Arthur Upfield - Sands of Windee

“You surprise me, Mr Bonaparte. I was not aware that you are a detective-inspector of the Queensland Police.”

“It is part of my confession, Father. Only the police of Mount Lion are aware of my position other than nowyourself. Before I come to the personal question I should like to tell you about an affair that happened many years ago.”

“Proceed!” Father Ryan settled himself deeper into his chair.

In concise terms Bony told him the full story of the stolen bride, and because the priest remembered odd details of the affair he found himself becoming deeply interested. Yet he wondered why he was being told all this in Bony’s low clear voice and somewhat flamboyant language. His words came without hesitation or fumbling in their selection, and then quite suddenly Father Ryan was jerked upright by the calm statement that:

“The stolen bride is Mrs Thomas, lately a visitor at Mount Lion; and the abductor, Joseph North, is Jeffrey Stanton, of Windee.”

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” he said, his voice lowered, his eyes for a second resting on the open window behind the priest. “There is nothing I shall say to-night of which I am not sure. The legacy that the affair of the stolen bride left was in the form of a document purporting to be a confession of the man to whom North took the girl for shelter. It was obtained by or for the girl’s mother, and was given to Mrs Thomas, as she was and remained legally, and a clever copy came into the possession of her brother, Luke Green, alias Marks.

“For a while we will follow this Luke Marks. As a young man he joined the New South Wales Police, resigned to join theA.I. F., was granted a commission, and was wounded in the head. After the war he became a member of the Licensing Branch of the police and, using the power invested in him, gathered together quite a little sum. A subsidiary source of income was blackmail, and one of his victims was Joseph North, alias Jeffrey Stanton.

“Both these sources of illicit income naturally would have an end. Marks was compelled to run from an investigating commission which, as is the way of commissions, would invariably punish a guilty man of low rank and whitewash as guilty a man of high rank. He determined to get out of the country, and approached Jeffrey Stanton for the sale outright of the forged copy of the document.

“The interview took place in the Windee dining-room, and the conversation was partly overheard by the book-keeper in the office. Roberts did not deliberately eavesdrop. There happened to be a crack in the wooden wall and his desk was close to it. Young Jeff was with him, and when the nature of the visitor’s errand became plain to Roberts he invited young Jeff to-er-‘listen in’.

“The price asked for the document was fifty thousand pounds, Father Ryan. An astonishingfigure, and one which Stanton declined to pay. He offered ten thousand, but this was refused, and Marks left Windee threatening to make public the fact that Joseph North and Jeffrey Stanton were the same man, as well as to publish the document.

“By a coincidence the same morning that all thisoccurred Miss Stanton lost one of the sapphires from her ring. Young Jeff picked it up from the floor of the office immediately before his attention was attracted by Roberts at the wall crack. He placed it in a pocket of his drill shirt and forgot all about it. It was still in his shirt pocket when he hid himself in the tonneau of Marks’s car beneath a rug.

“Unaware of his passenger, Marks drove off on his way to Broken Hill, and when the car reached the junction of that road with the Windee-Mount Lion track, young Jeff made himself known by demanding the document. Marks refused to give it up. He also refused to stop the car, and when he attempted to accelerate young Jeff threw his arms about the fellow’s neck, the car swerved into the bush, and finally was stopped by a low ridge of sand.

“The fight in the car was witnessed by two men: Ludbi, the son of Moongalliti, and Dot, the American. It was observed by Ludbi that young Jeff was quickly getting the better of it. Marks at last realized this, and with a final effort forced young Jeff across the back of the front scat and produced a very efficient knife with which to commit murder.

“At that precise moment Dot, unobserved by Ludbi, fired from a distance of approximately one hundred yards. The weapon he used was a . 22 Savage owned by Dash. It was not a weapon with which he was familiar. With his own rifle, a. 44 Winchester, he was an expert shot, and when he fired at Marks, intending to disable him, he did not allow for the heightened trajectory of a bullet fired by a much stronger explosive than the gun-powder used in his own rifle. The bullet smashed Marks’s head, killing him instantaneously.

“Ludbi fled when he saw Dot run towards the car. Dot, who considered his action justifiable, naturally wanted to know what the struggle was all about, and when he saw young Jeff obtain the fatal document and burn it he was minded to concoct a story to fit the tragedy, a plan that young Jeff, still controlled by emotion, agreed to. But it was then that Dash arrived with Dot’s. 44 Winchester rifle.

“The temporary exchange of these rifles was the result of friendly rivalry between these two men as to the number of skins each procured. On an average shoot Dash obtained the greater number. He claimed his success to be due to his rifle, and induced Dot several times-that day was one of them-to exchange rifles to prove his contention.

“With the plan Dot devised to explain the shooting Dash would have nothing to do. Possessing a higher intelligence than Dot, he could see that there was far more behind the document than what it actually disclosed. He knew also that the Australian police could not beso easily hoodwinked as Dot seemed to think the police of his own country could. Another thing that counted with him, when he had learned all young Jeff knew about Marks, was that, no matter how cleverly the affair was arranged, Jeff Stanton, senior, would be dragged into it, and, most important of all, his daughter too.

“Dash sent young Jeff to their camp to change clothes and put his own bloodstained garments into a sack, then to return to the homestead, keep his mouth shut, and behave normally. Dot and Dash then sat down and between them evolved a perfect method of destroying the body of Marks without leaving a trace. I complimented Dash on the result of the conference, but he told me that to his partner was due the chief point of the method.

“Between them they carried the body some few hundred yards away, and there burned it very efficiently, as also the sack holding young Jeff’s stained suit. Afterwards they examined the car and, also with high efficiency, obliterated all traces of the struggle. Knowing that there was no stock in that particular paddock, they went back to their own camp, where Dot admitted that he had taken from the car the treasury notes and securities which Marks had in a brown leather bag, the bag that had held the document of contention as well as others having nothing to do with this case. He was commanded by Dash to burn the money, and Dot nodded agreement. Even so, Dot’s love of money overcame his scruples and his loyalty to his partner, and only at the point of their parting on the eve of Dash’s return to his former social status did he clear his conscience by confession.

“The day after the killing of Marks they proceeded to the scene of the fire, near where Dot shot three kangaroos, and, after the ashes had been thoroughly sifted for bones and metal, over the spot were burned the carcasses of the kangaroos. Thus was hidden the spot where the body of Marks had been destroyed, for in the same locality these men had burned all the kangaroos they shot so as to leave no breeding-grounds for the blow-fly.