Dual Mysteries
THE DUAL mysteries at Burracoppin were getting more interesting. Detective-Inspector Bonaparte was realizing that the disappearance of George Loftus was a little more profound than a pavement murder. The case presented features that made it stand out from other cases of human disappearance or even of murder. He had traced the farmer for one mile along a little-used track to a gate crossing a busy highway, a lonely tree-girt place from which the nearest habitation was more than a mile distant.
At this time the Loftus case comprised three main questions. Was the man killed near the York Road gate and his body cleverly hidden? Did he plan his disappearance and board a car for the purpose of leaving the district? Did he walk on and finally reach his farm?
The problem of Mr Jelly was even more extraordinary. What lay behind his absences? In what business was he engaged which during a time of financial stringency supplied him with money? What could that business be which so remarkably affected him? From what Mr Jelly had said, he and Loftus were friends. Certainly they were near neighbours. Was there any connection between them, their absences from their homes, the strange business of Mr Jelly?
These questions engaged Bony’s attention during the Monday afternoon following the return of Mr Jelly. He sought answers to them while slowly he drove his horse and dray along the east side of the rabbit fence south of the York Road.
At this time he believed that the Jelly case could be cleared up with ease, and he decided that before dealing with it he would test the third significant question relating to the Loftus case. Did Loftus reach his home?
Could he prove that George Loftus never had reached his farm, and lack of evidence went a long way to prove it, he would be obliged to follow other avenues of investigation, avenues he would follow if he spent a year of time, sent his chief, Colonel Spender, to his grave with worry, or received permanent dismissal from the Queensland Police Force. Death only would draw him away from this absorbing case.
On the Loftus farm the two men were still stripping the wheat. The land east of the farm and the fence was uncleared, the bush comprising tall white gums standing in thick-growing scrub. Arrived at the camp site half a mile south of the Loftus gate from which Hurley had heard the dogs howling the night Loftus disappeared, Bony unharnessed the horse when the dray was pulled into the best shade and kept level by propping its shafts with the drop sticks. Giving the horse the four buckets of water it needed, he secured it with a neck rope to a tree from which he suspended a bag feeder. Quite accustomed to being tied to a tree all night, the horse was content to feed, and Bony made sure that the length of rope permitted it to lie down when it wished.
The sun was still high and hot. He made a fire and boiled the billy for tea. He moved the water tank to the front of the dray, pushed his swag against it for a back rest, and then sipped his tea whilst seated on the floor of the dray away from the ants.
A rabbit which came from a bush and nibbled chaff dropped by the horse recalled to Bony the absence of Ginger, who had departed with Inspector Gray three days before to join his master. And it was memory of Ginger which recalled Hurley’s statement that he had heard the Loftus dogs howling when last he camped here. It was to test this statement made to Mrs Poole, and to grasp opportunity, if presented, to learn more about the Loftus household that he was here.
All dogs will howl, but not all dogs will bark. A dingo will howl, but never bark as a domesticated dog does. The wild dog, the cross between the domestic dog and the dingo, very seldom barks, delighting to howl in concert with the pack or when alone in answer to another dog. Domestic dogs will howl at the moon for no special reason of which man knows, and it is not yet established that they howl only when saddened or grieved.
Yet, despite all this, there remains the fact that domestic dogs will howl when unable to accompany a loved master. Very often they howl when the master dies, irrespective of the master’s colour. Where the subject provokes discussion is in the question:
Does a dog howl because it knows its master has died?
When the sun went down, Bony ate his supper of cold mutton chops, bread, and butter from the enamelled billy, which was wrapped in hessian, saturated with water, so that the evaporation might keep the contents hard.
Whilst he ate he watched Mick Landon coming over the stripped stubble, wondered if he was coming to speak to him, and wondered where he was really going when Landon jumped the fence, wondered till he saw him cross the fence track and made for the Jelly farmhouse, half a mile east.
Landon returned in the dusk, carrying a machine part which he had borrowed from Mr Jelly or from Lucy. He came to Bony’s camp, to say pleasantly enough:
“Good night! Didn’t I see you at the dance?”
“Yes, I was there,” Bony replied, looking up from his cigarette making. “A good dance, too,” he added.
“Too right. We are having another next Saturday night at the Jilbadgie Hall. Sure to be a crowd from Burra. You could get a lift in a car.”
“Where is Jilbadgie Hall?”
“The hall is close to the Ten-mile Gate. Try and get down. It’ll be a good dance.”
“I’ll try,” Bony compromised, casually examining this open-air worker, whose magnificent body was boldly outlined beneath the armless cotton vest. The man’s face, chest, and arms were whitened by the harvester’s dust, yet he appeared clean, most certainly he had shaved that day.
“Was that you walking over our rock Saturday afternoon?”
“Yes. I was asked to tea by Miss Jelly, and I walked a straight line from Burracoppin.”
“Rough country.”
“Very. Yet I preferred it to the dusty roads.”
“You could have got a truck ride.”
“I could, but I like using my legs. It is what they were given me for. If I come to the dance I might walk the ten miles.”
In the fast-falling light Bony was carefully scrutinized.
“You must like walking,” Landon said. “You’re lucky to get a job with the Rabbits these bad times.”
“Influence, my dear man, influence, not luck,” Bony told him lightly. “The Black Hand Society, you know.”
Landon laughed at this, and the laughter enhanced his good looks. Yet somehow the laughter did not remain long. It subsided abruptly, as though Landon was unused to laughter and felt its strangeness.
Again he searched Bony’s face with those light, evenly coloured blue eyes of his, gazing at the detective as though tantalized by a memory of having met him somewhere before. Bony offered him a pannikin of tea, and his cigarette material when the tea was declined. Whilst Landon’s supple fingers worked at tobacco and paper, the half-caste said:
“By the way, when I passed Loftus’s house the other day and called for a drink, I could not but admire the expert manner in which that new haystack was built. I wondered how many tons of hay it contained. Can you give an estimate? I guess fifty tons.”
“The haystack!”Landon ejaculated sharply. “Oh! The weight? About sixty-four tons as near as nothing. Interested in stacks?”
“I am interested in everything about here. You see, this wheat country is all strange to me, for my home is on the Queensland cattle stations,” Bony blandly explained.
“Never been up there. Ah well, I’ll get along. See you at the dance most likely. Good night!”
“Good night,” returned Bony pleasantly.
At eleven o’clock the moon rose. At eleven-thirty the Loftus dogs howled long and mournfully. It was so quiet that Bony could hear Mick Landon shouting at them to stop.
Late the next afternoon, when Bony reached Burracoppin, he called at the post office, and there received three envelopes, two of which bore the Brisbane postmark; the third came from Perth.
Having parked the dray and fed the horse, he read his mail in the privacy of his room. The first envelope opened contained a copy of a telegram sent by John Muir care of theC.I. B. It read: