Lucy Jelly’s Adventure
THE FARMERS’ meeting at the Burracoppin Hall was advertised to start at eight-thirty. At eight o’clock Bony had made his dispositions for his second attack on the secrets of the Loftus homestead.
Behind his offer to purchase Mrs Loftus’s hay was his conviction that buried in the haystack was the body of the missing farmer, and if this were actual fact he considered it likely that immediately Mrs Loftus heard of some person’s interest in it she would have it fired.
If the body of Loftus was buried in the stack, its position most assuredly would be somewhere along its line of centre, as far as possible from either wall, so that the smell it cast off would not penetrate to the outside to be noticeable to the chance passer-by. And, too, it would lie near the ground, because when Loftus disappeared the haystack was only beginning to be built. To remove it would necessitate pulling away from the stack tons of hay in sheaves, sheaves to be piled in great heaps to arouse the curiosity and suspicions of more than one visitor to the homestead. The only practical method of removal was to fire the stack, and, when the ashes were cool, to remove the remains and dispose of them finally elsewhere. It was this procedure, Bony was confident, Mrs Loftus and Landon would carry out when satisfied that the search for Loftus was long given up, and he had hoped that his offer for the hay would expedite the date.
Yet Landon and his mistress had made no such move after Hurley had made the offer for the stack. Nor had they done so when the fence-rider had brilliantly insinuated that Mr Jelly was the prospective buyer. This, in consequence, had made Bony one degree less sure that the body was in the haystack.
What he wanted, and hoped to obtain, was further evidence against the suspects. Previously dissatisfied with his examination of the kitchen, he counted on the possibility of there finding the box to the lock of which fitted the key he had found in the table leg. If not in the kitchen, it might be found beneath the earth floor of Mick Landon’s tent.
At eight o’clock all that was left of the day was the shaded purple ribbon lying along the western horizon. Far to the north-west and north lightning flickered about massed clouds, lighting up their snowy virgin hearts coyly hid by the falling veils of rain. The muttering thunder held no menace, so distant wasit.
Hurley and the detective sat at the edge of the main south road, ready to take cover among the close-growing bushes massed on either side and covering the summit of that long sweep of sand rise between the Loftus farm and the old York Road. They could see light shining from the window of the Loftus farmhouse and could judge with fair accuracy the position of the farm gate down the long, straight road fading into the ever-mysterious gloom of early night.
Beyond the rabbit fence, beyond the government’s private road, hidden among the scrub, was Hurley’s motor-cycle.
To avoid the probability of anyone on the Loftus farm hearing the machine stop at this place at this time, the two men had brought the machine from the town that morning in the fence-rider’s cart. The canvas drop sides of the hooded vehicle adequately masked the operation of withdrawing the machine from the cart and carrying it into the dense bush. Most carefully Bony had obliterated their own tracks, and they then had renewed three posts in the fence to account for their halt there. Everything possible had been done to prevent suspicion, which, once aroused, might decide Mrs Loftus not to attend the meeting with Landon, whose secretaryship commanded his attendance.
They now waited the passing of the Loftus car, and at twenty minutes past eight first observed its headlights flash out near the house and later watched them whilst the car was being driven slowly over the bumpy track to the gate. Bony walked across the road and took concealment amongst the bush, leaving Hurley on the fence side, so that their observations of the passengers in the oncoming car might be checked.
“It was Landon driving, all right,” Hurley said after the car had passed and they were watching its red tail-light dwindling to the glow of a cigar end. “The two women were on the front seat with him. There was no one in the back seat.”
“Your report coincides with my own, save that from my position I could not identify the driver,” Bony said. “We will give them a quarter of an hour.”
Actually the detective allowed twenty-five minutes to pass before he and Hurley brought out of the bush the latter’s machine to the government track.
“You carry on, Eric. I’ll await you at the farm gate.”
When Hurley had set off to pick up Lucy Jelly, waiting opposite her father’s house, Bony picked up two sugar sacks, shouldered them, and walked down the rise to the meeting place. Three cars passed, travelling with speed towards Burracoppin and, presumably, the farmers’ meeting. By his watch it was five minutes to nine when Lucy and her cavalier reached him.
“You are still willing to help me, Miss Jelly?” Bony asked her when he had assisted her to alight from the pillion seat.
“Yes. I’ve brought cottons and needles and a pair of scissors.”
“It should not take us long. Now, please, permit Eric to lift you over the fence. I will go first, because the barbed wires are dangerous.”
Now on the west side of the rabbit fence, he led them to the Loftus farm gate, wide open, and halted them several yards from it, where low bushes gave adequate concealment. Here he emptied the contents of one of the sugar bags, which proved to be three balls of binder twine. From one of the balls he secured the running end, made a loop, and gave it to Hurley with instructions to fasten it to his wrist, for it was his intention to lay a line signal to the homestead. He said:
“When I am ready I will pull on the twine till it is fairly taut. I will then tug three times as a signal, and you will tug three times, signalling all clear. Whereupon you, Miss Lucy, will at once come to me, keeping to the stubble and wearing those elegant sheepskin shoes I made for you. Should anyone pass through the gate towards the homestead, you will warn me by pulling in all the twine, replacing it in the bag, and then stand by for a possible quick retreat. Now is that all thoroughly understood?”
Having their assurance that it was, he set off with the remaining sugar sack and the two balls of twine, allowing the twine of the third ball to run out after him until, reaching its length, he paused to secure its end to the new end of the second ball. In this way half of the third ball was laid down when he came to the edge of the stubble paddock facing the front of the homestead.
The three dogs were barking viciously, chained to their kennels. They presented to him the greatest problem, as he had expected they would be after the laying of the aniseedtrail, and, short of poisoning them, the only method left him to silence them was the tempting offer of many beef bones within the second sugar sack.
Leaving the half-used ball of twine near the only door of the house, he strode swiftly andunfurtively towards the dogs, crying in a loud, stern voice for them to cease. Two obeyed, but the third was loath to stop, crouching and alternately barking and snarling. This was the one ferocious animal among them. He could see it dimly, crouched. When the others seized upon the bones this dog spurned his share, and without waste of time the detective found a stick and masterfully proceeded to thrash it till it slunk into its kennel. After that they all remained quiet.
He spent five valuable minutes closely examining the haystack, becoming satisfied that no attempt had been made to remove anything from its interior. His next move was to the house. He discovered that a Yale lock had been fitted to the door. A close scrutiny of the two windows revealed that someone, probably Landon, had increased the efficiency of the clasps by the addition of two extra to each window, but these catches being far more simple than the Yale lock, it was but a matter of half a minute before he was in the house, searching the two rooms with his electric torch. The house, as he had expected, was empty of human beings.
Able to open the door from the inside, he passed out, picked up the binder twine, pulled it taut, and tugged three times. The answering three tugs immediately came back. He cut the twine, made a loop of the line end, and dropped this over the handle of a tin washing dish he balanced against a leg of the washing bench on the narrow east veranda. When Hurley pulled the twine the dish would be upset with a clatter and the loop end freed for Hurley to pull back, hand over hand, to the farm fence.
With much satisfaction, Bony waited for Lucy Jelly to join him.
“Are you quite steady?” he asked when she did join him.
“Yes, Mr Bony,” she whispered, which made him say:
“You may talk normally. There is no one here. There is not the slightest need to be nervous, and Eric will warn us in ample time if they do return early from the meeting. Come along.”
Conducting her into the house, he closed the door but left open the kitchen window through which he had gained access. They could not fail to hear the wash-basin fall over should Hurley pull on the binder twine. When in the bedroom the detective lowered the blind, and then, to save time, he gave the torch to the girl and began searching for the repaired slit at the foot of the mattress.
“What do you think of that, Miss Jelly?” he asked when he had carefully laid back the bedclothes and had arranged the mattress for her easy inspection of Mrs Loftus’s sewing.
“Bring the lamp nearer, please,” she requested, adding when he obeyed: “She used number forty in cotton. It is well that you did not cut the stitches. I doubt that I can do it good enough to deceive her. See! She has featherstitched it after herringboning it almost exactly in line with theovercasting. Why, it will take me more than half an hour to do it like she has done it. Hold the light still closer.”
Swiftly Bony glanced at his watch to note that the time was eighteen minutes past nine o’clock. For forty minutes the farmer’s meeting had been in progress, and much could be said and decided in forty minutes.
“Cut the stitches and go ahead,” he told her with unwonted sharpness. “Doit as well as you can. Make a good imitation. Let me assist, if possible.”
“Then fix the lamp so that you can hold things.”
With string he tied the lamp to the bedrail, drawing no knots, permitting the brilliant shaft of lift to fall directly on the work to be done. He was told to pocket several reels of cotton and to hold one particular reel of cotton, the number forty, and a packet of needles. The scissors flashed in the light as they snipped, snipped, snipped at the intricate stitching. Care and time were expended in gathering the extremely short pieces of snipped cotton, and it was after a lapse of five minutes before Bony gently inserted his hand into the opening and his fingers began to grope for the secret of the mattress. When, with care not to bring out any of the flock, he withdrew his hand, he held a small flat package wrapped in white paper.
The package was tied with white cotton. Holding it to Lucy, he told her to cut the cotton with her scissors. His long, brown, pink-nailed fingers quickly removed the wrapping paper and revealed a folded wad of treasury notes, which further examination proved to be of one-pound denomination. In the middle of the fold lay a man’s gold safety pin with a single small moonstone in its centre. The tie or collar pin Bony fastened to the lapel of his coat. He counted the notes. There were sixty. Their serial number was K/11. They were quite new. Their running numbers were within twenty of the numbers of the notes Mrs Loftus had paid to the garage-men.
Placing the notes safely in a pocket of his jacket, Bony carefully prepared with newspaper a dummy package which he wrapped in the white paper, and this he placed in the same position among the flock which the genuine package had occupied.
“Now, Miss Lucy, get to work. Make haste; try to replace those puzzling stitches. I may yet have to play Mrs Loftus a little longer,” he said with triumph in his voice.
“Needles and that numberforty cotton, please,” she said with a calm efficiency which delighted him, even though he had met many calm and efficient women in the bush.
He fell to watching the slim fingers threading the needle, the eye of which would have daunted any man. He saw her first secure the lips of the seven-inch slit with what he afterwards learned was overcast stitching, the needlepassing the cotton through the original holes. When she began the herringbone stitches he saw her difficulty in using the holes Mrs Loftus had made, yet marvelled at her dexterity. It was fifteen minutes to ten o’clock. She began the featherstitching.
“I can’t see it! I can’t do it!” she breathed.
“Never mind the original holes now. Make as good a copy as possible of her stitching.”
The light gleamed on the now slower flashing needle. Across the darker bands of the mattress material the featherstitching made him realize how difficult was her task, hopeless of accomplishment to any but the most practised. Despite the necessity for haste, she made a splendid copy of Mrs Loftus’s work, although Bony was unable to appreciate it properly. When it was done Lucy said:
“Unless she takes the mattress out into strong light I think she will not discover the trick.”
He saw the paleness of her face when she stood up, even though her face was outside the light beam. Now that her work was done, the terrific excitement was becoming felt, threatening to overwhelm her. Gently he took her hands in his and said firmly:
“Thank you! You have behaved wonderfully. Remain calm. There is absolutely no cause for nervousness. There is yet plenty of time. Just wait two minutes.”
Quickly he detached the string from about the lamp. Now its circle of light swept over hessian walls and moved across every floorboard. It gleamed on the polished surface of the table and flashed across the picture on the easel. Finally it halted on the floor at his feet.
“It is not here,” he said.
“What is not here?”
“A small box having a lock fitted by a peculiarly shaped key. Stay there.”
His voice, she noticed, had lost its soft inflexion. No longer was he the courteous acquaintance, the understanding friend. The guttural liquids of his aboriginal ancestry had crept into his voice, as their hunting stealth had crept into his limbs. When he walked into the kitchen his legs were like clock springs and his body rested on the extreme tips of his sheepskin boots.
Following him to the door of the bedroom, she stood to stare at his grotesque figure revealed by the quick-moving light which never once shone directly out of the window. She wondered why he did not lower the blind, as he had done in the room behind her. He was now examining the glass-fronted bookcase, now beginning the task of taking from the shelves every book to see if there might be one which really was a box fashioned like a book.
Standing on a chair, he examined the top of the bookcase. Lying on his chest, he searched the narrow space between the bottom of the bookcase and the floor. With the fluttering quickness of a butterfly he hunted for that little box, even removing the wood billets in the iron scuttle. Finally his lamp flickered about the fireplace.
It was a double fireplace, or rather a large open hearth with one-third of its space occupied by a cooking stove. At the time of the year the open wood fire would never be required, and now sheets of crimson tissue paper covered the brick flooring partly hidden by a hand-painted screen.
Stooping, appearing like a giant spider framed against the whitewash of the fire back, Bony removed the tissue paper and examined the floor of bricks. The bricks appeared solidly cemented together. Whitewash made level the crevices between them. And yet Bony tested every brick and found the central three loose.
It appeared that he had forgotten the watching girl, for he neither looked at nor spoke to her when he almost jumped to the painted dresser and took from a drawer two stout-bladed knives. With these he prised up one of the bricks sufficiently to grasp it with his fingers. The brick came up easily enough, and the two others were lifted out quickly. His light fell on the hole their removal made. It showed him a handle let flush into a japanned surface, and, when he lifted the handle and pulled, it required no exertion to lift out a square-shaped metal box. With it in his hands he was looking at the lock, preparatory to setting the box down and fitting the key, when the wash-basin outside topped over with a sharp crash. At once the light was switched out.
The noise of the overturned dish sent Lucy’s fingers to her lips to prevent the threatened scream. Someone must have come in through the farm gate, for Hurley had signalled. To Lucy the silence was dreadful. She could not hear the near approach of a car, so that they were not coming in a car. Bony was at the window. She could distinguish the silhouette of his head and shoulders against the dark grey opaqueness of the window oblong. Thirty seconds passed, thirty hours to the girl, and then Bony’s head and shoulders vanished. She was alone, she thought, and they were coming, those people whom she guessed were evil.
As though a snake menaced her she shrank back against the bedroom door-frame when flesh touched the flesh of her forearm. She wanted to scream, but was unable to open her mouth. Something brushed her hair, her cheek. Warm breath beat against her left ear, and, as though from the distant ages, soundless words came drifting to the electrical present. She heard Bony’s whispered sentences: “There is someone outside. He tripped up the binder twine and set off the alarm. Do not move or make any sound. Have no fear. I am with you.”
They were both gazing at the open window, the oblong of dark grey. To the right of it was the door, now shut, fastened by the Yalelock. The silence pressed on their ear-drums, causing mental pain which was almost physical. From another world, millions and millions of miles away, came to them the faint hum of a motor engine.
Bony thought of the moon being eclipsed by the earth’s shadow whenslowly, low down on the left edge of the window oblong, the edge of a large disc grew outward from the window frame. It was one quarter of a sphere before movement ceased.
Turned to stone, Lucy looked at this strange object with wide-open eyes and parted lips. After what appeared to her to be an eternity she saw that the outer edge of the disc seemed to dissolve, and then outward from it there appeared a nose, lips, and chin. Only for a moment, and then the disc vanished. A man was outside that window listening.
The dogs had never barked. Save from the falling dish, no sound had come to them of his approach to and presence there. Was that man George Loftus? Or Mick Landon? Bony shivered. He had been so sure that the body of Loftus was buried in the haystack.