Arthur Upfield - Wings above the Diamantina

“Mr Watts,” Bony said calmly, “I thought it better to ask you to suspend Miss Saunders from duty than to instruct Sergeant Cox to arrest her. You see, the local lock-up has only two cells. One of them is already occupied, and I want to fill the other with another person. However, if you decline to suspend her from duty-”

“Good God!” Watts exclaimed in a lowered voice.“All right. I’ll do it. I can send for my wife to take overpro tem. All the same, I fear there will be departmental trouble.”

“In which case you will receive promotion and a transfer to a more pleasant locality,” Bony reminded him, chuckling. “Please ask Sergeant Cox to speak.”

When Cox spoke Bony asked him if Miss Saunders had left the exchange.

“Yes, she is just passing out through the post office door,” Cox stated grimly, “What’s she done?”

Bony looked at Gurner, and Gurner was staring blankly at him.

“As Miss Saunders has been suspended from duty, Sergeant, get a warrant and arrest Owen Oliver on a charge of having destroyed an aeroplane, the property of Captain Loveacre.”

Cox wanted to bark a dozen questions, but all he said was.“Very well.”

“And, Sergeant, use care in this matter,” Bony urged.“Better go prepared for violence. Now, please put me through to Coolibah.”

In two minutes he was in touch with John Nettlefold.

“Tell me, Mr Nettlefold, which is the better track to Coolibah from Gurner’s Hotel-that via Tintanoo, or that via Faraway Bore?”

“Via Tintanoo, Bony. The track from Faraway Bore is impassable between the river and the Rockies. Have you had any success?”

“I am leaving at once for Coolibah. Aurevoir.”

Sikes was ordered to go out to the utility and arrange the gear so that Illawalli might be placed on it for the journey to Coolibah. Insensible though he was, the patriarch’s face was a noble one. The incongruous airman’s helmet was removed, and Shuteye was sent with it to the car, Bony knowing how that helmet would be prized in the days to come. When his assistants returned the detective was taking a statement from Gurner, who now had decided to tell all he knew. Which, outside the kidnapping of Illawalli, was not much.

Illawalli was removed to the utility. Gurner was requested to sign the statement and to initial every page of it, Then Bony asked for a screw-driver. He took the telephone instrument bodily from the wall and carried it out to the car.

“Just so that you can’t ring up Mr Kane and talk about the weather,” he told Gurner.

CoolibahsInWater

THE DAY TURNED out to be brilliantly fine. Small and fluffy clouds hung suspended against the turquoise sky while a light southerly wind tempered the sun’s heat. Bony, with Bill Sikes beside him and Shuteye looking after Illawalli in the truck body of thecar, drove towards Tintanoo at a steady thirty miles an hour. Eventually they saw the red-roofed buildings marching to meet them from out the sparse scrub.

The main road passed five hundred yards south of the homestead. For traffic destined to call at Tintanoo there was a branch turn-off from the main road on both sides before coming opposite the homestead, and when Bony and his companions reached the western turn-off, a blue-coloured single-seater shot out of the eastern turn-off and on the main road, and in a moment had disappeared over the lip of the incline leading down to the river channels. For just one instant they had been able to see the driver. It was John Kane, driving his Bentley in his usual reckless manner. Bony felt sure that he was heading for either Golden Dawn or Coolibah.

He was sure, too, that John Kane had recognized the Coolibah utility if not its driver. At the moment Bony had seen him, the man was smiling. The detective wrenched at the steering wheel and shot off the main road and up the east turn-off. A few seconds, later they stopped before the office. Ordering Sikes to follow him, Bony jumped for the veranda, found the office door locked, and then shouted to his companion to join him in the assault on it.

The door crashed inward at the impact of their combined weight, and the detective sprang to the government telephone. He rang, waited. He rang again, and waited another quarter-minute. Then he opened the box of the machine and found that the batteries had been removed.

“Bring in Gurner’s telephone,” he ordered sharply. “Hurry, and take care not to upset the batteries in it. Understand?”

“Too right!” shouted Sikes, and leaped for the door.

It was quicker to transfer the wires from one instrument to another than to change the batteries, and within three minutes, with Sikes holding the hotel instrument in his arms, Bony heard the cool voice of the postmaster’s wife, who had taken over the duties of Miss Saunders.

“Police-station, please,” he requested quickly.

A further thirty seconds of anxious waiting followed, and then came the voice of Constable Lovitt.

“Ah, Lovitt! This is Inspector Bonaparte. Where is Sergeant Cox?”

“He’s gone out to Windy Creek, Inspector.”

“Listen carefully then. I want you to act immediately. Get astride that motor-cycle of yours and take the track to Tintanoo. Ride like the devil. You will meet John Kane on the road, for he has just left Tintanoo. If you do not meet him before you reach the Coolibah junction track make sure that he has not turned and gone to Coolibah. If he has, get after him! If he has not, then you must block the road with fallen timber in order to stop him. You are to arrest him. Have you got all that clearly?”

“Yes, sir. On what charge is he to be arrested?”

“On the charge of having stolen Captain Loveacre’s aeroplane.”

Lovitt whistled. Then he said:

“Special precautions, Inspector?”

“Yes, certainly! Hold him until I reach you. Don’t waste a moment! It is vital that you reach the road junction before he does.”

Bony rang off. His blue eyes were gleaming. The time for action had come, and he was thrilling like a racehorse going to the starting-post. The removal of the telephone batteries had been the grounds for his present action, and before he looked inside the second telephone instrument, that communicating with the river homesteads, he knew that the batteries in it would be missing, too. Above this second machine was a card bearing the names ofhomesteads, and opposite that of Coolibah was printed:“Three short rings.”

Within half a minute Gurner’s instrument was attached to the wires of the second telephone, and within thirty more seconds the detective sighed with relief on hearing Elizabeth’s voice.

“Ask Dr Knowles to speak to me, please, Miss Nettlefold. Hurry. The matter is urgent. Yes, yes! No questions now. Dr Knowles, please.”

Then Knowles was asking the reason for the summons.

“Where is Nettlefold?” demanded Bony, and, on being told that the cattleman was out on the run, he groaned. “Listen, Doctor! I have reason to believe that John Kane is making for Coolibah to do that patient of yours a mischief. I have just got in touch with Lovitt. I have ordered him to ride his motor-cycle to meet Kane, who has just left Tintanoo, and to arrest him. I hope that Lovitt will reach the road junction before Kane does, but there is the possibility of Kane’s getting there first. Nettlefold being away with the car complicates matters. What’s that? Ted Sharp is there with his runabout! Now let me think. Wait a moment. Yes! I’ll take a chance with Ted Sharp. Drive with him towards the road junction, say about two miles, and there block the road with trees to stop Kane’s car. If he gets ahead of Lovitt, bail him up and hold him until Lovitt arrives. On no account let him pass! I am uneasy about Ted Sharp. I hope unjustifiably; but you must use your discretion. Take a gun. Kane might attempt to use one. Will you go at once?”