Arthur Upfield - The Mountains have a Secret

Bony drew away. The man on the stage was turning round. He came down the steps, marched slowly to his chair, his face white, his eyes wide. A pause, and his neighbour rose and walked forward, and during that short walk Bony slipped in round the edge of the door and in behind the wall drapery, coming to rest with his back against the wall, where two sections of the drapery met and provided a fold.

He could part the draperies and look through, and now he had a clearer view of the stage and the chance to study it.

The back and sides were draped with cloth of gold. Dwarfing the man standing with bent head, and seemingly about to fly out from the back wall, was a huge, black, double-headed eagle. The man was standing on the edge of a marble dais, and upon the dais was set a block of stone as green as uranium and semi-translucent. Upon the green stone rested a black casket with raised lid.

Simpson was the last to make the pilgrimage, for that is what it appeared to be, and on his return he crossed to the organ and began to play a portion of Wagner’stetralogy, theRing of theNibelung. Concluding, “DeutschlanduberAlles ” was like a fluid of sound pouring about the company, now standing, as the curtains slowly moved to contact at centre.

When the last notes swooned into silence Benson raised one hand, and the reason for the signal Bony never knew, for in that instant there broke into the silence the shrill ringing of a bell placed somewhere above the door. Benson’s face registered leaping anger, Simpson spun round on his organ seat and joined the startled company. The bell continued ringing imperatively, not to be denied. Benson glared, took in the company as though counting heads and shouted:

“Where is Heinrich? Jim, find out what your people want.”

The bell stopped as Simpson strode to the door which Bony had been careful to leave ajar. He pulled back the door and Heinrich almost collided with him as he staggered in, gazing wildly about like a man both blind and drunk, and, on seeing Benson, tottered forward.

“What is the matter with you, Heinrich?” Benson demanded harshly, a seemingly unnecessary question, as Heinrich’s head appeared to have been mauled by a chaff-cutter. The man swayed drunkenly upon his feet, tried but failed to articulate, closed his eyes as though about to faint, and then, with all credit, exerted tremendous effort to remain upright. No one offered assistance. No one brought him a chair. Not one of those astounded by the appearance of the man was more astounded than Napoleon Bonaparte. The man who had given the toast spoke:

“With your permission, Carl, I will attend to Heinrich. Odgers! Assist Heinrich to the house.”

Benson said, as though the butler’s state was of minor importance:

“Thank you, Dr. Harz. Jim, did I not say- The telephone, quickly. Ladies and gentlemen, please return to the house. Conrad, be pleased to have your aeroplane in readiness for flight.”

The sound of the butler’s dragging feet on the gravel came in through the open doorway as the last of the company passed from Bony’s range of vision. He heard a woman say:

“Why was not Bertram with us this evening?”

“He complained of a sick headache, Cora,” replied her brother. “He said he would retire and take aspirin and join us when he felt better. His absence may now be significant. We must-”

The voice faded, was cut off by a slight thud. Air pressure informed Bony that the door had closed.

He listened and could hear nothing. Without disturbing the draperies, he was unable to see the door or the organ beyond it. He was waiting tensely, holding his breath the better to hear, was concluding that he was entirely alone, when the lights went out. He relaxed, leaning back against the wall, his mind winnowing facts from impressions and classifying probabilities and possibilities.

Benson had ordered Simpson to find out what his people wanted, and it was certain that the order was connected with the ringing bell, although it had not sounded like a telephone bell. It meant that someone at the hotel was calling up the homestead and that the instrument in the house actuated the summoning bell in the observatory.

Who could be ringing from the hotel? Unless Mrs. Simpson and her daughter had returned, who else could be there? Only the old man, and he could not leave his bed. It would not be Mulligan, for even if Mulligan was thus early he would not make that mistake.

Glen Shannon! Improbable, because Shannon ought to have returned from Dunkeld, ought to have opened the double gates for Mulligan, ought to have reached the Baden Park boundary gate long before this. Perhaps the bell had not been a telephone summons, but an alarm set off by Shannon tampering with the boundary gate, trying to gain an entry in readiness for the arrival of the police cars.

Bertram! No, because Bertram was dead. Of that there was no doubt. He ought to have made equally sure that Heinrich was dead before leaving him at the back of the prison hut. He had then made a mistake which might be costly before the night was out, for doubtless they would get the butler to talk, or write if he could not speak, and tell what had befallen him.

Time! He wondered about the time, how close it was to daybreak. How long had he been here? It might be almost four o’clock, perhaps after four, and at any minute Mulligan would arrive to go through the place like a tornado and sweep everyone and everything into his net.

Before that happened Bony had yet more to do. He still had to uncover Benson’s secret and the motives for abduction and murder and the hospitality extended to these obviously German people. That upon the stage might inform him.

Within and without the observatory the silence was unbroken as he slid along the wall, parting the draperies with his hands so that they fell into place. Coming to the door, he felt for a handle or pull, found neither, discovered how closely the door fitted into the frame, decided that, like the gate, it was electrically controlled.

It was just too bad, for he would be a prisoner when Mulligan and his boys arrived. But-he was close to the hub of the mystery. An utterly fantastic idea had been simmering in his mind for an hour, but were it proved reality, for him fame would be undying.

He located the box of matches in one of his pockets, felt within the box, and found half a dozen matches and one fairly long cigarette end, of which he had no memory. He blamed himself for not having brought the butler’s flashlight, despite the fact that he could not have foreseen how the situation would develop.

Aided by the flame of a match, he crossed the auditorium and was near the stage curtain when the match expired. With his hands he found the curtain, the cool surface of satin caressing his fingers. He found the parting, then the steps with a foot, passed up the steps, and permitted the curtains to fall back into place. Another match he struck and held high when the tiny flame had taken steady hold upon the splinter of wood.

Somewhere an engine was pumping water. The sound was monotonous, and he wished it would stop. It did not permit him to hear with the keenness demanded by the situation, for he must know instantly if the door opened and anyone entered the building. When the noise of a motor-engine came to him he realised that the pumping was that of his heart.

Before him towered the giant two-headed eagle, and between it and himself was the casket set upon the block of green stone. The match went out as he placed one naked foot upon the dais.

Striking another match, he turned to leave the stage, hesitated, and was for ever grateful that he did not make the second mistake in this one night. In the ensuing darkness he felt with a foot for the dais, stepped upon it, and slid forward, first one foot and then the other, until he encountered the uranium-green stone.