Mr Jelly's Business. Arthur W. Upfield
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then lay on the bed and pretended to read.
He heard the horse and dray cross the yard, saw horse, vehicle, and driver pass before the open doorway. Came then the sound of a dog racing over loose gravel. The door of the chaff room next his rattled when a speeding animal passed through the small cut opening at the bottom. A dog scratched and sniffed loudly. A man whistled and shouted:
“Ginger, come here!”
Into the room swept the whirlwind. His clothes were covered with a greyish dust; his face and neck and arms were whitened by the same dust. Hazel eyes, reddened by dust, gleamed good-humouredly.
“Ginger! Hi, Ginger! You callused-jawed pork sausage! You chase cats! You kill the boss’s cat and get me sacked! You—you—you——!”
A dog, a red-haired cross between a whippet and an Irish terrier, came to heel, to stand with lowered head and uplooking soft black eyes which so plainly said:
“You’re only kidding now.”
“Lay down, you callused-jawed slaughterer.”
Ginger lay down, head resting on forepaws, shortened tail thumping the floor.
“What kind of a day have you had?” Bony asked.
“Lovely … lovely! I’ve been breathing chaff dust for eight and a half hours. It’s got under my clothes, and tomorrow I’ll be a red rash. See you later. I’m headed for a shower. Come on, Ginger!”
Whirlwind and dog departed, to return with equal speed ten minutes later. Bony continued to read while his room-mate dressed in clean clothes, and when Hurley finished lacing his boots he happened to look at the cover of Bony’s book.
“What’s that? What’s the name of that book?” he asked.
Above the lowered book Bony’s blue eyes twinkled.
“It is entitled,” he said, “A Contribution to the Natural History of the Australian Termite, written by a little-known but really clever man named Kurt von Hagen.”
“What’s it all about?”
“About the Australian termite.”
“Who’s he, when his hat’s on?”
“Do you refer to the author or the termite?”
“The termite. What’s a termite?”
“A termite is a white ant.”
“Oh! Then why the hell didn’t you say so in the first place? You interested in white ants?”
“I am interested in everything,” Bony replied grandly. “Art, philosophy, the sciences. At present my leisure is devoted to the study of the termite, which is the most wonderful of all living creatures. Its civilization is so simple, yet so complex, so strong as to defy every other creature save man, yet so vulnerable as to die in sunlight. We may be excused for thinking that what many regard as——”
“Say, Bony, are you interested in murder?”
It was seldom Bony was trapped into visible astonishment. On this occasion it must be said in his defence that his mind was not then employed by the subject of homicide. Hurley’s question actually brought him to a sitting position.
“Why do you ask such a question?”
“Because I am looking for a feller thoroughly in earnest on the subject of murder.”
For a fraction of time Bony hesitated. His brain raced to supply answers to a dozen questions raised by Hurley’s abrupt inquiry. Did the man know him for a policeman? Was it desired that he, Bony, should become a confidant? Did Hurley know that Loftus had been murdered and who murdered him?
“I believe,” he said blandly —“I believe I can truthfully say that I am interested in the subject of murder.”
Sighing deeply, Hurley leaned back over his bunk. Bony thought that the mystery of Loftus’s disappearance was to be explained even before he had started his investigation. And the case had been so promising, too.
“Can you recite the names of Australian murderers since nineteen twenty?” Hurley persisted. “You know, like we did at school with the kings—William the Conqueror, ten sixty-six; William the Second, ten … but can you?”
“Phelp, Trilby, Smith, and Low, nineteen twenty; Brown, Little, two Wills, Turner, and Love, nineteen twenty-one; Maynard, Ro——”
“You’ll do! You’ll do!” Hurley was standing over the half-caste, thumping him on the back. “You’ll do, Bony, old lad! You’re meat for old Jelly! Hooroo! Saved—I’m saved!”
“Kindly explain the cause of your exuberance,” Bony urged.
Eric Hurley snatched at the detective’s tobacco and papers, swiftly rolled a cigarette and lit it. His face was beaming; his eyes were bright. Somehow Bony’s liking for this impetuous man deepened.
“I’ll tell you the tale,” Hurley consented. “As a matter of fact, I’m in love with a girl. Her name’s Lucy Jelly. She is the loveliest thing within a thousand miles of Burracoppin. Twenty years old, she is. Her father is a cocky four miles out. He doesn’t seem to mind me courting his daughter, but he doesn’t give me a chance to do any courting. That’s Irish, but it’s a fact.”
Bony nodded sympathetically, his eyes veiled by the black lashes, the tablets of his mind wiped clean to receive new and startling impressions. Hurley went on:
“Every time I go to her place I get a moment or two with Lucy, and then the old man opens up on murder. He can’t talk about nothing else. He knows the details of every murder case that has happened in Australia for the last ten years at least, how the blokes slipped and got caught, and how they behaved on the drop. Old Jelly sort of catches you by the ear and leads you off to his private little room. He pushes you into a chair, from which there’s no getting out till it’s time to come home. There’s photographs of murderers all round the walls, and, as an extra treat, sometimes he’ll show you the rope Merrier, the Bendigo killer, was hanged with. You simply got to stay put, and look at the pictures on the walls, and read bits with him out of his albums. You’re his meat, Bony! You’re his meat!”
“It sounds as though he were a cannibal,” Bony interjected, his interest thoroughly roused, pleasure that this mystery was not so soon to be solved making him happy. “How am I his meat?”
“Why, it’s simple enough. You come along with me this evening. I introduce you to Lucy and old Jelly. Then you recite your table of murderers. Old Pop Jelly will fall on your neck and take you into his chamber of horrors—he might even show you the rope—and I can go courting Lucy as she should be courted. Gee, I’m glad you got a job with the Rabbits!”
“Your description of Mr Jelly interests me,” Bony said. To which Hurley replied:
“Jelly himself will interest you a thunderin’ sight more.”
Chapter Four
Mr Jelly
Eric Hurley owned a motor-cycle, to which was fitted a pillion seat, and, being a native of Australia, Bony should have known better than to take a ride thereon over country roads. He afterwards estimated that the two miles to the rabbit fence was covered in less than two minutes.
The rapidity of this locomotion certainly did not accord with the dignity of an inspector of police, yet he thoroughly enjoyed the rush through the air, warm yet from the sun which had seen set an hour. From the York Road gate they took the government track running east of the fence, roaring up the long sand slope, humming down the farther side. They passed the Loftus farm, tore onward another mile, swerved sickeningly to the left, and stopped with wickedly skidding tyres before a neat and comfortable farmhouse.
Two dogs welcomed them with much barking. Three turkeys fell off a tree branch, to which, with numerous other domestic fowl, they had climbed via a roughly made bush