Breakaway House

Arthur W. Upfield

Description

Harry Tremayne, a policeman, goes to an isolated valley in the remote Murchison region of Western Australia to find his brother - who vanished a month earlier while investigating the murder of a police detective. Do the gold smugglers at Breakaway House hold the answers to the mystery?

First published as a serial in the Perth Daily News in 1932, the real setting for the book is Mt Magnet, about 150k north of Perth, deep in gold country.

'It is somewhat less intense and less effective than the books in the Bony series, but it is successful as an early effort of Upfield's treatment of the Australian outback.' - Ray Browne, The Spirit of Australia

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Policier
• Police Procedurial
• Detective
• Mystery
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: ETT Imprint
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780994309655
• Langue: English

Extrait

This edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay 2023.

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers.

ETT IMPRINT & www.arthurupfield.com
PO Box R1906,
Royal Exchange NSW 1225
Australia

First published by Angus & Robertson 1987
Published by ETT Imprint 2015
with the help of Upfield scholar Kees De Hoog

Copyright William Upfield 2015, 2020

ISBN 9780994309655 (ebk)
ISBN 9781922698605 (pbk)

Digital distribution by Ebook Alchemy

Table of Contents

I Breakaway Meeting
II Breakaway Girl
III Miss “It”
IV The Cattle Duffer
V A Deal in Cattle
VI A Fox Hunt
VII Suspicions and Facts
VIII At the Myme Hotel
IX Tremayne Behaves Queerly
X Breakaway House Ball
XI Tremayne’s Trickery
XII What the Parson Said
XIII The Affair at Acacia Well
XIV A Problem Solved
XV Blackmail
XVI The Attack
XVII A Pleasant Host
XVIII A Night Ride
XIX The Ambuscade
XX The Island
XXI No Deceit Between Us
XXII Morris Tonger at Home
XXIII The Bunyip
XXIV The Tree Trunk
XXV Colonel Lawton Arrives
XXVI The Tea Party
XXVII Hurried Arrivals
XXVIII Colonel Lawton Explains
XXIX An Outraged Husband
XXX The Battle
XXXI The Colonel’s Plans
XXXII Falling Darkness
XXXIII Vengeance
XXXIV Again Sunshine

CHAPTER I
BREAKAWAY MEETING
THE brilliant yet balmy sunshine of early September fell on a hatless man lounging on a wide seat made of gum saplings, a man whose strong face would have aroused speculation in the observant–had he been anywhere else but just where he was. Here, on the lip of a Murchison breakaway, colourful space with far-flung boundaries so overwhelmed one with a panorama of scintillating tints–an intoxicant to the imagination and a vision of freedom known only to swift birds–that a solitary man was lost in the grandeur of his surroundings.
This was the rock-bound coast of a sea that never was. Never had the ocean roared against the rock-strewn foot of this curving, hundred-foot cliff which swept away to the north-west to end in a mighty headland of black and brown stabbing into a sea of dove-grey saltbush, and, to the south, curved out to westward to end in an escarpment of ironstone and granite rubble amongst which specks of mica reflected the sun as though an escaping thief had thrown away all the jewels of India. Perhaps it was familiarity, or perhaps some secret sorrow or flaming hope, but Brett Filson seemed blind to this imposing picture.
To reach the cliff, you left his homestead by the front door, walked through the small vegetable plot lovingly cared for by Soddy Jackson, the cook, passed through the garden gate, crossed the Myme-Magnet track, passed through another gate in a six-wire fence, pushed the hundred yards through thick mulga and, abruptly, burst out upon the granite edge of a precipitous cliff one never dreamed was there.
Such was the surprise Western Australia gave to Harry Tremayne when he, having left his saddle-horse in the Bowgada yards and inquired for Brett Filson, followed Jackson’s careful directions.
With the wall of dark green bush at his back, Harry Tremayne barely noticed the figure on the bush seat, the man whose hair was almost white, whose left shoulder was slightly lower than the other, and in whose right hand was the comfortable handle of a serviceable stick. Against his will his gaze was drawn instantly to the electrically attractive vision of colour and space.
“Wanting to see me?” the seated man asked with quiet yet distinct articulation.
Tremayne started, as though from a reverie, and walked with the mincing stride of a horseman the few yards to confront the Bowgada squatter. “Mr Filson?”
He looked down on the face of a man who knew suffering, encountered the hazel eyes of one who was courageous, a man hardly forty years of age, and yet…and yet…
“Yes, I’m Filson. What can I do for you?”
Brett Filson examined the tall young man standing squarely before him, instantly approved of the powerful shoulders, slim hips, and feet encased in riding boots. He liked, too, the wide-spaced grey-blue eyes, the features chiselled as though from the dark wood of the omnipresent mulga itself.
Tremayne seated himself beside the squatter of Bowgada, tobacco and papers magically appearing in his hands. “I’m Harry Tremayne,” he stated in the soft slurred accents of central Australia. “I’ve been up for a look-see at Myme which, I’m told, is a very rich mine. Thought I’d come along to have a yarn.”
“Good! For that I shall be owing you something,” Brett said, smiling at the bushman’s habit of never at once coming to business. A stockman, probably, this Harry Tremayne. In fact, a stockman, most certainly. Looked efficient and dependable.
Brett’s eyes turned away, to peer into the haze partially obscuring the turrets and domes of an opposing breakaway on the western horizon. When again he glanced at Tremayne it was to find himself being thoroughly examined. “Satisfied with me?” he asked.
Tremayne nodded, before lighting his newly made cigarette. “I was told that you’re a man to be trusted, but I’m apt to rely a lot on my own judgment,” Brett was informed. “Until this minute I was undecided whether to tell you I was a stockman wanting a job, which I’m not, or a policeman with a special commission, which is the truth. Interested?”
“Of course,” replied Brett, noting how the slurred speech of the bushman became submerged in the clipped tones of official authority.
Imagination transformed Tremayne into a bird which slipped off the edge of the cliff a few yards from them, glided downward steeply and then more levelly to speed over the rock-strewn slope falling away to the dove-grey plain, onward into the light beams which seemed not of the sun, ever onward to mount at last over the mysterious summits ten miles distant.
“Not a bad view,” were the four words which dispelled the fantasy.
“Er–no,” Tremayne agreed, suddenly grinning at the older man. “It’s a great view, one in miniature equal to anything America can show us per medium of her moving pictures. Now–oh yes! I was telling you that I’m a policeman on a special job. Do you remember the case of six months ago when a man was found shot at the bottom of an old mine shaft away out from Myme?”
“Yes.”
“He was a C.I.B. man sent up to investigate the suspicion of the mine directors that a lot of gold was being stolen. He’d not been on the job three weeks before he was murdered. His reports contained nothing definite save his belief, unfounded on fact, that a keen, well-organised gang was operating.
“The chief dispatched half the police force to rope in Hamilton’s slayers. They achieved nothing, drew a blank, fell down on it. There was a young uniformed policeman stationed at Pinjarra who, having a month’s leave due to him, asked permission to take a run up here and try his luck. Robbins was a likeable chap, keen on his job, and well coached in detective work by the chief himself, who was his father. When I refer to the ‘chief’ I mean the Chief Inspector, not the Commissioner.
“Robbins got his chance, Mr Filson. He arrived at Myme with a swag lashed to a bike, looking for work. For a month he knocked about among the old prospectors and dry-blowers on the outskirts of Myme, and when he did get a job at the mine, on the surface, his leave was extended. Being a strong young fellow, and intelligent, he worked his way into the crushing plant and laboured among the cyanide vats. Finally, he reported his opinion that the gold was stolen in the ore, and not after its treatment, which meant that it had to be treated elsewhere.
“As you can see, the problem then facing him was to discover the locality of the snide plant. Find that and the murderers of Hamilton would be found, because only the men who feared Hamilton would have killed him, and the only men who feared him were those whom he was there to get–the gold-stealers.
“Robbins–that wasn’t his real name, but the name he was known by at Myme–first examined the country north, east, and south of the town, and, knowing of the breakaways, at last decided to look them over.
“Which was how it came about that he arrived here one evening–to be exact, August tenth–and stayed that night and the following day and night at the pressing invitation of your generous cook, Soddy Jackson.”
“I remember him. He asked for work,” Brett said quietly. “But the busy time was just over.”
“So he said,” Tremayne continued. “The day he was here he wrote the chief a long letter, which wasn’t unusual, describing your cook and other hands and you most fully. Apparently Soddy Jackson is familiar with your entire history.”
“The devil!”
“Don’t worry,” Tremayne responded, chuckling. “Your dossier is entirely in your favour.”
“That’s fortunate.”
“Yes–for me as well as for you,” Tremayne agreed, again serious. “The letters Robbins wrote to the chief and to his mother he left with Jackson to post, which was done. Do you remember which way Robbins headed when he left Bowgada homestead?”
“Yes. Towards Breakaway House. If you use these glasses you’ll see Breakaway House homestead at the foot of that round hill over there on the horizon.”
The policeman accepted the proffered binoculars. His gaze leapt the ten-mile gulf and was presented with a low, turreted, battlemented ridge, blued faintly by distance, yet with the dark tints of the mulga growing at its summit and the blue-grey of the saltbush at its foot still clear to the eye. Like a small town nestling in a cove on a rocky coast, the buildings comprising the homestead of Breakaway House station dully reflected the sun with their iron roofs.
“Draw in a little. Do you see the hut and windmill halfway across?” Brett directed.
“Yes. I’ve got it.”
“That’s Acacia Well. It’s one of my hut