Wings Above the Diamantina

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Driving a car across this river was a tiring job. Bony might have found it less fatiguing had the track been straight, but it twisted and turned incessantly, and demanded much braking and much gear-shifting. Presently, every time he was heaved above a channel bank, he could see ever more clearly the redroofed homestead of Tintanoo sprawled beneath big bloodwoods growing on a spur of stony ground thrusting towards the river between the lower sand-dunes.

  He was still on the switchback when the station dogs raced to meet and escort him up the sharp incline, past well-built stockyards, round the end of commodious men’s quarters, and to the gate giving entry to the short path leading to the main veranda door of the rambling house.

  Here was no litter, no untidiness, no decay. The supply of paint was obviously plentiful. Beyond the men’s quarters two silent windmills were raising water into several large iron tanks set high on sturdy platforms.

  The door in the fly-gauze protecting the veranda was swung outward by a young man who unhurriedly advanced to the fence gate, there to lean against it and to survey Bony. He was tall and well built, and he wore riding togs, which is not usual among bushmen. Bony noticed that his left eye was made of glass.

  “Looking for any one?” he asked, in the tone often adopted towards people considered to be inferior.

  “Ah—yes,” assented the detective as though he now saw the young man for the first time. “I am looking for Mr John Kane.”

  The young man’s right eye stared, and his head jerked towards the office building. One hand rested on the gate, revealing that the top of the second finger had been removed.

  “You’ll find him over there, I think,” he said, and turned back to the house.

  With a subdued smile playing about the corners of his mouth, Bony strolled to the white-painted, wood-and-iron building. Mounting the three steps, he crossed the veranda to enter a business-like office wherein a man in his shirt sleeves was working at a ledger.

  “Well, what do you want?” he inquired without looking up.

  “I wish to meet Mr John Kane.”

  ‘What for?”

  “If you will kindly tell him that Detective-Inspector Bonaparte would—”

  Brown eyes raised their gaze to survey the caller. Large teeth were revealed by a quick smile. The man rose with alacrity, and the left corner of his mouth twitched twice. When he advanced his right hand was outstretched.

  “I am John Kane,” he announced affably. “I am happy to meet you.”

  “Thank you! I have called hoping you may be able to assist me.”

  “Certainly. Come over here and take a pew,” Kane urged, adding to the warmth of his welcome by whisking a chair to face his own beside the desk. “I heard that you had come west to go into the matter of Loveacre’s aeroplane. Extraordinary affair, eh? Is that girl found in it by Nettlefold any better.”

  “I fear not. Her condition baffles both Dr Knowles and the specialist from the city.... How much longer will the weather keep dry, do you think?”

  “It looks like breaking to-night,” prophesied the squatter. “Have a cigar? No? I don’t like this backing and filling of the weather. Generally the longer the seasonal storms delay the worse they are. You will be staying the night?”

  “Thank you, but I rather wanted to take a run over to St Albans.”

  “Oh ... you can go there to-morrow. You’d find it no joke to be caught in a thunderstorm on the flats this side of Gurner’s Hotel. Better stay.”

  “It is kind of you to insist. I will accept your invitation with pleasure. Sometimes it is an advantage to be a police officer,” Bony remarked.

  “Indeed!”

  “Yes. One receives invitations. Unexpected invitations.”

  The squatter’s brows rose, and the permanent surprise in his brown eyes was emphasized still more. Smiling, he produced whisky and glasses, and he filled a glass jug with water from a canvas bag.

  “I will be frank,” he promised, when seated. “I have heard that you are a clever man, and clever people are always welcomed to Tintanoo. Cox sometimes stays overnight when he comes out this way, but I find him too much like my old O.C. in the army. He’s intelligent, but only within the narrow limits of his profession. My bullock driver is also an intelligent man—on the subject of bullocks. In what way can I assist you?”

  Bony occupied his eyes with the rolling of a cigarette. He tried, but failed to detect, a false note in the other’s voice.

  “I understand that a year or two ago one of your bores suddenly ceased to gush.”

  “Yes, that was so. The loss of the water was a serious matter.”

  Still no false note. John Kane spoke with perfect frankness.

  “I understand, also, that all subsequent efforts to raise water at that bore failed.”

  The squatter nodded before saying:

  “That’s so, too. I had a contractor put the bore down another fifteen hundred feet. It was then that we decided to experiment. We smashed up the rock at the bottom of the bore with a couple of charges of nitro-glycerine. Even that failed to give us a new supply. It was all rather extraordinary, because, although all the Queensland bores are dwindling in output, we have never known one suddenly to cease producing water like that particular bore of mine.”

  Bony was carefully packing the tobacco into the ends of the paper tube.

  “Nitro-glycerine!” he echoed.

  “Yes, nitro-glycerine. It is unholy stuff to handle, but the boring contractor played with it as though it were treacle. It appears that he had on several occasions used that particular explosive with varying success. Is that what you wanted to see me about?”

  Bony smiled. Looking up he saw a twinkle in the brown eyes. The left corner of Kane’s mouth twitched rapidly. It was an oddity that one couldn’t help noticing. Normally the twitch occurred about once every ten seconds.

  “It is a subject that does interest me,” admitted Bony. “I take it that a certain quantity of the explosive was brought here. Was the whole or only part of it used?”

  “A part only. The remainder of what was brought is still here. It is kept in a specially-excavated cellar situated about a mile out. It is too confoundedly dangerous, you know, to have lying about. A slight jolt will send it off. Not for anything would I have been the truck driver who brought it here.”

  “Would not dynamite have done the job?”

  “That’s what I asked the contractor,” Kane replied without hesitation and with perfect frankness. “He explained that dynamite is less satisfactory for the work required here, but the why and the wherefore I have forgotten. It appears that nitro-glycerine is largely used on the American oilfields. I do remember that after he had used up two charges I wanted him to take the balance away, but although I offered to give it to him for nothing he said he would leave it. The stuff is still in that cellar, and I have often considered hiring an expert to touch it off. It is quite useless to me now, and a possible danger to stock grazing near it.”

  “It is, I am given to understand, a thick, oily substance, faintly yellow in colour. Have you seen it?”

  “Yes, I saw it when the contractor was here to handle it,” Kane assented grimly. “It arrived in a carboy well packed in a crate with wood shavings. The contractor invited me to attend at the unloading. I really believe he wanted to see me get the wind up. I was windy, too. Having got the stuff down into the cellar without blowing us all to pieces the contractor poured some of the stuff into a tin canister of a size to fit within the bore casing. We then went out to the bore in the car. I went grey-haired on the trip. The contractor lowered the canister down the casing with copper wire, and, when it reached the bottom, he touched it off with a battery. There was a dull, muffled explosion, but no water came up. The bore casing was dry right down to the bottom.”

  “You have not used any of the balance of the explosive left over?”

  “No, of course not! Why do you ask?”

  “One moment. On examining the carboy in the cellar would it b
e possible for you to tell if any of the explosive has been removed since the contractor took the amount he wanted?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Kane answered slowly. “I would if a large quantity had been taken. I do not know how many gallons the carboy holds, but I can be sure in stating that the contractor took out about two gallons.”

  “I wonder!” Bony gazed pensively out through the open window to the cool white bungalow house. There was now no necessity to strain one’s hearing to hear the muttering thunder. The black shadows of western Queensland’s days were now no more, the piling clouds having at last defeated the sun.

  Swiftly their gaze met. “I have reason to think, Mr Kane, that a quantity of nitro-glycerine may have been removed from your store,” the detective said. “It is important to know for certain either way. Might I trespass further on your kindness by asking you to take me to the cellar to examine that nitro-glycerine?”

  “If you wish to go, yes. But there is to-morrow.”

  “I hate to disturb you, but ... well, we are certainly going to have an electrical storm, and should a lightning flash set off the explosive we should never know if any of it has or has not been taken, and it may happen, you know.”

  The squatter rose. He was smiling and chuckling.

  “All right! I hate going near the damned stuff, but it doesn’t do to fear fear. Come along. We’ll slip out there in my car.”

  Outside, when they saw the western sky, he added: “We’ll have to hurry. That storm will break in another ten minutes, and I am not going to be down in that cellar when it does.”

  Within the corrugated-iron motor shed, Bony saw two trucks, two powerful motor-cycles, a Dodge car, and a single-seater Bentley. Kane took the wheel of the last mentioned, pressed down the starter button and, before the engine could warm up properly, they had shot out of the motor shed.

  “Motor-cycles appear to be in general use on stations now,” Bony remarked.

  “Only one of those bikes is mine. The other belongs to young Oliver, of Windy Creek. You’ll meet him at dinner. Hang on!”

  The advice was sound. The seat-back hit Bony’s shoulders when the car increased its speed. They were passing a blur of fence posts, and when Bony was wedging himself into his seat he noted that the speedo was registering sixty-four miles an hour.

  “Thank heaven a man can travel at his own pace on his own roads,” Kane shouted, swinging the car round a bend in the track. “We’ll have a job beating that storm. This bus is a little sluggish as yet. You were wise to decide to stay the night.”

  Bony was flung against the door when the machine skidded round yet another bend, and then he was almost hurled against the dash when it was braked sharply to a halt.

  “Here’s the cellar!” Kane announced calmly. “Come on!”

  Bony followed the squatter to a sunken pit, roofed with iron above ground level. Steps had been cut into the hard clay soil beneath the thin top layer of wind-blown sand, and down these Kane led the way to the stout wooden door which he unlatched.

  “I dislike even breathing down here,” he said. “There it is! If it went off we wouldn’t know we were dead.”

  He directed the beam of an electric torch to the far end of the cellar, and Bony saw the packing-case. The side facing them had been removed, and there on its nest of wood shavings squatted the carboy.

  “One moment, please! Your torch,” requested Bony.

  With the torch directed with apparent carelessness at the floor, he strode to the carboy. His eyes were gleaming when he came to crouch before the lethal monster imprisoned within the huge bottle. The glass was covered with fingerprints, oily prints first brought into sharp relief by the dust which subsequently had settled on them, and then dulled by successive layers of dust.

  “Well!” he cried to the squatter who remained at the door. “The carboy is empty.”

  “Empty!” echoed John Kane. With greater confidence, he joined the detective, bending down to examine better the interior of the carboy. “Good Lord! So it is! Come on! Even that thunder might set off the smear of the stuff still on the inside of the glass.”

  “Yes, we’ll go,” Bony said gravely. “The storm is nearly above us. Like you, I fear to breathe.”

  With almost indecent haste for a grown man, Kane stepped to the door and ran up the steps. Bony remained two seconds longer. There was one particular fingerprint which aroused his interest. It was unlike the others. It was roughly circular, and across it were two distinct lines.

  Chapter Twenty

  Thunder

  THUNDER SHOOK the Tintanoo house to its very foundations, and the lightning caused the lights to flicker, while Bony dressed with unusual care before dining. Beyond the open window of his bedroom, huge raindrops fell on the veranda roofing. Yet the worst of the storm was past, and, for all its commotion, remarkably little rain had fallen. Between the major thunder rolls of the nearer disturbance, his ears caught the rumblings of storms far to the west and north.

  While dressing, Bony hummed a popular tune. The peculiar print on the carboy was an exceptionally fortunate and important discovery. It appeared to indicate that this stubborn mystery was at last giving way to his assault. In its dark fog, he thought he now could distinguish one personality among several half-formed figures. Owen Oliver!

  The expert fire investigator had stated that Captain Loveacre’s monoplane had been disintegrated by exploding nitro-glycerine. Then Cox had received and had passed on a report that nitro-glycerine had been sold to a man named Barton, a bore contractor, for use at Tintanoo Station, some considerable time before the aeroplane was stolen. Other explosives were used extensively for mining. They are reasonably safe to handle, and almost all western stores sell them. But nitro-glycerine is an entirely different proposition. No person would purchase and use it unless for some special purpose such as “bore shooting.” Its sale, in consequence, is narrowly limited and restricted by stringent regulations. Excepting this Barton no person in western Queensland had sought permission to purchase this particular explosive since the year 1921.

  John Kane now said that a quantity of nitro-glycerine down in his specially-constructed cellar had been removed without his knowledge and permission. It was reasonably certain that the nitro-glycerine which had assisted to destroy Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane had come from that cellar. And then the print of the deformed finger! Only the keenness of his vision had enabled him to see it. One with ordinary eyesight would not have noticed it: more especially if he was particularly nervous of the monster chained within the bottle.

  No one had visited the cellar after the sand cloud had passed by. Bony was assured of that by the ground at the head of the steps. All the fingerprints on the glass bottle had been registered prior to the sand cloud. Of that Bony was sure. The question presenting itself for answer was whether Owen Oliver had visited the cellar to steal the remaining portion of the explosive, or to take the remainder of it with the sanction of its owner. That he had visited the cellar was proved by the imprint of his partly-amputated finger on the carboy.

  If he had not stolen it, then John Kane had sanctioned its removal. The object of its removal could be assumed with reasonable confidence. A further question arose, one that Bony found harder to answer. Without proof and without the aid of his uncanny intuition, he could not bring his mind to accept the fact—or even the theory—of John Kane’s participation in the conspiracy against Miss Double M. Not for many a year had a man’s personality so baffled him.

  When the recent storm was approaching Golden Dawn, and when another was far advanced from St Albans, the detective sat down to dine with three people. His host wore now a light black alpaca jacket. The elderly woman who acted as hostess had been introduced to him as Mrs MacNally, “who has been in the service of the family since before I was born,” said Kane, She was eagle-eyed, and the years had caused her mouth to retreat and her nose and chin to advance. Her command of the aboriginal maids who brought in the dishes was firmly enthroned.
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  The last of the trio was Owen Oliver. He was dressed as he was when Bony first saw him, and his actions appeared to be a little too familiar for those of a rare guest at Tintanoo. Of medium height, his features were regular and finely moulded, but bore signs of dissipation. The brilliant hazel eye was well matched by the artificial one. After one swift glance at the shortened second finger of the right hand, Bony studiously refrained from exhibiting any interest in it.

  Between twenty-four and twenty-seven, Bony thought him to be. His attitude to the detective was now less markedly superior, but still there was in it the almost unmasked hostility to his colour in the mind of one incapable of delving beneath the surface of things, whether of a man’s skin or a problem of metaphysics.

  The meal was plain but well cooked and well served. The table decorations were costly and tasteful. The large room was furnished with those sombre but solid period pieces associated, with the reign of Queen Victoria; heavy, cumbersome furniture brought to this far-western outpost in the eighteen-seventies on bullock wagons. They were the years when furniture was furniture—furniture built to last for centuries, furniture prized as heirlooms.

  The conversation began when Mrs MacNally inquired after the patient at Coolibah. Her voice was pleasingly soft—a voice trained in “a school for the daughters of gentlemen.”

  “Now the specialist has seen her, Dr Knowles is hopeful of saving her life,” Bony lied. “The unfortunate young woman is so completely paralysed that she is unable to eat, unable even to open and close her eyes. Dr Stanisforth suggested a course of treatment which Dr Knowles is giving her.”

  “I’ve never heard anything like it,” Mrs MacNally exclaimed. “Mark my words, there is something fishy behind it all. Mrs Greyson called in the other day, and she told me that it has created quite a stir in the district.”