Arthur Upfield - Death of a Swagman

With both hands gripping the top edge of the tank, Bony hauled himself up so that he was able to peer over at its edge. There was nothing additional to what he expected to see-the wind-disturbed surface of clear water. Despite the wind’s action on the surface, he could see down to the bottom of the tank. There was nothing inside the tank save the water.

Having lowered himself again to the flooring, he turned his body so that he came to stand with his back to the tank. All that he could see then was the mill, the head of it a little higher thanhimself. The three lines oftroughing extended outward into the white murk.

Marshall came and stood looking up at him.

“Release the mill!” Bony shouted down.

The mill sprang into action immediately the draw pin was removed from the lever bar, and so vigorous was its action that Marshall had to adjust the bar to prevent the vanes from meeting the wind full-faced. Water began to pour into the tank at Bony’s back.

The direction of the wind had not altered since the previous night, and although Marshall had partiallybraked the mill, the angle of the vane wheel to Bony was not markedly different from what it had been when the hooded man stood in that place. For several minutes Bony watched the working mill. He was oblivious to the wind and the discomfort of the flying sand mist. He could hear above the howl of the wind about the tank the “clang… clang… clang” of the labouring mill.

Was that harsh, monotonous sound of pulling iron music in the ears of the hooded man? Were the swiftly moving vanes, even then gleaming dully in an almost solid disk, the reason why the hooded man had stood so long where he was standing? There was no sand mist last night to obscure the moon’s silvery light. Did that revolving wheel havean hypnotic influence? If so, what had that to do with the killing of Kendall, and what with the attempted murder of little Rose Marie?

To Bony the light of day appeared to increase. He glanced up to the sun, only to observe that its pastiness was the same. He began the journey back to the ladder. He might easily have slipped and broken a leg, for his mind was not on the job of getting to the ground.

“Well, whatd’youknow?” inquired Marshall.

“I cannot find anything up there,” replied Bony. “Better shut off the mill, and then we’ll get back to town.”

Before reaching the station gate on the main road they met a car. Both vehicles came to a standstill, as the passing was in a difficult place. The driver of the other car backed for several yards and again stopped. Marshall was now able to steer off the track to pass the other car, and when opposite, he and Bony saw that the driver was Mr Watson, and his passengers were the two pressmen.

“Nice day for an outing,” shouted the sergeant.

On again, then to the station gate and the main road. Marshall tried several times to start the conversation but Bony relapsed into a silence from which he could not be roused. All the way up the incline to the town he sat slumped into his seat, gazing with unseeing eyes through the windscreen.

“You might like to stop at the doctor’s place and ask about Rose Marie,” he suggested when they had passed the church. “I’ll walk on from there. If your wife is with the child, tell her not to worry about us. We can make ourselves some tea and get our own lunch. Better arrange with Gleeson, too, to relieve him while he has his lunch.”

“Thanks. I’d like to know how she is.”

“Of course. Don’t hurry.”

He entered the police station by the back door, which had been left unlocked, and in the kitchen noted that the time was twenty minutes to one. The fire was out, and he set it going to boil water. That done, he passed along to the office and lifted the telephone. The postmaster replied.

“You still on duty?” asked Bony.

“Yes. I thought I might be more useful here. Quite unofficial, you understand, and all that kind of thing, but a long press message was handed in about an hour ago. A lot concerns you. If you care to come over, you could see the original.”

“Thanks! I will. Get me now Wattle Creek Station, please.”

The book-keeper answered and Bony asked for Mr Leylan. A minute later he heard the squatter’s voice, and announced himself.

“Between ourselves, I have quite a lot of work to do here in town,” he explained. “I left Sandy Flat per boot, in a hurry, and I am wondering how the horse will get on for water in the night paddock.”

“You will not be going back there tonight?”

“I may. I have been thinking of asking you to send someone out there to give the animal water, and then put him back into the night paddock in case I should want him before tomorrow night.”

“Oh yes. I can do that. How’s the investigation going?”

“Slowly. A fresh development occurred last night,” replied Bony, and then described what had happened to Rose Marie. He heard Leylan exclaim whilst he related the story, out of which he left his own adventure with the hooded man.

“That place seems to be cursed,” asserted the squatter. “What’s the attraction there for a man to commit his murders?”

“I wish I knew,” answered Bony. “Tell me now, have you ever found on visiting the place that the water in the reservoir tank has been overflowing?”

“Well, yes. It’s peculiar that you asked me that,” Leylan said. “Several times over the last couple of years, when I’ve gone there, I noticed a good deal of water soaked into the ground beneath the tank. Once I made a careful survey of the tank itself to see if it was leaking.”

“You didn’t attach any significance to it?” pressed Bony.

“No. You see, when there isn’t a man living there I send a rider out just to see that the tank is full, and to brake the mill to fill it slowly if it isn’t. The fact of the water overflowing I put down to bad judgment on the part of the man sent out.”

“Hum! Thank you. Quite an interesting little point. Well, well. Miss Leylan home today?… She is! Say we’ll ring her a little later to tell her how the child is progressing. Yes, Scott has hopes. Good-bye.”

Bony had made tea and set the table for lunch when Marshall came in.

“No change,” he said.“Still unconscious. The wife’s watching her. Mrs Sutherland has gone home for some clothes and to take her sister.”

“Did you see Scott?”

“No. He had to go out.”

Bony poured the tea, and the sergeant carved from a leg of mutton. They ate in silence for some time. Then:

“I have glanced through the contents of that registered envelope you received this morning from Sydney,” Bony said. “The reports give an amount of information on theJasons, Gleeson, Dr Scott, and Way, dealing with their lives and reputations before they came to Merino. Nothing was known at date concerning the other people included in my list. I haven’t got much out of the information sent, for which I am truly thankful.”

“Oh! Why?”

“Because I want to finalize this case off my own bat, and if headquarters had supplied a missing link or two of my chain, you and I would receive less credit than is properly ours. Way did time in 1931 for sheep stealing… and that’s about all.”

Having eaten, Marshall went off to relieve Gleeson for lunch, and Bony walked out to the post office, where in the little room devoted to the telephone exchange he read through the original press message from one of Mr Watson’s colleagues. Much had been made of the fact that Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte was in charge of the investigation into two murders and the attempted murder of the daughter of Merino’s senior police officer.

“The sender knows quite a lot about me, doesn’t he?” Bony observed to Mr Lovell. “The padre gets a good notice too. Just too bad. Honestly, I hate publicity. Have you ever heard your children recite a rhyme running: ‘Annabella Miller, what are you doing with that caterpillar?’ ”