Diana Lacy was giving much material for speculation. With immense satisfaction Bony was beginning to think that her aloof attitude to him was not based on the fact of his unfortunate parentage; for, try as he might, he had failed to detect in her mental make-up the feeling of superiority begotten by a city education. Nor was she governed by the snobbishness he had so often encountered among far-northern people who employed aborigines as servants. This was not the far north of the continent, where there is a distinct colour prejudice based on familiarity with aborigines debased through association with white people. Here, in this part of Australia, as in so many other inland districts, the sterling character of the full blood and the half-caste was paid reasonable tribute.
Bony was almost certain that it was not because of his birth that Diana Lacy maintained towards him an attitude of controlled hostility. This hostility was a compliment to him. She was not regarding him as an inferior, but rather as an enemy. She feared him, and her fear appeared to have its origin in that meeting at the boundary fence between herself and an unknown man.
It was the subsequent actions of the blacks—the wiping away of all traces of the meeting, the telepathic broadcast, announced by the smoke signal—that made this meeting an important corner-stone in the investigation. He had discarded his theory that the actions of the blacks had been dictated by lovers desirous of keeping their association secret. There was some other reason.
This morning Bony had an engagement to meet Sergeant Blake at the white boundary gate at noon, and now in the mulga forest he was again feeling what he had felt for many days—that he was being kept under constant surveillance. With an hour to spare before meeting the Sergeant, he determined to put this feeling to the proof.
As though casually, he turned his horse to ride back over her tracks, clearly to be seen on the soft sandy surface. Here, but a mile from the boundary, and two from the road gate, the trees were comparatively tall, robust and widely spaced. Lower to the ground grew currant bushes and wait-a-bit, and still lower were the dead filigree buckbush, waiting for the next windstorm to roll in their millions over the dust-masked world. The trees’ debris littered the ground, forcing the horse to advance on a winding course—the course just previously made.
For a quarter of a mile Bony made the animal walk back over her own tracks, and then he reined her away to follow the line of an imaginary circle, his eyes small and gleaming as they surveyed the reddish ground ahead and on either side, and peered along the tree aisles for the possible glimpse of a black face or body.
The full circle was completed without his seeing any sign of blacks. The bush was empty, or appeared to be, save for a few robins, two Willie Wagtails busy with their fly-catching, and several sleepy goannas. Tracks there were of an odd rabbit, those left by doves, by reptiles and by insects, but the land was empty of tracks made by possible spies.
Bony was still not satisfied. Arriving at the place where he had turned back, he moved on towards the boundary fence. The day was calm and warm, the cloudless sky appearing to rest on the tree tops. The cawing of a crow at some distance behind him caused him to tighten further his eyes and the frown above them, and when the fence came into sight, he abruptly turned back again and rode in concentric circles.
He now gave less attention to the tree trunks and more to the ground immediately in front of the horse’s nodding head. If he was being spied upon by aborigines it would be almost a waste of time trying to see them. And so it was that he saw lying beside a dead leaf a small black feather.
Without sign of haste, he dismounted, stretched himself, then squatted on his heels and rolled a cigarette. The feather was almost at his feet. While he rolled the cigarette he gazed intently at it, observing that it was not black but grey and that it was a bird’s breast feather. Having lit the cigarette, he took up a stick and, with apparent idleness, began to draw figures on the sand; and when his pencil passed the feather it was taken up between the ball of his little finger and the edge of the palm of his hand. There was no knowing if a black spy was watching him from round the trunk of the nearest tree.
Along the base of the small feather was a dark-red stain.
Blood on a feather! Blood and feathers!
Where Bony squatted was fully three miles from the bloodwood-tree beneath which Diana Lacy had met the unknown, where a man with feathers blood-dried to his feet had obliterated traces of the meeting, and it was improbable that a feather then detached from a foot could have been wind-blown to this place.
The discovery of this feather indicated that the man who was adopting the feathered feet method of leaving no tracks was careless or belittled Bony’s bushcraft, because no aboriginal desirous of escaping pursuers would fail constantly to glance behind to be sure that no feather from his feather-encased feet was left to provide a plain clue to his passing.
Still, Bony was not satisfied that one feather gave proof that he was being constantly followed and kept under observation. Although he was instinctively convinced of it, he wanted definite proof.
Mounting again, he rode towards the gate spanning the road to Opal Town, for the first time during his career being the hunted not the hunter. With almost terrible relentlessness he had tracked criminals; and now he was being tracked with that same relentlessness. To escape observation he might gallop the horse, and so leave the unmounted tracker behind. But this would not prevent the tracker following the horse’s tracks and eventually reading from the Book of the Bush the tale of Bony’s movements. Added to this, was the probability that he was being tracked and observed by more than one spy. Like every experienced bushman, Bony had acquired the mental trick of registering what the eyes note while the mind is otherwise occupied. Thus, while thinking of the surveillance of which he had become certain, he mentally noted that when he tossed aside the stub of his cigarette it followed the line of an arc to lie in the small shadow cast by a living buckbush.
Why was he being constantly trailed by the blacks? Why, unless in their own interests, or the interests of those directing them? Some connection between the trackers and the disappearance of Jeffery Anderson seemed almost certain.
After his visit to the Gordons, Bony was strongly of the opinion that neither mother nor son knew anything that might help to solve the mystery of Anderson’s fate. Both were almost fanatically devoted to the ideal of maintaining the Kalchut tribe in its original state. It was likely that the ideal blinded them to things clearly to be seen by the more worldly-wise, among whom might well be members of the tribe itself. The woman had had no experience of the world beyond the bush, and the young man only that little gained when a boy at school. Like all idealists they would be easy victims to the wily, and who more wily than the aboriginal who had come in contact with the new civilization? Bony was now thinking that the odds favoured some other man than John Gordon being the one who had met Diana Lacy at the boundary fence.
There were so many possibilities that to dwell on them was hardly to put time to good use. The man she had met might have been a member of the Kalchut tribe. He might have been one of the Mackays of Mount Lester Station, or someone from Opal Town. That he wanted Bony to know nothing of the meeting was proved by the removal of all traces of it.
“Yes,” he said softly to his horse. “There is ever so much more black than white in this affair. In fact, it might well be all black. There was Anderson, powerful and violent and suffering a sense of injustice after having been forced by Old Lacy to pay compensation to Inky Boy. There was Inky Boy whom Anderson flogged because of the loss of the rams through sheer laziness; Inky Boy would remember the flogging and soon forget the loss of the Karwir rams.
“The Gordons then take a hand in the business. Fearful that publicity may attack their ideal, they restrain the natural instincts of the blacks to set out for justice; and so Nero and his people plan to act independently of the Gordons. One places the sign at Black Gate saying that old Sarah at Deep Well is dying, so that after the killing has been done excuse for the walk
about can be made to the Gordons, and trackers cannot be called on immediately. The position where I found that piece of green cable silk from Anderson’s whip cracker goes far to support the theory that they tied him to a tree and flogged him as he had flogged Inky Boy.”
Of the thought of the finding of the cable silk was born another, a thought that made Bony involuntarily rein back his horse and stare up at the brazen sky: If the trackers had been following and observing him ever since his arrival, they would know of his discovery of the odd tracks left on claypans by The Black Emperor. They would know, if not of the cable silk, then of his interest in the tree on which he had found it. If Anderson had been tied to that tree and flogged, and if subsequently Anderson had been killed while tied to it, or close beside it, they would know that he, Bony, was “getting warm.”
If it were proved, therefore, that they were planning physical violence against him, it was proof that interest in him had turned to fear of him. They were subtle, these people, and by all accounts they still practised their ancient rites. He was allied to them through his mother’s blood. He was susceptible to their magic, and with their magic they would strike at him.
Round came the horse to carry Bony back over her tracks. He now clearly remembered the flight of the cigarette stub that ended beside the buckbush. It was like a picture drawn on the canvas of his mind. On reaching the buckbush, he dismounted and with blazing eyes searched for the discarded cigarette end. It was not there. There were no human tracks, and yet the cigarette stub was no longer where he had dropped it only fifteen minutes before.
Chapter Twelve
Powder of Bark
DESPITE the heat of the day, Sergeant Blake wore his uniform when he drove his car to meet Bony at the Karwir boundary gate. With his red face, grey hair and short clipped moustache, he appeared less at home in a motor-car than he would have been on the back of a horse on parade.
Almost exactly at twelve o’clock he braked the car before the white painted gate near which he saw Bony’s horse neck-roped to a shady tree; Bony himself was standing beside a fire in the shade cast by two robust cabbage-trees. The Sergeant turned off the track and parked the machine in the shadow of a mulga.
The appearance this day of Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte shocked Sergeant Blake. Bony appeared less well-favoured than the usual half-caste stockman, and was obviously not his former smiling self. Without a preliminary greeting, Bony said:
“So Old Lacy telephoned you my message. I didn’t think he would forget. Fill your own billy and make tea. We can talk as we eat.”
“Good idea!” Blake agreed. “But what’s happened? You look shaken by something or other.”
The smile that came to Bony’s face was forced.
“It is nothing,” he lied. “A touch of the sun. I am taking two aspirin tablets with my tea. Did you see Young Lacy’s plane?”
“Yes. He was having trouble and landed at Pine Hut to adjust the carburettor, so he said. The ground south of the hut is quite good enough to make a landing there.”
“Indeed! What time did you arrive there?”
“Half an hour back. Eleven-thirty. I stayed with him for ten minutes.”
Bony dropped half a handful of tea into the water boiling in his quart-pot and let it boil for ten or twelve seconds before he removed it from the fire. Blake, sitting squarely on the ground, regarded the water in his billy, slowly stirring.
“The plane passed me shortly after ten,” Bony said thoughtfully. “Young Lacy would have landed about ten-fifteen. You arrived there at eleven-thirty, so that Young Lacy had then spent an hour and a quarter adjusting the carburettor. Was he still fiddling with it when you left?”
“Oh no! They flew off to Opal Town before I left,” Blake replied, wondering at Bony’s extraordinary interest. He was, too, most uncomfortable in his tight-fitting tunic, and, when Bony suggested its removal, he took it off with a sigh of relief.
“I wonder why Young Lacy flew over this road to Opal Town instead of direct. Coming this way would add several miles to the journey.”
Blake offered no comment. He failed to understand what possible implication lay behind the observation.
“Is there a telephone instrument at this Pine Hut?” inquired Bony.
“Yes. Pine Hut belongs to Meena Station. There was often one or more black stockmen stationed there, but not since the dry season began.”
“Then there is communication with Meena homestead. Would one be able to raise Opal Town from Pine Hut?”
“No. The line is a private one, extending only between the hut and the homestead.”
“O! When you reached Pine Hut, what were the Lacys doing?”
“Young Lacy was putting away tools, and the girl was sitting on a case in the shade of the short veranda fronting the hut.”
“From my memory of Opal Town,” Bony said slowly, “if Young Lacy flew direct from Karwir he would pass over the police station before landing, would he not?”
“Yes, that’s so,” agreed Blake. “He often does that—comes direct. Goes over the same way on his return flights.”
“Now, I should like to know why he came this way. Do me a favour. I want your car to take me to this Pine Hut. You remain here and finish your lunch and look after my horse. I’ll not be long away.”
Before the Sergeant could speak, Bony was walking across to the car. It was a new machine and Blake was thankful when the detective drove it expertly to the track and expertly changed gears.
“Blest if I can understand him,” Blake said aloud. He listened to the dwindling hum of the engine for several minutes until it faded into the silence of the quiet day. He again heard it, like the drone of a distant bee, an hour later, and when Bony rejoined him he said, a little huffily:
“Satisfied that my description of the telephone is correct?”
“My dear man, I didn’t doubt your veracity. What I wished to ascertain was if Miss Lacy had rung up Meena homestead.”
“Did she?”
“Yes, she did. Her tracks on the earthen floor below the instrument indicate that she spoke for some considerable time to someone at Meena.”
“There appears nothing out of place in that,” argued Blake. “Remember, they were forced down there. Miss Lacy naturally would occupy the time by talking with Mrs Gordon, or the son.”
Bony sighed in his old mocking manner. He said:
“Without doubt, Sergeant, you are right. I am a wicked and suspicious detective, looking for evil where evil doesn’t exist.” Abruptly the cloud came back into his face, and he asked: “Tell me. Have you ever heard of a fellow named Horace?”
“Horace! Yes, Horace Maginnis keeps the pub in Opal Town.”
“I mean the Roman Horace, the philosopher and poet.”
“Oh! Yes, I’ve heard of him. He was a slave or something wasn’t he? Kind of raised himself in the community.”
“That was he. Horace once said, or wrote, I forget which: ‘No matter whether you are high born or low born, there is a coffin waiting for you.’”
“Eh!” ejaculated the astonished Blake.
“Horace wasn’t quite correct, Sergeant. Not all men, low born or even high born, are destined to be buried in a coffin. Have you got a new tracker?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Malluc.”
“Young?”
“No. Malluc’s getting on in life.”
“Sack him.”
“What for?”
“For the reason that at this time an elderly aboriginal is a dangerous man to have hanging about a police station. If you cannot get a young man, do without a tracker until I have completed this investigation.”
Blake’s eyes became big.
“If you say so. But what’s the reason? Why don’t you take me more into your confidence?”
Almost casually Bony examined the keen face and the frosty eyes. Blake was a typical outback police administrator of a huge district. He was naturally stern,
and skin-bound with red tape. When Bony spoke, his face was transformed by a winning smile.
“I’d like to take you fully into my confidence,” he said, earnestly. “There is a lot to be said in favour of confidences, but I don’t know where this particular investigation is going to lead me. I intend, of course, to follow it to the end, to find out what became of Anderson, who killed him, if he was killed, and how and why he was killed. You knew the man and his record. You know all the people who knew him. And, Sergeant, as I have said, I don’t know where the investigation into his disappearance is going to lead me.”
This somewhat vague generalization merely perplexed Blake.
“Still—” he objected, and then stopped.
“I would be, indeed, grateful for your assistance, Sergeant,” Bony said. “We belong to different branches of the Force, and we unite only on one point, that of making justice swift and sure. I will confide in you to a certain degree, but not wholly because I don’t know the end of the case. I may need you more as a human being than as an official colleague. Did you bring any letters for me?”
“I did. Sorry! I forgot them.”
Blake leaned back to reach for his tunic, and from a pocket produced two letters. Bony first opened one addressed in handwriting.
“From my wife,” he said, looking up. “She tells me that she and our boys are all well and busy with their respective careers. They live just out of Brisbane, at Banyo, you know. Superintendent Browne has been out there. He told my wife that I was expected back at headquarters on the seventh of the month. He said, too, that Colonel Spendor is very angry because I did not report, and that this time the Colonel intends taking drastic action concerning my disobedience. Browne asked her to write urgently and plead with me to return at once. I like Browne although he does not understand me; he persists in his belief that I am a mere policeman—if you will excuse me, Sergeant. And now for this official letter. I will read it to give you an insight into what I have to put up with.”
The Bone is Pointed Page 12
