A ReturnTo Coolibah
THE DATE THAT Bony met Captain Loveacre and Mr Cartwright on Emu Lake was 6 November-nine days after the unknown girl had been found in the red monoplane. About eight o’clock on the following morning, Bony had rung through to Nettlefold asking him to transmit a message to Sergeant Cox, which was in effect a request to Headquarters to have the findings of the Air Accidents Investigation Committee kept out of the newspapers. Bony then said that he would be absent from Faraway Bore for a day or two, and as he would be returning to Coolibah by a devious route he would like his suitcase to be brought in.
Nettlefold had called at Faraway Bore for the suitcase, and there he gained the distinct impression that while Ned Hamlin knew nothing of any developments, the two blacks did, but would not speak of them.
On 8 November a car brought a newspaper reporter and a photographer. They went on to Emu Lake, and on their way back they bailed up Nettlefold for a story. Nettlefold cautiously told them something, though very little, about the finding of the aeroplane, but said nothing about the girl found in it. The natural result was that the reporter scented a hidden story, and stopped at Golden Dawn, apparently prepared to remain in the district indefinitely.
On the ninth, Cox rang up Coolibah Station four times asking for Bony, and that evening there arrived at Golden Dawn a dust-grimed and powerful car driven by a distinguished-looking man who asked to be directed to Dr Knowles’s house.
Early the following morning Sergeant Cox again rang up, asking for the whereabouts of Bony and expressing some anxiety about him. An hour later Dr Knowles got through to inform Nettlefold that he was bringing a specialist, or rather the specialist was bringing him, as Stanisforth refused to risk his life in the air. Towards twelve o’clock they arrived, to be met by the genial cattleman.
“Welcome to Coolibah, Dr Stanisforth,” Nettlefold greeted him. “I only regret that your visit is a professional one. We have so few visitors that we shall be delighted if you will consider yourself our guest for just as long as you please.”
“I would like to stay a year,” the great specialist returned. “I amwanting rest and quiet, but-” and he sighed. “Like a fool I have allowed my practice to become an old man of the sea.”
“Well, come along in and have a refresher before lunch. My daughter is with the patient just now. On day duty, you know. Oh, here is Tilly! Tilly, please inform Miss Elizabeth that Dr Stanisforth and Dr Knowles have arrived.”
He conducted his guests through the house to his study.
“I trust you did not find the long journey too wearisome?”
“On the contrary,” said Stanisforth, “once beyond the settled areas, I could drive fast, and I find fast driving an excellent tonic.”
“You would have found a better tonic had you consented to fly here with me,” Knowles put in, smiling wryly.
“I fear not, my dear Knowles. Not after what a housekeeper told me when she brought the early morning tea. I hate heights, anyway. When a car stops through engine trouble one can get out and tinker with the machinery; when an aeroplane engine stops one can do nothing but regret that his executors will shortly be having a lot of worry. Ah-”
Elizabeth entered. Stanisforth bent over her hand and regarded her with interest.
“So you are the young lady who has taken it on herself to nurse a stranger found within the gates! You strengthen my faith in mankind, and it requires strengthening at times, believe me. How is your patient?”
“Just the same, Doctor. There is never any change in her,” replied Elizabeth. “Sometimes, it seems like looking after a mummy-a living mummy! If you are ready I will show you your room before going back to her. Lunch can be served whenever it suits you.”
“Excellent, Miss Nettlefold. I am really very hungry. Self before others is my motto. I will examine the patient immediately afterwards.”
“Dr Stanisforth considers himself a humorist at times,” Knowles hastened to explain when he saw a faint resentment in Elizabeth’s eyes. She smiled then, and said:
“Of course! Come along. The roads are terribly dusty, but you are fortunate to have missed the sand cloud the other evening. It was one of the worst we have experienced.”
She led the guests away, her father remaining to fill his pipe from the customary black plug tobacco.
“May I come in?” asked a low voice from the openfrench windows at his back. Swinging round, he blinked at the roughly-dressed man standing on the veranda. It was Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.
“Why, it’s Bony!” he exclaimed with pleasure. “Come in, of course. We have been wondering where you were.”
“Be good enough to overlook my appearance,” pleaded Bony. “With your permission I will close the door. Then, if I might so presume, will you give me a glass of soda water-with a dash of brandy?”
Without speaking, Nettlefold hurried to the wall cabinet.
“I noticed that you had visitors-ah, thank you!” Bony continued. “Not being very presentable, I concealed myself until the opportunity occurred to enter unobserved. Could I trespass on your kindness still further by asking you to smuggle me to a bedroom? As I know the situation of the bath-room, you could then leave me to gain its sanctuary.”
“Yes, of course. Your room is ready for you at any time. But where have you been? Cox has been ringing up every day asking for you.”
“I have been on a quiet little walkabout,” Bony replied. “There were several matters I wished to clear up. How is the young woman?”
“There is no change in her. Knowles has just arrived with a specialist from the city, a Dr Stanisforth. They will be seeing her after lunch. And lunch is ready. You must be hungry.”
“Not as much as you might expect, for I have been living on the country. Could you expand your generosity still further by putting up a fourth guest?”
“By all means. There’s any amount of room.”
“Then, when I am safely out of sight, please ring Sergeant Cox and ask him to spend the night here. Do not say I have returned. Just say you have had word from me.”
“Very well. I’ll see if the coast is clear.”
They were at lunch when Bony entered the dining-room. Bathed and shaved, and dressed in a light-grey lounge suit, he hadeffected a complete metamorphosis. The ragged bushman had now become the polished inspector, more at ease with the company than Nettlefold himself.
“We were beginning to worry about you, Mr-er, I mean Bony,” Elizabeth remarked.
“Indeed! Thank you for your solicitude, Miss Nettlefold,” he told her gravely. “My business has been lightened by the addition of a little pleasure. How did you weather that sand cloud the other evening?”
“It was terrific, wasn’t it? Fortunately we were warned of its coming by Ned Hamlin; yet, despite all our efforts to keep the dust out of the house, the place was in a shocking state when it had passed. We must have collected bucketfuls of sand.”
Sand clouds provided a topic that lasted throughout lunch, and when the two doctors had been taken by Elizabeth to the patient, her father and Bony drifted to the study.
“Ah-it is nice to get into a comfortable chair again,” Bony remarked. “I have been walking and sitting on my heels and lying on the ground o’ nights, and I find that my body is less tough and supple than it was once.”
Nettlefold chuckled. “When I was young,” he said, “I gloried in camping out and sleeping on a waterproof sheet with one blanket over me and the saddle under my head. Now I look for a flock mattress and sheets and a feather pillow. Did you do any good outback?”
“Yes-and no. First, tell me how things have gone here.”
“According to routine, excepting that I insisted on Elizabeth taking a turn off night duty. Ted Sharp continues to sit up on the veranda outside the sick-room, or prowl about close by. It seems improbable that that feller will make another attempt on the patient’s life.”
“It is not at all improbable,” Bony contradicted. “We cannot expose either your daughter or the housekeeper-not to mention the patient-to the risk of another attempt. How many men do you employ?”
“Fourteen: including the men’s cook, a groom, a Chinese gardener, and a tradesman.”
“How many of them are usually about the homestead?”
“Two, with the Chinese gardener.”
“Are there any new hands?”
“No. The last to be engaged is the tradesman. He’s been here a year. Ted Sharp has been with me eleven years.”
Bony’s browsrose a mere fraction. He broke a little silence by asking:
“Where did he come from?”
“Candidly, I don’t know. I never asked him. One doesn’t ask such questions out here.”
“I am aware of that. He has never volunteered the information, apparently. Good man?”
“Excellent in every way. He’s a good man’s boss, and a good boss’s man. We-er-we rather like him.”
“Does he know anything about sheep?”
The cattleman shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Do you know anything about sheep?” Bony persisted.
“Yes. As a matter of fact, when I was young I served five years as a jackeroo on a sheep station. It was down in New South Wales.”
“Is thatso! ” Bony sat bolt upright in his chair and regarded his host with steady eyes. “I need your assistance,” he went on slowly. “To obtain it I must confide in you. Usually no successful crime investigator confides in any one. I have in this case to be particularly cautious, because I am convinced that certain people command an excellent intelligence service.”
“Anything you tell me is in the strictest confidence.”
“Thank you. I have established the fact that Captain Loveacre’s monoplane was destroyed by a man who walked to it from the main St Albans-Golden Dawn track at a point some miles beyond Gurner’s Hotel, and then walked back to the main track. That fact proves another-or goes a long way to prove it. In my opinion more than one person was engaged in the matter of this stolen aeroplane. There is the man who piloted it, and there’s the man who poisoned the brandy. The firing of the machine and the poisoning of the brandy were done too closely together in time for one man to have done both.
“The man who destroyed the aeroplane-probably with the object of obliterating his fingerprints-did his work when wearing sheepskin boots having the wool on the outside. Out there we found no actual tracks of him, but we did find fibres of wool detached from his sheepskin boots. I understand that you have never run sheep on Emu Lake paddock?”
“There have never been any sheep running on Coolibah.”
“There are, however, sheep on Tintanoo.”
“Yes. Kane always has a few mutton sheep.”
“What class of sheep are they, do you know?”
“Yes. They are Border Leicesters crossed with Merinos.”
“Does he breed them, or does he buy them elsewhere?”
“I am not sure, but I think Kane purchases them from Olarie Downs. TheGreysons run that cross. But Kane isn’t the only man who buys killing sheep from them. TheOlivers, of Windy Creek, do, too. So does the Golden Dawn butcher. You see, in this district we are cattle people, but some people run a few sheep to give us a change from the eternal beef. When I want mutton I always buy a carcass from the butcher, because the Coolibah fences are not sheep-proof.”
“Hum! Well, that will widen the search.” Bony produced a pocket wallet, and from it he took an envelope containing several cigarette papers, each containing a fibre of wool and each numbered in the order that the fibres were found. “Does this wool come from a cross-bred Leicester?”
Nettlefold looked closely at the several fibres.
“Yes, they are all from the same class of sheep, if not all from the same animal. You know, Bony, if that man walked through the bush from the main track to Emu Lake and then backagain, he must know this country as well as I do.”
“That’s exactly what I think. He knew it so well that he could fly an aeroplane over it at night, and jump from the machine per parachute when he knew he was over fairly clear country. What puzzles me is how he did it without landmarks. He would be unable to follow a road, or distinguish any other landmark in the dark.”
“I think he could,” Nettlefold said thoughtfully. “Midway between this house and Tintanoo homestead there is a long sheet of water in one of the river channels. Once he picked that out on the dark ground, he could set his course for Bore Fourteen, which is north of Emu Lake paddock on Tintanoo. He would recognize those two waters by their shape: the long ribbon of it in the river channel, and the narrow channel of it, ending in a small lake, at Bore Fourteen.”
“Ah! Thank you. Knowing the country so well, he would certainly recognize the shape of the waters you mention. Now, whowould know thecountry as well as you do yourself?”
The manager considered.
“Kane, young Oliver, Ted Sharp, Ned Hamlin-oh, and a dozen others.”
“Well, we are progressing, Mr Nettlefold,” Bony said with satisfaction in his voice. “If I could obtain definite proof that when the aeroplane thief flew the machine he was guided by the water lying in that river channel, then I would be even more hopeful.”