“Well, you’re here to find out, aren’t you? And because if I was Mr Loftus I’d run away from her. I hate that woman.”
“Dear, dear! Surely you cannot hate?”
“I hate her, anyway. I couldn’t tell you why exactly. Do you think he ran away from her?”
There was no evading her question the second time. Bony was frank.
“I cannot find out,” he said.
“Will you stay until you do?”
“Very likely.”
Presently she said: “Will you come to our farm some day and tell me all about the blackfellows’ corroborees? I would like to hear tales about them, and, perhaps, you could find out about Father. Would you try?”
“Yes, if your sister would like me to do so,” Bony replied, studying the swiftly changing expression on her face. “We must defer to her, you know. She is the elder. Possibly she might not like my trying to find out.”
“Oh I think she would. Father makes her so worried.”
“Very well. I will put it to her later on.”
The music came to an end. The dancers stopped. There was much laughter whilst people thanked each other, followed by a general movement to the seats.
“Will you ask me to dance again presently, Mr Bony?” Sunflower asked, not attempting to conceal her anxiety lest he should forget.
“It will give me great pleasure to ask, not once, but several times. Let me take you back to your sister, now talking to——”
There was sudden commotion beyond the main entrance. The knot of men who appeared as though glued to that part of the hall, seemingly content merely to watch—and criticize—raised a cheer which was taken up by the dancers. They parted into a lane, and into this lane flashed a sparkle of pink which resolved into a woman’s dress. The wearer came along the lane, to pause at its innermost end while the crowd cheered and clapped.
Bony saw a strikingly pretty woman whom he guessed correctly to be Mrs Loftus. Her age, he knew, was twenty-nine. She was dressed in a frock of pink crepe de chine, which seemed oddly to contrast with her supposed financial difficulties, which this dance was being held partially to relieve. In height slightly above the average, her frock showed to perfection a well-moulded, supple figure. Her face was flushed, and her eyes—he thought they were dark hazel—reflected the lights. Her expression was one of strained anxiety, the whole giving a total effect of pleasure at being there and doubt of the proprietary of it when her husband was so strangely missing.
The band struck up “For she’s a jolly good fellow”, and the crowd roared the lines as Mick Landon gallantly escorted the guest of honour to the stage end of the hall, where he turned aside, leaving the woman alone to accept the welcome.
It was spontaneously given, and, Bony’s admiration of the beautiful aroused, he added his mite to the general uproar. When almost any woman would have cried with a full heart, this woman smiled with the calmness of a queen. And then Bony’s penetrating vision pierced deep behind the now smiling face, and he saw an iron-willed woman, sure of herself, selfish and sensual. His first impression was quickly revised. The loveliness of feature and form was marred in the eyes of the beauty worshipper by a will too strong, a composure too ably controlled, a mind too clever, too calculating.
The singing died down. The hand clapping ceased. Mrs Loftus said with charming simplicity:
“You are all very kind to me. I thank you from my heart.”
Again the clapping and the cheering. It surprised Bony to observe how popular Mrs Loftus really was. Mick Landon came forward, holding a sugar bag. He shouted in order to gain complete silence.
“Ladies and gents! Ladies and gents! In this bag are the entry tickets. I hope all the holders of them wrote their names on them, because the ticket Mrs Loftus will now draw from the bag here will entitle the owner to the honour of the first dance with her. If the ticket owner cannot dance, he may nominate a gent who can, and if a lady draws the honour she may name any gent she chooses. Now, Mrs Loftus, please draw.”
Watching with his never failing interest in human beings, Bony saw that when she placed her be-ringed hand into the bag she looked not at it but into the eyes of the man who held it open. When she had taken the ticket, the M.C. tossed the bag to the back of the stage and then politely took the ticket from her. There was a hushed suspense. Studiously Landon slowly looked up with the name on it in his mind, paused for precisely five seconds, and then shouted:
“Mr Garth!”
Again the cheering broke out, above which men shouted:
“Good old John! The Spirit of Australia!”
The band began to play a foxtrot. Gath’s booming voice rose above the din.
“I’m taking a ticket in Tatt’s,” he roared whilst stalking through the throng now surging on the floor towards the waiting woman who hid her disappointment behind a laughing face. The Spirit of Australia was dressed in a navyblue suit. His bearing, his face, shrieked the lie regarding his age. Towering above Mrs Loftus, his courtly bow and the manner in which he offered her his arm shrieked, too, the lie of his wild rough life on the gold fields and the farms.
Bony was about to propose another dance to little Sunflower when Mrs Gray came up and expressed a wish to introduce him to a friend. Smilingly he accompanied her, yet not before he had au-revoired Sunflower and had seen the look of regret in her big soft eyes.
He was presented to a matron belonging to that type known as “gushing”, yet was no whit abashed or discomfited. She danced moderately well, and, although his mind was occupied with Mrs Loftus, she did eventually confess to Mrs Gray that he was “a perfectly charming man, you know, in spite of his being unfortunately black, my dear”.
It was not till after supper, at which the Jelly girls were attended by two young men, both of whom obviously strove to gain the elder’s favour, that Bony found the opportunity to approach them.
“I have been hoping that you might now find an empty space on your dance card,” he said suavely to Lucy. “Am I in time to ask for this waltz?”
Without smiling the girl regarded him steadily while he bent over her with deference. Her eyes searched his face, held his eyes with a steady look of one who would like to trust him but hesitates. Her decision to do so was reached abruptly. Still she did not smile when rising to her feet to say:
“Very well, if you wish.”
There was no more opportunity to talk, because at the last minute Landon changed the waltz to a foxtrot. They do that sort of thing at country dances. And it seemed at the last moment, too, that Mrs Loftus stepped down from her place in his mind, giving way to Mr Jelly.
Chapter Nine
Mr Poole
THE STRANGE behaviour of Mr Jelly was not in itself of great interest to him. Knowing human nature as broadly and as deeply as he did, Bony realized that the occasional disappearance of the man from his farm might well be caused by the drink demon, woman, or some human vice the indulgence of which was irresistible. On the other hand, indulgence in vice is far more costly than the practice of virtue, and the fact could not be overlooked that Mr Jelly always returned from his absences with money and whisky.
That the disappearance of Mr Jelly had nothing to do whatever with the disappearance of George Loftus, Bony was convinced. For years before Loftus disappeared Mr Jelly had unobtrusively departed into the void and had returned unannounced. While other men had and do live double lives, the case of Mr Jelly was remarkable on one point: his return to normal existence with money.
It was a pretty little mystery wholly unconnected with the case then occupying his time—his holiday time, too—and his decision to unravel it was really based partly upon Sunflower’s sweet beauty and partly on his passion for the mysterious which gave him such keen mental exercise. To Lucy Jelly he presently said:
“Sunflower tells me that you know what I am and that you are both worried by the occasional absence of your father,” and later: “If I could be of any assistance I should be very pleased to try to help you.”
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“My sister talks too much, Mr Bony, but she is extraordinarily discerning in her judgment of people. Most of us require time to reach a proper understanding of a person’s character, but she sums up a person in a minute. Her judgment always has been right, and I think I will rely on it regarding you.”
When again she and Bony came together in the dance she said a little wistfully:
“I am worried about Father. I do hate mystery, and he seems mixed up in a mystery of some kind. I would like privately to know what Father does, so that if it’s anything very awful I might be able to help him. I’d like to talk to you about it. Would you care to come to us for afternoon tea on Saturday?”
“You are exceedingly kind. I shall be delighted. Will four o’clock do?”
“Yes. We will expect you.”
While escorting her back to her seat he observed that the cloud of anxiety was lifting. Even Sunflower noted and remarked upon it when next they danced.
That evening Bony thoroughly enjoyed himself. He danced with Mrs Poole, who with two vertical lines between her brows pointed out to him Mrs Black, suspected of milking her cow, and other notabilities of Burracoppin society. Mr Thorn invited him to run across to the hotel before Mr Wallace went to bed, and was most regretful when Bony declined. The small circle of people in which Mrs Gray had a place accepted him, thereby removing the impression that he was a stranger in a strange country. Yet other people, whilst interested in his personality and admiring his dancing, made no overtures, and he was shrewd enough to perceive that this was not so much on account of his colour as that he in Mrs Gray’s circle rotated in a distinctly different circle from theirs. It was another phase of the white man’s psychology which both interested and amused him.
Towards the end of the evening Mrs Loftus made a little speech.
“Friends, everyone,” she said a little nervously, “I thank you all for your great kindness to me. It is comforting to have your sympathy during this trouble made by my husband’s disappearance. I feel sure, though, he will be back one day, because I do not believe anything has happened to him. Thank you very, very much.”
“You give old Loftus beans when he does come back,” a man shouted above the hand clapping.
Mrs Loftus smiled wanly, but there was in her eyes a glint of purpose.
Bony escorted the Jelly girls to the car owned by a neighbour who was to take them home. After they had gone he walked along the footpath across the railway property and thence to the Rabbit Depot with his mind pleasantly occupied.
It was not three weeks since George Loftus disappeared from the face of the earth, or that part of it around Burracoppin. John Muir had communicated with the South Australian police, asking them to examine ship passengers from Western Australia, and had, too, telephoned the widespread station homesteads along the overland motor route the second day he had been put on the case. From the first the possibility that Loftus had planned to vanish, probably leave the State, was not overlooked.
Such a disappearance is the effect of one of several causes. He might have elected to disappear merely to desert his wife or escape his creditors with the balance of his credit, or he might have committed a concealed crime and fled to evade possible arrest.
Meanwhile Bony’s investigations were not progressing as rapidly as the Western Australian police chief considered that his eastern States reputation demanded. Which, of course, gave Bony no concern. It was the lack of time sense when on a case, a mental trait bequeathed him by his maternal ancestors, a real gift of infinite patience, which was his greatest asset. The most painstaking white man would not have spent precious hours looking into trees, grubbing under half-rotted logs, or poking about beneath low and prickly bushes.
With extraordinary thoroughness he searched every yard of ground east and west of the old York Road gate in the rabbit fence. He discovered in an apparently impossible place a Bank of England five-pound note, and the only solution to account for its being wrapped about a twig at the extremity of a branch twenty-seven feet above ground was that a passenger on one of the Perth-Adelaide mail planes had dropped it in mistake for some useless document or paper. The bank note, although dilapidated, was still passable as currency.
Of any clues to the passage of Loftus, Bony found none, save the notebook and the cigar ends about which he had talked with Sergeant Westbury. From the wrecked car the bush detective had tracked the missing man to the old York Road, a distance of one mile, but he could discover no evidence that Loftus had proceeded farther south or, in fact, east or west. It appeared almost certain that the missing farmer had met a violent end or had departed in a car at the rabbit fence gate, crossing the old York Road.
Sergeant Westbury proved a rapid worker. The cashier at the Bank of New South Wales, who had cashed Loftus’s cheque for one hundred pounds, remembered the transaction. He could describe the farmer in general outline and could state without doubt that the notes issued were brand-new one-pound notes. He had kept no record of their numbers and had paid out over four hundred that day, put he could give the series.
The tracing back to the places of purchase of the two beer bottles found near the car had been an equally simple matter. They had been imported into Western Australia from a Melbourne brewery and sold to Leonard Wallace at one of the hotels at Merredin. This particular beer was not sold at the Burracoppin Hotel. It was one of the many clues that occur in every criminal case which eventually prove to be unimportant.
More time was required compiling the dossiers of Mick Landon and Mrs Loftus, and to these Bony gave little thought because he had sufficient on his hands to occupy his time and mind and not a little to amuse him.
***
In his own way, Mr Joseph Poole was as delightful a character as were Mr Thorn and the Spirit of Australia. He was tall and lank, a drooping willow, for his body drooped, his straggly grey moustache drooped, and his hair drooped down his high and narrow forehead. To observe him was to consider him a martyr to dyspepsia, but actually his life was one long delight at the oddities of everyone with whom he came in contact.
He was having his dinner when Bony arrived at Mrs Poole’s famous boarding-house the second evening following the dance. Fifty yards from the weatherboard and iron building the detective first heard the raised voice of Mrs Poole commenting on the woodpile, the stove, Mrs Black and the cow, and all the remaining annoyances of life, including her husband.
“He doesn’t care,” she complained to Bony when he entered the kitchen by the back door. “The useless hulk! Just comes home and won’t do a hand’s turn. Go in and sit down, and I’ll bring in your dinner.”
“Do not allow your mind to dwell overmuch on the unpleasant things of life,” was Bony’s calm advice. “Remember only the nice things. Remember the dance the other night and how nice you looked in the blue frock. Remember the particular dance you danced with me.”
“Go on with you! My husband’s in there.”
“Perhaps I’d better run away instead,” he said, laughing.
“Have your dinner first,” suggested Mr Poole from within the dining-room.
“I will,” decided Bony, smiling again at Mrs Poole, whose temper could never be maintained at white heat.
Mr Poole’s drooping brown eyes regarded Bony anxiously when the latter took his seat opposite.
“You’ll do,” he said, as though he were examining a beast.
“In what way?” Bony asked, observing the good-humoured gleam in his eyes.
“Yes. You’ll do.”
“Idiot!” Mrs Poole said. “Been away two weeks and think you’ve saved up a few jokes. What about the wood? It’s getting dark. The kids have had to cut it up while you’ve been away enjoying yourself, but they aren’t going to cut it now their lazy father’s home.”
Mr Poole continued to gaze at Bony with even more intensity.
“Yes. You’ll do,” he said again.
“You sniggering fool! What d’you mean?” demanded the now exasperated woman.
/> Joe had been angling for the question direct. Now he pointed a broken-nailed index finger at Bony and managed to say seriously:
“You’ll do for a co-respondent. It’ll save me the trouble of cutting ’er throat.”
Then he leaned far back in his chair and guffawed, whereupon his poor wife rushed away to the kitchen and banged the dishes.
“You the new boarder?” asked Mr Poole at last.
Bony admitted that he was. Joe waved his hands as a dancer illuminated in the spotlight.
“Home,” he said while he drooped into his chair. “I always enjoys meself at home. The cow and Mrs Black, the blank stove, and the blanker woodheap makes me happier every time I comes home.” Clawing his way to his feet with the aid of the chair, he added: “See you after. If I don’t chop the wood now the old ’un will start whispering love words to me just as I’m falling off to sleep.”
Mysteriously he winked at Bony and went out. Later the detective helped poor Mrs Poole to wash the mountain of plates and dishes and afterwards joined the Pooles and the two garage-men in the dining-room, where the gramophone was constantly played, and they shouted to each other to command the noise of the machine and the two little boys who played on the floor.
“They tell me old Jelly’s cleared off again,” remarked Mr Poole conversationally.
“Yes, been gone some time,” agreed one of the garage-men. “Queer old bird, to be sure. What the devil he gets up to beats me. Is it correct he’s got a mania for pasting murder trials in scrap albums?”
“Too right,” Joe assented without removing the drooping cigarette from beneath his drooping moustache. “He got me out there one night and fair give me the shivers.”
“Funny kind of hobby to have,” the second garage-man put in.
“No funnier than some of them perfessers have. They collects ’uman bones and things,” Joe argued good-naturedly. “Knoo one once who collected ’uman skulls up Laverton way. He gimme fifty quid to go out and dig up fifty blackfellers’ skulls off’n a tribal battlefield where the slaughter mustah been somethink awful. Why, the old perfesser handled them skulls like a tart handles jooles.”
Mr Jelly’s Business Page 8
