The Mountains have a Secret
( Bony - 12 )
Arthur W. Upfield
Arthur W. Upfield
The Mountains have a Secret
Chapter One
Bony Takes a Gun
WHEN beyond Glenthompson, Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte first saw the Grampians. They rose from the vast plain of golden grass; in the beginning, isolated rocks along the north-west horizon, rising to cut sharply into the cobalt sky. The rocks united and upon that quarter of the plain it could be seen that a cosmic hurricane had lashed the earth and created a sea, a sea of blue-black waves poised to crash forward ingraphitical suds.
Distance presented mystery, released the imagination, stirred the memory. Beneath those curling wave crests surely dwelt the Beings of Australia’s Alcheringa Era, or where perhaps await theValkyries of the Norsemen to carry the remains of heroes into the Halls of their Valhalla.
Bonaparte had observed mountains rise above the limits of Inland Plains; rounded mountains and rugged mountains, but never mountains like these. The straight and level road seemed to be afraid of these Grampians, appeared to edge him away from them.
It was early in March and the day was hot and still. The highway was lost before and behind in the heat mirage which had no power over the advancing mountains. After the old tourer came a voice which had spoken these words in Melbourne early the previous day:
“Got a gun in your kit? No! I’ll get you one. One of my own. Easy to handle-easy to conceal. Take my car. I’ll have New South Wales number-plates put on it. You’d better be a Riverina pastoralist on holiday. Keep what happened to Price in your mind all the time you’re among those mountains.”
The blue-black waves came rolling over the golden plain towards the eager Bonaparte. He was inclined to stop and watch them. The voice of Superintendent Bolt, Chief of the C.I.B., again came winging along the road.
“Persons are always disappearing. Most of ’embecause they want to, and some because they are bumped off and successfully planted. Persons disappear singly; it’s rare that two or more disappear together. Two young women went by train to Dunkeld and from there set off on a hike through the Grampians. They reached a pub called Baden Park Hotel, stayed there a couple of days. After they left that pub they were never seen again.
“That was October twenty-second last. They weren’t fools in the bush. They carried camping gear, and they had tucker for emergencies. The country is laced with running streams. Not a solitary sign of them was found after they left Baden Park Hotel.
“Weeks after the search was stopped, young Price went into the Grampians. He was one of our promising young men. Born in the Gippsland mountains. Stayed at the Baden Park Hotel for ten or eleven days. He was found dead in his car twenty-five miles away. Shot dead. No connection with the young women, so my officers think. I don’t know. I’m not sure about that. If you’re interested, memorise the summary. Take a gun-take a gun-take this one. It comes easy into your fist.”
Dunkeld came swimming through the heat-waves to welcome Bony, a township old and crinkly, but natty as were the men and the women who first came this way with their bullock drays. Just beyond the shallow valley to the north stood the first of the mountains, facing sheerly to the east, its long western slope massed with trees.
Bony found the hotel, before which he parked his borrowed car on the place where, for a hundred years, coaches had stood whilst the passengers took refreshment and the horses were changed. The small bar being empty of customers, he drank a glass of beer with the landlord and discussed the district so beloved by artists. Following lunch, he announced that he would look round the township, and so came to the police station and entered.
“Glad to meet you, sir,” Senior Constable Groves told him. “Heard about your coming from Headquarters. Anything I can do?”
His visitor having seated himself beside the littered desk, Groves surveyed him, noting with shrewd grey eyes the gabardine slacks, the open-necked shirt, the dark brown arms, and the fingers which at once were employed making a cigarette. Without raising his gaze from the task, Bony said:
“Yes. Please report that I arrived here today and left again this afternoon. I am going on to Baden Park Hotel. D’you know why I am here?”
“No, sir, although I could make an easy guess. I’ve been instructed to render all assistance and to supply you with everything you may call for.”
A match was held to the cigarette and, through the resultant smoke, Groves saw a pair of brilliant blue eyes examining him with expressionless intensity. The smoke driftedceilingwards and warmth entered the blue eyes. The policeman wondered. The slight, lounging figure was not in focus with the picture of a detective-inspector painted for him by his superiors.
“I am interested in the fate of the two young ladies who disappeared in the Grampians last October,” Bony slowly said. “After the thorough search for them, I don’t expect to discover much of value. Still, I have succeeded in similar cases. Might I expect your collaboration?”
“Certainly, sir,” Senior Constable Groves replied warmly. “I’ll be only too glad to do whatever I can.”
“Thank you. Please begin by giving me your private opinion of the motive for the murder of Detective Price.”
“I believe that Price was killed because he chanced to meet and recognise a dangerous criminal who was touring or who was a member of a large road gang camped near the place where he was shot.”
“You don’t think it might have any connection with the disappearance of the two girls?”
Groves shook his head and glanced towards the large-scale map affixed to the wall. Bony abruptly left his chair and crossed to the map, Groves standing beside him.
“There’s the Grampians,” he said. “Fifty-odd miles from north to south and twenty-five-odd miles from east to west. Here’s Dunkeld down here at the southern edge. There’s Hall’s Gap away up on the northern edge. Three miles from Hall’s Gap was where they found Detective Price. The girls were lost twenty-five miles south of the place where Price was murdered, and approximately in the middle of the mountains. Have you ever been in them?”
“No. Point out the road taken by the two girls.”
“Well, from Dunkeld down here, they took the road northward past Mount Abrupt, which you can see through the window. They left about nine in the morning, and at eight that night a truck-driver saw them camped beside the road where there’s a little creek. Twenty miles from Dunkeld. The next-”
“The truck-driver? Where had he come from?”
“From Baden Park Station-here.”
“Oh! Proceed.”
“The next morning the girls followed the road to Hall’s Gap for a further ten miles where there’s a bridge and a turn-off track to the Baden Park Hotel. There! See the creek?”
“Yes. That turn-off track appears to be secondary to the road to Hall’s Gap.”
“Yes, it is,” Groves agreed. “When they left the hotel here, the girls said they were going through to Hall’s Gap, but on reaching the turn-off at the bridge they must have changed their minds. There’s a signpost there saying that Baden Park Hotel is four miles away. They had a road map, and therefore they probably saw that they could take that turn-off track, stay at the hotel, go on to the guest-house at Lake George, and from there follow a track which would bring them again to the Hall’s Gap Road. I suppose you know all this, sir?”
“Never mind. You tell the story.”
“Well. The girls reached the Baden Park Hotel the day after they left Dunkeld. They stayed at the hotel for two days. The licensee telephoned to the guest-house at Lake George and arranged accommodation for them for one night. They left his hot
el about ten and had to walk only three and a half miles to the guest-house.
“The next afternoon the guest-house rang the hotel to say that the girls hadn’t arrived, but no anxiety was felt at the hotel because the girls had camp equipment and tucker. Two further days passed before the hotel licensee set out to look for them. He could not find them, and the following day he organised a search. They-”
“Describe the search, please,” Bony cut in.
“Yes-all right. Er -having ridden along the road to Lake George and not finding any place where the girls had camped, the licensee reported the matter to me that evening. We arranged that he would contact Baden Park Station and ask for riders to get busy early the next morning, and I would take two men with me by car. I and my party reached the hotel at daybreak the next morning. We scoured the bush alongside the road, and the riders from the Station worked farther out. It’s hellish country. We kept at it for two weeks, but we found just nothing.”
“And then, two months afterwards, Detective Price tried his hand,” Bony supplemented.
“Price came in here one afternoon and said he was making for Baden Park Hotel to look round on the off-chance of finding something of the girls. He stayed there ten days. The guest-house people saw him pass their place on his way to Hall’s Gap. That was late in the afternoon prior to the morning he was found shot in his car.”
“Did the hotel licensee know he was a detective?”
“Yes. He let Price ride his horses. He said that, as far as he knew, Price found no signs of the missing girls. He also said that Price had given up the idea of finding anything of them when he left the hotel.”
“How long have you been stationed here?” Bony asked, and was told for ten years. “What is your personal opinion of the licensee?”
Groves frowned at the map before replying.
“The original licensee is Joseph Simpson, an old man and a chronic invalid. He settled there forty or more years ago. There’s never been anything against him, or against the son, James, who has been running the place for the last fifteen years. The son is a bit flash, if you know what I mean. Nothing against him, though. He gambles and runs an expensive car. There is a sister about thirty, and a mother who does the cooking. Usually a yard-man is employed.”
“Does the position of the hotel warrant the licence?”
“Yes and no,” replied Groves. “There’s fishing to be had at Lake George, and parties stay at the hotel in preference to the guest-house. I have the idea that the drinking is pretty wild at times, but the place is too isolated for proper supervision. However, the Simpson family are quite respectable citizens and thought well of by Mr. Benson of Baden Park Station.”
“The Simpsons’ nearest neighbours are the Lake George guest-house?”
“It’s a toss-up whether they or the Bensons are the nearer.”
“The Bensons! What are they in? Sheep or cattle?”
“Sheep,” Groves replied, a note of astonishment in his voice. “They breed the famous Grampian strain. Baden Park comprises about thirty thousand acres. There’s lashings of money. I was out there several years ago. The Bensons used to own the hotel property.”
“H’m!” Bony crossed to the window and gazed beyond at Mount Abrupt, warm and colourful in the sunlight, the serrated mountains beyond it darkly blue and mysterious. “The Bensons? What of them?”
“They don’t entertain much or interest themselves in the district’s doings,” Groves said. “The present Benson isn’t married. His sister lives with him. The father was quite a famous astronomer. He built his own observatory near the house, and it must have cost a fortune. The son didn’t follow it up, though. I heard that he’d sold the telescope. All he thinks about is breeding, and all he worries over is keeping his sheep from sheep stealers. Can’t blame him for that when he breeds rams which fetch a thousand guineas.”
“How many men does he employ, d’you know?”
“Not many, I think. Anything from six to a dozen.”
“Is sheep stealing prevalent?”
“Not at this time. Petrol rationing restricts that game. But before the war sheep stealing was very bad. You know, men operating fast trucks, pull up, over the fence, grab and grab, and off back to the city. Benson built a strong fence round his place and took other measures to defeat the thieves.”
Bony offered his hand.
“I’ll be going along to Baden Park Hotel,” he said. “Under no circumstances communicate with me. I’m a New South Wales pastoralist enjoying a long-delayed holiday. By the way, how did the guest-house people recognise Price’s car that day he passed?”
“Price had run over there twice during his stay at the hotel.”
Chapter Two
At the Baden Park Hotel
HAVING rounded Mount Abrupt, Bony drove northwards along a narrowing valley skirted by the frozen land waves. Either side of the road, the gums reached high above the dense scrub and exuded their scent into the warm, still air, but above them the menacing granite face of the ranges betrayed no secrets.
Round a bend appeared the white-painted arms of a long wooden bridge and, on the near end, a signpost standing sentinel at the junction of a track with the road. Straight on was Hall’s Gap-twenty miles. Dunkeld lay behind thirty miles. A third arm pointed to the turn-off track and stated that that way was to Baden Park Hotel-four miles-and Lake George-seven and a half miles.
Humming an unrecognisable tune, Bony took the turn-off track, narrow, rough, walled with scrub. There was a faint smile in his eyes and in his heart the thrill of expectancy which drives on the born adventurer.
There are no bushlands in the vast Interior comparable with this, but then, in the Interior, there are no easy landmarks like these ranges. The track dipped gently downwards, and Bony had merely to touch the accelerator. Now and then he passed a crack in the bush walls, cracks which could be enticing to the inexperienced hiker.
The change was almost instantaneous. In the one instant the walls of scrub crowded upon the car; in the next they had vanished and the car was rolling across a large clearing on the left of which stood the hotel, its weather-boarded walls painted cream and its iron roof a cap of terra-cotta. Across the clearing ran a little creek spanned by another but much smaller white-painted bridge.
Bony stopped the car before the veranda steps. To the left of them wisteria covered the lower portion of the veranda and climbed the roof supports. To the right, windows bore the golden letters of the word “Bar”. It was a comfortable building, a welcoming building to the traveller. He switched off the engine and heard a voice say:
“Get to hellouta here.”
Another voice croaked:
“That’s enough of that.”
To which the first countered with:
“Nuts! What about a drink?”
From the fly-wired door above the steps emerged a man dressed in a sports shirt and grey slacks. He came down to meet the traveller alighting from the old single-seater. Under forty, his still handsome face bore unmistakable signs of high-pressure living. Shrewd, cold grey eyes examined the visitor even as the sensuous mouth widened into a not unattractive smile.
“Good day!” he said, his accent unexpectedly good. There was a question-mark behind the greeting, as though a stranger coming this way was rare.
“Good day-ee!” Bony replied with an assumed drawl. “You’re the landlord, I take it. Can you put me up for a day or two? Pretty place. Looks peaceful.”
“Peaceful enough-most times,” was the qualified agreement, accompanied by a meaning smile. “Oh yes, we can give you a room. My name is Simpson. Call me Jim.”
“Good! I hate formality. My name’s Parkes. Call me John. Bar open?”
“It’s always open to visitors. Come on in. We can garage your car and bring in your luggage any old time.”
Bony followed Simpson to the veranda, and the great yellow-crested cockatoo in its cage suspended from the veranda roof politely asked:
“Whatabouta drink?�
��
Farther along the veranda a human wreck in a wheeled invalid chair called out:
“Good day to you!”
“Good day to you, sir,” replied Bony.
The invalid propelled his chair forward and Bony paused on the threshold of the door to gaze down into the rheumy eyes of a man past seventy, faded blue eyes gleaming with the light of hope. The white hair and beard badly needed trimming.
“My father,” said Simpson within the doorway. “Suffers a lot from arthritis. Gentleman’s name is Parkes, Father. Going to stay a few days.”
“Whatabouta drink?” shrieked the cockatoo.
The old man raised his head, failed to obtain the required angle, spun his chair until he did, and then shook a bony fist at the bird. Fury twisted his slavering mouth and his voice was like a wire in wind.
“If I could getouta this chair I’d wringyer ruddy neck.”
To which the bird made a noise remarkably similar to that described as a “raspberry”.
The son chuckled and Bony stepped into a small hall, to be surprised by several large oil-paintings on the walls and a large-scale pictorial map of the locality, which at once promised to be interesting. Part way along the passage beyond, Simpson showed the new guest into a small lounge off which could be seen the bar. Here it was dim and cool, and the floor and furniture gleamed like ebony from constant polishing. Bony called for beer and suggested that Simpson join him. Simpson said:
“Come from Melbourne?”
“I don’t live there,” replied Bony. “Don’t like it and wouldn’t live in a city for all the wool in Australia. I own a small place out of Balranald. In sheep, but not big. Haven’t had a spell for years and I’m enjoying one now, just dithering about here and there.”
“The Gramps are different to your class of country, I suppose?”
“They’re certainly that. I lease a hundred thousand acres, and I can see across the lot of it with a pair of binoculars, it’s that flat. Fill them up, will you? You get many people this way?”
The Mountains have a Secret b-12 Page 1
