The Barrakee Mystery

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Pincher Joe

DURING THE last week of the lamb marking there came to Barrakee, walking up river, a person whose baptismal names were George Joseph Sparks. Doubtless, forty years before, he had made a man and a woman very proud of his freshly started career; but the pride of his parents had not been transferred in later life to the policemen who handled him, or to the citizens who lost through his mental complaint-called “petty theft” when the sufferer belongs to the masses and “kleptomania” when he or she adorns the higher social strata. In that underworld to which Sparks belonged he was known, if not respected, as “Pincher Joe”.

He was a little man with a small head, and hands apparently created for wandering gently into other people’s pockets. Dirty hands they were, however; grimy, not with labour, but from an intense dislike to labour, even that of washing them. Never in all his lifehad he looked directly into the face of a human being, nor had he ever worked or done anyone a good turn disinterestedly. Yet, in his way, Pincher was a great man, a man who can be likened to the great Napoleon himself, in that he never missed an opportunity. That is, in Pincher’s case, an opportunity to steal.

It was precisely five o’clock when he reached the shearing-shed at Barrakee: his mind uneasy, his nerves shaken, his temper ruffled by two meetings with suddenly appearing police troopers since his departure from the township of Wilcannia. The cursed troopers had wanted to know all about him, where he came from, where he was going-as though he would trouble to remember whence he had come, or to plan whither he would go. All that he did trouble about was the low condition of his tucker-bags.

At the shearing-shed he boiled his quart pot and made his tea strong by the simple process of allowing it to boil for five long minutes. This he cooled rapidly by another simple process: that of raising the quart pot high above his head and emptying the contents into an old ant-cleaned jam tin held on the level with his knees; then pouring the decoction back into the pot, and repeating as required. Had not the man’s ferret eyes been so serious in expression, the action would have been comical. Sweetening his tea with sugar taken from a calico bag which, like his hands, required much soap and water, the gentleman from nowhere, bound for nowhither, with years yet to go, sat on his swag and drank daintily. He would have eaten also had the cook on the station lower down given him anything to eat.

At five-thirty the hands’ dinner gong sounded, and, allowing a just measure of time to elapse, Pincher Joe rose languidly and sauntered up to the men’s kitchen, on the back door of which he timidly tapped. Where he stood he could not see the cook at his stove, but he was able to see the whole dining table, at which sat a Chinaman-evidently the gardener-and two station men. Pincher surmised that the remainder of the hands were out in the lamb-marking camp. And then, with surprising suddenness, he was confronted by Rainbow Harry, the cook, so nicknamed because of his love of colouring the sweets and brownie. He used also, at times, colourful language.

“Wot-cher-want?” demanded Rainbow, with that fierceness of expression reserved in particular for tramps.

“Can you spare us a bit of tucker, Cook?” whined Pincher.

“You-you blankWooloomooloo rat!” Rainbow snarled. “Why, it was you wot pinched me watch up at White Gate last August.”

“No, I didn’t, Cook. I was never there-straight.”

“No, of course youwasn’t. Am I blind?”

“No, you looksorl right.”

“Am I a liar?”

Pincher hesitated for a split second. Rainbow roared:

“Am I a liar-am I? Iarsts you.”

“No, Cook,” the little man said with sudden fervour.

“Then you go and git your tuckeroff’n the bloke you sold me watch to,” ordered Rainbow, with a hint of triumph in his hoarse voice.

“But Iain’t got a bite, dinkum, Cook, Iain’t,” Pincher whined in desperation.

“Give him a bite to eat, Harry,” urged Bony, who sat at table intensely amused. Pincher flashed him a look which only hinted gratitude. Rainbow raised his hands on high and swore shockingly.

“No!” He thundered the word and, stooping, glared at the little man on the doorstep, adding, as though to emphasize his decision: “Go away, you rat! I’ll teach you to pinch me watch wot I paid six shillings for in nineteen-twelve. Go up to the big ’ouse. Thecook there don’t know you.”

Pincher Joe faded away. For a minute no one spoke. The men thought Rainbowoverhard; for, no matter the personal disagreement, it is the unwritten bush law to hand out food to the callingsundowner. And then upon Rainbow’s face there slowly dawned a grim smile, culminating in a chuckle. He said:

“ ’Edon’t know that Martha is still cooking up at the Government ’ousekitchen. Martha ’as bin waiting for years for Pincher Joe, ’cos’e stole herhaluminium fry-pan once.”

Hungry and disconsolate, a martyr to the world’s disapproval of his solitary talent, Pincher Joe made his way along the fence of the Chinaman’s garden, deciding before he reached the end of it not to proceed to the homestead kitchen by the main route, which led past the offices and jackeroos’ quarters, but the other way, round the bottom end of the garden. So intent was he on filling the void paining his stomach and inventing an opening speech for the coming interview with the homestead cook that he failed to observe Bony following him, still interested and amused.

In all great crimes that are found out the criminal makes one mistake that lays him low. Pincher’s mistake that evening was omitting to look behind for possible enemies. As Bony would have put it, Pincher’s cause was hunger, but the effect was so amazing that Pincher’s art was minimized to the ninety-ninth degree.

Whilst sidling along the wire and bamboo fence of the homestead gardens and lawns, the little man heard the homestead dinner gong. There were no sounds of human activity beyond the fence, and this Pincher attributed to the fact that nearly everyone would be out engaged in the lamb-marking. Pausing for some two minutes, during which he heard a fly-proof door spring shut, he went on again till he arrived before a small wicket-gate giving on to a concrete path that ran along the side of the house, round a corner, and straight to the kitchen. He opened the gate and passed within. He walked the path and finally reached the house.

All the doors of the rooms on that side were wide open. He passed one room that evidently was occupied by a man, for male apparel was in evidence, and male hair brushes lay on the dressing table. It was in the third room into which he looked that, on a well equipped dressing table, he saw, fastened to the edge of the mirror by a pin, a ten shilling Treasury note.

And straight away the little man had another attack of his chronic complaint, kleptomania. Electric tremors shot up and down his arms, pricking sharply the balls of each finger and thumb. The other objects within the room magically dwindled into a blurred nothingness, but the note itself seemed magically to fill the whole world. One sharp glance about him, and the little man was in Mrs Thornton’s boudoir.

Pincher Joe found it impossible to move quickly enough towards that magnetic Treasury note. For one second his long tapering fingers appeared to hover over it; the next the note lay snugly in an inside pocket. And then, as though eased from pain, as though the attack of kleptomania had subsided, Pincher Joe sighed, a luxurious sigh, a sigh of blissful content. But, following closely upon the sigh, almost cutting itshort, came another dreadful attack.

The glitter and glint of gold and silver flared into his brain like powerful searchlights. There, on the dressing table, lay silver backed hairbrushes, a silver backed hand mirror, a gold plated pin and brooch box, the colour and the sight of which caused Pincher’s eyes to protrude and his fingers to tingle again. Pincher Joe became a live wire.

The silver and gold dressing table appointments were thrust into his gunny-sack. Article followed article with lightning rapidity. Into the bureau drawers delved his flickering hands, to reappear and disappear into his sack. A beautiful inlaid mahogany sofa-chest was ransacked in like manner until the sack was bulging full, when the attack passed off once more.

It was then that Pincher looked carefully out of the doorway. Observing no one, he slipped out, following the concrete path to the wicket-gate, unhurriedly, casually, for he was nothing if not an artist in the make believe of innocence and absence of guile. Forgotten was his hunger in the fiercer hunger of gloating over his newly acquired treasures. Forgotten the insults of cooks, the rude inquisitiveness of policemen, the hate and envy of him by the world he preyed upon. For within his sack he possessed gold and silver as good as legal tender-objects of beauty which the magic of a “fence” would transmute into a long succession of amber-froth-tipped drinks and delectable “eats”, such as cheese and bacon and tinned fish.

Once outside the garden gate Pincher Joe quickened his pace. Since it was too far to the shearing-shed, since it would take too long to reach there, he walked parallel with the river gums till he espied a bower of seclusion within a clump of tea-tree bushes. Once there, within his bower, with the sun-tipped gum-trees beyond the shaded bushes, Pincher Joe took out of his bag the treasures he had secured, with an expression on his face like that of a child with its arm plunged into a lucky dip at a church bazaar.

There came into the light of the fast ending day the silver backed hand mirror. At it he looked lovingly-that is, at the back of it and its chased handle. His reflection in the glass interested him not at all. The little box of gold made his eyes shine as stars seen through a fine high level haze. The hair brushes parted his lips in a grin of avarice.

These things he placed in turn beside him. He brought out a pair of cheap scissors, twined about with a length of silk thread. A narrow leather waist belt followed, then came a china pot of sweet smelling cream. A long gold plated box containing two valuable rings and an assortment of the odds and ends apparently so necessary to a lady’s existence made him suck in his breath, but his breathing became normal once more when he took from his bag a small framed photograph of Ralph Thornton riding a horse. That he contemptuously tossed aside.

For a little while his hand delved into the bag in search of small objects that might be there, ignoring a larger object which stretched the bag in a peculiar manner in one place. A common steel thimble was added to the pile at his side, as were an expensive fountain pen and a memorandum book. And, finally, the delving hand brought out a piece of wood, round and angled and polished. At this Pincher Joe frowned in perplexed annoyance.

He wondered why on earth he should have gone to the trouble of stealing a common black fellow’s boomerang.

And then the voice of doom fell on his ears. It was a still small voice, yet a voice that filled the sky and trembled and throbbed among the trees and the bushes, and penetrated to every fibre of his being with its awful hint of punishment. That voice was worse, far worse, than the laying of hands upon his shoulders.

“Quite a nice little collection, Pincher,” remarked the soft drawling voice; and, looking round sharply yet furtively, the little man beheld Bony regarding the contents of the bag with extreme surprise.

“Itain’tnone of your business,” Pincher whined.

“There you are quite mistaken,” Bony murmured, recovering from his surprise and regarding Pincher with the interest bestowed by a botanist on an unfamiliar insect. “I am afraid, Pincher, that, to use an Australian aphorism, ‘your eggs are cooked’. Precisely, in what room did you-did you discover these things?”

“Wot’sthe odds?” the little man demanded, adding hopefully: “As you’ve foxed me, let’s go fifty-fifty.”

“Try and remember what room it was,” insisted Bony.

“What room! What are you driving at?”

“I want to know what room you stole those things from.”

Looking for one fraction of a second into the detective’s eyes, Pincher saw in them that which caused the return of his habitual whine when confronted by-to him-an enemy.

“It was the third round the corner,” he said thinly.

“Ah!” After that understanding exclamation Bony sat and stared at nothing so long that Pincher became uneasy.

“Well, wot about going fifty-fifty?”

Bony looked at him. Putting a hand in a trouser pocket he brought out a small metal object, the only proof of his connexion with the police force. Pincher Joe’s face became ashen.

“Shall we say three years’ hard labour for this?” inquired Bony blandly. “Or would you prefer to runyour hardest down to the shearing-shed, stop there long enough to pick up your swag, and then run again till you are right off the station of Barrakee?”

“I-I-” stuttered the little rat. “Jermean it?” And at Bony’s nod he leapt to his feet and made possibly the record sprint of his career. The exhausting and humiliating adventure had left him, however, one drop of balm-the Treasury note.

For perhaps five minutes longer Bony sat and pondered over the strange way in which Fate had given him this incriminating clue. At equal distance from the centre to the extremities of the boomerang were the marks of Wombra’s tribe, the marks that had distinguished the wound on the gum-tree near which King Henry had been killed. Of all the puzzles of the many that kept this particular murder shrouded in mystery, what was Mrs Thornton doing with that boomerang in her boudoir?

Bony rose to his feet and stuffed the heap of articles within the gunny-sack. Walking back to the wicket-gate, he decided to empty the bag out inside the room from which the objects had been taken and quietly retire. No one observed him enter the homestead garden, and he was convinced that he would achieve his object right up to the moment he met Mrs Thornton coming out of her room, her face a picture of anxiety and astonishment. Seeing Bony, she exclaimed:

“Someone has been here and stolen all my dressing table things.”

“Ah, but fortunately, Madam, I was able to intercept the burglar,” he said grandly. “Whilst I was recovering the plunder, however, he managed to escape. You see, he was examining the contents of his bag when I came upon him. Putting them back, I brought them here at once.”

Just outside the door stood a small occasional table, and on this Bony set out the stolen articles. At sight of the boomerang Mrs Thornton paled; and, when Bony bowed himself out, it was with difficulty that she managed to say:

“Thank you, Bony! Thank you!”