Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

“All right! All that is simple enough. Does the collar fit Elson?”

“Perfectly. The iron is covered with white satin which not only disguises the iron, but holds the acid preparation. The Strangler will find it impossible to throttle Elson, but he is strong enough to do him some other grave injury if not stopped in time.”

“If thisbirds falls into the trap, it will be a brainy scheme,” Lee said with unusual enthusiasm.

“Smithson called it neat,” Bony said, laughing.

“If we catch the Strangler tonight, who do you think he will turn out to be?”

“Up till last night I was almost positive who the Strangler is,” replied Bony without hesitation. “Now I am back again in a fog which is worse than this dust. When I took your name off the list there were left the names of ten men. There are now five. They are:

Hang-dog Jack

Bill the Cobbler

Fred Storrie

Tom Storrie

James Spinks.”

“It will be the cook, I’ll bet,” asserted Lee.

“I believe not. Hang-dog Jack is too obvious, and while the obvious is sometimes right I shy off it. No, my first pick is Fred Storrie, and my second his son, Tom.”

“Who did you think was the Strangler up till last night?”

“That is an unfair question, Lee.”

“Sorry, sir-er-Bony, but I’m all worked up about it.”

“Then let us get going. As you said, it is a nice little trap, butI do not like it notwithstanding. It is a reflection on my ability to solve a mystery with my brains. Perhaps, Lee, it is human to seek excuses for failure, and I am but human. Never in my career have I been met with difficulties so great and clues so few and of such small importance. Never have I had less assistance from nature, with so little indication of common motive. It is because I believe it to be impossible to obtain proof of murder, even if we knew the identity of the Strangler, that I have conceived this trap.”

“Well, it will be quite a sporting event,” Lee said.

“I doubt it. I shall not feel in a sporting mood. Now, no more talking, and, of course, no more smoking.”

When half-way to the creek, Bony led the policeman off the road, and Lee, who followed closely, was obliged to keep his gaze on the detective’s figure so as not to lose touch. It appeared to Lee that they walked for some considerable distance before Bony halted, turned to him, and whispered:

“Can you see the Nogga Creek trees?”

Lee stared into the velvety night.

“No, but I can hear the wind in them,” he admitted.

“I can see them,” Bony said. “They are only a little more than a hundred feet away. You are to remain here-seated, of course. In two hours the moon will rise. In half an hour Elson will begin his promenading. If an attack is not made on him before the moon gets up, the moon will assist us; and it will assist the Strangler, too. Don’t move from this place until you hear Elson shout for help.”

Lee was about to give an assurance when Bony vanished.

The detective walked direct to the road and then along the netted boundary-fence to the creek. Arrived at the top of the incline leading down to the creek-bed, Bony went on hands and knees and crawled along at the foot of the protective fence, under the branching trees beneath which Mabel Storrie was attacked, and so almost to the bottom of the incline.

Now he sat with his back to a strainer-post which was a foot higher than the ordinary posts, and by looking to his left he had the top of the incline providing him with a dim and valuable skyline. He was now immediately beneath the trees, but for this he cared little.

Having reached this position, he felt distinct relief from an acute attack of nerves, and it must stand to his credit that, after his experience of the Strangler along this same creek, he proceeded determinedly. The strainer-post gave him a feeling of great comfort. Its height would prevent any man attempting to strangle him from behind. In the distance a dim glow marked the position of the “prospector’s” camp, and the sense of complete isolation was less difficult to combat because of it.

Tortured by inherited superstitions, lashed by the contempt of reason, Bony maintained an incessant watch, visually searching for a monstrous figure slinking through this shrouded world of wind and noise. It was like waiting to spy upon one of those legendary half-dead people who are supposed to crawl from their coffins at sunset to roam the earth as living entities until sunrise. It was like a defiance of the bushbunyip, that horrific thing, half-dog, half-human, which, during the daylight hours, lurks invisibly in the heart of a bush, behind a tree, at the foot of the mirage, and at night takes material form to stalk venturesome blacks and half-castes who roam away from their rightful camps. This Strangler come from the world of light and colour into this living darkness with the wind and the stinging sand, and to the accompaniment of the wind’s fantasia. Bony was opposed to something which had uncanny sight, which could progress swiftly from tree-branch to tree-branch, which could move without sound.

The wind was hot, and yet Bony felt icy cold. Reason and inherited superstitions warred within him with nerve-racking ferocity. After all is said about reason, it flourishes best in the sunlight and drawing-rooms. A dark night with a prowling, foul murderer at hand is apt to wither this flower.

Thus was the reasoning Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte assailed by fear and doubt. Neither reason nor instinct assisted him to maintain the will-power.

A noise not of the wind banished even fear from his mind, subconsciously tensed his muscles for instant flight. Someone was on the road, humming a tune, and Bony tightened his ears and taxed his straining eyes. He saw, passing by on the road, distant but four yards, the figure of a woman dressed in white, and he knew “her” to be Barry Elson.

The fellow had grit, to be sure. A wave of shame and self-reproach swept through the soul of the half-caste. For a young and not too robust man to walk alone under the creek trees and in this darkness, hoping and yet dreading to hear at any moment a quick, pantherish step behind him, and then to feel iron-strong hands gripped about one’s throat, demanded courage of the highest degree. To do it night after night and never to know when the attack would come! To have no tree-trunk, no strainer-post comforting one’s back! To be able to control oneself like that for love’s sake and the honour of one’s name!

Bony was strongly tempted to call out, to get up and assure the young man that he was guarded by a watcher at this end of his awful beat. Barry Elson was playing the major part in a dreadful drama, while he, the investigator, crouched like a rabbit at its burrow’s mouth. But when the white figure passed again back to the camp, Bony kept silent and still.

After that, the minutes passed slowly, dragging out their allotted span. Above the dull glow of the tree-masked camp-fire was now growingan unearthly refulgence. Against this gradually came into being the ghostly outlines of the branches of the near trees, and Bony knew that the moon was about to rise.

The wind continuedits blaring of fantastic music, now satanic, mocking, shrewish, then strident, roaring, triumphant. Of the little familiar bush sounds there were none. They long ago had fled, affrighted by this monstrous concert played on leaf, bough and fence wire.

When the dirty-red disk of the moon was high above the invisible horizon, the white figure again appeared. Only the mind of a madman would find no incongruity in a woman walking in such a place and at such an hour, but it was a madman Bony sought. Elson went on down to the creek-bed, and then turned and came back to “float” away towards the camp.