roar: “Do I put on the parachute?”
“Never use one,” said the doctor. “If we crash, we crash. Anyway, we don’t go high enough for a parachute to be any use.”
He revved the engine to a prolonged roar for ten to fifteen seconds. When the roar died down, Captain Loveacre whipped away the wheel chocks. The engine voiced its power, and the machine began its race across the gibber plain before rising.
It was not the first time that Sergeant Cox had been off the ground, but it was the first time that he had left Mother Earth in the company of Dr Knowles. Looking down over the cockpit edge he saw Golden Dawn laid out for his inspection. There in the middle of the street stood the white-dressed figure of the exchange operator, still beside John Kane. Outside the police-station stood his wife and son waving to him, and he waved down to them. They and the town slipped away from beneath him, the machine sank nearer to the plain and then flew directly towards the sun.
To Sergeant Cox this air journey was by no means boring. The earth did not appear flat and featureless. It was too near to be either. He could even see the rabbits dashing to their burrows to escape the huge “eagle.” He could distinguish the track, faint though it lay across the gibber plain, and he could observe the shadows cast by the old-man saltbush growing along the bottom of a deep water-gutter.
When they met a truck coming from Tintanoo or St Albans, the doctor deliberately dived at it, almost spinning his wheels on the driver’s cabin roof. When they arrived over the scrub, the brown track lay like a narrow ribbon winding across the dark-green carpet, and now Dr Knowles’ set out to show just what he could do with an aeroplane—or to show just how mad he was. He followed the road, and when coming to an exceptionally high creek gum or bloodwood tree, he made the topmost leaves brush the dust off the wheels. Only when the sun went down did he fly higher, keeping steadily in its golden light until forced up to three thousand feet.
Presently the sun set even at that altitude, and then the ground was sinking into the shadows of night. The world came to be like an old copper penny lying on silver tinsel paper. Then, far ahead, two motor lights winked out to greet them.
Dr Knowles put down his ship as lightly as a feather and taxied to the waiting car. Shutting off his engine, he turned round to regard Sergeant Cox with bright, twinkling eyes.
“Good!” said Cox steadily. “I have a good mind to learn to fly. Lots more fun than driving a car.”
Chapter Four
Guests At Coolibah
Elizabeth Nettlefold waited on the east veranda before the hall door to welcome her guests. She was gowned in a semi-evening frock of biscuit-coloured voile, and in the deepening twilight she appeared extremely attractive.
“I am so glad you came, Doctor,” she said, taking Knowles’s hand. “Good evening, Sergeant Cox! Did you have a good flight?”
Dr Knowles turned to face both the sergeant and Elizabeth.
“I tried to make him sick, Miss Nettlefold,” he told her with mockery in his voice. “After what he’s been through nothing would upset him; not even a hurricane in the North Sea on a fishing trawler.”
“I’ve lived before my time,” Cox complained in his official voice. “I should not have been born until the year nineteen-eighty, and then I would have graduated as an air cop.”
“You were born in a lucky year, Sergeant Cox,” Elizabeth affirmed, giving Knowles a reproachful look. “Come in, please. Will you see the girl now, Doctor?”
“Yes! Oh yes! I’ll examine her now. Cox can see her afterwards.”
He went off with Elizabeth, her father conducting the policeman to his own room, which he was pleased to call his study and which opened on to the western end of the south veranda. Elizabeth led the doctor along the cool, dimly-lit corridor to pause outside a door with her hand on the handle. The smile of welcome had vanished, replaced in her dark eyes by one of pleading.
“It is the most terrible thing I have ever seen,” she cried softly. “The poor girl cannot move a muscle. She can’t even raise or lower her eyelids. Promise me something before we go in.”
“What do you want me to promise?”
He stood looking down at her, his cheeks criss-crossed with fine blue lines caused by excess. His eyes were bloodshot, and the fingers which stroked the small black moustache markedly trembled. He was still good looking despite his thirty-eight years and hard living. His cultured English voice was the only thing about him which did not reflect his mode of life.
“What is it you want me to promise?” he repeated when she continued to stare up at him. With a start, she collected herself.
“Promise me that you won’t order her off to a hospital,” she replied earnestly. “Hetty and I will nurse her very, very carefully. We will do everything you say, and Dad says he will spare no reasonable expense.”
“But the girl is nothing to you, is she? Do you know her?”
“We have never seen her before, Doctor, but nursing her will give me something to do. You couldn’t understand, but … but she will give me an interest in life. You will not order her away, will you?”
“Not unless it would be for her own good,” he compromised. “Come! Take me to her.”
“A moment! You will not permit Sergeant Cox to have her moved to the hospital at Winton, will you? Promise me that.”
A faint smile crept into the man’s dark eyes.
“I’ll promise you that,” he told her, to add with a flash of humour: “Cox owes me a debt.”
They found Hetty seated in a chair beside the bed, at her side an electric reading lamp which sent its shaded radiance to the edge of the small occasional table. The woman rose when they approached.
“This is Mrs Hetty Brown, my co-nurse.”
Knowles nodded and passed to the bed. He raised the lamp-shade so that its light fell on the patient’s face. And then he stepped back with a sharp ejaculation to stare down at the immobile features. His eyes grew big with amazement.
Astonished, herself, Elizabeth asked: “Do you know her, Doctor?”
She had to repeat her question before he was able to master himself enough to answer.
“No,” he said sharply, and bent over the helpless girl. Elizabeth noticed that no longer were his hands trembling, and when he spoke his voice again was steady.
“Well, young lady, you appear to be in a peculiar fix,” he drawled. “If you are conscious and can hear what I’m saying, don’t be afraid. They say that I am the best doctor in western Queensland, but, as I do not agree, you need not believe it.”
Presently he raised the patient’s eyelids and gazed steadily into the large, blue, intelligent and pleading orbs. He smiled at her, and the watching Elizabeth saw his expression soften, become one of infinite pity. She had heard a great deal about the flying doctor and his wild life. She had often seen him and conversed with him, and she had never thought he could be anything but reckless and cynical.
“I believe that if you could speak, you would tell us a lot of interesting things,” he went on. “But never mind that now. You must not worry. You will regain the use of all your muscles quite suddenly, and the less you worry and fret the sooner that will be. Ah! I can see that you hear and understand me. Now I will partly lower your eyelids so that you will be able to note your surroundings.”
For a little while he sat at the foot of the bed in a most unprofessional attitude whilst he regarded the pale face, almost beautiful in its impassiveness. Elizabeth and Hetty watched him, but they could not guess what passed through his mind. It seemed that he had utterly forgotten them.
“What do you think of her?” Elizabeth asked presently.
“What? Oh, what