LITMIR.BIZ

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never hurt. Attempts to cripple her were made by thugs, and the thugs were crippled by their own. A gunman shot at her, and the gunman had his face slashed. A low type once told her what he’d do to her, and the bad man’s wife bided her time and emptied a pot full of boiling cabbage over him. No one seemed to know why, save Bolt and the church minister.

      The evening came when Alice was instructed by the Senior Officer of her district to report to Superintendent Bolt at his private house. Bolt said:

      “Alice, will you do me a favour?”

      “Of course. Anything,” she replied with quiet earnestness.

      “I got a pal,” Bolt went on. “He’s the most conceited man in Australia. The most aggravating cuss in the world. He thinks he knows everything ... sometimes. I’ve known him for years, and we’re still pals. He’s half-abo but whiter than me. He’s ...”

      “Couldn’t be, Pop.”

      “He is, so don’t argue. The name’s Napoleon Bonaparte.”

      “I’ve heard things, Pop. Go on.”

      “Bony ... he’s Bony to all his friends ... seems to have been persuaded to investigate the abduction of those four babies at Mitford. Bit out of his line, ’cos he concentrates on difficult homicides. Anyway, he’s up at Mitford, and has asked me to send you up to off-side for him. You know, just like that. No thought of us being in the Victoria Force and him working for New South Wales. Oh, no! Such matters as State boundaries and inter-State jealousies wouldn’t register with Bony. Just asks ... just expects. Will you go?”

      “I’d like to.”

      “Good! I’ve arranged it. You’ll have no authority in Mitford, of course ... being Bony’s private assistant. There’s a plane for Broken Hill in the morning at ten which will put you down at Mitford. Catch the bus leaving Airways House at nine-thirty. Apply there for your ticket, which will be paid for.”

      “All right! No uniform, of course.” Alice rose. “Thanks, Pop! I’ll not let you down, or your pal. Those vanished babies will be right in my handbag in no time. I’ve read all about them ... poor little mites.”

      At eleven the next morning Alice McGorr landed at Mitford and was welcomed by First Constable Essen.

      “Ordered to meet you, Miss McGorr, and told to take you straight home. You’re staying with us, and we have to make you take morning tea before you join up with the Big Boss. Give me your case.”

      Alice McGorr liked Essen and his wife. She liked her room. She fell in love with the baby. She liked Main Street. She liked the smell of the town itself, of fruit ripening, fruit drying, fruit cooking, fruit rotting, and could not name that other smell, the indefinable, the haunting essence of the untamed hinterland of saltbush plain and mulga forest.

      She liked No 5 Elgin Street, although she had read about the murder in the paper when on the plane. Essen conducted her to the lounge.

      “Miss McGorr, sir,” he said, and withdrew.

      “Ah, Miss McGorr! I’m delighted that you were able to come. Please sit down, and smoke if you wish.” Bony set the chair for her, smiled at her, the shock she gave him never rising to his eyes. He held a match to her cigarette, sat down and asked after Superintendent and Mrs Bolt.

      She liked Napoleon Bonaparte.

      He listened ... and wondered. The face was a tragedy and yet heroic. The tragedy lay in the almost entire absence of chin. The eyes were softly brown, large, beautiful when she was telling of Superintendent Bolt. Her hands were beautiful, too, and well kept. Later, on suggesting she removed her hat, he marked the wide forehead, and disapproved of the blonde hair-do, drawn hard back to a tight roll. The hat was low-crowned and of white straw. It was better off than on. Her clothes ... there was something the matter with them ... and before he could make up his mind where, she gave him a letter from Superintendent Bolt.

      Dear Bony. Now you have it. Think yourself in luck. Remember what I told you about her. She will serve you well, for she has the most extraordinary variety of capabilities I’ve ever come across. You can unload your secrets, confess all your low sins, and she won’t tell ... excepting to me. Yet be warned. There’s no weakness anywhere, save with children and sick people, and you may take my word for that.

      Attached to the letter was a report by a detective who had interviewed Dr Browner of Glen Iris. Dr Browner declared he had no knowledge of a Mrs Rockcliff, and during the last eighteen months had had no case of an expectant mother which had not been completed by the birth of the child.

      Having dropped the letter on a pile of papers, he found her eyes directed to him, and they didn’t waver, but held in the mutual summing-up. She was, perhaps, thirty-five, tall and angular, with good shoulders and well-developed arms. When Bony smiled, her look of appraisal vanished.

      “The Biblical writer stated that there is a time to be born and a time to die; he should have included a time to be frank,” he said. “I will be frank with you now. When I want photographs, I apply to an expert. When I want to know why a man died in convulsions, I apply to a pathologist. I want to know more about babies, which is why I asked especially for you. You do know something about babies?”

      “I was thirteen when Mother fell ill, sir. There were twins as well as a little sister. Yes, I know something about babies.”

      “And learned more when you joined the Force.”

      “More about parents, sir.”

      “I have agreed to investigate the disappearance of five babies in this town, Miss McGorr. You would like to work with me?”

      The eyes only betrayed eagerness. “I would indeed, sir.”

      “We will work in harness. Later I’ll want you to study the Official Summaries on the four missing infants, and will outline what is known of the fifth child, who was, almost certainly, stolen at the time the mother was murdered in this house last Monday night. Those Summaries were compiled by men—mark—by men who when glancing into a pram couldn’t tell the sex or the child. Could you?”

      “With very young babies, it would mean guessing, but I wouldn’t often be wrong.”

      “H’m! Wait there. I have something to show you.”

      The brown eyes watched him leave the room. She sat with remarkable passivity, her shapely hands resting on the table and in sharp contrast to the hard and muscular forearms. A smile hovered about her unfortunate mouth, but it had vanished on his return with two feeding bottles, which he placed side by side on the table.

      “Tell me what difference you find in those bottles,” he asked. “You may touch them, they have been tested for prints.”

      Alice McGorr viewed the contents of each bottle against the window light. The liquid in each was a coagulated mass of seeming solids and bluish water. She took up each bottle to examine closely the teat, and then, arranging them as he had done, she sat down.

      “Although of different makes, sir, both bottles are of standard size,” she began. “This bottle contains a preparatory food, and this one contains cow’s milk. The teat of the bottle of preparatory food has been in use for some time, it’s soft from constant sterilisation. The teat on this bottle of cow’s milk is quite new. It has been sterilised, but very seldom used, if at all. There’s another difference, too. The hole in the old teat has been enlarged with a hot needle, but this other one, the new one, hasn’t been treated like that.”

      “Well done, Miss McGorr. The teats when bought would have a standard-sized hole in them, no doubt.”

      “Yes, sir. You see, the makers say the size of the hole is just right for the average baby, and that it induces the baby to exercise its mouth and throat muscles when getting its food. Much more often than not, though, a baby isn’t strong enough, or too lazy. It’s like drawing at a cigarette that’s too tightly packed. So the mother enlarges the hole with a needle.”

      “And then the baby is content?”

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