Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

“The next afternoon the guest-house rang the hotel to say that the girls hadn’t arrived, but no anxiety was felt at the hotel because the girls had camp equipment and tucker. Two further days passed before the hotel licensee set out to look for them. He could not find them, and the following day he organised a search. They-”

“Describe the search, please,” Bony cut in.

“Yes-all right. Er -having ridden along the road to Lake George and not finding any place where the girls had camped, the licensee reported the matter to me that evening. We arranged that he would contact Baden Park Station and ask for riders to get busy early the next morning, and I would take two men with me by car. I and my party reached the hotel at daybreak the next morning. We scoured the bush alongside the road, and the riders from the Station worked farther out. It’s hellish country. We kept at it for two weeks, but we found just nothing.”

“And then, two months afterwards, Detective Price tried his hand,” Bony supplemented.

“Price came in here one afternoon and said he was making for Baden Park Hotel to look round on the off-chance of finding something of the girls. He stayed there ten days. The guest-house people saw him pass their place on his way to Hall’s Gap. That was late in the afternoon prior to the morning he was found shot in his car.”

“Did the hotel licensee know he was a detective?”

“Yes. He let Price ride his horses. He said that, as far as he knew, Price found no signs of the missing girls. He also said that Price had given up the idea of finding anything of them when he left the hotel.”

“How long have you been stationed here?” Bony asked, and was told for ten years. “What is your personal opinion of the licensee?”

Groves frowned at the map before replying.

“The original licensee is Joseph Simpson, an old man and a chronic invalid. He settled there forty or more years ago. There’s never been anything against him, or against the son, James, who has been running the place for the last fifteen years. The son is a bit flash, if you know what I mean. Nothing against him, though. He gambles and runs an expensive car. There is a sister about thirty, and a mother who does the cooking. Usually a yard-man is employed.”

“Does the position of the hotel warrant the licence?”

“Yes and no,” replied Groves. “There’s fishing to be had at Lake George, and parties stay at the hotel in preference to the guest-house. I have the idea that the drinking is pretty wild at times, but the place is too isolated for proper supervision. However, the Simpson family are quite respectable citizens and thought well of by Mr. Benson of Baden Park Station.”

“The Simpsons’ nearest neighbours are the Lake George guest-house?”

“It’s a toss-up whether they or the Bensons are the nearer.”

“The Bensons! What are they in? Sheep or cattle?”

“Sheep,” Groves replied, a note of astonishment in his voice. “They breed the famous Grampian strain. Baden Park comprises about thirty thousand acres. There’s lashings of money. I was out there several years ago. The Bensons used to own the hotel property.”

“H’m!” Bony crossed to the window and gazed beyond at Mount Abrupt, warm and colourful in the sunlight, the serrated mountains beyond it darkly blue and mysterious. “The Bensons? What of them?”

“They don’t entertain much or interest themselves in the district’s doings,” Groves said. “The present Benson isn’t married. His sister lives with him. The father was quite a famous astronomer. He built his own observatory near the house, and it must have cost a fortune. The son didn’t follow it up, though. I heard that he’d sold the telescope. All he thinks about is breeding, and all he worries over is keeping his sheep from sheep stealers. Can’t blame him for that when he breeds rams which fetch a thousand guineas.”

“How many men does he employ, d’you know?”

“Not many, I think. Anything from six to a dozen.”

“Is sheep stealing prevalent?”

“Not at this time. Petrol rationing restricts that game. But before the war sheep stealing was very bad. You know, men operating fast trucks, pull up, over the fence, grab and grab, and off back to the city. Benson built a strong fence round his place and took other measures to defeat the thieves.”

Bony offered his hand.

“I’ll be going along to Baden Park Hotel,” he said. “Under no circumstances communicate with me. I’m a New South Wales pastoralist enjoying a long-delayed holiday. By the way, how did the guest-house people recognise Price’s car that day he passed?”

“Price had run over there twice during his stay at the hotel.”

At the Baden Park Hotel

HAVING rounded Mount Abrupt, Bony drove northwards along a narrowing valley skirted by the frozen land waves. Either side of the road, the gums reached high above the dense scrub and exuded their scent into the warm, still air, but above them the menacing granite face of the ranges betrayed no secrets.

Round a bend appeared the white-painted arms of a long wooden bridge and, on the near end, a signpost standing sentinel at the junction of a track with the road. Straight on was Hall’s Gap-twenty miles. Dunkeld lay behind thirty miles. A third arm pointed to the turn-off track and stated that that way was to Baden Park Hotel-four miles-and Lake George-seven and a half miles.

Humming an unrecognisable tune, Bony took the turn-off track, narrow, rough, walled with scrub. There was a faint smile in his eyes and in his heart the thrill of expectancy which drives on the born adventurer.

There are no bushlands in the vast Interior comparable with this, but then, in the Interior, there are no easy landmarks like these ranges. The track dipped gently downwards, and Bony had merely to touch the accelerator. Now and then he passed a crack in the bush walls, cracks which could be enticing to the inexperienced hiker.

The change was almost instantaneous. In the one instant the walls of scrub crowded upon the car; in the next they had vanished and the car was rolling across a large clearing on the left of which stood the hotel, its weather-boarded walls painted cream and its iron roof a cap of terra-cotta. Across the clearing ran a little creek spanned by another but much smaller white-painted bridge.

Bony stopped the car before the veranda steps. To the left of them wisteria covered the lower portion of the veranda and climbed the roof supports. To the right, windows bore the golden letters of the word “Bar”. It was a comfortable building, a welcoming building to the traveller. He switched off the engine and heard a voice say:

“Get to hellouta here.”

Another voice croaked:

“That’s enough of that.”

To which the first countered with:

“Nuts! What about a drink?”

From the fly-wired door above the steps emerged a man dressed in a sports shirt and grey slacks. He came down to meet the traveller alighting from the old single-seater. Under forty, his still handsome face bore unmistakable signs of high-pressure living. Shrewd, cold grey eyes examined the visitor even as the sensuous mouth widened into a not unattractive smile.

“Good day!” he said, his accent unexpectedly good. There was a question-mark behind the greeting, as though a stranger coming this way was rare.

“Good day-ee!” Bony replied with an assumed drawl. “You’re the landlord, I take it. Can you put me up for a day or two? Pretty place. Looks peaceful.”

“Peaceful enough-most times,” was the qualified agreement, accompanied by a meaning smile. “Oh yes, we can give you a room. My name is Simpson. Call me Jim.”

“Good! I hate formality. My name’s Parkes. Call me John. Bar open?”