Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“Dreyton!” echoed the doctor, and he drew in his breath and distended his pendulous cheeks. “Yes, I can guess with reasonable certainty of being correct. I’d wager a bet that he was once in the Royal Navy. I’d wager ten bets that he was an officer. There is not a great deal of difference between the face-cast of the military and the naval officer, but there is certainly a small distinction.”

“He would be, then, of that class commonly called the ‘upperclass’ in England?”

“Yes. Dreyton would belong to the ‘County’ class. Probably, nay, almost certainly, he comes from a long line of naval officers.’ ”

“Thank you. Now would it be too much to ask you to visit Fred Storrie in order to be sure that he does suffer an attack of influenza?”

“Not at all, inspector. I could go along right away.”

“Good! Try to remember, doctor, that to all my friends I am Bony, and I would like to count you among the number. While you are away Lee and I will get to work on the details of a little plan I have conceived. With your permission we will use your writing materials. And then, at dinner-if you will invite me to dinner-we will discuss the moon and madness and static electricity.”

Dr. Tigue’s Case-Books

“IN THIS COMMUNITY, doctor, there is a man suffering from a brain lesion,” Bony was saying as his host and he smoked and drank coffee after dinner. “This man is not a lunatic to the degree that he could be easily located and as easily certified. Normally he is as rational as you or I or Constable Lee-but you could be the victim of his mental trouble, as I could be, and the other one of us would never suspect it. I believe that his trouble is hereditary, that it did not seriously affect him until a few years ago, that it is now becoming rapidly worse and will inevitably reach the stage when normality will have ceased altogether.”

“There’s sense in what you say,” conceded the doctor. “I have myself thought along those very same lines.”

Bony rolled himself another of his interminable cigarettes, stretched his neck muscles, lit the weed and gazed solemnly at the medico.

“When a young man, doctor, I committed a grave mistake. Through a broken love-affair I threw up my post-university career and went bush. It was a mistake I have always regretted. Certain friends of mine wanted me to study for a medical degree and take up work among the blacks. Had I done that I would have known today more about the human mind than the average layman.”

“But you would not have been a detective.”

“Perhaps not.”Bony sighed before smiling. “The greatest evil of life is the shortness of its duration. We are not given time enough to learn anything before we must prepare for death. The older I become the more clearly do I see that the creation of a man’s brain is almost wasted effort, because the mortal span does not allow him to develop it. The more he learns the more clearly he understands that what he has learnt is but a drop in the ocean of what he could learn did he live for, say, a thousand years. I am repeatedly faced with a problem which would be no problem at all were I the master of all learning.”

“And your present problem?” asked the entranced Dr. Mulray.

“This-does static electricity affect the human brain, and, if so, to what extent?”

“Help!” cried the pendulous man. “You would have to be an Edison and an Einstein, not an ordinary doctor, to answer that. On that subject I, like you, am a layman.”

“Well, then, let two laymen tease it a little by discussion,” Bony urged, and then proceeded to relate the phenomenon of static electricity stored in the car he had met in the dust-storm. “That day there was no thunder, no manifestation of electricity in the atmosphere. The driver said that it was produced in his car by the incessant bombardment of sand particles, the dry tyres providing almost complete insulation. It appears to me to be quite a reasonable theory and, if correct, would account for several mysterious air accidents when the aeroplane is disintegrated. There must be a point when the charged object cannot carry more electricity. As you say, it is a problem for an Edison. Where it more closely concerns us is the probable effect on certain types of human beings of this singular electrical manifestation.”

“What the devil are you driving at?” asked Dr. Mulray.

“You will see in a minute. I have been told by many old people that the weather, or, rather, particular phases of it, affect their rheumatism. Can you tell me why?”

“Not with any authority,” confessed the doctor. “That the weather does affect rheumatic sufferers is, of course, correct.”

“Well, then, do these dry wind-storms have their effects on certain patients?”

“Ah! I can answer that. Mrs. Nelson’s nervous system is affected by them. I have prescribed a sedative for her to take when they begin. Then I have known two men and three women who become prostrate when a thunder-storm breaks. Admittedly, in the case of one the effect was caused by the shock of seeing her husband killed by lightning. The others suffered, in my opinion, by the atmosphere being overcharged with electricity, which affected their nervous systems. As a student, I used to think it was the result of sheer funk, but I do not hold that view today. They have a natural antipathy to electricity just as other people have a physical antipathy to lying on horse-hair, to eating strawberries, by contact with a cat.”

“We are progressing, doctor,” Bony said with great satisfaction. “Now, bear with me a little longer, please. Our Strangler operates only during a sand-storm. At first I believed he was sane enough to choose the conditions provided by these storms in order to conceal as much as possible evidence which might reveal his identity. I am beginning to think now that this might not be so. He might not be actuated by his own safety, but impelled to seek to satisfy his lust to kill by the electrical phenomenon accompanying these fierce wind-storms.

“Further. I have been seeking a man who knew, when normal, just what he did when abnormal. Now I recognize the probability that, when he is normal, he might not know what he does when insane. If this is so, then my task is made ever so much more difficult, because I could not trap him through conversation. He would not betray himself, being unaware of his guilt. Proof positive of his guilt can only be obtained by catching him in the very act of killing.”

“Then he might be-anyone?”

“He might be anyone, as you say, doctor. Still, lacking the requisite knowledge of a combined Edison, Einstein and Curie, we cannot consider this aspect of the case to be anything more than a theory, and, perhaps, a wild theory at that. To arrest Hang-dog Jack might be to commit as great a mistake as that committed by Simone when he arrested Elson. Even if I found the Wirragatta cook climbing along the Nogga Creek trees I would not be justified in ordering his arrest. There is no law against him climbing trees, even at two o’clock in the morning I am not going to order the arrest of any suspect before I am certain of his guilt. I have never yet done such a thing and I am not going to do it in this case. It is the toughest nut I have ever been asked to crack, but I’ll crack it if I have to stay here for ten years-and am sacked by my chief for not giving it up.”

Dr. Mulray pushed back his chair and clawed his way to his feet.

“Come along to the study,” he suggested. “I think, perhaps, I can give you a hammer which might enable you to crack the nut.”

Dusk was falling swiftly upon Carie as they entered the doctor’s most comfortable room and drew the heavy leather chairs to the open window. With many grunts and sighs the pendulous doctor settled himself deliberately, as deliberately put the tips of his podgy fingers together before he spoke.