Arthur Upfield - Death of a Swagman

He stood up, stretched himself, turned into the hut, and relit the fire to brew some coffee. By its light he let down the drop window and fastened it. The lamp he did not light. He returned to the doorstep, wishing that the night was past. The crackling of the fire he found a comfort.

Now the Walls of China were masked in black without a single eyehole. They presented a complete void above which floated the stars. The wind continued to moan at the hut corners and to play over the sand ripples, its noise sufficient to drown the sound of the bush banshee’s footsteps or the hessian-blanketed steps of the man who had strangled the swagman and then hanged his body. The banshee never made a mistake once it got on the tracks of a blackfellow caught away from his own campfire at night, but surely the man with sacking about his feet must make a mistake sooner or later!

When the billycan on the fire began to sing its boiling song Bony rose once again and made coffee, which he took to his doorstep with pannikin and sugar. Soon afterwards invisible wings fluttered above the hut roof, and again the icy arrow sped up his spine to chill the hair of his head. A thin sigh escaped his lips when from the roof of the cane-grass meat house came the “mo-poke, mo-poke” of the night bird.

The sky above the Walls was becoming diffused with a peculiar sheen and the stars were losing their brilliance. He sighed with relief. Far away to the south appeared a chain of strange clouds-the taller summits bathed in the light of the rising moon.

The moon was high above the Walls of China when Bony rose and, entering the hut, rerolled his swag and took it over tolay out upon the sandy floor of the meat house. He took his tucker box and rations, which he placed within the safe. He lay upon his bed and smoked his last cigarette for the evening, and somehow he found the air sweeter to breathe.

Bony was awakened by a rhythmic clanging sound. He sat up abruptly, listening, straining his ears. He knew what that noise was. The windmill was in action.

Adventure by Moonlight

SPLINTERS OF MOONLIGHT lay upon the floor of the cane-grass meat house. The wire-netted door was wide open, and beyond it could be seen a section of white sand beneath the star-filled sky. The wind still blew, whispering secrets into the clefts of the sand ripples, and hissing with the soft music of bursting sea suds through the tough grass of the hutment. Discordantly, without rhythm but with an inevitable regularity, there came to Bony’s straining ears the “clang

… clang… clang” of the windmill in action.

Surely he had not released the mill to take the wind! For an instant he checked upon himself, knowing then that he had not even interfered with the mill. It was not an old mill. The original paint was still in good condition. When he had visited the tank to draw water for his own use the tail fan was swung into line with the wind. That position of the tail was maintained by a strong wire fastened near the ground to a lever bar, which in its turn was kept in position by an iron pin. For the mill to gainfreedom, that iron pin would have had to be withdrawn or, alternatively, the wire would have had to break.

The remote chance of the wire breaking was debated by Bony whilst he pulled on his riding boots. The chancewas remote, for the mill was not old and that wire was not likely to be worn in any place.

There could be no legitimate reason for anyone to release the mill. The reservoir tank was almost full and there was hardly any stock as yet coming to drink here. Leylan and all his hands at the homestead knew that he, Bony, was camping here this night, and it could not be imagined that any of the hands would be sent to release the mill after ten o’clock, the hour that Bony had retired. From the position of the moon, it was now verging upon two o’clock.

The banshee? Oh rot! Cut out that stuff, Bony!

Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte moved toward the open netted door on his hands and knees. When he emerged into the moonlight he almost faced the front of the hut. For nearly a minute he regarded that sinister dwelling, noting how deserted it looked and that the door was fastened shut. He tried to recall if he had closed it. Unsuccessful, he began to crawl round the circular cane-grass meat house, keeping tight against the wall, until he reached the narrow segment of black shadow on its south-eastern side. In this shadow he stood up, pressing with his back against the wall and wishing that it had been made of brick, not grass.

The scene presented to him was almost as clear as at high noon. The Walls of China rose tier upon tier in snowy whiteness. To the south was the reservoir tank on its tall stand. He could see the black shadow about its wooden supports, and he could see the moonlitsandscape beyond and between the supports. The mill towered higher than the reservoir tank, its iron stand laying a maze of narrow shadows below it. The “wheel” of wind vanes was revolving fast. Almost facing Bony, the light of the moon blended the vanes into a solid disk of bright silver. And outward from the mill above the covered well radiated the three long lines oftroughing, black upon the brilliantly lit white sand.

Nothing moved in all that far-flung waste of white sand save the wind vanes of the mill. The sheep that had come to drink at sunset had gone away out into the feed.

The control wire must have broken.

Unhurriedly, almost casually, Bony visually examined every object made by man and set down there on the white sand. There were no shadows cast by Nature’s handiwork. There was no living thing beneath the mill, and after a full minute he was convinced that nothing alive lurked in the shadow cast by the reservoir tank. A man could remain concealed by lying down beyond any one of the trough lines, but to do that he must continue tolie full length.

Yes, that control wire must have broken this very night through a million-to-one chance. And yet…

For the third time during his stay at Sandy Flat the icy arrow sped up the flesh covering his spine and became lodged in his scalp. Somewhere in Bony’s sensitive being a warning chord was being struck.

All was not right with the place, despite the power of the moonlight and the paucity of objects casting shadows to conceal danger. The entire picture was illumined clearly enough, and the shadow-casting objects easily totalled. The mill, the reservoir stand and tank, the three lines oftroughing, the hut, and the meat house against which he was leaning made but seven objects set upon a ruffled sheet of white cloth. Yet the number seemed to be wrong, either one too many or too few compared with the number which had been impressed upon his mind whilst he sat on the hut doorstep the previous evening and smoked cigarettes. The westering moon shed its glare full upon the vast face of the Walls of China. Upon it there were no shadows.

The minutes were ticked off the sheet of Time by the moon’s inevitable passage down the pale blue bowl of the sky, and still Bony continued to remain passive, leaning back against the cane-grass meat house, now and then changing his weight from foot to foot. That inherited sense of unseen danger remained strongly in him. Therewas something wrong about the place, a something which had not been wrong with it when he made up his bunk in the meat house and fell asleep.

The vanes of the mill followed each other round and round to fashion an opalescent disk, raising and depressing the long iron rod connected to the pump deep within the well. Why should anyone release the mill in the middle of the night when water was not necessary? Well, one objective could be to awaken him, to take him to the mill to shut it off and so make a target of him with a rifle. Why that? The killer of Kendall and the swagman, the man whom he was seeking, might have learned who and what he was, and might be lying down on the far side of one of the trough lines, waiting for him.