Mr Jelly Is Shot
ERIC HURLEY was three days late returning to Burracoppin. With strange thoughtlessness, probably due to inexperience of sandy country, the Rabbit Department had permitted the farmers south of Burracoppin to clear the land to within one chain of the fence on its west side, subsequent stubble fires burning off the low bushes which are the natural protection against wind-driven sand.
When Inspector Gray returned from his north trip of four hundred and twenty-one miles, Bony inquired of him the whereabouts of Eric Hurley. Gray explained the reason of Hurley’s delay-sand against the fence-and on hearing that the detective wished to interview his subordinate he offered the loan of the government truck for the afternoon.
Bony found the boundary rider shovelling sand from the fence at the fifteen-mile peg. It was a sweltering hot day, certainly not a day suitable for sand shovelling. The place where Hurley was working was on high ground at the southern edge of a wide belt of wheat country, a district which bore the name of a State governor. The land fell away east and west of the straight fence and adjacent road, tree- and bush-cleared land with the horizon flung back for a dozen miles, thousands of acres of ripe wheat and thousands of acres of fallow roughly forming a vast chessboard. Here and there the giant sloths devoured the wheat with a thin, purring whine of pleasure and a halo of dust. Along a distant road the leaping dust clouds indicated the speeding trucks and the slower, lumbering, horse-drawn wagons. The granite rocks, lying along the horizon like recumbent reptilian monsters, breathed and lived in the fierce heat haze which caused the wheatears on the near rises to a dance as the chorus in asuperpastoral play. To emerge on that wheat belt from the bordering bush was as though one stepped out from a church.
“Hullo, Bony! Got the inspector’s job?” exclaimed Hurley, leaning on his shovel, which a second later he dropped. Then vaulting the fence with the ease of long practice, he came round to the off side of the truck and sat down on the running board in the shade.
“Which inspector’s job do you mean?” Bony asked mildly.
“Gray’s, of course.”
“I am informed that you know I am a police inspector,” Bony said a little sternly.
“Oh! Who told you?”
“Sunflower.”
“Then you know that I learned about you by accident. The boss was careless about that letter, but I’ve told no one. Lucy made me promise.”
For a little while the detective stared down into the strong, lean face. That Hurley had kept a promise delighted him.
“I am glad to hear you say that, my dear Eric,” he said. “A man who can successfully guard his tongue will never want for friends. Let us go along to your temporary camp and boil the billy for tea. It’s too hot to shovel sand just now, and I’ll make up your lost time by working for an hour with you this evening.”
And then, while they sipped tea from enamel pannikins:
“You must have thought a lot about Mr Jelly’s mysterious absences. Have you any idea of the reason behind them?”
“The old feller’s all right,” Hurley said without hesitation. “A bitstrait-laced, and a crank on one thing. If he’d give up collecting murders, Lucy and Sunflower would be a lot happier.”
“You would, of course, like to have those girls more happy?”
“Naturally. But there’s nothing crook about the old man,” Eric loyally maintained. “Some reckons he goes after a woman, being a widower, and others say he goes away on a bender. Well, a man is entitled to do both-within limits. A man who indulges in either near his family is a blackguard, which old Jelly is not. I don’t thinkit’s either women or wine, because the old chap always comes home richer than when he went away.”
“He has gone away again. He was not home when Lucy got up on Sunday morning,” Bony stated.
“It’s a pity he can’t stay home for the harvest. It leaves old Middleton shorthanded, and he’s not as young as he used to be. Lucy will be worried again.”
“She is doubly worried this time, because her father was wounded when he went away early Sunday morning.”
“Wounded!”Hurley echoed.
“Yes. He was prowling about the Loftus farm and Mick Landon shot him.”
“What the devil was the old feller doing messing about the Loftus farm?”
“That I do not know. He was shot about a quarter past three in the morning. He went home wounded. I tracked him Sunday evening. Lucy told me that one of his bed sheets was torn up, presumably for bandages, and there was a tinge of blood in the wash-basin.”
“But what was he doing on the Loftus farm at that hour?”
“We do not know.”
“What does Mick Landon think about it? Why did he shoot?”
“Landon does not know that it was Mr Jelly he shot. No one knows that Mr Jelly was shot, other than Lucy andmyself, and now you.”
“Then how did you know? How did you come to track him?”
“Because I saw him shot.”
“Then what were you doing on the Loftus farm?”
“Having a look round.”
“I give in,” Hurley announced resignedly. “You’re like a stonewalling batsman. You’ll answer a hundred questions and yet give away no information.”
The detective looked down from the cigarette he was making.
“Because it is proved that you have a silver tongue, because you are in love with Lucy Jelly, and because I need your assistance, I will take you into my confidence,” Bony said slowly. Whereupon Hurley learned many things which had occurred after the dance at the Jilbadgie Hall.
“I cannot but think, Eric, that the disappearance of George Loftus is connected in some way with the occasional absences of your prospective father-in-law,” Bony said when the fence-rider ceased to chuckle at the story of the aniseed trail. “Strictly betweenourselves , I have promised to reveal to your young lady the reason or cause of her father’s going away. She asked me to help her know so that she could help her father if he was practising some habit which love could help him conquer.”
“What makes you think the two mysteries are connected?” was Hurley’s reasonable question.
“George Loftus and Mr Jelly were great friends. They were neighbours, assisted each other over any difficulty. When the majority of farmers in this district are broke Mr Jelly goes off and brings back money, and Loftus had one hundred pounds on his person when he left Perth of the hundred and seventy-odd pounds he had hidden away in a private bank.”
“Someone told me that they had found Loftus at Leonora,” Hurley said interrogatively.
“Of the suspect at Leonora they took photographs, and the Merredin police got them quickly through a motorist who happened to be leaving the northern goldfields. The man at Leonora is not Loftus. At no time did I really believe that he was. I know where George Loftus is today.”
“Oh! Where?”
“All in good time, Eric,” Bony replied, smiling blandly. “I am not going to reveal one mystery until I have progressed further with that surrounding Mr Jelly. I am now afraid to finalize the Loftus affair for fear of wiping out the thin, faint trail leading to the Jelly affair. Do you think Mr Jelly suffers fits of insanity?”
“No. He’s sane enough.”
“That is what I think, but I am not an expert analyst.”
Neither spoke again for a little while. Bony gazed idly along the fence at Hurley’s horse, in hobbles, placidly grazing on the sun-killed herbage. The humming harvester machines vied with the humming blowflies at which now and then Ginger languidly snapped. The fence road was little used along that particular section since the main road to Burracoppin passed through it at the Fourteen-mile Gate. They could hear the roaring trucks on that road, drops of the stream which carried the flood of wheat to the railway siding as the wheatwas poured into Pharaoh’s granaries during the seven good years.
“Do you know if Mr Jelly has any friends in Merredin?” Bony next asked.
“Don’t think. Never heard him or Lucy say so.”
“Tell me. Why should the Loftus people stack hay when there are no horses and only two cows on the farm?”
“There’s nothing funny about that, Bony. Many farmers cut wheat for hay, especially when the straw is long, as it is in a good year. Almost any year it pays to cut hay for chaff, because if the price is low in a good year it is bound to be high in a bad year, and hay will keep several years.”
“I thought that might be the reason. Whilst studying the produce market reports I have been thinking that it would be an excellent money gamble to buy hay now, and have it cut into chaff by a contractor, and stored until a bad harvest comes, when, as you say, the price is bound to be high.”
Hurley laughed.
“You must have a lot of money,” he said.
“I haven’t much.”
“Then I wouldn’t risk what you’ve got,” was the advice instantly given. “If you are going to gamble on hay, don’t cut it into chaff until you are going to put it on the market; otherwise storage costs will more than wipe out any profit-if there is any profit.”
“I am inclined to accept the risk. Do you know any farmers who would sell me their haystack?”
“No, I don’t.”
“What would be a fair price to offer for hay in the stack, do you think?”
“Dunno. Chaff is three pounds fifteen a ton.”
“Do you think I could buy for two pounds a ton?” Bony persisted.
“What the devil are you coming at?”
“Hay, my dear Hurley, hay. I am keenly interested in the hay and chaff market. I want a gamble in chaff. Would you be my buyer, say at a commission of one per cent of the purchase price?”
“Well, yes, I suppose so, if you have made up your mind to chuck your money away. I could ask some of the cockies when I go south next trip.”
“Excellent! I want to buy the haystack on George Loftus’s farm. It contains about sixty-four tons. It is magnificent hay. I would be satisfied with that stack for the present. As a matter of fact, I want to buy that stack very much.”
“That particular stack?”
“That particular stack,” Bony repeated with emphasis. The rider searched the detective’s smiling features.
“You make a good third for a mystery,” he said with conviction. “Now why do you want to buy that haystack?”
“Because it is built with such perfect symmetry that it pleases my artistic eye,” Bony replied without smiling. “I desire that stack, and I have the money to buy it at two pounds per ton. I want you to do me the favour of acting as my buying agent. Forget that I am a crime investigator. You say that you will reach Burracoppin tomorrow. Arrive early in the afternoon. I have spoken to Inspector Gray, and he will have both eyes shut if you get in about three o’clock. You will then be able to set off for the Jelly farm about four o’clock. You will find that Lucy is anxious to see you. Convey to her and Sunflower my regards. On your way call on Mrs Loftus and say that a farmer, who shall be nameless, wishes to buy a whole stack of hay. Ask her if she would sell her stack, as she has no horses to feed. Is that clear?”
“It is, but I don’t know what you’re getting at. I’ll do as you ask, and thank you for working that early arrival at Burracoppin. What are you going to do with the blasted hay when you get it?”
Bony now smiled a little grimly. His eyes were almost invisible behind the puckered lids when he replied:
“Have no fear. I shall not get the sack. Mrs Loftus will not sell.”