back, and his mind went back, too, to the smudge on the picture.
Old Simpson had complained that his son would not allow him to talk with visitors. The son’s attitude was, doubtless, based on the desire to prevent his guests being bored, for it was understandable that guests would want to lounge on the veranda and not have the old man continually “ear-bashing” them. And so, when the house was filled with guests the old man was banished to the rear, where he had the solace of the yardman’s company, an elderly man by the name of Ted O’Brien.
This Ted O’Brien had been employed as yardman at the time the two girls had disappeared. He was referred to in the Official Summary of the case. Old Simpson had said that O’Brien had been “sacked” on having been discovered drunk in the spirit store, and in this matter Bony had gained another step when, the previous evening, he had given the old man a small nip of whisky before his tablet. To his question as to when O’Brien had been dismissed, old Simpson had said it was early in November, which was after the period covered by the Official Summary.
Simpson was perfectly justified in getting rid of an employee who had gained entry to the spirit store and drunk himself insensible. The fact that old Simpson averred that O’Brien was too honest to do such a thing counted for very little in view of his mental condition, but that little could not be discarded, and O’Brien’s subsequent movements would have to be established.
And old Simpson’s confidence would have to be further strengthened.
On crossing the little bridge, Bony saw the splendid Buick outside the garage being washed by a tall young man arrayed in blue overalls. Nearing the car cleaner, he greeted him and was regarded by wide-spaced hazel eyes beneath a shock of unruly brown hair.
“Mornin’, sir. Been takin’ the air?”
The voice raised the straight dark brows of the man who seldom exhibited astonishment.
“American, eh?” he exclaimed.
“Yes, sir, I’m from the United States. I’m Glen Shannon, the yardman here.”
“And from the South?”
“Texas, and I got a little bit of home right here under my hands.”
“It’s certainly a beautiful car,” Bony agreed. “Have you been working here long?”
The man from Texas wrung out a cloth and continued drying the mirror-like surface.
“Since just after Christmas,” he replied with that pleasing drawl which creates for foreigners visions of sunlight and galloping horses and two-gun men. “Good job. Nothing much to do and plenty of time to do it.”
“You like Australia, do you?”
“I like this place, sir. Reminds me of home. Back home us kids never saw a stranger once in a month. My pa had a ranch, and somehow we were mighty interested in things around. You know, horses and cattle and the usual chores. Guess it was the war that made a difference. I joined the Army and my kid brothers went into the Navy. Then, after the war was over and I went back home, it didn’t seem the same. It was me who had changed. So—here I am.”
“You’ll go back some day, I suppose?”
“Oh, sure! Some day. Pa said: ‘Roll around, son. Roll the moss off you. Us Shannons never yet had moss attached to us for long.’” The hazel eyes gleamed good-humouredly when directed to Bony, and Shannon laughed softly before adding: “Pa never had any moss on him that I can recall. He was as bald as a billiard ball. What part of Australia do you come from?”
The trick he had of tossing his hair back from his forehead and the swift smile which seemed to leap into his eyes Bony found very engaging. His chin was firm and his body looked hard. That he was yet thirty was to be doubted.
“I own a small place in New South Wales,” he said. “It’s about three hundred and fifty miles north. I run sheep.”
“A sheepherder, eh? That’s interesting. We never had nuthin’ to do with sheep. You got many?”
“Something like ten thousand,” replied Bony.
“Ten thousand! Say, that’s a lot. How many acres on your ranch?”
“A hundred thousand. As I told you, it’s only a small run.”
Shannon turned to face Bony.
“A hundred_____You’re not kiddin’? What’s a big place?”
“Farther outback—well, anything from three-quarters to a million acres.”
Bony described his mythical small place, its lay-out, the type of country. Having digested this information, Shannon said:
“Musta cost you a lo
t of money to build a boundary fence around all them hundred thousand acres.”
“Before the war it was roughly about twenty-two pounds a mile.”
“That all! How many barb wires?”
“None. My fences contain only five plain wires.”
Shannon frowned and turned back to his work. Then:
“Don’t they have higher fences than that in your part of the country?” he persisted.
“No. There’s no necessity.”
Shannon rubbed hard upon a fender, and without straightening up he said:
“What would they keep inside a fence eight feet high with a barb wire every six inches up from the ground, and an outward over-arm lay of five barb wires?”
“The Japs, I should think,” replied Bony, laughing. “Where is there such a fence?”
“I don’t recall. A fella stayin’ here a couple weeks back was tellin’ me. You got good roads where you ranch?”
“Fairish. We have difficulty in getting about in motors after heavy rain. Our roads are earth tracks, you know.”
“How would I get along in wet weather on a motorcycle?”
“Quite well. D’you own a motor-bike?”
“Yes. It’s inside the garage. What’s the best time to see your part of Australia?”
Shannon was avid for information. When in the Army he had visited Melbourne and Sydney, and it appeared now that the only brake to his desire to travel about the continent was the petrol rationing. He questioned the necessity for it, and Bony agreed that it was being maintained merely to keep a lot of people in quite unnecessary jobs. He gave his quick and open friendly smile as a reward for Bony’s information, and Bony went into the hotel for breakfast.
Bony had often felt the urge to visit America, and the desire was strong as he breakfasted alone in the dining-room, waited on by Mrs. Simpson. No one knew Australia better than he—its powerful allure, its pervading aura of antiquity. There were two things he wanted to see in America: Death Valley and the Grand Canyon. There were three things he wanted to do: to be the guest of an Indian chief, to fish for marlin off the California coast, and to meet the Chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Mountains Have a Secret Page 3
