I are not looking after her properly?”
“No, not in that respect,” he was quick to assure her, “but you must realize that last night a probable assassin entered this house and poisoned the brandy which Knowles ordered to be given the patient.”
“Are you sure that the brandy was poisoned?” she countered.
“No. We are not sure, yet. Knowles, however, states in his letter that when he examined the brandy before strong sunlight, he could easily detect a substance foreign to the spirit. Further, he stated that he was convinced that the brandy was poisoned, and that a most serious attempt had been made on the girl’s life. He urged that someone sit up on guard all to-night in case another attempt be made.”
“One of the men can be persuaded to do that, and we can leave the dogs off the chain,” she suggested swiftly.
“Quite so,” he agreed. “But we cannot turn this house into a fort.”
“Oh, yes, we can. After last night no one is going to harm that girl, not if I have to sit beside her with a loaded rifle in my lap. Dr Knowles told me that the patient may remain here, that she is better off here than in Winton, and therefore you are going to give in to me and allow her to stay with us. Why, her coming has given me just the stimulus that I have so badly needed.”
“Well, have it your own way, Elizabeth. You always do,” her father said, with just that tinge of sulkiness betrayed by a woman-defeated man. “It’s all so damned mysterious, and I hate mysteries.”
“I don’t. I love them,” she said, smiling his reward. “I am going to fight for that poor girl to remain at Coolibah. She is better off here than anywhere. What does Sergeant Cox think of it all?”
“Candidly, I think Cox is well and truly bluffed. He hinted that the case looked too big for him to handle, and that he intended to advise his immediate superior to call for a detective from Brisbane.”
“A lot of good that will do,” Elizabeth burst out. “If those two blacks cannot pick up any tracks, how could a city policeman succeed?”
“Detectives are trained. … There’s the telephone. Excuse me!”
He rose at once and departed for the study, and, frowning, Elizabeth continued the meal which their conversation had interrupted. She had read novels with plots far less fantastic than these happenings at Coolibah. The room, the house, life itself, appeared to have passed into a shadow making the real world distorted and fantastic. Down in Sydney and Melbourne there was a murder at least every week, and a hold-up or a smash-and-grab raid every night. One could accept a straightout murder, but helpless young women in abandoned aeroplanes and mysterious men slinking through the house poisoning brandy, belonged to the world of nightmare.
“That was Knowles,” Nettlefold explained, returning. “He is leaving Golden Dawn at once, and he wants me to meet him at the landing ground. I’ll have to hurry to finish dinner and get out there.”
“Did he give any news? Anything about the brandy?”
“No. When I mentioned it, he shut me up.”
“Oh! Well, I am glad he is coming to-night. I am glad, too, that Ted Sharp will be here. When should he be back?”
“Not before midnight.”
Elizabeth regarded her father steadily. Then she said: “Before you go, get the men to let all their dogs off the chains, will you?”
Chapter Seven
Sergeant Cox’s Visitor
Summer had come again, and Golden Dawn drowsed in the hot afternoon sunlight. The poppet-head of the mine danced in the heat waves rippling across the gibber plain, translucent waves which distorted the shapes of distant cows and flocks of goats. A hammer clanged on metal in the blacksmith’s shop, where, instead of making a set of horse-shoes, the smith was straightening a truck axle. The striking hammer appeared to mark time for the school class singing “Waltzing Matilda” in the little wooden building at the far end of the town.
With both coat and waistcoat removed, Sergeant Cox was at work in his office. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, and his jaw methodically worked at a large chunk of chewing gum. Office work demanded gum in preference to a pipe or an occasional cigarette, and the work in hand called for so much mental attention that the humming of the car that entered Golden Dawn from Yaraka passed quite unnoticed.
The sergeant was expecting the arrival of detectives from Brisbane on the mail coach due in at five-thirty, and his pen was busy drawing up a full report concerning the derelict aeroplane found at Emu Lake. The present was a distinct lull, as it were, after the storm of activity consequent on the discovery of the monoplane and its helpless passenger. Captain Loveacre had flown away with his fellow pilots in the de Havilland, and the members of the Air Accidents Investigation Committee had arrived, examined the wreckage, and had departed only that morning. Their findings, Cox had been informed, would be made known to the Commissioner, Colonel Spendor.
When a light step sounded on the veranda, Sergeant Cox frowned fiercely and continued to write. Filling in forms and making official returns were easy to a man long accustomed to such red tape, but he was finding the writing of an account of an investigation far more difficult. The coming of a visitor added to an irritation partially produced by the distracting tinkle of china in the kitchen where his wife was preparing afternoon tea. He kept his iron-grey head bent over his writing when the caller entered the office, and his pen continued its laborious scratching.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant!” greeted a low and cultured voice.
“Day!” snapped the sergeant, continuing to write.
“You appear to be very busy this afternoon,” remarked the voice.
Had he heard that voice before? Cox decided that he had not. Some traveller, without doubt. Men of all types, cultured and coarse, tramped the outback and here was one seeking the usual ration order supplied by the government. With grim determination, he went on with the paragraph in hand, and then, having completed it, he raised his head to glare at the caller.
He saw, seated on the small iron safe, a man of medium height and build, dressed in a light-grey tweed. His tie matched his shirt, and so did the soft felt hat now resting on the edge of the writing-table. The visitor’s face was turned downward to the busy fingers engaged in making a cigarette, and with no little astonishment the sergeant noted that the man’s hair was fine and straight and black, and that his skin was dark brown. And then he was gazing into a pair of bright blue eyes regarding him with a smile.
“Well, what’s your business?” Cox demanded, affronted by the caller’s freedom. The fellow was obviously a half-caste. He struck a match and calmly lit the cigarette he had made. Cox flushed to a deep red. He was used to stockmen and half-castes treating him with more respect than this.
“I asked you your business with me,” the sergeant rasped, his nether jaw protruding, his eyes blazing.
And then the soft and pleasing voice again:
“My dear Sergeant, my business is the same as your own. My name, given me in the long ago by an unthinking matron at a mission station, is Napoleon Bonaparte. Believe me, I have often considered seriously taking another name by deed poll, because no man—least of all myself—is worthy to be so honoured.”
“Napoleon Bonaparte!”
The pen dropped from the sergeant’s fingers. Slowly he stood up, his legs pushing back the chair. The glare now was drained from his eyes, but they remained as widely open.
“Not Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte!”
The caller bowed ever so slightly.
“I hold that rank in the Queensland Police Force,” he admitted.
“Well, sir, I am surprised. I was not expecting any one from Brisbane until the mail arrives this evening. How did you get here, sir?”
“I