Arthur Upfield - Murder down under

Standing on a chair, he examined the top of the bookcase. Lying on his chest, he searched the narrow space between the bottom of the bookcase and the floor. With the fluttering quickness of a butterfly he hunted for that little box, even removing the wood billets in the iron scuttle. Finally his lamp flickered about the fireplace.

It was a double fireplace, or rather a large open hearth with one-third of its space occupied by a cooking stove. At the time of the year the open wood fire would never be required, and now sheets of crimson tissue paper covered the brick flooring partly hidden by a hand-painted screen.

Stooping, appearing like a giant spider framed against the whitewash of the fire back, Bony removed the tissue paper and examined the floor of bricks. The bricks appeared solidly cemented together. Whitewash made level the crevices between them. And yet Bony tested every brick and found the central three loose.

It appeared that he had forgotten the watching girl, for he neither looked at nor spoke to her when he almost jumped to the painted dresser and took from a drawer two stout-bladed knives. With these he prised up one of the bricks sufficiently to grasp it with his fingers. The brick came up easily enough, and the two others were lifted out quickly. His light fell on the hole their removal made. It showed him a handle let flush into a japanned surface, and, when he lifted the handle and pulled, it required no exertion to lift out a square-shaped metal box. With it in his hands he was looking at the lock, preparatory to setting the box down and fitting the key, when the wash-basin outside topped over with a sharp crash. At once the light was switched out.

The noise of the overturned dish sent Lucy’s fingers to her lips to prevent the threatened scream. Someone must have come in through the farm gate, for Hurley had signalled. To Lucy the silence was dreadful. She could not hear the near approach of a car, so that they were not coming in a car. Bony was at the window. She could distinguish the silhouette of his head and shoulders against the dark grey opaqueness of the window oblong. Thirty seconds passed, thirty hours to the girl, and then Bony’s head and shoulders vanished. She was alone, she thought, and they were coming, those people whom she guessed were evil.

As though a snake menaced her she shrank back against the bedroom door-frame when flesh touched the flesh of her forearm. She wanted to scream, but was unable to open her mouth. Something brushed her hair, her cheek. Warm breath beat against her left ear, and, as though from the distant ages, soundless words came drifting to the electrical present. She heard Bony’s whispered sentences: “There is someone outside. He tripped up the binder twine and set off the alarm. Do not move or make any sound. Have no fear. I am with you.”

They were both gazing at the open window, the oblong of dark grey. To the right of it was the door, now shut, fastened by the Yalelock. The silence pressed on their ear-drums, causing mental pain which was almost physical. From another world, millions and millions of miles away, came to them the faint hum of a motor engine.

Bony thought of the moon being eclipsed by the earth’s shadow whenslowly, low down on the left edge of the window oblong, the edge of a large disc grew outward from the window frame. It was one quarter of a sphere before movement ceased.

Turned to stone, Lucy looked at this strange object with wide-open eyes and parted lips. After what appeared to her to be an eternity she saw that the outer edge of the disc seemed to dissolve, and then outward from it there appeared a nose, lips, and chin. Only for a moment, and then the disc vanished. A man was outside that window listening.

The dogs had never barked. Save from the falling dish, no sound had come to them of his approach to and presence there. Was that man George Loftus? Or Mick Landon? Bony shivered. He had been so sure that the body of Loftus was buried in the haystack.

Trapped

“DON’T MOVE-an inch,” Bony whispered, his mouth close to the girl’s ear.

With the silent movements of a stalking tiger cat he reached a position directly opposite the window and two yards from it. He could see the stars and a single deep black thundercloud east of meridian. He could see the faint whiteness of the stubble paddock, but not across to its farther side bordering the main road. Infinitely cautious, he drew nearer to the open window, its oblong frame giving him a growing view with every step he took.

Four feet from the window, now three feet, and now but one foot. He could distinguish the edge of the stubble where it met the hard ground in front of the house. There were no car lights on the farm track, nor were any to be seen on the highway beyond the gate. He could not now hear the car engine he and Lucy had recently heard, and that car, he suspected, had been travelling on another road. The silence beyond the window was no less profound than in the house.

And yet outside the house was a man.

And still the dogs remained silent.

The fact that the dogs had not barked once since Bony had thrashed the recalcitrant one was peculiar, to say the least. The arrival of the unknown at the homestead surely must have aroused them to angry barking, yet they were as silent as though they were dead.

Standing there at the window, he was weightedwith one regret. He had not brought the automatic pistol then locked away in his grip. Only in exceptional circumstances did he ever carry a weapon, relying on his wit and his extraordinary native hunting gifts to secure escape from awkward situations. Now he regretted his defencelessness wholly on account of having Lucy Jelly with him, and, therefore, being responsible for her safety. He had more than once assured her that she was safe and had taken adequate measures to receive warning of anyone approaching the house. Now he was mentally flogging himself for his sin of omission.

With quick resolution he took the last step to reach the window, but with resumed caution leaned forward over the sill, inch by inch, until his eyes were just beyond the outer edge of the frame. To his left, to hisright, and downward he looked, to see that no one was crouched against that side of the house.

Black against the lighter side of the distant stubble were the grotesque outlines of the cart shed, and, as though it were an optical illusion he then believed it to be, he saw for just a fraction of a second a tall shadow move beyond its eastward edge. For several seconds he gazed hard at that place and so saw instantly the night-shrouded figure of a man edging round the right angle of the house wall.

Inch by inch, so slowly that movement could not be detected in that darkness, Bony drew back from the window, backed till he came against the dining table, where he remained and waited, hoping and praying that the girl, crouched against the bedroom doorpost, would not speak or cry out!

Oh, for that automatic in his right hand! He remembered that on the table against which he pressed was a large china vase filled with flowers, and his hands swiftly groped for it, found it, plucked from the water the flowers, took it up with its water content intact, and faced the window again with the base held before him.

The window frame remained vacant for an apparently long period of time before Bony first saw a man’s hand, and then the forearm which the hand joined, silhouetted in the window oblong. The hand moved inwards, the fingers outstretched. Then both hand and arm vanished. The stalker had ascertained that the window was wide open. Still Bony waited. With wonderful courage Lucy, who had seen the groping hand, barred back the cry of terror with her teeth.

The weight of everlasting silence was lifted from their eardrums by the quick insertion of a key into the Yale lock of the house door. The door was flung inwards. It banged jarringly against a chair set near the wall between its frame and the window.