Wings Above the Diamantina. Arthur W. Upfield
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“Oh, Miss Elizabeth! Such news! Such happenings on Coolibah!”
So long and so soundly had she slept that Elizabeth awoke mentally alert and refreshed.
“What has happened, Hetty?” she asked, sweeping back the clothes and swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Six o’clock! Why did you not call me earlier?”
“Mr Nettlefold said I was not to. He and Sergeant Cox came in an hour ago. Someone has burned the aeroplane out at Emu Lake.”
“Burned it!”
“Yes, Miss Elizabeth, burned it. When your father and the sergeant reached Emu Lake early this morning they found the big plane landed there and the men all looking at the remains of the small one.”
Elizabeth accepted the proffered cup of tea.
“Do they think it was done on purpose?” she inquired, frowning.
“I don’t know! I suppose so! And then about midday they phoned the doctor from Golden Dawn to say that Mrs Nixon was going to have her baby, and he had to leave right off in his aeroplane. Wouldn’t stay for lunch. He set off to walk to the plane with that opened bottle of brandy in one side pocket and a half-filled bottle of whisky in the other. Oh, dear! He drinks terribly. Does he ever stop? And flying an aeroplane, too!”
“The patient. Is she …?”
“Just the same, Miss Elizabeth! Doctor left you a note about her, and I fed her every two hours as I was told.”
“Have my father and the sergeant had dinner?”
“The sergeant left for Golden Dawn without waiting for dinner. He wanted to ask you a number of questions, but Mr Nettlefold forbade him to have you wakened. They brought Ted Sharp in with them, and he’s taken Mr Cox to Golden Dawn.”
“Give me a cigarette and a match, Hetty,” Elizabeth ordered. “I used to cry my eyes out because everything was so hatefully quiet here. Well, life has bucked up with a vengeance.”
“Oh, Miss Elizabeth! Do you think it wise to smoke before you have eaten?”
“No, I don’t, but I’m doing it just the same.”
While drawing at the cigarette. Elizabeth stared up at this fluttering woman. Eleven years had Hetty been at Coolibah, and for eleven years the homestead had run like a well-oiled machine. Beneath the nervous exterior was the calm placidity of the born organizer. Elizabeth, for the first time, realized to the full her stability and loyalty. A little impulsively, she said:
“You know, Hetty, I don’t know how I would get on without you. Where is Father?”
“He was in the study five minutes ago, Miss Elizabeth.”
“Then run along and tell him that I will be ready for dinner in half an hour, there’s a dear.”
Hetty nodded and smiled, and vanished into the bedroom, and two minutes later Elizabeth, arrayed in her bath gown and carrying a towel, entered the patient’s room on her way to the shower.
The room was illuminated by the soft golden light of the westering sun. A cool evening breeze from the south teased the lace curtains ribbon-caught to the side of each of the open windows and, entering, stirred the scent of the roses in the bowl on the larger table. The only sounds were the petrol engine and the cries of birds.
“How are you?” Elizabeth softly asked, when she bent forward over the helpless girl. The patient’s eyelids were raised half-way, and the dark blue eyes moved just a fraction, in them an expression of welcome. Hetty had been at work on the light-brown hair.
“I am glad Hetty did your hair so nicely,” she said, smiling down at the pallid but beautiful mask. “I’ve been terribly lazy, you know. I have slept all day. But I will be with you all night, so you need not be a tiny bit uneasy. The doctor has had to go to Golden Dawn to attend a woman, but he will be back again to-morrow.”
The blue eyes became hard in expression and then were filmed with mist.
“Now you mustn’t fret,” Elizabeth said. “I know you want to speak ever so much, but you must not fret because you cannot speak. Speech and everything else will come back to you presently. The doctor says it will, so you really must not worry. We will soon find out who you are, and then we can send for your relatives or friends.”
Elizabeth smiled at her patient and patted her cheek before turning to take up from the table the envelope addressed to her. The note was from Knowles, and read:
Have to rush off to attend to Mrs Nixon. Carry on with the patient’s diet according to my instructions in writing. I will fly back as soon as I am able. Regards!
Having bathed and dressed, Elizabeth found her father waiting for her in the dining-room. His first words were an inquiry after the patient.
“About the same, Dad,” Elizabeth told him. “Is it correct that someone has burned the red aeroplane?”
“It is. I’ll tell you about it while we eat. I am famished. Had a hard day and a devilish exciting one, too.”
The young lubra, smartly dressed in a maid’s uniform, of which she was obviously proud, came in with the dinner dishes, and not till she had gone out and they were engaged with knives and forks did the big man begin his explanations.
“We left here, the sergeant and I, about six this morning,” he said. “We reached Emu Lake just before half-past eight. Captain Loveacre’s big de Havilland passed us before we cleared the Rockies. When we got to the lake, there it was with the pilots standing about the ruins of that beautiful red monoplane. Parts of the wreckage were still hot. The petrol tank had exploded with terrific force, for the wreckage was strewn about almost all over the lake.”
“Tracks?” breathed Elizabeth, the bush-bred. Nettlefold shook his head and sighed.
“It beats me,” he said gravely. “The sergeant told the airmen not to move about, and he and I circled the ruins. But not a blessed footprint could we discover. No one had approached that monoplane to fire it. No one could have done it without leaving tracks, as you know. Still, Cox and I are white men having the white man’s deficiencies. I drove across to Ned Hamlin’s hut, and I was just in time to stop Ted setting off in his car with Ned and the two blacks. Shuteye and Bill Sikes went back with me, and we loosed ’em on a hunt for tracks. They found nothing of the kind, although they circled on the lake and all around it.”
“Strange!” murmured Elizabeth. “Could the monoplane have caught fire through natural causes, do you think?”
“The captain said it was possible, but not probable. The weather yesterday was quite clear, as you know. There was no lightning last night or this morning.” The cattleman smiled grimly, and then added: “For some time, I think, the sergeant suspected us of firing the machine.”
That made Elizabeth laugh.
“How stupid of him!” she said. “What possible motive could we have had for doing anything so silly?”
“Ignorance of motive does not prevent suspicion,” her father replied. “Our tracks were plainly to be seen, but there were no others. Therefore, we must have done it. That was his reasoning. However, the sergeant’s suspicions faded when he read Dr Knowles’s letter.”
“Oh! Did Dr Knowles write him before he left?”
“Yes.”
Nettlefold pinched his nether lip with sudden pensiveness and regarded his daughter with penetrating eyes. She looked at him with ill-concealed impatience.
“Well, what did Dr Knowles write to Sergeant Cox?” she demanded.
“Quite a lot—about that man you saw in the sickroom, and who tampered with the brandy on the bed table. Elizabeth”—his voice became very grave—“Elizabeth, that poor girl will have to be taken to the hospital at Winton, where she can be properly looked after.”
Then