Arthur Upfield - Wings above the Diamantina

“As usual, last night the two machines were anchored just back of the hotel; and, at one-forty-two this morning, everyone was awakened by the roar of a motor engine. Captain Loveacre states that when he woke he recognized the sound of the engine as that of his monoplane, but before he or any one else could get out to itit had left the ground and flown off eastward.”

“So you do not know the sex of the thief, Sergeant?”

“No. Is the girl you speak of very ill?”

“We can’t make her out at all,” answered Nettlefold. “Look here! It is now only a minute past six. Do you think you could get Knowles to fly here this evening to have a look at her? There are two hours of daylight yet, remember.”

“Oh-he’ll agree to go,” Cox said, with airy assurance. “He’d start if he had to make a night landing on those river channels. What I can’t understand about him is that he’s still alive. Themore drunk he is the better he flies. I might come with him.”

“Do. We can put you both up. I could then take you out to Emu Lake early in the morning. Tell Knowles that he can land with reasonable safety on the white claypan country half a mile north of this homestead. I’ll be there in the car, and in case it’s dark when he arrives I’ll have the boys light fires along the edges of the enclosing scrub. Will you ring me when you know what he will do?”

“I will. But he’ll go all right,” Cox further assured the station manager. “If he breaks my neck… well, I’ll be the most unlucky man in Queensland.”

“You’re game, anyway. I wouldn’t trust my life to Knowles… off the ground.”

Cox chuckled and replaced the instrument, to walk thoughtfully back to the kitchen.

“Pack me a bag, Vi,” he commanded his wife. “I’m going to Coolibah Station.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. Only a night, I think.”

“Have they found the stolen aeroplane, Dad?” asked his son, a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of fifteen years.

“Yes, Jack,” Cox replied, nodding. “It is at a place called Emu Lake at the back of Coolibah. Pass the bread. I may just as well finish my dinner while your mother’s hunting up those pink-striped visiting pyjamas of mine.”

“Who stole it, Dad?” pleaded the boy.

“We don’t rightly know, son, but you can trust your father to find out.”

The red face was now less red. The stern lines about the iron jaw were much less hard. Sergeant Cox led a double life, one of which was known only to his wife and son. He was softly human when with them in their home.

“I won’t be home to-night to show you how to do your home lessons, so you’ve got to get right down to them yourself and work out those sums the best you know how.”

“All right, Dad. I’ll do ’emgoodo.”

“Of course he will, Pops,” added Mrs Cox, then entering the kitchen. “Who is going to drive you to Coolibah? Driving your own car?”

“I am going with Dr Knowles.”

“What! With that cranky fool! Oh, Pops!”

“Pops” grinned, rose from the table, kissed his wife and put on his hat with habitual care to achieve the right angle. He was dressed in civilian clothes, and yet with the addition of the felt hat he no longer was “Pops,” but Sergeant Cox.

“If Dr Knowles crashes the machine when I am with him,” he said sternly, “I will arrest him on the D and D charge.”

“But you might be killed, Pops.”

“Dad’llbe all right, Mum. Why, Dr Knowles can fly underneath the telephone wires,” Jack pointed out.

“I shall not be killed,” Cox said. “Dr Knowles might crash, but I will live to arrest him and keep him in our lockup. I’ll be back for the bag later on. And don’t forget, son, what I told you last night about those square roots.”

Again leaving the kitchen, Sergeant Cox strode along the passage to the open front door, passed across the veranda, down the steps and so to the front gate in the wicket fence. Above the gate on a narrow wooden arch were the words, POLICE-STATION, and on the fly gauze covering the window frame of the left hand room was the word OFFICE.

Across the hundred-yards-wideunmetalled track stood the store, a low, rambling, wooden building badly infested with termites and badly in need of paint. When he emerged from the Government premises it was to turn left to stride along the main street of Golden Dawn.

Once Golden Dawn had been a thriving mining town, and still the poppet heads of the mine half a mile to the north stood cutting clearly into the sky like the gibbet outside a medieval town. Cox passed vacant building sites on either side of the dusty street, sites from which the buildings long since had been purchased and removed for the iron and wood.

Golden Dawn now had a forsaken appearance: it was like a homeless old man who dreamed ever of better days. In the middle of the street wandered the town dairyman’s cows, while the dairyman himself was within the too-commodious hotel. Across each vacant allotment could be seen the flat gibber plain stretching to blue-black hills lying to the north and east, and to the flat horizon line to westward and to southward. Outside the hotel stood Mounted Constable Lovitt.

“Who’sinside?” asked Cox.

Lovitt began a list of names, but Cox cut him short.

“Is Dr Knowles in there?”

“No, Sergeant.”

“Captain Loveacre, then?”

“No. He went along to Dr Knowles half an hour ago.”

“I am flying with Dr Knowles to Coolibah this evening. Might be away for a couple of days,” Cox said in his most official manner. “The crowd staying in seems to be thinning out a lot, so you won’t have much work. It is a good thing that neither Ned Hamlin nor Larry the Lizardare in town. Keep in touch with the office as much as possible. I may want you on the phone.”

“Very well, Sergeant.”

Cox glared at the constable and turned to walk away, but relented and faced him.

“The monoplane has been found on Coolibah by Mr Nettlefold,” he said. “He found a strange woman in it. I understand that she is injured. Circumstances peculiar. Know any woman around here who can fly an aeroplane?”

“No, I don’t, Sergeant. There isn’t one.”

“I don’t know of one, either. Who is still in town of importance?”

“Only Mr Kane, of Tintanoo. TheGreysons have gone. So have theOlivers, of Windy Creek.”

“All right!”

Sergeant Cox walked on along the street which incongruously enough was bordered with well-kept sidewalks and veteran pepper-trees, evidences of Golden Dawn’s departed prosperity. At last he came to a gate in a white-painted fence beyond which stood a large wooden house with a wide veranda. When he knocked on the open door it appeared to be a mere act of courtesy; for, on hearing voices in the room to the left, he did not wait for the doctor’s house-keeper to answer his knock but walked right in.

“Good evening, Doctor! Evening, Captain!” he greeted the two men at table. Dinner, evidently, was just over.

“Hullo, Cox! Looking for Captain Loveacre?” inquired one, a medium built man with dark eyes and short moustache.

“Both of you, as a matter of fact.”

The second man, also of medium height, but clean shaven, stood up.

“Have you news about my bus?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes. It is all right as far as is known. No, thanks! I’ve just had dinner. I’ll take a cigarette.”

Seating himself, Sergeant Cox related the incidents concerning the discovery of the stolen aeroplane.

“Mr Nettlefold says that the young woman found in it strapped in the front cockpit is suffering from a form of paralysis,” he continued. “The Coolibah manager thinks she did not steal the machine. It has made a good landing, and as far as he can see it is quite undamaged.”