“The odds greatly favour that meeting being arranged between lovers for the purpose of a little innocent love-making. We know, Kate, that Old Lacy thinks he’s a wise father, thinks that his daughter hasn’t a lover and never had a lover. We know that he desires his daughter to marry well, that is to say, to marry a man of position in the social and financial worlds. Doubtless the girl knows that too. Yet she falls in love with a man who is nobody in the social and financial worlds. Not her fault, of course. John Gordon has much to commend him to any woman, and a very great deal to commend him to me and to people like me. He is respected, and admirable in all things except wealth.
“Like me, the girl is a real lion tamer. I am sadly mistaken if she couldn’t tame Old Lacy sufficiently to make him consent to her alliance with John Gordon. But, Kate, she is not yet of age; and there is the possibility that she so loves the old lion that she could not bring herself to desert him by marrying Gordon. She may argue that, being only twenty, she can wait several years; for her father is over seventy and his life may end before she is thirty.
“I wonder, now. I wonder if I have entered a maze, if I have imagined that the traces of the meeting were wiped away to preventmy seeing them, when the object might really have been to preventanyone seeing them, anyone who could have read their meaning and talked about the meeting. If that is so, then the meeting can have no connection with the disappearance of Jeffery Anderson. If that is so, then the disappearance is all black, and to the blacks only can I look for a solution of the mystery.”
Oblivious of the hot sunlight striking upon his left cheek, neck and hand, Bony was carried at a quick walk over the slightly undulating plain country towards the far distant mulga forest through which passed the netted boundary fence. The depressions were filled to the brim with mirage water, as though this world of colourful space were composed of treeless islands dotted upon a vast lake. The gum-trees marking the creek and the Karwir homestead had already risen above the “water” to become waving coconut and date palms, and now were swiftly being dwarfed by distance. Now there emerged from the “water” ahead to cross an “island” a shape like that of a beetle on stilts. The beetle sank again into the “water” with a deep humming, finally emerging to crawl up upon the “island” on which Bony himself was the castaway mariner. He urged the horse off the track, when the car halted and from it issued Old Lacy’s booming voice.
“Was hoping you were going to stay the night, Bony,” he said, before clambering out stern first. Then, when he had reached the horse’s side and was resting a great hand on its neck: “I was looking forward to a pitch with you. What’s taking you away?”
“Duty, Mr Lacy. I called at the homestead to inspect Anderson’s whips again. Miss Lacy provided a delightful luncheon. Now I have to get back to work without having the pleasure of spending the evening with you, because my chief has written to the effect that if I have not reported back at headquarters by to-morrow I shall be sacked.”
“Sacked! Sacked!”
Bony smiled with his face only and nodded impressively.
“I was given a fortnight to investigate this case-as though I could complete it in two weeks. Now, because I have not given it up and reported as instructed, my chief is angry and threatens the sack. Of course, Mr Lacy, I shouldn’t dream of giving it up until I have concluded it to my own satisfaction.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” agreed the old man, his eyes gleaming. “And don’t you worry about the sack. I’ll have something to say about that, if it happens. How are you fixed for rations and horse feed at the hut?”
“Plenty of everything, thanks. Oh, but if you could send out some meat.”
“Right! I’ll send it to-morrow. That do?”
“Very well. And by the way, would you lend me your microscope? I’d take great care of it. I may want it. I hope I shall.”
“Yes, too right! The lad can fly it and the meat out some time to-morrow. Anything else, now?”
“No, I think that will be all.”
The old man smiled in his grim manner and stepped back from the horse.
“Don’t you let your boss take you away from here until you can tell us what happened to Jeff Anderson,” he urged. “And don’t you worry about getting the sack. I can make things jump around down in Brisbane when I want to.”
He went backward into the car, slammed the door and waved a hand-a man whom age could not dominate nor men subdue.
Bony was further delayed, this time for half an hour, by an ant battle, so that when he arrived at the boundary gate he saw beyond it Sergeant Blake and his car. The Sergeant had been asked to leave Opal Town half an hour after the chairman of the bench. Blake straightened up from the task of making tea, two dogs tethered to trees having announced the arrival of the horseman.
“So you managed the dogs, Sergeant?”
“They’re pretty rangy and only good for chasing rabbits,” Blake said, doubtfully.
“They will suit my purpose.”
“Your trouble will be keeping ’emwith you.”
“Presently you will see how I make a dog stick closer to me than a poor relation. You know, Blake, when making my report on the termination of this case I am going to give you an excellent notice.” The Sergeant grinned with quick pleasure. “If there is a man I like better than a good colleague it is a man with a swift perception of the needs of the moment. You have the gift of making good tea when tea is to be valued like a costly gift.”
The smile faded from the weather-beaten face, and the short grey moustache settled again into its official angles. Bony, having brought the cup of his quart-pot, filled it from the billy and helped himself to the sugar in the Sergeant’s tin. Blake fell to loading his pipe and watching Bony manufacture cigarettes. He offered no comment about perception of the needs of the moment.
“This case is becoming increasingly interesting,” Bony said, with a slight pause between each word. “Assigned to this case, any one of the world’s great investigators would have become hopelessly bushed, literally and practically. It is an investigation to be successfully conducted only by me, on several counts. I am, of course, familiar with drawing-rooms, but they are not my natural background. This world of the bush is my background, my natural element. The bush is like a giant book offering to me plain print and the language I understand. The book is so big, however, that I require sometimes a great deal of time to find in it the passages interesting me at the moment. And finally, as I think I have told you, time is my greatest asset; without it I am as ordinary men.”
“The last day of your leave is up to-morrow, isn’t it?”
“I am not concerned about that, Sergeant. Official action taken in Brisbane is of less importance than a recent development here at Karwir. Do you know what this is?”
Before Sergeant Blake Bony set on the ground the ball of gummed cigarette stubs he had found beside him when he awoke that morning. Blake peered down at the gum ball, then gingerly took it up the better to examine it.
“No, I don’t know what it is,” he admitted.
“The latest development in this case has deprived me of my greatest asset, the unconsciousness of the value of time. Patience is a great gift, Blake, the greatest. Unfortunately neither Colonel Spendor nor my immediate chief, Superintendent Browne, has that gift. The Colonel, like all self-important big business men, constantly yells for results. I give results, but in my own way and in my own time.
“ ‘Report!’ they yell, like babies yelling for a bottle of milk. Am I to report every other day that I did this and did that, that I found a certain track here and a wisp of cable silk there? That a crow gurgled like a man being strangled, and that one night someone left at my side a ball of gum and cigarette ends? That I began work at such and such a time in the morning and left work at such and such a time?”
Blake was astonished by the rising anger in the voice of this man, usually so calm. He noted that anger did not make the voice louder in volume.
“When I am
on a case nothing outside interests me. I don’t work for so many hours a day. I work all day, every minute I’m awake. The Commissioner has sacked me before, in his own way, and I have reinstated myself, in my own way. This time, however, the Commissioner means business, thinking that he can bring me to heel, as I will presently show you I can bring those dogs to heel. As you say, to-morrow is my last day. And you know I could not reach Brisbane by then, even if I wanted to-which I don’t.
“Sack me, would they! I-don’t-think! I won’t wait to be sacked like an errand boy. Here, I have an envelope! It will do fittingly for the occasion. Now watch me sack myself. I’m finished with the Department that I’ve served so well. Here’s my resignation. I write it on the back of an envelope. Take it, Sergeant. Mail it for me to the Chief Commissioner.”
Blake was forced to accept the split-open envelope on which Bony had written his resignation. Bony’s outburst had made him uncomfortable, a sensation that was increased when the half-caste raised his knees and pressed his face between them. Quite deliberately, Blake dropped the resignation into the fire. Presently Bony lifted his head to stare beyond the fire at the dozing horse standing in shadow.
“Yes, I have been deprived of the exercise of my greatest gift, unconsciousness of time, infinite patience. Neither Browne nor the Commissioner could deprive me of that; they could not rivet to my legs the irons of limitation.
“Look all about you, Sergeant. You see but a fraction of a great area of land in which eight months ago a man was destroyed and buried. I know, approximately, where he was killed; but as yet I don’t know where he was buried and by whom. I have to find where he was buried, who buried him, who killed him-within the next three weeks, at the longest a month. I may be able to extend the limit to six weeks, but I gravely doubt it. I may not need six weeks, or even three weeks, but the time limit is now my master. Because it has never before been my master I have always succeeded. Now that it is my master I may well fail for the first time. What do you make of the ball of gum in which are embedded a mass of my discarded cigarette ends?”
“I don’t know. What does it mean?”
“It is the announcement to me that I have been boned by the blacks.”
“What’s that!” almost shouted Blake.
Bony turned slightly to regard the policeman who saw in his eyes blue pools of horror.
“Oh, that’s it, is it?” he said, and whistled.
“I see that you realize the seriousness of the threat behind the boning,” Bony said.
“Realize it! I realize it all right,” Blake replied. “I’ve never seen the thing done, but I have known men who have. Old Lacy knows of its deadliness. He once told me that he warned Anderson to be careful or he’d be boned. The old man’s a believer in the magic. Said he saw a white man die of being boned. Why don’t you give up the case and get back to Brisbane as soon as you can?”
“Give it up!” shouted Bony, springing to his feet. “What of my reputation, my personal pride?”
“Well, no one’s going to blame you for giving it up. You’ve been ordered to, remember. Anderson disappeared six months before you came here. It’s not as though his body was found and examined by you the day after he disappeared, when you might have discovered a dozen clues, when the scent was hot. Anyway, who’s to know that the man is dead?”
Bony’s body sank upon his heels, and for a moment he was silent and motionless. Then he said:
“But I know. I was sent here to find out what happened to him, what was done to him and by whom. Ha-um! It would be easy to follow your road. Away from the bush I might defy the magic, most likely I should escape it. But your road would be signposted ‘Failure.’ No one would blame me for obeying orders to give up the case; but I should know, I’d always know that I gave it up because I was unable to carry on, unable to solve it. No one would blame me but myself.”
Sergeant Blake did not speak when Bony finished, the index finger of his right hand pointing at himself. He still failed to understand the basis of Bony’s pride in accomplishment, although now he was sure it was not mere vanity. The Sergeant felt as one of an audience waiting for the curtain to go up. And now up it went.
“No, Sergeant, I couldn’t bear failure. Being what you are, you could never clearly understand what I am. You can have no conception of what I am, what influences are ever at war within me. Once I failed to finish an investigation, I could no longer hold to the straw keeping me afloat on the sea of life, beneath the surface of which the sharks of my maternal ancestry are for ever trying to destroy me. Once I am unable to admire the great Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, I become parted from my straw. Down I go into the sea to be claimed for ever by my mother’s race.
“Don’t for one moment think that I despise my mother’s race. At a very early age I was offered a choice. I could choose to be an aboriginal or a white man. I chose to become the latter, and have become the latter with distinction in all but blood. To fail now would mean to lose everything for which I have worked, and the only thing which enables me to cling to what I have is my pride.
“You cannot know of the eternal battle I fight, to lose which means for me and mine what we should regard as degradation; my family and I should fall to that plane on which live the poor whites and the outcast aborigines. Failure! No. Surrender to the fear of death by boning! No. The white man might say, surrender. My wife, who understands, would say, no. And so, Sergeant, I must go on. I must for the first time triumph over the absence of my greatest asset. I must work against time as well as against the insidious mental poison now beginning to be administered.”
Sergeant Blake regarded Bony with steady eyes. He saw clearly enough that in Bony’s attitude and speech there was no melodrama, no conceit or flashy show. The half-caste’s sincerity was beyond doubt. Blake had heard of the efficacy of the aborigine’s power to will death and achieve it in others. Now the Sergeant understood the basis of Bony’s reputation for success in his chosen work. He felt this late afternoon the shock of the battle Bony had mentioned, the battle which was a clash of inhibitions, loyalties, superstitions, instincts, love, pride and ambition. There sat a man of great courage, and almost eagerly, he said:
“You haven’t made much use of me, sir. Let me help more. Two’s better than one any time. Let me inquire among the blacks who’s doing the boning. It could be stopped. Why, theGordons would stop it.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Bony said very softly.
“Good! Now let’s get going. What shall I do?”
“You will not make inquiry of the blacks, and you will not mention the fact of the boning to theGordons. I will tell you why. My impression of John Gordon and his mother is excellent. My admiration for them is unbounded, for what they are doing for one Australian tribe is unique. I do not think that John Gordon was in any way concerned with the death of Anderson, or that he knows any particular of it. I think him innocent, but I have no proof. Until I have proof of his innocence I cannot permit myself to be beholden to him for any service whatsoever.
“Supposing you went to him, supposing I went to him, and asked him to intercede with the blacks for my life, and then I discovered that he had killed Anderson. Think of that situation. Neither you nor I would ever discover by inquiring among them which of the blacks were doing the boning.
“You have offered to co-operate with me, even after I have written out my resignation from the Force. You are whiter than your skin, Blake. I accept your offer, but still you must be patient with me, be content with the part I shall allot you. Oh, I shall want your assistance all right. Above all I shall want the contact with all that you represent. Will you try to meet me here at six o’clock every evening from now on?”
“Yes, I can do that.”
“Then I will be waiting for you. If I am not you need not wait for me, for I will be detained on my work. On your way back to-night I want you to stop at Pine Hut and there smash the battery jars inside the telephone box.”
A quick frown came int
o, then passed from the military face.
“Very well, I’ll do that,” assented Sergeant Blake.
Chapter Sixteen
Things Below the Surface
BONY made the two dogs his willing slaves by a method known to the aborigines. They were friendly animals, two rangy members of the great canine League of Nations. One looked something like a Queensland heeler, and in the other there was a distinct strain of the bull terrier. After making a fuss of them, Bony gently forced the nose of each up and into an armpit. Having freed them, he turned to the interested Sergeant, the dogs leaping about him.
“They’ll do,” he said. “They are of the mixed breed I wanted, intelligent, loaded with stamina and hunting mad. For weeks I have been the hunted; now I become the hunter. Aurevoir! I’ll expect you here to-morrow evening at six. Remember to smash those batteries inside the telephone box at Pine Hut, and then be indignant at the vandalism should questions be asked. Nothing of the boning to anyone, remember, and find out, if you can, who is the Kalchut medicine man. You will do all that?”
“I will. You can depend on me.”
And so Bony walked over to his horse and led it to the Karwir boundary gate, the two dogs jumping about horse and man, the horse obviously pleased by the companionship. Blake watched until they all disappeared among the trees beyond the fence.
At a walking pace, Bony rode for two miles towards Green Swamp when, abruptly, he swung his horse round, urged her into a gallop back over her own tracks, and shouted to the dogs. The mare snorted, and the dogs yelped into excited frenzy.
“Hool’emSool ’em!” shouted the half-caste.
The enthusiastic dogs raced ahead of the galloping horse. They wanted no urging to enter into this new game with their new master. For a while the hunting pack raced back towards the boundary fence, and then southward of it to sweep in wide semicircles through the mulga forest, Bony constantly urging the dogs to “Sool ’em!”
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