The Sting-Ray
ON REACHING MERINO shortly after four o’clock, the two constables sent by district headquarters were given a late lunch by Mrs Marshall, who had relinquished her nursing duties to the trained Mrs Sutherland. At five o’clock they reported to Sergeant Marshall, who was alone in the station office.
“Thewife fix you up all right?” he inquired in his official manner. On being assured that “the wife” had certainly done that, he sent one of them to relieve Gleeson at Dr Scott’s home. When Gleeson returned he asked:
“Seen anything of the inspector?”
“Yes, Sergeant. He’s been with the doctor for an hour. Then he went over to the parsonage, and after he left there he came up the street and went into Fanning’s shop.”
“Hum! Seems to be busy. You go out and ask the wife for a cup of tea. May want you to stay on duty. Hear how Florence was when you left?”
“Still unconscious.”
Marshall sighed, and Gleeson turned about in his stiff military manner and departed. The second constable from headquarters was seated at Gleeson’s desk reading a newspaper, and to him the sergeant said:
“At any time now Inspector Bonaparte will come in. I’m telling you because to look at him you wouldn’t think he was an inspector. I didn’t when I first saw him. He’s middle-aged and of medium build-a half-caste but not the kind we see knocking about the bush. You’ll know that when he looks at you.”
“All right, Sergeant.”
Marshall returned to the work of compiling a report. The constable returned to his newspaper. Through the open window came the familiar sounds of this bush township towards evening, the sounds of lethargic human activity beneath the piping of birds and the drowsy humming of nearer blowflies. The wind had gone down and was coming coolly from the south. In his secret heart Marshall was wishing for the old-time conditions of normal life when there were no worries additional to maintaining local order and being scrupulously careful with reports. Howcould he concentrate on this one?
Gleeson came back and sat bolt upright in the chair opposite him. He sat as though he were having his photograph taken. The sergeant glanced up at him, then back at his writing. But somehow writing was impossible. He liked Gleeson. Men cannot work together in harness for years without getting to know each other. A bit of a crank on efficiency and abiding by rules and regulations, but a sound man at heart. A good one, too, to have with one in a brawl.
A footstep sounded on the front porch. Marshall wanted to say “Thank heaven” or something like that. Gleeson stood up and crossed to the other constable, who also stood up to attention when Bony came in.
“Ah! Here we are, Sergeant,” he said briskly, adding: “Hope you haven’t been thinking I got bushed or actually had eloped with Mrs Sutherland. Thank you.”
“Have been wondering where you had got to, sir,” Marshall told him without smiling.
“I’ve been doing a little visiting, Sergeant. Interviewed the parson and paid my respects to his wife. Had a chat with Mr Fanning and went into a huddle with Dr Scott. And now, I think, we are all set.”
“Meaning, sir?” asked Marshall, his eyes abruptly big.
Bony smiled, and Marshall was never to forget his face in that moment. In the dark blue eyes lurked that expression he had seen when, on the threshold of his daughter’s room, he was told to go and dress. In the smile he saw the triumph of the aboriginal about to throw his spear at the kangaroo he has been stalking for hours.
“Constable Gleeson!” he said sharply.
“Sir!” replied Gleeson, and strode to the desk.
“I want you to go along and ask the elder Jason to step in here for a moment.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Er-you will see to it that he arrives.”
“Very well, sir.”
Gleeson turned about.
“Oh! Gleeson!”
“Yes sir!” Gleeson turned back and faced the man sitting in the place so familiarly occupied by Marshall.
“It might be as well to take a gun,” Bony advised, and the air was sucked between Marshall’s teeth with a soft hiss.
“Very well, sir.”
Bony, the sergeant, and the constable watched Gleeson stride over to the big safe, in the lock of which was the key. They watched him swing open the door and take from the interior a heavy revolver in its leather holster attached to a black leather belt. They watched Gleeson buckle the belt round his hard, slim waist, saw him take up his hat, and watched him leave the room. They heard the sharp but light step of this mounted constable in the passage without, and then on the porch. After that, in the comparative silence, they listened. Then Bony spoke softly.
“I think we can leave that little duty safely to Constable Gleeson,” he said. “However, you, Constable, go to the front gate to be on hand if Gleeson whistles for assistance, or if there is any shooting.”
Marshall came nearer the seated Bony.
“Is Jason the man?”
“Jason is the man,” replied Bony. “Providence did drop several important clues into my waiting hand, but today I have really exerted myself. When we have lodged Jason in safe custody we are going to open a bottle of beer-perhaps two bottles.”
“When did-”
“No more just now. I’ll talk it all over with your tame justice and deputy coroner when he arrives. Give me ten days in the jug, would he?” And Bony flashed his normal, sunny smile. That passed away before another mood, and he said: “The law is a terrible thing, Marshall. Think now! We have just given an order to a constable to gather into the law’s grip one little human being. From now onward police and legal officers will be preparing to fight to uphold the law of the country, and others will be preparing to defend the man from the law’s grip. And so the fight will go on and on over one human being who has been caught in the cogs of a machine. You and I are merely the teeth in one of the cogs of a machine which is greater than all the generations of man who have constructed it. And the man caught in the machine is no longer a man: he is merely a piece of living clay, to be fought over and disposed of as other men will.”
“Are you going to charge him now?” inquired Marshall.
“Yes. Ah… here they come. Keep an eye on him. He might start something.”
A short procession entered the office. It was led by the constable from divisional headquarters. After him came Mr Jason, followed by Gleeson.
“Good evening, Mr Jason. Come and sit down,” Bony said pleasantly, and the tall, lean, and not undistinguished man advanced and sat down in the chair opposite Bony.
Jason had discarded his working overalls and was wearing an old brown lounge suit. Bony was reminded of when this man sat on the seat of justice rather than when he leaned against a bar counter and exhaled tobacco smoke for long duration. Mr Jason turned in his chair to look at Gleeson, the constable at the door, at Marshall, who sat at the end of the table desk and thus was able to guard the window. In his full and rich voice he asked:
“What is the meaning of all this?”
The long thin nose was the only feature that held colour. Against the white cheeks and chin the full moustache lay like a black mark. The dark eyes were big beneath the raised brows.
“I may be wrong, Mr Jason, but I think it was a gentleman named Sam Weller who used to say: ‘Cut the cackle and get to thehosses,’ ” Bony replied. “Sound advice. I am going to charge you with the wilful murder of George Kendall on the night of October eleventh.”
“You astonish me,” said Mr Jason calmly. “I presume that you have good and sufficient reasons for such action. I would like to hear them.”
“Yes, Jason, I will outline them to you, although it is not my practice so to do,” Bony assented. “You are a man of above average intelligence, and also one with me in appreciation of the dramatic. Gleeson, will you please search Mr Jason.”
“Stand up! Hands above your head!” snapped Gleeson. Mr Jason obeyed. The constable by the door came swiftly forward to stand behind Mr Jason. With the artistry of a conjuror Gleeson produced a wallet from an inside pocket, pipe and tobacco and knife from a side pocket, and an automatic pistol which seemed to come from a hip pocket. The weapon was deftly passed to the constable behind Mr Jason, and the other articles were placed on the table before Bony. Jason was then ordered to sit down.
“The pistol is not registered,” he said.“A technical fault.”
“To one having your knowledge of the law, Jason, you will agree that it is not inconsequential… now,” Bony told him. He pushed across the desk the tobacco, pipe, and clasp knife, and added his own box of matches. Gleeson frowned heavily. Bony continued: “You might like to smoke, as my recital of facts will occupy a little time.”
“I thank you.”
A silence fell within the office as Jason carved chips from the tobacco plug. When he had cut sufficient from it he laid down the knife and, whilst he was shredding the chips in the palms of his hands, Gleeson’s hard hand slid by him, and picked up the knife. That action made Jason smile coldly. He filled his pipe, made sure that the little nicotine-catching cup at the bottom of the bowl was secure, and laid a lighted match against the tobacco.
As he was known to do in the hotel, so now did he draw and draw vigorously, inhale and inhale, until it seemed impossible that he could breathe. Twice Bony had observed him doing that locally famous act, and on each of those occasions Jason had been very angry. Jason was angry now, but he did not show it. The pipe held in his right hand, his hands came to rest upon the desk. He regarded Bony with his face void of expression.
“Well now, to make a beginning,” Bony said. “You were born and educated at Bathurst, and there you served your apprenticeship to your father, who was an undertaker and wheelwright. Your only brother eventually set up in business as a chemist in Sydney.
“You became well known, first in Bathurst and subsequently in Sydney, as an actor, and the reason why you did not take up acting as a profession was because of your father’s dislike of the stage. When he died the theatre was almost submerged by the moving pictures, and you, having inherited his business, carried on the business until you failed. Your wife then being dead, you came with your son to set up in business here in Merino.
“Here in Merino, cut off from all association with the stage and with people having literary tastes, you began to brood upon the ill fortune which had overtaken you. When you were insulted in the hotel by Kendall about your passion for acting, I discarded that as motive for killing him. It was, however, contributory to the motive, which has been the most baffling feature in this case.”
The tobacco smoke which Jason had inhaled was now beginning to trickle through his pursed lips. His face was still devoid of expression, and his hands resting upon the desk were perfectly immobile.
“The motive should be interesting, if not original,” he said. “Please proceed.”
He passed the matches to Bony when that lover of the drama took a cigarette from the little pile he had made whilst waiting for Gleeson to return with his prisoner. Bony lit a cigarette and noted the thin stream of smoke continuing to issue from Mr Jason’s lips. Then he went on:
“You see, Jason, there is a case on record similar to your own, and this previous case is noted in a volume on medical jurisprudence in Dr Scott’s library. In 1943 in England an inquisition was held on a young man who had a strong propensity for watching windmills-you know, the old-fashioned windmills having large latticework sails for arms. He wished to be tied to one of the arms and so go round and round and round. He would actually sit for days watching a windmill.
“You became a windmill watcher through first staring at the cooling fan of motor engines in your garage. It became an obsession with you, and your son discovered it and did what he could to wean you from a practice which would have ugly results to yourself. I myself once heard him shout at you to get away from the engine I saw you watching.
“Within a radius of three miles of Merino, there are three modern windmills. They are: the one at the town dam, the one at the homestead of Mrs Sutherland, and the third at Sandy Flat. You could not watch any one of those mills during daylight hours, firstly because your son would stop you, and secondly because you knew that others would be bound to observe you. But you could watch a mill in action on a moonlit night.
“The town dam mill was barred to you because an employee of the Shire Council lives in a hut there, and, moreover, this man is in the habit of returning to his hut at all hours of the night from Merino.
“The best mill of the three for your purpose was at Sandy Flat. There a station employee rarely lived. And so you often visited Sandy Flat and released the mill, then climbed to the tank stand to be as near as possible to the fan wheel so that you could watch it whirling round and round in the moonlight.
“Sandy Flat, however, is three miles away, and so you hit on the idea of riding there and back on a horse, a car or truck being out of the question by reason of its engine noise. You could not very well keep a horse yourself, because your son would get to know the purpose of it, and so you approached the Rev. Llewellyn James and you told him a story of romance.
“You told him that you wished to pay court to Mrs Sutherland and that you feared the reaction this would have upon your son. You suggested to the reverend gentleman that he should have a horse to use in his parish work as a change from the somewhat old car provided by his parishioners. You offered to buy a good horse for him, and to pay the feed bills and the stabling charges provided that he would permit you to use the horse at night to pay secret court to Mrs Sutherland. Mr James demurred. He didn’t like the idea of riding a horse as a car demanded less exertion. So you offered to pay him a pound a week honorarium if he would assist you in your ambitions of the heart. Mr James accepted and finally grew to like horse riding.
“And so, Jason, you would leave home late at night, take the horse from Mr Fanning’s yard, having also taken Mr Fanning into your confidence, and ride out to Sandy Flat, where you would release the mill regardless of whether the tank was full of water or not.”
Mr Jason listened with stony calmness.
“Watching windmills is not an illegal act, Jason, but one cannot approve, however, of your action in putting into the minds of two men the thought that Mrs Sutherland was receiving secret court from you. That is of no concern to the police, but it most certainly should have been the concern of the Rev. Mr James. The little scene between him and you at the graveside of the swagman put me slightly out of gear, as your son might well say.
“The employment by Mr Leylan of a stockman at Sandy Flat stopped your visits to the mill there, and there was no other that you could visit with safety on moonlit nights. Kendall, the man employed at Sandy Flat, appeared to be satisfied with his home, and that urge in your mind to watch the revolving fans of a windmill became steadily stronger and stronger-until finally you decided that Kendall would have to be removed.
“It is, of course, impossible for me to follow the process of your planning to remove Kendall, but it is fairly certain that an objective of even greater importance than killing Kendall was to give the hut an evil reputation so that Kendall would have no successor. The killing would have to be done inside the hut, or in its vicinity, not here in Merino or elsewhere in the bush.
“Your greatest obstacle lay in the natural conditions at Sandy Flat. All about the place, outward from it for a mean distance of half a mile, the ground was covered with fine sand. There were no patches of wire grass, noclaypans, over which you could pass without leaving tracks for even the police to see if the wind did not erase them. How to achieve that passing over such ground without leaving tracks? As Longfellow wrote, how ‘Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen’?”
Into the dark eyes gazing so steadily and so solemnly at Bony flashed an expression of pain, and for the first time Mr Jason interrupted:
“It was not Longfellow who wrote that line, but Shakespeare,” he said.
Bony bowed his head, saying:
“Thank you for correcting me, Jason. No doubt that line was in your mind when you planned to murder George Kendall. Anyway, you found that by wrapping strips of hessian about your feet your footmarks were made infinitely more difficult to discern.
“You may correct me again later on, but it appears that the time Kendall was killed was not quite of your own choosing. You knew that Kendall came to town on the evening of the social dance, and that he had booked in for the night at the hotel. Here was an opportunity for windmill gazing. Late that evening you rode from Merino on the horse presumably belonging to Mr James. You tethered the horse well back in the scrub and walked in your hessian-covered feet to the mill, and when your passion had been satiated you walked back to your horse.
“You may correct me on this point, too, later. When you got back to your horse you found Kendall quietly waiting for the horse’s rider, quite probably thinking that the rider of that tethered horse was engaged in a spot of sheep stealing. You were discovered.
“The wind was blowing strongly enough to wipe out the faint imprints made by your hessian-covered feet, and you knew that a windy night was essential. And so you killed Kendall with a billet of scrub wood, and you carried his body to the hut.
“Then you discovered that the body had bled during its journey on your back, and, properly to stage the killing inside the hut, you killed one of the ration sheep in the near-by pen, drained its blood into a basin, and then spattered the sheep’s blood over the floor about the dead man’s head.”
Mr Jason’s hands moved slightly.
“In such a case as you present, Inspector, I would not impose a fine of five shillings,” he said. “It is based entirely on assumption prompted by imagination.”
Bony’s brows rose a fraction, and he said, with no trace of triumph or exaltation in his voice:
“Indeed, it is not so, Jason. You were seen to carry the body into the hut. You were seen to kill the ration sheep and drain its blood into a basin which you took into the hut. You were seen to skin and dress the sheep’s carcass and to hang it in the meat safe so that the police would assume the killing of the sheep had been done by Kendall before he left for Merino.”
Mr Jason leaned forward over the desk and stared at Bony.
“Who saw me?” he demanded, and over the face of Constable Gleeson spread a mirthless grin.
“Why, the man you strangled with a strip of hessian,” Bony replied with feigned astonishment that such a question should be asked. “Unfortunately for you, that man was a genuinesundowner, not an ordinary stockman looking for work. Put yourself in his place. From some point of concealment, probably on the far side of the meat house, he saw you coming with Kendall slung over your shoulder. He watched you go to the pen and kill the sheep and bring back its blood in a basin. He saw you enter the hut with the basin of blood, saw you come out again, saw you go back to the pen, and then saw you come to the meat house carrying the skinned carcass of the sheep. He noted the hessian covering about your feet. It was quite simple for him to put two and two together.
“After you had gone, did he walk to Merino and report the matter to the police? No. Did he travel to a station homestead and report there? Of course not. That class of men hate the police and would not be drawn into a murder case on any account. He argued thus, however. He argued that it might be many days before the body was discovered, and during that period one of his ownclass might happen along and blunder into the scene of the murder. And so, in loyalty to his own class, he drew on the door of the hut a warning to keep away.”
Bony paused for Mr Jason to comment.
“Thatsundowner didn’t hate the practice of blackmail like he hated the police. He wrote to you and arranged that you hand him money or place money for him to obtain, perhaps, underneath the hut. You forestalled him by reaching the hut before he did, carefully wiping out your own faint tracks with a flail, and when he entered the hut you-but you know all that happened, for it was related to you when you held the inquest. Matches? Certainly. The pistol which the constable has just removed from your person you obtained from the body of the man you strangled and then hanged.”
“How do you know that?” Jason asked, and exhaled the last of the smoke.
“Thesundowner was known to have an automatic pistol in his possession when he was at Ned’s Swamp Station homestead,” Bony lied. “Tell me, why did you visit old Bennett the night he died?”
Jason smiled that cold and humourless smile.
“As you seem possessed of such imagination, albeit uncontrolled, why not try to guess?”
“Very well, I will,” Bony agreed. “Old Bennett had learned from his daughter or his son-in-law that you had an arrangement with them and Mr James to take the minister’s horse at night to visit Mrs Sutherland. Old Bennett chided you about it in the hotel, and you decided to-er-bump him off.”
Jason placed the stem of his pipe between his white teeth and slowly nodded his head, saying:
“You are even good at guessing, Inspector. Is there anything else?”
“Having killed the swagman, why did you hang the body?” Bony asked.
“I did it to make it appear that Way hanged himself in remorse for having murdered Kendall. That would have cleaned up the Kendall case and stopped men from living in that hut for a long time to come. Again, anything else?”
Mr Jason might well have been terminating an interview.
“Yes. You might tell me why you wanted to kill Rose Marie?”
“I did not want to kill the child,” replied Mr Jason. “I didn’t want to kill old Bennett. But I saw clearly that I would have to. Old Bennett dropped dead when he saw me outside the door, and so saved me the trouble. I overheard Rose Marie tell you beyond my garden fence that she had promised my son not to tell of something she had found out about me watching windmills. I couldn’t trust to a child’s promise, and so I decided to kill her.”
Mr Jason lit his pipe and gravely handed the matches back to Bony. No longer was his face expressionless. There was a faint colour in his cheeks, and his eyes became quick in movement.
“As it has all turned out,” he said, “I am glad that I did not kill the child as I intended, and I hope she will recover. If I had had a daughter like her… but no matter. You see in me, Inspector, a man whom life has thwarted. My father thwarted my ambition to become a great Shakespearean actor. My wife was an ambitionless creature, and she thwarted my desire for a son who might have become what I wanted to be. And then when I came to see glorious visions in revolving fans my son attempted to thwart me there.”
“What did you see in the windmill vanes?” interjected Bony.
Jason’s face actually glowed. His eyes became glittering orbs. The cold pipe became clenched in his two hands.
“It was like looking through a doorframe beyond which was a scene of wondrous delight. I used to step through the door-frame, and I would find myself being interviewed by newspapermen, or gazing at great and colourful signs announcing that the Great Jason was to play Hamlet or Othello. All the visions I had had in the past came to reality when I stepped into the windmill vanes. I lived as I had always dreamed of living. I didn’t really live at other times. And I shall never again enter the spinning, shimmering vanes… no, never again… for the graveawaits… for me… even for you.”
“Where did you obtain the chloroform?” asked Bony.
“From my brother in Sydney,” was the answer spoken under the stress of emotion which was swiftly mounting in intensity. Into the dark eyes swept remorse, and when Jason spoke again the rich intonation was absent. “I ought not to have said that. I got it when I was down in Melbourne some time back.”
“And the strychnine with which you poisoned your son’s dog?”
“Oh, that! One can buy pounds of it in any store, and cyanide, too. The sale of such poisons should have been stopped years ago. I wrote to the Premier about it, but no notice was taken.” Once more the eyes of Mr Jason burned, and he went on: “I have done a little good in my life… not much. I could have done far more had not life thwarted me. And now… the end.”
Mr Jason slowly rose to his feet, and Gleeson’s hands rose in readiness and Gleeson’s eyes bored into the back of the prisoner’s head. Mr Jason came to stand at his full height. The pipe was held in his two hands. He stared above the seated Bony and Marshall, stared out through the window. His voice was deep and clear when he cried:
“ ‘Thoughdeath be poor, it ends a mortal woe.’… ‘He that dies pays all debts.’… ‘Death is a black camel which kneels at the gates for all.’ ”
The fingers of the right hand, which had been placed upon the bowl of the pipe, flashed to his mouth. In them was the little cup which collected the nicotine at the bottom of the bowl.
Gleeson was too late. His arms swept about Jason’s body, imprisoning the man’s right arm and the hand which had conveyed the cup to his mouth. Jason spat out the cup, which fell upon the desk.
“ ‘Thetongues of dying men enforce attention like deep harmony,’ ” he quoted. “I am no gallows meat, nor will I rot among a community of lunatics. I…”
His dark eyes blazed like black opals. His back became arched against Gleeson’s chest. And then, like a lamp going out, the warmth faded from his eyes, and Gleeson laid down the body.