Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

“Yes, I ran over there a couple of times,” he said. “Very pretty place. The guest-house proprietor told me that the fish were biting well.”

The pirate said, studying Bony:

“Might give the fishing abirl. Anything to drink at this Lake George?”

“No, you would have to take it with you.”

“Then I’m not staying at Lake George,” announced Superman with a voice that boomed. “I’ll get too thirsty, and I don’t sleep when I’m thirsty.”

“You drink far too much,” the parson told him. “You have a magnificent body, and you have not any kind of right to harm it with alcohol. Moderation in all things, Toby, has been the advice of scholars and preachers down through the ages.”

“Quit preaching at me,” pleaded Superman, and the pirate cut inplacatingly with:

“Are you from Melbourne?”

“No,” Bony replied. “I have a small station outside Balranald. Taking the first holiday since before the war.”

“Balranald!” murmured the pirate, and he began to twirl the points of his moustache. “I’ve never been there. Wealthy town, I understand. Someone told me there used to be seventeen hotels in Balranald.”

“Talking of pubs makes me feel queer,” asserted Superman. “What about a drink?”

The pirate ceased his attention to his moustache and regarded the large man with brows slightly raised. And then it was that the figure lurking deep in Bony’s mind stepped to the surface and made its bow. It bowed from the photographic print of Antonio Zeno, proprietor of gambling schools and suspected of being connected with the murder of a business rival. It stepped aside to permit another to present itself in the guise of the parson. This was Frank Edson, a con man who had, prior to the war, risen to international status and, when on business, always favoured clerical garb. Edson’s last term of imprisonment had been in Canada.

There was certainly something akin to old Simpson’s hard doers in these two men. Bony glanced at Superman, and Superman said through the still haze of tobacco smoke:

“I want a drink.”

“I am too comfortable to move,” murmured the parson, stretching his long legs, and the gentleman pirate impatiently said:

“So am I. If you want a drink, Toby, go and get one. Take two, take three, a dozen.”

Superman frowned and his square jaw hardened. He opened his mouth to speak and was stopped by the unctuous voice of the parson.

“There is, my dear friend, a time to be born and a time to die; a time to rest and a time to labour; a time to eat and a time to drink.”

“Hell!” said Superman, lurching to his feet to stand above them like the range towering above the hotel. “The time to drink is when you swallow. Come on! You can’t expect a man to drink with the flies. Trouble with you fellers is that you’re too correct and too careful with yourselves. You’d regret all the missed chances to drink if you got run over by a tram or something.”

Viciously kicking the chair back from his legs, he stalked to the door and entered the building.

“Friend Toby is ever too impatient,” indolently remarked the parson. “Nice fellow and all that, you know.”

“Better go along in and join him, I suppose,” grudgingly surrendered the pirate. “Else he’ll get himself drunk too early in the evening. What about you, sir?”

“No, I don’t think so,” replied Bony. “In another hour, perhaps.”

“Well, you’d better come along,” the parson was advised, and he frowned and compressed his lips for an instant before saying: “Yes, I suppose we ought to keep an eye on Toby. Still, I hardly approve of deserting our new acquaintance. Alter your decision, sir, and join us. I can assure you, we are moderate in our minor sins.”

Bony smiled and assented. It was the old, old story. And he was supposed to be a man of means.

Spanners in Machinery

SUPERMAN had prevailed on Ferris Simpson to open the “cupboard”, and now she was standing within, and the narrow serving ledge had been dropped across the doorway. Her face indicated petulance.

Superman brightened at the arrival of his friends and Bony and invited them to name their drinks. The parson and the pirate called for whisky, Bony and the big man choosing beer, and whilst the drinks were coming up the pirate offered expensive cigarettes. They stood at the cupboard ledge despite the inviting easy-chairs, and for the first half-hour the “shouting” was not consonant with moderation. They talked of the mountains, the hotel, the fishing at Lake George, and Bony began to wonder when the inevitable personal interest would come to the fore. The angling was expert, the acting of both the parson and the pirate superb. Superman only was his natural self. The fish was enjoying the situation, when:

“Can’t get it out of my head that I’ve seen you before,” remarked the pirate. “I’m Matthew Lawrence. What’s your name?”

“Jack Parkes,” replied Bony. “It’s unlikely we’ve met before, because I haven’t been away from home since ’39. Too much to do and too little petrol to do it with.”

“H’m! Strange. Might have been in Sydney some time.”

“Every man falls into one of about ten classes or types,” murmured the parson. “Thus it is that often we think we’ve met someone before. You mentioned, did you not, that you are a pastoralist?”

“That’s so. Wool production is my living.”

“Hell of a good living, too,” said Superman, grinning down at Bony. “Better’nwrestling for a living, anyway. I’m Toby Lucas. Toby to my pals.”

“Ah, the lies men tell!” mocked the parson. He ranged himself closer to Bony. “Look at him. Perfect physical specimen of Man. The idol of the crowd, especially the female portion of it. Receives four hundred pounds every time he steps into the ring. And steps out again at the end of an hour or thereabouts. Do you make four hundred pounds an hour?”

“Not much more than four hundred in a year,” Bony admitted truthfully.

“Neither do I-after having been freed by the Income Tax people. Just imagine four hundred pounds per hour, about sixteen hundred dollars an hour, or, if you’d like to take it in francs, about a hundred and ninety thousand francs per hour, just to step into a ring and bow to the fans, and then put on a dashed good act of rough stuff with plenty of hate with a fellow who is a bosom friend. Look at this Toby Lucas. Take in the expensive suit, the silk shirt, the diamond-studded wrist-watch, the bulging inside coat pocket, where he keeps his gigantic wad.”

“And then look at me, at my shabby clothes, at my flat pockets,” pleaded the pirate.

“And also at me, my dear Jack,” urged the parson. “Regard me, Cyril Loxton, a slave to capitalistic bosses who demand sixty hours a week for a miserable few pounds. You’d never guess how hard I have to work-and at what.”

“You are, I think, connected with a religious organisation,” Bony said, and the others laughed without restraint.

“My dear fellow, you are very wide of the mark,” the parson asserted smilingly, and yet Bony detected the smirk of satisfaction. “I am a debt collector. I collect long outstanding debts owed to other people. I pursue debtors until they pay up, and after they have paid up and thus freed themselves of a load, they dislike me. And whatever guess you made about Matt, here, it also would be wrong.”

Bony asked Ferris to fill the glasses and then stood back to examine the pirate, whilst swaying slightly upon his own feet. In the instant his gaze had been directed to the girl, he had noted that she was troubled rather than annoyed.

“Give me three tries,” he suggested.

“Bet you don’t hit the bull’s-eye,” struck in Superman, and Bony wondered why con men are so unoriginal in their methods. Then he was presented with a variation, for the pirate accepted the challenge on his behalf.