Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“You suppose right, Joe. Forget it. It is of no importance to you or to anyone else. If you think I go about collecting pieces of cloth attached to tree suckers, you must have an extraordinary opinion of me.”

“Very well, Mr. Dreyton. Thank you for the records. I will take great care of them. Perhaps if you should come across that piece of grey flannel-dark-grey, wasn’t it?”

“Yes… yes. Come on, now! Out you go. I want to lock up.”

Then the telephone-bell rang shrilly. Dreyton swore, and Bony sauntered out to the veranda. He was smiling. He had certainly discovered a wisp of grey fibre adhering to the broken ends of a tree sucker in that tree climbed by Dreyton, but he had not known until Dreyton informed him without the aid of words that what the crows had quarrelled about was a small portion of dark-grey flannel.

He had but reached the end of the office building when Dreyton called:

“Joe ahoy! Just a moment.”

Bony went back.

“Constable Lee is on the phone and wishes to speak to you,” Dreyton said with asperity. “Hurry up, please.”

At the telephone, Bony announced his presence. Lee said:

“Sergeant Simone went out to Westall’s station this afternoon. He has just returned, bringing Barry Elson with him. He has arrested Elson and charged him with the attack on Mabel Storrie.”

When Bony did not speak, Lee said anxiously, “Hi! Are you there?”

“Yes, Lee. I am astonished by Simone’s action. When does he propose to take his prisoner to Broken Hill, do you know?”

“Tonight. He’s at the store filling up with petrol. Elson is in the lock-up. My wife is preparing his tea now.”

“Will you take it in to him?”

“Yes.”

“Then tell the young man not to worry about the future. I shall probably see you early this evening. Aurevoir.”

Having replaced the instrument on its hook, Bony turned to find Dreyton standing at his table, waiting.

“That was Constable Lee, Mr. Dreyton,” Bony explained. “He rang up to say Sergeant Simone has arrested Barry Elson for the attack on Mabel Storrie.”

“Then Simone is a confounded fool,” Dreyton said, his eyes beginning to blaze.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. Now, hewould have been a confounded fool had he arrestedme.”

The Night Rider

A TREELESS PLAIN has its wardrobe of dresses, a wardrobe much better stocked than that possessed by a forest. Unlike women, nature dons a dress to suit every mood, and not one to create a mood. Some of her moods call for ugliness, colour dissonance, even drabness.

On this particular evening in the second week of November the bluebush plain surrounding Carie wore a dress of orange and purple, for the setting sun had drawn before its face a mantle of smoky crimson bordered along its topmost edge with ribbons of gold and of pale green.

This celestial drapery was beyond Mrs. Nelson’s range of vision. She was sitting in an easy chair at the extreme south end of the balcony of her hotel, the knitting with which she had been employed now idle in her lap, her small, white, blue-veined hands resting upon it. Even so, she could command an excellent view of the one and only street.

It was an evening to calm anyone’s troubled mind, but the mind of Mrs. Nelson was by no means untroubled. In fact, it was greatly excited by recent events.

To the south, a bar of dark green was Nogga Creek, and after the sun had set it became a bar of darkling colour fading gradually into the dove-grey sky. From the wide eastern horizon, coming inward towards the town, the grey of distance merged into purple-a purple slashed by streaks of orange where the sun’s aftermath caught the lines of tobacco bush-a purple which flowed about the greater splashes of light red, beneath which lay the thousands of tons of fine-grained sand deposited by the winds since Mrs. Nelson was a girl.

Smith’s Bakery opposite, and all the town to the left of the hotel, was stained with dull reds and browns-stains which obliterated the harshness of iron roofs and weathered walls of wood, of iron, of petrol-tins, of chaff-bags. Along the street had been driven a flock of goats, and, as though their passage had been transmuted into an imperishable mark, minute sand particles raised by their cloven hoofs now hung steadily in mid-air, forming a nigger-brown varnish, which coloured old Grandfer Littlejohn, talking excitedly with Mr. Weaver, the many playing children, and the unusual number of gossiping women standing on the footpaths. Even the figures of Bony and Mounted-Constable Lee, talking outside the police station front gate, were tinted with this umber shade.

What an afternoon it had been! The little woman on the veranda was feeling almost exhausted by the strain of the excitement. She had, of course, watched the departure of Sergeant Simone on the track to Allambee, and for two hours she had found much enjoyment in speculating on his destination and the purport of his business. Then she had seen the sergeant’s car returning along the sole street, had watched it turn just before it reached the police station and so disappear in the direction of the lock-up. And in the car with the sergeant had been Barry Elson.

It was as well that, despite her years, her heart was robust, because the subsequent wait and the suspense were hard to bear. That old fool of a Littlejohn had hobbled to the police station corner and stood there to stare at the lock-up instead of coming to tell her if Elson really had been arrested. Mrs. Nelson was about to send for James and order him to go and ascertain what it was all about when Sergeant Simone drove out to the street and pulled up before the petrol pump outside the store.

After that, for an hour, the car was parked outside the police station whilst that annoying brute of a man was inside talking mysteriously to Constable Lee. People began to animate the usually empty street, and they stood like statues staring across at the lock-up when the sergeant drove his car to it, and out of Mrs. Nelson’s view. Ah, and then he had suddenly reappeared with Barry Elson at his side, and had driven away, to vanish under the Nogga Creek trees on his way to Broken Hill.

Tilly came on to the veranda and told her in hushed voice all that she had guessed. One could see the look of amazed relief in Tilly’s homely face. One could tell by the movements of the people in the street that at long last the shadow of the Strangler had been lifted from Carie.

And then, about half-past seven, that stranger half-caste working on Wirragatta had appeared at the Common gate, to walk into Carie to the police station, where he had been for the last half-hour. Oh, what was he doing in the police station? What was he talking to Lee about? Mrs. Nelson sent for James. And James received certain orders.

Mrs. Nelson’s dislike of Sergeant Simone was due less to his profession than to his refusal to inform her of the progress of his investigation. She disliked Donald Dreyton because he avoided acquainting her with his past history. With Joe Fisher, she was positively angry, for not only was she unable to find out whence he had come and who he was, but he had not even called at the hotel for a drink and a yarn with James. Old Grandfer Littlejohn had been ordered to come up for an interview, but to hide his ignorance of what was going on the old fellow had cackled about nothing.

The plain was swiftly changing its gown for one of dark grey and indigo blue. From two dozen tin and debris-littered back yards hens were quarrelling for roosting-places. Mr. Smith sat down on his doorstep, and Grandfer Littlejohn arranged himself on his petrol-case set at the edge of the path outside his son’s house. And then Bony left Constable Lee, and, on his way towards the hotel, was stopped by Grandfer… Five minutes later Bony entered the hotel, and the watching Mrs. Nelson sighed and settledherself to receive a visitor.