Arthur Upfield - Wings above the Diamantina

“I may have to knock him out, sir,” Lovitt said casually.

“You may,” Bony gravely agreed. “If he refuses to leave his perch there will be nothing else for it. Good luck!”

Illawalli and he picked up the constable’s uniform and the blacks’ clothes, and slowly walked downstream watching the bobbing heads. Wisely, Lovitt allowed Sikes to lead, and the watchers saw how Sikes craftily swam with the current and yet edged constantly farther from the shore. Presently, when the three were being swept swiftly downstream, Bony and the old chief were forced to walk rapidly.

They could just see the three heads reach the tallest tree of the line, and after that they could not follow what happened. It was Illawalli who first saw the three rescuers far below the tip of the tree line, and they left to walk on round the great natural bay created by the sand-dunes that turned the flood westward.

They were standing waiting and watching Lovitt and Bill Sikes bringing ashore the inert figure of the Tintanoo squatter. They waded into the flood to assist them, and Kane was dragged to dry land.

“Half-drowned?”Bony inquired.

“No, he is all right,” Lovitt panted. “As I expected, he wouldn’t leave the tree. I had to go after him, and got badly scratched. Was compelled to knock him out; but we got him, and that’s the main thing.”

Dr Stanisforth straightened up from his bent attitude over the patient at Coolibah, removed the earpieces of the stethoscope, and looked at Dr Knowles with eyes from which hope had vanished.

“She is very low,” he said, “but her vitality is extraordinary, and she may live yet another week. At the moment she is not asleep; she is insensible. She may never regain consciousness.”

“Then we may no longer hope to save her?” whispered Elizabeth.

“Her condition has failed to react to all our treatment. We have done everything that medical science has made possible.”

Knowles turned his anguished face to the wall. The specialist looked pityingly at him. Elizabeth Nettlefold stepped swiftly to the younger man’s side and was about to say something when the door opened.

Bony stood surveying them. He glanced across at the white figure on the bed. Knowles leapt across the room so that they stood face to face, the doctor’s eyes desperate, the eyes of the detective without expression. Then, into the tense hush broke the soft voice of the half-caste.

“Will you permit my friend, Illawalli, to visit your patient, Doctor?” he asked quietly.

“What! You have found that aboriginal witch doctor? You have come through the flood?”

“Yes. Illawalli is outside, awaiting your permission to enter.”

The hope blazing from Knowles’s eyes subsided.

“You are too late,” he said bitterly.

“Then Miss Double M is dead?”

“No, Mr Bonaparte, but she is close to death,” Stanisforth answered. “She is no longer conscious.”

“Even so, you will allow my friend to see her?”

The specialist shrugged. “Your friend can do no harm,” he grudgingly conceded.

“Very well, then. Kindly do not interfere with Illawalli.”

Opening the door, Bony beckoned, and there entered the tall, gaunt figure of the old chief still wearing the flying helmet.

“Illawalli,” Bony said softly, “the white woman is dying. Can you read the mind of a dying woman?”

The incongruously-dressed ancient swiftly appraised the others.

“I have been thinking,” he said. “Maybe it is as I have thought. Give me light.”

Bony switched on the ceiling light. Illawalli passed to the bed, and gazed down at the wasted, expressionless face. The silence within and without the room was profound. The specialist was visibly sceptical, but on Elizabeth’s vivid face shone the dawn of a great hope.

With the ball of a little finger, Illawalli raised the patient’s eyelids and gazed long and keenly into the vacant dark-blue eyes turned slightly upward. For fully half a minute he looked down into those vacant eyes, and then gently closed the eyelids. Taking up one of the waxen hands, he pressed the point of a finger into the flesh of the forearm, and Bony saw that the little pit in the flesh made by the forefinger remained clearly indented after the finger point had been removed. Gently the old man put down the nerveless hand and arm on the coverlet. Turning, he addressed Bony:

“Come!”

Then Dr Knowles was standing before them, his eyes glassy, his mouth trembling.

“You can do nothing? You cannot read her mind and tell us who drugged her?” he cried savagely.

“No. Ole Illawalli cannot read the shuteye mind,” Illawalli replied with regal dignity. “You wait. Bimeby me and Bony come back. Bimeby sick white woman no shuteye. Sheget up! Shetalk! Shelaugh. Come, Bony!”

Together they passed out of the room, and when in the corridor the old man said sharply:

“Light, Bony! Bring beeg feller light.”

The detective found Mr Nettlefold in the study, and the cattleman produced a lamp which gave a brilliant light. Illawalli took it and, with Bony at his heels, hurried from the house. The chief led the way past the men’s quarters, on down the creek now filled with the flood water, and then, like a gnome of vast proportions, he set to work gathering the leaves of certain plants brought up by the recent thunder-storms.

“You beeg feller fool this time,” he said, chuckling.“You no ’member how blackfeller dope waterholes to make fish all stiff and come to top of water, eh? White woman, she bin doped like blackfeller fish. Now I gibbet her dope to kill the other dope. Me fine feller blackfeller, allri ’! Bimeby that white woman, she goodo. She nodie, Bony. No fear! Bimeby she open her eyes and she smile at ole Illawalli, and then bimeby still she laugh at ole Illawalli and tell him plurry fine blackfeller doctor. Better’nwhitefeller doctor, any’ow !”

Bony drew in a long breath.

“Oh, that’s it, is it? What a fool I am! What a blind idiot! Why did I not guess that?”

“Don’ you lash yourself, Bony,” Illawalli pleaded. “You don’ look for blackfeller dope in white woman for sure.”

“No, I did not look for an aboriginal poison. I saw no aboriginal influence at work in this case. Fool-blind fool! I see it all now. I recall something to which I should have given much greater attention. I was told that John Kane had been living for some time with the aborigines of York Peninsula. Of course! When he learned that you had been sent for he knew for what purpose.”

“Don’ you lash yourself,” again cried old Illawalli. “No man heknow all. You worry too much over white woman dying and you don’ think properly. Now we go to homestead. I got what I want. We get fire going and we boil upmed’cine, eh?”

“Come along, then.”

Back again at the big house, Bony called on Hetty, and she took them along to the detached kitchen.

An hour later they slipped into the patient’s room. Elizabeth and the two doctors were still there, and to Dr Knowles Bony handed a china basin and a spoon.

“Give her as much of this as it is possible for her to swallow,” he instructed.

Stanisforth came forward to gaze disapprovingly at the dark-green liquid in the bowl.

“What is that stuff?” he demanded. “We must know what it is before we can permit it to be given to the patient. We are responsible for her.”

“I do not know the ingredients,” Bony confessed. “And I do not think Illawalli will tell us. You may, however, have no fear that it will harm her.”

“But-but-”

“What is it?” Knowles asked the chief.

“Med’cinemake white woman better,” came the evasive answer.

Knowles flashed a doubtful look at Stanisforth.

“Tush!” the specialist burst out. “An aboriginal mess like that! It is impossible! It is unheard of! It is an outrage on the ethics of our profession.”