Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

“Don’t speak. Pretend to be asleep.”

Sliding back to the floor, he pocketed the glass and the bottle. The silence was material, a substance filling the room from floor to ceiling. Came into the silence the whisper of moving bedclothes, and then the regular breathing of a man asleep. Cunning old bird. Likely enough, he had in the past been surreptitiously inspected in the small hours.

It was outside thefrench windows, not beyond the closed door. Bony detected the small creak of the veranda board he had himself located. He went forward to lie prone on his chest, his body then being parallel with the bed, and able to see the oblong of the windows. Slowly he worked his feet under the bed, his legs, his body. Then his head was beneath it, and by lifting the valance he could again see the shape of the windows.

The oblong became a frame encompassing a human figure. The size of the figure magically grew larger so that the frame vanished into it. Soft illumination broke the darkness, and Bony saw a man’s feet and trouser cuffs within inches of his face. Whoever he was, he was standing at the foot of the bed and directing the handkerchief-filtered beam of a flashlight at the old man. There was no sound. There had been no sound to break the silence other than the old man’s breathing, and Bony marvelled at the soundless entry into the bedroom. There was no sound now other than the breathing, regular, slightlystertorous.

The light went out. The oblong frame appeared dimly again and showed the figure of the man for a fraction of time. The man had stepped beyond thefrench windows and had gone along the veranda, and so round the corner to the front-if he was not waiting just outside.

Bony waited a full minute before edging out from beneath the bed. Stealing to the windows, he glanced cautiously round each and searched the blackness of the veranda and the lighter darkness beyond. Satisfied that the visitor to old Simpson’s bed was not near, he stole back to the old man.

“Who was that?” he whispered.

“Don’t know for sure. Didn’t open me eyes. Likely enough it was Jim. How’s the bottle?”

“But the Buick hasn’t come back. We’d have heard it.”

“He-he! Jim’s got brains, he has,” asserted the invalid. “Got ’emfrom his father. Jim’s a bit suspicious, soprob’ly he left the car at the Bensons’ gates and walked here. He done it before.”

“When was that, d’you remember?”

“Too right! It was about the time them gals disappeared. He washopin ’ to catch Ted O’Briengivin ’ me a drink. Mistook the night, sort of. Ted and me washavin ’ a nip or two the night before.”

“Was that when my uncle told you he thought the girls hadn’t been bushed?”

“Yes, it were. Me throat’s that dry and all. Yes, it was then. We washavin ’ a nip or two, and Jim came in andcatched Ted giving me a tot. Jim did perform. But it came out all right. He didn’t sack Ted till weeks after, and that was for getting drunk in the spirit store.”

“What did you mean about a body being in the store-all stiff and cold, you said.”

“Nuthin’. It was a sort of dream I had. How’s the bottle?”

Bony told the old man to lie quiet, and himself went to thefrench windows, was assured, returned to the bed.

“Tell me about that dream,” he urged.

“Yougimme a drink. I’m drytalkin ’,” countered the old man. Bony pondered, standing in the dark, a part of his mind seeking to register the sound of the returning Buick, another part wondering what reliance could be placed in the cunning old rascal pleading for another drink. The old man askedquaveringly:

“You still there?”

“Yes. I’m waiting for you to tell me about the body in the spirit store.”

“There wasn’t no body, I tell you. I dreamed it one night. The body I saw lying there cold and stiff was me.”

“When did you dream it?”

“When? How the hell can I remember when? Gimme a drink, quick.”

Bony’s voice was like the tinkle of ice in a wineglass.

“When-or no drink,” he said.

“Blast you,” snarled the old man. “It was that night Ted O’Brien put me to bed. I was having me dream when a curlew or something screamed on the veranda or somewhere and woke me up. Why don’t yougimme a drink?”

“It wouldn’t be my uncle who screamed, would it?”

“Whatd’you want to frighten me for?” wailed the invalid, so loudly that Bony almost clapped a hand over his mouth. “All in the dark, too. And Jimsneakin ’ in here and all. Course it wasn’t Ted. Ted was drunk in the spirit store. Jim found him there the next morning.”

“Very well. Let that slide. One other thing, and you tell me true and I’ll give you another tot. The next day, the day after you had that dream, what did Jim do?”

“What did he do!” slowly repeated the old man, and Bony believed he was genuinely stirring his memory. “Why, hegimme me breakfast here in bed and he tells me he’s sacking Ted because he got drunk in the spirit store. And then, all morning, he took the horse and dray and went out after firewood, what Ted was supposed to fetch and didn’t. And then he dressed me and put me on the veranda and played the organ all afternoon. After that hegimme dinner in the dining-room. And after that he put me back to bed. Nowgimme that drink.”

Bony gave a further two swallows, retrieved the glass, told the old man to go to sleep, and left the room, walking without noise back to his bedroom window. He had been in his room only a minute when he heard the Buick returning. It was then seven minutes to two.

“Hard Doers”

EARLY the next day the wind came to thresh the trees of weak leaves and dead wood and to keep the small birds deep in the protection of the creek scrub. It made the morning so unpleasant that Bony elected to read the newspapers in the small lounge serviced by the “cupboard”, where Simpson, looking in on him, suggested a drink.

“Good-oh!” he said when Bony declined. “Day to be inside, all right. I’ll be about when you want a drink. Gold fever burned out yet?”

“Never had it,” Bony replied lightly. “I haven’t the sporting spirit. To be a prospector one must be a gambler.”

“Agreed. Wool and booze are deadcerts. Still, I like a flutter now and then.” The cold grey eyes were steady, having in them no reflection of the smile widening the sensuous mouth. “I’m going to Dunkeld this afternoon. Anything you’d like brought out?”

“Yes, if you would,” Bony said. “Bring me a packet of Dr. Nailor’s Digestion Tablets. It’ll cost three and six.”

“Get indigestion, do you?”

“Sometimes, and then badly. Was up most of last night. In fact, I went for a walk in my dressing-gown. Must have walked almost to the Dunkeld Road junction. Didn’t hear you come in.”

“Oh, I got home about two. I’ll make a note of those tablets. Be seeing you.”

He left for Dunkeld shortly after three. The wind gave signs of petering out by sundown, and after tea, taken with old Simpson on the veranda, Bony strolled beside the creek as far as the locked gates barring the road to Baden Park Station. Lingering for a little while, he found the evidence proving that Simpson had coasted his car down from the mountain crossing, had walked to the hotel, and then had returned for the car. The slight suspicion that the visitor to old Simpson’s room the previous night had been Glen Shannon was thereupon banished.

On leaving the gates, Bony parted with the track, walking through the bush for a mile or more along the foot of the range, to examine the country in the vicinity of a little mountain of rocks sundered from the range when the world was young. A tiny stream came down from the range to pass by the little mountain and go whispering softly through the luscious scrub. Near-by Bony came to the tracks of the hotel dray, tracks now several months old.