Until then he had forgotten Filson’s message concerning the escape of N’gobi. Of course, N’gobi would make his way back to his own district, and knowing that, the police must have telephoned Filson to watch out for his arrival. The blacks knew as soon as did Filson; in fact, sooner than he. They set up a chain of signals from Kalgoorlie which finally informed Ned and Nora, who had acknowledged the message.
From all accounts, this N’gobi was a bad man. He would without doubt come back for his woman without vengeance in his heart, for it was unlikely that he would know who had informed the police against him, but he would bring his friends to Ned’s camp to reclaim his woman and exact tribal justice. They would take Nora away from the man she liked and, if Nora was not in Ned’s marriage class, then N’gobi and his friends would kill her, or, fearing the white man’s vengeance, would point the bone at her; and if she was in Ned’s marriage class, N’gobi would take her back, and Ned would have to fight N’gobi’s friends and relatives, or be beaten into one whole bruise.
So intent was Tremayne on the likely outcome of N’gobi’s escape that he permitted Major to walk off the track to nibble at a young bluebush. Suddenly he was recalled to his present surroundings by two distinct flashes of light in the far distance. He kept watching for a full minute for any repetition, but there was none. Imagination doubtless. Looking about to see where he was, he discovered that the east breakaway was behind him when he saw the flashes. The flashes then – if there really had been light flashes – were in the direction of Acacia Well.
When again on the track, he urged his horse into a canter, keeping his gaze fixed on the ground ahead to discern water-gutters before they were reached. Higher and higher loomed the line of the breakaway against the faintly moon-lit sky, now dark and featureless as the moon touched the horizon. Those flashes most likely were due to Fred Ellis carrying his hurricane lamp when he escorted Alec as far as the boundary gate.
He could now feel the long gentle rise reaching to the breakaway foot. A bluff-pointed shadow crept out to meet him on his right as he approached the mass of rock debris among which twisted the track before taking the final long and steep grade at a slant up the side of the right-hand shadow. And presently, like strange sleeping beasts, strange shadow shapes slid by him on either side – giant boulders. Major eased to a walk, ears pricked forward, head carried softly. There appeared to be something suspicious higher up along the track which excited his curiosity. A kangaroo? A loose horse? Or a mob of restless steers?
Tremayne could not forget those flashes. He could not discard the suspicion that they had been signals. The men in the overtaking car had dropped Alec at Acacia Well. They had all come from Breakaway House, or through Breakaway House, and if it had been Alec signalling what lay behind that?
Major was reined to a halt and his rider dismounted.
CHAPTER XIX
THE AMBUSCAD
FOR a full minute Tremayne stood still and listened. The silence became a sensation in his ears. The horse stood almost as quietly as he, his ears pricked, his nostrils slightly twitching.
Without haste, the overseer forced the animal to stand obliquely across the track, facing the edge of the steep slope falling to the water-gutter marking the gully bottom. And in this position Major again looked up along the darkened track, his attitude one of tense suspicion.
There was something between them and the topmost level of the track, unseen by the man, heard, if not actually seen, by the horse. That mysterious something might be wild things or domestic stock – or the travellers who had passed them in the car. Man and horse were but a bare mile from the Bowgada homestead; if the rider wished to reach the homestead by a different route he would have to return to the rock debris at the foot of the grade, strike north across the gully, skirt a headland, and so come to that bay commanded by the sapling seat where he and Filson had first met. It was an alternative route to take if he wished to avoid trouble; but, after all, avoiding trouble would not get him anywhere, and on this particular job trouble was to be sought, not avoided.
Leading the horse off the track, he lightly fastened the ends of the reins to a young kurrajong tree, and then, with his automatic in his hand, he once again intently listened from the centre of the roadway.
No sound came to his straining ears save the haunting wail of a curlew away out over the sunken valley. Supposing Tonger, or whoever had engineered the shooting attempt on his life, had sent those men after him to make a second attack? Alec had said he did not know them, but supposing the borrowing of Fred’s accordion was a mere excuse to permit him to signal that Tremayne had left for the homestead, and somewhere up along this track the men who had been signalled lay waiting to shoot or in some way stage an accident? The locality would be quite far enough away from Breakaway House to permit its becoming the scene of an investigation without centring attention on Morris Tonger.
There was only one way to decide this question. He would have to scout forward, not along the track itself but parallel to it, and because, if he took the right side higher up the slope, he would be presented on a skyline, he stepped down the slope off the track and began to stalk with his head on the road level.
The further he proceeded the steeper became the slope of the headland. The ascending track began to follow a natural ledge widened with blasting powder, and the debris from the blasting had been pushed over the track’s edge, requiring careful negotiation by a man whose life might depend on silent movement.
It was not lost on Tremayne that, although it was dark, he was placed at a disadvantage. He was forced to move while possible enemies could remain completely invisible by keeping still. Even in the darkest night a moving object is visible at short range.
Constantly halting to listen, Tremayne was gradually coming to believe that his suspicions were without foundation. His movements were executed soundlessly; not once did his feet snap a twig or dislodge a splinter of granite to rattle sharply down the now steep slope, a slope which became steeper still the further he progressed.
He saw the car and heard the horse at the same time. The horse was galloping up the track; the stationary car was further up the track, possibly two hundred yards. It emitted no lights, but its blurred outlines lay against the starry sky.
The horse’s hoofs thudded against the granite track surface. With his eyes on the level of the track, Tremayne could see the sparks flashed outward by the iron-shod hoofs. An enemy come to view the result of the “accident” or a friend pounding after him to warn him of an attack? And then he saw the shape of the horse rushing out of the darkness, and saw, too, that the animal was saddled but riderless. It was his own horse, Major. It swept by him before he could make any guarded effort to stop it.
Major sped up the track, frightened by something down below, anxious to find his master or get to the familiar homestead. Two seconds after it passed him, Tremayne saw the body of the horse against the sky close to the rock wall which bounded the track’s far side. The horse’s shape blotted out the shape of the car. Then there came a muffled report. The rock wall moved. Featureless, he yet could see its outline, and the huge slab which split asunder. The slab was hurtling outward, toppling forward over the track, over the horse rushing to meet it. The horse screamed sharply – a scream drowned, cut off by the thumping crash as the rock slab smashed on to the rock roadway. Again the horse screamed. And from part way down the slope he heard the rumble of a miniature avalanche.
From the gully’s bottom came another sound, the low roar of racing sheep. They fled to the open plain, and, as they went, Tremayne heard men’s voices from the direction of the car. He gained the track, darted to the rock wall and into its deeper shadow, then moved cautiously along it, mounting ever upwards towards the place where that huge slab of rock had been blown out of its bed to send Major hurtling into the gully.
The beam of an electric torch sprang into being and began to play over a mass of rock lying on the track. It illuminated, beside the rock debris, the figure
of a short tubby man who evidently was examining the result of this engineering feat. Another man joined him, a big man, and when he spoke Tremayne recognised him to be Buck Ross.
“Did we get him?” Ross said sharply.
“Yes, we got him all right. Didn’t you hear the horse scream? The top edge of this slab of granite caught him nicely. Horse and man were knocked clean off the track. And look here, over the edge is a sheer drop of thirty feet.”
The little man was a stranger to Tremayne. At first he thought him to be Mug Williams, but he was now sure that it was not Williams’ voice.
“Good business,” acclaimed Ross with a devilish chuckle.
“That’s a little score wiped out which was beginning to get my goat. I never like owing debts. Well, we might as well get on. We’ll have to pass the homestead, but we needn’t stop to tell everyone who we are.”
“What about making sure that the bloke is out to it?”
“There ain’t no need to mess around finding him to make sure,” objected Ross. “Hit by that slab of rock wasn’t like being patted on the back by a lovin’ woman.”
Again Ross chuckled with very genuine pleasure, and together he and his tubby companion walked up to the waiting car. The lights were switched on and the engine started before they reached it, proving that a third man was the driver. The engine rose into a high-pitched hum as the machine shot forward.
No tail-light gleamed on white registration numbers. Softer and softer grew its purring hum until the silence of the night reigned once more over the breakaways.
With matches to aid him, Tremayne examined the debris of rock on the track, estimating that, at the least, two tons of granite lay there, and some of the slab must have been sent forward off the track with the horse. From the gully rose no sounds indicating that Major lived; and, his match supply being low, he decided to go on to the homestead and return with Old Humpy and hurricane lamps to make sure that the horse was not lingering in agony.
HE discovered Brett Filson sitting in the living room with a novel in his hands, his feet on a second chair and a pipe between his teeth.
“Well, how have you been putting in the day?” Filson asked.
“Oh! So, so!” Tremayne replied casually, to add with more lucidity: “I’m going to help myself to a whisky neat.”
“You’ll find the bottle in the left-hand cupboard. Had a hard ride?”
“Very. I’ve been shot at, and Major has been killed by about three tons of rock blown out of the rock wall across the valley track. That car didn’t stop, of course.”
“No, it passed at high speed. But shot at? Your horse killed? Tell the tale.”
Tremayne related his adventures, listened to without interruption by a man whose face became grimmer and grimmer as the tale unfolded.
“Those birds must have worked rapidly in laying the charge of gelignite,” opined the overseer. “It beats me how they did it in the time. They got to work when that Alec signalled that I’d left Acacia Well. He was sent there for that, and who could send him, and that car-load of men under Buck Ross, if not Tonger?”
Filson rose to his feet and walked to the empty fireplace. He stood with his back to it, an angry frown drawing his brows together.
“We’ll go over to Breakaway House in the morning and have it out with Tonger,” he stated in tones likened to a whip cracking. “This sort of thing has got to stop. It’s become a police matter.”
“It’s a police matter now, Brett,” Tremayne said quietly. “Rushing things won’t do any good. We’ll lie low, and let ’em think as long as possible that they succeeded.” The young man’s expression was indicative of satisfaction, although his smile was without mirth and the drooping lids did not hide the hard, steely light in his eyes. “I want to go back now in the truck to make sure that Major is not living in agony. I’ll take Old Humpy or English with me.” Suddenly his face cleared and he laughed. “You know, Brett, these gentry are going to give me quite a lot of entertainment. John was right when he wrote the old dad that he suspected a criminal gang to be operating on these breakaways.”
“That seems to be certain, Harry. Another thing which is certain is that a large force of police should be brought here to clean up the gang before they do any more damage.”
“A large force of police would collect the small fry and let the big fish escape,” Tremayne pointed out succinctly. “We can’t act until we know the names of the big fish. Slow but sure is the policy to follow.”
“All right,” Filson assented reluctantly, and together they left the house, routed out English, and set off for the scene of the attempt on Tremayne’s life. They discovered the horse dead almost at the bottom of the slope.
“He was an intelligent beast, Brett,” was all the younger man said about the horse he had broken and come to love.
They were back again in the living room in less than an hour. “I hope Dame Fortune will be kind enough to let me lay my hands on the swine who engineered that little stunt,” he said savagely. “Here’s the dad writing to tell me that he won’t accept my resignation, and to remind me that I’m still a policeman and must always act within the letter of the law; but I pray the day will come when I can start shooting, and that day I’ll not remember about being a policeman, you can bet.”
To banish this mood, Brett said: “How’s your head? Let me look at it.” And then when he examined the wound and saw Tonger’s expert stitching: “You weren’t born to be shot. What are your next moves?”
“I’m going to examine Breakaway House inside and outside. And I’m going to examine every blessed foot of that breakaway bay which contains the balancing rock, Brett. Tomorrow I’ll slip down and see Ned and Nora. I’m going to get Ned to come with me, and Nora can come here and stay with Millie English. She’ll be safer here, for when N’gobi arrives there’ll be some fun. Now tell me, old man, what do you really and truly think of Frances Tonger?”
“I like her.”
“I more than like her. But only she knew I was going to the balancing rock this afternoon.”
“Just what do you infer from that?” Brett asked levelly.
“I don’t know. I love that girl, but I have horrible suspicions, cur that I am.”
The squatter pursed his lips, looking steadily at Tremayne. He reloaded and lit his pipe before he said: “I think that your suspicions are rotten. What probably happened is that she innocently told her uncle that you wanted to meet her at that place and time. And then Morris Tonger found a business excuse to get her out of the way. You say she says she’s going to Perth?”
“Yes, that’s so. And I expect that’s how Tonger learned about my appointment with her. Mind you, she never said she would be there, and when I think of it, I realise my cheek in putting it to her. By the way, when you rang up did he say anything about my being shot?”
“Not a word.”
“Now I wonder,” Tremayne said musingly. “He didn’t mention that little matter to you. Alec said nothing of it to Fred Ellis. When Tonger planned this little stunt tonight – I’ll bet it was him – he took a chance that no one bar the rifleman, Alec, and himself would ever know about it. He knew I saw the gun flash. He knows I know it wasn’t a ricochet bullet which cracked me. He didn’t arrange that ‘accident’ just because I was hoping to meet his niece, or might by chance discover something. No. He knows – I’ll stake my life on it – that I’m a policeman up here to investigate the disappearance of John Tremayne. Phew! Things are getting interesting. Curse it! I wonder if Frances innocently mentioned that to him, too.”
“You can depend on her innocence,” Brett said quietly.
“One day I’ll grovel on my chest to her to atone for my thoughts, Brett. I wish she were out of the way for good. I’ve a mind to wire the old dad to keep her in Perth for a week or two. He could lock her up if she refused to stay with my people. Say! On Saturday I want you to telephone Miss Sayers and invite her and my lovely Violet out for Sunday.”
“Why?” demand
ed the astonished squatter.
“Because Bowgada is deuced dull on Sundays.”
“That’s not the reason. Tell me.”
“Well then, because I want to learn a little history from Violet Winters. And I want to be reminded once more what a damn fool you are.”
“I don’t understand you,” Brett said with abrupt stiffness.
Now Tremayne was grinning broadly. “Then don’t try to,” he said. “But invite those two for Sunday, if you love me. Send English in for them if you can’t go.”
CHAPTER XX
THE ISLAND
FRANCES drove away from Breakaway House after lunch on the Wednesday Tremayne had hoped to meet her at the balancing rock, accompanied by a hand who was to return with the car. She arrived at Mount Magnet, a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles, shortly before six o’clock, and there ate her dinner at the hotel, with plenty of time at her disposal to catch the 7.40 train to Perth.
While she was eating the hand approached her table to say that his employer had telephoned orders that he was to stay the night, and would Miss Frances be sure to ring Breakaway House as soon as convenient.
Evidently there was something her uncle had forgotten, so after dinner she telephoned him.
“Oh – that you, Frances?” Tonger said smoothly. “There isn’t now any necessity for you to go to Perth after all as I’ve received a telegram clinching that business. Come back tomorrow. See Reeves, please, and ask for a case of whisky and a dozen syphons of soda. And don’t forget to buy anything you may want for yourself.”
“Very well, Uncle,” she assented lightly.
“I hope you’re not disappointed at not going to the city?”
“Not very. It’s a long and hot journey just now.”
“Good! I’m scheming to get away before Christmas. You and I will take a holiday trip to New Zealand for a month or so. We’ve both earned it, you know.”
Breakaway House Page 13
