a crimson eye stared out at Bony. On moving his head the merest fraction it vanished. Then he saw it again. He stretched forth a hand and lifted the quartz guarding it.
It was a ruby, or a stone remarkably like one. The tips of Bony’s long fingers went down to it. A man said:
“What the hell are you looking for?”
With the ruby, the fingers took up a piece of quartz, and the hand became still. Bony looked up. On the track just off the shingle stood James Simpson. He had a double-barrelled shotgun nestling in the crook of his arm.
Bony stood up and tossed away the piece of quartz, with the tip of one finger imprisoning the ruby against his palm.
“Gold,” he said lightly. “Likely-looking quartz around here.”
Simpson’s lip lifted, and he came forward on to the shingle. The fantail almost alighted on his felt hat and then flew on to dance on a boulder.
“You must be an optimist,” sneered the licensee, and there was something in his eyes akin to that in the eyes of the bull ant. Bony chuckled. He conveyed the ruby to a side pocket and took from it the splinter of quartz.
“What would you say that is?” he asked, proffering the quartz to Simpson.
Simpson thrust forward his left hand, his eyes as hard as those of the mountain. Then his gaze fell to the piece of pink stone, and the rigidity of his body subsided.
Chapter Seven
Prospecting
Waited upon by Ferris Simpson, Bony ate in meditative mood the excellently prepared dinner. At the other table old Simpson twice attempted to break into the general conversation and was pointedly ignored by his son, who talked with Glen Shannon of gold and its incidence in their respective countries.
Simpson was dressed in an old but well-pressed dinner-suit, and the starched collar and shirt cuffs emphasised the weather-darkened skin of face and hands. His brown hair, parted high up, lay close to his head, which added strength to the face when in profile.
The man’s reaction to the gold-shot quartz had been slightly baffling, especially in view of the general knowledge of gold being now revealed in his conversation with the American yardman.
When returning to the hotel with Bony, he had asserted it to be a “floater” brought away from the range in the distant past by, probably, water from a cloudburst. He had never found gold in the district, and no one ever had. It was the strangest fluke that Bony had found it, and then had come the pressing questions: Had Bony prospected for gold? Where and when? Had he ever staked a claim? All questions which could have been intended to get farther into Bony’s background.
Simpson had said he was out after rabbits for the table, but Bony saw by his tracks that he had stood for several minutes watching him before he spoke, and before that he had advanced spasmodically from a point where first he sighted him, advanced as though desiring to do so without being noticed.
Rabbits! No, not along that road. Along by the creek there were rabbits. There were rabbits in the abandoned vineyard. It appeared as though Simpson had been looking for him, which would indicate that he was suspicious.
Throughout the meal Detective Price tried to emerge from the back of Bony’s mind, being frustrated only by the interest in Simpson and his reactions. The old man was wheeled away in his chair by his daughter, out through the door leading to the hall and the front veranda, and when she returned she brought the coffee and Bony lit a cigarette. It was then that Price won.
In Bony’s mind the death of Detective Price had for some time been disassociated from the mystery of the hikers, but in view of what he had discovered this afternoon it demanded reconsideration. If Price had been killed by some person or persons responsible for the vanishment of the hikers, whereabouts along the chain of his investigation had he discovered a clue, or a link, which had made him an acute danger to those responsible for the vanishment? The subject was like a dog’s curly tail which, on being smoothed straight, swiftly returns to the curl.
The same thing followed when the supposition was raised that Price was murdered because he had discovered a vital clue leading to the discharged yardman, Ted O’Brien. Old Simpson was so sure that the man would not have departed without saying good-bye to him. Supposing O’Brien had seen something, or discovered something concerning the two girls, and had been effectively silenced, and then suppose Price had discovered something of the yardman’s fate, and himself been effectively silenced? That appeared to be a more reasonable hypothesis than that Price had found such a clue to the fate of the girls as Bony had that afternoon discovered.
It was not a ruby but a brilliant which had had a setting. Neither of the girls had worn hats when they left Melbourne, and one, Mavis Sanky, had worn a hair-clip studded with ornamental ruby-red brilliants. Her companion had been wearing a similar ornament decorated with emerald brilliants. The setting of both ornaments was nine-carat gold, and therefore the ornaments were not cheap and the stones would not easily fall out.
Bony decided he was licensed to assume that his picture of the car waiting on the shingle area was authentic. There had been a struggle during which the hair-clip worn by Mavis Sanky had dropped from her head, had been trodden upon as it lay on the shingle, had been picked up minus that one brilliant which had dropped down between the pieces of quartz and remained unseen.
Had the persons concerned in the struggle retrieved the hair-clip before they drove off with their prisoners, or had it been found by either the old yardman or by Detective Price?
Assumptions only, but they were all that Bony had gained, and as he passed out of the dining-room, already evacuated by the others, he determined to press forward with his interrogation of old Simpson.
On the few occasions he had been able freely to talk with the old man he had been unable to elicit anything further to the remark about the body in the spirit store. Old Simpson was deeply cunning or slightly decayed mentally, in either case aggravatingly so, and Bony was given the impression that he was being bargained with. If he wanted information he’d have to buy it with a drink or two. And with this in his mind, he passed on to the front veranda and was ordered to:
“Get to hell outa here,” by the cockatoo.
“Don’t you take no notice of that ruddy fowl,” snarled the old man. “Come on over here and have a talk before they dump me into me cot like a body into a coffin. Where you get that floater, eh? I can’t make head nor tail of it the way Jim tells it.”
Having settled himself near the invalid, Bony described the shingle area and proffered the quartz for examination. Old Simpson held it to the light and squinted at the golden speck.
“I know the place,” he said. “Might be as Jim said about being washed down by a cloudburst. It’d have to be that. Ground ain’t low enough to have been the bed of a river.”
“The quartz might have worked up from a reef underneath the shingle,” Bony suggested, and the old man nodded quick agreement. He said:
“Pity Ted O’Brien ain’t here. He’d have an idea or two. He done a lot of prospectin’ around Ballarat in the old days. How long you staying on?”
“Few days, I expect.”
The weak eyes peered at Bony and then were directed along the veranda to the caged bird. Bony could almost see the mind working.
“You pull out tomorrer,” the old man said, hope in his voice. “You go down to Hamilton and find Ted’s sister and from her find out where Ted is. Show him this bit of quartz. Back him with a grub-stake and arrange to go partners with him. I’d like to see Ted again.”
“Perhaps O’Brien didn’t go back to Hamilton.”
“Perhaps he never did. I ain’t sure. I’d like to be.” The old man’s voice sank to a whisper. “The winder behind me—is it open?”
Bony brought his gaze upward to pass swiftly across the window next to that of his bedroom. He shook his head and then