“And you got home?”
“Just after they had lugged the corpse up here to the carpenter’s shop.”
“All right, Clair. Send in McIntosh.”
To the sergeant’s questions, McIntosh, a youth of eighteen, admitted that he was “courting” the housemaid, and that they had sheltered in the shearing-shed during the rain.
Blair, the last man, then entered.
He was a little wiry man, under five foot six inches, a man more than fifty years old, but with the spring and suppleness of a youth. A blistered complexion accentuated the greyness of his hair and the goatee beard that jutted forth from his chin.
He was employed as bullock-driver. To the people of Wilcannia he was known as the fierce little man whom it required the combined energies of the entire police force to put into the lock-up. This occurred every time Blair visited Wilcannia, which was every quarter.
Now, Sergeant Knowles was a pearl among policemen in that he possessed a keen sense of humour. He never bore Blair any malice for sundry bruises received whilst helping his subordinates to lock him up. He had for Blair a profound admiration, owing to his courage and fighting qualities, drunk or sober. With perfect gravity, he said:
“Is your name Frederick Blair?”
Blair, knowing this inquisition had nothing to do with his employer, and wishing to make sure that the sergeant should not think he was nervous in any way, seated himself in the vacant chair with studied insolence, elegantly crossed his legs, and as elegantly placed his thumbs in the arm-holes of his much-greased waistcoat.
“Is my name Frederick Blair?” he remarked, to the ceiling. “Now I wonder!”
“I am asking you,” the sergeant said gently.
“How many demons ’ave you got with you?” Blair inquired, with equal gentleness.
“Trooper Dowling is outside.”
“Only two of you? I can manage you with one ’and.” Blair’s goatee raised itself towards his nose. “Now look ’ere, Sergeant, the last time I was in Wilcannia you wanted the bleeding jail whitewashed, so you goes and grabs me and two other blokes on the d. and d. charge, and gets us fourteen days without the op, so’s you can get the jail whitewashed without paying the award rates. Wot I wants to know is, when your flamin’ jail wants whitewashing again?”
“Not for another three months, Blair. But what I want to know is, where—”
“Never mind what you want to know,” interjected the little fury. “What I want to know is whether the next time I come to Wilcannia, and the jail don’t want whitewashing, you’ll let me alone to have a quiet drink in peace.”
“We’ll have to wait till the next time. Where were you last evening?”
“Like to know, wouldn’t you?”
“I want to know,” the policeman said at last impatiently.
Blair suddenly leaned forward with twinkling blue eyes. “As a matter of fact, Sergeant, I met the black fellow last night and asked him for a match. He cursed me for a police pimp. Me! Me, Sergeant, a police pimp! So I ran up to the house, grabbed the maids’ step-ladder, took it down to the black, made him stand still beside it, climbed to the top to get level with his head, and then hit him with a cucumber I pinched from the garden.” Then, turning to the squatter, he added: “You see, Mr Thornton, being a small bloke, I couldn’t reach the nig’s head without them steps. But I took ’em back and put ’em where I got ’em.”
Both men were obliged to laugh. Blair, however, remained perfectly serious.
“But, look here, Blair. Honestly, now, where were you about eight-thirty last night?” persisted the sergeant.
“I told you,” Blair returned. “I murdered the nig by ’itting ’im on the ’ead with a rotten cucumber. I own to it. You arrest me, Sergeant—and see ’ow you get on. Two of yous! Why, I could crawl over you.”
“Not in the office, Blair. You’d smash the furniture,” Thornton murmured.
“All right, Blair. You had better go,” the policeman said resignedly.
Blair rose slowly to his feet, the goatee now at its normal right-angle with the bottom of his chin. Slowly he walked to the door, as though reluctant. At the door he turned, a man bursting with some hidden withheld information. The sergeant was at once hopeful; Blair slowly returned to the desk and, leaning forward, whispered:
“Say, are you quite sure you don’t want to arrest me, Sergeant?”
“Quite sure. When I do, I’ll arrest you.”
“My oath! You, with your bloomin’ speelers to lend a hand.” Blair almost cried with disappointment. Then, appealingly: “But ’ave a ’eart, Sergeant! Don’t bung me in next time to whitewash the jail. I goes to Wilcannia and gets drunk like a respectable wowzer, not to whitewash jails. That’s a bit thick.”
With a regretful nod, Blair left them.
“What do you make of Blair?” asked the squatter, chuckling.
“Blair is a fighter, not a murderer,” replied Sergeant Knowles, grinning. “The two don’t mix outside a drunken brawl, and this murder was not the result of a drunken brawl. How many house servants have you got?”
“Three. Martha the cook, Alice the maid, and Mabel the laundry girl.”
“Humph!” the sergeant re-read his notes carefully. Then, looking up, he added: “I’ll have a look at the corpse. Then we’ll look at the scene of the killing. Then I’ll examine the blacks in that camp up-river. As far as your people are concerned, I am not satisfied with Clair. I’ll send Trooper Dowling with him to see if he did set traps last night. Also, Mr Thornton, Frank Dugdale did see someone in the lightning.”
Chapter Seven
The Only Clue
“Damn the rain!” rasped Sergeant Knowles, staring down at four wooden pegs set at the points of a cross to mark where the body had been found. “There is not a track left for a black tracker to see, let alone a white man.”
“What seems significant to me is that the abo stood six feet four inches in height, and yet, as you say, the blow at the crown of his head was delivered downwards,” murmured the squatter. “Such a combination rules out any man of medium height, unless he adopted Blair’s plan and used a pair of step-ladders.”
“Just so,” the sergeant agreed absently. He stood on the river side of the four wooden pegs and consequently faced the garden fence. “Is Dugdale in love with any of the maids, or with Miss Flinders, do you know?”
“I don’t know. I’ve no evidence of any love-affair. Why do you ask?”
“For no real reason,” came the absent response. “Let us go along to the camp. Hallo! Who is this?”
Along the bank of the river, walking towards them and the homestead, came a young lubra. The two men watched her approach, the sergeant at least noting the springing gait and the beautiful contours of her limbs. Her age might have been twenty, but her figure was unusually lovely for a lubra, for somehow the angular awkwardness of the aboriginal girl changes with startling rapidity to the obesity of the gin.
She was dressed in a white muslin blouse, a neat navy-blue skirt, black stockings and shoes. She wore her cheap but well-fitting clothes with the unconscious grace of a white woman. When close, she looked at them fearlessly.
According to the white man’s standards it cannot be said that the Australian lubra is anything but ugly. This girl, however, was a rare exception. Her face was oval and flat. Her forehead neither receded nor bulged, but was high and broad. Her nose, for an aboriginal, was not spread, and the nostrils were finely chiselled; whilst her lips, thicker