The Battling Prophet

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Bravo, Alice!” Bony cried.

  “You wouldn’t read about it,” chortled Mr. Luton stepping from his room, and Alice said brightly:

  “I don’t think I’ll ever leave the Police Force. It’s always such fun.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  In The Feminine Manner

  AN interior water-pipe between the living-room window and the wash bench, and Alice’s handcuffs, produced no discomfort while the prisoner was seated on the floor.

  Small in stature, he wasn’t small in courage. For the first half-hour his will-power was strong enough to resist Bony’s questioning, supported by Alice. And this brought afternoon tea-time, which, in Australia, is sacred to the god of leisure.

  In the Iron Curtain countries they use drugs and implements to make a man talk. In the United States they employ bright light and relays of questioners. In Australia, if a criminal won’t talk, they give him afternoon tea; in other words, leisurely soften him with kindness. It is a sad fact that these several methods of extracting information, based no doubt on scientific research and study, were ever man-controlled. Huge steam hammers to crack eggs! But interrogation by women!

  Alice addressed the prisoner on the floor:

  “I’m giving you a cup of tea and a slab of cake. If you swill tea on the floor, I’ll smack your face.”

  The prisoner, who had shown silent hostility under polite questioning, glared at Alice when she stooped to place the cup and plate on the floor beside him. It is probable that he would have withstood the steam hammers applied with such labour by real he-men with brains. Since he had risen to and descended from the ceiling, he hadn’t uttered one word.

  At the conclusion of the afternoon tea-break, Alice nodded to the sitting-room, and Bony and Mr. Luton accepted the hint and withdraw. There Bony again examined the contents of the prisoner’s wallet, which told them little more than that the prisoner’s name was Tolnic, which could be of Slavonic origin. The suitcase did contain a few packets of soap, boxes of pins and the like.

  Into Bony’s concentration crept Alice’s voice, raised to that shrillness she had used to annihilate the callers. The voice rose to a screaming jumble of abuse, dropped to a nasal whine, and continued. The diatribe was punctuated by the clatter of pots and pans and the banging of what could be a rolling-pin on a pastry board.

  Bony watched the clock. When he glanced at Mr. Luton, he saw the old man frowning and wincing.

  “Glad I’m not married,” avowed Mr. Luton, and Bony smiled thinly.

  It wasn’t only what Alice was saying to the unfortunate prisoner with such remarkable verbosity; it was the timbre of the voice, which seemed to pierce a man’s head like the point of a surgeon’s probe. Down through the ages, millions of men have heard this voice, going on and on and on until the mind reels and the stomach suffers as though from the effect of a rough sea.

  Mr. Luton rose and closed the door. Bony smiled as he returned to his chair. Mr. Luton closed his eyes and groaned, because the door made no difference. Through it, through a brick wall, through sheet steel that voice would penetrate.

  Aware of the purpose of the domestic nagging which, possibly, is the cause of thirty murders in every hundred, Bony became entranced by the raw phrases, the inane questions, the ridiculous charges, the atrocious innuendoes. And, above all, the astounding sincerity of Alice’s performance. There wasn’t any doubt that a man was being verbally lashed by a furious spouse.

  Mr. Luton exploded. “I can’t stand it. It’s worse than the hoo-jahs. Can I go outside, Inspector? Ought to chop a bit of wood.”

  “No, Mr. Luton. It’s likely there are confederates outside.”

  “But when’s she goin’ to stop?”

  “When the prisoner breaks. It’s her intention to break him.”

  “But she doesn’t know him,” argued the old man. “He’s not married to her, is he?”

  “No, and if he’s not married now, he never will be,” chuckled Bony.

  Still accompanying the terrible voice were crashes and bangs, the clatter of tin-ware, the slam of the oven door. Never ceasing, on and on and on, skewering through your brain, the endless insults, the endless accusations. Rising, falling, swirling, snarling streams of words. Nothing mattered save the shrill voice with the relentless wailing-whine. On and on and on!

  Now and then the prisoner shouted. The effect on the voice? Not the slightest. A rhythmic noise, produced by the handcuff on the ankle being pounded against the pipe, was as the feet of King Canute opposed to the waves. Mr. Luton paced the sitting-room, sometimes his hands pressed against his ears, sometimes his teeth biting upward at his moustache. Bony wanted to burrow his head into something, but the linoleum was tacked to the floorboards.

  On and on and on! Shrill piercing, hammering at the mind with twenty million blows to the minute. The uselessness of walls and doors to shut it out! The naked defencelessness of the brain!

  One hour and six minutes did the trick. The prisoner was screaming “Stop!” Bony opened the door to the living-room, where Alice was still talking and the prisoner watching her with mouth agape and eyes glassy.

  “I tell! I speak!” he moaned.

  “Of course you’ll tell,” snarled Alice. “I can go on till tomorrow night without stopping. And I will, too. If you’d lived in our street when I was a kid you’d have talked an hour ago. You tell now, or else!”

  “Your name?” asked Bony. “And address?”

  “Ivor Tolnic. Two-nine Alford Street, Hindmarsh.”

  “Why did you come here threatening bodily injury?”

  He was an illegal immigrant. When he had jumped his ship at Port Adelaide, he thought he had jumped his country. That was five years back in history. An engineer, he had obtained work as a cleaner in an engineering shop, had joined a union, had married, was buying a home. Then his country had caught up with him.

  Tolnic was stopped in the street when going home from work the previous day. The man he did not know. He was told what to do, and what would happen, either way. The man, British, spoke like an Australian. In the car, two men. They were non-British. All three men knew everything about him. No, his name hadn’t been Tolnic on the ship, or in his own country, but they knew it.

  He had recognised Constable Gibley from the description given by the men, and this was backed by the conversation between the policeman and the young woman which he had overheard from near-by bushes. The presence of the young woman did not affect his determination to stay in Australia. Yes, he would have pulled the trigger if...

  He ate the meal prepared by Alice when still sitting on the floor. The door was shut and bolted. Without, the world was calm, quiet, and the dogs, unseen, were lazily lying on the outside mat.

  This evening the moon was at full. After dinner Bony stood in the dark sitting-room, gazing beyond the window at the trees beyond the wicket fence and the sheen of the river beyond them. The risen moon was tinting the topmost leaves of the trees with silverfrost. In the outer room the clatter of plates and cooking utensils spoke of the washing-up being done by Alice and Mr. Luton.

  At this hour Mr. Luton was supposed to be tied up and the doors open.

  Into the clearing, to the left, appeared a shape. The shadows prevented Bony from nailing its identity. It came across the clearing towards the cottage and remained mysterious until it reached the car track opposite the gate, where it resolved itself into two men, one following closely the other.

  The first man raised the gate-latch. The dogs met them, obviously doubtful. The first man was Knocker Harris. The second man Bony did not know. In the same order they advanced along the cinder path, and Bony slipped to the door and whipped back the bolt.

  He could hear the dogs whingeing a welcome. He heard the scrape of boots groping for the veranda steps. He stood braced on his toes, the automatic in his right hand, the door-knob in his left. The two men crossed the veranda. Someone pounded on the door. Then Knocker Harris shouted:

  “Don’t open the doo
r, John! Keep her locked! Keep her...”

  Bony snapped the door inward. Knocker Harris was sinking to his knees, writhing in contortion, his mouth wide to scream or shout another warning. He slumped, and as he went down, Bony saw the gleam of steel in the hand of the other man racing for the wicket gate, and slashing at the charging dogs.

  He said, in a low whisper:

  “Halt! Police here!”

  Then fired once.

  The second man dived at the gateway and lay still. Bony stooped over Knocker Harris, partly lifted him, dragged him into the house, re-bolted the door and flashed down the blind. The light went up. Over the prone figure of Knocker Harris, Bony saw the startled Alice McGorr with Mr. Luton behind her.

  It was obvious that Mr. Luton’s neighbour was in extremis. His breathing was difficult. Perspiration soaked his face and hands. The wound was bleeding inwardly from the point of contact above the left kidney.

  “What happened?” gently asked Bony.

  “Sort of ... sort of baled up, like. Was comin’ along ... see ... if John wanted any more from town. Didn’t see him. Came behind me ... prodded with knife ... told me keep going. Said tell John open up, like. I wouldn’t....”

  “Well?” softly urged Bony.

  “I...”

  “Please, Knocker.”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘Open up’. Told John not ... not open up.”

  Harris drifted into unconsciousness, and Bony drew aside to permit Mr. Luton to pour a little more brandy between the partly open lips.

  “Did you fire that shot?” Alice asked.

  “Yes. Harris was brought to the gate and marched to the door by another man. When Harris’s warning was cut off, I opened the door, to see him falling, and the other running to the fence gate. I called out: ‘Stop! Police here!’ He did not stop, so I fired. Er ... I hope you heard me order him to stop?”

  “Of course, Bony. I hear everything you say. Didn’t you know?” A moment later she whispered: “He can’t last.”

  Mr. Luton heard her and looked up. His mouth was slack. His eyes dimmed. He stood helplessly.

  “I ... We must fetch the quack,” he said dully.

  Bony slowly shook his head.

  Knocker Harris attempted to sit up, and Alice held him.

  His glazing eyes passed from Mr. Luton, upward to Alice, round to Bony. The voice was almost a gurgle:

  “John was me only friend. Got to ... explain ... like,” he managed. And Bony nodded and knew that Knocker Harris died knowing that no explanation was necessary.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Leave It To Alice

  THE rising moon was concentrating the shadows. It was touching the points of the picket fence, deepening the shadow beneath as though to delay shedding its light on the form lying in the cindered gateway.

  That body was a development threatening to deprive Bony of the initiative. He had planned to go-get a mountain, and the mountain had moved to stand over the gateway. He had sent for Alice McGorr that he might gain greater freedom of action and less responsibility for Mr. Luton, and the little man had come to herald swift enemy counter-action.

  From behind the edge of the blind in the sitting-room, Bony watched the front, wondering if the slayer of Knocker Harris was one of those men who had brought Tolnic from Adelaide. The Queensland heeler appeared crossing from the river-bank, and he came on till within a yard of the dead man, where he sat, and lifted his jowl and howled.

  “What’s going on up your street?” asked Mr. Luton from his guard point at his bedroom window.

  “Your heeler has found the dead man at the gate,” replied Bony, and then Mr. Luton saw the dog’s mate, which, wounded, had run for the kitchen door and died on the way.

  “That’s what he’s crying about,” he said, and added: “I feel like crying myself.”

  “Now you look up cheerful,” Alice advised, and the old man’s counter didn’t register with Bony, because the dog had ceased to cry and was staring along the track to the bridge, stiffly erect, the moonlight gleaming on his fangs.

  Bony cautiously opened the front door, no light behind him, the veranda shaded from the moon by its iron roof. Sure that no one stood either side the door, he opened it still wider. Now he could hear the dog’s throaty growl, the animal low to ground, legs braced. Some distance away a car engine raced, but this could not be the cause of the dog’s attitude.

  The picket fence ended at a wire fence keeping the scrub back, and at this point something moved, just beyond the white pickets. It was stalking the dog. Bony heard it say:

  “Here, Towse! Lie down, old fellow. Good Towse!”

  But Towse wasn’t taking it. His spring reminded Bony of Alice going into action off the floor. There was a spurt of dull fire, the metallic crack of a small-bore pistol. Then man and animal appeared for a moment atop the fence, then beyond it on the dusty track.

  Unable to leave the door unguarded, Bony called for Alice.

  “I’m here,” she said within two seconds.

  “Wait.”

  The car he heard had turned off the highway and was coming at speed towards the cottage. The uproar beyond the fence was certainly raised by a man being savaged by a dog, and they seemed like two crocodiles wrestling in a pool of silver. When the headlights of the car found them, Bony pushed back into the cottage and locked the door.

  The car was stopped while its headlights still held the combatants. Men erupted from it. They counted seven, and among them were Boase and Sergeant Maskell.

  “South Australian police,” Bony said sharply to Alice. “Now listen, because this gives you a ticklish job. They’ll demand admittance. Remember, you are Mr. Luton’s niece come to protect a sick old man from being hounded by violent strangers. Demand the search warrant. They’ll have it, more than likely. Rile them for always arriving after a murder, never before. Keep it going. I’ll prepare Mr. Luton.”

  Bony snapped on the bedroom light, saying:

  “The police are here. You’ve got to be ill.”

  Mr. Luton regarded him with raised white brows and an excited gleam in his eyes. Bony winked. He knelt before Mr. Luton.

  “You look quite ill, Mr. Luton,” he said, loudly for the benefit of the prisoner. “You must lie down. Take it easy. The excitement is too much for your heart.”

  Off came the slippers. With Mr. Luton’s assistance off came the coat and trousers. Mr. Luton was in his under-vest when there was loud knocking on the front door.

  “Hold them, Alice,” Bony softly encouraged.

  “Get off that veranda,” screamed Alice in the best traditions of the inner suburb in which she had been born and had lived for twenty-five years. “I can see you through the winder. If you don’t clear out, I’ll shoot your whiskers into the river.”

  “Now, now!” one said, and Bony could recognise Boase. “Police here. Don’t be afraid. Let us in.”

  “Police here!” mocked Alice, scorn enough to wither his soul. “Where’s your search warrant? Go and get it. And get yourselves a bitta manners.”

  The handle of the back door was turned, but even the prisoner wasn’t interested. Alice scoffed and abused and threatened. The already splintered door shuddered, and someone said:

  “If you don’t open up, how can we serve the warrant? Stop your stupid screeching and listen.”

  “Shove it under the door,” yelled Alice, when, attired in pyjamas, Mr. Luton was sliding under the bedclothes. As he was expected to look sick, he suggested the blue-bag in the wash-bench cupboard. A smear of blue on the lips heightened the effect produced by a trembling hand on the coverlet.

  Bony returned to the kitchen. The prisoner was terrified. Bony stood before him and said reassuringly:

  “The less you say about me, the easier it will be for you.”

  He went on to the sitting-room door, waited for Alice to pause to tell her to offer no further resistance. He slipped back to Mr. Luton and sat on the chair beside the bed. The front door was giving trouble; he could
hear a hinge being torn off. Then light was born in the sitting-room.

  “Now where’s your warrant?” shrilled Alice. “Police me foot. You’re not policemen. Why, you all got hump-backs. Now don’t all talk at once. Which one of you knifed poor Mr. Harris? Go on, own up, you murdering lot of scum.”

  Boase said, with a keen edge:

  “Shut up, and look at this.”

  “Oo-o-o!” gasped Alice. “Superintendent and all.” She gave a short pause. “So you are police. And like all your rotten kind you arrive when all the murdering’s done. You couldn’t have got here before, could you, you great big flat-footed slob.”

  “Pipe down,” snarled Boase. “Dead man outside the gate. Another specimen fighting with an unfortunate dog. Dead man lying right here. What else?”

  “What else!” shrilled Alice, thoroughly aroused. “Another gunman anchored to the kitchen bench, and me uncle sick of a heart attack, and him paying taxes and things. Ain’t that enough? Wait till I get a reporter. Wait till I tell the papers about all this. Wait...”

  “If you don’t shut up,” roared Boase, “I’ll have you taken outside and anchored to a tree.”

  Alice put on a realistic act of hysterics.

  In the kitchen a harsh voice commanded the prisoner to get up. The little man moaned, and the harsh voice called Boase to look at the handcuffs.

  “Police cuffs, be gob!” exclaimed Boase.

  “My equipment,” Bony loudly informed him.

  Men spun around, then crowded into the bedroom, where there was complete silence seeming to last for a week. Boase stood behind Sergeant Maskell. There were four other men not known to Bony. He said icily:

  “You will not make a commotion. The owner of this property, into which you have unlawfully broken and entered, is a sick man, as you must observe. His trouble is of the heart, brought about by the assault on this house by gangsters, and added to by the illegal entry made by yourselves, I presume without a warrant.”

  “Who are you?” a man asked, and Boase straightened to restrain himself from laughing loudly.