Wings Above the Diamantina

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “I am going with Dr Knowles.”

  “What! With that cranky fool! Oh, Pops!”

  “Pops” grinned, rose from the table, kissed his wife and put on his hat with habitual care to achieve the right angle. He was dressed in civilian clothes, and yet with the addition of the felt hat he no longer was “Pops,” but Sergeant Cox.

  “If Dr Knowles crashes the machine when I am with him,” he said sternly, “I will arrest him on the D and D charge.”

  “But you might be killed, Pops.”

  “Dad’ll be all right, Mum. Why, Dr Knowles can fly underneath the telephone wires,” Jack pointed out.

  “I shall not be killed,” Cox said. “Dr Knowles might crash, but I will live to arrest him and keep him in our lockup. I’ll be back for the bag later on. And don’t forget, son, what I told you last night about those square roots.”

  Again leaving the kitchen, Sergeant Cox strode along the passage to the open front door, passed across the veranda, down the steps and so to the front gate in the wicket fence. Above the gate on a narrow wooden arch were the words, POLICE-STATION and on the fly gauze covering the window frame of the left hand room was the word OFFICE

  Across the hundred-yards-wide unmetalled track stood the store, a low, rambling, wooden building badly infested with termites and badly in need of paint. When he emerged from the Government premises it was to turn left to stride along the main street of Golden Dawn.

  Once Golden Dawn had been a thriving mining town, and still the poppet heads of the mine half a mile to the north stood cutting clearly into the sky like the gibbet outside a medieval town. Cox passed vacant building sites on either side of the dusty street, sites from which the buildings long since had been purchased and removed for the iron and wood.

  Golden Dawn now had a forsaken appearance: it was like a homeless old man who dreamed ever of better days. In the middle of the street wandered the town dairyman’s cows, while the dairyman himself was within the too-commodious hotel. Across each vacant allotment could be seen the flat gibber plain stretching to blue-black hills lying to the north and east, and to the flat horizon line to westward and to southward. Outside the hotel stood Mounted Constable Lovitt.

  “Who’s inside?” asked Cox.

  Lovitt began a list of names, but Cox cut him short.

  “Is Dr Knowles in there?”

  “No, Sergeant.”

  “Captain Loveacre, then?”

  “No. He went along to Dr Knowles half an hour ago.”

  “I am flying with Dr Knowles to Coolibah this evening. Might be away for a couple of days,” Cox said in his most official manner. “The crowd staying in seems to be thinning out a lot, so you won’t have much work. It is a good thing that neither Ned Hamlin nor Larry the Lizard are in town. Keep in touch with the office as much as possible. I may want you on the phone.”

  “Very well, Sergeant.”

  Cox glared at the constable and turned to walk away, but relented and faced him.

  “The monoplane has been found on Coolibah by Mr Nettlefold,” he said. “He found a strange woman in it. I understand that she is injured. Circumstances peculiar. Know any woman around here who can fly an aeroplane?”

  “No, I don’t, Sergeant. There isn’t one.”

  “I don’t know of one, either. Who is still in town of importance?”

  “Only Mr Kane, of Tintanoo. The Greysons have gone. So have the Olivers, of Windy Creek.”

  “All right!”

  Sergeant Cox walked on along the street which incongruously enough was bordered with well-kept sidewalks and veteran pepper-trees, evidences of Golden Dawn’s departed prosperity. At last he came to a gate in a white-painted fence beyond which stood a large wooden house with a wide veranda. When he knocked on the open door it appeared to be a mere act of courtesy; for, on hearing voices in the room to the left, he did not wait for the doctor’s house-keeper to answer his knock but walked right in.

  “Good evening, Doctor! Evening, Captain!” he greeted the two men at table. Dinner, evidently, was just over.

  “Hullo, Cox! Looking for Captain Loveacre?” inquired one, a medium built man with dark eyes and short moustache.

  “Both of you, as a matter of fact.”

  The second man, also of medium height, but clean shaven, stood up.

  “Have you news about my bus?” he asked eagerly.

  “Yes. It is all right as far as is known. No, thanks! I’ve just had dinner. I’ll take a cigarette.”

  Seating himself, Sergeant Cox related the incidents concerning the discovery of the stolen aeroplane.

  “Mr Nettlefold says that the young woman found in it strapped in the front cockpit is suffering from a form of paralysis,” he continued. “The Coolibah manager thinks she did not steal the machine. It has made a good landing, and as far as he can see it is quite undamaged.”

  “Rather an extraordinary business,” said the doctor. “If the girl did not steal the machine, where is the pilot? No trace of him?”

  “None—if there was a pilot with the girl. What about having a look at her to-night?”

  Dr Knowles laughed shortly and pounced on the whisky decanter.

  “I am not sufficiently drunk to fly and set down in the dark in a strange place.”

  “Then you had better get drunk enough without wasting time,” Cox said in the exact tones he used when ordering a reveller off to bed. “Half a mile north of the Coolibah homestead is a stretch of level claypan country good enough to land on. We can make it before dark. Mr Nettlefold will be waiting with a car.”

  “How far is it?” asked Knowles, again tipping the decanter.

  “One hundred miles, as near as dammit. We’ve got an hour and a half of daylight left us.”

  “All right! What about you, Loveacre?”

  “Is it a prepared ground?” asked the famous airman, who had been forced to air-circusing for his daily bread.

  “No.”

  “But I could land the de Havilland on this Emu Lake without being cramped, couldn’t I?”

  “Yes,” chipped in the doctor, again tipping the decanter. “I’ve never been there, but I have heard Nettlefold talk about it. He says it is the best natural ’drome in western Queensland. Hi! Mrs Chambers!”

  “Aren’t you drunk enough yet?” Cox asked with frozen calm.

  “Just about, Sergeant. Oh, Mrs Chambers! Bring me my black bag, please. I shall be away all night.”

  “Well, when you come back don’t have to be carried in again like a squashed tomato,” grumpily returned the old housekeeper. “Flying about in the dead of night.”

  “Now, now! Get my bag, and don’t take the door frame with you. I told you before not to go in and out of door frames frontways.”

  Loveacre chuckled, and the doctor once more tipped the decanter. Sergeant Cox glared. Then he stood up and took the decanter from the flying doctor and placed it inside the sideboard cupboard.

  “We’ll be going,” he snapped.

  Dr Knowles stood up, swaying slightly.

  “You are a good scout, Sergeant, but you are damned rude. I’ll make you as sick as a dog for that.” His voice was perfectly clear. Turning to the captain, he said: “Come along with us to my plane, and I’ll loan you a decent map of the country.”

  The doctor’s pale face now was tinged with colour. His dark eyes gleamed brilliantly. He visibly staggered on his way to the door, but his articulation was perfect when he again called to Mrs Chambers. He was talking to her in the hall, and solemnly assuring her that he had left her the house in his will, when the airman touched Cox’s arm.

  “Good in the air?” he asked doubtfully.

  The sergeant nodded, his body as stiff as a gun barrel.

  “Better drunk than sober,” he replied. “He has had three crashes these last two years, but he was stone sober on each occasion. You will be flying to Emu Lake to-morrow?”

  “Yes, I’ll go with the boys in the de Havilland, and fly my own machine back. That landing g
round you will come down on to-night—how big is it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll get Mr Nettlefold to ring you up later. He can give you all the information you require.”

  “Good man! I’ll be at the pub. I’m thundering glad that machine wasn’t damaged. I am not too well off, and the insurance would not cover the complete loss.”

  “Well, come on. The doctor is ready. Might I ask you not to discuss the frills in reference to your monoplane being found?”

  “Certainly, Sergeant.”

  At the street gate, Cox parted from the doctor and the airman to hurry back to his house for his bag. The sun was low in the western sky. The air was motionless and painted a deep gold where in it hung the dust raised by the dairy-man’s cows and the two separate mobs of goats being driven to yards on the outskirts of the town.

  On passing opposite the post office, he noted that the main door was shut, and that at the door of the telephone exchange room a girl stood talking with a tall, finely built man. The man was John Kane, owner of Tintanoo, and the girl was Berle Saunders, the day telephone operator. Coming along the street was her brother, who was employed by the department as night operator.

  Cox looked straight ahead after that one eagle glance. Miss Berle Saunders was a most presentable young woman and one, moreover, able to look after herself even with a suitor like Mr John Kane.

  Having given his final orders to Mounted Constable Lovitt, Cox kissed his wife, renewed his order to his son regarding the square roots, and made his way with his suitcase to the hangar where Dr Knowles housed his black-painted monoplane. The colour was a touch of the doctor’s irony.

  On his arrival he found the aeroplane standing outside the hangar, the engine already being warmed up by the doctor, who occupied the pilot’s seat. He had not troubled to put on either coat or helmet, but he wore goggles.

  “The doctor says he will hedge-hop to Coolibah, so it won’t be cold,” shouted Captain Loveacre.

  “All right! But I’m wearing my overcoat, all the same,” stated Cox, putting on his heavy uniform coat. The captain indicated the grim head of the doctor, to be seen above the cockpit and behind the low windscreen.

  “He’s a corker,” he cried. “Directly he climbed in he became sober.”

  “Apparently sober,” the sergeant corrected. “So long! He’s ready.” He climbed into the passenger’s seat, and then he turned to shout above the engine roar: “Do I put on the parachute?”

  “Never use one,” said the doctor. “If we crash, we crash. Anyway, we don’t go high enough for a parachute to be any use.”

  He revved the engine to a prolonged roar for ten to fifteen seconds. When the roar died down, Captain Loveacre whipped away the wheel chocks. The engine voiced its power, and the machine began its race across the gibber plain before rising.

  It was not the first time that Sergeant Cox had been off the ground, but it was the first time that he had left Mother Earth in the company of Dr Knowles. Looking down over the cockpit edge he saw Golden Dawn laid out for his inspection. There in the middle of the street stood the white-dressed figure of the exchange operator, still beside John Kane. Outside the police-station stood his wife and son waving to him, and he waved down to them. They and the town slipped away from beneath him, the machine sank nearer to the plain and then flew directly towards the sun.

  To Sergeant Cox this air journey was by no means boring. The earth did not appear flat and featureless. It was too near to be either. He could even see the rabbits dashing to their burrows to escape the huge “eagle.” He could distinguish the track, faint though it lay across the gibber plain, and he could observe the shadows cast by the old-man saltbush growing along the bottom of a deep water-gutter.

  When they met a truck coming from Tintanoo or St Albans, the doctor deliberately dived at it, almost spinning his wheels on the driver’s cabin roof. When they arrived over the scrub, the brown track lay like a narrow ribbon winding across the dark-green carpet, and now Dr Knowles’ set out to show just what he could do with an aeroplane—or to show just how mad he was. He followed the road, and when coming to an exceptionally high creek gum or bloodwood tree, he made the topmost leaves brush the dust off the wheels. Only when the sun went down did he fly higher, keeping steadily in its golden light until forced up to three thousand feet.

  Presently the sun set even at that altitude, and then the ground was sinking into the shadows of night. The world came to be like an old copper penny lying on silver tinsel paper. Then, far ahead, two motor lights winked out to greet them.

  Dr Knowles put down his ship as lightly as a feather and taxied to the waiting car. Shutting off his engine, he turned round to regard Sergeant Cox with bright, twinkling eyes.

  “Good!” said Cox steadily. “I have a good mind to learn to fly. Lots more fun than driving a car.”

  Chapter Four

  Guests At Coolibah

  ELIZABETH NETTLEFOLD waited on the east veranda before the hall door to welcome her guests. She was gowned in a semi-evening frock of biscuit-coloured voile, and in the deepening twilight she appeared extremely attractive.

  “I am so glad you came, Doctor,” she said, taking Knowles’s hand. “Good evening, Sergeant Cox! Did you have a good flight?”

  Dr Knowles turned to face both the sergeant and Elizabeth.

  “I tried to make him sick, Miss Nettlefold,” he told her with mockery in his voice. “After what he’s been through nothing would upset him; not even a hurricane in the North Sea on a fishing trawler.”

  “I’ve lived before my time,” Cox complained in his official voice. “I should not have been born until the year nineteen-eighty, and then I would have graduated as an air cop.”

  “You were born in a lucky year, Sergeant Cox,” Elizabeth affirmed, giving Knowles a reproachful look. “Come in, please. Will you see the girl now, Doctor?”

  “Yes! Oh yes! I’ll examine her now. Cox can see her afterwards.”

  He went off with Elizabeth, her father conducting the policeman to his own room, which he was pleased to call his study and which opened on to the western end of the south veranda. Elizabeth led the doctor along the cool, dimly-lit corridor to pause outside a door with her hand on the handle. The smile of welcome had vanished, replaced in her dark eyes by one of pleading.

  “It is the most terrible thing I have ever seen,” she cried softly. “The poor girl cannot move a muscle. She can’t even raise or lower her eyelids. Promise me something before we go in.”

  “What do you want me to promise?”

  He stood looking down at her, his cheeks criss-crossed with fine blue lines caused by excess. His eyes were bloodshot, and the fingers which stroked the small black moustache markedly trembled. He was still good looking despite his thirty-eight years and hard living. His cultured English voice was the only thing about him which did not reflect his mode of life.

  “What is it you want me to promise?” he repeated when she continued to stare up at him. With a start, she collected herself.

  “Promise me that you won’t order her off to a hospital,” she replied earnestly. “Hetty and I will nurse her very, very carefully. We will do everything you say, and Dad says he will spare no reasonable expense.”

  “But the girl is nothing to you, is she? Do you know her?”

  “We have never seen her before, Doctor, but nursing her will give me something to do. You couldn’t understand, but ... but she will give me an interest in life. You will not order her away, will you?”

  “Not unless it would be for her own good,” he compromised. “Come! Take me to her.”

  “A moment! You will not permit Sergeant Cox to have her moved to the hospital at Winton, will you? Promise me that.”

  A faint smile crept into the man’s dark eyes.

  “I’ll promise you that,” he told her, to add with a flash of humour: “Cox owes me a debt.”

  They found Hetty seated in a chair beside the bed, at her side an electric reading lamp which sent its shaded
radiance to the edge of the small occasional table. The woman rose when they approached.

  “This is Mrs Hetty Brown, my co-nurse.”

  Knowles nodded and passed to the bed. He raised the lamp-shade so that its light fell on the patient’s face. And then he stepped back with a sharp ejaculation to stare down at the immobile features. His eyes grew big with amazement.

  Astonished, herself, Elizabeth asked:

  “Do you know her, Doctor?”

  She had to repeat her question before he was able to master himself enough to answer.

  “No,” he said sharply, and bent over the helpless girl. Elizabeth noticed that no longer were his hands trembling, and when he spoke his voice again was steady.

  “Well, young lady, you appear to be in a peculiar fix,” he drawled. “If you are conscious and can hear what I’m saying, don’t be afraid. They say that I am the best doctor in western Queensland, but, as I do not agree, you need not believe it.”

  Presently he raised the patient’s eyelids and gazed steadily into the large, blue, intelligent and pleading orbs. He smiled at her, and the watching Elizabeth saw his expression soften, become one of infinite pity. She had heard a great deal about the flying doctor and his wild life. She had often seen him and conversed with him, and she had never thought he could be anything but reckless and cynical.

  “I believe that if you could speak, you would tell us a lot of interesting things,” he went on. “But never mind that now. You must not worry. You will regain the use of all your muscles quite suddenly, and the less you worry and fret the sooner that will be. Ah! I can see that you hear and understand me. Now I will partly lower your eyelids so that you will be able to note your surroundings.”

  For a little while he sat at the foot of the bed in a most unprofessional attitude whilst he regarded the pale face, almost beautiful in its impassiveness. Elizabeth and Hetty watched him, but they could not guess what passed through his mind. It seemed that he had utterly forgotten them.