The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Nineteen

Blood and Feathers

AT TEN O’CLOCK in the morning on the following Monday, Sergeant Knowles and a trooper arrived at Barrakee in a motor-car. Mrs Thornton heard the car pull up outside the office, and asked Kate to see whowere the callers. A minute later she welcomed them on the veranda.

“Why, it’s Mr Knowles,” she said in greeting. “Come in and have morning tea, do. Kate, run along and tell Martha. And why are you so far away from your post of duty?”

Talking gaily, she indicated chairs to her visitors, seating herself to permit them also to be seated.

“Trooper Smith and I have called about a little business matter,” briskly explained the dapper yet athletic sergeant. “But the business can wait till after the morning tea, Mrs Thornton.”

“Of course it can,” the Little Lady responded. “If the tea-growers went on strike, I really don’t know what we would do.”

Martha, bearing a tray, arrived resplendent in white poplin skirt, emerald green blouse, and brown riding-boots.

“Good morning, Martha,” Knowles said, without the faintest shadow of a smile on his brick-red face.

“Mornin’, Sergeant,” was the gin’s simple answer, but her eyes rolled and she seemed ill at ease. Kate soon joined them. She said:

“I hope, Sergeant Knowles, that your jail doesn’t want whitewashing. I’m sure Uncle would not like to lose Blair until his work is finished.”

The trooper chuckled. The sergeant laughed right out.

“So you have heard of Blair’s complaint?” he said. “No, we have not come to arrest Blair, this time.”

“You appear to hint that you have come to arrest someone,” ventured Mrs Thornton lightly.

“Where is Mr Thornton?” countered the sergeant.

“Good gracious! You are not going to arrest him, surely?”

“Oh, no! But I should like to see him presently.”

“Then you will find him with Mr Mortimore and the carpenter down in the shearing-shed,” the mistress of Barrakee told him, adding in a coaxing voice: “But really now, whom have you come to arrest? Tell us. We are always hungry for news and gossip.”

The steely blue eyes of the sergeant twinkled genially. He saw that both women were burning with curiosity. Kate, he thought, looked pale and her eyes as though they required sleep.

“Won’t you guess?” he teased.

“No,” said Mrs Thornton firmly.

“Martha?” Kate guessed with a strained laugh.

“Quite wrong, Miss Flinders,” interjected the trooper. “Well, you may as well know now as in a few hours’ time. We have come to apprehend William Clair for the murder of King Henry.”

For a moment the women were silent. Kate frowned. Mrs Thornton’s breath was caught sharply and her eyes became veiled.

“Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that you are still worrying about the killing of that black fellow?”

“I don’t worry about it, Mrs Thornton,” replied the sergeant, well satisfied with the effect of his bomb. “The law does, however. The law never ceases to worry about an unpunished crime. The official memory is infinite. Now we must go along and see Mr Thornton. We want his cooperation.”

“Then you will be going out to the Basin?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ll stay and have lunch before you go?”

“Thank you, we will.”

“Certainly you will. I’ll see about it at once. You know your way to the shearing-shed?”

“Oh yes! Thank you for the cup of tea.”

The women of Barrakee watched the two uniformed men go out through the double garden gates, and climb into their car to drive the half-mile to the big shed.

“Well, what do you think of that, Kate?” questioned Mrs Thornton.

“It seems difficult to believe that Clair did it. But then, I suppose, it would be as difficult to believe it of anyone else one knows,” replied Kate.

For thirty seconds the Little Lady gazed pensively across the lawn. Then, turning again to Kate, she said:

“If you’ll tell Martha about the visitors staying for lunch, I’ll go along to the store and get a few tins of ox-tongues. Martha is short of meat, I think.”

Down in the shearing-shed, the squatter was planning some alteration in view of the coming shearing, and the policemen found him detailing to Mortimore the timber and iron necessary.

“Hallo, Sergeant!” he said. “More trouble?”

“For someone, yes. And a little for you, too.”

“Oh!”

“From information received,” this with a meaning look, “we hold a warrant for the arrest of Clair, now I believe at a place called the Basin.”

“Yes, he is at the Basin. What’s he done?”

“We have enough evidence to charge him with the murder of King Henry.”

“Have you, now?”

The sergeant regarded Mortimore, then jotting notes in his order book, motioned the squatter to follow him outside. On the river-bank he said:

“What time do you reckon Clair will be home?”

“He is home all day,” Thornton told him. “Clair is not boundary-riding. He’s pumping.”

“Oh! that makes it easier. He has no riding-horse out there?”

“No.”

“How do you get to the Basin?”

“D’youknowthe road to Thurlow Lake?”

“Yes.”

“Well, six miles from Old Hut Tank you will come to a gate,” explained the station-owner. “Go through the gate and immediately take a secondary track to the right. From that gate to the Basin is thirteen miles.”

“Good,” replied the sergeant. “Mrs Thornton has kindly asked us to stay for lunch, and we have accepted. We’ll get away directly afterward. Did Bony tell you anything?”

“Only that his suspicions rested equally on Clair and Martha and me.”

The policeman chuckled. “Bony is a humorist,” he said. “He discovered a footprint outside the lower garden gate miraculously saved from the rain. He knew a size 9 boot made it, shortly after the rain began that night. It’s been established that Clair made that print. But the chief edifice of our prosecution is built from the material sent Bony in a letter from a pal of his in North-West Queensland. By the day of the trail we’ll have affidavits and witnesses in plenty.”

“But why did Clair kill theabo?”

“That we don’t know,” the sergeant admitted. “Bony appears sore on that point. Thinks that the arrest of Clair does not finish the case off artistically.”

“Humph! If Clair is found guilty the case will be finished off all right,” asserted John Thornton. “I must send a man out to take his place.”

“Let him come out with us. There’s room.”

“No. I’ll take him out myself. We can travel together.”

“All right. Will you take Bony as well? Look all right if he accompanies you. No one then will guess his identity. Besides, he may pick up something valuable to us.”

“Very well, I’ll see him about it,” agreed the squatter thoughtfully. “You go along to the homestead and make yourselves nuisances with the women. I want to finish this job.”

After an early lunch the sergeant and his companion left ten minutes before the squatter, who drove his own car, and was accompanied by Clair’s successor and Bony. Dugdale and Ralph were just riding in, and the latter waved to his foster-father.

The last thirteen miles of the journey over the secondary road was covered in slow time, since the little-used track was rough and covered with blown sand. The police car reached the Basin at about five minutes past two.

The Basin was situated on a wide circular flat, hemmed in by a mass of loose sand-hills. The hut was old, but weather-proof, and was built but a few yards from the sub-artesian bore, at which a small petrol-engine lifted the water into three large receiving tanks. Beyond the tanks ran two lines oftroughing, each watering sheep in a paddock, a division fence separating the two troughs.

The police car pulled up at the door of the hut. The sergeant and his companion got out, the former knocking on the door. His knock being unanswered, he glanced at the trooper and, the two having drawn their heavy revolvers, he unlatched the door, and threw it inward.

“William Clair,” he called.

There was no answer.

With that the two men entered. It might well have been that Clair was armed and desperate, but little thought of personal safety was in their minds. Clair’s silence was ominous.

The hut was empty.

It contained no place for concealment. An iron cot at one end bore two hastily tossed blankets. On the table were parts of a carcass of mutton and grains of sugar mixed with tea-leaves. The open fireplace indicated that that day a fire had been lit, for smoke still curled upward from the almost consumed wood.

“Outside, Smith,” snapped Knowles. “Look for tracks. Keep your eyes skinned. He may be hiding in the old shed over there. Search.”

But Clair had vanished.

Thornton with Bony and the new man arrived by the time the sergeant had decided that Clair was not in hiding anywhere near the hut. He was annoyed but not balked. For here was Bony, Australia’s King of Trackers. Mindful of the new pumper, Sergeant Knowles said, when he had explained the situation:

“What’s your name?”

“I’m Bony,” replied the half-caste innocently.

“Can you track?”

“A little bit,” admitted Bony.

“All right. Get on this man Clair’s tracks. He’s wanted for killing an aboriginal called King Henry, so you ought to be interested.”

“All right. Inside first. You all stay outside, please. And don’t move about.”

At the doorway Bony surveyed the interior. He noted the tumbled blankets, the accumulation of foodstuffs on the table, the wisp of smoke arising from the dying fire. He noted also the absence of the usual canvas water-bag, and the small tea-billy. Near the bed he saw a litter of feathers.

Entering the hut then, he removed the blankets from the bed. Beneath he found and examined what evidently had been a pillow. One end had been ripped open, and several downy feathers still adhered to the covering on the inside. From the bed he approached the table, observing the scattered tea and sugar. The meat had evidently been partly disjointed in a hurry, and the flesh was flabby, denoting that the ration sheep had been killed that day.

Bony sighed and smiled, and called the others in.

“Clair knows a thing or two which is going to make his capture difficult,” he said. “I’m looking for a dish or bucket which has recently contained blood. We have no time to waste. Look around, some of you, outside.”

It was the new pumper who found, at the back of the hut, the wash-dish in which were traces of blood and many white feathers sticking to it. When Bony saw it he nodded slowly and then, pointing to the telephone, said:

“Someone told him, Sergeant, that you were coming out to get him. Clair then took that dish down to the killing-pen, in which there happened to be a ration sheep, killed it, and caught its blood in the dish. The dish and the carcass he brought in here. He then cut off sufficient meat to take with him, filled his ration-bags with tea and sugar and flour, and put the full bags in a gunny-sack, with what cooked meat and damper he had by him.

“Next he rolled one blanket intoa swag. Finally he removed his boots and socks and bathed his feet in the blood before dipping them into his pillow-case filled with pelican feathers. Allowing the blood to congeal and harden, thereby firmlyadhering the feathers, he repeated the process till his feet were thickly encased with the feathers.”

“Oldabo trick!”Thornton exclaimed.

“Precisely! Clair knew that when a black fellow wants to avoid being tracked by an enemy he covers his feet with feathers,” Bony answered calmly. “Feathered feet leave no mark, turn no stone, break no twig, and damage no grass where there is any.”

“Damn!” growled the senior policeman. “Now, who the devil rang up Clair and told him we were coming?”

“Someone must have done so,” insisted Bony. “Clair didn’t just bolt when he saw your car coming through the sand-hills yonder. His preparations occupied quite two hours. He’s on foot. Had you been mounted you might have run into him.”

“And you mean to tell me you can’t track him now?”

“Yes. Clair adopted the only method that baffles even the best trackers. If you circle that ring of sand-hills this quiet afternoon, you might see a very faint impression on the loose sand. But Clair would know that, and would not leave his direction so evident. When on fairly hard ground again he would circle in the direction he proposes to go.”