could always play something or other. His mother bought him a mouth-organ when he was a nipper, and one day when the present Benson’s father was here he heard Jim playing it. So what did he do? I’ll tell you. The next time his own son went off to college in Melbourne, he sent Jim with him. They was at college for years. When Jim left college he could play a piano. His mother got me to buy one. Jim could play wonnerful, and sing, too. Sing proper. Then this Benson got him the organ, and they imported a man from the city to show him how to play it. Oh, drat ’em!”
Ferris Simpson appeared.
“Don’t forget to sneak me in a drink,” whispered the old man.
“They’d hear me,” Bony countered.
“No fear. They all camp at the back. Only me and you is in front. Well, what d’you want, Ferris? Can’t you leave me be when Mr. Parkes is talking to me friendly-like?”
She came and looked down upon the invalid, and from him to Bony.
“It’s seven o’clock, Father,” she said with peculiar woodenness. “You know that Jim insists that you go to bed at seven. Now don’t be difficult. Go along quietly.”
She passed to the back of the wheel-chair and so failed to see her father wink at Bony and slide the tip of his tongue to and fro across his mouth. He began to voice objections as he was taken round the angle of the veranda to his room. His voice drifted into the organ notes, was defeated, leaving Bony to resume his chair and give himself to Jim Simpson’s playing. It was dark when Simpson stopped, and a moment later he joined Bony, slipping into a chair and lighting a cigarette.
Bony said:
“You play remarkably well.”
“Only thing I really like doing. Do you play anything?”
“I can get a tune out of a gum leaf,” admitted Bony. “You’ve a fine organ.”
“Yes. A modern German instrument. They can’t be beaten in that line.” The glow of the cigarette being smoked over-rapidly now and then illuminated the man’s face. “I’d take a cinema job in the city were it not for the old people. Can’t leave them, and they won’t stand uprooting. Have you dependants?”
“A wife and three boys,” replied Bony truthfully.
“I was born here, but I’m hoping I won’t die here. How long have you lived on your property?”
“Took it over in 1930.”
“Never been up into New South Wales. Have promised myself a good round trip when petrol’s easier. You must do all right for juice.”
“I have had to do a lot of wangling,” Bony explained, adding with a soft laugh: “One has to wangle all the time these days. I’ve made a bit of money these last three seasons, but what’s the use? I want to build myself a new homestead but can’t get the materials. I want a new car, and I’ve got cash to splash on one, but I have to wait my turn. You were lucky to get your Buick.”
“Matter of fact, I was,” Simpson agreed. “Benson—he’s the near-by Station owner—put in for a Buick two years ago, and then when he got it he decided to wait for a new Rolls, and so he sold the Buick to me—on good terms, of course. What kind of sheep do you run?”
“Corriedale origin,” Bony replied without hesitation. “I introduced the McDonald strain to give extra wool length. Know anything about sheep?”
“Next to nothing. We get a few ration sheep from the Bensons now and then.”
“How many do they run?”
“Very few compared with your flocks. The yardman was talking about your place. The sheep and the acreage seemed to astonish him. The Bensons, of course, own the Grampians strain.”
“They breed the Grampians, do they!” Bony chuckled. “A fellow would have to be a millionaire to buy their rams. How big is their place?”
“Thirty thousand acres, and only half of that any good. Still, what country is good, is good.” Simpson paused to light another cigarette. “The Bensons don’t encourage visitors. Can’t blame them, of course. They have to keep their breeding secrets. How far out of Balranald is your place?”
“From Balranald Post Office to my homestead it’s eighteen miles. As I was telling the yardman, it’s billiard-table flat compared with this place. Pardon me for gossiping about you to myself. Are you the Simpson who figured in searching for two lost girls?”
“That’s so.” Simpson eased himself in his chair and tossed the cigarette end over the rail. “They stayed here, and after they left to walk on to Lake George no one ever saw them again.”
“Terrible country to be lost in,” Bony asserted.
“You’re saying the truth, John. Terrible country to find anything in too. Trick anyone not used to getting around in it. There’s a gully west of here by a mile that’s at least a mile deep. Goes down straight. Could never understand why they left the road.”
“Looks like bad tracking country too.”
“’Tis so. Large patches of it covered with shingle, and larger patches that spongy they wouldn’t retain an elephant’s tracks beyond a couple of hours. Care about a drink?”
As Bony followed his host along the passage to the small lounge he decided that the information he had gained had little if any importance. He was, however, receiving the impression that Simpson was slightly on guard and more than a little interested in his guest. Simpson unlocked the “cupboard”, a small room off the lounge permitted to stock liquors for bona-fide guests when the public bar had to be closed. A narrow ledge dropped into place across the doorway, and the men stood on either side and drank.
“My sister and I, and the men from Baden Park, rode all over the scenery,” Simpson continued. “Never found a track or a sign of them. We think one of them must have slipped over into that gully I mentioned, and the other fell over when trying to locate her. No getting down there. Now don’t you go getting lost.”
“I don’t think I would,” Bony said casually. “And I don’t think I’ll risk it. Fill them up, and I’ll go to bed.”
In the Official Summary and in the statements signed by Simpson and others there had been no mention of that gully “more than a mile deep”.
Chapter Six
The Watchers
A week at Baden Park Hotel produced little of concrete evidence concerning the fate of the two girl hikers, but much of psychological interest for a man adept in withdrawing himself to watch people on the stage of life.
Superficially the Simpsons comprised an ordinary hard-working family of not unusual beginnings. The old people had adventured, built a home, established themselves in a secure living, reared their children. The passing years had weakened them and strengthened the remaining son until they had become mere ghosts of the past.
The ghosts might whimper and whisper with, however, as much effect on James Simpson as the rain upon the granite face of the mountains. It availed old Simpson nothing to rebel against physical incapacity. His wife glanced over her shoulder at the guests who had come to paint the mountains and to study the botanical marvels and she looked with disfavour at the moderns who arrived in fast cars with fast women to drink as fast as possible.
Ferris was also a rebel, but she had nothing of the old man’s fire and the old woman’s patience. She hated the mountains and the people who came to carouse, but she was a prisoner of loyalty to her parents, who would have suffocated in a city’s suburbs. That her brother was also a prisoner, Bony suspected, but failed to understand what captivated him. In consequence, James Simpson provided most of the interest.
Doubtless, he drank far too much when the hotel was full of his “flash guests”, as described by the old man, but throughout the period of Bony’s visit he