Cake in the Hat Box. Arthur W. Upfield

to:

      “Come along in for a cup of tea. Missus will be glad to see you.”

      Irwin produced a bundle of mail, and Cummins led the way through the gate and along the path composed of the rubble of termite hills, and stalked into the house calling for his wife. After a little delay, Mrs Cummins appeared, tidy and excited.

      “Mr Irwin! Whatever are you doing down this way? Sit down, do, and I’ll make a pot of tea. Glad to meet you, Inspector Bonaparte. Heard your name on the wireless the other day.”

      Questions and answers criss-crossed like the nightly display of shooting stars. The welcome was warm and, to Bony, Irwin’s standing with these people amply assured. By magic the living-room table was ‘set’ for afternoon tea of buttered scones and cake, and it did seem incongruous to interrupt the gaiety with the announcement that Constable Stenhouse had been found shot to death.

      Mrs Cummins was obviously shocked. Cummins accepted the news with an abrupt withdrawal. It was as though an opaque curtain fell before his keen grey eyes.

      “Well, that’s just too dreadful,” said Mrs Cummins. “He was here only the other day. Stayed the night.”

      The cattleman’s brows drew close in a frown, and Bony could ‘see’ his mind at work. He was mentally adding miles, and placing them against the total of days since Stenhouse had left his house for Leroy Station up to the afternoon when his body was found ninety miles north of Agar’s Lagoon.

      “Did he say where he intended going on leaving here?” Bony asked.

      “Yes. Said he thought of running across to Leroy Downs,” replied Cummins.

      “I see you have a transceiver. Did you mention over the air to Leroy Downs the probability of Stenhouse arriving there?”

      Cummins shook his head. His wife said:

      “No. Unless you policemen ask us to we never say anything of your movements. That’s the rule up here.”

      “Thank you. Did Stenhouse have his tracker with him?”

      “Oh, yes. Jacky Musgrave was with him.”

      “And Jacky’s missing?” Cummins interpolated.

      “That’s so,” replied Irwin. “Any of Jacky’s mob working for you?”

      “Yes. One. He’s away on walkabout.”

      “I didn’t see any aborigines when we arrived,” Bony remarked. “None here?”

      Cummins nodded and laughed. “Plenty,” he replied. “But they all went down the creek aways day before yesterday.” What he fancied was in Bony’s mind made him ask: “Think that’s anything to do with Jacky Musgrave?”

      “Possibly. Have you noticed an unusual number of smokes recently?”

      “No, haven’t seen any.”

      “There was something that stirred up the blacks, though,” said Mrs Cummins.

      Irwin glanced at the old pendulum clock on the mantel, and Bony rose to thank their host and hostess and express the hope that he would meet them again. Both escorted them to the utility, and they departed to the accompaniment of hearty farewells, the barking of dogs and the excited crowing of roosters.

      “Most of these stations have a transceiver, I suppose?” Bony asked when his fingers were engaged making a cigarette.

      “All of ’em,” Irwin answered. “The wireless and the aeroplane and the refrigerator have changed life considerably. People can now gossip to their heart’s content to their neighbours over forty, sixty, a hundred miles of space.”

      “They have to keep off the air at certain periods, I understand.”

      “Yes, for periods which are kept clear for telegrams and the Flying Doctor Service.”

      “And do you find that the station people do refrain from talking of police movements?”

      “Oh yes. They’re strongly cooperative there. Same with everything else. Notice Cummins’s reaction to the news about Stenhouse?”

      “Yes. He was wondering how Stenhouse came to be north of Agar’s Lagoon. I received the impression that he didn’t like Stenhouse.”

      “Me, too.”

      The track ran southward, following an ever-widening valley prodded by the long red fingers of the ranges pointing towards Jacky Musgrave’s country. They passed a well from which radiated lines of troughing. Red cattle were drinking, and other cattle were standing in the spinifex and looking exactly like the termite hills. Far to the south-west a low, flat-topped range, isolated and singular on that quarter of flat country, gleamed opalescent gold under the opalescent blue sky.

      “Looks like a range, doesn’t it?” remarked Irwin. “That’s the wall of the meteor crater. Full mile round, as I said. Steeper than a house roof, and the interior at least three hundred feet below the top of the wall.”

      “What’s down inside, d’you know?”

      “Nothing much. Floor’s flat, or almost so. Small desert trees growing down there. In the dead centre, a lake forms after a good rain.”

      “Any official name given to it?” pursued the interested Bony.

      “No. People hereabout call it ‘The Racecourse’.”

      “And what’s beyond it?”