The Bone is Pointed b-6

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “We’ll have to. An old lubra is reported ill at Deep Well which is forty-two miles from this place where Abie is employed as a tracker. During the vital night it is raining hard, and Abie walks twenty-eight miles to Meena Lake, and a further fourteen miles to Deep Well to find the woman not dying. On the face of those facts the blacks made an extraordinarily bad mistake. You know, my dear Blake, I am already becoming interested in this case. There is another point.

  “It was never established that on the morning that Anderson last rode Green Swamp his horse was carrying a neck-rope. The next morning when the groom found the animal at the gate there was no neck-rope, though it was Anderson’s custom to have one with him. We mustn’t lose sight of the probability that the horse carried a neck-rope on that fatal day, and that when the man vanished the neck-rope as well as the stockwhip vanished with him.”

  Sergeant Blake nodded his agreement. He noted with interest the gleam in the blue eyes, and his interest was increased when Bony took a pen and wrote on a slip of paper. The writing was pushed towards him, and he read:

  “There is someone standing outside the window. Look out and see who he is. Have him in if possible.”

  Without a sound the Sergeant’s chair was raised and lifted back. With catlike tread he moved to the window and then, in swifter action, he thrust his head beyond the sill. The delighted Bony heard him grunt before shouting:

  “What the devil are you doing there, Wandin?”

  The answering voice was unmistakably aboriginal.

  “Waiting for you, Sargint. Wantum money buyterbaccer.”

  “Oh, do you? You come in here, quick.”

  Blake moved clear of the window, and Bony saw a tall black figure pass it to reach the front door. Followed then the padding of naked feet in the passage. He stood up beside Blake to await the coming of this Wandin, who, he knew, had been leaning against the wall within a foot or so of the wide-open window.

  A tall, gaunt, spindle-legged aboriginal entered the office to stand just inside the doorway and gently rub the naked left foot with the toes of the right foot. He was cleanly shaved, and his cotton shirt and dungaree trousers were reasonably clean. He wore no hat. His hair was full and greying. Over his long face was spread a grin as he looked alternately from the Sergeant to Bony. It was a foolish grin deliberately to conceal anxiety, which the black eyes failed to do.

  “What were you doing out there?” Blake asked, sharply.

  “Nuthin,’ Sargint. Jes ’waitin ’.”

  “What for?”

  “Moneyferterbaccer, Sargint. Noterbaccer. You give me two treeschillin ’?”

  Bony now stepped forward to stand close to the blackfellow who was taller than he was.

  “You Wandin, eh?”

  “Yes. Too right!”

  “You stand outside listening ’cosyou want tobacco. Look!”

  Wandin bent his head to look at the point of his trousers where a large plug of tobacco was distinctly outlined. When the eyes were again raised to meet the steady blue eyes the unease behind them was stronger still. Yet he continued to smile, foolishly, and said: “Funny, eh? I forgot.”

  Now Bony was smiling, and swiftly his two hands went upwards to grasp the edges of the open shirt and to draw them farther apart. Wandin stiffened, and from his cicatrized chest Bony’s gaze rose again to meet the angry black eyes.

  “You plenty beeg blackfeller, eh?” he said softly. “You have plenty magic, eh? Youmarloo totem feller. Me-I know signs. Now you go out and you go look-see police horse.”

  The detective turned back to his chair at the desk, and Blake repeated the order to look to the horse in the stable. Without speaking, Wandin left, the soft padding of his feet coming to them from the passage. Through the open window Blake saw him leave the building and round an angle of it before he himself resumed his seat.

  “Do you think he was listening to us?” he asked, a frown puckering his eyes.

  “He’s a most intelligent aboriginal gentleman, Sergeant. I quite think he was listening. Anyway, I hope so. Yes, this case already reveals possibilities of absorbing interest. Is your clock right?”

  “Was last night by the wireless signal.”

  “Good! By the way, in your report you didn’t state whether Anderson was wearing a hat the day he vanished. In fact, you haven’t mentioned his clothes.”

  “I took it for granted that he was wearing a hat.”

  “You mentioned a saddle-bag containing a serviette that had been used to wrap his lunch in, but you did not say whether, also attached to the saddle, there was a quart-pot. Was there?”

  “Yes, there was. I saw the saddle later.”

  “You see, it is necessary to establish what disappeared with Anderson. We know that his stockwhip did. Probably he was wearing a hat, a felt hat. And it is probable that round the horse’s neck was a rope, neatly rolled and knotted, with which to secure the animal when Anderson stopped for lunch or was obliged to repair the fences. If that rope was discovered, say, here in your office- You see the point? So it would be with his hat, or any other article associated with him that fatal day. I will go into the matter at Karwir. Would you ring Mr Lacy and ask him if he will put me up? Say Detective-Inspector Bonaparte. He might give Bony room in the men’s hut.”

  Blake grinned and reached for the telephone attached to the wall at his side. When he had called the exchange, and while he was waiting for the connection, Bony said, chuckling:

  “The title, added to the illustrious name I bear, often goes far in securing me comfortable quarters. Alas! I love comfort. I am soft, I know, but being soft keeps me back from the bush which to me is ever a great danger.”

  Blake spoke, addressing Mr Lacy, so that Bony knew not whether father or son was at the other end of the line.

  “Mr Lacy will be very pleased to put you up,” the Sergeant said, turning back to him. “If you like, he will send his son in the aeroplane for you.”

  “Thank Mr Lacy. Say I will be glad to accept his offer of modern transport. I am ready to leave Opal Town when the machine arrives here.”

  “Well, that’s that!” Blake said, having replaced the absurd horn contraption on its hook. “You’ll like theLacys.”

  “Oh yes, of that I have no doubt,” concurred Bony. “In fact, I believe I am going to enjoy myself on this investigation. Its basic facts please me immensely-which is why I consented to come.”

  “Consented to come!” echoed Blake abruptly, very much the policeman.

  “That is what I said. You know, Blake, were I not a rebel against red tape and discipline I should be numbered among the ordinary detectives who go here and go there and do this and that as directed. Team work, they call it. I am never a part of a team. I am always the team. As I told you, I think, once I begin an investigation I stick to it until it is finished. Authority and time mean little to me, the investigation everything. That is the foundation of my successes. Instead of fearing defeat in this case because of the length of time between the day of the disappearance and this day of my arrival, I am confident of ultimate success in establishing what happened to the man Jeffery Anderson. The sands of the bush have buried all the clues. I have not one with which to start. No body, no false teeth, no bloodstained knife or revolver covered with fingerprints. But Sergeant, I have a brain, two eyes, an ability to reason, a contempt for time and red tape and discipline. These things are all I need. Now, please, go out and find what Wandin is doing. Spy on him. Don’t let him know you are spying on him if you can help it.”

  The Sergeant was away for nearly five minutes and when he returned to the office he found Bony once again standing before the wall map.

  “You found Wandin, probably in the place he occupies as a camp,” Bony said without turning his head. “He was squatted on his heels. His arms were crossed and resting on his knees. He appeared to be asleep. He was, of course, awake, but as you moved quietly he did not know of your approach.”

  With light tread, Sergeant Blake walked to Bony�
�s side. His grey eyes bored steadily into the beaming blue eyes. For three seconds he stood there, staring, and then he said:

  “How did you know that?”

  “In a city drawing-room, a city office, on a city street, I am like a nervous child,” Bony began his reply, which was no reply to the policeman. “Here in bush townships I am a grown man. Out there in the bush I am an emperor. The bush is me: I am the bush: we are one.” And then Bony laughed, softly, to add: “There are moments when I feel a great pride in being the son of an aboriginal woman, because in many things it is the aboriginal who is the highly developed civilized being and the white man who is the savage. Perhaps your association with me on this case will make you believe that.”

  Chapter Four

  Old Lacy

  BONY and Sergeant Blake stood beside the latter’s car at the edge of flat country half a mile north of Opal Town, country which had been cleared and levelled by Old Lacy’s men to make a landing ground for the Karwir plane. From this point the town was hidden by a range of low sand-dunes through which wound the little-used track.

  “This Young Lacy,” Bony said, “is he a reliable flier?”

  “Most. Holds his ‘B’ licence. When he failed to enter the Air Force he wanted to join the flying staff of a commercial company, but the old man persuaded him against it. I think the young fellow stays at home only because his father is growing old. The old man has a lot to commend him, you know. I think I can hear the plane coming now.”

  “Yes, it’s coming. I can see it. By the way, give that tracker of yours his marching orders. He is too dangerous a man to have hanging round a police station.”

  “Dangerous?” Blake echoed. “I’ve found him willing enough and reliable.”

  “Perhaps Abie will consent to return,” suggested Bony. “Anyway, exchange Wandin for a much younger man. A young man won’t know so much about magic and uncomfortable things of that kind. Ah, quite a smart machine!”

  The silver-painted aeroplane landed with hardly a bounce, and, with the propeller ticking over, it was expertly taxied to a halt within fifty yards of the car and facing the light wind coming from the west. Young Lacy jumped to the ground, ignoring the step inset in the fuselage immediately behind the near-side wing. Bony watched him striding towards them, noted the red hair when the airman snatched off his helmet, and instantly liked the open cheerful face. Before reaching them, Young Lacy shouted:

  “Good day, Sergeant! How’s the spotted liver this afternoon? I’ve been sent to pick up Inspector Bonaparte.”

  His clear hazel eyes gazed about and beyond Bony on whose face was painted a hint of a smile. It was obvious that Young Lacy was looking for a white man, and Sergeant Blake made a noise from way down in his throat.

  “In the departmental records, Mr Lacy, I am listed as Inspector, Criminal Investigation Branch,” Bony said gravely. “Actually, of course, I am not a real policeman, but being a family man I have no hesitation in accepting the salary. My name is Napoleon Bonaparte.”

  During this somewhat grandiose self-introduction Young Lacy’s eyes opened wide and the cheerful smile gradually gave place to an expression of bewilderment. Sergeant Blake offered an observation.

  “Inspector Bonaparte’s reputation is to be envied, Mr Lacy,” he said stiffly. “He mayn’t be a real policeman, but he’s a real detective right enough.”

  “Oh-all-yes, of course! Pleased to meet you, Inspector Bonaparte. Boorish of me to be so dense,” Young Lacy hastened to say. “I was expecting to see a bull-necked, flat-footed bird with jangling irons in his pocket. The old man will be disappointed.”

  “Indeed! Why?”

  “He’s waiting to receive the detective I was expecting to find waiting here. He’s dreaming dreams of taking him out into the bush and losing him. Still, I’m glad to meet you and not the other kind.”

  “And I am most happy to make your acquaintance, Mr Lacy,” Bony said warmly. “I mean it more especially after having watched you fly that machine. I’m not air-minded, you see. The last time I went up was several years ago with Captain Loveacre.”

  “Loveacre! You know Loveacre, eh! I last met him-why, red wine and laughing eyes! I remember Loveacre telling me about you and your Diamantina case. He called you Bony.”

  “He would, Mr Lacy. Everyone does. I wish you would, too.”

  “Bony it is, then. I’m Young Lacy to all hands. And now we are friends, what about getting home? The old man will be waiting with all his little sayings ready saved up.”

  Young Lacy stowed the suitcase, assured himself that the second helmet was securely on Bony’s head and Bony himself safely strapped into the rear cockpit.

  “So long, Blake!” he called when he had taken his position at the controls. “Don’t forget to remember me to Mrs Blake.”

  The throttle was opened, the engine roared to drown the Sergeant’s reply and make him skip back to the car away from the dust. A short even run and the ground was slipping away from under, and into view sprang the township, to fall into the centre of a great green and brown disk. Bony saw the road to “outside” winding away to the eastern horizon, another road curving this way and that far to the north, and a third road lying like a snake’s track from the town to where the sun was destined to set. He wrote with a pencil on a spare envelope:

  “Kindly follow the road to Karwir. I want to see Pine Hut on Meena. Fly low, please.”

  He thrust the note over Young Lacy’s shoulder. The pilot took it, read it, and, glancing back, nodded. With the stick held between his knees, he also used the envelope to pencil a note:

  “Will fly low, but it will be bumpy. Might make you sick.”

  On seeing Bony shake his head and indicate with a hand his desire to be flown nearer the ground, the pilot sent the ship sharply down to follow the track snaking westward. The earth was painted with a crazy pattern of greens and browns, green scrub and brown sand-dunes. Only the road possessed continuity, now plainly marked by the shadows lying in the deep wheel-ruts on soft sand, now faintly limned by putty-coloured ribbons made by the wheels of motors crossing cement-hardclaypans.

  A wire fence rushed to meet them and passed under them. Bony knew, by his study of Blake’s wall map, that it was the Opal Town Common fence, and that now they were flying over Meena Station. It was quite a nice little property, though not to be compared with the big runs like Karwir. He would have to visit theGordons, and Nero and his tribe, too. Nero would be sure to interest him, because, of course, by now Nero would have had word of his flying to Karwir.

  At the average altitude of six hundred feet, Young Lacy sent the machine over the winding road. Little brown and white dots away to the north represented grazing cattle. The road was behaving erratically, falling away and swinging upward to them as the machine entered air pockets, passed through them, and rose again when propeller and wings bit into the air.

  Only a few minutes of this and then the iron roof and the windmill of Pine Hut flashed up above the horizon and slid swiftly towards them. The sun glinted on the revolving fans of the mill, and, striking the water in two iron troughs, made of it bars of gold lying rigidly on a light-brown cloth. As though the mill were the hub of a wheel, four fences radiated from it, their thin straight lines quartering the carpet of earth. The road junction was easily discernible-that to the west connecting Meena homestead with Opal Town, the road to Karwir turning widely to the south to enter a mulga forest extending over the rim of the world.

  The sun swung sharply round to Bony’s right shoulder when the machine turned to follow the southward road to Karwir. No smoke rose from the chimney of the hut below them. No dogs moved. There were no horses in the yards down there, or human beings to wave at the passing plane.

  Fascinated by the speed with which the road unwound to thrust the scrub trees towards and under the machine, Bony was unconscious of time. He saw cattle lying in the shade beside the road. Now and then he saw a running rabbit, and noted how the rodents appeared to be chased by tiny balls
of red dust. Sometimes he saw the thin thread of the telephone wire stretched from tree to tree.

  Now the trees thinned to terminate in a clearly defined line. The machine began to cross a wide ribbon of grey and barren land bordered on its far side by an irregular line of coolabahs, in which no foot of wood is straight. The coolabahs passed under, and again the machine crossed a wide ribbon of treeless and bare grey ground, to be met with another line of coolabahs. A third grey ribbon of bare ground was crossed before the machine again flew above massed trees bordering the everlasting road. They had passed the Channels stated by Sergeant Blake and shown by the wall map to extend from Meena Lake to Green Swamp.

  Two minutes after crossing the Channels, there appeared far along the road a white blob that magically resolved into a painted bar-gate. It was the gate that darted towards them, not they towards the gate. Beyond it stretched a thin, dark line, to cross, in the far distance, a blue-grey crescent rising above the rim of the world. It was the fence crossing the plain to Karwir, the fence separating Green Swamp Paddock from North Paddock. It was rule-straight, but the road skirting its east side continued to curve like the track left on sand by a snake.

  What made Bony look to the westward when the machine passed over the boundary fence, instead of to the right to observe Green Swamp Paddock that seemed to be so important to his investigation, he could not recall. As the gate passed beneath the plane, he saw the netted and barb-topped barrier lying like a knife blade along the centre of a rule-straight brown sheath dwindling to a point some three miles away.

  For only a half-second did he see this cut line and the fence, but, during that fraction of time, he saw, about three-quarters of a mile westward of the gate, a white horse standing in the shade of a tree on the Karwir side of the barrier. Opposite this horse, on the Meena side of the barrier, stood a brown horse, also in the shade cast by a tree. Both animals were saddled, and appeared to be neck-roped to their respective trees. Stockmen chance-met and enjoying a gossip, Bony surmised.

  The machine now was flying along the seemingly endless fence towards the homestead beyond the plain already sliding to pass beneath them. It appeared like strands of black cotton knotted at regular intervals, the knots being the posts. The plain folded away mile after mile to the clean-cut horizon west and south and east. Behind them, the mulga forest was drawn over the swelling curve of the world.