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before he realized that a tiddler s mouthful was actually a
whale s.
He was sitting in the boss s chair, and talking to an imagin-
ary companion, when he heard the shot. At first he thought it
was the boss shooting crows. Then he remembered that Mr
Wootton had gone to town. He decided he had better leave the
office, and found difficulty in recalling exactly where the bottle
had stood before the tide went out.
Eventually he left the office and carefully closed the door,
and I believe him when he says he was partially blinded by the
sunlight, and that he didn t see Mrs Bell lying on the ground
until about to trip over her body. He heard sounds inside the
house, which, I ve no doubt, was the transceiver being
smashed. Befuddled with whisky, still a little blinded by the
sunlight, he says he picked up his rifle and swag, and was
intending to clear out, when Harry Lawton appeared and
said: By crikey, Yorky, what the hell did you shoot her for?
You must be crackers.
Such was Yorky s mental state that he gazed with terror at
the weapon in his hands, then at the body. From the confusion
of mind emerged one idea. His rifle was his dearest possession;
he had cleaned it the morning before Mr Wootton had stopped
at the camp, and now, sniffing at the muzzle, he could register
the smell of the expended cartridge.
He said, dully: Yair, I must be.
Lawton said: You killed her all right. I saw you fire. I
rode over from the yard to see Mrs Bell about me lunch I d
forgotten to take out, and I saw you. I don t want to be mixed
up with it, Yorky. You better clear out and keep going.
Yorky panicked. He filled his gunny-bag with rations and
cooked foods, and said he d cross the lake to an island he knew
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of in the middle. Lawton asked how he was going to stay there
without food and water, and Yorky told him there were rab-
bits, and that he could find water.
It would appear that Lawton was greatly concerned about
Yorky, and Yorky told him there were rations in the hut on the
south end of the boundary fence. Lawton assured Yorky that
he would replenish the food at the hut, that Yorky wasn t to
worry. Just stay out on his island. And he had better take the
kid with him.
Yorky says that he argued against taking Linda, and that
he was overruled into doing so. He was tormented still by the
effects of a long carousal, partly revived by a small dose of
whisky, and more than revived by too much in too short a
time. We can imagine his state if we cannot wholly sympathize
with him. Always a quick thinker, Lawton found it easy to
think for Yorky, telling him that mates have to stick together,
that he would do all he could to put off the trackers and the
dirty coppers, and so on. Yorky s good friend!
Lawton knew what Yorky in his condition did not know,
that the floods were about to enter the lake. He foresaw that
Yorky on his island would wake one morning to find it sur-
rounded by water, and would be marooned there. And, finally,
Linda opened two doors for him.
Having shot Mrs Bell, he knew he would have to destroy
Linda, for although the child had not appeared, he could not
risk her seeing him cross to his horse and ride away. The
shooting of Mrs Bell had, been done in mad lustful anger. It
was with cold deliberate purpose that Lawton determined that
Yorky take Linda with him, for then she would drown with
him.
All this came out in his confession last night to Constable
Pierce. He was a young man who ought never to live in con-
ditions of such isolation not without a woman. When he was
stopped from interfering with the lubras, he stood on the brink
of an abyss, when he turned his mind to the only woman at
Mount Eden. I have no doubt his claim that she encouraged
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his advances was due to imagination. All the men absent, he
returned to conquer by compulsion, and when Mrs Bell ran
from him he thought she was running to Linda. About to rush
after her, he found the swag with the rifle leaning against it,
snatched up the rifle, pumped a cartridge into the breach and
fired. Recognizing Yorky s swag, he wiped off his own finger-
prints, and put the weapon back where it had been, and before
finding Yorky, re-entered the house to smash radio and tele-
phone.
Now to tidy up the plan which almost evolved itself. Yorky
said he would have to get his mud shoes. Lawton urged him
to collar Linda from the playhouse while he went to Yorky s
room for the boards. There was more quick thinking now
when confronted by the desperate urge to get Yorky away
with Linda. Obtaining the mud shoes, he met Yorky coming
from the playhouse, carrying the child, and he hurried them
round the back of the office to avoid the body. And, lastly,
now knowing that the boss had seen Yorky, and in order to
make sure it would be known Yorky was at the homestead, he
obtained a pair of Yorky s old boots and made the prints for
Bill Harte and others to see.
Although Yorky could not remember shooting Mrs Bell, he
was bullied into thinking he must have done. Lawton knew
that his frame would collapse once I found Linda and Yorky.
When he knew I was about to do that, he determined to
prevent the four of us ever getting off the mud, and on learn-
ing from Yorky that the shortest track from his island came in
at the boundary hut, he anticipated we would return that way.
He had taken rations and the dolls to that hut for Yorky to
collect.
Now, Charlie, you tell.
Charlie s round face rippled into a wide smile.
Well, Inspector, you told me to fox Harry Lawton and do
nothing only if he started shooting somebody. After you went
out on the mud I was watching Harry, when Meena jawed me
about making her some mud shoes for her to go after you.
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That Meena! Time I done them shoes for her, Harry and the
rest have cleared out, and I asked the boss where Harry went.
The boss said to Yorky s old fence hut down south.
All the spare horses are gone, too, so I had to walkabout
down there, and it s sundown when I came to the camp, and
Harry s cookin a feed for himself. Doin what you said, just
fox him, I has to do a perish that night, and next day late,
when Harry mooches over to the lake sand dunes, I gets me
chance at tucker in the hut.
In the afternoon I seen Harry mucking about with case-
boards, and I knows what he s up to. But he don t do nothing
that night, and the next morning he s gone. I track him to the
lake and see where he s taken to the dingo pad, but I can t see
him cos the sun s in me eyes.
Charlie burst into prolonged chuckling.
There s me sitting like a crow on a windmill, and there s
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