She smiled, and the sergeant noted that her smile was restrained and not the customary broad beam.
“Yeth, Mithter Thornton,” she said. “Mithess Thornton sent for me to give Mabel a hand. She wash tomollow.”
“Ah, yes! Tomorrow is Monday, isn’t it?”
“What is your name, young lady?” Sergeant Knowles put in.
“I’m Nellie Wanting.” She regarded the blue tunic with awe, the man with native dignity.
“Who is your mother?”
“Sarah Wanting.”
“And your father?”
“I dunno,” she replied, with utter simplicity.
“Well, well! We won’t keep you.”
They watched her move across the billabong and climb the farther bank to the garden gate.
“A fine-looking lass, that,” essayed the sergeant thoughtfully. “I wonder who she’s married to, or who she’s living with. It’s all the same to them.”
“Heartwhole, I think. Anyway, she’s a good girl, and comes up to give the maids a hand two or three times a week. What now?”
“I think we’ll go along to the camp.”
The policeman rowed the boat upstream, and during the short trip did not speak. He was a man who, whilst making an excellent officer and an efficient administrator of a police-controlled bush town, would never make a good detective. Detectives are necessary in centres of population. In the Australian bush a good policeman must combine the qualifications of soldier, scout, and administrator.
Simple murder, with the murderer defined and at large, he could have dealt with. The apprehension of a known criminal would have been a matter of tracking, even across the continent. But, whilst his inquiries were not yet complete, the rain had obliterated all tracks made prior to nine-thirty the night before.
At the camp they were greeted by Pontius Pilate, engaged in the somnolent variety of fishing, which is to say, fishing in the mood of caring little if the fish bite or not. He moored the boat for them, and with deep seriousness escorted them up the bank to the fire near the humpies.
“Who is here, Pilate? Wake your people up and tell them I want to see them,” ordered the sergeant.
The buck growled a few unintelligible words, and, as spirits raised by incantation, there appeared an enormously fat gin, another only a shade less fat, two thins laths of girls about sixteen, and five younger children. The young fellow, Ned, rose from the ground beneath a gum, yawned, and stretched himself. He still wore the moleskin trousers; Pontius Pilate was still barely half-covered by the simple blue shirt.
“Where are your trousers?” Sergeant Knowles demanded severely.
“Well, boss, you see Ned, he ride-it outlaw, and him pants all busted. So I loan him mine. By im by, ole Sarah she fix Ned’s pants, and I git mine back.”
“Which is Sarah?”
“That Sarah. She Sarah Wanting,” answered Pontius Pilate, seating himself tailor-fashion with extraordinary dexterity; and pointing out the huger of the two huge gins.
“Well, you mend Ned’s trousers quick and lively, Sarah,” she was ordered. “We can’t have Pontius Pilate wandering about like an angel.”
Sarah said nothing. Her eyes widened and protruded.
“Now, Pilate, who is your friend that got himself murdered last night?”
The black fellow’s countenance assumed tremendous gravity.
“He got one hell of a bash, eh, boss?” he said.
“How do you know?”
“I went alonga and seed ’im this morning. Poor ole King Henry! Good feller, King Henry.”
“Was that his name? He’s not a river black, is he?”
“Yaas, boss. He belonga river long time ago. One time broke-in horses for Mithter Thornton. He—” His eyes widened hungrily at the cigarette-case from which the squatter was abstracting a smoke. Slowly he said: “Anyway, boss, it’s a plurry dry argument.”
John Thornton smiled, and tossed him a cigarette. Instantly, the less fat gin was at Pilate’s side when he caught it. Breaking it neatly in halves, he gave her one, and then, stripping off the paper from the other half crammed the tobacco into his mouth and began chewing.
“Now, Pontius Pilate,” the sergeant said. “King Henry you say, was once breaking-in horses on Barrakee. When was that?”
“Long time ago.”
“When? How many years?”
“Dunno. He went away when Ned was a li’l baby.”
Turning to the young man, Knowles said:
“How old are you, Ned?”
“Twenty last January,” he replied in excellent English.
“What did he go away for, and why was he away for years?” the elder black was asked.
“Ah! You see, boss, King Henry he was a no-fear man, but he was feared of some white man,” Pontius explained. “This ’ere white feller he tell King Henry he get him quick, and so King Henry he go walkabout.”
“And who was the white fellow?”
“I dunno.”
“Sure?”
“Yaas, boss.”
“And where’s King Henry been all this time?”
“Up Nor’ Queensland.”
“Oh! And why did he come back?” pressed the sergeant.
“Well, you see, boss, it was orl like this.” Pontius Pilate seized a short stick and drew fantastic figures on the soft damp earth. “Ole King Henry he married Sarah Wanting. That old Sarah. Tellible fat. Ned’s mother. Nellie’s mother, I don’t believe it, though. She mother to a lot of fellers and lot of gins. Well, you see, ole King Henry, he find out that white feller who was tracking him got busted, killed, or something, so he come back and took Sarah away from ole Mokie, and then he bring Sarah up here to my camp. Course, Sarah didn’t know he was gona git murdered like that.”
“But why was the white man tracking him?”
“I dunno.”
For half an hour the sergeant fruitlessly questioned him and Sarah Wanting on that point. They did not know, and appeared to take no interest in the matter. Nor did they know or appear interested in the reason prompting King Henry’s visit to the station after dark.
That the dead man had held a certain power over these people was quite evident, and the sergeant surmised that he was a kind of king, as his name implied.
But any useful information he did not obtain. If these people knew anything about the crime, they kept the secret so well hidden that Sergeant Knowles was convinced that so far as the actual killing was concerned they were none of them implicated.
At the oars once more, with the squatter facing him from the stern seat, he growled:
“I’m hanged if I can see any light. Here is a man who left the district eighteen or nineteen years ago because his life was threatened by a white man. For years he wanders, pursued by the tracking white. The white gets killed, and King Henry at once comes back and takes his wife away from old Mokie. He leaves the camp here about dark, helps Dugdale with his fish, dives overboard again, and swims the river on the way to the station, where he is killed.
“Why does he go to the station after dark? And why is he killed at his first appearance at the station for nigh twenty years? The man who hunted him died, or was killed, and he had no one to