Arthur Upfield - Death of a Swagman

“More than ready.”

“Come on, then.”

Gleeson was standing at the end of the front veranda, in which place he could stop people from reaching either the front or the side doors. To him Bony rapidly outlined the circumstances, and warned him that the person who had abducted the child and had attempted to kill her might very well try again. He was to remain there until relieved.

Together Marshall and he strode up the street to the police station.

“No talking just now, Marshall,” he said firmly. “You go and get your car out. We must get back to Sandy Flat. While you’re getting the car I’ll ring your headquarters and ask for assistance.”

On reaching the station office, Bony rang the telephone exchange.

“No, I haven’t raised Sydney yet,” Lovell told him.“Very sorry, but there seems to be trouble somewhere along the line. There is a heavy official envelope, registered, just in. Addressed to Sergeant Marshall. Posted at Sydney.”

The Windmill at Work

WHEN BONY and Sergeant Marshall left Merino in the latter’s car for Sandy Flat it was not possible to see the Walls of China, nor even to locate the cemetery halfway down the long slope. The wind was blowing strongly from a little north of west, sweeping over the world of scrub-tree and shrub in prolonged gusts reaching a velocity up to forty miles an hour. It raised the sandy dust high so that the sun’s orb was the colour of an unwashed dinner plate.

“I contacted your district headquarters and spoke to your senior officer,” Bony told Marshall. “He’s sending twoconstable by car.”

“Say anything about… Florence?”

“Yes. And I asked him to be kind enough to let me finish the job. Said he would be only too pleased.”

“Haven’t found him particularly nice. Always expects too much too soon.”

“They all do, Marshall,” Bony stated emphatically.

Neither spoke again for a minute, then Marshall urged pleadingly:

“Break it out, Bony. Did you expect to find my girl at Sandy Flat?”

“Yes, I did. You know last night when I was awakened by the mill inaction, I crawled on hands and knees to the door of the meat house and then faced the hut. For a little while I stopped still, staring at the place. I saw that the door was shut, and I wondered for a moment if I had closed that door or not. The importance of the question was submerged by the greater question whether the mill had broken loose or had been deliberately released to draw me outside so that I could be shot.

“Then, when the postmaster was with me in the office and he was about to leave, he mentioned that he would lock the door of the exchange room when I was speaking to Sydney. That remark stuck in my mind after he had left and produced the association of ideas, sending my mind back to the period when I wondered if I had or had not shut the hut door. Then I remembered quite clearly that I had not done so when I left it for the meat house.

“That being so, the man who wore hessian on his feet and a hood over his head must have done so. He must have done so whilst I slept. And why had he gone into the hut… if not to leave Rose Marie inside? Acting on that supposition, I chose to requisition Mrs Sutherland and her car in preference to calling on you to take me down there.”

“I still don’t understand why the swine took her there. Do you?” asked Marshall.

“Not yet. I have a glimmering of an idea, though.”

“Have you got any idea where windmills come into the picture?”

“Only a glimmering of one.”

“Well, what are the glimmerings?”

Marshall spoke sharply, still suffering from strain.

“There are several nebulous theories floating around inside my cranium, Marshall. They are all so silly that I am unable to voice them. How did you get on with young Jason?”

“Oh! When I arrived at the garage young Jason was shutting up. On seeing me, he rushed to me and poured out a flood of questions concerning Florence’s disappearance. Whenwas she first missed? How long had she been out of the house? Did I think she walked out or did I think she was carried out? He was properly upset.

“I asked him where the old man was, and he said he was still at the house. Hadn’t made an appearance. Expected he was washing up the breakfast things, as he always did. He himself was shutting up the place so that he could join in the search for my girl.”

“Did you see him when we left the doctor’s house?”

“No.”

They came to the gate left open by Bony on the previous trip, and this time Bony alighted and closed it before they proceeded now on station property.

“What did you do with young Jason after you saw me clear out with Mrs Sutherland?” he asked when again beside Marshall.

“Well, I had told him that, having been friendly with Florence and all the other kids, he might be able to help us, and we were on the way to the office when we saw you getting off with Mrs Sutherland. That stonkered me somewhat, so I told him we’d both join in the search till you came back.”

“You told him, then, that I am a police officer?”

“Yes. You had yourself been broadcasting the fact, and so I told him that you were in charge of the investigation, and he had no need to be hostile to you because of Redman’s dealing with him. I wanted to keep him easy, you see.”

“Ah, well! We can collect him when we get back. And after we’ve had a yarn with him we’ll invite the Rev. Llewellyn James to call on us.”

“Can I be present?”

“If you promise to behave yourself.”

“Rats!”

“Pardon my levity at such a time, Marshall,” Bony said quietly. “But we have to treat James with velvet gloves on our hands, as it were, with perhaps a horseshoe inside them. Pull up outside the hut door. We’ll have a look inside for a start.”

On getting out of the car, Bony peered through the now white sand mist. He could see the dim shapes of the reservoir tank and the mill head but not the mill stand. The Walls of China were completely dissolved in the whirling flurry. The very ground seemed to be a moving white fog.

Inside the hut the wind tore through the lifted drop window and out through the open door. Bony was thankful to observe that the mark of blood beneath the bunk was obliterated by the white sand brought inside by the wind. There was nothing to find, nothing to help. He closed the window, shutting out the wind, and said:

“I’d like to know why the killer brought Rose Marie to this place. Why here, instead of dumping her anywhere in the scrub? He thought he had killed her when he dropped her on the bunk, otherwise he would have come back to the hut after climbing from the tank stand. And why climb up to that tank stand? I’ll go up there and try to work it out.”

They left the hut, Marshall fastening the door. Bony walked across to the meat house, glanced inside to see his swag and tucker box as he had left them. The wind assisted them over to the tank stand.

“Look out that you’re not blown off,” advised the sergeant.

“The sand’s soft if I am. Phew! What a place to be on such a day!”

Bony climbed the iron ladder and, when standing on the edge of the flooring, was just able to reach up and grasp the edge of the open tank, precisely as he had observed the hooded man do. Foot by foot he went around the tank, now and then glancing back to note the position of the hut and meat house. Eventually meat house and hut were blocked from his view by the curving bulge of the tank. He proceeded another two yards and then stopped.

There was nothing amiss with the tank itself. There was here no easier access to the top of the tank, presuming that the hooded man had reached this side of it to put something into it. There was nothing out of place with the flooring of the stand. Why should he have come here? Why should he have stayed here for at least forty minutes-the period that Bony had watched from the shadow of the meat house?