Arthur Upfield - Wings above the Diamantina

“May I have a look at her?”

“You may,” Knowles assented, a little curtly. Then, when the sergeant stood up, he added: “My patient is suffering from a form of muscular paralysis. She is conscious and her mind is clear, but she is quite unable to articulate. I don’t care a sixpence who stole the aeroplane. All that concerns me is that she’s my patient, and I will not have her frightened or worried, you understand. She is powerless to run away and escape from you. I told her that my colleague would visit her, just to look at her. It is no useyour putting questions to her, but by all means ascertain if you can identify her.”

Sergeant Cox glared at the doctor, and Knowles strolled across to a wall cabinet where he could see a decanter, glasses and a soda bottle.

“I won’t excite her,” Cox promised readily. “Do you think she could have stolen the aeroplane?”

“No… emphatically.”

“Is there any basis for your opinion?”

“So far there is nothing definite on which I could base any opinion,” Knowles replied, turning with a filled tumbler in his hand. “In her present condition it would, of course, be quite impossible for her to have flown the machine. I have never before seen a case even remotely like it. The general paralysis of all consciously controlled muscles may have been produced by physical injury, mental shock, or-” and he made a distinct pause: “or drugs. I can find no external physical injury, but I will examine her again to-morrow. I can conceive no mental shock of sufficient strength to produce such a result. Therefore I incline to the hypothesis that she has been drugged.”

Cox pulled savagely at his grey moustache. Elizabeth stared with peculiar intensity at the doctor. Her father frowned down at his polished slippers, and began a hunt for tobacco plug and clasp knife.

“If the poor thing has been drugged, Doctor, will not the drug wear out of her system in time?” Elizabeth asked.

“Drugs are so varied in their effects,” Knowles replied. “If the patient has been drugged the drugmay slowly lose its hold upon her. I stress the word ‘may’.”

“And if it does not?” put in Cox.

“Then she will inevitably die despite all our efforts to save her. The paralysis of the consciously controlled processes will have a grave effect on those that are involuntary.”

“Go along and find out if you know her, Cox,” urged Nettlefold.

The sergeant nodded and followed Elizabeth.

“Pardon me, Nettlefold,” said Knowles, “for helping myself to your whisky. Ah… but I was perishing.”

“Whatever you do, don’t perish, or let me perish either,” the big bluff manager returned warmly. “Three fingers is my usual measure.”

The doctor turned again to the wall cabinet. Glass tinkled against glass, and the hiss of aerated water splashing into liquid were the only sounds to break the little silence which lasted until the doctor seated himself, having handed his host a glass.

“It is quite a mystery, isn’t it?” he queried.

“Too deep for me,” Nettlefold admitted. “An aeroplane is stolen at Golden Dawn, and it is then found undamaged one hundred and eighty-four miles away. In it is a drugged girl. The pilot is missing, and there are no tracks showing that he left the machine after he landed it.”

“Your resume contains several facts but one assumption. You assume that the girl is drugged. That is not proven yet.”

“Then it is possible that she is suffering the effects of some physical injury?”

“Yes. There is that possibility.”

The door opened to admit the sergeant. He was alone, and before he spoke they knew he had been unable to identify the patient.

“I do not know her,” he said. “I have been in control of this district for twenty-four years, and I am positive that she has never lived in it. I could swear that she was not in Golden Dawn yesterday. I was among the small crowd watching the air circus and seeing people taking trips in the de Havilland. You are quite sure, Mr Nettlefold, that you saw no tracks of the pilot leaving the aeroplane?”

“Quite!” replied the cattleman with conviction.

“Then he must have jumped out before the machine landed-if there was a pilot other than that girl.”

“In that case, would not the machine have crashed?” Nettlefold asked the doctor.

Cox looked steadily at Knowles.

“My machine would go into a fatal spin immediately I left the controls,” he said. “Captain Loveacre’s monoplane, however, might not. There was the affair during the war when a German flier was shot dead when over the lines, and his machine made a perfect landing several miles behind our front. Better ask Loveacre how his monoplane behaves.”

“Yes. And, by the way, I told him, Mr Nettlefold, that you would supply him with information how to get to Emu Lake. May I ring him up?”

Dr Knowles again permitted himself to become the needle attracted by the magnet of the wall cabinet. There was something terrible in his steady drinking as well as in the extraordinary effects it appeared to have on him. The potent spirit attacked his legs and arms, but failed utterly to cloud his mind or thicken his speech. Before leaving the cabinet he refilled the glass to take with him to one of the lounge chairs, and into that he dropped to lean back his head to rest on the cushion and to stare up at the coloured lamp-shade.

It was obvious that he did not hear, whilst the others were too much engrossed by the telephone to note Elizabeth’s quiet entry. She stood now just inside the door she had quietly closed, and there she continued to stand.

She saw and heard her father speaking into the telephone. She saw Cox crouching forward across the large writing-table. And then she saw the white, upturned face of Dr Knowles. He was staring at the lamp-shade, and the light fell directly on his face. It was devoid of expression, a cold white mask beneath the glaring electric light. The little silky black moustache and the fine black hair but emphasized the whiteness of the skin, an unnatural whiteness, considering that the man spent hours in the air every week.

He was a clever doctor, she knew. She knew, too, that his medical studies had been interrupted by fifteen months in the Royal Air Force during the war. For a period of that time-how long she did not know-he and the owner of Tintanoo had been pilots in the same squadron. But, while John Kane often spoke of those days, Dr Knowles always avoided the subject of army flying.

Her father having called good night, and the telephone receiver having been replaced on its hooks, she stepped forward and suggested supper. Not till then was Knowles aware of her presence, when he flung himself to his feet so precipitately as to indicate annoyance.

“I am ready to eat-anything,” he said, smiling to conceal his confusion.

“And the flight has sharpened my appetite instead of blunting it,” added Cox.

“Then come along. I have to go on night duty at ten o’clock,” Elizabeth told them.

She led them to a cold supper set out in the dining-room. Her father carved from a great round of beef, the quality of which is never found on offer in a butcher’s shop. Everything was in keeping with the furniture, solid and homely, easy and comfortably luxurious.

Beneath the conversation was an undercurrent of excitement, of expectancy. They could discuss nothing save the helpless young woman lying on Elizabeth’s bed, although the sergeant did make several attempts. Through the open windows came the subdued and methodical reports of the petrol engine running the station dynamo. From farther afield drifted the notes of an accordion. The night was silent and peaceful and warm. They each sensed rather than knew positively that drama had come to Coolibah.