Arthur Upfield - Winds of Evil

Borradale stood up. His eyes were terrible and his gun hand was as steady as a rock. With effort, he mastered the trembling of his lips.

“I want you to plead for me with Dreyton,” he said. “I want you to try to show Dreyton that, although I am a monster in human shape, my father and mother were normal, decent people, and Stella is clean and normal too. I want you to impress that on him, because he might think that my abnormality is a family trait. It may be that I am a kind of throw-back, like a colt sometimes is a throw-back over generations. I don’t know. Will you try to make Dreyton see it in a sensible light? I’d like to know at the end that Stella would be happy presently.”

“I will do that,” Bony said simply.

“Thank you, inspector. Now please go,” Martin said sharply. “You will get up from the chair and march to the window. You will pass out to the veranda and then shut the window. I would like to do what I must do away from the house, but I had to call you here to explain matters and ask you to grant those few requests.”

Slowly Bony stood up. He stood then with his hands stiffly at his sides, less from fear of the revolver than from a perhaps unwarranted respect for the man before him. When he began to speak his voice almost failed.

“Mr. Borradale, yours is the most terrible story to which I have ever had the misfortune to listen,” he said. “I am in the position to believe every word of it. I leave you of my own free will. To arrest you, assuming I managed to do so, and to thrust you into the torturing vortex of a murder trial, with its inevitable result, would be beyond me. I shall not make any attempt to bar your way of escape. At this moment I thank God I am not a real policeman, mindful of his oath, aJavert, a Sergeant Simone. I feel honoured by knowing you-a man who can think of others at this moment, and a man who sees clearly the road he should take and who has the courage to tread it.”

Martin’s mouth quivered.

“Thank you, inspector,” he said, almost whispering.

Bony’s eyes were shining.

“My friends call me Bony,” he said.

“Thank you again, Bony!”

“Good-bye!”sighed the detective who was not a real policeman.

At the window he turned to look back to see the squatter still standing beyond the table, the flickering lamp light giving a marble-like passivity to his agonized face. The revolver was no longer pointed at him as he said with his hand on the window catch:

“I am going straight across to the office, Mr. Borradale. The garden is large and the wind is loud. A shot here may frighten Miss Borradale. You may trust me, for I am a man of honour.”

Bony bowed, opened the window, left it invitinglyopen, and walked direct to the picket fence, jumped over it and so crossed to the office building. In the office he found Constable Lee talking with Dreyton. Dreyton stared hard at him, and Lee said:

“I am glad you have come in. Can I now speak to you officially before Donald Dreyton?”

“Yes,” Bony said very, very softly. He appeared to be listening, and Dreyton thought it peculiar. About them the storm roared and whined. Beyond the windows was nothing but a blank wall of red sand.

“Very well, sir. We have found out that Hang-dog Jack’s hands are not burned with that paste stuff. Elson swears that the Strangler got his hands pressed to the iron collar. Sergeant Smithson reckons that we made a mistake.”

“The sergeant should reckon thathe made a mistake, not us,” Bony pointed out. Still he listened, and still Dreyton regarded him curiously. Lee was addressing this half-caste assir, whom he had known as Joe Fisher.

Bony expelled his pent breath. Then he said, still very, very softly, “If, my dear Lee, it is not the cook, it must-”

Above the yelling of the wind there came to them the sound of the shot.

“- must be the cook’s master,” Bony whispered.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dreyton shouted.

Lee and Bony were staring at the featureless wall of sand-dust sliding eastward beyond the opened office door. Bony turned to the frigid constable.

“From now on, Lee, you will exercise extreme reticence,” he said with unexpected firmness. “Do you understand?”

Constable Lee stood at attention. His eyes were full of knowledge.

He replied, “Yes, sir.”

The End-AndA Beginning

CARIE’S ONE STREET with its flanking buildings, the flock of goats passing the police station, old Smith standing at the door of his shop, and Grandfer Littlejohn holding audience with two men and three women: the distant line of trees bordering Nogga Creek, the far sand-dunes, and the nearer Common gates-everything and everyone was seen this evening by Mrs. Nelson as though in her spectacles were red lenses.

Above the township and the bluebush plain hung vast red cloths black within their deep folds. The wind had dropped almost toa calm, and it was coming, cool and sweet, from the south. The sun was setting and its oblique rays were being filtered through slowly falling sand-mist to strike full upon the celestial draperies now being majestically drawn away to the east.

When Mrs. Nelson, who was standing at the south end of her topmost veranda, held out her hands for inspection she saw them to be as though recently dipped in blood. There was no escaping this colour out of doors. It even transmuted the diamonds and sapphires in her rings into rubies.

Only now had she been able to leave her rooms in which she had been imprisoned for two days by the sun-lifted and wind-driven sand. She stood straight and sturdy, thankfully breathing the cool air, wonderingly watching the amazing sky above her coloured world. The soul of this woman was stirred, and she suffered vexation when a light step behind her broke a train of thought.

The man she knew as Joe Fisher stood before her when she turned. His blue eyes were soft, almost appealing.

“Madam, I am the bearer of sad news,” he said gently. “It is of your son about whom I have come to speak.”

Instantly the dark eyes widened and the fragile lips were compressed. For three seconds she stared up at him before saying sharply, “My son!”

“Your son, Mrs. Nelson!”

For the first time Bony sawthis woman shrink.

“My son! What do you know? Who are you?”

“I am an investigating police officer. Will you not sit down and invite me to bring a chair from the sitting-room?”

Mrs. Nelsonnodded, her face white, her eyes anguished. When Bony became seated a little to her front she said softly, “My son! Tell me, please.”

“When I was told that old man Borradale wept when he read the service over the body registered as your child I knew that he wept over the body of his own son, Mrs. Nelson. You must prepare yourself for a great shock. Your son, known as Martin Borradale, is dead.”

“Dead!”

Bony averted his gaze from her stricken face.

“Dead,” he repeated. “He died this morning a brave and an honourable man-by his own hand.”

Swiftly Bony related everything he had that morning been told by the young man in the Wirragatta bedroom, and of the trap prepared to ensnare the Strangler.

“I did not enlighten your son regarding his parentage,” Bony continued. “The only people who know that are Miss Borradale, Dreyton, Doctor Mulray, and our two selves.”

“Tell me all you know,” the woman commanded.

“Your son was born on the third of January, 1910. Doctor Tigue attended you and Mrs. Littlejohn nursed you. The following day Mrs. Borradale’s baby was born, and it died. Mrs. Borradale and her husband had been eagerly looking forward to the coming of their first born, and so ill was the lady that Dr. Tigue feared to tell her it was dead. Mr. Borradale and old Grandfer Littlejohn-”