Sergeant Cox’s Visitor
SUMMER HAD COMEAGAIN, and Golden Dawn drowsed in the hot afternoon sunlight. The poppet-head of the mine danced in the heat waves rippling across the gibber plain, translucent waves which distorted the shapes of distant cows and flocks of goats. A hammer clanged on metal in the blacksmith’s shop, where, instead of making a set of horse-shoes, the smith was straightening a truck axle. The striking hammer appeared to mark time for the school class singing “Waltzing Matilda” in the little wooden building at the far end of the town.
With both coat and waistcoat removed, Sergeant Cox was at work in his office. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and his jaw methodically worked at a large chunk of chewing gum. Office work demanded gum in preference to a pipe or an occasional cigarette, and the work in hand called for so much mental attention that the humming of the car that entered Golden Dawn from Yaraka passed quite unnoticed.
The sergeant was expecting the arrival of detectives from Brisbane on the mail coach due in at five-thirty, and his pen was busy drawing up a full report concerning the derelict aeroplane found at Emu Lake. The present was a distinct lull, as it were, after the storm of activity consequent on the discovery of the monoplane and its helpless passenger. Captain Loveacre had flown away with his fellow pilots in the de Havilland, and the members of the Air Accidents Investigation Committee had arrived, examined the wreckage, and had departed only that morning. Their findings, Cox had been informed, would be made known to the Commissioner, Colonel Spendor.
When a light step sounded on the veranda, Sergeant Cox frowned fiercely and continued to write. Filling in forms and making official returns were easy to a man long accustomed to such red tape, but he was finding the writing of an account of an investigation far more difficult. The coming of a visitor added to an irritation partially produced by the distracting tinkle of china in the kitchen where his wife was preparing afternoon tea. He kept his iron-grey head bent over his writing when the caller entered the office, and his pen continued its laborious scratching.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant!” greeted a low and cultured voice.
“Day!” snapped the sergeant, continuing to write.
“You appear to be very busy this afternoon,” remarked the voice.
Had he heard that voice before? Cox decided that he had not. Some traveller, without doubt. Men of all types, cultured and coarse, tramped the outback and here was one seeking the usual ration order supplied by the government. With grim determination, he went on with the paragraph in hand, and then, having completed it, he raised his head to glare at the caller.
He saw, seated on the small iron safe, a man of medium height and build, dressed ina light -grey tweed. His tie matched his shirt, and so did the soft felt hat now resting on the edge of the writing-table. The visitor’s face was turned downward to the busy fingers engaged in making a cigarette, and with no little astonishment the sergeant noted that the man’s hair was fine and straight and black, and that his skin was dark brown. And then he was gazing into a pair of bright blue eyes regarding him with a smile.
“Well, what’s your business?” Cox demanded, affronted by the caller’s freedom. The fellow was obviously a half-caste. He struck a match and calmly lit the cigarette he had made. Cox flushed to a deep red. He was used to stockmen and half-castes treating him with more respect than this.
“I asked you your business with me,” the sergeant rasped, his nether jaw protruding, his eyes blazing.
And then the soft and pleasing voice again:
“My dear Sergeant, my business is the same as your own. My name, given me in the long ago by an unthinking matron at a mission station, is Napoleon Bonaparte. Believeme, I have often considered seriously taking another name by deed poll, because no man-least of all myself-is worthy to be so honoured.”
“Napoleon Bonaparte!”
The pen dropped from the sergeant’s fingers. Slowly he stood up, his legs pushing back the chair. The glare now was drained from his eyes, but they remained as widely open.
“Not Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte!”
The caller bowed ever so slightly.
“I hold that rank in the Queensland Police Force,” he admitted.
“Well, sir, I am surprised. I was not expecting any one from Brisbane until the mail arrives this evening. How did you get here, sir?”
“I hired a car at Yaraka. I should have been here two days ago, but I was finalizing a case out from Longreach. The Commissioner thought I would be the best man to clear up this little bush mystery of yours. Oh, by the way! Please do not employ the ‘sir.’ I am known to all my friends and colleagues as Bony. Just Bony. Even Colonel Spendor calls me Bony. He says: ‘Where the hell have you been, Bony?’ and ‘Why the devil didn’t you report, Bony, when I ordered you to?’ Colonel Spendor is volcanic but likeable. He will die suddenly-as a soldier should-and we shall all miss him. I like a man who damns and blasts. There is no conceit and no sly treachery in his make-up.”
“Well, sir-er, Bony-I am glad to meet you,” barked Cox, still controlled by astonishment. Moving hurriedly round the table, he jerked a chair from the wall corner.“Have heard a lot about you, of course. The wife is boiling the billy, I think. Can I offer you a cup of tea?”
“I was hoping that you would,” Bony assented smilingly. “The driver of my hired car is removing the alkaloids of the track with pots of beer, but I find that beer taken during the day gives me a headache. Do not, however, put your wife to any trouble.”
“Not at all! Not at all! I shall ask her to bring a tray here, and we could then discuss this aeroplane business. Have you seen my report which, I take it, was forwarded to Headquarters?”
“Yes. Otherwise I might have been disinclined to come,” Bony replied.
“Disinclined! But the Chief Inspector, C.I. B., allocates cases, doesn’t he?”
“He does, Sergeant. He allocates cases to me, but sometimes I decline to accept them.” Bony smiled and revealed his perfect teeth. “I have found it necessary on more than one occasion to refuse to stultify my brain with a common murder or a still more common theft. The Chief Inspector of my department does not see it in the same light, or from the same angle. Neither does the Commissioner, whose damns and blasts are frequent.”
“Yes, yes, of course!” Cox gasped, his face now purple, the military soul of him seared by this devastating defiance of discipline and questioning of authority.“Just a moment! I’ll see about the tea.”
When the sergeant had gone, the blue eyes of Napoleon Bonaparte twinkled. His defiance of authority and lack of respect for superiors never failed to create horror, and that horror never failed to amuse him. Moving his chair forward so that he came to be seated at one end of the writing-table, facing where the sergeant would be sitting, his long brown fingers began rapidly to manufacture a little pile of cigarettes.
This slight and handsome man had carved for himself a remarkable career. Taken into a mission station when a small baby, there had grown in the matron’s heart a warm affection for him. At her death, she left in trust for him the whole of her small estate. Early in youth, Napoleon Bonaparte revealed a quick intelligence and facility for assimilating knowledge. At a State school he won a scholarship taking him on to high school at Brisbane from which he graduated to the then new university, at which he obtained his Master of Arts degree.
Thenoccurred a grave disappointment in love that sent him back to the bush. For a year he ran wild among the natives of his mother’s tribe, and during that year he learned as much bushcraft as he would have done had he never been to school and to the city. The murder of a little girl out from Burketown, in which case he did invaluable tracking and found for the police the murderer, was the beginning of a brilliant career in the police force. His successes were remarkable, because wise superiors employed him wholly on bush cases, at which his natural instincts, inherited from his aboriginal mother, added to his own natural mental astuteness, were given full scope.
For a little while low-pitched voices drifted to him from the kitchen, and presently the sergeant returned to lower his bulk into the official chair.
“The wife will be bringing the tea in a minute or two,” he informed Bony. “As for this aeroplane case… well, I don’t think it will-what did you say?-stultify your brain, although it has deadened mine thinking about it. I can manage drunks anddisorderlies, and make the owners of cars and trucks comply with the regulations, and all that, but this business is right off my beat.”
“What you say is most promising. By the way, since the aeroplane was found has it rained or blown dust?”
“No. The weather has been clear and hot.”
“Excellent! I understand that the Air Accidents people have visited the wreckage. What did they have to say?”
“Nothing,” Cox growled.“Said they would report to the Commissioner.”
“Well, well! We must allow these civil servants to wield their own thunderbolts. Dignity, you know, must be maintained. I wonder, now! Did they tramp about in the vicinity of the burned plane trying to shoot kangaroos or otherwise enjoythemselves?”
“I believe not. They were there most of one day pottering among the ruins. No, they did no kangaroo hunting. The only men who have tramped about much looking for tracks are the two station blacks, Shuteye and Bill Sikes.”
“Oh! Another unfortunate, named this time after a famous person in literature. I do not think it right. Was this Bill Sikes so named because of any resemblance to the original cracksman?”
“Maybe. He’s ugly enough in all conscience.”
“What success did they achieve?”
“None-unless the fact that they could find no tracks does prove that no person left the machine after it landed, and no person approached it to destroy it.”
“Well, that will all have to be checked, and, as the weather has been fine and still, it will be mere routine work.”
“I have here statements made by several men on Coolibah and elsewhere.”
At this moment Mrs Cox arrived with the afternoon tea. She was wearing an afternoon frock, hastily donned. Knowing as much about police matters as her husband, she had insisted on bringing the tea in order to be presented to the most remarkable member of the force, and the member of it least known to the public.
On his feet, Bony bowed acknowledgment of the introduction. Mrs Cox had called him “sir,” and now she was staring at him.
“Tell me, Mrs Cox,” Bony urged, “do I look like a commercial traveller?”
“No, sir.”
“Or a tramp?”
“Of course not, sir.”
“Or a criminal?”
“Criminals are hard to detect until they are found out, sir,” she answered cautiously.
“Thank you, Mrs Cox. I was afraid your husband mistook me for a criminal, or a tramp, or a commercial traveller. And now will you render me a great kindness?”
“If I can, sir.”
“Please call me Bony. Just Bony. You see, I hold an inspector’s rank merely because my training and my mental gifts entitle me to an inspector’s salary. But it is the salary, not the rank, I covert. I have a beautiful wife and three growing boys to educate, and I have to find a great deal of money. My boys and my wife, the Commissioner and your husband, all call me Bony. I would be happy were you to do so.”
Mrs Cox wanted to laugh, though not altogether with merriment.
“Certainly, if you wish it, Bony,” she managed to say.
“Thank you! And thank you for the tea. I am sure I shall appreciate it.”
The sergeant’s wife fled, and the sergeant fell to manipulating the tea service.
“Have you any children?” asked Bony.
“One. A boy of fifteen. Illness in his early years put him back a lot, but the new school teacher has done wonders with him.”
“What are you going to make of him?”
“Not a policeman.”
“Why not? The police force offers a fine career.”
“I beg to differ,” Cox growled, in his voice a hint of anger. “Look at me, shoved out here as a young man to keep order among a peaceful, law-abiding people. Pushed here out of the way. No chance of further promotion-no chance to use what little intelligence I may possess. My wife sacrificed city life for me, and now my son will sacrifice a decent career for me, too. What chance has a lad out here, bar life as a stockman? Whatchance have I, for that matter? I have asked for a transfer until I’m sick of asking.”
Bony’s eyelids drooped. He sensed the almost extinguished ambition in the other, and, gauging it by his own illimitableambitions, he read the book of life plainly in this police office.
“Perhaps you will gain promotion out of this aeroplane case,” he suggested softly.
“Oh, yeah?”Cox returned with a wry smile. “Pardon the Americanism, but I’ll get nothing out of this case. Why, I had to call on theC.I. B . for assistance, or rather to ask them to take it over from me.”
“Without doubt, in that you acted wisely,” Bony said, again softly. “Remember, from the carcass of the lion came forth sweetness. We will collaborate, and I will see that you get all the credit possible. I will get none, because my superiors have become used to my successes. Have you previously had an important case?”
“No, worse luck.”
“Then we must make this one a stepping-stone for your promotion out of Golden Dawn. Tell me all about it-from the beginning.”
While Sergeant Cox related the facts in proper sequence, now and then assisted by the report he was writing when Bony arrived, the detective smoked cigarettes he took from the pile he had made and sipped several cups of tea, munching buttered scones between the cigarettes.
“Analysis showed that the brandy beside the girl’s bed was doctored with approximately one quarter of an ounce of strychnine reduced to liquid form by boiling in vinegar,” Cox wound up.
“You have a map of the district?”
“Yes. It is there on the wall.”
They rose to stand before the large-scale map, and the sergeant pointed out the places he had mentioned.
“Thank you,” Bony said, turning back to the table. “You have put the case in a manner both concise and clear. I understand that to date the people who have seen that girl are: yourself, this Dr Knowles, the Coolibah housekeeper, and Nettlefold and his daughter. And not one of you recognized her?”
Cox shook his head. “She is a complete stranger to us.”
“At the time of the theft of the monoplane was there any one else in this district able to fly an aeroplane other than Loveacre and his companions and Dr Knowles?”
“Yes. There is Mr John Kane, the owner of a station north of Coolibah, called Tintanoo. He was in the Royal Air Force during the war, but as far as I know he hasn’t piloted a machine since his return from France.”
“Where was he the night that the machine was stolen?”
“Here in Golden Dawn.”
“And the next night, when the machine was burned?”
“At his home at Tintanoo. You may be sure, Bony, I convinced myself that he could have had no hand in it. Besides, although he is a fast liver, he is otherwise well respected. Tons of money.”
“Hum! It is obvious that there is more than one person concerned in this matter, unless, of course, it was possible for one person to burn the aeroplane-if it was destroyed by human action-and then travel nearly seventy miles to poison the brandy at about four o’clock. The latter fact gives us every excuse to assume that the machine was wilfully destroyed. Now this Dr Knowles! Tell me about him.”
“He came here in 1920 from Brisbane where he had lived without practising from early in 1919. He, too, was in the Flying Corps. In fact, he and John Kane were for some time attached to the same squadron. They met again in Brisbane, and it was due to Kane that Knowles came to practise at Golden Dawn.
“Naturally we all welcomed the doctor. He has proved himself a good man. He doesn’t get overmuch work, and yet his fees are reasonable. Private income, I think. Five years ago he bought his first aeroplane. We expected him to break his neck, but he soon showed that he can fly as well as he can doctor. He is, of course, known to us as the flying doctor, but he has no connexion with the Australian Aerial Medical Service, which is responsible for other flying doctors.”
Sergeant Cox regarded Bony steadily when he paused.
“We can forgive a man much when he will fly anywhere in all weather to attend a case. We can overlook his heavy drinking, because I have never seen the man drunk in the ordinary sense. To use a common phrase, he drinks like a fish, and he sticks to spirits, too. The effect of alcohol on him is peculiar. It weakens him from the belt down while having no visible effect from the belt up. And the more he takes the better he flies. He has never given me any trouble. He has always behaved like the gentleman and the man he is.”
“Dear me!”Bony exclaimed. “And how long has this drinking been going on?”
“Ever since he came here, to my knowledge,” Cox affirmed.
“Where is he now-to-day?”
“In town. He came in this morning from Coolibah.”
“Then I think we will go along and see him. By the way, would Mr Nettlefold be kind enough to put me up?”
“Yes, I am sure he would be only too pleased,” Cox said warmly. “He’s worried, of course, about thatpoisoner. He wanted to have the patient moved to Winton hospital, but Miss Nettlefold would not hear of it.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. Jolly fine girl that. About twenty-six years old. Came home from school to look after the old man when, I hear, she wanted to go in for science. Told me the other day-or at least didn’t tell me, but let me guess-that she had been bored stiff with the dull life at Coolibah, and welcomed the job of nursing. She does the night shift, and the boss stockman out there roams around all night. You see, we half expect another attempt to be made on that girl’s life.”
Bony rose and took up his hat. Once again he stood before the wall map. Then, when he turned to Cox, he said: “I believe, Sergeant, that this case will interest me. I am particularly pleased that the weather has continued fine. Now for Dr Knowles. On our way I will call at the post office to dispatch a telegram to Colonel Spendor.”
Together they walked to the post office, the only brick building in Golden Dawn. Outside, Sergeant Cox stopped to talk with Constable Lovitt, and Bony entered.
The postmaster was writing at a table beyond the counter. Through a glass-built partition could be seen the telephone exchange. The glass door was wide open, and through the doorway Bony noted the young woman who turned to observe him. Cold, appraising eyes of blue regarded him with what in a less attractive person would be a rude stare.
Bony’s message, addressed to Police Commissioner, Brisbane, ran:
Delighted with prospects. Weather has been splendid. Have met exceptionally keen colleague in Sergeant Cox.