LITMIR.BIZ

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as did the stock. Fingerprints! Likely, but not important at the moment. Nor, at the moment, was there anything odd about it having been cleaned.

      There was, however, possible significance in the circular hole in the ceiling. Bony brought a step-ladder from the outside wash-house. He estimated the size of the hole as being close to the size of a .32 bullet. He moved the ladder and, mounting it again, lifted the manhole, covering himself with sand and dust. Above the hole in the ceiling he could see a corresponding hole in the iron roof. The rifle he had cursorily examined was a .32.

      He was putting the ladder away in the wash-house when he saw a horseman coming from the mail-boxes, and he sat on the outside bench and waited, his fingers busy with the usual cigarette. Presently the rider dismounted and, with the reins looped in an arm, came to the bench. He was young and fair.

      “Who are you?” he asked.

      “I am Inspector Bonaparte.”

      “Oh! How’s the old lady?”

      “Dead. Who are you?”

      “I’m Cosgrove. Did you say dead?”

      “Yes. Didn’t you know?”

      “No. I’ve been out all morning with the men, trying to locate Lush. I knew on leaving that Mrs Madden had hurt herself in a fall. What goes? Isn’t Jill about?”

      Bony said that Jill had gone with Mrs Cosgrove, who had invited her to stay at Mira. When young Cosgrove remarked on the presence of Lucas’s jeep and was told the reason for it he fastened the horse’s reins to a veranda post and sat on the bench.

      “What are you an inspector of—rabbits?”

      “No. Police.”

      “Crikey! Then you’ll be wanting to put the old hand on Lush?”

      “Of course.”

      “Add the boot to the hand, good and hard.” Ray Cosgrove was rolling a cigarette with hands between his parted knees, and the rim of his stetson appeared to be aimed at the ground. “You know, to call Lush a swine is to insult the pigs. He’s a polite, mealy-mouthed, unadulterated, vicious bastard. What the old girl and Jill put up with nobody knows. I hope it’s me who finds him, because if it’s you he’ll end up in a nice comfortable jail for a year or two.”

      “Should it be you who finds him?”

      “That’s a little secret, Inspector.” Cosgrove sat up and leaned back against the house wall.

      “You have a personal interest?”

      “Naturally, the Maddens being our neighbours since the year one. Jill’s father was a sound feller. He and my dad were friends. When he died this place was flourishing. Now look at it: litter and rubbish all over, the sheds coming adrift, the fences propped up instead of repaired. Why did Lush hit his wife this time, d’you know?”

      “She refused to give him a cheque for three hundred pounds.”

      “Three hundred!” said Cosgrove. “Quite a wad. Must have been in deep at White Bend. There’s a poker school down there. Run by two brothers named Roberts. You don’t pay up, you get it rough. They must have given Lush a lot of rope.”

      “He drinks, doesn’t he?” said Bony.

      “Too right, but not more than most of us when we go to town. And I did hear that the hotel stopped his credit. Besides, again like most of us, he would have brought a carton or two of beer back with him, but when I took the mail to the box day before yesterday, which was the morning after the night he left town, there wasn’t a bottle in his ute, let alone a reasonably good supply.”

      “Then you believe he must have been desperately in need of three hundred pounds to settle a gambling debt?”

      “He’d have been just as desperate if he wanted only fifty,” answered Cosgrove. “The Roberts have a reputation, as I said. Mind you, if that slit-eyed skunk was refused five bob he’d have bashed his wife just the same. According to Jill it had got to be a pleasant hobby with him.”

      “Have you a theory of what happened when he left his utility?” Bony asked, and Cosgrove slowly shook his head.

      “Not much of an idea, but, knowing the swine, when he didn’t come home he could have walked over the cliff into the hole and drowned, or he could have holed up somewhere about here with a case of something to keep him company. Have you been through the place?”

      “Not as yet,” replied Bony.

      “I decided to do so. It’s why I came. Shall we give it a go now?”

      Bony agreed, and, having put the horse in the yard, they began a tour of inspection. In the open-fronted motor-shed was a worn sulky, the gear hanging on a wall peg. Cosgrove said that Lush went in for a trotter but had never won a race with it, dropping more money down the drain. They entered a two-man hut furnished with only a table and two iron bedsteads. The door sagged, and the window was massed with cobweb. The compact shearing-shed offered no clue, and after leaving it they parted, young Cosgrove circling away from the river, and Bony keeping to the bank on the return to the house. There was a natural hole below the shed, and water was raised from it by a pump to tanks serving both the shed and the house.

      Eventually Bony came to a small yard and gallows where ration sheep were yarded and killed. Draped over a rail were several sheepskins long since dry enough to be removed into the skin-shed. Bony looked into the shed and found no evidence of its having been occupied. A short distance from the gallows was a fireplace roughly constructed with large stones in a semicircle to provide a windbreak. Here rubbish such as dog bones and kitchen refuse had been burnt, and from here to the house ran a distinct path.

      The condition of the top layer of ash showed that the latest burning had been quite recent, and the spread of it indicated that much material had been consumed. The two door hinges, blackened by heat, were spaced as they had been when screwed to a door; the door lock and handles were there too.

      Bony looked for Cosgrove, saw him nearing the house, and proceeded along the path to join him.

      “I couldn’t cut his tracks,” Cosgrove said. “Well, you can see what a loafing bastard he was. Did nothing about the place. Bad enough to make poor old Madden turn over six times in a run. What’s your plans? What about the dogs and the chooks?”

      “It was finally arranged that I should stay here to welcome Mr Lush, and inhabit the place until such time as something else is decided,” Bony replied. “There’s chook feed in the motor-shed and a quarter of mutton in the meat-house. I could see only two dogs, so we should not perish of starvation. Mrs Cosgrove is having my case sent from your homestead.”

      Cosgrove smiled for the first time since he had appeared.

      “All right, Inspector. Let the chap know if you want anything when he brings your duds. You’ll know Lush when you see him. Has a face like a crumpet. I’ll keep in touch, too, about the river. I can hear old Leveska getting off the ground.” Freeing the reins from the posts, he flicked the off-side one over the horse’s head, bunched them, and then appeared to be lifted by jet air-stream into the saddle. His final words were: “Bet you find the radio in order. Lush would be sure to have that right to listen to the race results.”

      He rode away to cross the river bed above the shearing-shed. Bony unchained the two dogs, which began to race about and pretend to chase the fowls. The roosters screeched, and the excitement brought several kookaburras to perch on a roughly made stand and there set up a chorus of laughter. The place had come alive, and Bony took possession.

      With the woodheap axe he chopped and split enough wood to keep the stove going. Then he filled the oil lamps, and inspected Mrs Lush’s linen cupboard. He made up a bed in the third bedroom, brewed a pot of tea, and took a spell with several cigarettes. Once more energetic, he cut up the fore-quarter of mutton, providing a shoulder for roasting, chops for grilling, and a meal for the dogs.

      The kookaburras watched him conveying meat to the house, their wonderful

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