Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

His early-morning scouting expeditions were not quite so profitless. He found that the hotel’s electric power was brought over the range from the Station homestead, and that a direct telephone line connected the two places. And that was all, save the addition that Glen Shannon had done a great deal of hiking both before and after his, Bony’s, stay at the hotel.

Because on the afternoon of this fifth day he wanted to sleep, he pinched out the current cigarette and carefully preserved the end to leave no clue to himself, as well as to conserve precious tobacco. Then, ready to move, he stood for a minute to scrutinise the scrub back of the boulders.

People could become lost and die in this country. A man could wander through and through it seeking help and never finding it. And yet! Bony recalled the story told by two men constructing a fence in the bush, a dozen miles from the nearest road and a hundred from the nearest township. They had run out of meat, and one had taken a rifle and hunted two miles from camp, where he had shot a kangaroo. As he was skinning it a mounted policeman rode out of the scrub to charge him with having killed a kangaroo in the closed season.

It was like that here-and probably more so. Because the bush looked empty, felt empty, the odd chance of someone observing him had to be recognised and countered with the utmost caution. There had been three men with Simpson at the road junction, three men he had not seen during his stay at the hotel. They might have come from Baden Park Station: they might be three of the hard doers Old Man Simpson had spoken of. And to clinch the argument for caution, no one had heard the three shots fired at Detective Price. No one would have done so had the pistol been fitted with a silencer.

The summit of the range back from its precipitous face was almost flat, the slope becoming gradually steep as the land fell towards the valley in which was situated Baden Park Station. Along the upper portion of the mountain back, the trees were short and the scrub was low and sparse. As he proceeded down the back, Bony employed every artifice to reduce the number of hisbootprints. To glue feathers to his naked feet with blood, as his maternal ancestors were wont to do to evade pursuit, was out of the question, and the next best method, wearing boots of sheepskin with the wool on the outside, was prohibited by the toughness of the minor shrubs and the sharpness of the granite chips.

Fortunately, opposition, if encountered, would be by white men and not aborigines.

Taking advantage of granite outcrops and large flakes of stone which had become surface “floaters” from a parent reef, Bony made his way diagonally down the mountain back, intending to reach the track from the hotel to the Station after it had crossed the summit. The birds were his allies who saw everything, who twittered at everything which moved.

Quite abruptly he looked out over the valley, a wide and luscious valley, ironed into the greensward of well-tended paddocks whereupon grew wide-spaced red gums, providing shelter for stock. Down the centre of the valley ran a wide creek, its water gleaming like silver, and the creek partially encircled a spacious white house surrounded by ornamental trees. Near-by was a great domed block, the observatory, which in turn was flanked by outbuildings and the shearing shed. It was the most beautiful pastoral property Bony had ever beheld.

Continuing diagonally down the slope, he came to the road from the hotel. He followed the road, keeping wide from it, visually examining the scene ahead and watching the birds, and so to the foot of the range, where he was confronted by a fence.

With his back to a tree and himself partially concealed by scrub, he studied this fence. It was eight feet high. Iron posts carried the wires between larger strainer posts set every thousand feet apart, and from the ground upward every six inches was a barbed wire strained to the tautness of a violin string. Set at an angle of forty-five degrees, iron arms reached outward to carry five barbed wires. It was impossible for anything on four legs to climb over or pass through, and even the rabbits were frustrated by wire-netting. Save with wire-cutters, a man could not conquer this fence.

This must be the fence which Shannon had had in mind.

The gate was to the right, and cautiously Bony moved closer to it. It was the same height and similarly constructed, being fitted with a peculiar lock, which had no keyhole and no bolts. Outside the gate stood a small hut or shelter shed, from which a telephone wire passed to the nearest pole, carrying a telephone power line from the homestead to the hotel. Fifty feet inside the gateway a narrow band of metal was inset into the roadway.

Bony had seen similar fences built round government experimental farms, but never such a one enclosing private property. The cost per mile must have been very high, but in this case was certainly an insurance against the theft of extremely valuable animals and breeding secrets.

He smoked three cigarettes before moving away from the tree to stand beside the road for a close-up view of the gate. Now he observed that it was electrically controlled and without doubt was controlled from the house. And then, as though to show him how the gate worked, into the background silence of the day entered the humming of a car engine.

He wasted not a second in gaining concealment within a clump of scrub.

Simpson’s Buick came snaking down the road to be stopped before the gate. Simpson was alone. He left the car and entered the little hut, and the ringing of the telephone bell reached Bony. Simpson was inside less than thirty seconds, and on emerging he crossed to the car and entered it.

The gate slowly swung inward. Simpson drove through the gateway. The car must have passed over the strip of metal inset into the road, and the gate closed silently, excepting for the final soft metallic clang.

Cracks in the Picture

MASKED by the leafy green in which he had found concealment, Bony relaxed and made a cigarette by shredding his collection of ends.

It was evident that the electrically powered gate was controlled from the distant homestead and that it had been opened when Simpson had announced his arrival by telephone. It was also evident that when wishing to leave the property the weight of the car passing over the metal strip would open the gate and keep it open long enough for the vehicle to pass through.

Beyond the fence at this place the scrub had been thinned to such an extent that the homestead could be seen without difficulty. Bony estimated the distance as being a fraction under two miles, the road to it running straight and level and marked at intervals by side posts, painted white. At this low elevation he could see the red roofs of the buildings and the massed ornamental trees forming an arboreal oasis on the plain of the cultivated valley. Slightly higher than the trees rose the domed roof of the observatory.

What he could see of Baden Park Station was of interest to Bonaparte the traveller, but held little significance to Bony, the investigator into the disappearance of two young women. That James Simpson was a constant visitor to the homestead was accounted for by his childhood association with Carl Benson, by his ability to play an organ, and by the friendly association of their respective fathers.

The American yardman had certainly seen this fence, and it was most likely that he had visited the homestead with Simpson. There was no significance in Shannon’s visit to the homestead, although there was in the vagueness with which Shannon had spoken of fences in general, as though he shared a secret and could not refrain from seeking further information about a particular fence.

Bony was content with his own situation at the moment. The shade cast by the scrub was cool and he had found a comfortable back-rest against a boulder. Curious to see how the gate did open to permit Simpson to pass from the property, he decided to wait-and fell asleep.