footprints were made by people who came here early this morning. The imprints left by the coach party and Constable Lee were, of course, wiped out by the wind. Now, the girl was walking home when the night was as black as a stove. Quite naturally, she clung to the road, and on the road she was attacked. Remember, no efforts were made by the murderer to conceal the bodies of Alice Tindall and Frank Marsh: so we may assume—if we take it for granted that Mabel was attacked by their murderer—that he, thinking he had killed Mabel, merely let her slip out of his hands and then fled. There was no purpose in carrying her to the place where she was found, because, although her assailant might have known her brother was due to pass on the truck, he knew that before the dawn the wind would have wiped away his tracks.”
“That seems a reasonable argument,” conceded Dreyton.
“It is. The Strangler’s tracks were quickly expunged from the ground. So were his victim’s—save in one place—Come here!”
Motioning the other to follow, Bony led the way towards the road where there was a small wind-swept area of claypan—sun-dried mud of a once-filled surface puddle. Pointing downward, he said:
“On that claypan are the impressions of cuban heels, the heels of Mabel Storrie’s shoes. Her walking shoes, for she changed her dance shoes for them before she left the hall.”
“My eyes are good, but I can see no tracks,” objected Dreyton.
“No? Then step back here a little. Bend low, like this, and look across the claypan, not down at it.”
The fence-man did as instructed, and at the lower angle he thought he could make out faint indentations. Still——
“I can certainly see something,” he admitted.
“I can see heel-marks plainly. Look! I will outline one of the marks.”
Standing over Bony, Dreyton watched him scratch the hard grey surface with a match-point, and there grew the outline of a woman’s shoe-heel at the position where the woman would have taken her second step to cross the claypan. “I say,” he said apologetically, “I’m sorry I chaffed you about Sherlock Holmes and all that. Hang it! You must have eyes like telescopes.”
“It is a gift bequeathed me by my mother. You will see that if Miss Storrie recovers, and can recall all that happened to her, she will tell how she got up from the road and walked dazedly away, only to trip and fall and remember nothing more. Now I must get back to my job, or I will be getting the sack at the end of my first day.”
Continuing his work, Bony watched Dreyton and his camels travelling down the creek road to the homestead until man and beasts disappeared round a bend and so were hidden by the box-trees. Although mystified by the fence-rider, he had come to form a favourable opinion of him. He was a gentleman by his manner and appearance. Regarded on his present situation, he was a gentleman no longer.
“I wonder what he was, for what he is he has been only for two years,” Bony said aloud.
For a further half-hour he tossed the light filigree straw balls over the netted fence, so that the next of the prevailing westerly winds would roll them across the track and away to the east.
It was five o’clock when he shouldered the fork, unhooked the water-bag from the fence, and began his return to the homestead. Along the creek road, plainly to be seen, were the fresh imprints of the camels’ feet. Here and there was a solitary imprint of a boot; here and there but a portion of a boot mark. The camels following after the man, almost but not quite, had blotted out his tracks.
Eventually Bony rounded the creek-bend, the bordering track now running to the south-west to Junction Waterhole. On the left of the track grew the line of box-trees, and between their trunks the detective could see, across the flat, the timber bordering Thunder Creek drawing nearer as he proceeded. On the right of the track, two hundred yards round the bend, there grew out on the bluebush plain a thriving leopardwood-tree, in the vivid branches of which a party of crows vociferously quarrelled.
On reaching an imaginary line to be drawn from the leopardwood to the nearest creek box-tree, Bony saw that Dreyton’s camels had been halted for some time. Now there was no necessity for the fence-rider to halt at this place, for he no longer was patrolling his section. Bony’s mind at once sought for an explanation. Without the smallest difficulty he saw Dreyton’s boot-tracks walk off the track to the creek box-tree, and, on following them, he saw where they circled the trunk. He was further astonished to discover marks on the tree-trunk, clearly indicating that Dreyton had climbed it.
Why? Bushmen do not climb trees for exercise or the fun of it. Dreyton was on his way to the homestead after a tiring day, and there must, in consequence, have been something up in this tree to successfully entice him to climb it.
Bony climbed the tree, too. He climbed high to the point reached by the fence-rider.
Later, when he continued the walk to the homestead, he wondered much about Dreyton, and if his climb had had anything to do with the crows quarrelling in the leopard-wood-tree.
Chapter Six
Dreyton Refuses Promotion
The first to be seen of the Wirragatta homestead by anyone following the creek track from the Broken Hill road were the stockyards; and then, as he swung round a sharp bend in what had become the Wirragatta River, there came into view the trade shops, the men’s quarters, then the office-store building, and finally the large bungalow surrounded by orange-trees, which in turn were confined by a white-painted wicket fence.
To Donald Dreyton it was like coming to a palm-fringed oasis after a wearying journey over the desert. It was not quite five o’clock and work for the day had not stopped. The clanging of the blacksmith’s hammer on iron, the methodical clanking of the two windmills raising water to the tanks set on high staging, and the voices of the birds ever to be found in the vicinity of a dwelling, all combined to give him a feeling of prospective peace and content.
Some distance from the men’s quarters, which had first to be passed by anyone wishing to visit, Dreyton turned off the track to follow a pad leading down and across the dry bed of the river and skirting the top end of a beautiful lagoon beside which the homestead was built. On the river’s far side stood a small hut given entirely to the use of the two fence-riders.
The camels having been put into their especially fenced paddock, his gear carried into the hut, and he himself shaved and bathed and arrayed in white shirt and gabardine slacks with tennis shoes on his feet. Dreyton again crossed the river and sauntered to the office. The westering sun was gilding the tops of the gums and slanting between them to lay bars of gold on the surface of the waterhole about which the galahs and cockatoos created constant din. The homestead, being built on a shelf below the level of the bluebush plain, the township of Carie could not be seen. In its direction the cawing of innumerable crows indicated that the cowboy was at work killing mutton sheep.
Within the office Martin Borradale and Allen, the book-keeper, were at work before their respective tables, and at Dreyton’s entry the squatter glanced up sharply. An expression of slight worry gave quick place to a smile of welcome.
“Hullo, Donald! In again?”
“Yes, Mr. Borradale. I see that I have a day’s work along the Broken Hill road assisting that new man.”
“You need not trouble about that. He can finish it. How are things outback?”
“All right. I did another two strains of footing over the Channels. Might I suggest that when the bullock-wagon goes out again it takes a dozen rolls of netting and drops them at the Fifty-mile gate? I could get them from there to where the netting is wanted.”
“Yes, certainly,” Borradale instantly agreed. “The bullocky will be taking a load of rations outback next week.” He paused and tapped the table with a pencil end. Dreyton waited. Then: “I think I’ll send a couple of men and a horse-dray out there to do that footing. It will take you too long to complete it. Any rabbits along that section?”
“None.