Arthur Upfield - The Barrakee Mystery

“What is it going to be? Peace or war?” he heard Dugdale ask.

“Peace for five minutes at least,” he managed to gasp.“God! I’m frozen.”

“Maybe. But you’re alive, which is something,” Dugdale pointed out. “Luckily, I’ve a watertight box of wax matches, so we’ll get a fire going. There’s a quart pot on my saddle, so we’ll get a drink of hot water, which, my dear Smithy, is a great luxury compared with cold.”

Five minutes later, two half naked men stood close to a roaring pillar of fire, taking turns in sipping from the quart pot. The heat stung their flesh, and from their clothesrose clouds of steam, and eventually, when Smith’s tobacco and papers were dried, they smoked cigarettes and talked about the future.

“Tell me-during the armistice-what your idea was to pinch Clair’s wallet,” inquired the policeman, breaking a long silence. “Duty andall that aside, Dugdale, you’re getting yourself into a dickens of a mess over it.”

Dugdale related the coming of Sinclair to his hut and the events leading up to and following his death. “You see,” he pointed out, “Clair particularly asked me to take and deliver his wallet to a certain person. In fact, he got my promise to do it, and, having promised to deliver the wallet, deliver it I must. Now, I am scared by the flood and the attitude of Knowles and you fellows towards me, and damned sorry I did promise. But all that can’t be helped now.”

“But did Clair, or Sinclair, say why the unnamed person has to have his wallet?” Smith pressed.

“No, he did not. Aside from that, I consider that he had a perfect right to dispose of his wallet as he liked, and I had no justification for refusing to take and do with it as he directed.”

“Humph! In one way you are right. You are wrong, however, legally, because Sinclair was a man wanted for murder. He was killed in escaping the law, and what property he possessed, as Sergeant Knowles said, belongs to the State till his assigns are established. Anyway, it’s a knotty point; too difficult for me. I’m only a policeman. I’ve got to obey orders, which are to arrest you and convey you to Wilcannia.”

“And you will, I suppose, carry out your orders?” asked Dugdale with his quiet smile.

“I shall.”

“You will, I should say, find it a little difficult, especially as you cannot swim.”

“I shall hold you here till they come with a boat or something.”

“And where do you suppose they are going to get the boat?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s up to them.”

“Of course-if they know we’re here. But by the time they find out we shall be fairly hungry.”

“That, of course, cannot be helped.”

“In fact, we shall become so hungry that we shall never want any food again-unless, of course, we are fed in the next world.”

The two men looked keenly at each other. Suddenly Smith grinned and burst into a guffaw of laughter. Dugdale laughed at, and with him. He looked so absurd in his underclothes, and he himself felt he must appear no less absurd. The Devil pawed the ground impatiently and attracted their attention.

“I am going to put on my clothes, as it is useless drying them,” Dugdale explained with the placidity of determination. “You see, I have to swim The Devil across two more creeks before I can get clear of the Washaways and send help to you.”

“But what about my orders?”

“You were not ordered to starve me todeath, or yourself either,” Dugdale observed whilst dressing. “When I pulled you out of the water you were unconscious, and when you came to you found yourself against a nice warm fire, with a quart pot of hot water beside you and no sign, absolutely no sign, of Frank Dugdale. Now isn’t that right?”

Trooper Smith, of the New South Wales Mounted Police, closed one eye.

“Now you recall it, Dugdale, I think it is about correct,” he said, adding, with sudden gravity: “But you are not going to attempt those two creeks, are you?”

“Of course. There is no other way of getting to the Darling, but across them, and the water won’t go down for a month.”

“Well, even at school you were an ass,” Smith reminded his prisoner.

“Better a live ass than a starved corpse. However, I would prefer not going till day comes. What about promising not to relieve me of the wallet, so that we could get a good warm and enjoy a sleep?”

“My dear chap, there is no wallet!” Smith rejoined cheerfully. “As a personality you don’t exist. I neither know nor see you. You have vanished, and I regain consciousness alone between these creeks. Let us camp. Let us heat more water and talk of the last dinner we had in the city.”

“Yes, let’s,” agreed Dugdale.

Bony Takes Command

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, Australia’s brilliant but little-known bush detective, was walking down the river. His walk would have been more direct had the volume of water in the great channel been normal. Now the channel was marked only by the bordering gum-trees, for on both sides the river overflowed its banks in places many miles out over the flats. Water was sent out into the meanderingcreeks, it crossed the established tracks and cut off direct communication with the towns of Bourke and Wilcannia.

To walk down the river meant, therefore, wide detours round billabongs, gutters, and creeks. Where Bony walked was about four miles west of the Darling proper, and had he wanted to cross the flooded river he would have been obliged to swim some eight or nine miles.

So great was the volume of water that the station of Barrakee, standing on high ground, was surrounded by water, except for a ramp or causeway, sufficiently wide to allow a car to drive along it, which connected the island with the dry land. It proved to be the second great flood which the Western Division of New South Wales had experienced and on the crest of the flood there appeared myriads of wild fowl, water-hens, ducks, geese, and members of the vast crane family.

It was the birds rather than the volume of water which fascinated the detective, but even the fascination of the birds paled before the events of that morning in mid-August. On the disappearance of Ralph Thornton from Barrakee and Nellie Wanting from Three Corner Station, the river from Barrakee downward had been carefully watched at more than one point.

A peculiar feature of the disappearance became intelligible to Bony when it was known that the girl left her employment three days before the departure of the young man. On the face of itit appeared that Ralph had hidden a boat a mile below Barrakee, and had gone down river to Three Corner Station to pick up the gin. On account of the wide detours made by the river it would take him all of three days to get to Three Corner Station, precisely as long as it would take a person to walk the same distance by the track which ran from bend to bend.

These distances and times Bony had quickly learned from two old pensioners camped on the side of the river, who were now sheltering, on account of the flood, in the Barrakee woolshed. It appeared, therefore, that the girl had walked up river to Ralph and his boat; and, since it was not likely that she would do that only to go down river again in the boat, it became obvious that the pair had gone up river past Barrakee.

For two days the half-caste had been searching for indications of the missing couple. The first day he drew a blank, but on the afternoon of the second he saw drifting down a small creek the empty shell of a duck’s egg, and on securing this, found that it had been recently cooked. Even whilst examining the shell the faint report of a shotgun came floating to theboxtrees, and thirty minutes later Bony found a native humpy constructed of green boughs and leaves, half way up a sand ridge at the foot of which lapped the flood-water. Precisely six seconds were spent in discovering that the inhabitants were away, and a further three in reading their tracks. Positive proof lay over the ground that dainty Nellie Wanting and slim, small-footed Ralph were the occupants.