Leave ItTo Alice
THErising moon was concentrating the shadows. It was touching the points of the picket fence, deepening the shadow beneath as though to delay shedding its light on the form lying in the cindered gateway.
That body was a development threatening to deprive Bony of the initiative. He had planned to go-get a mountain, and the mountain had moved to stand over the gateway. He had sent for Alice McGorr that he might gain greater freedom of action and less responsibility for Mr. Luton, and the little man had come to herald swift enemy counter-action.
From behind the edge of the blind in the sitting-room, Bony watched the front, wondering if the slayer of Knocker Harris was one of those men who had brought Tolnic from Adelaide. The Queensland heeler appeared crossing from the river-bank, and he came on till within a yard of the dead man, where he sat, and lifted his jowl and howled.
“What’s going on up your street?” asked Mr. Luton from his guard point at his bedroom window.
“Your heeler has found the dead man at the gate,” replied Bony, and then Mr. Luton saw the dog’s mate, which, wounded, had run for the kitchen door and died on the way.
“That’s what he’s crying about,” he said, and added: “I feel like crying myself.”
“Now you look up cheerful,” Alice advised, and the old man’s counter didn’t register with Bony, because the dog had ceased to cry and was staring along the track to the bridge, stiffly erect, the moonlight gleaming on his fangs.
Bony cautiously opened the front door, no light behind him, the veranda shaded from the moon by its iron roof. Sure that no one stood either side the door, he opened it still wider. Now he could hear the dog’s throaty growl, the animal low to ground, legs braced. Some distance away a car engine raced, but this could not be the cause of the dog’s attitude.
The picket fence ended at a wire fence keeping the scrub back, and at this point something moved, just beyond the white pickets. It was stalking the dog. Bony heard it say:
“Here, Towse! Lie down, old fellow. Good Towse!”
But Towse wasn’t taking it. His spring reminded Bony of Alice going into action off the floor. There was a spurt of dull fire, the metallic crack of a small-bore pistol. Then man and animal appeared for a moment atop the fence, then beyond it on the dusty track.
Unable to leave the door unguarded, Bony called for Alice.
“I’m here,” she said within two seconds.
“Wait.”
The car he heard had turned off the highway and was coming at speed towards the cottage. The uproar beyond the fence was certainly raised by a man being savaged by a dog, and they seemed like two crocodiles wrestling in a pool of silver. When the headlights of the car found them, Bony pushed back into the cottage and locked the door.
The car was stopped while its headlights still held the combatants. Men erupted from it. They counted seven, and among them were Boase and Sergeant Maskell.
“South Australian police,” Bony said sharply to Alice. “Now listen, because this gives you a ticklish job. They’ll demand admittance. Remember, you are Mr. Luton’s niece come to protect a sick old man from being hounded by violent strangers. Demand the search warrant. They’ll have it, more than likely. Rile them for always arriving after a murder, never before. Keep it going. I’ll prepare Mr. Luton.”
Bony snapped on the bedroom light, saying:
“The police are here. You’ve got to be ill.”
Mr. Luton regarded him with raised white brows and an excited gleam in his eyes. Bony winked. He knelt before Mr. Luton.
“You look quite ill, Mr. Luton,” he said, loudly for the benefit of the prisoner. “You must lie down. Take it easy. The excitement is too much for your heart.”
Off came the slippers. With Mr. Luton’s assistance off came the coat and trousers. Mr. Luton was in his under-vest when there was loud knocking on the front door.
“Hold them, Alice,” Bony softly encouraged.
“Get off that veranda,” screamed Alice in the best traditions of the inner suburb in which she had been born and had lived for twenty-five years. “I can see you through the winder. If you don’t clear out, I’ll shoot your whiskers into the river.”
“Now, now!” one said, and Bony could recognise Boase.“Police here. Don’t be afraid. Let us in.”
“Police here!” mocked Alice, scorn enough to wither his soul. “Where’s your search warrant? Go and get it. And get yourselvesabitta manners.”
The handle of the back door was turned, but even the prisoner wasn’t interested. Alice scoffed and abused and threatened. The already splintered door shuddered, and someone said:
“If you don’t open up, how can we serve the warrant? Stop your stupid screeching and listen.”
“Shove it under the door,” yelled Alice, when, attired in pyjamas, Mr. Luton was sliding under the bedclothes. As he was expected to look sick, he suggested the blue-bag in the wash-bench cupboard. A smear of blue on the lips heightened the effect produced by a trembling hand on the coverlet.
Bony returned to the kitchen. The prisoner was terrified. Bony stood before him and said reassuringly:
“The less you say about me, the easier it will be for you.”
He went on to the sitting-room door, waited for Alice to pause to tell her to offer no further resistance. He slipped back to Mr. Luton and sat on the chair beside the bed. The front door was giving trouble; he could hear a hinge being torn off. Then light was born in the sitting-room.
“Now where’s your warrant?” shrilled Alice. “Police me foot. You’re not policemen. Why, you all got hump-backs. Now don’t all talk atonce. Which one of you knifed poor Mr. Harris? Goon, own up, you murdering lot of scum.”
Boase said, with a keen edge:
“Shut up, and look at this.”
“Oo-o-o!” gasped Alice.“Superintendent and all.” She gave a short pause. “So you are police. And like all your rotten kind you arrive when all themurdering’s done. You couldn’t have got here before, could you, you great big flat-footed slob.”
“Pipe down,” snarled Boase.“Dead man outside the gate. Another specimen fighting with an unfortunate dog. Dead man lying right here. What else?”
“What else!” shrilled Alice, thoroughlyaroused. “Another gunman anchored to the kitchenbench, and me uncle sick of a heart attack, and him paying taxes and things. Ain’t that enough? Wait till I get a reporter. Wait till I tell the papers about all this. Wait…”
“If you don’t shut up,” roared Boase, “I’ll have you taken outside and anchored to a tree.”
Alice put on a realistic act of hysterics.
In the kitchen a harsh voice commanded the prisoner to get up. The little man moaned, and the harsh voice called Boase to look at the handcuffs.
“Police cuffs, be gob!” exclaimed Boase.
“My equipment,” Bony loudly informed him.
Men spun around, then crowded into the bedroom, where there was complete silence seeming to last for a week. Boase stood behind Sergeant Maskell. There were four other men not known to Bony. He said icily:
“You will not make a commotion. The owner of this property, into which you have unlawfully broken and entered, is a sick man, as you must observe. His trouble is of the heart, brought about by the assault on this house by gangsters, and added to by the illegal entry made by yourselves, I presume without a warrant.”
“Who are you?” a man asked, and Boase straightened to restrain himself from laughing loudly.
“Him! He’s Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.”
The questioner was large and tough and had a face well schooled to evade emotion. He said:
“In that case, Inspector Bonaparte, you’re headed for a load of trouble. You better tell us now about these killings.”
“You can get out of here,” weakly complained Mr. Luton. He endeavoured to rise on an elbow, sank wearily back to the pillow and called Alice. She appeared behind the burly figures masking the door-frame, pushed in between them and stepped hurriedly to the bedside.
“Empty these pests out of my room,” commanded the ‘ailing’ man.
“Yes, Uncle.”
Alice straightened, glared at the intruders. She opened her mouth to take in steam, and Boase beat her to it by saying:
“All right! All right! Get out of this, chaps. Anything to stop her starting. Come on, Bony. It’s up to you to watch your step.” They crowded into the living-room, and Bony freed the prisoner. And then Boase said: “Now, Bony, we’ll have it.”
Bony leaned against the cupboard beside the stove. His long brown fingers were suddenly occupied making a cigarette. His eyes were masked, almost sleepy, and a slight smile puckered his lips. He applied a match to the cigarette before saying coldly:
“You will now take it. The man on the bed in there is the owner of this house. I am his guest. We have had trouble from strangers before you came, and when you arrived there was no riotous disturbance in this house. You demanded admittance. When asked for a search warrant, you said you had one. I then asked Mr. Luton’s niece to admit you, but you broke down the door before she could do so. Your search warrant-at once.”
“Now look here, Bony,” began Boase. “It won’t work. There’s been murder done inside and outside this house. You can’t play the fool.”
“Waste of time,” the pan-faced one cut in. “For your information, Inspector Bonaparte, I have here a warrant for your arrest.”
Boase waved him back.
Bony bowed. “I know Sergeant Maskell, Super. Please present your other associates in illegal practices.”
“We’re Commonwealth Investigation, Bonaparte, and you can chew on that,” gave the man with the arrest warrant. “Unless you give tongue, we’re taking you in.”
Aware of the jealousies between the Commonwealth and the States Police Departments, Bony played it, for the events of the immediate past had befogged issues already involved. Looking to the two South Australian policemen, he said:
“As you know, I am on leave of absence, and the guest of Mr. Luton. On several occasions I met Mr. Luton’s nearest neighbour, one known as Knocker Harris. This evening, at about seven-thirty, I was looking out of the front-room window, admiring the moonlit night and considering what bait I would use to-morrow.” He then described the actions of the two men who appeared in the clearing, their arrival on the veranda. “I opened the door in time to see Harris collapsing to the veranda floor, and the other man racing to the gate. He still carried the knife and was slashing at the dog. Although on leave from duty in another State, I have duties to observe as a police officer. I called on the man to stop, and when he did not obey my order, I fired to enforce obedience.”
“By shooting him dead?”sneered theC.I. S. man.
“In view of what occurred earlier this evening, Superintendent Boase, and in view of the fact that with me in this house is an old man and a young woman, I am prepared at any time and place, either at official enquiry or in the press of Australia, to claim that I did not fail in my duty.”
Bony outlined the events of the late afternoon, ending with the entry of the little man armed with an automatic pistol, and his capture and confession-what there was of it. He went on:
“Prior to these events, there have been strange happenings in this part of the State of South Australia; unlawful activities by several persons. One: the office of the late Benjamin Wickham was broken into and ransacked, this crime not being reported, as far as we know. Two: men came here and employed threats and menaces for the purpose of pumping Knocker Harris for information concerning the late Mr. Wickham’s work and papers and, three: a Miss Jessica Lawrence was waylaid when she left this house late one night. The car used by these persons was destroyed and reported to the local officer as an accident. Also, a Dr. Carl Linke was removed by persons purporting to be police officers. And I had been enjoying two or three days of peaceful fishing when someone in Cowdry reported to someone to have me recalled to Brisbane, according to what Senior Constable Gibley inferred one pleasant afternoon.
“There, Superintendent Boase, you have sufficient material on which to base your investigations. The foreign gentleman present will no doubt supply valuable information. The dead man at the gate is obviously his accomplice, and the third man with whom he came from Adelaide is the person attacked by the dog he failed to shoot. There are other matters we can discuss at your leisure.”
“Now is the time, Inspector Bonaparte,” Superintendent Boase decided, and the left eyelid just barely flickered. “I arrest you on a charge of manslaughter.”
“But you can’t do that, Super,” interjected theC.I. S. man. “I have already a warrant for his arrest, and power to conduct him to any lock-up in the country. You know that.”
Boase stretched, yawned, grinned without mirth.
“This is my territory,” he said stonily. “Bonaparte is my prisoner.”
“But you can’t…”
“Don’t be a blasted fool. Killings are my job.”
“Yes, and get to hell out of it!” shrilled Alice, appearing among them. “My uncle wants peace and quiet and something to eat. Nowdefongerate. This isn’t an opium den. Go on! Imshi!”