The pipe slipped from Matt’s hands to the table-cloth, and Emma uttered a soft gasp of astonishment.
“Yes,” Karl repeated. “And I can’t make up me mind.” They could see the uncertainty and desperation in his soft blue eyes. He could see on their faces the shock, and all the sorrow that had been there thirteen years before. Haltingly he related the experience of the night on the track.
“You sure you saw what you saw, dream or real?” pressed Matt Jukes, his voice hard, his eyes blazing.
“That’s what I dreamed or what I saw,” answered Karl.
“But would you recognize him after all this time?” Matt argued. “Remember, when he went away he was only a lad, only just turned twenty. He’d be thirty-three now. He’d be different.”
The heaviness lifted from Karl Mueller, and he smiled with relief. It was a dream after all. Then the smile vanished, and the weight of memory appeared to crush him into his chair.
“No, I know now it was real,” he said. “I remember that as he was passing me he was humming like he used to. He was humming ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ like he used to.”
Chapter Two
The Timbertown Policeman
Senior Constable Samuel Sasoon was the toughest of the many nuts Timbertown had failed to crack. A superficial survey of Timbertown would lead one to presume that it could not crack a soft-shelled egg, all being nice and quiet and genteel during business hours.
Samuel Sasoon’s father had been a tree-faller and sleeper-cutter in the forests of the immense Karri country, inland from the coast, between the Leeuwin Light and Albany. He had the physique of a gorilla; the nimbleness of a dancing master. It was as nothing for him to scale a karri trunk for two hundred feet to lop off the great crown of branches, and cling like a limpet to the beheaded trunk when the crown gave it the ponderous kick at parting, causing the bare trunk to vibrate like a tuning fork. He would ask someone to drive a peeled stick into the ground, anywhere they chose, and then fell the vast trunk exactly upon it. Once he failed. The trunk missed the stick by a couple of yards; he broke down and wept and got himself drunk for a week.
The huge karri trees have killed many men, and continue to do so, but the elder Sasoon was killed by a piece of orange peel on the main street at Timbertown. Young Samuel was then fifteen and showing the promise of his sire’s body and feet. Also he was showing his mother’s fear of heights and his mother’s love of books of which she possessed two: the Bible and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
There being an elder brother to carry on the Sasoon tradition, young Samuel pitted himself against human giants in preference to the lords of the forests. He was given his first chance when, among the attractions of a visiting carnival, there was the usual boxing booth, with the usual gorillas issuing invitations to step inside and try one’s science. Having no science to try out, young Sasoon stepped inside and flattened the lot one after another, and was at once promoted to head-man by the proprietor.
For two years he remained with the show, travelling all over the State, and then on impulse he joined the Western Australia Police Department. Meanwhile, the timber mills operating in the vicinity of Timbertown had increased, and the population of tough nuts had multiplied to such an extent that the force there had to be doubled. Eventually, instead of re-doubling, the Brass decided to send young Samuel Sasoon to help out.
Constable Sasoon had a way with him, and the reach to put it into effect. A brawl outside the hotel or the dance hall was ever a magnet drawing Constable Sasoon. He would advance upon the brawlers. Then on impact he would seize a man with one hand and another with the other and crash their heads together. Dropping them like wet sacks, he would seize another couple and repeat the process, and so on, until he was on the far side of the crowd. He would then pause to admire the stars or something before returning and, should there be any adventurous spirit lingering on the scene ... but after the trial run there never was.
He married Emma Jukes’s best friend, and despite the fact that he never charged a man with being d. and d., he was promoted to Senior Constable. The years tamed him, but not much, and experience broadened his mind as the boxing tent had broadened his shoulders.
There was nothing beyond the ordinary about Timbertown. There was Main Street fronted by stores and shops, the Post Office, the Court House, the Council Chamber, with the Hospital and the Police Station down a side street. The nearest mill was half a mile out of town, and hard against the terminus of the railway. Flowering gum-trees shadowed the streets, and the gardens around the houses were always bright.
He was working on a case to prosecute at court when he heard Matt Jukes in the outer office giving details about a car registration to the constable on duty, and, without leaving his chair, called to Matt to come in when he’d concluded his business. A minute or two later, Matt entered the inner office to be greeted with a cheerful grin and the invitation to take a pew.
“Got an item of news, Matt,” Sasoon said, reaching for tobacco and papers. “Came down this morning. How’s things?”
He was relaxed, in his shirt-sleeves. His sandy hair was now scant, but his grey eyes had lost nothing of their youth and joy of living. Matt Jukes was older, shorter, as tough, and his dark eyes had lost nothing of youth either.
“All right, Sam. Been a bit undecided what foot to stand on, though, since Karl came home from Albany,” replied Matt, now looking troubled. “Can’t make anything of it. Can’t make up my mind yet if Karl was having a nightmare or not.”
“Never knew he had nightmares, Matt. The horrors, yes.” Jukes sighed, hesitated, then burst forth.
“Don’t like thinking about bad times. Don’t want ’em brought back to mind. But there’s Karl camped a few miles east of the old Stoney Creek mill. The moon’s high and him in shadow, and he thinks he saw Marvin Rhudder walk past, coming back home.”
“Thinks!” stressed Sasoon, stubbing his cigarette. His eyes had lost their customary benignity.
“Still thinks he did and he didn’t. Me and Emma thinks he did because Karl says, as Marvin was passing him, he was humming ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’. Ever since, I’ve been on Ocean Ridge watching the Rhudders’ place through glasses, and I’ve not seen Marvin about, and the others haven’t done anything out of routine.”
“How long’s this been going on?” Sasoon asked, and hearing someone enter the outer office, left his chair to close the inner door.
“Well, Karl got back yesterday week.”
“You been watching for a week?”
Matt nodded, and returned to the chore of filling his pipe. There was slight wonderment in Sasoon’s eyes when he asked:
“Why the hell didn’t you ring me up about it?”
“Well, what for? If it was Marvin, then he must be out of gaol, he must be off licence and able to come home. No crime in coming home, is there?”
Sasoon selected a document from a tray and again read it. For a period he pondered, before looking across the desk at Matt. He said, as though carefully choosing his words:
“What do you really think, Matt? Did Karl see the feller, or was sight of him due to the booze?”
“I put the odds in favour of his having seen Marvin.”
“You mean in reality?”
“Yes. I reminded Karl that Marvin had been away thirteen years, and that he’d be much older. It was the old habit of humming hymns that threw Karl off balance.”
“Karl describe him to you?”
“Yes. Marvin was wearing a good suit. It was black or dark-grey. He was carrying a suitcase and nothing else. And he wore a beret with a brooch or ornament at the front.”
“Ah.”