Arthur Upfield - Battling Prophet

Mr. Luton shuddered.

“Once. A long time before I fell in with Ben. Neverno more. They pulled my hair out in chunks, and then my whiskers. After that they nipped out all me body hairs, one at a time. And now and then they threw things at me-a bale of wool, a bullock, a planet. And never missed.”

“You take a point,” conceded Bony. And Knocker Harris cried triumphantly:

“Therey’are, Inspector. Benkonked out onsomethin ’ not gin. You got to study this killing to find the lay of it.” His small eyes gleamed with sardonic humour. “Millions of people had no time for Ben and his weather-predictin’. And the politicians are in it, too. They were allagin Ben, like. He told us. The politicians would have their mothers murdered if they could hire someone to murder ’emfor nineteen andelevenpence. As for the Jews…”

“You keep off the Jews, Knocker,” roared Mr. Luton. “I’ll have no sectarianism in my house. “You’ll be…”

“Tell me about this last drinking bout,” interposed Bony, and Knocker Harris was unabashed.

“Yes, tell him,” he urged, and Mr. Luton said:

“It’ll be easy. Ben hadn’t been along for about two weeks, when he came down from the big house one afternoon. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask him, but he was soured by something or other, and when I seen how he was, I suggested a bender as we hadn’t had one going on for six months. First he says no, and then he says yes and to hell with everything, and so we got stuck into the gin.”

“You happened to have a supply of gin on hand?” Bony asked.

“I did, Inspector. Well, after a bit we didn’t want to eat no more. Now and then Knocker would call in and cook us a feed, hut we didn’t want it. Then he tried us out with soup, and after that he gave us up.

“Mind you, this was all on the programme. Nothing unusual. We talked about the old days. We sang all the old songs we knew. Now and then we took the whips down and went outside and flogged the trees, pretending wewas once more on the tracks with the bullock teams. It ended like it always did. One of us got thinking about his mother, and then we cried and called each other drunken sots and swore off the booze for ever. That was two days before he died.

“You got to understand that once we swore off the drink, we had to take on the cure and stick to it. We’d never been that weak-minded that any justice could have put us on the Blackfellers’ Act.*The cure was a small dose of the same every four hours. Between doses you suffer hell and you watch the clock like it was going to spit at you. * In several Australian States, a magistrate is empowered to declare an offenderan habitual drunkard, whereupon it is an offence for a hotel keeper to serve him with liquor. The aborigines are also debarred from hotels, and to serve them with liquor under any circumstances is an offence. Colloquially, the habitual drunkard comes under theBlackfellows ’ Act.

“I got the hoo-jahs that night, and Ben got ’emfirst thing in the morning, the same as me. He didn’t tell me so. Had no need to, or me to tell him. I knew by the way he kept looking sideways and back over his shoulders that he was having the gin hoo-jahs all normal and proper.

“Towards evening that first day, I made a fire in the stove and got us a hot drink of meat extract. We couldn’t bear the stink of it. So we sat and called each other dirty names tillmed’cine time came round again. At midnight we had ourdoch-an’-doris. A real snorter for the night. I was a bit worse than Ben, so he seen me into bed, and, soon after, I heard him shout good-night from his stretcher in the front room.

“I had a cat-nap, but I was awake long beforemed’cine time at four in the morning. I waited till four to take the bottle in to Ben. He was sitting on the stretcher with his feet on the floor, and he was holding his head with both hands to stop himself looking backwards at them hoo-jahs. Y’see, after a day of doing that, your neck aches like hell. I gave him his snort, and had one myself. Then I covered him up after he got back on the stretcher, and went back to my own bunk.

“I had another cat-nap, and waswoke by hearing Ben roaring with laughter. I asked him what he was laughing at, and all he could do was to keep on laughing and point at his legs, him sitting up and the bedclothes on the floor. Iwasn’t liking the way he was going on. I pushed him down and covered him up and left him, the time being just before half-past six, and one hour and a half offmed’cine time.

“He stopped laughing as I was making a brew of tea, pouring as much water on the floor as in the pot. I wasthinkin ’ then that if Ben didn’t come out from them funny sort of hoo-jahs pretty quick, I’d break our rule and give him a stiffener to keep him going. It seemed that I needn’t have worried, because when I went to him with the tea and the bottle, he was asleep and snoring. So I came back here and had a cup of tea and resisted the gin, deciding I’d wait for Ben to join me in the eight o’clock dose.

“Come eight o’clock, I went in to see how he was faring. He must have sat up again, for the clothes were half off him. He wasn’t asleep then. He was dead. So I staggered up-river to tell Knocker to go for the quack.”

“And the quack roared hell outer me, like,” snarled Knocker. “Told me that Ben and his boozing mate oughtadied a century back. And I oughta be ashamed of myself for associating with ’em. I told him to take arunnin ’ jump athisself, and I went to the policeman, and he said he’d a good mind to lock us all up, includin ’ dead Ben.”

Mr. Luton took over once again.

“They got here in the doctor’s car about ten that morning. By then I’d done some tidying up, throwing the empties into the river, planting the full ones out of sight. I told the tale that Ben had brought the supply with him, and we’d run dry and was sobering up. We had a confab on the veranda after the quack had seen Ben and said he’d died of the booze. I told them about the right kind of hoo-jahs Ben had, and how he couldn’t have died of ’em. They told me not to be a damned old fool, and that I ought to be put away for my own good.”

“The quack said we both oughta be sent up to the Old Men’s Home,” supplemented Knocker Harris indignantly. “And the policeman backed him up. Ruddy bastards, both of ’em.”

“You’d better get back to your camp,” Mr. Luton suggested with some severity. “I got to fix us with a feed, and feed the fowls and the dogs. It’s almost dark.”

A smile of benign satisfaction spread slowly over the weather-bashed features of the neighbour. He said something about seeing them later, and departed. The dogs went with him, only as far as the garden gate.

“You’ll be staying, Inspector, eh?” again pleaded Mr. Luton.

“Of course. You asked me down for the fishing,” replied Bony. “I’m a good fisherman, Mr. Luton.”

The Picture

THEnight was peaceful and cold. The moon at zenith was almost completely triumphant, for the western sky was fast being drained of light. Beyond the garden fence the three mighty gums ruled a magic world of semi-tones, with the silvered pathway of the river in the distance.

This was not the picture Bony was seeing. He was looking at a picture sharp in places, blurred in others, an unfinished picture. A man had died, and he and those associated with him were the subjects of this picture. They were portrayed brilliantly, were at once recognisable. The circumstances surrounding the dead man’s last hour of life were blurred as though befogged by Mr. Luton’s claims of extraordinary knowledge, knowledge which, superficially, was as fantastic as the dreams of the modern artists. Superficially to everyone save those who, like Bony, were familiar with the extraordinary background of the extraordinary race of men represented by Mr. Luton.