Mr Jelly's Business. Arthur W. Upfield
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Yes, that is the word I dislike. The railway crossed by the rabbit fence makes a perfect cross. On all four sides the land is cleared of timber and now is supporting ripe wheat. Here is difficult country in which to hide a human body indefinitely; for, supposing the remains of George Loftus were hidden somewhere among all those acres of waving wheat, it would be only a matter of time before a man driving a harvester machine came across them. Assuming that Loftus was killed, what object could his murderer have in hiding his body for only a few weeks, excepting, perhaps, to put as great a distance between himself and it before the body was discovered. And to carry the body weighing twelve stone to the nearest timber, which I judge to be not less than three-quarters of a mile distant, would be no mean feat.”
“It’s mighty strange what’s become of him,” the Fence Inspector gave it as his opinion.
“I shall find him alive, if not dead.”
“You think so?”
“I am sure of it. My illustrious namesake was defeated but once—at Waterloo. I was defeated once … officially, at Windee Station, New South Wales. I shall not meet my Waterloo twice.”
Inspector Gray hid his face with cupped hands, which sheltered a cigarette-lighting match, to conceal his silent laughter. Bony proceeded, unaware of the effect his vanity was having on his companion. Pointing to the fence, he said:
“I see several posts which want renewing. I suggest that you employ me cutting and carting posts and replacing those old ones. It will give me both opportunity to look about and time to study this affair. Now, please, take me on along the road Loftus would have taken from here to his house.”
Proceeding southward west of the fence, the land to left and right appeared as a golden inland sea caressing the emerald shores of bush and timber. The drone of gigantic bees vibrated the shadowless world—the harvesting machines were at work stripping fifteen bushels of wheat from every acre.
Crossing the old York Road and then continuing straight south, the truck sped up a long, low grade of sandy land which bore thick bush of so different an aspect from that familiar to Bony in the eastern States that he was charmed by its freshness. Here this bush, by its possible concealment of the body of Loftus, presented a thousand difficulties: for in it an army corps could live unseen and unsuspected.
“What is your real opinion of this case?” Gray asked.
“Tell me your opinion first,” Bony countered.
Silence for fully a minute. Then:
“This is the twelfth day since Loftus disappeared. It is my firm belief that he didn’t just wander into the bush and perish. As you see, there is as much cleared land as uncleared bush. Loftus was not a newchum, and even a newchum hopelessly slewed would surely come to the edge of cleared land, where nine times in ten he would be able to see a farmhouse. I think he was killed for the money he might have had with him—anything from a shilling to a fiver—either where his car was found or at some point on his way home, possibly as he crossed the old York Road.”
“Muir informed me that the vicinity of the York Road gate, as well as the edges of the wheat paddocks around the wrecked car, was thoroughly searched.”
“Doubtless that is so,” Gray assented. “Still, the possibility remains that Loftus may have been killed by a man or men possessing a car, who could have taken the body miles away to hide it in uncleared bush north of the one-mile peg beyond the railway.”
“There is solidity in the composition of your theory,” Bony said slowly, his eyes half closed, yet aware of the quick look brought by his ponderous language. “I am beginning to think that tracing Loftus will resemble the proverbial looking for a needle in a haystack. However, we must not rule out the possibility that Loftus disappeared intentionally. How did he stand financially?”
“He was as sound as the average farmer.”
“And how sound is the average farmer—I mean in this district?”
“Distinctly rocky. Nearly all are in the hands of the Government Bank.”
“Was Loftus an—er—amorous man, do you think?”
Inspector Gray took time to answer this pertinent question.
“Well, no,” he replied deliberately. “I should not consider him amorous. To an extent he was popular with the ladies, but, nevertheless, he was a home bird. And, as I said before, Mrs Loftus is still young, good-looking, and a good wife. There you see the Loftus farm.”
They had reached the summit of the long slope. Before them lay a great semicircle of low, flat country chequered by wheat and fallow paddocks: to the east and south-east reaching to the foot of a sand rise similar to that on which they stood; to the south far beyond the horizon; to the south-west extending to a sand rise which drew closer the farther north it came. The Loftus farm was situated immediately to their right as they slipped down the grade. The house lay not quite half a mile from the road at the foot of a long outcrop of granite with oak-trees growing in the crevices. A tractor driven by one man, which pulled a machine operated by a second man, moved with deceptive slowness round a near paddock.
“That will be Mick Landon driving the tractor,” Gray said when he had taken in all the view. “The man on the harvester is Larry Eldon. He comes out every day from Burracoppin on a bike.”
With narrowed eyes Bony examined the scene spread out before him, for the land dipped a little to the foot of the granite outcrop. Silently he regarded the small iron farmhouse, the stables beyond, and the stack of new hay beyond them. Over all that vast belt of brown fallow and golden wheat here and there moved the humming harvester machines like giant sloths, feeding on the grain voraciously and flinging behind them the dust of their passage. Gray said:
“That’s Mr Jelly’s place. You remember I mentioned him. He’s a mystery, if you want a mystery. With him mystery is added to mystery. Most of us when we go away come back poorer than when we leave. He comes back richer than when he goes.”
“Mysteries!” Bony sighed as though greatly content. His eyes were almost shut when he said: “Always has my soul been thrilled by mystery.”
Seated at the table in his room at the Rabbit Department Depot, Bony slowly read once again the collection of statements gathered by John Muir. The most important of these statements was that signed by Leonard Wallace, the licensee of the Burracoppin Hotel. It appeared to be a straightforward account of his movements and actions from the time he left Perth to the moment he entered the room in the hotel occupied by his wife and himself. There were three statements which in part corroborated this, in addition to that rendered by Mrs Wallace.
One was signed by Mavis Loftus, giving the date of her husband’s departure for Perth, the nature of his business there, the date of his expected return, which was 4th November—two days after his actual return. Michael Landon stated over his signature the orders that Loftus had given him before he went away and the fact that he had not seen or heard Loftus during the night of 2nd November or at any subsequent time.
The story, in full, of the finding of the wrecked car was given by Richard Thorn, employee of the Water Department.
From the mass there was nothing to point to murder, nor was there anything in them to make Loftus suspect of wilful disappearance. As far as Bony could then cull from his collection of facts the missing man was remarkable for no one habit, vice, or virtue.
Seated there in the quiet peace of late afternoon, idly examining each signature, noting the badly formed scrawl of Leonard Wallace at one extreme and at the other the neat calligraphy of Mick Landon, he experienced the sensation of elation he always felt when a baffling case, by great good fortune, came his way.
Questions poured through his mind as water through a pipe. He declined to halt the flow with a mental tap to find an answer to any one of them until he had cast his net in the still water about this small wheat town. When the fish had been landed for his inspection, then would he search for the deadly stingray which, if found, would prove that George Loftus had been slain.
Hearing