Breakaway House

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Towering above his companions was a huge man whose sole garment was a pair of tattered dungaree trousers. His hair and beard were greying, and, at Brett’s approach, he swung round to glare at him with wild bloodshot eyes. He was clearly mad with rage. “What for you takeum Nora in homestead, eh?” he shouted. “Nora belonga me. You sendum Nora out quick, or by cripes we put fire-stick into place and smoke her out.”

  “No, you won’t, N’gobi. And you others won’t help N’gobi, either,” Brett told them sternly. “You others will get tucker off the cook and go back to your camps. Now, N’gobi, you come with me. You have to go back to gaol. The white man’s law says so.”

  “White man’s law no good, boss. Blackfellas’ law say Nora belonga N’gobi, go back with N’gobi,” shouted one of the flashily dressed men. “Blackfellas’ law make Ned fight us for taking Nora from N’gobi.”

  “N’gobi hasn’t any right to Nora. N’gobi was in gaol and will have to go back to gaol. Someone had to look after Nora while he was in gaol, and Nora chose Ned. If you break the white man’s law you will all go to the white man’s gaol.”

  There was a sudden movement from the small crowd, and, soon after that, the crisis. N’gobi shouted strange curses, taking two paces towards Brett and his companion. Neither saw who threw the spear which pierced Brett’s right shoulder. The force of the heavy missile spun him right round and on to the ground. He heard N’gobi’s savage yell; then was deafened by the crack of Jackson’s pistol. Following the explosion came a sudden silence broken by the sound of a heavy body crashing to earth.

  Brett was on his knees holding the heavy spear in his two hands, trying to lift it to stop its leverage bending him forward. He had to get up to prevent that fool of a Jackson from shooting all the others. Didn’t he know that Jackson when once his blood was fired? Yet somehow, strive as he would, he could not rise to his feet. The spear was too heavy, holding him to the ground as though it were fastened there. He could see Ned running from the house, the dreadful Leonile club swinging round his black head. As he twisted his agonised body he saw N’gobi’s relations break and run towards the scrub.

  N’gobi was lying still, the dim light glistening on a round blob slowly issuing from the exact centre of his forehead.

  Soddy Jackson began firing into the air and yelling terrific oaths. From the house the shotgun roared twice and the rifle began to bang at intervals. Yells from the departing blacks drifted back to join with the shrill cries of women.

  The daylight faded at last, but it was not the darkness of night which swept over Brett Filson.

  “Take it out! Take it out! Why don’t you take it out?” The woman’s voice was low, shot through and through with anguish. She was kneeling beside Brett Filson, gazing at the heavy spear as though she would never see anything else.

  She heard Williams say in staccato tones: “It don’t look like one of them barbed ones.”

  “Take it out! Why don’t you take it out?” reiterated Ann Sayers.

  Although Jackson merely whispered, she heard him say with a shudder: “Fetch a good saw, Charlie. We’ll have to saw off the shaft and see if we can get out the point after we’ve got him on his bed. He’ll bleed a lot and we’ll want swabs. Where’s Millie?”

  Ann felt herself lifted up, and she struggled because she did not want to leave the man she loved. After all the waiting time, to have found him, and now to lose him!

  “Miss Sayers,” she heard Violet say. “Me and you have got to get busy. Come on! You hunt up clean linen for bandages and I’ll see to the hot water. The men will bring him in.”

  Ann experienced exquisite weariness but when they neared the kitchen door strength suddenly returned, and it was she who urged Violet into the house.

  As they entered Millie came running towards them. “She’s gone! She would go! I tried to stop her, but she would go!” she cried vexedly.

  “Who do you mean?” Violet demanded.

  “Why, Nora! She said she wouldn’t stay to be taken by N’gobi. The shooting! Are they coming to the house?”

  “No,” said Violet quietly, “N’gobi is shot dead and the others have cleared out. They speared Mr Filson. The men are bringing him in now. Now get to the stove, and heat up water,” she added more loudly. Violet then became positively dynamic. “Come on! Lights! Get the light going! Where’s Miss Tonger?”

  Frances had remained with Brett. She was calm, was wondering at her calmness as she supported Brett’s head while Jackson cut through the spear about six inches from Brett’s shoulder, with English steadying the wood for all his worth.

  “Now we’ll take him inside, Charlie. You lift his legs. No – I’ll take his legs. You’re stronger than me. You take his head. Lift him steady. Steady, now. Here, Ned! Pass your hand under him. Take Ned’s hand, Miss Tonger. Easy, now! Remember his harness. Cripes! He’s heavier than he was when I carried him back after that stunt, or maybe I’m getting weaker. Easy does it.”

  Soddy Jackson’s face was transfigured. Gone was the perpetual melancholy, the habitual grouch at all the world. Even his voice was altered. It was deeper, resonant, revealing a sense of power.

  When they arrived at Brett’s room and Brett was lying on his bed, Jackson glanced round at the others crowding near the open door. English and Mug Williams looked on with strained faces, Ned’s eyes were rolling, Millie was crying, Ann Sayers appeared to be a statue and Frances was steady but very pale. Only Violet Winters seemed unchanged save for the glare in her small round eyes.

  “All you get out and be ready to bring them things,” Jackson snapped, waving his long-fingered hand to everyone but Violet. “Miss Winters, you’re for it and no faintin’ allowed. You got to be the nurse. Now then, towels, linen, potash. A basin of water and a can of water, quick. Keep that range stoked, Millie.”

  It was fortunate that the spear was plain pointed, not barbed. The point was drawn out easily but much blood was lost before the deep wound was washed out and plugged.

  “Wonder if it touched his lung?” Jackson whispered. “Might have done,” whispered Violet. “Mighty close if it didn’t. We’ll have to get the Mount Magnet doctor as quick as he can get here. Old Jonton at Myme will be too drunk, like as not, even if we could reach him on the telephone.”

  “That’s so. We don’t want no medical drunks round here. Put that harness out of sight. He wouldn’t like Miss Sayers to see that. Bit gone on ’er, he is.”

  “So’s she on him. Let’s lift him so we can put a clean sheet under him. That blood…”

  “We’ll have to ring the police, too. Boss didn’t want ’em here tonight, but we’ll have to ring ’em now.”

  “Who threw the spear? N’gobi?”

  “Dunno. No, it wasn’t N’gobi. N’gobi jumped when the boss was hit. I didn’t wait no longer. He got wot he was looking for. Them Mausers hit hard.”

  “Where did you get him?” was Violet’s morbid question.

  “Head. Dead centre,” replied Jackson, as though shooting people in the head, dead centre, were a natural thing to do.

  When everything these inexpert hands could do for Brett had been done, Ann and Frances were called in. Ann was “ordered” to watch the patient and report any change. Frances remained with her, and she could hear the telephone in action.

  Violet Winters rang up Breakaway House from where Bowgada could be switched through to Mount Magnet. Morris Tonger, who happened to be engaged with Colonel Lawton in his office, replied to her call.

  “This is Miss Winters, speaking from Bowgada. Put me through to Mount Magnet, quick.”

  “You appear to be in a great hurry, Miss Winters,” Tonger said with assumed cheerfulness.

  “I am. Look! Your friend and accomplice seems to have cut the wire to Myme, so I can’t ring up old Jonton. I want the Mount Magnet doctor quick. So don’t you start arguing and waste time. No, No! Mr Filson has been speared by N’gobi or one of his cobbers. Of course, N’gobi’s dead. Didn’t expect him to be alive, did you? My friends
here shoot straight, and you can tell that to Buck Ross. And tell him, too, that next time I meet him I’ll put him in hospital for six months, and in the home for blind men for the rest of his life, or until the hangman gets him. Don’t you start, now. You put me through to Magnet. I’ll talk to you after I’ve spoken to the doctor and the police. The police – remember?”

  CHAPTER XXXI

  THE COLONEL’S PLANS

  BECAUSE he was sure he would be shot if he offered resistance, because he was so sure, Harry Tremayne permitted himself to be tied in such a fashion that to escape was out of the question. Vigilantly menaced by Lawton’s pistol, he was compelled to sit on the floor with his back against one of the wooden pillars supporting the roof. Tonger then tied his hands behind the pillar, lashed his body to the pillar, too, and gagged him. Effective concealment was provided by a number of bales of wool-packs walling him about like the walls of a small room.

  There was only one policy to adopt – obedience, with the knowledge in mind that dead men can no longer even hope.

  “It’s unnecessary for Whitbread and his helpers, who will be shortly returning with more of the iron boxes, to know of your presence here,” explained the Colonel. “Even though you’re gagged you’re capable of making gurgling noises which would attract their attention. As it is not my wish that you should attract their attention. I shall strike you with this iron bar if you do so; and, because I’m not practised, it is possible that I might strike too hard and kill you. Being a thug is not my usual role, I assure you, and therefore I fear that my inexperience could produce results fatal to you.”

  Harry Tremayne forced mocking amusement into his eyes, since the gag prevented his registering amusement in his face. Actually he considered his position to be extremely grave; for, seated opposite him, a long bar of iron across his knees, was one of those rare mortals not shackled by fear, emotion and selflessness, a man who could kill with much less feeling than the average man swats a march fly.

  The first time they had met Lawton had effectively kept hidden the cold, passionless, ruthless facet of his nature; but now there was no necessity to retain such a veneer, which after all was a boring task. This was the truth forced on Tremayne. Seated opposite him was the natural man; on the former occasion, Colonel Lawton had been cramped and cabined like a small boy dressed in his Sunday clothes.

  He had never before met a man like Lawton. His sergeant had once described to him a man he had taken for murder who perhaps belonged to Lawton’s type; the type of human being who kills without experiencing emotion, without feeling the lust to kill, who kills merely to remove an obstruction or a danger as the ordinary man might cut down a tree which blocks a splendid view.

  The policeman found it difficult to understand why a man of Lawton’s calibre should traffic in cocaine. He was reputedly rich long before he engaged in it. He seemed to be a man without the human weaknesses which demand satiation by the power of money; the one possible reason behind his activities lay in the danger of the life, the excitement, such as had dominated his activities during the war. With the coming of peace tens of thousands had yawned their heads off with boredom.

  Whitbread and his assistants returned on the truck and they could be heard re-baling the wool. The presses whirred and thumped for an hour or more, and the day was waning when at last Tonger ordered them to their quarters on the completion of their labours.

  “How does the weather look?” he was asked when he entered the small space about the prisoner.

  “Much like rain,” replied the squatter, glowering at Tremayne. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “Nothing drastic, Morris, until it becomes certain when I can leave,” Lawton said, his brows knit in a frown of perplexity. Quite abruptly his face resumed its habitual expressionless placidity, and to the bound man he said: “You see, my dear fellow, you know so much it’s absolutely essential that you die in the near future. Dead, you’ll not feel the loss of a few years of life. Actually, the loss is imaginary, for the loss will be of the future. We cannot really lose what we’ve never had. If I’m a little hazy on the point, please forgive me.

  “The last time I was here, a swagman calling himself Robbins proved to be an inconvenience. It appeared that he knew a little about a gold-stealing gang with which Mr Tonger is associated, and because he learned a little of my organisation, it was necessary to remove him.

  “I left orders that Robbins – I’ve recently learned that he’s your brother – was to be put to sleep, but I find that he’s been employed by the gold thieves at their treatment plant. That’s a small matter for settlement between Buck Ross and me.

  “My intention is to incapacitate you both – being brothers you will have no cause for jealousy – with expertly given injections of cocaine, and transport you in the charge of Buck Ross to my north-west station, tomorrow if the weather permits. You’ll then be taken to sea in my launch, still in the care of Buck Ross, and when a school of sharks has been attracted by the killing of a goat you’ll be passed overboard to them.

  “A peculiar thing about sharks in Australian waters is that they’ll seldom take a dead man. As fish abound off the north-west coast they are rarely hungry. I’ve found that to effectually dispose of a man it’s necessary that he be given to them alive for his struggles in the water arouse the sharks. However I can assure you that a school of aroused sharks cause death much more quickly than drowning. It may be of some consolation to you to know that after Buck Ross has fed you to the sharks I’ll send him after you. I’ve no objection to you telling him that. In fact it will interest me to watch how he reacts for, although he won’t believe you, the idea will persist and make him cautious of me. He’ll use what little brain he has and it will amuse me to watch him use it. You see, I’m a strict disciplinarian.”

  So John was alive! That was indeed good news. And he, Harry Tremayne, was not dead yet either. If it rained, Lawton’s departure would be delayed, and every moment added to his span of life would increase his chances of longevity. “Lucky Tremayne” it had been up in the Kimberleys. To date, “Lucky Tremayne” it had been on the Murchison. The news that John still lived was splendid. If only he could send off a telegram to his anxious mother!

  Lawton was looking at him with calm but terrible eyes as he discoursed on the failings of men and women who killed without plan or foresight, and of the extraordinary efforts of some to destroy their victims’ bodies when there were to hand such simple methods.

  No wonder they had tried to shoot him from the balancing rock, Harry Tremayne thought. Unaware of what Violet Winters had told Brett, Tremayne still thought that the treatment plant must be in the vicinity of that rock, and thus his brother must be there too, instead of it being seventeen miles north. In fact the midnight lights indicated the position of Lawton’s cocaine store.

  So Buck Ross was due for a gruesome end. If the worst came he would not inform Ross of Lawton’s little plan. Tonger had gone to the office to telephone to Ross to come at once just before Whitbread came back with the truck, and Ross should be arriving at any moment. Frances, Ann, Violet and Brett would all be over at Bowgada, wondering why he did not turn up. It was a shame that they had to worry, but he could not have left the Breakaway House shearing shed until he learned why all these wool bales had been half emptied.

  Of course, the wool had to be baled during the shearing. In the first place, nothing else could be done with it, and even were it possible to defer the baling – an unheard-of procedure – far too much suspicion would have been aroused among the shearers and shed hands. And the cocaine could not have been buried in the bales during the shearing operations. Clever – damned clever – to get cocaine into England via Australian imported wool. What Customs officer would think of that channel?

  Left alone the prisoner’s optimism evaporated. It began to dawn on him just how desperate his position was, and the assertion that he and his brother were to be kept in a state of paralysis with cocaine injections was an even more h
orrible fate to contemplate than the awful death promised. Once his body was paralysed, even the hope of escape would be taken from him. He wished that he was not so confoundedly uncomfortable.

  He heard the oncoming car long before it stopped – as far as he could judge – outside the office. Two minutes later it went on, humming up the long grade towards Mount Magnet, and, he supposed, the area of surface rock directly behind the promontory on which stood the balancing rock. Without doubt, that area of surface rock was used to turn a car or truck so as to leave no tracks to arouse curiosity. Now the silence was broken only by the petrol engine working the electric light dynamo. Tremayne waited patiently for the next development.

  And it came from a quarter which astonished him. Round one of the walls of wool-packs slipped a well-built girl whom Tremayne recognised as the one who had given him the note from Frances. Her features were fixed by the temperature of fear, frozen despite the warmth of determination. With the fingers of one hand laid against her red mouth and a butcher’s knife held firmly in her right hand, she advanced upon him, and in a few seconds cut him free from gag and lashings.

  “Don’t speak! Rub! Hurry!” she whispered swiftly gathering the rope and the gag into a heap.

  She revealed intelligence above the ordinary when she said on her return from a short absence: “I’ve hidden all that. It’ll make them wonder if you were really tied to that particular pillar and it might give us a little time when wanted. Come with me. I know where we can hide. Go on, rub. I’ll watch at the door.”

  She flitted beyond his range of vision, a winsome, graceful figure, and he fell to massaging his cramped legs and arms, fighting the exquisite pain of returning circulation, his wonder at her mingling with plans for the immediate future.

  There was one thing of which he was certain. If discovered by Lawton, Tonger, or Ross, he would be shot down like a dingo. They would have to do it out of self-preservation, and the thought made Tremayne understand that devilish cunning and foresight of the Colonel. Make an enemy so dangerous that his death is inevitable and lesser men become ruthless. What a man! One to whom fear, repugnance and human frailties were unknown; a tyrant who played on fear, repugnance and frailties in others.