Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

There was something about this foul Strangler which was almost supernatural. In the wind and the dust of night he pounced and slew until his lust was appeased. Supposing that his crimes were not premeditated, that he was not one of those now remaining on Constable Lee’s list? Supposing that he had the head of a dog and the body of a kangaroo and the arms and hands of the kangaroo?

Reason opposed such a notion, but the idea was nourished by the darkness and the wind hissing among the trees. Much of reason is evolved for the express purpose of comforting men who live life like those who shoot unknown rapids in frail barks. A coward can easily deny his God when he is young and the sun is shining, but it is the believer in God who can command courage as he dies. Then it is faith, notreason, that takes the hands of a man to lead him on.

So, even as Bony thrilled at his triumph over fear, so did he wish himself back in his bed in the men’sbunkhouse.

The Three Sisters were above him now. He could see them as the wind-swayed branches moved. The Southern Cross was not visible, it being masked by the creek trees. It was ten minutes after eleven o’clock.

One of elevenpossibles! Which onethe Strangler? Of course it was a man and not abunyip. Come away! cried Bony’s mother. Stick it, old man! urged his father. Dreyton, Donald Dreyton. He knew when Mabel and Frank walked alone. He was camped only four miles away when Mabel walked alone. If he was innocent, why did he conceal, keep the piece of flannel and not at once hand it to the police? Tom Storrie! He was a strong youth, with hands like legs of mutton. Fred Storrie, his father! He was tall, lean and as strong as a bull. He knew when Alice walked alone, or could have known. He knew when Frank walked alone. Did he mistake his daughter for someone else, and then, discovering his mistake just in time, release her from his hands and, thinking her dead, leave her? Physically and mentally, Hang-dog Jack was the most likely of all thepossibles. He could-

Abruptly Bony ceased to breathe.

The back of his head rested against the trunk of the tree, and the trunk had received a distinct blow…

Continuing to keep his head pressed against the trunk, Bony slowly turned it so that his left ear came to be pressed against the rough bark and he was able to look up into the swaying branches.

Among them he could see no fantastic shape. The skin at the nape of his neck was prickling, while the feeling in his legs drained away like blood. His hair felt dry and brittle. Now he could faintly hear a regular tattooing on the trunk, but he could not locate its origin. When the tattooing ceased he heard a soft rasping noise as though something was sliding down the bark to reach him.

Yet he could see nothing, and the horror gripped his muscles and tortured his nerves. Stilled to stone, Bony waited with his right hand caressing the pistol and his left hand gripping the torch. He looked for, but failed to see, either man orbunyip. The rasping noise ceased, and he dared to free his pent breath. His straining ears hurt and then felt exquisite relief when they caught the sound of a sharp hiss.

There was someone or something on the far side of the trunk against which the detective was pressing his head. The strange tattooing began again, and Bony recognized it for what it was. It was being produced by a nervous man’s fingers, and this man, too, was pressing himself against the tree-trunk. The wildly staring half-caste saw the outline of the man’s head bulge outward from the trunk line, slowly, deliberately, until he saw half a man’s face. Swiftly Bony’s eyelids drooped to mask the white of his eyes.

The seconds passed, and neither man moved a fraction of an inch. The unknown continued to stand peering round the trunk; Bony continued to lie perfectly still, watching the half-face exposed to him. Had his own face been white he must have been seen, for now intuition rather than visual proof assured him that he was not discovered.

Even whilst he waited thus, Bony was experiencing admiration. The unknown had not arrived via the tree-branches and then down the trunk to his present position. He had come along the ground. He had come as silently as an aboriginal along the edge of the creek-bank which passed the tree only three or four yards beyond it. Bony knew that his super-sight and hearing had not been at fault. For a white man it had been an achievement, and that he was a white man was proved by the faint gleam of white face protruding from the trunk of the tree.

From the direction of the homestead Bony now heard the unmistakable sound of footfalls. To turn his head or to make the slightest movement would have betrayed him to the man on the other side of the tree, but presently the detective knew that a third man was coming along the creek track. He was now close. Now he was passing. Then the half-face vanished behind the tree, and swiftly Bony changed the angle of his head so that he could see the opposite line of the trunk and watch the track as well.

Walking the track was a man. He was walking towards the Broken Hill road, and for an instant of time he became silhouetted against the sky above the township. His shape, his gait, the manner in which one arm was swinging, all informed the detective that he was Hang-dog Jack.

The next moment the Wirragatta cook had vanished into the dark of the night. Bony waited, listening with all his power, to hear, if not to see, the fellow on the far side of the tree move away from it. Still more secondspassed, and he heard no sound nor saw any movement other than the waving branches above. Hang-dog Jack’s footfalls faded into the night as his shape had done. Still Bonywaited, certain that the other man had not moved his position.

The moment arrived when he could wait no longer. With the pistol now free of the coat-pocket, he slowly and noiselessly drew up his legs, and then he began the operation of raising his body whilst still pressed against the trunk. Up and up, inch by inch, and so till he gained a standing attitude, still pressed to the tree.

With the pistol ready for instant work from the hip, the detective slowly sidled round the tree, his head a little in front of his body, his right eye seeing past the trunk and his left eye blinded by it.

There was no one behind the tree. As silently as he had come so had the white man departed.

The Wirragatta cook had disappeared in the direction of the Broken Hill road, and Bony dared not use his torch to ascertain if the unknown man had trailed Hang-dog Jack or was still close by. The silence of the unknown’s departure was astonishing, because, unlike his arrival behind the tree, his departure had been listened for. From this vigil so far, one fact stood out in great importance. Hang-dog Jack walked the creek track in the middle of the night without the smallest effort at concealment or even silent movement.

Bony felt no uneasiness about the cook-if he were not the Strangler. Hang-dog Jack was exceptionally strong and he was, too, an expert wrestler. No man was better able successfully to resist physical violence. The detective reviewed his own actions in the immediate past. Should he have bailed up the unknown who had watched the cook pass by? Had he done right by making no attempt to apprehend the unknown for identification? Yes. To have done this would not have proved the unknown to be the Strangler, for Bony had not seen the fellow up among the tree-branches. He could not be charged with vagrancy, or with being on enclosed land or with any one of the hundred charges used for the purpose of holding a suspect.

Who he was Bony naturally would have liked much to know. Yet he would prefer to remain in ignorance of his identity if the knowledge did not prove him to be the Strangler. The pressing matter at the moment was to learn the direction taken by the watcher from the tree. To Bony an examination of his tracks would provide evidence of his identity as sound as that of fingerprints. Once he saw them he never would forget them, and would surely recognize tracks made by the same man at any future date. That he had followed the cook Bony was inclined to believe, but until he had proof he could not know if this were so. He might be within a few paces of him, and to use the torch to examine tracks at this stage would be foolish.