he announced. ‘This is their money, you know.’ And as the absconding financier stared at him, stonyfaced, Jeffery went on. ‘You were staying with Jim and Sally Rutland, so you overheard them planning the disappearing trick on us. That’s how you learned about the panel in the door. And you saw a heaven-sent opportunity to disappear yourself – and let the Rutland ’s face up to the police investigation that must follow.
‘I rather suspect that the shifty-eyed chauffeur you employ is in this thing with you. Tonight he was waiting in the summerhouse for you, but Sally, taking the passage to the summerhouse following her vanishing trick, surprised him there. No doubt he trussed her up to prevent her talking too much.’
Wilkins had recovered some of that hard poise. Now he thrust his hands in his pockets and managed a twisted smile. ‘Interesting. Blackburn,’ he murmured, ‘but go on.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Blackburn, ‘I intend to. When Sally disappeared, Rutland didn’t turn a hair. But when you presumably vanished, he was worried, for here was something he hadn’t planned. And when he found you’d cut the telephone wire, he was dead scared. He knew then it was a ease for the police. But you had other ideas. Unfortunately for you, in the scuffle with Rutland, you dropped this bag and a servant brought it in here. And naturally, you weren’t going to leave without this money!’
Wilkins said smoothly. ‘Circumstances alter cases, Blackburn!’ One hand shot from his pocket and it held a small black automatic. ‘I regret this touch of melodrama, but it’s essential that I’m out of this country by the morning.’ Keeping that automatic ominously steady, he began to retreat toward the french windows. ‘And I don’t intend letting anyone stop me!’
Elizabeth turned her head slowly. Miss Rountree sat like someone paralysed, jaw dropping and codfish eyes wide and staring. Jeffery’s face was dark and set. He made a half-movement and the automatic swung up level with his chest. Oh, my God, thought Elizabeth – he’s going to charge! She gave an almost audible sigh of relief when Jeffery stiffened and was immobile. A coal fell in the fireplace and her spine prickled with the shock. Wilkins was almost to the french window and reaching out one stiff hand to push it wider.
And there was Evan Lambert. Evan Lambert and two stocky figures in blue uniforms who leapt forward almost simultaneously. There was a sharp crack and the acrid tang of gunpowder before Wilkins disappeared in a tangle of waving arms.
Midnight was chiming when Lambert returned. ‘Seems I came back just in time,’ he observed, then paused as the hum of a retreating car was heard. ‘There go the Terrible Twins, alias Wilkins and Tucker.’
‘And good riddance, too,’ said Elizabeth shakily. ‘Now, what about Sally?’
‘She’s in her room,’ Lambert replied. ‘They found her tied up in the summer-house. Poor kid – she’s had the scare of her life -’
Mr Blackburn nodded with some satisfaction. ‘The trouble with practical jokes,’ he announced, ‘is that they have the damndest way of kicking back!’ He took his wife’s hand. ‘Come on, darling, let’s go up and comfort Jim Rutland. Doctor Preston tells me he’s going to have a very sore head tomorrow.’
ARTHUR UPFIELD
One of the giants of Australian crime fiction, Arthur Upfield, was born in Gosport, Hampshire, in 1888 and came to Australia in 1911. He worked and travelled widely, particularly through the outback, and upon the outbreak of World War 1 joined the Australian Imperial Forces. Upfield served at Gallipoli, and in Egypt and France, and returned to England after the war as private secretary to a British Army officer.
Australia proved too much of an attraction and Upfield was back in 1921. He tried prospecting, pearling and labouring, and at one time patrolled a 320 kilometer section of a rabbit-proof fence across Western Australia. The year was 1929 and it proved an important period in Upfield’s career.
While working as a boundary rider, Upfield was busy planning the perfect crime, or rather the perfect plot for his newly realised fictional detective, Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland Police. With the help of his workmates, Upfield devised the central mechanism of his 1931 novel,
‘Wisp of Wool and Disk of Silver’ was especially written for the
Wisp of Wool and Disk of Silver
It was Sunday. The heat drove the blowflies to roost under the low staging that supported the iron tank outside the kitchen door. The small flies, apparently created solely for the purpose of drowning themselves in the eyes of man and beast, were not noticed by the man lying on the rough bunk set up under the verandah roof. He was reading a mystery story.
The house was of board, and iron-roofed. Nearby were other buildings: a blacksmith’s shop, a truck shed, and a junk house. Beyond them a windmill raised water to a reservoir tank on high stilts, which in turn fed a long line of troughing. This was the outstation at the back of Reefer’s Find.
Reefer’s Find was a cattle ranch. It was not a large station for Australia – a mere half-million acres within its boundary fence. The outstation was forty-odd miles from the main homestead, and that isn’t far in Australia.
Only one rider lived at the outstation – Harry Larkin, who was, this hot Sunday afternoon, reading a mystery story. He had been quartered there for more than a year, and every night at seven o’clock, the boss at the homestead telephoned to give orders for the following day and to be sure he was still alive and kicking. Usually, Larkin spoke to a man face to face about twice a month.
Larkin might have talked to a man more often had he wished. His nearest neighbor lived nine miles away in a small stockman’s hut on the next property, and once they had often met at the boundary by prearrangement. But then Larkin’s neighbor, whose name was William Reynolds, was a difficult man, according to Larkin, and the meetings stopped.
On all sides of this small homestead the land stretched flat to the horizon. Had it not been for the scanty, narrow-leafed mulga and the sick-looking sandalwood trees, plus the mirage which turned a salt bush into a Jack’s beanstalk and a tree into a telegraph pole stuck on a bald man’s head, the horizon would have been as distant as that of the ocean.
A man came stalking through the mirage, the blanket roll on his back making him look like a ship standing on its bowsprit. The lethargic dogs were not aware of the visitor until he was about ten yards from the verandah. So engrossed was Larkin that even the barking of his dogs failed to distract his attention, and the stranger actually reached the edge of the verandah floor and spoke before Larkin was aware of him.
‘He, he! Good day, mate! Flamin’ hot today, ain’t it?’
Larkin swung his legs off the bunk and sat up. What he saw was not usual in this part of Australia – a sundowner, a bush waif who tramps from north to south or from east to west, never working, cadging rations from the far-flung homesteads and having the ability of the camel to do without water, or find it. Sometimes Old Man Sun tricked one of them, and then the vast bushland took him and never gave up the cloth-tattered skeleton.
