Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

“Have you got the brilliant with you?”

“No. It’s in safe hands. I think, Shannon, it would be wise for you to continue searching for traces of those two girls, and I will continue my investigation into the motives and actions of Simpson. If you will do that and promise not to take the law into your own hands, we will progress much better. We will leave our swags here, concealing them with scrub, and we could meet here again late this evening to make camp and compare notes.”

“Okeydoke. Let’s act.”

Eventually, the swags were hidden among a nest of rocks at the foot of the range, and when returning to the creek to pick up the tracks of the dray, Bony pointed out the tracks left by the American.

“Pretty hard for an ordinary guy to trail a man through this country,” countered Shannon, and not for the first time revealing a stubborn streak.

“Good Australian bushmen are not ordinary guys, Shannon. Australian aborigines are super-extraordinary guys. However, we are fortunate that there are no aborigines in this district-so far as I know. Well, now, I’m going after that dray. We’ll act independently. Meet you tonight.”

Shannon nodded agreement a trifle too casually to satisfy Bony and at once proceeded to demonstrate his bushcraft by disappearing into the scrub. Bony went forward, keeping roughly parallel with the dray’s tracks, for him broken bush and scrub being a clear guide.

It was quickly evident that Simpson had not led the horse towards the hotel, but had skirted the foot of the range, reaching the elbow of the side track where it left the vineyard, and then, on that track, had passed through the white gates he had left open. Keeping wide of the track, Bony found the horse and dray standing on a small cleared space, and the licensee sitting with his back against a stack of some six tons of cut firewood.

Bony concealed himself in a patch of low bush at the edge of the clearing, and he, too, made himself comfortable, envying Simpson his opportunity to smoke. He had seen and heard nothing of Shannon.

The stack of wood was significant and confronted Bony with a problem. Should he prevent the destruction by fire of the yardman’s remains? Where lay his duty? If the body was destroyed by all that wood, what then? Fire does not completely destroy a human body. Thecalcined bones remain among the ashes, and teeth, natural or artificial, and such items as metal buttons and boot nails.

Because he felt that O’Brien’s murder was the outcome of others, because he felt that through Simpson and his crime he would penetrate the mystery covering the fate of the, two girls, he decided again to lie low, like Br’er Rabbit.

A full hour passed, and he was fighting off sleep and yawning for a cigarette, when he heard the sound of horse’s hooves coming down the road from Baden Park. Simpson did not budge, although he must have heard the approaching horseman. He did not rise until the horseman reined off the road and dismounted beside the dray.

The rider was tall and lean and slightly grizzled. Bony had seen him twice before, seated with a woman in a magnificent Rolls-Royce.

The Man from Baden Park

THERE was no friendliness in the greeting. Simpson stood before the horseman with a scowl on his face. The horseman regarded Simpson with a steady glare in agate-hard blue eyes, and there was a tautness in his body foreign to the Australian pastoralist whose garb he wore. His voice was resonant.

“You brought the body?”

“Yes. It’s in the dray. I rolled it in canvas.”

“Place it on the heap of wood and unroll it that I may inspect it.”

“Oh, I brought it all right,” Simpson snapped, rebellion in his eyes.

“That I may inspect it,” repeated the horseman.

Simpson shrugged, and from the dray drew the corded bundle on to a shoulder and carried it to thewoodstack. The stack was four feet high, and he heaved the bundle upon it, sprang to the top of the stack, and, cutting the cords, obeyed the order. There was none of the horror in his eyes and on his face Bony had seen in that dark hour before the dawn. There was now rebellion and anger that his word had been doubted. The sun was shining. The birds were awake and excited. And there was a living man beside him, the horseman having agilely mounted thewoodstack.

“Satisfied?” Simpson flung over his shoulder.

No alteration occurred on the face of the horseman. He replied:

“Proceed with the burning.”

He jumped to earth and Simpson followed. The horseman strode stiffly to his horse and led it farther from the dray and nearer to Bony. From the dray Simpson took a four-gallon tin and proceeded to pour the contents on thewoodstack along that side facing the wind. With a match he fired a piece of brushwood, and this he tossed against the petrol-drenched wood. Then, placing the empty drum into the dray, he led the horse a little way down the road.

The wood had been cut perhaps two years and was over-cured for cooking purposes. After the first emission of black smoke it sent up tenuous blue smoke, which the wind carried to the range and dispersed against the granite face.

The horseman relaxed, standing on the road with the bridle rein looped over his forearm and watching the mounting fire. He must have seen Simpson approaching from the parked horse and dray, for without speaking he produced a cigarette-case and proffered it. The licensee accepted a cigarette from the gold case, which sparkled with a bluish light of diamonds. Neither spoke as they watched thewoodstack burning.

The pyre presently became a great, slowly-subsiding mass of coals. There was no smoke, only the hot air rising in a long slant. The object of bringing the body all this distance to burn was plain. The wood of the stack was dust-dry and no longer contained gas, and thus gave off a minimum of smoke, it being the end of summer, when smoke is likely to bring a spotting aeroplane.

Carl Benson broke the long silence, and from his voice had gone the brittleness.

“The work is well done, Jim. An unpleasant episode is almost finished. You must attend to the final details tomorrow morning.”

“You going to trust me to do it, or are you coming along to watch me?” Simpson almost snarled.

It did seem that Carl Benson was impervious to the other’s mood, for neither his face nor his voice changed by a fraction.

“I am not sorry that I spoke coldly,” he said. “You must not resent my orders or my displeasure, because our trust is too great to permit our reactions to situations to affect it. Yours was the mistake, mine and yours the task of rectifying it.”

“All right, Carl. I’m sorry I was huffy. It was a filthy job and, I now see, necessary. You can depend on me to recover the bones in the morning and put them through a prospector’s dolly-pot and toss away the dust.”

“Of course, it was a horrible business, Jim, but there was nothing else for it. I was angry because you did not report at the time the removal of that old fool, and for dealing with the corpse in the way you did and thus creating danger to the consummation of The Plan.”

“The chance of finding the body where I planted it was a thousand to one.”

“Agreed, Jim. But the one chance in the thousand could not be accepted in view of the Trust laid upon us. And, further, I am not pleased by the manner in which you got rid of that American. You acted hastily and without proper thought, when you should have accepted my guidance. However, have you seen or heard anything of him?”

“No, not after Amos reported that he had left Dunkeld and taken the road out this way. It’s likely that he went to Hall’s Gap.”

“We cannot be sure of that,” Benson said. “We have no one there now to report, since Lockyer left. And thus we have to proceed with extreme caution until the culmination of The Plan on the twenty-eighth. Come over tonight and play for us. The company will help the music to get this business out of your system.”