Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“Then that settles it, Donald. Officially you begin here in the morning. Agreed?”

“Yes. And you will not fail to write to the agency for a new man?”

“Very well,”assented Martin ruefully.

He might have said more had not light footsteps been betrayed by the veranda beyond the open door. Into the office came Stella Borradale, dressed in tennis-rig and carrying two rackets. A swift smile broke on her face at sight of the fence-rider.

“Hullo, Donald!” she exclaimed coolly. “Are you really still alive? I wonder you did not choke to death in those two days of wind and sand.”

Dreyton’sface registered an answering smile, but no longer was his body relaxed in the easy stance of the bush-man, and no longer were his eyes unguarded. When he addressed her, he spoke as easily as he had done to her brother.

“I wanted to be a rabbit, Miss Borradale, so that I could burrow deep,” he told her. “It was no use wishing to be an eagle. Those I managed to see were perched in dead trees and looked extremely miserable.”

“They could not have looked or felt more miserable than I,” Stella said lightly, taking the others into her confidence. “In addition to the physical discomforts I was obsessed by the dread that something would happen. It spoiled the dance, and I was thankful to get home. Haven’t the detectives arrived yet, Martin?”

Her brother shook his head, and both he and Dreyton noted the look of horror deep in her eyes.

“I hope they send someone better than Sergeant Simone,” she said quickly. “He is an obnoxious person.”

“I think that half-caste fellow, Joe Fisher, would do better,” offered Dreyton.

“I have not seen him,” the girl said indifferently, staring at the fence-rider.

She possessed the trick of steady scrutiny without being rude, and Dreyton knew that he was being examined and approved much as his mother used once to do when he returned home at the end of a term at school. Her friendliness, he was well aware, was due to the absence of snobbery in her mental make-up. Her present attitude to him she adopted with all the men. It was never taken as ground for familiarity. It has ever been the general rule for those who live in “Government House” to address the men by their Christian names, and the rule has been in force for so many generations that were a man addressed by his surname he would accept it as an insult.

“Donald is going to take Mr. Allen’s placeprotem., ” remarked Martin, breaking a silence. “Mr. Allen is leaving us tomorrow.”

“Indeed!” Again Stella examined the smoothly shaven, not unhandsomeface, its keen cut features and the grey-blue eyes now regarding her. Then again she took them all into her confidence. “I am sorry you are leaving, Mr. Allen, and I hope you will find your mother much improved in health. We shall miss your tennis and bridge.”

“But we shall have Donald back,” her brother cut in, and he could not prevent satisfaction expressing itself in his voice.

“But I have not played tennis for more than a year,” Dreyton protested.

“That’s your fault,” Stella pointed out a little severely. “You would go fence-riding.”

The men’s cook was pounding his triangle.

“Better dine with us,” invited Martin.

“It’s kind of you to ask me, Mr. Borradale.” Dreyton made haste to reply, “butI am not yet your book-keeper. I must go to Carie this evening to refit. It would be possible for a book-keeper to dress like a fence-rider, but quite impossible for a fence-rider to appear as a book-keeper in his fence toggery. With your permission, Miss Borradale! Hang-dog Jack is so easily upset if delayed in serving dinner.”

She bent her head and smiled, and he turned and strode from the office, where brother and sister stared at each other for quite ten seconds.

Dreyton found Hang-dog Jack awaiting him in the long building devoted to the men’s kitchen dining-room. Five men were seated on the forms flanking the table. Bony being of their number. Standing at a bench on which stood a large iron pot of soup, and dishes of roast meat and vegetables, was the cook. Hang-dog Jack was an extraordinary person, both in his ability to cook and in his appearance.

He was of cubic proportions. His legs were short and his enormous arms abnormally long. His ugly face was square and crowned with a mop of black hair. A flattened nose, a wide and characterless mouth and a shapeless chin, were redeemed by a broad forehead and steady brown eyes. How he came by his “nom-de-track” no one knew. Some said it was due to his hang-dog facial expression; others that once he actually had hanged an unfortunate dog.

“Soup?” he snarled at Dreyton.

The fence-rider feinted and the cook ducked.

“Lookin’fer fight, eh?” snarled Hang-dog Jack. “You come outside and I’llwrastle you. In two ups I’ll dump you six times and give you the aeroplane spin.”

“I don’t believe in ‘wrastling’ with you,” mocked Dreyton. “Give me soup and a pleasant smile.”

The cook ladled soup into a tin plate and Dreyton took it, with knife, fork and spoon, to a place at the table where he met a barrage of greetings and questions.

A young fellow, obviously a horseman, who sat on Bony’s right and who was Tilly’s “boy”, Harry West, wanted to know if Dreyton had seen a piebald mare with a colt running at heels. Bill the Cobbler, an old man without a hair to his head, wished to know if Dreyton was feeling fit enough to write a letter for him to a “widderwot’sblackmailing me down in Adelaide”. Young-and-Jackson, so named because the famous hotel of that name in Melbourne was the only building he remembered seeing during his rare visits to that city, wished to know if Dreyton had seen Dogger Smith and “ ’Ow’sthat old pioneer getting along?”

Beneath their questions was restraint. Dreyton could feel it. He nodded recognition to Bony, who was smiling happily. No one mentioned Mabel Storrie. Harry West asked if Dreyton would take a ticket in the station sweepstake on the Melbourne Cup.

“I don’t believe in sweepstakes,” snarled Hang-dog Jack.

“Then why did you buy two tickets?” demanded the organizer.

“I don’t believe in ’em, all the same.”

“Whatdo you believe in?” asked Bill the Cobbler.

“I don’t believe in nothing,” argued the cook as though he enjoyed arguing.

“Not even beer?” mildly inquired Young-and-Jackson, blinking his green eyes rapidly.

“Not even in beer-at sixpence a small schooner.”

The scowl on the cook’s face was terrific. It amazed even Bony. With deliberate unconcern, Hangdog Jack lit an ancient pipe and casually blew smoke into the soup saucepan. Bony was thankful that the first course was past.

The BookOf The Bush

MOUNTED-CONSTABLE LEE and Bony sat facing each other across a small table wholly covered with untidy piles of documents which were partially weighted with sand particles. From the ceiling a suspended oil lamp provided a kind of illuminated passage up which spiralled tobacco-smoke. The time was 9.50 p.m., and the room was that designated as the police station office.

“I don’t envy you your walk to town tonight,” stated the uniformed policeman. When Bony smiled, but did not speak, he added, “And I envy you less your walk back to Wirragatta.”

“Being a still night, there was, and is, no need for nervousness,” argued Bony, his ready smile revealing his white teeth, his eyes now almost black. “Have you been informed of the departure of any plainclothes men from Broken Hill?”

“No. I don’t expect any notification. Simone will probably be assigned to this last case, as he is in possession of the details relating to the other two.”