“You make me glad,” she said, sighing, and was smiling happily when Mr Jelly claimed the next dance.
The building was packed. Mrs Loftus was receiving congratulations from many about the report of her husband. Mick Landon, of course, acted M.C. and worked with enthusiasm, minus coat and waistcoat, the red braces over white shirt adding colour to the women’s dresses. And there was Miss Waldron dancing with the Spirit of Australia, whose passion for dancing evidently had not cooled with age.
The only difficulty in the way of Bony’s quietly unnoticed departure about ten o’clock was presented in the Falstaffian figure of Mr Thorn. The Water Rat’s difficulties were appalling. His objective was the six bottles of beer which with Machiavellian cunning he had concealed in a clump of dense bush one hundred yards from the hall. The obstacles presented to him were represented by the equally Machiavellian Mrs Thorn and by Bony, who cussedly enough appeared to be the actual needle in the haystack. There were moments when Mr Thorn almost pricked himself with the illusive needle, but not until late that night did he even so much as touch it.
“Blast!” he ejaculated when at last he had surmounted the obstacle, in the person of his watchful wife, and had successfully managed to sneak away from the hall. “I wonder where that coon’s got to.
“Don’t seem like ’im to ’ave a plant all on his own, and until I’m sure he’s brought no beer I don’t like having a Jimmy Woodser.”
Yet in the end he was forced to copy the example of that detestable fellow, Mr James Woods, and drink without company precisely at the instant Bony, dressed in mechanic’s overalls to save his clothes from dust, reached the Loftus farm gate on the back of William’s motor-cycle.
There he unwrapped the small parcel the garage-man had brought, producing an electric torch, a black silk handkerchief, a pair of roughly made sheepskin boots, large enough to slip over his dancing pumps and made with the wool on the outside of the soles, and a bottle of aniseed to the contents of which had been added five drops of essence of roses, a ball of worsted yarn, and a long length of stout string.
The sheepskin boots would enable him to move about without leaving tracks. To the end of the string he attached the ball of yarn, and on the ball of yarn he poured a quarter of the aniseed oil and the oil of roses. The lamp and the handkerchief he pushed into the single pocket of his overalls.
“Now, I think, we are ready,” he said to the deeply interested William. “Listen carefully, please. The strong smell of this mixture of aniseed and essence of roses should be a sufficiently powerful decoy to entice away those barking dogs. This end of the string I will tie to the pillion frame. You will now take me to the Loftus house, keeping carefully in one of those wheel ruts on the farm road. Where the farm track reaches the hard ground near the house, turn sharply about and drive slowly back again, still being careful to keep in a wheel rut. When we turn near the house I will drop the doped ball of yam when it will be trailed behind the machine. The dogs will pick up the scent and follow, and when we get about halfway back to this gate I’ll slip from the machine. The dogs will not bother about me.
“Now, remember, give them a good run right back to Burracoppin. Run the trail to that empty garage, of which, you say, you have the key, unlock the main door, go in, machine and all, and pass out through the back door, which, of course, you will instantly reclose. Then slip round the building to the front, and when the dogs arrive and go in, lock them in. It is now twenty minutes past ten. Time yourself to get back to this gate at half-past eleven. Is all that clear?”
“As rainwater.”
“Very well. Let us go.”
Riding on the pillion whilst William steered the machine with difficulty along one of the deep wheel ruts was not easy. The truck which was moving the Loftus wheat, as well as the Loftus car, kept to one set of wheat tracks, which now were six or seven inches deep. The tracks ran over ground proved to be clear of tyre-destroying roots; and, therefore, what marks the motor-cycle would make could certainly be wiped away by the wheels of Mrs Loftus’s car when she returned from the dance.
At the house end of the farm track the three dogs met them with yelps and savage snarls. As William turned the machine on the hard ground near the house Bony dropped the treated ball of worsted yarn which at once became trailed. In the darkness he could see the dogs, and when they had covered fifty yards of the return journey to the gate the animals suddenly ceased their noise, telling the detective that they had crossed the powerful decoy and were following it. The odour of roses added to that of aniseed would draw them till they dropped with exhaustion.
Bony slipped from the machine and darted several yards into the wheat stubble, there to stand motionless while the dogs passed, noses on the trail William was laying.
With a handful of straw he obliterated his tracks on the roadside made when he had left the machine. Hiding his white collar with the black handkerchief, after making sure that his sheepskin boots were securely on his feet, that the torch was in the overall pocket, he moved towards the house, carrying in his hand a short length of tempered wire.
When Bony approached the homestead for the second time the buildings looming out of the darkness were strangely silent now that the dogs were decoyed away. The dwelling house was like a large square box, so few and slight were the attempts at decoration.
Silently Bony circled it, eyes and ears at straining point to note the possible presence of a human being. He observed how the narrow veranda partially protected the front of the house, which faced east, a veranda so narrow as to be almost useless for the purpose for which it was built. The wider south veranda, enclosed by wooden trellis-work up which climbed sturdy grapevines, was the only softening effect, the whole building appearing to reveal George Loftus as one who spent all his money and thought on the land at the expense of a comfortable home. During his stay in the wheat belt Bony had seen many superior farmhouses and many much worse.
Again reaching the front, satisfied that the house was empty of human beings, he stepped carefully across the rough-floored veranda and inserted the hooked piece of wire in the door lock of common make. Ten seconds later he was inside the house, the door just ajar behind him, listening to make positively sure he was alone. Then the white shaft of his torch flashed out across the room.
To Bony was revealed a large kitchen, which also was made to serve as a living-room. Beside the long dining-table in the centre and the stiff-backed chairs against the wall there were two leather lounge chairs, a cane-grass sofa, and, in one corner, a glass-fronted bookcase filled with volumes. White crockery gleamed from the shelves of a big dresser. The glint of polished fire irons came from both sides of the cooking range. A room most comfortable, although the walls were covered with hessian stretched and tacked to the wooden frame. A clean and neat room, obviously ruled by a woman.
There was but one door leading from the living-room. Crossing to it, Bony’s light showed him a bedroom which, like the kitchen, seemed oddly to contrast with the poor appearance of the outside of the house, There was no further room leading off this one. Living-room and bedroom were all that the house contained. The windows of both rooms faced eastwards, either side of the solitary door, and at the west side of each room long narrow fanlights which could be opened were built in high up near the ceiling.
The bedroom more accurately described the character of Mrs Loftus than did the living-room. The living-room she was obliged to share with others, but her bedroom was her own, the more completely since her husband had vanished. Here was her secret world wherein she spent most of her time; here was the world in which she dreamed her dreams and thought her secret thoughts. The furnishings, the pictures, the little books tossed carelessly on the writing table proclaimed the aspirations of this woman for things higher than are found on an Australian farm.
The cream-painted double bed with the lace-edged quilt above the coverings, the cream-painted long dress mirror and the dressing table, and, in sharp contrast, the black oak pedestal table and
the antique escritoire of time-dulled walnut, all bespoke a woman of artistic taste in furnishings.
Two seascapes in watercolour hung in ebony frames on the walls, attracting him by their portrayal of light and wind. Low in the right-hand corner of each were the initials M.L. Mrs Loftus was without doubt something more than an amateur artist. Upon an easel was another picture, this in the making.
The writing table was next to claim Bony’s attention. It was a plain-topped affair, having no pigeonholes or drawers, heavy, and firmly held by the carved pedestal supported by three claw-shaped legs. Now seated at the writing table, the detective proceeded to examine every article on it. There was a photograph of a young woman in tennis kit who might be Mrs Loftus’s sister, for there were lines about the girl’s mouth claiming relationship. There was a framed photograph of Mrs Loftus herself, seated before an easel beyond which was the wide-shaped veranda of a large house. Was that house her childhood home?
A volume of poems in leather covers held the detective’s attention for several minutes. Written by an Australian poet, they breathed of love and passion, and, according to the wording on the title page, the book had been given to Mavis Waldron by the poet. Idly turning the well-thumbed pages, he came across a piece with some of the lines heavily underscored, read it through, read it again, and for the third time. Unrequited love was the theme of the poem, describing in mounting intensity the things the poor poet would do if his love was not reciprocated, things ranging from self-mutilation to homicide. Extraordinary verses, indeed, to capture a woman’s fancy.
A black, gilt-edged, cloth-covered notebook was the next article to be examined. Almost all the pages were filled with neatly penned verses about love and hate, sorrow and joy, passion and dead flowers, and small pencil sketches of dreamlike magnificent houses, of nude male figures, and of several heads among which were copies from life of Mick Landon and the Spirit of Australia. This notebook and the volume of poems spoke plainly of a woman’s passionate heart amid harsh, uncongenial surroundings.
Every inch of the table was examined. Far from being an expert, Bony yet recognized its age although unable to tell the period to which it belonged. The piece suggested secret hiding places in the thickness of its surface, the carved pedestal, the curious claw legs. And in one of the three claws he did discover a long shallow recess which contained a small, intricately fashioned key.
Obviously the key was regarded as valuable, since it operated a lock behind which presumably were articles of greater value. Bony spent ten precious minutes searching for a drawer or chest or box with a lock which this key opened. He found no such object either there or in the kitchen, but, coming across a box of candles that were softened by the heat of the house, he made a set of impressions on one of them, placed it in a dish of water to harden, and replaced the key in the secret cavity in the table leg.
An exhaustive search of the escritoire produced no result. There was nothing other than papers and books and accounts relating to the management of the farm; no smallest clue to the whereabouts of George Loftus, not a letter from him, no address, no written word of his intention of going to Leonora.
Bony raised the carpet in sections and examined each of the floor-boards, finding none loose or capable of being moved. The walls were equally barren of result. The bed he left until the last.
Here he paused with indecision, because the make-up of this bed was outside the ambit of his experience. He felt that should he disarrange the coverings he might be unable to replace them precisely as he found them. The dainty laceedged pillows, the artistically silk-worked counterpane, made him feel that to touch them would be an act of sacrilege, something that never could be fashioned again once he destroyed the symmetry of its virginal lines. And yet he could not leave the bed unexamined.
With great care he folded downward still farther the bedclothes. With his light he patiently searched the pillows and the sheets, for in his mind was born a suspicion begotten by the poems and the sketches. The close-held torch threw a circle of light no larger than a cheese-plate. Inexorably it covered every inch of pillows and sheeting, and at the end of one pillow, entangled in the lace, he found a hair, yellow in colour, about two inches long. It might well have come from the head of Mick Landon.
At the dressing table he was fortunate enough to secure from the woman’s brush one of her hairs measuring more than a foot in length, but when he compared it with the short hair he could discern no difference in colour in the light of the torch. The two hairs he placed in folded paper, and the paper within his pocket book.
Back again at the bed, he began to examine the flock mattress, slipping his arms beneath it and above it, feeling every inch of its surface with his fingertips, taking remarkable care not to disorder the clothes. And there at the foot of the mattress he found with his fingers a sewed-up incision of about seven inches, and, at the end of a minute, located a foreign substance among the flock about fifteen inches in from the edge.
Several minutes were expended trying to work that hidden thing nearer to the edge of the mattress. With great care he exposed the incision to the light of the torch, when one swift appraisal told him that were he to cut the herringbone stitches he would never be able to put them back, because despite his intellectual gifts, despite his bushcraft and his acute vision, it would take him years of practice to acquire Mrs Loftus’s sewing ability.
Balked, he stood thoughtfully biting his nether lip. He came to realize that here inside this house he was outside his element. In the open bush he might be supreme, but his knowledge became limited, and his craft useless, within a lady’s boudoir. It was impossible for him to reopen the incision as he could not reclose it again without betraying the fact to Mrs Loftus, whilst if he cut a fresh incision she would notice it when she made the bed.
He was limited, too, to one other thing, and that was time. Eighty minutes he had given himself for the entire examination, and already thirty-five had passed.
Sighing with regret, he rearranged the bed coverings before passing out to the kitchen. Five of his precious minutes he gave to searching the kitchen, which offered no clue. Other than the living-room and the bedroom, there were no further rooms in the house to be searched, and when he closed the house door behind him and locked it with his piece of wire he would have been wholly satisfied could he have known the secret of the flock mattress.
Round the corner of the house to the south veranda he moved as soundlessly as a shadow. At the doorway in the centre of the trellis he paused a moment, listening, before opening the door and passing within and henceforth being most careful of his torchlight.
He saw a black wrought-iron bed, a plain deal dressing table with silver-mounted appointments, a cretonne-covered, roughly made washstand of casing boards. Beneath the bed was a large tin trunk on which were painted in large letters the initials E.W. The trunk was unlocked, and he had no time to bother with its contents. Evidently this was Miss Waldron’s bedroom, and, there being here no object having a lock that the hidden key might fit, he went out into the night and silently made his way to the tent room occupied by Mick Landon.
Here he found a stretcher bed neatly made in readiness for the night. For a farm worker’s bed it was luxurious. Landon slept between sheets. His head would rest on a linen-covered feather pillow. Silk pyjamas lay folded on the pillow. A pair of red leather slippers were left on the strip of carpet beside the bed.
At the head of the bed was a chintz-covered, case-made table on which were several books, a looking glass and shaving kit, a silver-framed photograph of a man Bony had never seen, an alarm clock, and knick-knacks inseparable to a bachelor’s existence.
Opposite the bed was a leather suitcase, unlocked and containing clothes, a packet of letters all bearing an English postmark. That was all. There was nothing of importance. Idly Bony, looked at his watch and saw that he had six minutes left.
Without purpose he picked up the photograph the better to see the face of the man wearing plus-fours and ca
rrying a bag of golf clubs. The frame was exceptionally heavy, exceptionally thick. It created curiosity, and he put down the light on the table the better to use both hands to feel it, turn it about. Then he saw the little sliding clip which, when pushed up, permitted the frame to open outwards like the covers of a book. It was a double frame, and the picture revealed inside was that of Mrs Loftus taken, according to the note written in pencil at the bottom, at Bondi Beach, 1923.
The detective became a thief. He stole two hairs from Landon’s comb.
Decidedly, when he reached the gate and then was obliged to wait several minutes for William, he had much food for thought.
Chapter Sixteen
Mr Thorn’s Plant
“I HAD a game with the dogs,” William told Bony on his return. “After I left you I kept the bike down to five miles an hour. Turning west at the old York Road, I saw a car pulling up at the gate the other side of the fence, so I went on for a quarter of a mile fairly quick and then stopped and got off. By that time the car was through the gate and coming up behind me, and in its headlights I saw Loftus’s three dogs nosing my trail like bloodhounds.
“As per instructions, I set sail for the pub end of Burra, trailing all round the town and ending up at the empty garage. In I went, trail and all, and once inside I picked up the trail and put it into the tool bag, opened the back door, pushed the bike outside, and left it leaning against the building. Then I slipped round to the front and was just in time to see two dogs, noses to the ground, going inside. Three more dogs followed them before the three from here, and nine more followed them eight.
“As I was leaving I seen Mrs Poole’s cow, leading Mrs Henry’s pack of goats, coming along the road right dead on the trail, and, between there and here, I counted two horses, another cow, four dogs, and about five million rabbits. By the morning there’ll be a menagerie outside that garage. When Burra wakes up tomorrow the people will wonder how that garage got turned into a Noah’s Ark.”
Mr Jelly’s Business Page 14
