ItPays to be Dumb
HAVINGGAINEDFREEDOMof movement without arousing speculation, Bony rode one of the youngsters along the sandy track leading to Johnson’s Well. From the Well the track flowed over uplands ofbelar, pine and mulga, for thirty miles to the eastern border ofPorchester Station, on and on to pass by the homesteads of two settlers and so to the railway at the town of Ivanhoe. It was by this track that Gillen had come to the out-station of Lake Otway.
It could be conceded that there are better places for meditation than the back of a young horse on a very hot afternoon, but the heat gave the horse something to think about and, being entirely devoid of humidity, was not unpleasant for the rider.
So far Bony could make nothing square in this mystery of Ray Gillen and his vanished treasury.
All that had emerged for the intuitive Bony was that those men and women who were at the out-station when Gillen announced his intention of going for a swim now waited with anxiety for Lake Otway to die. What did they expect, or dread, or hope from the death of the Lake? Did they foresee that, when the sun had sucked up all the water, the skeleton of Ray Gillen would prove he had not died from accidental drowning and thus start a murder investigation? Were that so, then five men and two women were associated in the murder, and this would seem exceedingly unlikely. Did they hope that, when Lake Otway dried out, the missing money would be exposed, and was it for this reason that every man and both women had continued in their employment here?
They were united by two bonds: their anxiety concerning the coming death of the Lake, and their front to everyone not present when Gillen went swimming for the last time. In all else, each of them was opposed to all the others.
Having reached this stage of his investigation, he was not dissatisfied with his progress, and again decided all he need do was to wait, when the people concerned would inevitably reveal exactly what did happen to Ray Gillen and his twelve thousand pounds.
At Johnson’s Well he dismounted and neck-roped the horse to a shady cabbage tree. The well was situated on the bank of a creek some two hundred yards from the sandbar which prevented water running from the Lake when the level there was nineteen feet.
The hut was built with pine logs and had an iron roof. There was no glass in the one window, and the door required new hinges. Near the hut was the well, spanned by the windmill, and flanked by large iron tanks from which water could be discharged into lines oftroughing for the stock. There was an engine shed and a supply of oil to work the auxiliary pump when the wind failed. Beyond the well were the horse yards, and an apparently abandoned reservoir tank stood in isolation between these yards and the engine shed.
A familiar scene for Bony: composed of sand and drowsing box trees, grey creek banks and flats, summer heat and flies, and, in winter, icy winds sweeping over the low dunes to keep the air heavy with gritty particles. A mere living place for men willing to put up with utter absence of comfort in order to earn a cheque.
Evidence of the work done byMacLennon and Lester was plain. The mill had been greased and the reservoir tanks were full, but the ball-cocks had been chocked with wood to prevent water running into the troughs. The oil engine had been serviced and run. There was, too, evidence that George Barby had been here with his utility.
The interior of the hut hadn’t been touched. The floor was of packed rubble from termite nests. The long table was flanked by the usual forms. There was a bench under the glass-less window, and white ash still lay heaped on the open hearth. When Bony entered he disturbed a dozen rabbits, and they crowded into a corner and wished they had wings.
He had boiled water in his quart-pot and brewed tea, and was sipping the scalding liquid when he heard the rising hum of a motor engine, and was not at all surprised whenBarby’s brown utility heaved over the hard sandbar and came along the creek bank, empty water tins rattling, and three dogs barking at the tethered horse.
Barby stopped at the tanks, waved to Bony and proceeded to fill his tins. The dogs came across to make friends and then lie in the hut shadow with Bony. One of the rabbits charged out through the doorway, and the dogs simply were not interested. They accepted rabbits with the boredom with which they tolerated their stick-fast fleas.
Barby eventually came over to squat and load a pipe.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Layin’off?”
“Toughening a youngster,” replied Bony. “Where are you camped?”
“Couple of miles round the Lake. There’s millions of rabbits coming to water, and I’mgonna fence a strip of coast and trap ’em.”
The cook was no longer a cook. He wore a grubby grey flannel vest, old and patched tweed trousers and rubber-soled sand-shoes which once could have been white. The sun already had sizzled his face and bare arms, had puckered his hazel eyes and stiffened his brown hair.
“If I had a farthing for every rabbit around this Lake,” he said with slow emphasis, “I’d claim to own half Australia. Heard over the air once thatthere’s five million rabbits in Australia. Well, all but ten of ’emisdrinkin’ at Lake Otway.”
“All but ten million?”
“All but ten. Eight, nine, ten. Those ten is down at Canberra laughing at the scientists. You think thatmysotis any good to bump off all the rabbits in Australia?”
“Myxomatosis!” corrected Bony. “No. It’s partially effective, I think, on small farms and along rivers where the mosquitoes are busy.”
“Therabbit’ll beat the scientists, don’t you reckon?” Barby persisted.
“The rabbits will beat any germ, any man, any thing,” Bony said with conviction. “What the people in the cities and towns cannot grasp is the immensity of this land mass called Australia, and another thing they cannot grasp is that the Australian rabbit has been fighting droughts, sun, eagles and foxes, poison baits and GeorgeBarbys for a hundred years, and is still winning.”
“Too right they have,” Barby agreed, earnestly. “Nothing’s going to stop ’em. Why, the young does when they’re six weeks old begin to litter fives and sevens every six weeks after. They’re the greatest breedingmachines that ever was. Let ’emmultiply, I says.”
“They do eat feed and drink water needful for stock,” Bony mildly countered.
“So what?”Barby asked. “Theyain’tdoin ’ no real harm to Australia. The rabbit is the poor man’s food and always has been. If the scientists do knock them out, which they won’t, and if the squatters do rear twice as many sheep, will the price of mutton be any lower? Will the cost of blankets and clothes be any cheaper? Or the price of tobacco and booze come down any? No hope. But the squatters and the farmers will be able to buy more motorcars and machinery to rust away in the paddocks, ’costhey’re too damn lazy to put ’emunder cover, and they’ll pay a bit more in taxes to let the blasted politicians have more world tours and get higher pensions when the people heaves ’emout into the cold, cold snow. And that’s all the scientists are being paid to bump off the rabbits for.”
“Don’t worry,” soothed Bony. “Brer Rabbit will last for ever. How are you to clean them up here?”
“Drop-netted fences. Stop ’emgetting to the water. Or stop ’emmakin’ back from water. Water they must have. And feed they must have. Wish Red could turn up. Me and him can skin five thousand a day. He’s a champ. And five thousand a day for five years wouldn’t be missed round Lake Otway. How are yougettin ’ on with the gals at the out-station?”
The unexpected question momentarily rocked Bony.
“Pleasantly enough,” he replied disarmingly.
“Bit stuck up with you?”
The indirect reference to his birth was not missed. As it was not intended to hurt, Bony took firm hold of the cue and played the stroke.
“Perhaps they think I’m dumb. A caste earning good money. Be nice to him, and he’ll be persuaded to send down to the city for expensive presents.”
“That’s about it, Bony. They never tried it on me, but there’s them they have. Chisellers, they are. Been here too long. But blokes like me and you can see through them. You hear about the feller who was drowned in this Lake?”
“Yes. Red mentioned him at dinner one day.”
“Name of Gillen, Ray Gillen. Went swimming in the Lake one night and stayed put. So they say. Me and Red has other thinks about that. I was trapping at the time, but living at the men’s quarters. Things were getting sort of tense, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh! How, tense?”
Barby had let his pipe get cold, and he picked up an ember from Bony’s fire, balanced it on the bowl and drew noisily.
“It’s a sort of history,” he said. “Beginning from whenthem women came out from Broken Hill. Everything was smooth as pie then and they certainly made a difference. The young’un could ride; Martyr used to take her out to look at the Lake and things.
“Then, accordin ’ to Red, there was a sort of bust-up. Red added a sum and probably got the wrong answers, but Martyr suddenly stopped taking the girl out riding. Seems that the mother complained she was left to do all the work, but it could be she was jealous at the daughter getting off with Martyr.
“Anyhow, after that it got sort of quiet, right up to the time Gillen came. He came from Ivanhoe way, and he had to push his bike the last half-mile to this place ’cosit broke down. He had tucker with him, so he camped a day or tworight here and tried to fix the bike. When he couldn’t, he walked to the out-station with the part that wanted fixing, and it happened all the blokes were out. So he stayed there till Martyr came home, and Martyr repaired the part and give him a job the next morning.
“From then on things hotted up at the out-station. Both the women fell for Gillen, and he was supposed to be after the girl. Then there was a fight between him andMacLennon, and although Mac’s done some ring work, Gillen beat him. He’d take the girl out on his bike. Then he’d take the mother for a ride, and they didn’t know which of ’emhe was after. He almost came to bashing Carney who camped with him and, being of about the same age, they sort of stuck together. Lester said something cross-eyed, and Gillen floored Lester, and apologized next morning. The women got intoholts over nothing, so they said, but under it was Gillen. Then one night we all goes to bed, and he decides to go swimming, and that was the last anyone seen of him.”
“Any trouble that day?”Bony asked.
“No. Been no trouble for a week. The night he went for a swim we was all playing poker in the quarters.”
“Money?”
“No. Matches.”
“Gillen had a suitcase,” Barby went on. “It was a flash case, too. He kept the key on a cord with a gold locket round his neck. And one day Red wassittin ’ on Carney’s bed yarning to Gillen, and Gillen wanted a change of undies, and takes off the cord to open the case. And after he took ’emout he had to kneel on the lid to lock the case, it was that full.
“The day after Gillen was missed, Martyr got me and Lester to looksee while he goes through the case to find out who Gillen’s relations are. I didn’t know then what Red saw about Gillen kneeling on the lid, not when Martyr opened the case. The case wasn’t full at all. It was less than three parts full. It’s only after Red and me talked it over that we wonder what happened to the inside of that case from the time Red seen Gillen open it to the time I seen Martyr open it. It wasn’t as though Gillen’s few things on the bed table made up for it. They didn’t.”
Opportunity favoured Bony.
“You say Gillen always kept the case locked. And the key on a cord round his neck. How did Martyr open it?”
“How? Why, he just pushed the catches aside. Cripes, Bony! You’re all there. I never thought of that angle. That case wasn’t locked when Martyr opened it.”
“Martyr didn’t have the key and the locket on the cord?”
“Not that I remember. No, he couldn’tof had. Gillen had the cord round his neck. He never took it off, that I do know as well as Red.”
“And you think someone took something from that case?” Bony prompted.
Barby nodded, slowly, significantly.
“Yair, Bony. Money wastook from that case.”
“Money!”
“A lot of money. I’ll tell you why I’m sure it was money. Seven or eight days before Gillen got drowned, I was along the shore one night looking at me traps. There was a moon, good enough for me to work without a light, and I’m coming back from the end of metrapline… I wasworkin ’ a hundred spring traps… when I heard voices, and I just had time to slip behind a tree.
“I seen it was Harry Carney with young Joan Fowler. They wasn’twalkin ’ arm-in-arm. Justwalkin ’ polite. Joan says, calm as you like: ‘I’m not marrying on a few hundred pounds, Harry.’ And Harry says: ‘Well, the four hundred odd I’ve got saved up would give us a good start.’ She says: ‘That’s what you think. It wouldn’t go far these days. When I marry you you’ll have to be rich. And you know what to do.’
“Harry says: ‘Now look, Joan, I couldn’t do that, even though the moneymusta been stolen, and he wouldn’t dare to make a song and dance about it being stolen from him.’ Well, that’s what I hear ’emsay before they got too far away. I waited by that tree and presently they comes back, still arguing about a lot of money someone’s stolen and what could be stolen in turn. Joan says: ‘Aren’t I worth it, Harry? Think of the wonderful times we’d have. You know I love you.’ Harry still says he couldn’t do it, whatever she wanted him to do about stealing stolen money. And she was still kidding him on when they got out of my hearing.”
“And you think Carney knew there was a lot of money in Gillen’s suitcase?” Bony pressed, nonchalance well acted.
“Yes. I didn’t know what to think at the time, but Ithunk it out since.”
“But Joan didn’t marry Carney, so Carney couldn’t have taken money from Gillen’s case.”
“That’s so, Bony. But Carney knew the money was in the case, and he told Joan about it. I’ll bet he looked inside the case that morning he woke up and found Gillen hadn’t come back. He could have taken the money then and planted it somewhere. Or someone could have beaten him to it. If it was the moneymissin ’ what sunk the tide in Gillen’s case, then someone’s got it and whosoever is still at the out-station, ’cosnot a man left the place since Gillen was drowned.”
Bony looked dumb, frowning perplexedly at the cook-trapper.
“I don’t get it,” he admitted. “If anyone took a lot of cash from Gillen’s case, then why didn’t he go on a bender? If Carney took it why didn’t he run off with Joan?”
“That beats me, too, Bony. But I’m as sure as we’resittin ’ here that Carney and Joan knew about a lot of money in Gillen’s case, so much money that it must have been stolen. P’raps, when Carney wouldn’t lift it, Joan got someone else to do it, and that someone double-crossed her. There’s double-crossing all round, if you ask me. They’re all like hungry dogswatchin ’ each other to find out where the bone’s buried. And nicely planted that bone is, I’ll bet.”
“You may be right,” conceded Bony, feigning admiration ofBarby’s perspicacity.
“I’m right enough,” Barby averred. “And you andme could do a deal. You keep your eyes and ears open. Tip me off about what goes on over there. We might find that planted dough, and then we go fifty-fifty. We can easily face out in myute, and nothing could be said bynobuddy .”