Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“Old Grandfer Littlejohn, I think,” Lee replied, starting.

“What is the condition of his memory?”

“Poor-when he wants it to be. He’s a gossip. Anything you say to him will be retailed to Mrs. Nelson. He is her secret service.”

“Oh! Who is the next longest resident here?”

“Dogger Smith, now working on Wirragatta. He has the body of a giant and the vigour of a man of fifty, but the majority of the guessers put his age at ninety. Been here for more years than I’ve lived. He is never going to die. He’d interest even you with his yarns of the old times. You interested in the old days?”

“The old days of Carie, yes. Very much so. This Dr. Mulray-what type of man is he?”

“He is a pendulum.”

“A what?” asked the astonished Bony, and Lee grinned.

“He’s a pendulum. I was looking into a dictionary some time ago to find out what ‘pensile’ meant, when I came across the word ‘pendulum’, which describes Dr. Mulray. He has pendulous eyelids, pendulous cheeks, a pendulous lower lip and a pendulous stomach. Age, about sixty. Height, about five feet nine inches. Circumference at greatest part about four feet. If you can play chess, he’ll do anything for you, give you anything. I don’t play chess.”

Bony broke into low laughter, saying:

“You know, Lee, I think I like you. Do you remember what the word ‘pensile’ means?”

“Yes. When a man’s suspended at the end of a rope he’s pensile.”

Bony stood up.

“I thought so,” he murmured, “but I was not sure. Now I’m off.”

The Broken Hill Road

TO BE APPRECIATED, beauty must be felt as well as seen.

To those having the eyes to see and the soul to feel, the great plains of inland Australia present countless facets of beauty: these same plains offer to the man with good eyesight, but a shrivelled soul, nothing other than arid desert.

This early November morning the bush presented to one man at least all its vivid colours, all its allure, to stir his imagination as well as his pulses, to delight his mind as well as to subjugate consciousness of his body. Doing all this, the bush was, indeed, beautiful, for beauty only has the power thus to raise man out of himself.

It was ten minutes to eight when Bony reached the Broken Hill road and the scene of his labours. To the south of him ranged the trees bordering Nogga Creek, the soft breeze tipping each slender leaf with gold, the mass of them supporting the softly azure sky beyond. To the west and east the bluebush merged into a dove-grey carpet, a carpet which stretched away to the foot of the town in the north and rolled by and beyond those significant sand-dunes, which were not there when Mrs. Nelson was a girl.

Bright against the skylay the red-painted roof of Nelson’s Hotel, and, so clear was this crystal air, Bony could actually see the corrugations of that roof. In contrast to its colour the unpainted roof of Smith’s Bakery shimmered like faint blue water. Men and cows and goats of Lilliputian size moved about Carie’s one street, for the sun was not yet hot enough to create the mirage. There appeared to be a void, not atmosphere, between all those distant objects and the retina of Bony’s eyes. It seemed to him, this brilliant morning, as though he had returned from a long sojourn in a dim cavern. This bright world was painted lavishly with blue, green, soft grey, red, yellow and black, colours mixed andlaid on in the grand, the majestic manner as only the Master Hand can do it. Eden could not possibly have been more beautiful.

Beyond Nogga Creek came the growing hum of a powerful car. Bony’s ears informed him when it was negotiating the far bank of the creek, when it was crossing the wide bed of the creek, when it was mounting the sharp incline before bursting into the sunlight to send to him-and to Mrs. Nelson on her veranda-reflected bars of brightness from its chromium fittings.

It was a big car having especially wide rear seats, driven by a cigarette-smoking youth who wore his cloth cap back to front. Beside him were three passengers. The youth waved a lordly hand, and one of the passengers shouted something as the machine sped by the watching detective like the iron point of a spear fashioned with the red dust raised by it. And in the dust laboured the ghost of a Cobb and Co.’s coach drawn by five straining horses and driven by a wide-brimmed felt-hattedman who wielded a long, snaking whip.

An hour later there emerged from the Nogga Creek trees the figure of a man astride a piebald horse. Tiny spurts of dust rose from the animal’s hoofs to blur the legs from the knees down. The rider sat his saddle bolt upright. Methodically his switch rose from and fell upon the horse’s right rump, but the horse took no notice of either it or the full voice continually commanding it to:

“Come on, Jenny!”

It was evident to the observant Bony that Jenny long since had decided upon the speed at which she should “come on”. Or perhaps it might be that the rider long since had resigned himself to the speed at which Jenny was capable of coming on. Whatever the fact, the horse approached Bony at a steady three miles an hour, and then, without command, when it was opposite the detective, she abruptly stopped and fell asleep.

From beneath pendulous brows a pair of steady grey eyes regarded Bony. Pendulous cheeks were extended as though their owner was winded. The pendulous stomach almost rested on the saddle pommel.

As though the distance separating him from the man at the fence was a full half-mile, the horseman said, “Good day there! Who the devil are you? I’ve never seenyou before.”

It seemed that for this horseman not to have seen any one before was to be affronted. The switch rose and fell, and the horse again was commanded to “come on”. She therefore awoke and staggered off the road to bring her master beside the fence, and then again fall asleep.

“Good morning, doctor!” Bony said politely. “You are out early today.”

“Early! Early be cursed! Why, it’s after nine.” The pendulous cheeks became fully distended as though the accusation had the effect of physical exertion. “Early! Why, I’ve been abroad these three hours. Who areyou?”

There spoke the man long used to being obeyed and never become used to the expectation of being obeyed.

“My name is Fisher, doctor. Joe Fisher,” replied Bony gravely. “I am a stranger here. That is possibly why you have not seen me before.”

“Then how the devil do you know who I am?”

“I have heard your description, doctor.”

“Ah… my description, eh?”

“Yes. You were described to me as a fine figure of a man who rode a piebald mare.”

Now were the pendulous cheeks distendedtwice. The voice became a roar.

“I’ll have no word said against my Jenny. She has carried me in foul weather and finethis fourteen years, and she’s not going to lie down and die until I do. No, sir! She is the best horse in western New South Wales, and I’ll lay this switch across the shoulders of the man who argues the point. So you’re Joseph Fisher, eh? You were camped at Catfish Hole the night Mabel Storrie was nigh strangled to death. Did you do it?”

“Doctor…please!”

“Well, someone did, and it could have been you as well as another. However, youlook honest enough.”

“How is Miss Storrie this morning?”

“She’s recovering, poor child. She received a cruel blow to her forehead, and she’ll want time, and lots of it, to mend.”

“Has she regained consciousness?”

“She has lucid periods. I fear the effects of the blow, as well as the effects of the strangulation, much less than the effects of the shock given her mind.”