Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

“Well, now, Jack Parkes, since you have asked me to demonstrate on you the Indian death lock-and these gentlemen are witness that you did-I will now oblige you. No doubt you will have to enter a hospital or a nursing home for a little while, due, of course, to my slight inebriation and thus misjudgement, but you did insult me and that will be my excuse. I shall apologise and be very sorry and visit you often, and my publicity man will have a picture taken of me at your bedside. Now come to Daddy.”

With astonishing quickness he was upon Bony, and Bony was equally quick. He attempted quite successfully the French drop kick taught him by an expert. The kick rocked the wrestler, and had it been given by a man of his own weight he would have been dropped cold. He swore viciously, and the parson called:

“Well done! Very well done! Now, Toby, kindly get busy.”

Bony backed, crouched to take the onslaught with an offensive and was savagely pushed from behind by the pirate. The push sent him out of balance into the wrestler’s huge hands, and in an instant he was on his back and his legs were gathered up, twisted into the wrestler’s legs, and the wrestler, grinning down at him, proceeded merely to hold him fast.

“Excellent, Toby,” cried the parson. “Do be careful now. Our friend only requires a slight rest, not a broken back. Honour will then be satisfied.”

Toby’s body began to lift, Bony’s legs locked behind his own. Up and up he went preparatory to flinging himself backwards and thus strain and wrench the ligaments and muscles of a man hopelessly unable to bear it. The other two came closer. They leaned over the prostrate Bony, still smiling gently, but with the joy of sadists flaming in their unwinking eyes. Something which glittered streaked between the face of the wrestler and the two heads, and from the wall came a sharp twanging sound. Three pairs of evil eyes rose from the victim’s face to clash, to waver, to move to the wall in which throbbed the blade of a throwing knife.

“You guys better let up, sort of,” came the soft drawling voice of Glen Shannon. “If you don’t, well, I just can’t miss.”

Like actors on a slow-motion film, the heads of the four men turned from gazing at the quivering knife to see the American yardman standing inside the cupboard, the door of which was wide open. On the serving-shelf were laid symmetrically four throwing knives. Another was lying along the palm of Shannon’s open hand. Shannon said, and menace was like metal in his voice:

“Easy now, wrestler. Untie yourself. Think of a knife buried into your stomach, handle and all. Don’t you other guys so much as blink.”

The wrestler cursed, lifted his upper lip in a wide snarl. Then he went about freeing Bony’s legs and, strangely enough, in this situation, Bony noticed the lacerated place on the great chin made by the toe of his shoe.

He and the wrestler rose to their feet. The others stood up, watchful, silent, poised like snakes ready to strike. This silence was whole, solid, something of weight, broken a moment later by the banging of a distant door. Along the passage came the tread of heavy men. A gruff voice drifted inward from the back of the premises. The knives vanished from the cupboard-door shelf. Shannon drew back, snatched up a drying-cloth. The parson and the wrestler turned slowly to face the door. Bony sighed, and his mouth widened into a narrow red slit. The door opened violently, and two large men entered.

“Licensing Police here,” announced one of them.

The Raid

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE was finding it necessary to exert willpower to subdue temper. He had suffered injury to his dignity, and that was also a blow to his pride, which could not easily accept physical defeat at the hands even of a man like Toby Lucas, one of the world’s greatest mat men. That he had come within an ace of suffering physical injury was of less significance.

He regained command of himself during the moments when the two plain-clothes policemen took in the room, the open cupboard and Shannon standing within it and polishing a glass, the four hotel guests.

The raid had been efficiently conducted. The police car had been stopped a mile away from the hotel, and on foot the crew had arrived to surround the hotel and simultaneously enter it at the front and the back.

Two more policemen came into the lounge, and one of these took command. Unobserved by Bony, Ferris Simpson had entered the cupboard, and the American had emerged into the lounge to stand nonchalantly chewing gum. The girl was asked to bring the register.

“You men staying here?” demanded the police leader, and, having received affirmative replies, he waited silently for the register.

Bony sat down, emotional reaction causing leg and arm muscles to throb and heart to pound. Breathing was now slightly easier, but his brilliant blue eyes were still dilated and noticeable in the dark face. The leader of the raiding party flashed him a keen look the instant before he accepted the register, snapped open the leaves to lay bare the last entries, and examined the page.

“Who is John Parkes?” he asked.

“I am,” Bony admitted. “Address isCoonley Station, via Balranald.”

“Huh!” grunted the leader, as though by force of long habit he did not believe a word of it. “Well, which of you is Cyril Loxton?”

The parson answered. He was standing beside the table upon which he was elegantly leaning one hand.

“Your name is not Loxton. Your name is Edson.” The slight movement of those in the room was stilled by that harshly spoken objection. “Which is Matthew Lawrence?”

“That’s me,” replied the pirate. “That is my name.”

“Not in Australia it isn’t. Your name in Australia is Antonio Zeno. And your name-your real name-you know, the name at birth?”

“Toby Lucas,” replied the wrestler. “And you can’t argue about it.”

“Good!” The policeman signed the book and returned it to Ferris, who had stood by tight-lipped and silent. “I like people who stand by their legal names. Saw you at the stadium a month ago. The wife barracked plenty for you. Thought I recognised you. Must say you’re pretty good on the mat. Still, I don’t think you’d put up much of a performance against four of us, so calm down. Now, what about you? You’re not in the book.”

“I’m the yardman and general man employed here,” replied Shannon, without ceasing to chew.

“How long you been employed here?”

Shannon said he had been working at the hotel for close on three months, and then, to Bony’s astonishment, for the senior man had not once appeared to look in that direction, he was asked about the knife sticking from the wall.

“I tossed it,” he announced. “Was giving a demonstration how it’s done.”

The senior man now stared at the knife and then went back to the American.

“H’m! Pretty good, eh? Friendly demonstration, I suppose?

“Sure.”

“Glad to hear it. Name is?”

“Name’s Glen Shannon.”

Ferris was brought into the range of the hard hazel eyes.

“That O.K., Miss Simpson?”

“Yes, that’s correct, Sergeant.”

“Good! Shannon, you clear out. Miss Ferris, lock the cupboard and retire.” He waited until Ferris and the yardman had withdrawn, and then he addressed himself to Antonio Zeno, asking how he had arrived. Zeno said he had come in his own car and, when this question was put to Edson and Lucas, they admitted they had travelled with the pirate.

“Well, we must get along, gentlemen,” proceeded the leader. “Parkes, I am going into your background in a minute. You, Edson, and Zeno, I’m taking back to Melbourne-for identification, you know. I have reason to think that the names you gave me were false.”