Wings Above the Diamantina. Arthur W. Upfield
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speaking, Sergeant. I understand that an aeroplane belonging to the visiting ‘flying circus’ was stolen last night.”
“Ah—yes, Mr Nettlefold. Know anything about it?”
“Was the machine a monoplane type varnished a bright red?”
“Yes. Have you seen it? Has it come down on your place?”
“It has,” announced Nettlefold from Coolibah.
“Have you got the fellow who stole it?” grimly demanded Cox.
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t … you don’t think so! Surely, Mr Nettlefold, you know definitely if you have or have not apprehended the thief?”
The station manager’s prevarication acted like wind on sea. The policeman’s large red face took to itself a deeper colour. The short iron-grey hair appeared to stand more stiffly on end, and the iron-grey eyes to become mere pinpoints. The iron-grey moustache bristled. Place Sergeant Cox in khaki, and on him put a Sam Browne belt and a pith helmet, and you would see the popular conception of an army general on Indian service.
“No, I cannot say definitely whether I have the thief,” replied Nettlefold easily, quite unabashed by the sergeant’s asperity. “Listen carefully.”
He related the bare details of all that had happened at Emu Lake, and then he asked for particulars of the theft.
“It’s queer, Mr Nettlefold, to say the least,” Cox said, as though he addressed John Nettlefold, Esq., J.P., when sitting on the bench. “This aeroplane circus—that is what Captain Loveacre, who is in charge, calls it—has been here three days. There is a twin-engined de Havilland passenger machine for taking up trippers, and there’s that red mono-plane which the captain flies himself, the big one being flown by his two assistant pilots. We have got no proper aerodrome here, as you know, but the surrounding plain makes a fair landing ground.
“As usual, last night the two machines were anchored just back of the hotel; and, at one-forty-two this morning, everyone was awakened by the roar of a motor engine. Captain Loveacre states that when he woke he recognized the sound of the engine as that of his monoplane, but before he or any one else could get out to it it had left the ground and flown off eastward.”
“So you do not know the sex of the thief, Sergeant?”
“No. Is the girl you speak of very ill?”
“We can’t make her out at all,” answered Nettlefold. “Look here! It is now only a minute past six. Do you think you could get Knowles to fly here this evening to have a look at her? There are two hours of daylight yet, remember.”
“Oh—he’ll agree to go,” Cox said, with airy assurance. “He’d start if he had to make a night landing on those river channels. What I can’t understand about him is that he’s still alive. The more drunk he is the better he flies. I might come with him.”
“Do. We can put you both up. I could then take you out to Emu Lake early in the morning. Tell Knowles that he can land with reasonable safety on the white claypan country half a mile north of this homestead. I’ll be there in the car, and in case it’s dark when he arrives I’ll have the boys light fires along the edges of the enclosing scrub. Will you ring me when you know what he will do?”
“I will. But he’ll go all right,” Cox further assured the station manager. “If he breaks my neck … well, I’ll be the most unlucky man in Queensland.”
“You’re game, anyway. I wouldn’t trust my life to Knowles … off the ground.”
Cox chuckled and replaced the instrument, to walk thoughtfully back to the kitchen.
“Pack me a bag, Vi,” he commanded his wife. “I’m going to Coolibah Station.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know. Only a night, I think.”
“Have they found the stolen aeroplane, Dad?” asked his son, a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy of fifteen years.
“Yes, Jack,” Cox replied, nodding. “It is at a place called Emu Lake at the back of Coolibah. Pass the bread. I may just as well finish my dinner while your mother’s hunting up those pink-striped visiting pyjamas of mine.”
“Who stole it, Dad?” pleaded the boy.
“We don’t rightly know, son, but you can trust your father to find out.”
The red face was now less red. The stern lines about the iron jaw were much less hard. Sergeant Cox led a double life, one of which was known only to his wife and son. He was softly human when with them in their home.
“I won’t be home to-night to show you how to do your home lessons, so you’ve got to get right down to them yourself and work out those sums the best you know how.”
“All right, Dad. I’ll do ’em goodo.”
“Of course he will, Pops,” added Mrs Cox, then entering the kitchen. “Who is going to drive you to Coolibah? Driving your own car?”
“I am going with Dr Knowles.”
“What! With that cranky fool! Oh, Pops!”
“Pops” grinned, rose from the table, kissed his wife and put on his hat with habitual care to achieve the right angle. He was dressed in civilian clothes, and yet with the addition of the felt hat he no longer was “Pops,” but Sergeant Cox.
“If Dr Knowles crashes the machine when I am with him,” he said sternly, “I will arrest him on the D and D charge.”
“But you might be killed, Pops.”
“Dad’ll be all right, Mum. Why, Dr Knowles can fly underneath the telephone wires,” Jack pointed out.
“I shall not be killed,” Cox said. “Dr Knowles might crash, but I will live to arrest him and keep him in our lockup. I’ll be back for the bag later on. And don’t forget, son, what I told you last night about those square roots.”
Again leaving the kitchen, Sergeant Cox strode along the passage to the open front door, passed across the veranda, down the steps and so to the front gate in the wicket fence. Above the gate on a narrow wooden arch were the words, POLICE STATION and on the fly gauze covering the window frame of the left hand room was the word OFFICE.
Across the hundred-yards-wide unmetalled track stood the store, a low, rambling, wooden building badly infested with termites and badly in need of paint. When he emerged from the Government premises it was to turn left to stride along the main street of Golden Dawn.
Once Golden Dawn had been a thriving mining town, and still the poppet heads of the mine half a mile to the north stood cutting clearly into the sky like the gibbet outside a medieval town. Cox passed vacant building sites on either side of the dusty street, sites from which the buildings long since had been purchased and removed for the iron and wood.
Golden Dawn now had a forsaken appearance: it was like a homeless old man who dreamed ever of better days. In the middle of the street wandered the town dairyman’s cows, while the dairyman himself was within the too-commodious hotel. Across each vacant allotment could be seen the flat gibber plain stretching to blue-black hills lying to the north and east, and to the flat horizon line to westward and to southward. Outside the hotel stood Mounted Constable Lovitt.
“Who’s inside?” asked Cox.
Lovitt began a list of names, but Cox cut him short. “Is Dr Knowles in there?”
“No, Sergeant.”
“Captain Loveacre, then?”
“No. He went along to Dr Knowles half an hour ago.”
“I am flying with Dr Knowles to Coolibah this evening. Might be away for a couple of days,” Cox said in his most official manner. “The crowd staying in seems