Man of Two Tribes (9 page)

Chapter Fourteen

THE cloud passed from the westering sun, and swiftly the hall was transmuted to a place of warm colour. This effect was notable, even on Dr. Havant's chalky face, and strengthened Bony's first impression of him. He was sitting easily on the rock ledge, studying the draught board, and Bony could not make up his mind whether the doctor was intentionally encouraging Riddell, or was actually placed in a quandary by a man of greatly inferior intellect.

Having pocketed his ‘scroll', he rose to his feet and crossed the chamber to become a spectator of the game. Riddell looked up, his small eyes illumined by triumph. The doctor continued to study the board, made once as though to move a man, hesitated, then did move it. Whereupon, Riddell countered, placing the doctor in a position from which there was no escape.

“Congratulations, Joe,” Havant said, sliding his long body off the ledge. “Well, Inspector, how have you been getting along with Maddoch?”

“I've now a mental picture of these caverns and connecting passages, Doctor. The problem of who killed Mitski is similar to draughts, and a game I shall win. Meanwhile, there is the disposal of Mitski's body to be attended to.”

“Agreed. What do you suggest?”

“I assume burial is out of the question.”

“In earth, yes. There is only the one place for the body, and that is down the crack where Fiddler fell. Shall I have it taken there?”

“Yes, and thank you, Doctor.”

Havant regarded Riddell. He called for Jenks, and Jenks came from the alcove which served as the kitchen. In the same calm and formal manner, Dr. Havant said:

“I want you two fellows to take the body of our departed friend to Fiddler's Leap, and inter it.”

Riddell's wide mouth tightened. Jenks' square face registered no emotion, but he said:

“Remember what Mitski told us happened when Art Fiddler fell down there?”

“Yes, Ted, I remember what he said about it,” replied the doctor. “Subsequently there was the noise of a drain partially choked. Perhaps you could bring your majestic brain to bear on this matter, and suggest an alternative ... cemetery.”

The majestic brain tried to oblige, and failed.

“All right, then. Come on, Joe,” assented Jenks.

“You might assist them, Mark, and you, Clifford, with lights,” urged Dr. Havant.

Brennan went to the kitchen for the lamps, and they heard Myra Thomas say:

“What we call dinner, Mark, will be ready in half an hour. If you men want me to go on with the cooking, you'll be back for it.”

“Okay, Myra,” Brennan said. “If we ever get out of here, you won't have to do any more cooking.”

“So you told me before, Mark.” The voice was clear but low-pitched. They heard the soft laugh, the gentle tinkle of a pan. “Get going, Mark. The watch dogs are not far away.”

The breath hissed from Riddell. Jenks chuckled. Maddoch said: “That's what I meant, Inspector.”

The gorilla flashed about and punched the little man's chest, and Maddoch was spun and sent staggering, fighting for air. The voices and the words had triggered Riddell. It was as though a spark had jumped from the kitchen stove to a pan of gunpowder, and that when Riddell blew up, the explosion also ignited Jenks.

Jenks slid backwards to the wall to start his run, and Riddell, oblivious of Dr. Havant's shouted order, sprang towards Bony. Jenks didn't make his run. Havant did not repeat his order. Mark Brennan stood in the entrance to the annexe and little Maddoch fought to conquer his laboured breathing. They saw Bony side-step the charging gorilla, saw Bony flash in behind and slide his arms up under the big man's arm-pits, his hands lock behind Riddell's neck.

The indirect light from above fell upon Riddell's contorted face, and they saw the expression of Riddell's eyes change from fury to agony. They watched Riddell's wide mouth open to scream, and knew that he was too paralysed to scream. Uninhibited, accustomed to violence, yet Riddell's face revealed that he was enduring indescribable pain indefinitely prolonged. They watched Bony's thumbs working about the base of Riddell's skull, and even they were shocked.

Myra Thomas came to join them, and on seeing Riddell's face, her violet eyes opened wide, and her mouth curved into a smile as she said:

“You don't seem to be enjoying yourself, Joe.”

Bony stood back from the huge body, and like a tree, wrenched from its roots by a gale, Riddell fell stiffly sideways to the floor, where he lay on his back, his mouth opening and closing until relief came and he was able to scream.

The scream faded into sobs of anguish, and the girl's soft laughter.

“Go to your kitchen,” Bony said.

Myra Thomas would have defied him had she not been caught by blue-ice eyes which grew and grew until she could see nothing else. She had resisted Havant's hypnotic eyes, but these were different, terrifying, magnetic and challenging. When she was freed, she ran to obey.

“Riddell! Get up!” commanded Bony, and Riddell groaned, turned over, humped and lurched to his feet. With legs splayed wide, he swayed drunkenly, eyes bloodshot, mouth but a sagging travesty.

“That is an aborigine hold, and many persons would pay much to learn its secret. I don't like applying it, Riddell, and I don't want to apply it to you again. And you others, pay attention. I command here. I hope to escort you from this place to civilisation, and therefore, you are not going to behave like wild animals. You will obey without question, and you will perform the tasks I set you. Convey that body to the place named and dispose of it.”

Their shuffling faded into the tunnel-like passage. Maddoch crawled to Bony's camel gear and retched. Havant went to him. Bony entered the kitchen.

“Mrs. Thomas,” he began softly. “I have had to deal with women exactly like you before. Doctor Havant will have a scientific term for your behaviour. You have a single-track ambition, but not here. Under normal conditions female coquetry is socially accepted. These are not normal circumstances, as you are fully aware. You will thus conduct yourself with rigid discretion.”

Her dark eyes held only admiration as he reprimanded her. Her expression was subdued but her eyes defeated him. Her voice came softly on a note of seriousness.

“I can be the soul of discretion, Inspector. Anything I can do to help, just tell me. And I hope you will loosen up and call me ‘Myra'.”

“Where were you when Igor Mitski cried out?”

“Here, attending to the breakfast coffee. When I heard him, I knew he was in trouble, and I ran along the passage and found the others already there.”

“The others.... Was Brennan there?”

“I think so, but I could be wrong. You see, I was upset by seeing Mitski lying in a pool of blood.”

“You were playing him against the others?”

“What do you mean?”

“I repeat,” Bony said icily. “Were you playing Mitski against the others?”

“I still don't understand what you mean, Inspector.”

“I believe you do, but I'll put it another way. Were you arousing the men by encouraging Mitski, as you roused the others by play-acting with Mark Brennan here in this kitchen?”

The girl's eyes flamed scornfully.

“Do you actually believe I would encourage advances from murderers?”

“Yes. They are men.” He indicated an empty box for her to be seated. “I shall keep to Igor Mitski, as you will, even if we do so for an hour, a day and a night. Mitski was a pointer, as Mark Brennan just now was a pointer, to your ambition, your attitude towards men, your reactions to this position in which you now find yourself. You are not unintelligent, and must know that in all hell there is no more violent loathing than that in the heart of a man made to appear a fool to himself. Did you permit Igor Mitski any intimacy, or just play-act with him?”

“To me Mitski was a musician, a singer, that's all,” she declared, her voice now low and vibrant. “When I was tossed into this warren, it was like being one hen in a yard of roosters. You wouldn't know about that, but I haven't lost any feathers yet. I was brought up the hard way, and I got somewhere only by using the gifts I was born with. You men, you make me tired. Clever thinkers, protectors! I use my brain, and I have plenty to spare if you need it.”

Was she being honest? Bony doubted it.

She went on more calmly:

“Mitski was gentle and thoroughly decent. He was like Cliff Maddoch, a dreamer, the kind of man a girl dreams about when she's seventeen, but when she's twenty, her man has to be the strong, determined type, the sort she has to fight off to save her virginity. Film stuff.

“When I was dumped here, it was Doc Havant who kept the roosters away, and it was Mitski who helped him carry me into the other annexe and nurse me out of the dirty drug I'd
been given. I couldn't play favourites and so what could I do but be nice to Brennan and Riddell and the rest?”

Plausible! Reasoned! Genuine or fake? Did she believe what she said? Or was she blinded by vanity?

“I'll tell you what would have happened if you hadn't come,” she went on. “The man who murdered Mitski planned to murder the others so he'd be the only rooster in the pen. In my opinion Riddell is that man. Riddell was quick in accusing Maddoch. And it was the kind of plan Riddell would think of. Which is why I was glad to see you giving that ape a little something to think about besides me.

“Then you believe that my coming alters the situation?”

“It couldn't possibly make it worse. Or could it?”

“Then will you please adopt an attitude of watchful coldness to everyone—especially me?”

“Certainly, Inspector—to the others.”

“You know the story of Jonah—how the sailors tossed him to the whale because his presence aboard the ship was disastrous? You could find yourself situated as Jonah was, with no possibility of the whale being in Fiddler's Leap. Think about that.”

She jerked her head swiftly to toss her hair from her face and, as he was about to leave, she stood to stir the large pot on the stove. In the doorless arch between the small and the large caverns, he turned to watch her. She must have felt his gaze for she looked over a shoulder at him and smiled, causing him to think that perhaps a dose of the medicine he had given Riddell might be effective.

Clifford Maddoch he found recovered, although the chest was painful, and Dr. Havant suavely promised banishment of pain by morning. They three took towels and soap to the Jeweller's Shop, where they washed and brought oil-drum buckets filled with water for the kitchen. The burial party returned, saying nothing, and they went off with towels also.

The cook served a substantial meal of Irish stew well seasoned with onions and potatoes, and it was Jenks who
assisted Maddoch to wash the utensils. That done, the day above had departed, and Myra Thomas invited Havant to tell them a story.

“Yes, if you would all like me to,” assented the doctor. “Last night I finished Jack London's
Burning Daylight.
In honour of the coming of our latest member, I shall tell you the story of
The Mystery of Swordfish Reef,
which I read several years ago, and is the record of one of Inspector Bonaparte's murder investigations. Agreed?”

“Unanimously.”

Bony settled himself against Curley's pack-saddle, a well-fed Lucy sleeping beside him. The two lamps, placed on the floor in the centre of the chamber, revealed the doctor sitting, Eastern fashion, on a folded blanket, his back resting against the rock ledge, and the others in various attitudes. The doctor began the tale, and Bony was astonished by the manner of the telling, which was as though Havant were reading from a book. His listeners were so engrossed they did not notice Lucy when, an hour later, she left Bony and trotted off behind Brennan, to enter the kitchen. Perhaps ten minutes after that—it might have been longer—she barked at the company raptly listening to the story-teller, and when the doctor ceased speaking, and the company looked to see the dog bark from the edge of the opening above, they were silent for a full pregnant minute. Then Mark Brennan voiced the thought in all minds.

“If that dog can get out up there, so can we.”

Chapter Fifteen

SOME time during the night, meaning the night above ground, Ganba roused Bony from well earned slumber. From the very intestines of the earth moved Ganba, creating sounds to fly along passages, through cracks, and echo from rock to rock. Sometimes one could hear Ganba slithering along a passage, being pinched by an overhang, then racing in freedom to an exit from which he could ensnare a blackfellow.

Bony had been sleeping on the floor of the main cavern, and within feet of the annexe where the men were sleeping. On being wakened by Ganba, he rolled a cigarette without bothering to ignite the hurricane lamp, and Lucy, obviously nervous, nuzzled against him.

Comforting her, he wondered if the dead Mitski was usurping Ganba's role. Mitski had said that after Arthur Fiddler fell to his death in the underground river, there arose direful sounds, suggestive of a great beast, replete and belching. When utterly alone, he had had the courage to trace the source of the sound to the split in the earth which had taken his companion, and he had reached the conclusion that the body was blocking the river, or partially so, like a choir boy's chewing-gum in the pipe of an organ.

In the men's sleeping quarters someone struck a match and lit a lamp, and Dr. Havant said:

“It's all right, Clifford. Only poor Mitski complaining of the manner of his burial.”

“Wish he'd quit, then,” Jenks grumbled. “He oughta know we don't have soft ground down here.”

Nothing further was said, and soon the light was extinguished. The rumblings and the moanings died away, and
Bony composed himself to sleep. When awakened by a further session of Ganba's peregrinations, he felt that he need sleep no longer, and for the second time made a cigarette.

A lamp was lit in the men's quarters, and then Jenks appeared with it, and stood looking down at him.

“Ruddy racket,” he said. “Hope it don't go on for a month.”

Without invitation, he squatted at the foot of Bony's blankets and bit hard into a plug of tobacco. With the casualness of the Australians down through decades, he asked:

“How you doing, Inspector?”

“Reasonably well, despite a mind crowded with questions,” replied Bony. “A question I'd like answered now is, what have you people tried by way of escape?”

“Oh, that!” exclaimed the sailor indifferently. “Well, we got the notion of putting on a circus act. Doc worked out the height of the hole in the hall roof. The idea was for Joe to stand under it, and Mark to climb up and stand on his shoulders. Then for me to climb up them two and stand on Mark's shoulders, and Maddoch to shin up me and stand on mine. Doc reckoned that ought to get Maddoch high enough to grip the edge of the hole and haul himself out. We was gonna make a rope out of the blankets, and Cliff was to take one end up with him, find a place up top to tie it to, and the rest would be Jack and the Beanstalk.”

“A good idea,” agreed Bony.

“Yes, a beaut. But it didn't work out. We done a lot of practising, but still couldn't make a go of it. Mark managed to stand on Joe, but neither me or Cliff could get up to stand on Mark, because Joe wobbled too much. Gave it away after some of us got hurt.”

“What about a blanket rope across Fiddler's Leap?” pressed Bony. “Ever try that way?”

“Thought about it, but no one was game to take the jump to the other side, and there's not much on the other side we could chuck a noose to bite on. Oh, we done some nutting out,
Inspector. I thought I'd try and dig me way out. Went in for a yard or two, but the rock's too hard and they stopped me wearing out more knives. But there is a way out, ain't there? Must be. This here dog found it.”

“Yes, she found it,” agreed Bony.

“It don't matter how small it is, Inspector. If that dog got out, we can. Anyway, she got out, that's for sure.”

“You still say you couldn't have missed an outlet?”

“Can't see how we could,” asserted Jenks. “We've put in hours an' days crawling around on hands and knees, and poking our noses into bits of holes and cracks and what nots. Me or Mark have jockeyed on Joe's shoulders so's we could poke about the walls high as possible. Those bastards who put us down here musta made sure there's no getting out once you're in.”

“There's the blow-hole, Jenks. If you are agreeable we'll look at that now.”

“Suits me. Had enough sleep, anyhow.”

Jenks led with the lamp, and when they entered the main passage a new day was indicated by the light in the distant hall. The passage off the main one twisted tortuously, was very narrow, and at some places barely high enough to give them movement. Then it widened and became higher, and the noise of the blow-hole ahead was loud and persistent.

“Sounds sort of different this morning,” the sailor said, forging ahead. “She's always whined like a pup. Now she's moanin' like wind in the riggin'. Jeez! I'd give me soul to be at sea instead of down here in this stinkin' rat-hole.”

The passage became small and they were forced to crawl, as though in a drain. Here the draught was distinctly strong, and the noise beyond a low and continuous roar. Ten or eleven feet of crawling brought them into a small chamber filled with pandemonium and wind, which caused the light to falter. At the far side of the chamber was an alcove without floor or ceiling. From below came the air spout, so powerful that it continued upward through the main roof. The air-flow
within the alcove was like a metal bar against Bony's hand slowly thrust forward to meet it, and he could now understand how the girl's scarf had been drawn into the air spout and poised above the ground. There was certainly no exit here for Lucy.

He crawled back to the passage, tested the draught entering the hole, and decided that the girl need not have been near the air spout when the scarf was whisked away. Here it was possible to talk, and Brennan had said that he and the girl had come to talk.

“Old Doc Havant says the air pressure is caused by water banking up somewhere below. That right?” Jenks asked.

“Yes. Has it stopped since you have been here?”

“No. Sound alters a bit now and then. Knew an engineer one time. Clever bloke. If he was here and had the doings he'd make that spout work a generator to give us electric light. Say, wasn't that dog with us a minute ago?”

“Gone calling on the cook, perhaps.”

“We'll be in on that, Inspector. I can smell coffee.”

They found Riddell standing at the entrance to the kitchen and talking to Myra Thomas. He was unshaven and wore only trousers, his beefy torso clothed with hair. He drew aside when he saw them, and the girl who did not see them said:

“But, Joe, you know perfectly well that a woman needs a friend in a place like this.”

“We got early visitors,” Riddell said loudly. “Where you two been?”

“Workin', of course,” snarled Jenks. “The dog here?”

“Yair, round about. Why?” demanded Riddell.

“Good morning, Myra.” Bony greeted her as he entered the annexe which seemed to be filled with the stove and the girl standing beside it. “That coffee smells better than good.”

“Been brewing for hours,” she told him, filling two pannikins. “I couldn't sleep for that beastly row going on. You did, I suppose. You'd always do the right thing at the right time, Inspector.”

Her black hair was combed to reveal her ears, and in this light her eyes appeared to be indigo blue. It was a pity, but undoubtedly necessary, that the male clothes she wore were ill-fitting, and neuterised her body.

“It's mere caution to look for the step before you raise your foot,” he said without smiling. “My thanks for the coffee.”

He withdrew to the hall, where he sat on his pack-saddle chair and appreciatively sipped the steaming coffee. Dr. Havant appeared, and after him came Maddoch, then Brennan who smiled at Bony and complimented him on following his nose.

“The first coffee and the first cigarette!” sighed Havant, who was exactly as he had been before going to bed. “What a night! That ghastly noise is beginning again.”

“It frays my nerves,” complained Maddoch, and Riddell sneeringly jibed:

“Why shouldn't it? Chucking Mitski down there sort of blocked the drain. Now the poor devil is hollering for help. He's feelin' cold and all washed over, like. You'd be, too, you bloody fox, if someone bashed you with a rock and chucked you down the crack.”

“That will be all from you, Joe,” commanded Dr. Havant.

“Well, he did...”

“Control yourself, Joe. It's too early in the day to surrender to nervous reaction. We have work to do.”

“Work! What's that?” sneered Riddell.

“Continuous use of the muscles which none of us have employed for a very long time, save Inspector Bonaparte. The dog! Has she been seen this morning?”

“She's here with me,” called the girl from the kitchen. “We females have to guard each other. The breakfast menu is porridge and the usual tinned muck that our country also expects England to eat. It's all yours when you're ready.”

There was a general exodus, and Bony followed with towel and soap, and the thought that he must soon shave or he'd be an ape, like Riddell.

Down in the Jeweller's Shop, its gems scintillating in the light of two lamps, the noise of Ganba was decidedly raucous, coming as it did along the passage from Fiddler's Leap. Before washing, Bony determined to prospect and, taking one of the lamps, he proceeded to negotiate what was little better than a rabbit's warren.

On stepping from the passage to the ledge at the great crevice, Bony sensed a change. The light percolating to the far ledge was as he had last seen it, but the distant rush of water had ceased. The level of the water was within a foot of the ledge, when it had been so far down that to drop a stone meant counting seven before hearing the impact.

The light fell upon the surface, to which now and then rose a large bubble of air, filled with sound not unlike that produced by an under-water swimmer. The released sound, exploding into the narrow confines of this rock chamber, blasted the ears with sledge-hammer rhythm.

Horror born of the theory evolved by the man whose body had been thrown into this noisome cavity subdued one part of Bony's being, and threatened the other. One part of his mind saw Ganba lurking in that wide ribbon of black water, and felt Ganba's breathing against his scalp. The other part of his mind registered the fact that within hours the water had risen almost to the ledge, and that, should it continue to rise, it would inevitably flood all these caverns and passages. And appalled by the threat of such catastrophe, he was driven back to the Jeweller's Shop by the pursuing voice of Ganba.

He remained at the stream only long enough to wash and comb his hair, and on again entering the hall, where he found the others at breakfast, he was master of himself, fury at an inherited phobia keeping him silent.

Dr. Havant enquired if the dog had followed him.

“She disappeared again, Inspector. We had forgotten to watch her. You are sure she did not go with you to Fiddler's Leap?”

“Quite, Doctor. Had she followed me, she would have gone no farther in face of the noise coming up from the crevice! We must work seriously to locate her outlet to the top. By restricting the area, we can narrow our search. Brennan and I will block with rubble the passage from the Jeweller's Shop to the crevice, and you others can block the passage to the blow-hole. If the way out is beyond one of those two barriers, Lucy will soon let us know when she's blocked. Myra can stay here and watch for her return.”

While he and Brennan were blocking the passage with boulders to fit, so that the small dog could not get through, Bony felt himself unduly crowded. He had not informed the others of the danger he foresaw if the water continued to rise, lest panic should destroy effort. He was anxious to learn the escape route of the dog, anxious that the others should not know of it until they were fully prepared for what waited for them on the Nullarbor Plain. If without such preparation they gained freedom, the result would be more devastating to morale than panic at the threat of rising water. He said to Brennan:

“Did Mitski ever say how long these noises continued after Fiddler fell?”

“Didn't really know,” replied Brennan, grunting as he rolled a boulder. “Like us, since Myra broke her watch, Mitski didn't have the time with him. He did say he guessed the racket went on for about twenty-four hours.”

The noises ceased for approximately two hours when Bony judged it to be mid-day, and began again when they were eating what Dr. Havant called luncheon. Each glanced nervously at the others, and Bony said loudly to make himself heard:

“It's like a lot of drowning men, isn't it?”

“Please, Inspector!” pleaded Clifford Maddoch.

A minute later, Bony said, with a realistic shiver:

“I wonder if Mitski is struggling to come back to accuse his murderer.”

“Caw!” shouted Jenks. “Cut it out, Inspector. Gives me the willies.”

And Maddoch screamed: “Yes, yes, cut it out. It's gruesome.”

Maddoch stopped his cars with his fingers. Havant regarded everyone in turn, a faint derisive smile on his chalk-white face. Brennan's eyes were closed tightly, and Riddell sat hunched, still and waiting. In the archway to the kitchen the girl stood tautly, as though expecting Mitski to appear among them.

The rumbling, the moans, the gulping, stopped abruptly. The ensuing silence was even more harrowing. Then came one long loud crash and another silence. From the silence came Bony's voice:

“Sounds like Mitski pushing down the wall Brennan and I built. He could be coming from the Jeweller's Shop.”

Maddoch moaned and shivered. The others made no sound whatsoever, sitting like men whose breath would never again be released.

Then pandemonium engulfed them. Their ears were bombarded. The rock on which they sat shuddered. From nowhere the dog raced upon Bony and buried her head in his lap. Maddoch seized the canvas tablecloth and wrapped it about his head.