Hoo-Jahs

BEYONDthe door appeared a man, who called:

“Hey, there, John! You around?”

The frame of the door darkened and there stepped into the kitchen a man tall and lean and weather-bashed. He was wearing a suit of dungarees so often boiled that the colour was like blue-veined stone. Smiling, obviously embarrassed, he sat on a chair near the door and fondled the dogs.

“That,” remarked Mr. Luton, pointing the stem of his pipe at the caller, “that is my neighbour up-river a bit. Name is Knocker Harris. He believes in no one and nothing. It was him who recommended I write the letter to you, Inspector.”

“That’s me, Inspector,” agreed Knocker Harris. “Pleased to meetcher. Me nephew, Frank Lord, you put away for his natural, always said you’re a top detective, and if he hadn’t sort of accidentally shot that prospector in the bush, you wouldn’t have been on tothe job and he wouldn’t have been nabbed like. So we reckoned you are the man to understand John’s ideas about the jerks. Not that Ben wasn’t murdered. Got too dangerous for the politicians, he did. I told himmore’n once to go easy, but he would never listen.”

“You talk too much,” Mr. Luton asserted severely.

“That’s me,” ruefully agreed Mr. Harris.

“Knocker is given to making wild statements,” Mr. Luton said, accusingly. “I like to keep to a bit of reason, because people might say we’re old and mentally wonky. You heard Knocker say the Government murdered Ben. Then again the Commos could have done it, hoping to get what he’d worked out. Ben wasn’t just an ordinary bloke, like us.”

The fishing was slipping from Bony’s mind. He said:

“Mr. Wickham told you something of his work, it would seem.”

“During the past half-century or thereabouts,” replied Mr.