A QUESTION OF SANITY

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 10 (Supplement)

A QUESTION OF SANITY

(By W. H. EYRE.)

(PRIZE-WINNING SHORT STORY.)

i« m | j The Prize-winning entry in the "Auckland Star's" Short Story J j Competition for May is published below. Entries for this month's | J competition should be posted to reach the editor not later j J than June 20. |

Native curiosity impelled Mrs. Hori Tukuwai to rise from her doorstep and ■waddle to the gate. The gate cracked ominously as she draped her expansive figure upon it, and the driver of the cream lorry, who was about to depart after collccting the Tukuwai cream, looked round inquiringly.

"Good day!" called Mrs. l'ukuwai, raising her voice in order to be heard above the clanking of the ill-used engine. "You te new man, eh? Where' Tommy to-day ?" The new man grinned cheerfully as le engaged the gears. "Tommy," he answered, his small figure vibrating rhythmically as he held liis foot on the clutch-pedal, "he's out with the rest of 'em looking for this fellow who escaped from the asylum last night.; How many more places are there up this road!" Mrs. Tukuwai's eyes widened, and her habitual smile gave place to an expression of growing alarm. "What fellow?" she asked sharply, ignoring his question. "Haven't you got the wireless at your place?" asked the driver; and when Mrs. Tukuwai shook her head in answer he looked gave. "That's too bad," he said. "Just as well y-'i came over, missis. According to wa. ..ngS from all the main stations he was headed' in this direction the last time he was seen." To the lady's further breathless and fearful questionings he replied with all available information on the matter. It appeared that the escapee, who had always been considered a harmless case, had been engaged in his customary work in the strawberry gardens attached to the institution. He was heard to'complain to the other inmates who were working with him about the insipidity of strawberries without cream, and a warden, in to avert trouble, had soothingly suggested that the complainant should return to his quarters and think it over. Without warning, the lunatic had seized a slasher which was leaning against a wheelbarrow, had felled the warden with a blow with the back of th'; blade, had cut his way through the hedge and a mesh-wire fence and had got clean away. He had been seen by two women just before dusk. He was still carrying the slasher and was headed in the direction of this settlement. Half a dozen search parties ■were out looking for him. i "I'd advise you to keep indoors, Missis," the driver concluded "and have your husband handy." Mrs. Tukuwai's jroad face was grey with alarm, aud her huge body quivered spasmodically. "Hori he down on te road somewhere," she explained, as she heaved herself upright and turned A r hasten to refuge. "You tell him to come home," slie yelled oi'er her shoulder, as the lorry commenced to move away. "You tell him I got te wind up!" The lorry driver grinned and nodded. "I'll toll him if I see him," he shouted in reply, and laughed aloud as he noted tlie elephantipe grace with which Mrs. Tukuwai bounded to the questionable safety of her home. He could distinctly hear the thudding of her bare feet above the noise of the engine and the clanking of the cream cans, and it was evident to him that the cows in the adjoining paddocks, by the nervous raisin a of their heads, were aware of alarming earth tremors. Mrs. Tukuwai splintered a floor-board as she leapt over her threshold, and the house trembled and creaked as she hastened to erect barricades against possible assault. She sweated with exertion and fear, pouring out a stream of invective in her native tongue upon the husband who had chosen to absent himself in this hour of her dire peril. Considerably later in the morning Jack Bentley slashed his way out of thick standing manuka upon a hillside and found himself at the fence-line of the Tukuwai farm.- He was hot, wet with perspiration, and fairly well satisfied with his morning's work. Looking back at the track he had cut it certainly did seem that he riiight have headed a little to the left with advantage, but he was justified in thinking that he had not done so badly for a first job. He could get a line through the section, and that was the principal consideration.

He could see his theodolite just over the rise above the fallen brush; but Mrs. Tukuwai, squatted on the floor of her bedroom and peering between the bottom of the curtain and the windowsill. had not that advantage.. ' • .

For hours the terrified lady had watched the head of the new track moving slowly and inexorably towards her down the scrub-clad hillside opposite. She had seen the gleam of a slasher-blade in the sunlight as it swung unceasingly and deadly, and each flashing gleam had lifted the panic in her breast a little higher. She liad glimpsed a muscular, suntanned arm swinging and striking untiringly, and once she had glimpsed an object fiery red. When Bentley at last emerged she saw that the fiery-red thing was his head, and she recalled stories of red-headed fiends which inhabited the world of Maori legend, and it was no longer possible to doubt that the tattered figure leaning upon the slasher and smiling at nothing ■was of the fraternity of such—the madmen who inspired the greatest awe and terror in all people, the chosen people whose brains had been touched by the fingers of the gods.

Her nostrils flared, her opened lips trembled uncontrollably, her enormous bosom heaved rapidly as her terrified panting accelerated. For Bentley, after keenly examining the landscape to right and left, was coming towards the house, the slasher carried jauntily upon his shoulder. When he stopped again- he seemed to stare at the corner of the window from which she peered. In abject terror Mrs. Tukuwai sank to the floor and thrust her head beneath the bed, closing her eyes and endeavouring to hold her breath, painfully aware, however, that by far the larger portion of her body would be visible at once to the madman should he take it into his head to enter by the window. She tried to crawl further tinder the bed, but the violent rattling of a loose brass knob on the old-fashioned bedstead checked the movement at once, and she crouched on hands and knees, her face in the thick fluffy dust of years, a huge mass of unlovely, quivering flesh. Bentley "moved round to the backdoor and knocked. He knocked several times. Receiving no answer to any knock he walked around the house and tried the front door. He knocked twice, then, after waiting a few moments, tried the door handle.

For the best part of an hour after these terrifying sounds had ceased Mrs. Tukuwai crouched in the dust beneath the bed, strangling incipient sneezes at intervals and suffering agonies of cramp which were endurable only because ot the greater agony of deadly fear; and when at last she ventured to emerge and raise her eyes to the level of the window sill she was so relieved to see the redheaded visitor sitting and smoking over by the fallen manuka that she wept noisily and copiously.

Becoming calmer she raised the edge of the curtain very slightly the better to observe the madman, and that he was mad indeed there could now be no lingering doubt. He was intent on the task of tearing narrow strips from the tail of his shirt!

As Bentley worked his thoughts were upon the escaped lunatic of whom the lorry driver had spoken that morning. Camping out, as Bentley was at present while engaged on making n fresh survey of this block, he had not been aware of the escape until the lorry driver had stopped to inform him of it. Thinking it over, he supposed that the people who lived opposite were out with a search party; otherwise they would have answered his knock and he would have been able to cadge a piece of rag for his marking pegs instead of beinar compelled to tear pieces off his shirt like this.

He smiled as he inserted small pieces of shirt into the short cleft sticks which he had prepared. He was thinking of the scare a woman in the house opposite might have had if she had seen him strolling over with a- slasher on his shoulder and had been aware of a similarly armed lunatic at large in the vicinity. Strangely enough it did not ocpur to him that the lunatic might even then be :creepjng upon him somewhere in the dense manuka scrub behind him. As. a matter of fact, there was someone creeping upon him from behind, and creeping very expertly, despite' his enormous bulk. It was Hori Tukuwai. So intent had Bentley been on his work that he had not seen Hori return nonchalantly to his farmhouse, nor had he seen Hori emerge stealthily therefrom some few minutes later and flit— if 6uch a large man as Hori can be said to flit—to an adjoining shed, from which, armed with an ancient and rusty slasher, he had crawled immediately and dropped into the shelter of a drain which ran along the fence line. Bentley had, indeed, no knowledge that such a man as Hori Tukuwai existed until some sixth sense caused him to look over his shoulder in sudden alarm. The spectacle of a huge Maori, clad only in a pair of dark-blue knickers which obviously had not been designed for one of his sex, his big eyes wide and alight with the love of battle which was the heritage of his race, his thick muscular arms holding aloft a notched slasher in the act of striking, induced p, most uncomfortable feeling in the pit of Bentley's stomach. Although the lorry driver had not said that the escaped lunatic was a Maori, he had no doubt that this was he. Who else would, carry a slasher and wear bloomers ?

Had Hori struck in that instant, momentary fear would have held Bentlev motionless and powerless.. But Hori did not strike. He had never been subjected to the terrible glance of a maniac before, and the suddenness with which Bentley had turned upon him without the slightest sound to warn him of his peril, daunted him. For a moment the two stared into each other's eyes, each shaken by a similar fear, each thinking precisely the same thoughts. Both held their breath, and it was as though they had become simultaneously and suddenly petrified. Then, as naturally, they became human again at a precisely identical moment, and both moved in self-defence. Hori struck wildly and Bentley corkscrewed in a dive at his assailant's legs. The Maori came down with an earthshaking thud, Bentley rolled in the direction of his slasher, and when the two sprang to their feet both were bleeding from superficial wound? inflicted by manuka stumps, both were armed with a slasher, and both were extremely wary. The battle-which ensued was worthy of the descriptive style of Homer, but that gentleman being- unavoidably absent on this occasion, we have only the description of a neighbouring farmer who, happening along the road in his ancient vehicle at the moment when the two "lunatics" sprang to their feet after the first clash, stalled his engine in his surprise and gazed open-mouthed until the reason for the combat dawned npon him and he moved to promote an armistice.

"I've seen some goes in my life," declared the farmer when, having conveyed Bentley to town for repairs, lie leaned over the bar of his favourite hostelry and discoursed to an interested audience, "But I never seen anything like this in all my born days! I come round the corner near Hori's place, thinking nothing like I usually do about there, when right alongside the road I sees Hori and this surveyor chap bounce up out of the grass and start walking round each other. was so took by surprise I put my foot on the reverse and old "Lizzie" nearly shook her innards out as she stopped. Fair bucked,'she did, and I banged my forehead on the windscreen and my stomach on the wheel. That's what made me so dizzv I was so long waking up to 'em. "There tliey was, each of 'em with a slasher, cat-stepping round each other like a couple of boxers. Every now .and then they would make a dab at each other, then dance away until I thought they was just having a game of some sort. They was so busy watching each other they never saw me. Then they suddenly 'takes to each other good and proper. Well, I've read tales of how they used to go for each other with axes and spears in the old days, but I never thought I'd ever see it in these times. And there 'was science in it, too. Hori, big and all as he is, was as light on his feet as the next fellow, and the way he handled that slasher was like these tales you read of about the old-time Maoris. He 6eeraed to be having a great time. He was sticking out his tongue and cussing the other fellow in Maori, and blowing and puffing like a steam engine. "Bentley didn't 6eem to mind it, either. He wasn't any match for Hori at slashing, but he'd got it all over Hori for guard. He had his slasher with both hands close together about the middle of the handle, and he used both ends at once, seemed to me." "Quarter-staff,',' suggested a listener. "Whatevei that might be," admitted the narrator, "he certainly donged Hori a few times. I got so excited I found myself giving a cheer every time one of

'em made a hit, but they didn't 6ee me or hear me, they was that busy trying to knock the daylights out of each other.

"After a bit they started to blow, and then they started this walking around each -other again. Both of 'em was cut pretty bad, but neither of 'em seemed to notice it. Then they started to arsrue with each other. That was real funny, that was. They tried to find out what they were fighting about, but neither of 'em would admit why it was. Neither of 'em seemed to like the idea of suggesting the other was mad in case it started something that couldn't be stopped. I just sat there in the car and wached 'em. I was too flabbergasted to do anything else when I woke up to what it was all about.

"Presently they agrees to drop the slashers and have a go without 'em. You should have heard 'em, talking to each other like a couple of kids. 'You put yours down, and I'll put mine,' says Bentley. 'No fear,' says Hori, 'you put yours down first.' And so they went 011 for about ten minutes. Then they decides to put 'em down together, which they do. Then tliev walk away from 'em for about two steps, and makes

a sudden dive for 'em again. This goes on for a long time, but they finishes up with 'em still in their hands. Then they agrees to throw 'em into the manuka together. They counts 'One! Two! Three! Throw!' and neither of 'em throws. -All the time they're watching each other like a pair of tomcats; and both of 'em tip-toeing round like they was afraid of waking the baby. "I could see how it was. They didn't want to kill each otheh They wanted to capture each other alive. So £ decides to help 'em out. I hops out of the car and goes over to 'em. "'Good-day' I says, just like that. " 'Good-day,' they says, not looking at me—just watching each other like they was before. ""'So you got him,' I says to both of 'em, and both of 'em nodded. 'Good!' I says. 'Now there aint 110 sense in chewing each oilier up,' I says. 'Let's all go back nice and friendly. Give me that slasher,' I says to Bentley. 'You get his first,' he says. 'All right,' I says, and goes "to Hori. " Hut Hori ain't trusting Bentley. So I tries a bit of diplomacy. I gets them close together a;ul makes 'em stick the slashers in the ground when I said 'Three!' As soon as they did it I grabs both of the slashers and ducks for the car. As soon as I turned my back on 'em they was into it again.

j "It was wiling .while it lasted, but ».)i i didn't have a show. He came at llentley like a bull at a gate, and Bentley just side-stepped and banged him on the ear. This happened about five times, then Hori got mad properly. He bounced all over the place like a young .elephant, and, if Bentley had got under him he would have been squashed flat. But he didn't —nowhere near it. He just let Hori bounce about and donged him scientifically every time he went by. Bentley started to sing, too. Sing, mind you! If his name had been Moloney I could have understood it. "I didn't see what happened at the last. I see Hori take a flying leap, turn a beautiful somersault, and on his face. Before he could roll over Bentley was on his back and putting a hammerlock on him. I never in all my life saw anybody so scared for his life as Hori was then. He yelled to me to pull Bentley off him before he was murdered, yelling at the top of his voice that Bentley was an escaped lunatic. . "Bentley grinned up at me when I went over to 'em again. 'They always talk like this, so I understand,' he says. 'Better get a bit of rope,' he says, 'and I'll tie him up.'

" 'What for ?' I says. " 'This is the bloke who got out of the asylum last night,' he says. 'Heaven oniy knows what happened to the person who belonged to them pants,' he says. " 'That's Hori Tukuwai,' I says. 'He lives over the road.'

"I had to laugh at the expression on his face. Then I makes a darn fool of myself. 'You two has been thinking each other was the feller that 'escaped, haven't you?' I says, thinking myself very clever. 'I seen that as soon as I come along," I says, 'but you was enjoyin" yourselves so much I didn't like to butt in. The bloke who escaped pinched the cream lorry this morning, when Tom Gifford was talking to Mrs. Way, collected all the cream along this road and took it all to the asylum so the inmates could have it with all the strawberries he's been growing lately. That's what got out for, so he says.'" The narrator paused at this point and nodded reminiscently. "Then what happened?" asked one of the audience. The narrator shook his head. > "I don't rightly know," he admitted. "But I do know I ain't going to be able to sit comfortable for a week or two." The audience laughed. "Still, I suppose I ought to be thankful Hori didn't have his boots on," he added, drinking his beer thoughtfully. Rumour has it that Mrs. Tukuwai has purchased a much higher bedstead for herself and Hori, and that she sweeps beneath it regularly every month.