TemptationUnder Foot
“WHATI have told you, Inspectore, is a bare citation of events, and purposely not stated in chronological order, meaning to gain your attention, and, I hope, understanding,” continued Dr. Linke, speaking slowly and as though repeating a previously composed address. “Permit me to go to the beginning.
“You understand my life here in Australia has been good. I have no complaint. I am, what you say, a free man in the mind. I can work hard at what I want to perform, and I have not to say: ‘Heil Hitler,’ or ‘Bravo, Mr. Menzies,’ at noon each day. Mr. Wickham, always he treated me with respect, and when we did not agree, he did not say: ‘You get out! I sack you.’
“Our life was very good. I respect Mr. Wickham. His mind was free of orthodoxy and he proved what he knew. And then he would ask: ‘What is proof?’ For what often in the past have proved to be true, had proved to be a lie in the present.
“He asked that I work along certain lines of investigation, so to leave him free to continue along other lines. He asked for my results. He was entitled to them. He was paying my salary, and he was being a very good friend. It was not for me to demand of him the results he was getting. And of his own work he told me very little.
“So, then, all of us were very happy to be with Mr. Wickham. We were sad to see him worried, and many times he was worried. Sometimes he would tell us. Sometimes he would-what you say?-bottle it up. Many visitors came for him. Some were meteorologists. And the newspaper correspondents. And the members of the board for Primary Producers. But the first visitors I suspected were bad persons were the two who came to the office on July three.
“The man who talked to Mr. Wickham, with the office door closed was-how shall I say?-perfume… o-oder…oderous…”
“In Australia we’d say he stank,” rumbled Mr. Luton and Dr. Linke smiled his gratitude.
“That’s it. The man stank. He betrayed his… his…”
“Stink,” assisted Mr. Luton.
“Carl means that the man’s appearance, his face, hair, eyes, everything gave him away,” Jessica Lawrence contributed.
“Ah! Yes, it gave him away. To me it gave him away,” went on the doctor. “He was from those persons who have become termites. He stink, no, stank, of those who are without a name because they have so many names they have forgotten their born name. And he had a shoulder pistol. The car driver also had one. The car driver never spoke but once, when he came in to lunch, and then he foolishly tried to make us think he was an Irishman.
“Two, three days after they had gone, Mr. Wickham said something to me that might relate to those men. He said: ‘Linke, d’youthink wars are started when the season is thought to be propitious for the aggressor?’ I told him that I thought it not a coincidence that the two World Wars began after the European harvest had been gathered. Then he said: ‘If a Hitler knew for fact that all over Europe 1960 would be a famine year, followed by another famine year, would he stock his granaries in the years ’58 and ’59 and start his war in ’60?’ Then he asked: ‘Can you imagine the value of long-range accurate weather forecasting to a would-be world conqueror?’ I replied that History tells much about victories and defeats caused by unpredictable weather conditions. He asked, not because he did not know. He wanted my agreement. So we agreed that accurate long-range weather forecasting would be a tremendous weapon.
“I remember Mr. Wickham looking at me a long time and thinking, so that his eyes were seeing strange and terrible pictures. After much time, he said to me: ‘It is comforting, Linke, to know we are not living near the Iron Curtain.’
“He would say no more, Inspectore, and he did not ever talk direct about the visit of two Eastern Europeans. Then, on July 13 was that telephone call. I recognised the caller’s voice. It was the manager at the Commonwealth Bank in Cowdry. I hide my money in that bank. He has helped me. He arranged for me to be a member of the Tennis Club. So I know his voice. He asked to speak with Mr. Wickham. It was ten minutes after eleven o’clock in the morning. So it was that Mr. Wickham was away with the estate manager. I said if I could give Mr. Wickham a message, and the caller said no, no, he would ring again. Then, as is polite, I enquired his name, and the caller was so silent.
“Mr. Wickham did not return until a minute before dinner. I saw him enter the house, saw Jackson, the driver, put the car in the garage. We had arranged some important work together that evening, and I waited until he came to the office to inform him of the call from Cowdry. He did not come to the office until after nine o’clock, and then to inform me we would work together another time as he had the engagement. Yesterday I spoke with Jackson, the chauffeur.”
Dr. Linke paused in what was a narrative to light his pipe, and possibly to highlight the climax. “What next occurred was that the manager rang once more when he knew Mr. Wickham would be at dinner, and he rang the House. My Jessica remembers Mr. Wickham was called to the telephone from dinner that night. He was two hours after dinner in his study, and then must have instructed Jackson to take him to Cowdry. He told Jackson not to speak of this journey, and Jackson spoke to me only because Mr. Wickham died. The car stopped at the private entrance to the Commonwealth Bank. It was then ten o’clock, and Mr. Wickham was with the manager for nearly one hour. When Mr. Wickham came from thebankman’s private door, two men came with him. The two men spoke a little moment with Mr. Wickham, and then walked away. Mr. Wickham entered the car, and Jackson brought him home.”
Dr. Linke having ceased talking, Jessica Lawrence rose to her feet, saying:
“I’m going to the kitchen, Mr. Luton, to make tea and sandwiches. I can’t see any relationship between the visit of those foreign men and the visit of Mr. Wickham to the Commonwealth Bank.”
“He didn’t bank with the Commonwealth, Sunset,” stated Mr. Luton. “I know that for a fact. And why go there at ten at night? If the manager wanted him to play cribbage or something, he wouldn’t have been so mysterious on the phone.”
“The only relationship I can see is that both occurrences are extremely odd. Now, where is the sandwich filling, Mr. Luton?”
“Better show you,” replied the old man, and together they left for the kitchen.
“Did he say anything to Jackson during the drive home?” Bony asked the Doctor.
“He did not say one word. Jackson said he spoke twice to him, and there was no reply. I did not see him after he returned. The next morning he seemed nothing unusual.”
“It would appear, Doctor, that Mr. Wickham did not visit the bank manager to play cards or to enjoy a social evening. Both the time and the period of time are against it. Was Jackson able to describe the men who emerged with Mr. Wickham?”
“It is for that I asked Jackson, Inspectore. He said he had noted the two who had called at the office, and the two with Mr. Wickham at the bank were not the same. He heard them say good-night to Mr. Wickham, and they were not aliens.”
“Perhaps Mr. Wickham kept his secrets as well as securities at the bank.”
“No,” replied Dr. Linke, a huge hand waving triumphantly. “I asked Mrs. Parsloe and she informed me she had gone to the Commonwealth Bank and the other two banks to enquire what they held for Mr. Wickham. They held nothing at all. And the lawyer had nothing, not even the will.”
“Does Mrs. Parsloe know that her brother paid that visit to the bank manager?”
“I did not tell her. Jackson did not tell her. We did not because Mr. Wickham had instructed Jackson not to say.”
“Did you happen to record the number of the car which brought the two men to the office?”
“No. But Jackson did so. It was X 10007. A Humber.”
“I must become acquainted with Mr. Jackson. Did Mr. Wickham ever say, even hint, that he might present his life’s work to a Government
… any Government?’^;
“I cannot be precise,” replied Linke. “I believe that Mr. Wickham tried much time ago to assist the Australian Government.”
“I might be able to answer that one,” Jessica said from the kitchen doorway. “Five years ago Mr. Wickham did approach Canberra. The outcome was that he was rebuffed on the ground that his methods were unorthodox in the view of meteorological experts. He told me that he would not again approach the Commonwealth Government. He spoke bitterly, and had every cause to do so.”
Mr. Luton nudged the girl, and she turned to take from hima tray on which were plates and a larger plate of meat sandwiches. He followed her, carrying another tray bearing tea cups and tea.
“Ben got no change from the Commonwealth Government,” he said, his eyes small and hard. “He never said why, but I know why. If theGov’ment had accepted Ben’s methods of long-rangeforecastin ’ all the duds in the Meteorological Departments would be out of work, and they’d all turnagin ’ theGov’ment at the next election.”
“It’s true, and that’s Australia all over,” was the support he received from Jessica Lawrence. “You can’t doanything, get anywhere, in this country unless you belong to a trade union. It doesn’t matter how clever you are, unless the powers that be say ‘Bless you, my brain child.’ Mr. Wickham was an outsider, so he couldn’t possibly know anything about weather science. There are fully qualified doctors working as labourers because they qualified in Europe and won’t be accepted by the local medical union. Carl has been a qualified meteorologist for fifteen years, and they’d put him to work ploughing or milking cows.”
Doctor Linke held up a hand, saying:
“Please, my Jessica. You ought not to speak so of the Government, of the leaders of this Australia.”
“I will, Carl. I can and I will,” the girl flashed at him.
“Same here,” shouted Mr. Luton, pouring the tea on the tray instead of into a cup. “To hell with theGov’ment, the loafing, lazy, money-grabbingbas…”
“Now, now!” interposed Bony, laughingly, “you must not unduly shock Dr. Linke, who hasn’t been long enough in the country to appreciate that one of our remaining freedoms is to gibe at the antics of our multiple rulers.”
Mr. Luton chuckled; Jessica squeezed her sweetheart’s arm, and Bony led the way to less contentious subjects. He felt that hewas knowing Ben Wickham much more than hitherto and that Wickham must have been a great man to have inspired loyalty in such contrasting people.
As the girl and Linke were leaving, she squeezed the hand of Mr. Luton, and thanked him warmly for his hospitality, and he looked down upon her from his great height and chuckled.
“Fine young woman,” he said when again seated with Bony. “I like that German more than I did. Some of ’emmust have had a rough time.”
“What he told us was significant,” Bony said. “There is one point, however, which isn’t as sharp as others. One day Mrs. Parsloe opens the private safe and does not find the secret notebook, and the next day the Investigation man arrives to put Linke through the mill. The period is too short between the time Mrs. Parsloe reported Linke and the time the CommonwealthI. S. man arrived. I must find out if he has an office at Cowdry, or was staying at Cowdry. And why.”
“Think he could have burgled the office for Ben’s books and things?” asked Mr. Luton. He smiled. “It would be funny if he did, ’cosI’ve an idea.”
“Many ideas are productive of great results, Mr. Luton.”
“Can you pick locks?”
“I am a professional,” replied Bony gravely.
“That don’t tell me much, but I’ll pass it. Down below there’s a chest what Ben kept things in. After we decided on that last bender, he went down there with some papers in a leather case. Might be we could take a look.”
This time Bony smiled broadly. “I saw a piece of wire just outside the kitchen door. As you suggest, we will look at once.”
He brought the wire when Mr. Luton was locking the front door. Then he made sure that the window blind was drawn that there was no possibility of anyone looking into the living-room-kitchen from without. He pushed the table to one side, and carefully rolled the linoleum so that it would not crack or crease.
“A long time ago, the Parsloe woman came and found me and Ben on a bender,” he said. “We’d got a supply of whisky from the pub in Cowdry, and she heard about it. So we dug the hole, as I told you, and carried the mullock down the gardenso’s no one would know. Ben had a friend up in Adelaide, and the friend has a son who has a car and an outsize caravan. So every year when the fishing is good, the friend and his son come down with a load of grog to keep us stocked up.”
Mr. Luton set a match to the wick of an oil-lamp. He lifted a trap-door to disclose a flight of wood steps flanked by a handrail. He went ahead carrying the lamp, and a moment later Bony stood in the cellar and began to chuckle.
“Whatd’you think of her?” asked Mr. Luton, having set the lamp on a bar of polished red-wood. Behind the bar the shelves were packed with bottles of spirits. In front of the bar were two cuspidors and two wood box seats. There were veritable stacks of cased spirits along one side of the cellar, which was as large as the living-room and the sitting-room combined.
“Are all those cases full?” Bony asked.
“Well, me and Ben never hadno use for empty cases.”
Bony sat on the pile of two which served as a seat at the bar. He noticed that none of the shelved bottles had been opened, and the proud Mr. Luton guessed the thought and said:
“We used to spend a lot of time down here, before Knocker called pretty late one night and we had to rush up top and straighten things quick enough to stop him getting suspicious. After that we didn’t use the place as a pub, just kept her as a store. Just as well, too, because the steps got awkward as time went on, and then there was always the lamp.”
“Harris doesn’t know about this cellar?”
“That’s right, Inspector. No one knows. Only me and you.”
“And Ben’s friend and the friend’s son?”
“They don’t know, either. When they brought the supplies we got ’emto stack it all in the sitting-room, and out in the shed. Brought it down here ourselves.”
“And how long has this been going on?”
Mr. Luton chortled, and was frank enough.
“Eleven year back I was sort of retired on a small place I had on the Darling, and Ben came there and wanted me to come and live near him. Said he owned a nice little cottage where I’d be comfortable and he could come and have a drink without being blackguarded by his relations. So I sold out up north and came here. Now he’s dead I think I’ll go back up north. They always say that once you’ve been on the Darling River you’re bound to go back to die on her. Ah, now! Ben’s box.”
Mr. Luton pulled down a stack of whisky to disclose a longcedarwood chest having a heavy brass lock and two heavy brass clasps, and, under the minute, Bony had the lid raised. There were several hard-board, loose-leaf files, a large envelope unsealed, and a green-covered notebook.