Thunder
THUNDER SHOOK the Tintanoo house to its very foundations, and the lightning caused the lights to flicker, while Bony dressed with unusual care before dining. Beyond the open window of his bedroom, huge raindrops fell on the veranda roofing. Yet the worst of the storm was past, and, for all its commotion, remarkably little rain had fallen. Between the major thunder rolls of the nearer disturbance, his ears caught the rumblings of storms far to the west and north.
While dressing, Bony hummed a popular tune. The peculiar print on the carboy was an exceptionally fortunate and important discovery. It appeared to indicate that this stubborn mystery was at last giving way to his assault. In its dark fog, he thought he now could distinguish one personality among several half-formed figures. Owen Oliver!
The expert fire investigator had stated that Captain Loveacre’s monoplane had been disintegrated by exploding nitro-glycerine. Then Cox had received and had passed on a report that nitro-glycerine had been sold to a man named Barton, a bore contractor, for use at Tintanoo Station, some considerable time before the aeroplane was stolen. Other explosives were used extensively for mining. They are reasonably safe to handle, and almost all western stores sell them. But nitro-glycerine is an entirely different proposition. No person would purchase and use it unless for some special purpose such as “bore shooting.” Its sale, in consequence, is narrowly limited and restricted by stringent regulations. Excepting this Barton no person in western Queensland had sought permission to purchase this particular explosive since the year 1921.
John Kane now said that a quantity of nitro-glycerine down in his specially-constructed cellar had been removed without his knowledge and permission. It was reasonably certain that the nitro-glycerine which had assisted to destroy Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane had come from that cellar. And then the print of the deformed finger! Only the keenness of his vision had enabled him to see it. One with ordinary eyesight would not have noticed it: more especially if he was particularly nervous of the monster chained within the bottle.
No one had visited the cellar after the sand cloud had passed by. Bony was assured of that by the ground at the head of the steps. All the fingerprints on the glass bottle had been registered prior to the sand cloud. Of that Bony was sure. The question presenting itself for answer was whether Owen Oliver had visited the cellar to steal the remaining portion of the explosive, or to take the remainder of it with the sanction of its owner. That he had visited the cellar was proved by the imprint of his partly-amputated finger on the carboy.
If he had not stolen it, then John Kane had sanctioned its removal. The object of its removal could be assumed with reasonable confidence. A further question arose, one that Bony found harder to answer. Without proof and without the aid of his uncanny intuition, he could not bring his mind to accept the fact-or even the theory-of John Kane’s participation in the conspiracy against Miss Double M. Not for many a year had a man’s personality so baffled him.
When the recent storm was approaching Golden Dawn, and when another was far advanced from St Albans, the detective sat down to dine with three people. His host wore now a light black alpaca jacket. The elderly woman who acted as hostess had been introduced to him as Mrs MacNally, “who has been in the service of the family since before I was born,” said Kane, She was eagle-eyed, and the years had caused her mouth to retreat and her nose and chin to advance. Her command of the aboriginal maids who brought in the dishes was firmly enthroned.
The last of the trio was Owen Oliver. He was dressed as he was when Bony first saw him, and his actions appeared to be a little too familiar for those of a rare guest at Tintanoo. Of medium height, his features were regular and finely moulded, but bore signs of dissipation. The brilliant hazel eye was well matched by the artificial one. After one swift glance at the shortened second finger of the right hand, Bony studiously refrained from exhibiting any interest in it.
Between twenty-four and twenty-seven, Bony thought him to be. His attitude to the detective was now less markedly superior, but still there was in it the almost unmasked hostility to his colour in the mind of one incapable of delving beneath the surface of things, whether of a man’s skin or a problem of metaphysics.
The meal was plain but well cooked and well served. The table decorations were costly and tasteful. The large room was furnished with those sombre but solid period pieces associated, with the reign of Queen Victoria; heavy, cumbersome furniture brought to this far-western outpost in the eighteen-seventies on bullock wagons. They were the years when furniture was furniture-furniture built to last for centuries, furniture prized as heirlooms.
The conversation began when Mrs MacNally inquired after the patient at Coolibah. Her voice was pleasingly soft-a voice trained in “a school for the daughters of gentlemen.”
“Now the specialist has seen her, Dr Knowles is hopeful of saving her life,” Bony lied. “The unfortunate young woman is so completely paralysed that she is unable to eat, unable even to open and close her eyes. Dr Stanisforth suggested a course of treatment which Dr Knowles is giving her.”
“I’ve never heard anything like it,” Mrs MacNally exclaimed. “Mark mywords, there is something fishy behind it all. Mrs Greyson called in the other day, and she told me that it has created quite a stir in the district.”
“Well, the circumstances are peculiar, to say the least,” Kane reminded them. “No one knows her, where she comes from, what she was doing in the aeroplane, and how it got to Emu Lake.”
“Wanted to steal it, I suppose,” suggested Mrs MacNally placidly. “Young girls these days are always aping the men. This one learned to fly an aeroplane, and then she couldn’t resist stealing one. Joy-riding, they call it. Plain theft, I say! Up she went in it, and then something happened to the machinery and she was injured when it came to ground. It is her spine, more than likely. The spine is the most delicate part of the body. I remember Mr Kane’s father being thrown by a horse against a stockyard post, and he was laid up helpless for nearly a month.”
“Was the specialist able to diagnose the cause of the paralysis?” asked John Kane, the perfect host.
“He gave it as his opinion that the young woman had been drugged,” replied Bony.
“Drugged!” echoed Mrs McNally. “Well, well, to be sure! The young women these days are too fast, what with cocktails and cigarettes.”
“Mr Bonaparte said that she had been drugged, not that she drugged herself,” the squatter pointed out. “There is there a subtle distinction. You know, MrBonaparte, that is extraordinary. It implies that someone drugged her and put her into Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane. Dashed if I can understand why.”
“The whole affair is most baffling,” admitted Bony. “There is no knownmotive, or even one on which speculation may be based. If the person responsible for drugging her wished to kill her, why take her up in an aeroplane containing a canister of your nitro-glycerine?”
“Yes, why?”
“I fear that my investigation has not proceeded as rapidly as I could have wished,” Bony admitted gravely. “If the person responsible for her drugging wished to kill her, as I said just now, why not knock her on the head and bury her? Why stage such a spectacular drama? The Air Accidents Investigation Committeehave reported that Loveacre’s monoplane was destroyed by fire and by nitro-glycerine. I am now sure that a quantity of your stock of the explosive was placed in the machine to make it certain that it would be destroyed, and the young woman with it.”
“Then it is a case of attempted murder?” offered Kane, astonishment plain upon his face.
“It appears to be. If only the young woman could speak my task would be made much easier. As it is, I am working completely in the dark. However, should Dr Knowles cure her-and he is hopeful of doing so-then we shall know all about her and what happened before she was found at Emu Lake.”
“You think, then, that someone kidnapped her, put her into the machine he stole at Golden Dawn, put some of my explosive into the machine, too, flew her out to the vicinity of Emu Lake, and then jumped clear to let the machine crash?” Kane pressed.
Bony nodded his agreement.
“In that case, the thief must know this district pretty well?”
“Yes, he knows the country much better than I do. On the other hand, any person knowing the country so intimately would surely be known by other residents. They would know that he could fly an aeroplane. And I have been assured that the only people here able to fly an aeroplane are Dr Knowles and yourself.”
John Kane regarded Bony with steady scrutiny. Owen Oliver was watching him with almost equal intensity.
“That is so!” Kane admitted. “And thank goodness both the doctor and I were in Golden Dawn the night the machine was stolen, and that we both were among those who rushed out to see-or rather to hear-the machine departing.”
Bony smiled.
“I suppose it created quite a stir?”
“It did. The sound of the engine could not possibly be mistaken for a car engine. Everyone turned out in their night attire. I collided with Knowles, and we rushed round to the back of the hotel with about fifty other people.” Kane sighed with mock relief. “And I could have been placed so awkwardly,” he pointed out. “I could have been held up on a bush track by a faulty car, or I could have been away on a tour of inspection, when to have proved an alibi would have been next to impossible.”
“Might not the airman, like the girl, have come into the district? The girl is a complete stranger here, by all accounts,” interposed Owen Oliver, speaking for the first time.
“But that does not wipe out the fact that the pilot must have known this part of the country well,” argued the squatter.
The approaching storm, heralded by its thunder rolls, was drawing near. Although the meal had not arrived at the coffee stage, Oliver pushed back his chair and rose.
“Please excuse me, Mrs MacNally, I must be off,” he said. “I promised Dad I would be home to-night because of a muster to-morrow. There may be a lot of rain in this storm coming up.”
“If you must go, Mr Oliver…”
“Yes, if you must,” added Kane regretfully. “You’ll have to ride like the dickens, though.”
“Oh, I’ll beat it all right,” the younger man assured them.
Concerned for his departing guest, the squatter rose, too. Oliver shook hands with Mrs MacNally, but nodded coolly to Bony. Kane went out with him. When the door closed behind them, Bony turned to Mrs MacNally.
“How did Mr Oliver come to lose his eye?”
“Oh! He got it poked out when he was smashed up in a motor-cycle accident-hurt the part of one finger, too,” she readily explained. “He’s fast, that young man. Such a pity, too, for his old father is a fine gentleman, and his mother is one of the real Kennedys.”
“The artificial eye is a good match for the real one, don’t you think?”
“I haven’t noticed it either way.” Mrs MacNally leaned back in her chair, her dark eyes calmly observing the guest. She spoke with the forthright directness of her age. “He’s a young man I do not like. He is too vain, too sarcastic, too sly. The last time he was here was on my birthday. No, I do not like him.”
Bony smiled at the stiff old lady. “Might I ask how many birthdays you have spent at Tintanoo?”
“Now you are becoming personal, Mr Bonaparte,” she told him archly. “You willbe wanting to know my age next. Anyway, I’ll tell you. I came here in 1884 to be a companion for Mrs Kane. It was the year that my husband died and the year before Mr John was born. Mr Charles was born on 28 October 1891. Oh me! A rampageous scamp was Mr Charles, but a nice boy notwithstanding. You would have liked the father. He was a great gentleman, even though his temper was so uncertain. And now he has gone, and his saintly wife, and poor Mr Charles and his wife. No, I shall not see many more October twenty-eights.”
“Nonsense, Mrs MacNally,” Bony assured her gallantly-even as his mind accepted the fact that Owen Oliver had been staying at Tintanoo the day prior to the night that the red monoplane was stolen. Had he taken a quantity of John Kane’s nitro-glycerine on the occasion of that visit?
Mrs MacNally certainly had strengthened concrete suspicions.
From without came the roar of a motor-cycle engine. Bony was listening politely to Mrs MacNally detailing the sins of theKanes. A pounding of thunder submerged the noise of the motor-engine, and when again he heard it, distance had softened its harshness.
The storm arrived to shake the house and rattle the roof with raindrops. Still the heavy rain held off; the expected downpour did not materialize.
Later in the evening Bony sought permission to use the telephone. He raised Coolibah from the office. Kane heard all that he said to Mr Nettlefold, and what he did hear puzzled him. Bony asked that a spare tube be sent the next day to Faraway Bore for him to pick up.