Rebels in White
MINUS the heavy swag and gunny-sack, Bony travelled light and fast, keeping parallel with the fence to reach the gate and follow the road. The night was dark though the stars were clear, and he did not see the wire over which he almost tripped. It had been dragged away from the fence after a repair job, but it was still tough and flexible.
He had left it behind when an idea halted him, sent him back to break off about four feet of it by constantly bending and opening the bend. One end of the broken-off piece he bent into a long hook, slipped the hook down through his belt, from which it was suspended something like a sword. A length of heavy wire is a handy weapon against men and dogs.
The gate was shut, but it opened when he stood on the metal bar inset into the roadway. It closed again shortly after he removed his weight. He thought of placing a boulder on the bar to keep the gate open for Mulligan and discarded the idea because someone arriving or departing before he was ready would give the alarm.
Keeping well off the road, Bony arrived eventually at an open gateway in a massive hedge guarded by a plain wire fence, and because the wind was coming from the north and there being the likelihood of dogs, he skirted the hedge to the south and so came to the anchored aeroplane and the wicket gate through which the passengers had been conducted.
Beyond the wicket gate and through the short tunnel in the hedge was the house, several of its rooms being brilliantly illuminated. To the left of the house was the observatory. The men’s quarters and the outbuildings must be situated on the far side.
Having unlaced his boots and hidden them in the hedge, he made his way through the garden and on to the lawn laid before the front of the house, moving like a wisp of fog in a lightless dungeon.
The house was the usual bungalow type and built three feet above ground, this side being skirted by a wide veranda having four steps to it along its entire length. From the lawn it was not possible to see the lower portion of the rooms beyond the openfrench windows.
Bony spent five minutes assuring himself that none other was in the garden, and then he slipped along the black bar between two of the broad ribbons of light falling half-way across the lawn, to float up the veranda steps and gain the shadow against the wall between two pairs of windows. The murmur of voices rose to clarity as he edged one eye round a window frame.
The size of the room, theelectroliers, the tapestries on the walls, the long table of gleaming walnut, the floor covering, the high-backed chairs; the two women and the twelve men seated at the table, the sergeant-major of a butler, and the huge portrait against the end wall, all comprised but a hazy background to the presentation of two young women arrayed entirely in white.
Seated at the head of the table was the man who had watched the burning of O’Brien’s body. At the far end of the table sat the man who had conveyed the body on the dray. Upon Benson’s right hand and on his left sat a woman, middle-aged but preserved by all the’ arts, big-framed, and stiff. Like Benson and James Simpson, the other men were in formal evening clothes. Directed by the butler, the two women in white served the host and his guests.
The conversation was conducted in a language with which Bony was unfamiliar. It was a harsh, masculine tongue, and the men and women who spoke it were masculine and harsh and handsomely arrogant. They sat stiffly, moved jerkily, like subalterns at mess when the general is present. No one smiled. They were of one race, blond and square. The men looked corseted, save Simpson, who was not of them.
The serving maids! One was a brunette, slim and pretty. The other’s hair gleamed like the aftermath of a sunset. She was taller than her companion and more robust. She was worth any young man’s voyage across the world.
It had been logical to assume that these two young women had wandered off the road and had perished in the bush. It had been logical to assume that they had been murdered because they had stumbled upon a dreadful crime or a tremendous secret. It had been logical even to assume that they had been kidnapped to appease the hunger of lascivious brutes, but to have been kidnapped into domestic service Bony had not permitted himself to assume.
Domestic service in Australia, even in this ultra-democratic age, is not impossible to obtain. The Bensons possessed the wherewithal to induce girls from Dunkeld, and even Melbourne, to come to Baden Park. Why, then, kidnap two tourists and compel them to domestic service? Why, when such an act, if discovered, would surely ruin them?
When discovered! Perhaps it had never been intended that it be discovered.
That these two girls had been kidnapped was surely true because they had not been seen after they left the hotel; they had not communicated with their parents and friends since leaving Dunkeld. That they had been impressed into domestic service was only too obvious, for rebellion was in both faces and even in the manner in which they walked to and from the serving bench.
Their fate was plain enough now. Old Simpson and Carl Benson between them had drawn the picture. James Simpson had known that the Bensons could not employ domestic servants because of something they had to keep hidden. Benson had referred to surrendering to his sister’s demand. So James Simpson had brought the two hotel guests at Baden Park to be inspected by Cora Benson, to be approved of by her, to be claimed by her from her brother, who had engineered the kidnapping.
They three, the Bensons, brother and sister, and Simpson, wereau fait with this crime upon the persons of two Australian women, and the other woman and the other ten men must also beau fait with it.
But why? Why kidnap these two girls? Why murder the old yardman? Why slay Detective Price? Why insult or assault hotel guests? Why shoot it out with Glen Shannon, who had every legal and moral right to be where he was bailed up? Who and what were these people who did these things? What was their secret, to preserve which a man and a woman of wealth and social position connived at murder?
Benson had spoken of a trust, even as the remains of an old yardman were being cremated. A trust! How much did those two press-ganged girls know of it? If they knew nothing of it, they were still press-ganged, still the turnkeys to open the door of a gaol to receive Carl and Cora Benson. How would they fare at the hands of these people when Mulligan and his men arrived?
The thrill of achievement coursed hotly through the veins of the watching Bonaparte. When a police organisation had turned its attention to other matters for want of clues, he had undertaken the assignment to bring to light the fate of two young women who had disappeared in the bush five months previously. He could reveal their fate, but he yet had to prove it, to do which he must produce the bodies before persons able to identify them.
At the first sign of an invasion by Mulligan, these women might be whisked away beyond reach. They might be taken in the aeroplane, flown over the not-distant sea, and jettisoned with weights attached to them. At all costs he would have to get them out of the house and into a place of safety before Mulligan’s police cars skidded to a stop at the front door.
Instinctively he glanced round to observe the time-telling stars, found he could see none beyond the arc of diffused light, swiftly essayed the guess that it must be eleven-thirty. A peculiar hour for people to be seated before a meal comprising several courses. The food and drink being served recalled to him the hunger he was experiencing, the hunger created by a sharply unbalanced diet. Yet there was no envy in him, none of the despair of one on the outside looking in, for within the fine apartment the atmosphere was so foreign to ordinary human conviviality that he was chilled by it.
Not once had anyone smiled. Carl Benson did most of the talking. Once Simpson spoke to his left-hand neighbour, asking in English what the passenger load of the aeroplane was, and was told “eight”, in so brusque a manner that his face became faintly flushed. Everyone was on edge, as though facing a momentous decision or a tremendous event.
Then happened that which made Bony fighting mad and yet glad that Shannon was not with him.
Red Head was pouring wine into the glass before the woman facing the windows, who was clearly the sister of Carl Benson, when the woman’s arm inadvertently came into contact with thenapkined bottle. The result-a little wine upon the polished table. Red Head straightened up, and the woman, with no expression upon her large face and no detectable alteration of expression in her eyes, raised her hand and slapped the girl’s face.
Before the sound of the blow ceased its echo down the corridors of Bony’s mind, the butler was behind Red Head, one great hand fastened about her hand clasping the bottle. She was snatched away from the table as though she were a feather duster and whisked to the serving bench, where her other arm was swept up her back in a half nelson and the bottle removed from her right hand.
No one at the table turned his head or removed his gaze from Carl Benson, and Benson did not pause for a fraction in what he was saying. The butler, six feet two and weighing in the vicinity of fifteen stone of everything bar fat, placed the bottle on the serving bench, released his hold of the arm behind the girl’s back, and violently pushed her against the wall. Then he marched to the table, swabbed up the spilled wine, and proceeded to fill the woman’s glass.
Red Head didn’t cry. She stood beside the serving bench, hands clenched, green eyes blazing, chest heaving. Her fellow-servant left the board with used plates, and as she crossed to the bench she shook her head, imploring Red Head to do nothing. Then, astoundingly, the butler marched to the serving bench, took a bottle from an ice-pail, withdrew the cork, wrapped the bottle, and presented it to Red Head. Red Head returned to the table to continue serving.
The meal came to an end. The remnants of the meal were transferred to the serving bench by the two girls, the butler assisting. At an order from him, Red Head passed out of the room, to reappear beyond the shutter which opened behind the bench. She drew out the loaded trays passed to her by the butler, and the brunette left the room. The shutter was closed and the butler fastened it. Then he locked the door and proceeded to serve wine in fresh glasses, the diners remaining seated and silent.
Every glass charged, the butler took up the glass he had filled for himself and stood beside Benson. Benson looked up at him standing as stiffly as the best of sergeant-majors, and then he, too, rose to his feet, followed by the company.
A guest began to speak. He was tall, lean, grey, and soldierly in bearing. He spoke in the same language, keeping his light blue eyes directed at a point just above the opposite man’s head. The others became statues, each of them holding the wineglass poised at a level with his or her face. The toast, for it was certainly that, was a long one. The voice was low but loaded with emotion, so much so that Bony, who could not understand a word, felt it powerfully.
Abruptly the voice ceased its outpouring. The ensuing silence could be measured. Benson spoke the same word twice, and in time with the third utterance of the word the company gave a single great shout. Glasses were drained and then cascaded into the great Benares bowl upon the table.
The melodrama thrilled Bony down to the soles of his naked feet.
The butler stalked to the door and, unlocking it, threw it open. The company almost stalked, too, as they drifted out of the room. And then Bony was off the veranda, crouching down beyond its edge as he watched the butler close and fasten the windows and finally switch off the lights.
Continuing to feel the peculiar emotional reaction to the voice of the toast giver and the final smashing of the glasses, Bony debated his next step. He toyed with the idea of testing thefrench windows to gain entry to the house, gave that away and decided to reconnoitre outside the building and familiarise himself with the set-up of the homestead.
It was important to locate where the hands were quartered and their approximate number. It was vitally important to have the entire plan of the place in his mind that he might move quickly if speed of action was essential. That done, he could proceed to contact the girls and get them out of the house and into a place of safety. They had to come first, and of that there could be no argument.
The languorous wind whispered to the orange trees and the smaller shrubs. The stars gleamed like sequins on a woman’s velvet dress. A black and shapeless shape moved swiftly along the darkened side of the house, passed round it, flitted on to pause before a lighted window, broke into rapid movement, and slipped up into a flowering gum tree. From the gum tree Bony could gaze into a large kitchen.
Both girls had changed into blue linen house-frocks. One was polishing glasses, the other washing dishes. They were talking and they were alone. They talked without smiling and yet without sulkiness. Red Head was still indignant, Brunette still pleading.
Bony had yet to master the plan of the homestead, but he was tempted to knock upon the window and urge the girls to escape with him. The opportunity, however, although appearing favourable, was not felt to be so in view of all the other aspects of this new development.
Having finished the chores, the girls came to stand near the window, where they linked arms as though gaining comfort by the affectionate contact, talking earnestly, the one soothing the outraged nerves of the other. They stood thus for several moments, when the butler appeared, armed with an oversize flashlight.
Beckoning with his head, he marched out, followed by the girls.
Bony dropped lightly from the tree, hope given him by the flashlight carried by the butler. The shapeless shape danced away from the kitchen window, withdrew a little farther from the house, stopped beyond the next corner that two sides of the house could be watched.
A door was opened on that side opposite to the lawn, and a man issued from it, closing the door behind him. Bony went to ground, searched for, found a sky-line. Along the sky-line he observed the head and shoulders of James Simpson, and Simpson crossed a wide, gravelled space and entered the dark observatory. The next moment a light appeared in a small window high from the ground.
Immediately the light had been switched on inside the observatory, another house door was opened and three figures issued from it. This time, across Bony’s sky-line slid the heads and shoulders of the two girls, followed by that of the butler. His flashlight came on, the beam aimed steadily at the ground about the girls’ feet as they walked over open gravelled space, skirted the observatory, and halted before the door of a small building. After them, like a long-legged tiger cat, skipped Inspector Bonaparte.