“I played cribbage with Black in the barracks after dinner.”
“What time did you start playing? Any idea?”
“A little after eight, I think. We played till ten o’clock.”
“That lets you out. Ask Mr Black to step in for a moment, please.”
Edwin Black corroborated Ralph’s statement, and in turn sent in Johnston, the carpenter. Johnston was not asked to be seated.
“Where were you, Johnston, between the hours of seven and nine o’clock last night?” asked the sergeant, resuming his official poise.
“In the men’s hut.”
“Doing what?”
“Reading a blood about a bloke wotarsenicked his three wives.”
“Oh! You mean you were reading a novel?”
“Somethinglike that,” Johnston, tall, angular, and red-haired replied. “In my young days we called ’em‘blood and thunders’. I remember-”
“Precisely. Who was in the hut with you at the time you were reading this blood?”
“Bob Smiles, Bert Simmonds, and Jack O’Grady.”
“That’s four of you. Where were the others-Clair, McIntosh, and Fred Blair?”
“How the devil do I know?”
“Now, now! Were those three absent between half past eight and nine o’clock?”
“Look here, Sergeant! I’ll answer any question about me,” murmured the carpenter, with studied calmness.
“All right, Johnston,”came the unruffled dismissal. “Send in Bob Smiles.”
Smiles, Simmonds, and O’Grady briefly corroborated Johnston’s replies, and at last William Clair came in. He wore a six-day growth of whiskers.
“I don’t know you, Clair. Where do you come from?” was the first question put to the gaunt man.
“Can’t say as I come from anywhere,” Clair replied in a hoarse voice.
“Got a sore throat?”
“I have,” Clair said calmly. “I wish you had it instead of me.”
“I don’t. Where is your home address?”
“I haven’tno address. I’ve been carrying my swag most of my life. The last place I worked on was Humpy-Humpy Station, out of Winton, Queensland, in nineteen-twenty.”
“Right. Now how did you spend last evening?”
“I was away down the river most of the time setting half a dozen dog-traps,” Clair replied.
“Must have got wet.”
“If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have got this blasted cold.”
“You’re unlucky. When did you start out on your trap-setting?”
“About sundown.”
“And you got home?”
“Just after they had lugged the corpse up here to the carpenter’s shop.”
“All right, Clair. Send in McIntosh.”
To the sergeant’s questions, McIntosh, a youth of eighteen, admitted that he was “courting” the housemaid, and that they had sheltered in the shearing-shed during the rain.
Blair, the last man, then entered.
He was a little wiry man, under five foot six inches, a man more than fifty years old, but with the spring and suppleness of a youth. A blistered complexion accentuated the greyness of his hair and the goatee beard that jutted forth from his chin.
He was employed as bullock-driver. To the people of Wilcannia he was known as the fierce little man whom it required the combined energies of the entire police force to put into the lock-up. This occurred every time Blair visited Wilcannia, which was every quarter.
Now, Sergeant Knowles was a pearl among policemen in that he possessed a keen sense of humour. He never bore Blair any malice for sundry bruises received whilst helping his subordinates to lock him up. He had for Blair a profound admiration, owing to his courage and fighting qualities, drunk or sober. With perfect gravity, he said:
“Is your name Frederick Blair?”
Blair, knowing this inquisition had nothing to do with his employer, and wishing to make sure that the sergeant should not think he was nervous in any way, seated himself in the vacant chair with studied insolence, elegantly crossed his legs, and as elegantly placed his thumbs in the arm-holes of his much-greased waistcoat.
“Is my name Frederick Blair?” he remarked, to the ceiling. “Now I wonder!”
“I am asking you,” the sergeant said gently.
“How many demons ’aveyou got with you?” Blair inquired, with equal gentleness.
“Trooper Dowling is outside.”
“Only two of you? I can manage you with one ’and.” Blair’s goatee raised itself towards his nose. “Now look ’ere, Sergeant, the last time I was in Wilcannia you wanted the bleeding jail whitewashed, so you goes and grabs me and two other blokes on the d. and d. charge, and gets us fourteen days without the op, so’s you can get the jail whitewashed without paying the award rates. Wot I wants to know is, when yourflamin ’ jail wants whitewashing again?”
“Not for another three months, Blair. But what I want to know is, where-”
“Never mind what you want to know,” interjected the little fury. “What I want to know is whether the next time I come to Wilcannia, and the jail don’t want whitewashing, you’ll let me alone to have a quiet drink in peace.”
“We’ll have to wait till the next time. Where were you last evening?”
“Like to know, wouldn’t you?”
“I want to know,” the policeman said at last impatiently.
Blair suddenly leaned forward with twinkling blue eyes.
“As a matter of fact, Sergeant, I met the black fellow last night and asked him for a match. He cursed me for a police pimp. Me! Me, Sergeant, a police pimp! So I ran up to the house, grabbed the maids’ step-ladder, took it down to the black, made him stand still beside it, climbed to the top to get level with his head, and then hit him with a cucumber I pinched from the garden.” Then, turning to the squatter, he added: “You see, Mr Thornton, being a small bloke, I couldn’t reach thenig’s head without them steps. But I took ’emback and put ’emwhere I got ’em.”
Both men were obliged to laugh. Blair, however, remained perfectly serious.
“But, look here, Blair. Honestly, now, where were you about eight-thirty last night?” persisted the sergeant.
“I told you,” Blair returned. “I murdered the nig by ’itting’imon the ’eadwith a rotten cucumber. I own to it. You arrest me, Sergeant-and see ’owyou get on. Two ofyous! Why, I could crawl over you.”
“Not in the office, Blair. You’d smash the furniture,” Thornton murmured.
“All right, Blair. You had better go,” the policeman said resignedly.
Blair rose slowly to his feet, the goatee now at its normal right-angle with the bottom of his chin. Slowly he walked to the door, as though reluctant. At the door he turned, a man bursting with some hidden withheld information. The sergeant was at once hopeful; Blair slowly returned to the desk and, leaning forward, whispered:
“Say, are you quite sure you don’t want to arrest me, Sergeant?”
“Quite sure. When I do, I’ll arrest you.”
“My oath! You, with yourbloomin ’ speelers to lend a hand.”Blair almost cried with disappointment. Then, appealingly: “But ’avea’eart, Sergeant! Don’t bung me in next time to whitewash the jail. Igoes to Wilcannia and gets drunk like a respectablewowzer, not to whitewash jails. That’s a bit thick.”
With a regretful nod, Blair left them.
“What do you make of Blair?” asked the squatter, chuckling.
“Blair is a fighter, not a murderer,” replied Sergeant Knowles, grinning. “The two don’t mix outside a drunken brawl, and this murder was not the result of a drunken brawl. How many house servants have you got?”
“Three. Martha the cook, Alice the maid, and Mabel the laundry girl.”
“Humph!” the sergeant re-read his notes carefully. Then, looking up, he added: “I’ll have a look at the corpse. Then we’ll look at the scene of the killing. Then I’ll examine the blacks in that camp up-river. As far as your people are concerned, I am not satisfied with Clair. I’ll send Trooper Dowling with him to see if he did set traps last night. Also, Mr Thornton, Frank Dugdale did see someone in the lightning.”
Chapter Seven
The Only Clue
“Damn the rain!” rasped Sergeant Knowles, staring down at four wooden pegs set at the points of a cross to mark where the body had been found. “There is not a track left for a black tracker to see, let alone a white man.”