Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

Instantly Bony’s hands went upward to tear away the band of bone and flesh about his neck, and it was then that he became conscious of the automatic pistol in his right and the torch in his left hand. Tautened muscles rather than intent pressed forward the light switch, and the strong beam moved to and fro between the branches like a searchlight hunting an aeroplane.

The pistol cracked even above the roar of the wind and the roaring in Bony’s ears. He doubled it round and against his side, and at terrible risk to himself endeavoured to shoot his assailant. The night was now becoming unnaturally dark to Bony’s starting eyes, and then swiftly the threshing branches against the sky faded into a general void.

Again and again the pistol cracked, but, although his forefinger could still continue to press and release the trigger, Bony could not move the angle of his body more than was permitted by the muscles of his neck below the Strangler’s hands.

He began to slide downward into a pit. Once again the pistol exploded. Then he felt himself flying across immeasurable space. In his brain a light flickered with astonishing rapidity. When it stopped, pain ceased. Consciousness ceased, too.

The Doctor’s Patient

SO LIMITED WAS the scope of Dr. Mulray’s practice that to receive a night call was unusual. He was awakened by a persistent knocking when the dawn was breaking on a new day of high wind blowing coldly from the south.

The doctor’s bedroom was the front room, left of the tiny hall; his study-cum-consulting room was opposite. He was, therefore, not difficult to awaken by the knocking on his front door in a township where electric lighting and bells were notably absent. The temperature this early morning was lower than it had been for weeks. With the fall, the wind’s power over the sand particles had waned to vanishing point. The air was bracing, even in the doctor’s bedroom, and as he heaved himself off the bed, Dr. Murray knew that while he had slept a cool change had arrived.

“All right! All right! I’m coming!” he shouted when the knocking continued. Breathing heavily, the old man struggled into a worn dressing-gown, picked up the oil lamp he had lit, and thudded out to the hall and the front door. The wind caused the lamp to flicker badly, but standing outside he saw the burly Constable Lee and the much smaller Joseph Fisher.

“Admit us, please, doctor. I am in need of your services,” urged Bony. The tones of his voice caused the doctor to stoop to glare at him, and then he abruptly straightened and turned to the study door.

“Come in and let me have a look at you. Shut the door, Lee,” he commanded. Within the study, having put down the lamp, he watched the detective lurch into the room, and then gently assisted him into one of the two old but comfortable leather armchairs.

“Humph!” he grunted, not unkindly. “What has happened?”

Bony, looking up into the weather-beaten, pendulous face, stretched his neck.

“I have been within an ace of death,” he said with difficulty. “The Strangler attacked me while on Nogga Creek. Please examine my throat, doctor. Then, perhaps, a sedative…”

“Ah!” The exclamation was expressive. “Don’t you talk any more till I sayso. Know anything about this, Lee?”

Dr. Mulray had unfastened the pin at Bony’s coat-collar and was already examining his neck while he was taking the detective’s pulse.

“No, doctor,” replied Constable Lee. “This man has just roused me out and asked me to bring him to you.”

“Humph! Anobbier of brandy with a plentiful dash of milk, Lee. Brandy in the sideboard cupboard. Milk in the cooler on the back veranda. Get it, please. Now then, Joe! We’ll have your coal and shirt off. The strangling brute got you, did he? I knew damned well that that fool of a Simone arrested the wrong man. Humph! Ah! Yes! Humph! Your coat-collar saved your neck from external laceration, Joe. There is only faintecchymosis. I doubt that you could articulate if the hyoid bone was fractured, as it was in the cases of Tindall and Marsh. Mabel Storrie’s windpipe was split in two places, so I have heard from Adelaide. I can’t tell the condition of your windpipe without X-rays, but I am hopeful that you have escaped that most serious injury. Mabel had no clothing protecting her throat. Neither had the other two. Ah, good, Lee! Here, Joe, sip this brandy and milk. Take your time. You, Lee, help yourself to a bracer.”

“Thank you,” Bony murmured weakly. “I’ll be better presently. Fright, you know.”

“ ‘Shock’is the correct word for your mental condition,” argued the doctor. “I know; you don’t. You will stay here today. I have a spare room. You will go to bed now. Think you can walk with assistance? Help him, Lee. I’ll show you the way.”

While the policeman was helping Bony to his feet the doctor rushed out of the room, across the hall and to his own bedroom, from which he appeared a moment afterwards with a clean pair of pyjamas. Taking up the lamp from the study table, he directed Lee and the patient along the short passage to a rear bedroom.

“Did the brandy sting more than usually?” asked Mulray.

Bony shook his head.

“Good! It augurs well for your windpipe. Those neck muscles will be bruised. I’ll foment ’em. Then the needle, my boy, and a long sleep. Lee, hurry out to the kitchen and get the fire going. I want hot water, and plenty of it.”

Brisk, efficient, cool and immense. Dr. Mulray attended to Bony as gently as he might have attended a duke. He had the half-caste undressed and inside his spare pyjamas before Lee could appear with the hot water, and when Bony lay luxuriously between sheets he asked the old man:

“You insist that I stay here?”

“Of course! Think I am suggesting that you run up and down the street? How did you get here from Nogga Creek?”

“Walked-when I wasn’t lying down.”

“Ah! A long way for a man in your condition. About what time did it happen?”

“A little after one o’clock.”

“Humph! Quite a long time ago. And what were you doing on Nogga Creek at that hour?”

“I’ll tell you… I will be happy to explain when Lee returns.”

“All right! All right! Don’t worry. Hi, Lee! Stoke up that confounded fire.”

“Flames are shooting out the top of the chimney, doctor. The water is nearly on the boil.”

“That’s right, Lee. Never mind about the chimney. I always clean it every three months by setting fire to it. And then Mrs. Mumps has a fit and I have to dose her… with brandy.”

Dr. Mulray demonstrated that he was an excellent nurse as well as a good doctor. Lee submissively obeyed his orders, and presently Bony lay with his neck tingling from the application of hot cloths.

“Any pains in the chest or the back, Joe?”

“No, doctor.”

“Ah! Humph! Yes! Lungs not damaged, apparently. You can thank your coat-collar for a lot. Now Lee will want from you particulars about this terrible attack, so you need say nothing more than necessary at this time.”

Bony managed to smile. His neck and throat were feeling much easier, and his nerves were already steadying.

To the worried Lee, he said, “Explain to Doctor Mulray who I am. Doctor Mulray will respect the confidence, I know.”

As the constable told who Bony was and the business which had brought him to the district the doctor barked:

“Inspector! Incognito! Bless my soul! Humph! Ah! Yes! Simone knew nothing? Haha! That mountainous fool! That gutter-bred Charlie Chaplin detective! That champion chess-player!”

“In explanation of my absence from the homestead last night, doctor,” Bony took up the tale, “I said that you and I would probably be playing chess the night through to finish a close and interesting game. Let that stand.” To Lee, he said, “Can you manufacture an excuse to visit Wirragatta this morning?”