The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Sixteen

Three Letters-and a Fourth

RALPH THORNTON kept his two items of news until dinner was over and the family were sitting in the long main room of the house, part dining and part drawing room. Kate was playing softly on the piano anold Italian love song sent her by a girl friend in Sydney. Although she was quite happy about having consented to marry Ralph, she was perplexed. She felt that she was notso happy as she ought to be; that though her happiness was comforting it was not the tumultuous emotion so rapturously described by the novelists.

John Thornton was readingThe Pastoral Gazette; his wife was sewing; Ralph, laying down a history of Alexander the Great, began to speak.

“Dad, Kate and I had two adventures this afternoon,” he said. The girl, hearing him, played still more softly.

“Oh! And what were they?”

“We found a wild dog eating a sheep it had killed in the North Paddock.” And the young man graphically described the chase, ending by: “I think, when you see thescalp, that you’ll be pleased to divide between Kate and me your cheque for thirty pounds. It was the ‘Killer’.”

“The ‘Killer’!” echoed the squatter.

“Yes. Fawn red coat, with almost black feet. Prick-eared and full curling red tail.”

“That’s the beast,” John Thornton agreed. “Well! I’m mighty glad you got him, Ralph. Certainly, tomorrow I’ll write you cheques for fifteen pounds apiece, and be very glad to do it. How will you spend yours?”

“With your permission, I should like to buy an engagement ring.”

“An engagement ring!” the squatter echoed the second time.

Mrs Thornton ceased sewing and Kate stopped playing. Leaving the piano, the girl came into the circle and seated herself between the old and the young man. The latter was regarded by the Little Lady with startled eyes; by her husband with the suspicion of a frown.

“Have you become engaged, dear?” Mrs Thornton asked.

“Not yet, Mother. We agreed to wait until we received your permission,” the young man replied quietly.

“Who, Ralph, is the girl?”

“Why, Mother, Katie, of course!”

The strained expression of the woman’s face relaxed and gave place to a dawning smile, accompanied by a low chuckle from her husband. It was Kate who broke the silence by saying:

“I hope you are both pleased.”

“Pleased! Oh, Kate! I have dreamed of your marriage to Ralph for years.”

“Then, Mother, your dream shall come true.” Ralph rose and stood behind Kate’s chair, allowing his hands gently to caress her hair. He said: “Katie and I have decided that we love each other, that our marriage will cement the family more closely. We felt sure that you and Dad would be pleased.”

“We are, my boy,” said John Thornton. “Indeed, we are. You and Katie have made your mother and me proud and happy. But don’t hurry things; you are both of you very young yet. Suppose we say five years, at least, for the betrothal?”

“Don’t be so hard, John,” entreated his wife. “Two years will be plenty.”

“As you will, my dear. Do you want to be formally engaged?”

“We want to please Auntie and you, Uncle,” Kate said softly. The squatter was on the verge of saying something when Mrs Thornton spoke decisively:

“Of course they do, John. They say they are in love with each other, and want some day soon to marry. What I should like would be to give a betrothal party. Let it be the evening of Saturday week, the day the Land Board sits at Wilcannia. Mr and Mrs Watts will be here that day, as well as Mr and MrsHemmings and theStirlings. Let us call it a ‘Surprise Party’ on the invitations, and then towards the end you, John, can announce the engagement; and you, Ralph, can place the ring on Kate’s finger. You must wire to Sydney tomorrow. Now, don’t you think that’s a good plan?”

“And who, my dear Ann, is going to pay for this party?” inquired the station-owner, with stern face but twinkling eyes.

“You, of course, dear. The bills will come in about the end of June, and you can pay them the same day you pay your income tax. Are you young people agreeable to the party?”

“Yes, Auntie,” came Kate’s eager response.

“Rather!” confirmed Ralph.

So the date of the party was fixed, and a few days later the elite of the Upper Darling received appropriately-worded invitations, invitations promptly accepted by all, whilst not a few implored information regarding the “surprise”.

The day before the Saturday when the Great Land Lottery was to be held in Wilcannia was one of the two weekly mail days. Ralph received from a jeweller in Sydney, a diamond ring worth considerably more than his portion of the dog-scalp cheque. And, if he was pleased and not a little elated by the receipt of the ring, there was one other highly satisfied by the contents of his mail, and that was Bony.

The size of his mail was limited to three letters, and the first that he opened was from his wife, Laura, inwhich she gave him news of their three children, and evidence of her undying devotion, in a firm round hand, and quite passable grammar.

The second letter was contained in a plain foolscap envelope and was from Sydney. The message, however, was given in concise official prose:

Detective-Inspector Bonaparte. The plaster casts received recently, and numbered1to4, have been examined. It has been established definitely that the print No. 3is identical with that of the original stated by you to have been removed from the ground at Barrakee. If you decide upon an arrest, first communicate with the Senior Police Officer at Wilcannia, who has orders to carry out your instructions.

The letter was signed by the Chief Commissioner of Police at Sydney, and was read by Bony with a quiet smile.

“If I decide to make an arrest!” he said softly to a curious kookaburra perched on a branch over the second boat he was painting. “You seem to think, MrCommissioner, that I am a policeman, whereas I am a crime investigator. And now for Mr Edward Sawyer’s letter.”

From its cheap envelope Bony took the following, written on cheap ruled paper:

AltungaCreek,

Vie Camooweal,

Queensland.

Dear Old Bony,

I quite thought you had been planted years ago. It was only the other day that me and TommyChing -Lung was talking about the little bit of tracking you done up here in nineteen-twenty. And now youresurrects and writes to a bloke.

Dear old Bony, when are you coming up here again? You’ll find all the kids you used to talk to about the stars and things allgrowed up and thinking more of cattle, alligators and hard cash than of stars and all them elements you had in your head.

And now, Bony, about the gent you wants traced. You asked me if I remember ever seeing a tall, gaunt, cadaverous gent name of William Clair. Tall and gaunt were words I appeared to get the hang of, but cadaverous bluffed me at the post. I rode over to Blake’splace and the next day went down to Moreno to try and dig up a dictionary, but we don’t seem to be strong on dictionaries in these parts.

Anyway, two motor car explorers pulled up here last night, being afraid to sleep in the open on account of the alligators, and one of them told me the meaning of your foreign word.

That helped me to fix Mister Will Clair, but I reckon you’ve made a mistake in the gent’s name. In nineteen-ten a tall, cadaverous, gaunt bloke with walrus whiskers hit the creek carryinga swag. I remember him because it’s darned few what carry swags up here. This gent’s name was Bill Sinclair, and for nine months he went black and lived with Wombra’spush out at Smokey Lagoon.

I just got back from a trip to Wombra, who was looking younger than ever, though a bit worried on account of the police not liking the way he waddies his second best gin. Old Wombra remembers Sinclair. He says Sinclair was made second chief of the push because he happened to find Wombra up a tree, guarded by a particularly nasty bull buffalo.

Sinclair, it appears, was after a bloke called King Henry, a New South Walesabo who rated as Super Grand Master of the blacks’masonic craft. Wombra didn’t tell me plain about the craft part of it, but putting two and two together that, I think, shows which way the steer bolted and explains, too, the reason of this King Henry gent being able to move about among Queensland blacks. By ordinary race rules a strange black gets a spear mighty quick.

But getting back to Sinclair, Bony old lad. This Sinclair palled in thick with Wombra and learned a heap of black’stricks. I asked old Wombra particular about boomerang chucking, and the old pirate told me that when Sinclair pulled out he could heave a warkirras as good as any of the bucks. In fact he won a kind of tournament the day before he left, and Wombra gave him his best boomerang as a sort of prize.

So that’s that. W. Sinclair hasn’t been up here since to my knowledge. What has he done? Run amuck or killed a money-wasting politician? If this last, let him go, Bony. He deserves a medal.

Well, so long old chip. Hop along this way when you go for your next walkabout. The wife and kids will be glad to see you. I got one wife and seven kids andgets two tax papers every year. Hooroo.

Yours till the alligators grow wings,

Edward Sawyer

Bony carefully re-read this boisterous letter from the far North-West of Queensland, and smiled with genuine pleasure; then, folding it, replaced it within the cheap envelope.

The writer was one of the many friends Bony’spersonality attracted to him. In those far-distant places the half-caste had devoted hours to the teaching of white folk’s children-children who otherwise, on account of remoteness from a school, would have grown up unable to read or write.

The parents of these children owed Bony a debt of gratitude, the children themselves a much greater debt. There were dozens of white men scattered over the north of Australia who would have provided Bony and his family with accommodation and tucker for the rest of their lives.

And from several ofthese Bony’s mind gradually reverted to William Clair. In Clair’sbootprint No. 3, as well as the history of Clair’s or Sinclair’s sojourn with Wombra and his tribe, Bony had gathered sufficient evidence to justify the gaunt man’s arrest.

He had not, of course, any direct proof that Clair killed the black at Barrakee. That Clair did kill King Henry he had no doubt, but what Clair’s motive was still remained baffling. And until he, Bony, had laid bare the reason for that deadly pursuit of King Henry, which had been carried on patiently and relentlessly for nearly two decades before opportunity came for its terrible culmination, the half-caste felt that his work at Barrakee would not be complete.

That night he wrote a letter which he took to Thornton to address, and to dispatch by Frank Dugdale the following day. The letter set the law in motion against theunsuspecing Clair, then living in solitude at the Basin.