Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

Lucidly and with remarkable detail, Bony planned their individual parts. In his woman’s clothes, wearing his iron collar on which would be smeared the doctor’s acid preparation, Barry was to walk from the camp to the road and repeat this walk until two o’clock every morning. If attacked, he had to resist the impulse to struggle until he was sure that the criminal’s hands were clamped round his iron collar. Then he was to shout for help. The sergeant would lie hidden from early in the evening at a spot approximately one-third the distance to the road, and Bony would be keeping watch on the road itself. Barry was not to begin his promenading before nine o’clock, at which time the watchers would be in their respective positions.

“Have you any idea who the bird will turn out to be?” rashly asked the sergeant.

“Yes. I am not a gambling man, sergeant, otherwise I would lay short odds against a particular man, one of ten I have had remaining on a list for a long time.”

“Who is he, Mr. Bonaparte?” urged Elson, and Bony smiled.

“I would not dare to tell you,” he said. “Should I prove to be wrong, I would never forgive myself, and you would never again regard me as being a great detective. I must remain silent until we get him, and then I can always say I knew who it was. Now I must be off.”

The sky this evening was one of splendour. The sinister high-level haze was now transmuted into streamers and banks of crimson velvet, the reflection from which stained the tops of the plain’s bluebushes with brown while leaving their under-portions a brilliant blue-green. Despite the lateness of the hour, the flies were particularly active, and no evening breeze came to stir the pointed leaves of the box-trees-leaves which drooped as though too long without water in a hot room. Deeper yet in shade became the ominous but glorious sky, until, like a curtain, night was drawn down to the western horizon.

Bony at length reached that box-tree against which he had sat for several hours, and from behind which an unknown man had watched the passage of Hang-dog Jack, when the detective saw not far distant the shape of a car standing on the track. It was theBorradales ’ single-seater, and because the hood was down Bony saw that no one was seated in it.

With tautened nerves, his mind at once sensing an important development, Bony edged to the creek-bank and proceeded with the utmost caution. He came eventually opposite the car, and he had reached this point with absolutely no sound betraying him. His right hand gripped the comforting butt of his pistol.

The sky was still faintly lit by the departed day, and a sound directed his attention up and into the tree immediately beyond him. On one of the lower branches he saw a man, and then, when this man’s head moved out from a branch above him and became silhouetted against the sky, Bony recognized him as Martin Borradale.

At once realizing that if Borradale was the Strangler he would certainly not leave his car standing on the track, yet unable to grasp what the squatter was doing, the detective waited, his body pressed against the tree-trunk and invisible to anyone but a yard distant. Borradale was not climbing farther into the tree, and he was not coming down out of it. He appeared to be doing something to the branch above that one on which he was standing. There he remained working for some few minutes, whilst Bony’s muscles were tensed like steel springs. Four or five long minutes passed, and then the squatter descended to the ground, walked quickly to the car and drove away to the homestead.

Without delaying, Bony climbed to the branch on which Borradale had stood. The tree, even in the near darkness, was as familiar to the detective as his own house near Brisbane. It was a unit composing one of the many sections along the creek in which the blacks’bunyip leapt and swung from branch to branch.

Standing as Borradale hadstood, the next higher branch was on a level with Bony’s face. It was a branch used by the “bunyip’s” feet, and with great care Bony raised a hand to it and felt along its worn surface. His fingers came in contact with slack string, and following this string to the trunk of the tree the brown fingers came in contact with the warm metal of a double-barrelled shotgun.

Having found the gun, Bony proceeded to examine it by lowering his head and bringing it against the sky. He saw now that it was lashed to the trunk of the tree and that its two barrels pointedslantingly upward along the branch.

Bony understood.

Anyone coming to step on the branch from swinging to it from another at a higher level wouldtauten the string, which in turn would discharge the weapon and kill him instantly. As Smithson might have said, it was a very neat little trap.

Martin Borradale’s action was a revelation. Bony was really delighted and could hardly forbear to chuckle. Borradale had discovered-or, more likely, had been told by Dreyton-that the Strangler climbed from tree to tree, and here he was determined to end the suspense by bagging the Strangler himself. After all, he had had but a poor opinion of Detective-Inspector Bonaparte, and, like Colonel Spendor, was become impatient of delay.

Standing there up in the tree, Bony pondered. If he left this trap set, it might well kill the Strangler. Then it would come out that the great Bony had been beaten by a young pastoralist, and the said pastoralist would certainly get into hot water for using such means. That would not do. No, of course not. In any case, if the gun went off and killed anybody, it would not provide proof that the person killed had strangled two people and had come close to strangling two others.

Bony permitted himself to chuckle softly as, with great care not to discharge the weapon, he broke open the breech and extracted the two cartridges. He would take his turn in providing a first-class mystery and proving that the Strangler was as cunning as a whole flock of crows.

While walking on to the homestead, he visualized the squatter’s face when he went to examine his trap. Afterwards, when the case was finalized, he would explain everything to Martin and his sister. Altogether, Bony was feeling very pleased with himself.

The Vigil

THE WEATHER PORTENTS did not disappoint several men who had been waiting for the calm, hot spell to break. Shortly after the dawn following the evening when Bony watched Martin Borradale set his gun-trap, the wind rapidly freshened from the north. It sent scudding over the ground the debris of bluebush and river tree; it sent the galahs and the cockatoos and the crows whirling in the air like pieces of paper, and when Bony set off for Carie to fetch the mail it was raising the sand high over the bluebush. And the bluebush now was painted a brilliant purple on the underside of every curiously shaped leaf, and the sun’s shadows were tinted ash-grey.

When in Carie Bony spent half an hour with Constable Lee. The northerly wind swept down the main street and caused Mrs. Nelson to desert her balcony. It assisted the detective on his way back to the homestead, but its angle gave the flies shelter against his face and chest.

Two among his several letters provided much interest. One was written by his wife, in which she carefully noted a hundred and one details concerning their children andherself. The second letter was typed and was signed by the New South Wales Commissioner of Police. It was, however, the enclosure which was of greater importance, for it dealt wholly with the career of Donald Dreyton prior to his arrival in Australia.

When Captain Malcolm Dreyton, R. N., was accidentally killed on the China Station in 1912, his son, Donald, was at school atStubbington, Hampshire. An uncle, Vice-Admiral Sir Reginald Dreyton, became the boy’s guardian and supervisor of his career. In due course the boy went to the Naval College at Osborne and subsequently graduated into the Royal Navy. Promotion was normal, and the young man reached the rank of Lieutenant-Commander and became the commander of a destroyer.