Before the moon rose it had been one of the darkest nights the elder brother remembered; now, with the cloud-masked moon above Bowgada, the blackness was replaced by a dull opaqueness permitting them to make out the other buildings and the outline of the aeroplane between them and the giant shed.
“That woman who ran to the house veranda – it wasn’t Frances, I suppose?”
“No. I think she was an Aboriginal woman named Nora. Tonger has been making love to her,” Harry replied, still wondering at his brother’s changed voice. It had been pleasantly modulated when he had last seen him years ago. Now it sounded coarse, harsh.
“You had a pretty rotten time?” he asked.
“Foul. I’ve been treated worse than an animal. Their plant’s in a series of caverns. I was kept with manacles on my feet, and chained up when not worked. A Russian who lived at the place was my master. He made a sort of cat-o’-nine-tails out of a stockwhip. He’d flog me without any reason; just for the lust of inflicting pain. I’m going to get him. I’m going to choke him to death. I’ve got to…”
“Hey…! steady, old man. Speak softly.”
“If you knew!” John’s voice held a sob. “I tell you I’ve got to kill that Russian, and Buck Ross, and a fellow called Jake, if I’m ever to get back my self-respect. I ought to be mad; I can’t understand why I’m not mad. How many guns have you?”
“One.”
“Give it me.”
“I’ll keep it, John. Go easy,” Harry urged, his own blood at boiling point.
“All right, but let’s do something. Let’s get going. I can’t stop here like this much longer. Let’s clean up the crowd here so that we can tackle those who are away when they return. We must stop Lawton getting clear in the plane.”
“I’ve an idea it’s guarded. Go carefully.”
Without noise they gained the ground, and there John Tremayne gripped his brother’s arms with such power that Harry stiffened.
“You give me that gun. I want it,” the younger man breathed fiercely. “Hand it over.”
“I’m keeping it,” affirmed Harry steadily, nauseated by the odour of his brother’s clothes.
“Hand it over, I say.”
“Don’t be a fool. You’ll get your chance. Remember that you’re still in the force.”
“No I’m not. I’m not a policeman. I’m not a man. You haven’t seen me yet in the light. Wait until you do. I’m only a beast, and I’ll always be a beast until I can clean myself with blood.”
“Steady! Steady! It’ll come out all right. You’ll get a bath and change of clothes presently and you’ll be a new man.”
Round the corner of the shed stepped a tall figure which halted as its peering eyes found the two brothers. The figure raised a heavy waddy but was not quick enough. The man died slowly, iron fingers closed round his throat, a sickening smell in his gaping nostrils.
“One – the first one,” snarled the semi-human being which rose from the body. “I don’t want the waddy nor your gun. I want to feel ’em die in my hands.”
If John Tremayne was not mad, he appeared to be verging on it. And with the passing of every moment Harry Tremayne was becoming more and more uneasy. A minute later he lost sight of his brother. Filled with foreboding, he decided to make for the house.
“I can hear another car coming – from the east,” murmured Colonel Lawton. Morris Tonger and he were still lounging on the dark veranda, although the time was after one o’clock.
“It’ll be Frances,” was Tonger’s opinion. He spoke with a note of regret in his voice which the Colonel did not fail to pick up.
“I hope so,” came the soft voice. “We three will get away in the plane at daybreak if your hunters fail to obtain a bag. Why fidget so? My retreat will be safe, and our money’s safe in foreign banks. We can start afresh with nothing to fear.” Presently he said: “Here’s someone with news.”
Out of the darkness sprang the figure of a running man. He wrenched back the gate and raced up the shaft of light streaming through the open doorway. It was Alec. He halted on the veranda breathing heavily, unable to make out the two figures until Tonger sharply asked him what was going on.
His reply was hysterical: “Jimmy – he’s dead. So’s Jacky Sparrow. So’s Billy. Billy and Jacky are under the plane. They’re both dead, boss.”
The squatter uttered an oath.
The Colonel got to his feet.
“You sure?” demanded Tonger.
“Yes. Too right, I’m sure.”
“You heard nothing? Where have you been?”
“Sneaking about. I heard nothing, not a sound.”
“Morris, you stay here,” ordered Lawton curtly. “I’ll get my torch and this man can come with me. It’s about time I took a hand in this hunting game in the dark. Send Miss Frances to bed when she arrives. Keep her quiet, anyway.”
Slipping along to his bedroom, Lawton entered and then emerged with a torch through the French windows. With Alec, he walked swiftly from the house.
Tonger, knowing that the cook was asleep in her room, had left Nora in the kitchen; but knowing, too, that Frances would want coffee after her drive, and would go to the kitchen to make it, he entered the house to take Nora to another place.
Her coming at this time was damned inconvenient. Showed him up, too, to Lawton. What a mess they were in, to be sure! All through Lawton being so cocksure of himself. Telling Tremayne everything to make him more dangerous! Pshaw! Devilish clever, but there were times when Buck Ross’s crude methods were preferable to finesse.
Nora cried out when he came into the kitchen and ran to cling to him.
Tonger scowled, but then relented and smiled. He kissed her passionate mouth, and soothed her with promises. His embrace lasted but a moment, for the squatter did not forget that this was hardly a time for love and kisses.
Beyond the house came the sound of the approaching car. With his arm round Miss Hazit, her head laid back firmly against his shoulder, they walked the long passage to the hall off which opened his bedroom. And in the hall Morris Tonger died without ever knowing what killed him.
LAWTON was flashing his torch on the bodies of two men lying beside the shadowy aeroplane, experience revealing to him the manner of their death, when a scream rang out from the house, a high-pitched dreadful scream. It came a second time but was cut short, as though shut off by the closing of a sound-proof door.
The car from Bowgada was quite close, and for an uncertain instant Colonel Lawton contemplated climbing into the cockpit of the plane and attempting to take off in the dark and with cold engines. It was, however, merely an impulse. In the approaching car was Frances Tonger. Once she was with him, that fool Tonger and his stupid gold-stealing could go hang.
“Wot’s up, Colonel? Who’s that yelling?” demanded Matthews, running up with a hurricane lamp.
“I don’t know. Those Tremaynes are evidently keen sportsmen. They’ve strangled the guards here. Seen anything of them?”
“Nope.”
“Have you a gun?”
“Too right.”
“Where’s your companion?”
“Dunno,” replied Matthews. “I bin lookin’ for ’im. Perhaps he’s bin corpsed, too!”
“You stay here. Keep your eyes open. I must see who’s coming in that car. Damn! That Alec’s disappeared. Wind up, I suppose.”
“Bout time we all got away, I’m thinkin’.”
“Fool! The game’s only just started. You’ll stay here to guard the plane. Shoot on sight. Do you understand that?” Lawton asked with silken politeness.
“All right,” Matthews said surlily. “Only don’t be long, or send me a mate. I ain’t as young as I was, and them stiffs…”
The Colonel strode off to the house, his giant figure illuminated by the headlights of the approaching car. The car had almost stopped when he reached the gate and he turned to welcome Frances Tonger. The dash light revealed the faces of the woman in the car and the tight-lipped man who drove
it. The woman was not Frances.
“Good night!” she said grimly. “Mr Tonger about?”
“I believe he’s inside the house,” the Colonel replied casually. “Will you come in?”
“No. I’m stopping here. Tell him to come out. Tell him a lady’s wantin’ to speak to him.”
“Very well. If you’ll excuse me.”
Lawton bowed and set off for the house, his mind working furiously at the problem this rude woman presented. Why the devil didn’t Tonger come out?
He stood motionless in the doorway for three seconds, then turned and came slowly down the path to the gate.
“I regret,” he said softly, “I regret to say that Mr Tonger has been murdered.”
“I’m not surprised to hear that,” announced Violet Winters. “It’s a wonder he wasn’t murdered years ago. I think I will come in. Mug – if there’s any funny business, shoot first and ask questions later. It’ll be safer.”
SMALL brown eyes screwed into pin points regarded the steady figure of Colonel Lawton. Pale-blue eyes examined the Amazonian proportions of Violet Winters. They stood either side of the dead squatter. Lawton’s hands thrust lightly into the pockets of his jacket, Violet’s hands concealed by the light rug hung over one arm.
“Did you kill him?” she demanded, like a woman asking a small boy if he had stolen an apple.
The Colonel experienced admiration, a rare emotion in him, for this square-cut woman who appeared to possess none of the weaknesses of her sex.
“No, I didn’t kill him. He was killed while I was over by my plane near the shearing shed.”
“Well, it’s a pity he couldn’t have got himself murdered outside the house. He’s spoiling the carpet.”
“It’s not our carpet,” the Colonel reminded her, unable to forbear giving her a wintry smile. What a woman! Indeed, what a woman!
“It’s nothing to laugh about,” she said severely. “Who are you?”
“My name is Lawton. I’m the dead man’s guest.”
“Oh! Have you seen Mr Tremayne, Mr Filson’s overseer?”
“Mr Tremayne! I don’t think I know him.”
“I don’t think you’re telling the truth. Take your hands out of your pockets when you’re in the presence of a lady. Bring ’em out slow like.”
No man cares to be addressed like a child, and no man likes to be reminded of his manners. The Colonel’s face paled and his eyes narrowed. He could not but note that Violet’s hands remained concealed within the folds of the rug, and he could not divest his mind of the idea that concealed, too, was a pistol unwaveringly pointed at him. His own right hand was wound round the butt of an automatic, and he had no doubt of his being able to fire first.
There were so many men dead at Breakaway House that his “retirement” to his second line, or retreat, no longer was a matter for speculation. A few more dead people would make no difference – but he wanted Frances. He drew his hands out of his pockets, slowly. They were empty.
“You’ve not yet told me who you are,” he said politely.
“I’m Miss Winters. I’ve come over from Breakaway House to find Mr Tremayne, as the policeman from Magnet who came with the doctor has gone to try and contact the Myme policeman. To stop you wastin’ time asking questions, I’m telling you that I think you know very well where he is.”
“Really, I don’t know your Mr Tremayne. I haven’t…”
“Where’s the telephone here?” Violet rudely broke in. “If you’re so innocent as you make out, why don’t you telephone the Magnet police about this murder?”
“The telephone’s over in the office. Please permit me to point out that you’ve hardly given me the opportunity to leave and telephone. All this business is going to be…”
“Very serious for you, I agree. Where’s Buck Ross and Matthews?”
“You appear to think…” the Colonel was saying as they turned towards the doorway. He broke off. Beyond the car at the gate – that used by Matthews to transport John Tremayne from the treatment plant, and behind which Mug Williams had halted Tonger’s car – a brilliant white flame was leaping skywards higher than the shearing-shed roof. The Colonel gave no indication, even then, of any emotion, but he was placed in the tightest corner of his adventurous life. Somebody had set fire to his aeroplane.
CHAPTER XXXIV
AGAIN SUNSHINE
WITHOUT undue haste and with a low murmur of apology, Colonel Lawton stepped to the doorway and passed through it to the veranda. Suddenly a voice ordered him to raise his hands above his head. Turning to his left, he saw clearly revealed by the burning plane the rock-like figure of Harry Tremayne.
“Back – into the house, Colonel,” came the sharp command.
With his hands held on high, his face as passive as always, Lawton obeyed, stepping backwards into the hall.
At the sound of Tremayne’s voice, Violet Winters, who was still behind the Colonel, experienced both astonishment and happiness. “To my unfortunate brother is due the deaths of three of Tonger’s men and Jake Matthews, and the burning of your aeroplane, Colonel. He has suffered badly at the hands of that gold-stealing gang, and it will require time to heal his poor mind. Your game is finished, and you’d better be resigned to that fact,” Tremayne explained. “Miss Winters – if you don’t mind – kindly relieve the Colonel of the pistol in his right-hand pocket.”
Lawton remained immobile, the vacuity of expression making his face terrible.
“Do not pass in front of the Colonel, Miss Winters. Take the pistol from behind him. I’ll shoot to kill if you move, Lawton.”
“I thought he looked a scoundrel from the first,” Violet said calmly.
She was drawing close to the airman when the engine of one of the cars standing at the gate broke into a roar and was driven away with terrific acceleration. Tremayne dared not remove his gaze from the Colonel. Violet now was directly behind the Colonel, and, too late, Tremayne saw that he dared not shoot if Lawton went for his pistol for fear his bullet would pass through the man and wound her. Lawton’s hand streaked for his weapon directly he felt her behind him, and he attempted at the same time to spring at the overseer.
But he had not reckoned with Miss Violet Winters, a woman of the mining camps of Western Australia. Her mighty arm went round him, her left arm, and sent him staggering to the right, and even as he was staggering, trying to pull out his pistol, the machine wrench she had hidden beneath the rug, and which he had thought to be a pistol, crashed down on his head and sent him to the floor like an expertly pole-axed bullock.
“Oh, boy! What a night!” she exclaimed, and sat down on one of the hall chairs. “And it isn’t over yet. Buck’s due to come. He’s around here for sure. And the shearin’ shed is alight, caught afire by the plane. What a night! Tie him up quick, and hunt out a drink. I’m dying.”
When Tremayne stood up from his task of handcuffing Lawton’s hands behind his back and tying his ankles together with window-blind cord, she smiled at him in a way that was different from her usual grim humour. Softly, almost crooningly, she said: “What a night, what a night to remember.”
“What are you and Mug Williams doing here? Have you brought Frances?” he asked.
“She’s over at Bowgada helping Ann Sayers to nurse Mr Filson,” Violet explained, going on further to tell him all that had occurred there. Then, a little defiantly: “Mr Filson was thought to be dying, so I told the Magnet policeman who came with the doctor all about you, and all about what you had been through and what you thought. Mr Filson told me, you see. And I knew a lot more. And you never came home when you promised. I knew you were up against something over here and I was afraid. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Not a bit, old thing. The job’s a little bigger than I can manage with John in such a bad way from the treatment he’s had.”
“I’m glad you’re not angry. The Magnet policeman and English took Mr Filson’s portable telephone with them on a truck to try and locate the break in the telephone
wire and get in touch with the Myme policeman. They’ll be coming across as soon as they can get here. Where’s Mug now?”
“He’s outside keeping an eye on things. How’s your nerves?”
“A bottle of beer would soothe ’em. What killed Morris Tonger?”
After Tremayne had examined the dead squatter and covered the body with the dining-room table cloth, he said gravely: “Clubbed. Were Ned and Nora at Bowgada when you came away?”
“No. Nora cleared off when Mr Filson was speared. We reckon Ned went after her. Say…do you think she came over here, and that Ned followed her and did…that?”
“Confidentially, I do think so. What’s more, I think Morris Tonger has been looking for what he got for a long time.”
“Perhaps Tonger was killed with that thing half hidden under that chair. Looks like the handle of something.”
She pointed at a lounge chair set in a corner of the hall, and from beneath it, where possibly it had skidded after being thrown down, Harry Tremayne drew out the Leonile club he had seen in Ned’s possession.
“So it was Ned,” he said steadily. “Ned came here through the line of men sent out to net me, and he’s departed with Nora to get through them again.”
“Burn it,” Violet suggested.
His brows rose.
“Burn it,” she repeated. “They’ve got feelings like the rest of us. Forget you’re a policeman.”
“I’m not a policeman,” Tremayne assured her with a grin. “I resigned some time ago.”
“Why?”
“Because…oh, because I wanted a free hand. I think I will burn it. By the way, did you stop at Acacia Well on your way over?”
“No. Why?”
Breakaway House Page 23
